It's finally music festival season and The What podcasters have lots of twists and turns to discuss. Are we all ready for this? Are they ready for this?
Lollapalooza begins now, and Brad and Barry are just as curious about how everything is going to work as you are. Pooling their years of experience plus insider information, they discuss the reality of returning to music festivals in a world that is still not entirely recovered from 2020.
Topic: Lollapalooza
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Something strange is in the air.
On the eve of Lollapalooza 2021, we have cancellations, additions, confusion, all reign supreme.
It's usually which bands this year that matter, but in 2021, it's more like which fests this
year that make it.
We promise it won't be a doomsday episode.
Barry Courter Brad Steiner, the What Podcast starts right now.
I'm going to go grape ate.
I'm reaching through the microphone.
I'm going to stop your motherfucking ass.
What did I do?
Nothing.
You just got me out of bed.
It is seven o'clock at night.
It's eight o'clock.
I've had a bad day.
I've had a bad weekend.
What's the trouble bubble?
Oh, my computer.
You don't even want to know.
That's it.
That's bothering.
Dad is his computers.
He's a VCR down to what else is broken?
Can you not get the humidified dehumidifier on?
I got a did they shut down the early bird buffet?
We got there.
The shrimp with the crab meat was gone.
All of the crab meat was gone.
And the steak tasted like your mother.
The steak had been sitting out in the heat lamps forever.
Tasted like your mother.
Tasted like your mother.
I wish.
I wish it tasted like your mother.
Is everything okay in your world?
I think so.
I mean, it's, you know, all in all, I should tell you.
I should tell you.
I literally I got a call from a guy who's a living rock star who wanted to move 6700
vinyl records tomorrow in the heat.
And he needed a couple of teenagers.
And so I'm like, now I'm pimping.
I'm pimping teenage boys.
Cut that.
Get that.
Somebody get that.
Grab that one forever.
I'm pimping teenage boys.
Now I'm pimping teenage boys.
Welcome to the 2022 What Podcast T-shirt.
I'm pimping teenage boys.
I need you to help me schlep some records around.
You think I'm kidding?
I'm pimping teenage boys.
This was a two hour part of my day.
What did you get the records moved?
It's tomorrow.
Yeah, I think I did actually.
I know people.
Are these records any good or are they just all one record?
It's actually Kings of Leon.
It's their new record.
They need somebody to help get them out to their fans.
Well the way that it's selling, I don't think you're going to need to worry about 6800 records.
No, these are sold.
These are sold.
These are stunning.
So what are you doing with Kings of Leon records?
There is the question.
Why am I involved?
I'm glad to be because they reached out to me.
They're friends of mine.
Kings of Leon?
No.
Are you holding out friends for the show?
Are you holding out?
I'm not going to say who, but yeah.
Just random Kings of Leon new record.
I'm so confused.
If you gave me a thousand choices to try and figure out, I would guess some sort of like
really you know.
Yeah, K-Tail.
Ron, what are the old ones?
The Ron from the 70s and 80s.
Hey, it's the whatever.
No, these are legitimate fan club records.
King of Leon that have to be processed and I'm now involved.
You're the guy for me.
I was thinking just about you, Barry.
I thought about what I need.
Who can move this product?
Well, I mean you are the Swiss army knife of everything in my life.
So if the most random thing, let's be honest, if something were to happen and a very large,
long vegetable found itself lodged in my body, you'd be the guy I'd call.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have this thing.
I have a thing.
I have a thing.
I have a thing.
I need you to come over with a bucket and a screwdriver.
Can you help me out?
And my answer would be I got a guy.
I got a guy.
I'm on my way.
I got a guy.
I got a phone number.
Call this guy.
You know, you're also like the one thing that you do, all these things that you have at
your disposal and yet not one time have you been able to, you know, carry out a hit on
another life.
You just don't do hits.
As far as you know.
You're like the good mobbers.
As far as you know.
I guess, but I mean, I don't know.
I mean, that would be even, that'd be the beautiful part, right?
Maybe that's why you keep building the pool over and over and over and over.
Maybe I got a whole, I got a, I got a whole, yeah.
A parking lot full of hits.
You don't know.
Aside from your life being strange, do you feel something strange?
By the way, have you hit record on this?
Cause I'm not seeing it.
Yeah, it's, it's good.
All right.
I just want to make this, this is good stuff.
Oh, great stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm pimping teenage boys is going to live forever.
If your life is weird, do you feel anything strange happening in the air right now?
I feel a ton.
Yeah.
Something feels very odd.
Um, the only information that I have, I'm going to say this straight up.
Uh, I've put out there on, on, uh, Twitter, the, uh, Lollapalooza people are very, very
nervous there, ringing hands, nervous.
There was a feeling earlier in the week, the mayor was going to put a mask mandate on the
festival that looks like that is not going to happen.
Um, they of course are, uh, demanding you have a 20 or 72 hour test, which means a test
at 72 hours previous before you get into the festival, which means if you got a test on
say Wednesday, you need a test before you go back in on Sunday.
Um, this was described to me originally when they put the line out, the lineup out was,
um, nobody's going to enforce this.
They're not even going to, they're not even going to bother.
So it's all for show.
Literally the quote was, it was all for show.
It ain't for show anymore.
Um, they, I cannot, I'm going to be, I'm leaving for Lollapalooza.
If I don't know when you're listening to this, but I'm leaving for Lollapalooza on Wednesday
morning and by Thursday, when I get to the gate, I hope to find the longest line that
you could ever imagine.
Because if the longer the line is Barry, the more that they're actually checking these
things and then putting a wristband on you that says that you are cleared and tested
negative or shown a, uh, a vaccine card.
You and I talk how often every day, every day.
I didn't know that you were schlepping teenage boys.
I didn't know either at the three.
Yeah.
I don't admit that to a lot of people, but we talk what every two days, three days maybe
and this conversation, not listening right now.
Okay, so we're very randomly and we do, it's usually cause you owe me money.
Does that help?
Um, so if we, I mean, this conversation changed how quickly a week ago, two weeks ago at most.
And man, like I told you earlier today, I don't want to be, I don't want to be doom
and gloom.
I know.
I don't want to be chicken little.
I don't want to be, it's the end is nigh and all that.
I don't want to be that guy, but your question three minutes ago, how does it feel?
Something feels strange.
Something feels strange.
And look, the, the thing I've done this, I've done radio for 21 years.
Um, and in the capacity that I'm in now, I've been for, I guess, 12 years now.
I've never felt, you know how like you just feel the calmness before the hurricane.
I guess I know this now living in New Orleans, there's just this weird, um, docile, uh, calmness
across the city before a storm hits.
Um, that's what it feels like.
And now granted, I'm, I'm making this clear.
The Lollapaloo's information that I shared is completely independent than anything else.
I have no information about anything other than that.
And that's what's really scary.
That's what's weird and maybe not scary, but it's bizarre.
It surely is bizarre.
The reason why, you know, this show in by itself is a little late on our schedule is
because we've been waiting for a schedule to drop.
Exactly.
The schedule by all accounts, you know, should have come out by now.
Um, that's strange.
Uh, not unheard of.
Maybe we're reading too much into it, but man, something just doesn't feel right.
Yeah.
And then part of it is cause we got an Olympics going on with people getting sick.
I mean, we got golfers, we've got stars, we've got people.
I feel creepy even talking about it.
Cause like I said, I don't want to be that guy.
So, so Lollapaloo's, I think if I had to guess, um, whatever happens this weekend at Lollapaloo's
is going to be, I think it's going to be huge.
Yeah, I hate to use this analogy again, but it's going to be a major domino.
If, if you see this thing, a complete, you know, clusterfuck as far as an organizational
thing, getting people in and out 120,000 people in and out of a festival grounds, um, with
vaccine cards, a positive COVID negative COVID tests, et cetera, on a daily basis.
And then the aftermath of the next three weeks after, if there's a super spreader event that
happened to happen in Grant park, you're going to, I just don't, I don't feel good about
any of this.
You know, I've, I've been very, I've been told very clearly that the mayor of New Orleans
does not want jazz Fest to happen.
She doesn't feel as though she's got the, the bandwidth with the police department.
She doesn't feel as though it's a, it's a public health concern.
Um, you know, there's some, some political things in there and that she may just not
like jazz Fest, so, you know, Lord knows it's the kind of woman that she is, but, um, it's
been pretty open that she wants them to cancel jazz Fest.
And what does jazz Fest do goes and add it's another day with, with, uh, I, I, I've never
heard of this band.
Like who, who was it?
They added.
I've never heard of them.
The strolling drones.
Yeah.
Some teeny tiny little nobody.
I want to get to, I want to get to that here in a bit.
I know we'll come back to that.
But no, I think, I think you raised an unbelievable point that, uh, I think kind of gets lost
in the mix.
Uh, so even with me, I won't say you, I'll say me, um, it's not just about the, the,
uh, vaccine and the card and the whatever, you know, are, do we feel safe and all that,
that, which is huge.
I don't know.
I don't mean to miss that, dismiss that.
But the reality of it, the, and, and our guys at RooHamm, you know, and I, and you sent me
a text giving them full credit.
What a great show they had.
They, they touched on some stuff that you and I, because we don't go that route, we
don't do general admission.
Never thought of, but the reality of it.
Um, and I think you mentioned it earlier.
The, how do you get 80,000 people in and out of a festival site?
And do you do that comfortably?
You know, we all just want to think about being inside, having a good time shoulder
to shoulder watching the Foo Fighters.
We don't, you and I've talked about it, but we haven't really focused on it.
How do you make that work?
Well, I did please to play devil's advocate from all of this yet.
This could all be very, very bad.
Um, come Lollapalooza weekend and the aftermath from it.
But the thing, the difference between Lollapalooza ACL and then Bonnaroo is that Bonnaroo is
self-contained.
And if you still got to get them inside, that's my point.
Right.
But what I'm saying, oh yeah, true.
But you're not, let me put it this way.
Once you're inside though, Bonnaroo it's self-contained.
True.
Now, now if, if there is a world where all of the sudden Bonnaroo says, you have to be
vaccinated to show up.
I mean, the time is the time the clock is ticking on making that a reality because you can't
say that two weeks before the festival.
Yeah.
You've got to give somebody that takes four weeks.
Yeah, you got to get somebody the full four to five weeks to make this work.
And they're, they're out of time when it comes to that.
And our friend, uh, Oh, I can't think of his name.
I will.
Uh, from Canada, our friend, Stevie wonder from Canada has already said Canada's closing
their borders.
He can't make it.
Um, he's been, he was a guest on the show.
I haven't heard that.
Oh, I saw that.
Oh my God.
Really?
You know me.
I'm terrible with his name is Bill or, or Jesse.
I don't know.
You know me.
I'll think of it in a minute.
I didn't, I hadn't heard that though.
Madison, Madison, Madison from Canada.
Seriously, Madison.
Okay.
Yeah.
He said, I can't make it cause they closed the borders again.
Uh, so that's a, that's another one.
Um, you know, he, your point is exactly right.
We're, we're 34 days, something like that away.
So if you haven't been vaccinated, it takes depending on your vaccine summer, four weeks.
Yeah.
You're running out of days.
Um, so, okay.
So I don't think that they are going to force you to be vaccinated because I don't think
they have the kind of time, but they could force you to show a negative test before you
get there.
Um, that would be new and maybe that's something they're trying to work out.
Again, would at least I would, I think I would feel more safe in Bonnaroo space.
If everyone that walked in for the most part was honest about their, their either vaccination
status or their, uh, negative COVID tests.
I don't necessarily feel that safe with Chicago and Lollapalooza when you can intermix, you
can, you know, in and out, in and out, switching wristbands, new people coming in every day,
day pass after day pass, you know, with Bonnaroo, once your people are there, those people are
going to be there the entire time.
You're not going to be, there's not that many randomly new people showing up.
Fair point.
That's a, that's a good point.
And if you got in, we would assume, yeah.
All right.
I get that.
I'll go with that.
So that's why I think that like, there's a, there's some sort of difference between Bonnaroo
and Lollapalooza.
So maybe, so again, this is all to play devil's advocate at the same time though, the whole
point that I'm trying to make is there is eerie silence here.
Yes.
Yes.
And there's not just eerie, eerily eerie silence from, from Bonnaroo, there's eerie silence
from everybody.
Everybody.
In a way that I, like, I feel it across the entire industry.
I don't feel it just from Bonnaroo.
No, that's, that's what I was saying earlier.
That's why I brought up Olympics.
I mean, Lala, which you leave, you know, this week for, depending on when people are hearing.
Yeah, no, I, I get it.
That's, I totally agree.
The silence is, I mean, it's terrible cliche, but the silence is pretty deafening because
we're not hearing it from a lot of people.
And, and then on top of it all, put the silence in one basket.
And then in the other basket is the total confusion about so much that happened, is
happening this year.
Not only is our facts changing on the fly and they're obviously having to rearrange
things as they go.
And I'm sure every day comes a new argument for this and then a new argument that completely
is the opposite of that.
So I can't even imagine the, to untangle all of that.
But then you're asking, you're putting new policies in place.
You're putting new organizational things in place.
The way to get in and out of Bonnaroo is going to be completely different.
I, what in the, I hate to be like baffled about this, but I'm, I'm baffled who's running
the place right now.
The word I got that from some of our insiders and that sounds so like I'm, you know, my
guy inside told me, I don't mean it to sound like that inside Ian, we call them inside
Ian inside Ian, but that's what it sounds like.
And I don't mean it to be like that, but what the word I got was the people who were making
the changes are making changes.
So what was there yesterday is already changed.
So they're, they're making it up and, and I don't mean it to sound like, you know, they
don't know what they're doing, but everything keeps changing.
Um, and, and in a normal year that would be startling, but in this year, exactly in this
year it's understandable, but at the same time, like I still haven't figured out, you
know, frankly C3 is a major entity and they know what they're doing when it comes to running
Lollapalooza, but sometimes even with them, it feels like they're walking around without
any sort of direction whatsoever.
And just hoping to God, this thing doesn't go bad.
And maybe frankly, Barry, maybe that's the best that we could have hoped for.
Well, I'll put it this way.
If you were in charge, what would you be doing?
I mean, I would be freaking the fuck out.
Yeah.
You, I mean, let's be honest.
You think you know what you're doing.
You let's write.
I mean, in what department do you think everything, everything?
I mean, you, you put events on, I've been involved in putting events on.
We'd like to think we know what we're doing.
That nobody knows what, nobody knows how to do this because it's never been done before.
Um, and that, you know, that is a good point.
And I hope that, I hope that anybody who is, you know, you do, I'll put it this way.
I hope that nobody thinks that we're saying this as a negative.
No, I'm not pointing it out though.
Thank you.
Out, pointing it out is, is not the same thing as criticizing it.
I am not.
Thank you.
That I'm glad you brought that up.
I am absolutely not.
My point is nobody's ever done this before.
And you know, it, the only comparison I can put to it is my industry newspapers.
We did it for 200 and something years and we printed money.
I mean, we literally printed money.
And you were there the day it started.
I was there when, when we ran the first dollar bill off the printing press and, uh, and then
the internet happened and it was like, we don't know what we're doing.
And that's what it feels like.
Honestly, every day.
Exactly.
We don't know what we're, we're reacting.
We're not acting.
Um, and this feels like, actually I hadn't thought about it, but that's, that's exactly
what it feels like.
When we come out of this with festivals, they, we don't know.
And I think I said that to you a week or so ago.
It feels like, it feels like it's a great opportunity for a restart for a lot of these
festivals things that they thought they should have fixed that they don't like, whatever.
This is a great opportunity for them to fix.
And I think they're going to do that and I don't blame them, but can I sit here and predict
to you what those are?
No, I probably, I could have made a list, but maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong
though.
You know, Lollapalooza is happening in 48 hours.
48 hours is about the time round about panic time in probably any festival.
You don't really know.
You have a good idea and you have a good handle on most things, but you don't know how everything's
going to go.
You're worried about weather.
You're worried about crowds.
You're worried about, you know, a random guy from the top of a building shooting you,
you know, you've got security measures and things like there's real concerns that you're,
you're panicked about.
Um, so maybe if you're Bonnaroo or any of these other festivals that are still holding
on to the fall and hoping to God that it works, maybe you're just taking your time.
Maybe this is much to do and more thought about from us.
Maybe we think about this much more than they think about it.
Maybe they see the, the world happening in front of them.
They see the calendar, they've got some time and there's no rush.
They've got a sold out festival.
They don't need to put out, you know, the schedule.
They don't need to do anything.
I don't need to put out press releases.
They don't need to talk to us.
They don't have to do any of this stuff.
So they could be sitting here for the next, you know, three weeks and still be fine.
Let's see how it plays out.
Let's not panic and figure it out.
You know, this time, you know, um, three weeks from now, I would have agreed with you a while
ago.
The difference to me is, and, and we're making this up, we are completely making this up
and so are they.
I think you can count on the fans.
I think in, in a weird way, the difference is this year you can count on the fans because
the fans are ready to come.
I think in the past that would have been your number one concern.
Are we going to get the numbers?
And maybe I'm wrong.
I think the fans are coming.
Um, I think what's different is the other side.
It's the artist's hesitation.
The artist's hesitation.
I don't think that has ever been.
I told you, I don't think that has ever been an element.
I just, I think this year it's like, Oh my God, the artists, maybe they don't come.
I just heard a story today and, um, I can't believe I didn't lead with this.
So I heard a story today about a major artist playing Lollapalooza.
I will not say who it is because it will anyway, a major artist playing Lollapalooza that the
mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot asked to meet.
And this artist said, no, not politically.
It wasn't a political thing.
They're on the same side.
They believe all the same things.
And she got a big no.
Yeah.
Why?
Because this person has said, nobody gets in my bubble except for my closest, my, my
touring staff and my management and my band.
I think that's nuts to me.
I mean, if you went one, two, three, you know, artists used to be three cause the money was
there and then if you were super superstar, you raised at the top, but otherwise it was
one, two, three.
And now I think artists is one.
And I think, uh, promoters and attorneys and all that becomes two.
And I think three is way down.
And I could be wrong, but that's the way it feels to me.
All of a sudden we know that the fans are going to come, but the artists are questionable
and becoming more and more questionable.
And now it feels like, uh, you know, the other becomes, you know, like you said,
Do you remember when, do you remember when Major League Baseball went on strike in the
nineties and like 1996 and all you heard from the top guys, like we're going on strike for
the little guy.
We're going on strike for the minor league players.
You know, it has, sometimes I feel like these, these artists are, are coming to these festivals
and performing just so the little guys can still get a paycheck.
You know, what does the, what are the Foo Fighters need to do this for?
You know, they've had COVID, they've had COVID break out in their, uh, the group already.
They had to cancel shows in LA.
For one guy, for one guy.
They don't have to do this, but you know, they're, they're putting themselves out there
because they really hope that, you know, uh, cannons makes a, you know, $1,500.
Uh, I don't know.
I guess maybe they are.
Maybe.
I don't know, but it's not about the fans.
That's not ugly.
I'm just saying now the fan, we know the fans are coming.
I'm just saying the pyramid is flipped.
Um, and it feels like it's flipping even more and more every day.
Yeah, this, uh, what's happening with the numbers in New Orleans, just yesterday, there
were 700 cases of, of COVID.
And I know there are breakthrough cases.
I just want, I just want to say this one thing.
This is the, the paradox of our time is that everything becomes political and the things
that shouldn't be political have been politicized.
And you know, then who politicized the politicization becomes politicized.
You can't even associate blame correctly anymore.
So I actually, I actually heard somebody say it's flipped now that the people who refuse
to get the vaccine because they're getting sick are now the ones getting it because the
GOP is losing voters because they're dying.
Yeah.
I'm not trying to throw politics.
I just thought, wow, didn't see that coming.
I mean, it's just, it's just nuts because the right will say the left politicize it.
The left will say that Donald Trump politicized it.
So even the politicization is getting politicized.
It's become so, it's such a mind screw, but here, like at the end of the day, you have,
I was in a text thread where somebody sent an article that said 27 people died that have
re-vaccinated, died of COVID in Tennessee, 27 people, the exact same thing that was linked,
right?
In that news article, it was all from the same story.
I found a link that said 98% of all COVID cases are from unvaccinated people.
Those are the two headlines.
And if you, if you, if you dug down deep, the headline that read 27 cases in Tennessee
of breakthrough deaths was by Sinclair broadcasting, which was owned by a Republican.
And the article that I found was written by Scripps, which is the left version of Sinclair
broadcasting.
We can't even get the fucking story right.
You know, we're telling the same story, but we've got the completely wrong, everybody's
got their own headline.
Everybody's got their own different version of what they're looking at.
At the end of the day, we're trying to look out for each other.
The whole point of this is like, we're looking out for each other.
I've gotten to the point, Barry, that I did this, I got the shot because of other people.
Now I'm feeling like I got that shot from me.
Yeah.
I hate that I'm feeling this way.
I got the shot so I could go to Bonnaroo.
Well, yeah.
Well, now I've, now I'm just like, screw these people.
They're not even trying.
They're not even trying.
Yeah.
Well, when you know when the governor of Alabama is calling you out, something's wrong.
Yeah.
It's nice to see some people show up and discover a spine, but it's better late than ever, I
suppose.
Point being, I mean, it's, I don't know.
Back to your original question, it feels weird.
There's no question the electricity, the buzz, the whatever in the air feels weird.
I know, but if they were delaying the schedule and having a little bit of missteps along
the way with new procedures in any other year, would we be this worried about it?
Wait, I'm going to have to think about that because as I've told you, we're 42 days out
or something like that, whatever the, you know, you're hearing this.
I'm always worried about it at this point.
I mean, at this point, we're convinced it's going to be the worst show ever.
You guys do this every year.
Oh, stop, stop.
We have a group of people in our campsite.
Don't even act like you're not the leader of the puckered up party.
You are the absolute leader.
That's just not true.
You guys get so worried that the time, the moment that you show up, they're going to
look at you like you've got, what are you doing here?
And that's what I'm worried about.
But you're the one, you're the one, you're the one that showed up two years ago with
your finger pointed at the guy who was trying to park us.
This will never do.
This is awful.
And I'm like, Brad, who this guy is, who won that conversation by the way?
I did because he was a friend from Chattanooga.
We had already figured it out and you showed up like grandpa.
No, no, no, no.
I'll show him.
This is the worst.
No.
Um, and we all do that.
But, but anyway, this is to your point.
Yes.
Um, we always do it.
I always do it.
And I'm like I said at the beginning, I am trying not to be, you know, things are bad
because every year we do it and we show up and it's, it's great.
It's never not great is our friend, Ken Weinstein said.
And I, I mean, it really is.
It will be fine.
It will be if it happens.
But I just, I just, I know there's going to be changes and you know, what's your percentage
of it happening?
Ooh, ooh, that's a great question.
What is today?
Today is July 27th.
I'm going to say, I'm going to say it's a solid 88, 90% happen.
Wow.
Okay.
That's much more optimistic than I thought you'd go.
I'm going 75.
Um, but it's, it's going to change.
You think it's going to change?
I really, I think, ask me again on Sunday.
I think Lollapalooza is huge.
Yeah.
I think Lollapalooza is a massive tail.
I'll be honest with you.
Now I'll go, I'll kind of repeat this.
You know, the, the people inside of Lollapalooza are panicked.
They're, well, maybe I shouldn't say panic.
They are stressed out.
Their hand, they're wringing their hands.
They're very concerned about this.
I, um, I, I'm less put it this way.
The outcome of what happens with all the other festivals in the country, I think has more
to do with the, with watching how Lollapalooza organizes the entry and how they manage, um,
dealing with all the tests and the cards and the whatever versus the super spreader event.
I totally, and I, I think I tried to allude to that 10 minutes ago and probably did poorly,
but that's exactly, I agree.
I don't think it's as much about the numbers though, those will be key as the organization
of it.
If it's a, if it's a shit show organizationally, uh, because of COVID, then it's going to be
tough to do any of them.
If you don't think that if one of the top guys in C3, uh, sees the mess that this could
be, then they might do a magical, a great job at this.
They might do an incredible job that makes everybody look around and say, we need to
do it like them.
Possible.
They're very capable people at doing this, no matter what you think about them as a lineup
producer.
Either way, they're very good at this, but if, if it goes bad, I can imagine one of the
C's calling insert festival organizer here or live nation and say, let me tell you, this
is damn near impossible.
Yep.
I agree.
I don't, I don't think it will be canceled necessarily because you know, 20%, 30%, whatever.
I think it will be the logistics and, and as related to that, it could be the bands
that just say, we're not, you know, we're out.
What I'm going to do is, is, uh, we're going to have a special show later this week.
When I get to Lollapalooza, I'm going to try and put my eyes on as much as I can on Thursday,
especially early when they first start, uh, and then later on in the day and then, and
then maybe when the gates open on Friday, um, I'll get a better sense of it too.
And then sometime around Friday night, Saturday, maybe we reconvene into a really quick show.
Maybe even do it on, on Instagram and do like an Instagram live or something, Barry, where,
um, you know, we just go through some of the things that, that I've seen that are different,
maybe, um, problems, celebrations, et cetera, and just see, see what happens.
I don't know what to expect though.
I really don't.
They, they have asked us to do certain things that I'm not necessarily able to say yet,
um, when it comes to getting on site.
So, uh, maybe I'll be able to share those when I actually get there.
Um, but all I do know is there's a, if you think there is, there are changes of Bonnaroo
happening in GA backstage in center, man, the changes that are happening, a lot of blues
are, are just out, out, unbelievable.
They're out of this world.
The list is as long as I can, I can give you a piece of paper.
So I'll give you what I can on Thursday and Friday, and then we'll see what happens from
there.
Right.
I love it.
Um, so let's, uh, get into this, this thing about the, the Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones
are added to jazz Fest and I, I don't want to, didn't anticipate to spend much time on
this, but I, I first thought that stones being added to jazz Fest was maybe one of the biggest
additions in the history of American festivals.
And then I remembered that they were already booked to do jazz Fest in 2019.
So, um, this is just like them doing a make good essentially.
And then somebody on Twitter had this brilliant poll and I had totally, Prince was a late
ad on echo, chela man.
Oh man.
Is that big?
Um, but the stones going to, to jazz Fest, all I know is what the external people say
about it and feel about it and what New Orleans feels about it.
Um, outside of New Orleans, you see jazz Fest getting the stones and you say what Barry?
I told you that getting the stones for anything is the biggest ad in the history of whatever.
I mean, they're the biggest band in the world.
I think Prince trumps it, but no, I mean, personally, but I know the stones are huge.
The stones are the biggest band in the world and Prince is huge.
I love seeing Prince.
I love love, but okay.
Those are the only show he did that year, man.
Yeah.
But I saw him at Memorial auditorium.
Oh, stop it.
Yeah, I did.
Right.
Okay.
But point point being, what did you're feeling about the stones getting added to jazz Fest
was one of euphoria.
You thought it was massive.
He's huge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No doubt.
No doubt.
Well, this is what inside the city.
There were two reactions.
One, who cares?
It's not going to happen because they're going to cancel it anyway.
And then two, Oh, they created a rich white guy day.
Because what they did was they put the stones on their very own day with no other band on
the lineup, but nothing else happening.
They put the stones on Wednesday night and for the low, low price of $199 for a ticket
as an extra.
Okay.
Wow.
You can walk in a jazz Fest and have a blast.
Eat some crawfish Mac and cheese, baby.
Yeah.
You know what?
Now, if you want to upgrade it, you can.
That's going to be an extra three, $400.
But they added a day for rich white people.
Wow.
Okay.
So it didn't go over well.
Is that what you're saying?
I just don't think it was as much of an event as people thought.
It'll do fine.
But it just wasn't as much of an event as normal festival guys think of it would be.
Yeah.
But I mean, I'm starting to kind of be turned off on the whole jazz Fest thing from what
you've been telling me.
It doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.
I actually-
It's not our type of fun, Barry.
It's a lot of fun.
I mean, there's not a human being in this city that doesn't adore it and love it with
everything they have.
You just have to reset your expectations for it.
Here's my thing then.
Can I sit on your roof without any trouble and watch the Rolling Stones perform?
Well, first off, I ain't putting you on my roof.
We are a good 50 feet in the air.
You're not getting on my roof.
Well then no.
If I have to go to any trouble, that's what it's-
I mean, no, you can't sit on my roof.
No, you can't do that.
You could get close to- No, it's a massive fairgrounds.
You couldn't even sit on a roof around the fairgrounds and watch it.
This isn't the Chicago Cubs.
You don't get outfield seats in an apartment complex.
I've never seen them.
I've never seen the Stones.
I haven't either and maybe we get there, but I'm excited to see at least A, if it happens
and then B, what kind of crowd they'll get.
I get what you're asking me.
How does it change the festival world?
I don't know.
Does it?
Well, you remember what I said a couple of months ago when they were putting out these
lineups.
I said, why not just put everybody on the fucking lineup?
What does it matter?
If you have this expectation of it not happening, you might as well just book everybody.
Well, that was the other thing you had said about the lineup, the Jazz Fest.
Did somebody come up with $3 million just so they could say they have the Stones on
it?
Is it purely political or is it an actual- Man, I don't know.
Who's driving that train?
I don't know.
It's New Orleans Jazz and the Jazz Heritage Foundation, which is just rolling in money.
These people just have so much money.
It kind of goes back to that whole thing.
Doesn't matter because it ain't happening, which is funny.
It is.
I mean, there is a very... Look, the numbers here have just gone through the roof and it's
mostly because Louisiana is the worst-vaccined state in the country.
Right.
So they're going to... Okay, so if it's $2 million or $3 million, they take their percentage
and then it doesn't happen because the numbers are up.
Yeah.
We'll have you back next year.
That's a good move.
We'll have you back next year.
Mick never even gets a haircut.
Never had to leave the house.
Never got a haircut.
Never left the house.
That's good business.
The final thing that I wanted to bring up on this, yet again, this quick episode, this
short one again- Which is always our longest.
Yeah, I know.
It always happens.
I watched the Woodstock 99 documentary.
Me too.
Oh my God.
God, I don't want to talk about this because I'll talk about it for another half an hour.
Yeah, do we need to do another show?
Because I could.
We really could.
Well, look- We can do it tonight or we can do it later.
I had two big takeaways.
I'll just do top-level stuff.
So I had a couple of big takeaways.
One was the misogyny in the- Disgusting, right?
It was disgusting, right?
And a group of angry white kids screaming the N-word.
You know, it's all awful.
And grabbing boobs.
Poor guy, Bryan Stone was there.
And I told him- He was?
He was there.
That's true.
I know.
And I told him, it's like nothing.
You're the closest representation of what they said was there that I could have ever
known.
You are 20.
You've been given everything in your life.
You're upper middle class and you're angry and you don't know why.
Yeah, because your flannel doesn't fit right.
And that was the group of people, the 100,000 some odd kids that were there.
So yes, A, the misogyny was just hard to deal with.
A group, 100,000 people screaming the N-word to a black man was just-
I wasn't.
That was the least offensive.
I know.
I'm just going through the list of stuff that really, really bothered me.
At the same time though, I can talk out of both sides of my mouth that that was sort
of the culture at the time.
And I don't know if we are horrified so much as watching it back and saying, look at these
people, what was wrong with them?
Or are we looking back and horrified saying, look at all of us?
It wasn't me.
Just because Limp Bizkit sucks, but don't forget, they were the biggest band in the
world in 1998, 1999.
Yeah.
My three quick things.
Yeah, the misogyny, the way women were treated is unbelievable.
And what's stunning, well, it was stunning the way women were treated, but three years
later, 2002, the first Bonnaroo, it changed.
Women rule Bonnaroo.
Well, yeah.
A lot of people will say that that was the band aid being ripped off, Woodstock 99 was
sort of like the catalyst that ended all of the aggressive white male stuff of Kid Rock.
I think so.
I mean, I showed up at Bonnaroo as a 40 something year old thinking, dang, these young women
got it going on.
And that's a whole nother topic we can get into.
The other thing is-
Right, but stop there for a second.
It was the organizers being so completely baffled and then blaming the women even how
many years later, still blaming the women for it.
He was clueless.
He is clueless.
He's an old guy.
I mean, I'm not going to go there, but yeah, the nudity still happens at Bonnaroo, but
nobody's given disrespect in the women.
It's like if they want to be naked, they're naked.
That's what I mean.
It completely flipped in three years.
So that's a point.
The other point that stood out to me was the female reporter from Washington?
MTV.
MTV?
Yeah.
Who said this generation, the organizers of this event wanted to basically base it on
a, what did they call it?
In 1969, everybody had something they were fighting against and they wanted to impart
it on the 1999 and this generation had nothing they were fighting against.
That's right.
Because they were 20 year old white kids, upper middle class white kids-
They'd been given everything.
Who were angry and they didn't know what they were angry about.
I didn't know what they were angry about.
I thought that was such a great point.
But the reporter, so this is where, this is my other big takeaway, the reporters that
were there.
First off, they kept blaming MTV as if a crowd of a hundred thousand kids who had to go to
a pay phone to make a phone call were watching MTV in the field.
Couldn't even get water.
How could you blame a field full of kids who can't even make a phone call or go to an ATM
and blame MTV on their reaction?
That is absurd and bizarre to me.
Secondly-
That was revisionist, no question.
Barry, they were doing daily press conferences.
Yeah.
These guys were standing up and talking about this festival on a daily basis, which tells
me, there is a chasm between the backstage area and the regular, the GA area in every
festival.
Do you think you and I have, do we have that issue, Brad?
Did they not walk out?
Did they not even stand on a stage?
Did they not walk out to the crowd?
Did they not know anything that was happening in that festival whatsoever that they decided
to stand up in front of the press every day and answer questions about it?
Talk about how great it was.
No, I know.
And you know, you and I have to be careful of that too, because we're backstage.
But I don't, I don't, well, I don't think we're lost in it like they were.
Yeah, but I don't think I'm shouting somebody down for telling me that there's enough water.
I mean, the woman basically-
Yeah, exactly.
The journalist, the female journalist said, these kids don't have water out there.
And the guy basically responded with, well, we hooked up a hose.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, he was, he was, look, I had forgotten-
That was, guys should be in jail.
I had forgotten a lot of that.
But it's funny, somebody, our friend Trevin and David, you know, who now are friends of
ours been on our show and they go to all kinds of festivals.
They were like, yeah, you know what?
If that's what would have been happening, I would never have gone to a festival.
Well, that's-
And I was like, me too.
That's why I didn't go till 2007 because that's what was in my head.
I know, but here's the thing.
There was a time where Kid Rock came to Chattanooga to a place called The Bay and there were 25
people there.
There was nobody there as before.
I think he brought, what's, Mini Me.
No, Mini Me was out at Sky's.
Go ahead.
And 10 years later when Kid Rock hit, it was like the whole city had been at that show.
Oh yeah, I remember seeing Kid Rock there.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
No, it was-
I'm getting guys come out of the woodwork that I know all of the sudden have been, they
went to Woodstock 99.
I'm not going to deny that they were there very well that they could, but everybody that
I've met that has been there or that was there rather, they said they didn't see any of that.
They knew it was a shit show.
They knew it was dirty.
They knew they didn't have any showers and they didn't have any water, but they didn't
see any of the raping.
They saw kids being kids and half the audience is on acid, so how the hell they're going
to remember most of what anything that happened.
I can't disagree with that.
The other thing is, but the other, I mean there were like four or five main points that
I took from it.
One being the nostalgia for 1969.
I mean I was six at the time and for most of my teenage years I thought, man, I would
have loved to have been at Woodstock.
No, no, no, no.
Well, that's the other thing that they say that I think that there's even a documentary
I think on Hulu that the majestic nature, the glorification of 69 Woodstock is so sick
to me.
That was just big of a shit show.
Literally a shit show.
Literally.
That mud and all that.
Well, that was, talking about, we weren't supposed to get too deep in this, but man,
how much did your stomach turn when you saw those kids jumping into puddles next to porta
bodies?
Yeah, and so-
Hello, dysentery.
No, thank you.
And so I don't want any part of that.
And the whole Hendrix thing, people talk about, he didn't play until Sunday morning.
Or Monday morning even maybe.
I think it was Monday morning, right?
It was over.
So yeah, there's this whole nostalgia part of it.
Woodstock 99 the same.
The other thing too, by the way, they only had two stages.
Imagine a music festival surviving today with two stages.
They were a mile apart on a concrete concourse.
Hysterical.
I mean hysterical.
It was just bad on every level.
It's a great documentary for people who haven't-
It's so good.
It is so, so good.
Yeah.
And if you're watching it and you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, why are
these two guys still talking?
That's not what it's like.
Well, hey, by the way-
They figured it out.
Well, the thing that the thing that the, yeah, no kidding.
No festival is like that anymore, except for the fire festival.
But that was written and directed and put together all by Bill Simmons.
Bill Simmons started as a guy who just wrote about sports.
The dude was just writing about the Celtics.
He was a Boston sports writer.
And then he turns around and it's got a podcast corporation that's worth billions of dollars.
The guy gets a deal with HBO and ESPN.
He's a monster.
And he's got a whole bunch of other music documentaries coming out over the rest of
the month.
I think he's doing Juice World.
He's going to do DMX.
I think he's going to do the Studio 54, something like that.
Maybe it's just disco.
I can't remember.
But there's a whole series of these documentaries coming.
He's just so good.
He's so, so good.
If you have any opportunity to watch this, please do.
Because if you like music festivals and you like where they have come, it started from
that shit show.
Yeah.
To your point, is it accurate?
It's always through the lens of the teller.
I don't know how much of the misogyny and all that went on.
I wasn't there.
I just know that I've not seen any of that at Bonnaroo.
Well, if a woman walks by and she's putting her boobs out, what do you expect a guy to
do?
Oh, God.
I wanted to punch him right through the stupidity.
How many times have you seen it?
And it's like, you know, good, go, bye.
How many times have you seen some sort of redneck dude grab boobs at Bonnaroo?
None.
Do you know what else I've never seen at Bonnaroo?
A fight.
I've never seen.
I haven't seen a fucking bug.
I haven't seen a bite.
17 years.
17 years.
I've only seen one crossword.
And that was two years ago when it was somebody yelling at his wife outside the festival.
That's funny.
First time.
First time.
I've never seen a crossword.
Well, this quick show lasted 52 minutes, buddy.
So we did it.
Congratulations.
I can do Woodstock for more.
We need to revisit.
Well, that was our quick update of what's going to happen this week.
Maybe we'll jump back in here and do an update on Lollapalooza.
If not, Barry, thank you for your patience and hopefully we get a schedule here soon.
Yeah, yeah, I think we should.
All right.
Let me have you hear anything.
We have a we will have a I know we'll have Jeff Quay or on to talk about details of Bonnaroo
coming up soon.
We're looking forward to that because we haven't had that one in a long time.
Yeah, we haven't.
It's been a year.
All right, buddy.
We'll talk to you soon.
Bye bye.
Hey, thanks for listening to the What Podcast?
Rate, review if you can.
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