street scene goes indie

the lineup for street scene was announced today and it appears rob hagey made an excellent decision to enlist casbah owner tim mays to help book the festival. quality acts from the indie scene, along with several major label artists, make up the majority of the lineup, which is anchored by beck and the black crowes. there's a definite move away from the pop-oriented acts that have been a major part of street scene for the past several years (black eyed peas, anyone?) toward artists that have often had critical, if not large-scale commercial success. and hagey and mays seem to have taken the pulse of the (white) cosmopolitan listener and booked bands that appeal to younger folks who live in and around downtown san diego.

in the past, street scene has tried to appeal to various audiences within the same festival, but there's little effort to do that this year. since part of the deal in securing the site was apparently capping attendance to a reasonable number, it makes sense to largely book acts with low-to-moderate price tags and focus on a target demographic. but are there enough people in that demo in san diego? coachella built its early success on a similar formula, and many of that festival's attendees are from throughout southern california, so it seems reasonable.

for me, the festival highlights are:

- beck: people seem to be falling off his bandwagon recently, but there's no denying that beck is one of the premier alternative artists of the past two decades. plus his live shows are consistently good, whether it was the vamp of the midnite vultures tour at coachella in '99 or pairing up with the flaming lips at copley symphony hall downtown in 2002.

- spoon: hard to beat their last two albums for sheer quality of songwriting

- hot chip: too much fun at coachella this year, impossible not to dance to

- tv on the radio: how hard is "wolf like me" going to rock?

- justice: mixed reviews from coachella, but their set should be an intense end to the night on one of the stages

- others: new pornographers (will neko case be there? regardless, just go light on that last cd); cat power; the national; vampire weekend; the hives. a friend of mine is very high on man man and devotchka, so i'll have to listen to them soon. i'm hoping the lead singer's voice for cold war kids will be in better shape than what i heard at coachella, and that the number of fights during x will be less than 20 (with social distortion conspicuously absent from street scene, that might be possible).

ticket prices are very reasonable - just $75 total for both days at this time. this is another smart move by hagey - the concert industry appears to be soft right now, and i've been seeing 2-for-1 ticket deals for the george michael concert here and for big-grosser kenny chesney elsewhere. by making the tickets affordable to the target audience, they stand a good chance of hitting that attendance cap - if people turn out, which i really hope they do. we need to support this incarnation of the festival, because 50 year-old jimmy buffet fans sure won't be coming.



one interesting thing is the stage layout, which utilizes the eastern side of tailgate park east of petco, but also two closed street blocks. i don't see how they're going to accomodate any large turnouts on those street stages shown.

a downer is the complete lack of any hip hop acts at the festival, but it's better than booking a couple of token acts that the crowd ignores. so i'm posting an mp3 here from the new lil' wayne cd as a reminder that hip hop can appeal to the indie crowd. stay tuned for street scene act previews here in the next few months.