This week’s Asheville Disclaimer has a good gag about the 29th Annual Weekly Festivalfest. So here’s a question: How many local music festivals will it take before there are too many?

For instance, here’s a list that come immediately to mind: Vortex, POPAsheville, Bele Chere, AMJam, Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam, Trinumeral, LAAFF, Downtown After Five, Shindig on the Green, Mountain Sports Festival, LEAF (twice a year) and Musique Automatique, just to start.

Can the trend sustain itself?

I don’t know, but i don’t go for the music.  I’m an anomaly, i’m sure - of the generation that did homework while NOT listening to music.  I think it would be nice to have a Silencefest for once. You know, no music; children’s clown face and mouth-taping booths; wearing sneakers...

But as far as the volume of festivals, it does seem to have reached overload, but i think that since Bele Chere is so overblown that smaller more isolated events (and more often) really work pretty well.

I would go to Silencefest. You could issue everyone their own headphones at the gate, so they could all be rocking out to their favorite songs while allowing everyone else to have a normal conversation. I should pitch this idea to the downtown condo associations—I bet they’d lobby to test market it at Bele Chere starting this year.

I worked at the downtown store Friday during Downtown After Five… boy was I in for a shock.  I haven’t been to one of those since The Merle and The Bottlerockets played 7 - 8 years ago.  Must have been two thousand people at least.

A common topic of discussion is having an “indie” music fest here in town.  I think it’s doable, most of these popular Pitchfork bands have got pretty low guarantees and if you book a bigger act like The Shins or Wilco you can have a fun time.  The only question is do hipsters camp?

That was such a dead-on parody in the Disclaimer that I bet several people were fooled into thinking it was real. The “poster” for it was particularly well done and on the mark. Obviously, I agree with the sentiment, otherwise I wouldn’t have found it so perfect a parody.

Festival die-hards who were waiting to traipse down to south Jersey for the Vineland Festival, the multi-day, multi-band fest that was “postponed” from this year to a summer 2009 launch date, are going to be disappointed: The festival’s plug has been pulled by C3 Presents, the Texas-based company that also puts on Lollapalooza, thanks to the immediate area being too saturated with multi-day affairs.
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albertjames
North Carolina Treatment Centers

Don’t attend any of those listed for Asheville but I can tell you, the Mountain Song Festival in Brevard is a sell out crowd and well worth the money just to spend the day in such a beautiful environment.  This photo looks to be The Biscuit Burners.  If you look real close you can see us over on the left about 10 rows back.

I like that AVL has a lot of festivals personally. But, I’m not so sure so many music-themed ones are needed. Got to mix it up.

S!