Seeing as Bonnaroo will begin unveiling their 2013 lineup on Tuesday, it's time to think about music festivals, those glorious weekend-long concerts. "You can do whatever you want, wear whatever you want, and everyone is your friend," said Weinberg junior Katie Chilton. "There's no wrong way to dance. You can just be you."
As far as lineups go, the major festivals' offerings tend to overlap quite a bit and are always stellar if you're into indie music at all. Passion Pit, Kendrick Lamar, TNGHT, Japandroids and Youth Lagoon seem to be making the rounds, and legacy acts like Wu-Tang Clan and the man himself, Lou Reed, are taking victory laps as well. Northwestern's academic calendar makes attending some festivals more difficult than others, but fear not: NBN breaks down the appeal and the feasibility of six major music festivals.
The draw: Older and more complex than most music festivals, South by Southwest is a 10-day event offering film screenings, panels on emerging technology and, of course, music. In Austin, Texas, SXSW presents various music showcases encompassing a variety of artists at over 90 venues, all under SXSW's umbrella. There's no shortage of musicians and artists in Austin, and all kinds take to the streets to share their work in a laidback but vibrant environment. “The entire city really embraces the festival and it's just cool being there,” said Medill freshman An Phung.
Dates: March 12-17 (for the music festival). This encompasses the Tuesday of Weinberg's Reading Week up to the Sunday before Finals Week starts. Study hard and early and you could conceivably excuse yourself to Texas for awhile.
Cost: According to Phung, buying the all-inclusive passes and wristbands makes less sense than just purchasing tickets for individual events, because you could never attend everything SXSW offers. Plus there are many free events, such as the Auditorium Shores stage, which has three nights worth of free concerts.
The draw: Set in beautiful Indio, Calif., the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, at least to a Midwesterner like myself, represents a kind of far-off gorgeous 72-hour gold standard of a party. In addition to music, every year Coachella also features large-scale art installations, often abstract hunks of contorted material that light up each night. The event has seen its stock grow dramatically. Last year, the festival began holding the fest two consecutive weekends to accommodate the demand.
Dates: April 12-14 and April 19-21. A Northwestern student would have to miss a Friday of class and presumably a Monday as well in order to do Coachella, and the distance demands flying.
Cost: $800, easily. A staggering $349 for a weekend general admission pass, which apparently does not include camping. A GA pass and Car Camping Pass will cost $434. Airfare to the Palm Springs airport is ludicrously expensive (around $500 round-trip) and while round-trip to LAX can be had for as cheap as $250. I figure the 130 miles east will run at least $25, however you make that leg of the trip. Finally, you'd have to give yourself at least $100 to spend on food and whatever else you might care to ingest.
The draw: This festival in the Pacific Northwest in George, Wash. fits the more typical music festival bill: an extended weekend of high-profile artists spanning the genres of hip-hop, indie rock and electronic dance music. As with Bonnaroo, Sasquatch general admission passes all include camping, and the grounds are truly beautiful. One big perk for Sasquatch is that the main stage, the Gorge Amphitheatre, stands in front of beautiful vistas of the Columbia River and its canyon.
Dates: May 24-27 (Memorial Day weekend)
Cost: $337.50 for a ticket, and airfare to Seattle that weekend runs around $399 round-trip. Then to get to George you can carpool or rent a bus from lots of self-organizing groups emerging online and spend maybe $25. Throw in about $100 on food and beverage and Sasquatch, like Coachella, becomes very expensive.
The draw: Bonnaroo has more of a tilt towards jam bands and bearded hippie culture than Coachella's glossy celebrity image or Lollapalooza's major metropolitan backdrop. In Manchester, Tenn., on what is basically a huge farm, the camping-neccessary, all-or-nothing festival creates its own little oasis of freedom. More than Lollapalooza or Coachella, Bonnaroo channels Woodstock. While ostensibly the event runs four days, Chilton said that there are only a few shows on Thursday. That night and Friday morning consist of setting up camp. Being so isolated, Bonnaroo can get away with more than Lollapalooza.
"At Chicago, Pretty Lights' set had to end at nine and they literally unplugged him," Chilton said. "At Bonnaroo it was supposed to go until 4 a.m. and it didn't end until nine in the morning. There's no place like Bonnaroo at night."
Dates: June 13-16. Finals Week ends on June 14 and Manchester is about an eight-hour drive from Chicago. So start planning your Spring Quarter to have finals end on Wednesday and befriend someone with a car. Bonnaroo may be the single best way to blow off a year's worth of academic and extracurricular steam.
Cost: $375. Tickets were $225 last year, but could conceivably go up to $250 or so. From that point, food, gas and intoxicant expenditures will depend on how many people are in your vehicle and how much you value your health (Chilton described living on fruit snacks and ham sandwiches), but you would probably have to spend at least $150.
The draw: Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago resides a few miles west of the loop, at Union Park. The event runs a much lower tab than other festivals and typically promotes up-and-coming artists who will probably grace bigger festival's stages in the future (Last year Pitchfork had Kendrick Lamar, Youth Lagoon, Vampire Weekend and Grimes, among others). However, the headliners recently announced for the 2013 festival are R. Kelly, Björk and Belle & Sebastian, a typically eclectic but untypically nostalgia-heavy set of artists. "Pitchfork's great because you can actually walk from one end to another in 10 minutes or so," said Weinberg freshman Jay Smith. "But that doesn't mean there isn't a whole lot to see and hear and experience."
Dates: July 19-21
Cost: A three-day pass costs $120. Like Lollapalooza, Pitchfork's location in Chicago makes it easy to get to from anywhere around the city. Assuming you can stay somewhere for free, the total Pitchfork experience could stay under $200.
The draw: Having personally done Lollapalooza I can vouch for it being a blast and worth going to, especially if you have a friend to stay with around the city. Booking a hotel to attend a festival seems silly, but Chicago's public transit makes getting to and from Grant Park a breeze, from anywhere in the city and all of the close suburbs. Not to mention the party tends to flow right into the trip home. "One of my favorite things about Lolla is that the camaraderie on that last train home is awesome," said Chilton, who is from the southwestern suburb of La Grange. Smith came to Lollapalooza from Valparaiso, Ind., by train and said it was totally manageable. "As long as you're within a certain big radius of the Loop, you can get there on public transit, no problem,” Smith said.
Dates: Aug. 2-4
Cost: Seeing as this festival is not during the NU school year, this depends totally on where you are from. But for an estimate, assuming you find a place to lay your head for free, take $230 for a ticket, about $100 for food and intoxicant consumption rates and whatever your transportation cost may be.