San Francisco's Outside Lands Arts & Music Festival is a load of crap

Here is a copy of my enraged email to the good people at the Outside Lands Festival regarding their scheduling decisions for next weekend's show. I just sent this off to an email that sent me an automated response. Hopefully that does not mean that it will not be read because I think it includes some good points. If anyone reading this blog happens to have any leads to contacts at the Outside Lands Festival please let me know. I would like to get my concerns in the hands of the right people. If anyone else going to the festival has similar concerns as myself, you can try sending an email to info@sfoutsidelands.com like I did. OK, here is what I wrote:


To whom it may concern at the Outside Lands Festival:

I would like to say that I am thoroughly disappointed in your scheduling decisions for Friday evening’s concerts. I bought tickets for Friday of Outside Lands and have been excited for the festival for a while. I was looking forward to the chance to see many of my favorite bands all at the same festival. However, today I saw the schedule had been posted and realized this will not be a possibility. I noticed that the Black Keys and Beck had been scheduled at exactly the same time with half of Manu Chao's set overlapping with them as well. Now, granted, at this point I am not certain about the layout of the concert and the location of the stages, but I do not see how you can rationalize scheduling your biggest acts at exactly the same time so that none of the fans could see them all. I realize that it was necessary to have some bands play at the same time by the nature of the festival setup, but I feel this particular action to be somewhat ridiculous. The only explanation I can fathom is that the planners of the festival had no idea what they were doing and simply haphazardly arranged the concerts, not realizing that people would want to see these acts the most. However this is obviously not the case as the official poster advertising the festival clearly listed Radiohead, Beck, Manu Chao, and the Black Keys at the top of the lineup in large bold print. This evidence indicates that the planners of this festival realized that these would be the most popular acts yet, out of complete disrespect for the fans, scheduled them at the same time anyway. Taking note of this information, the only other possible explanation would be that Outside Lands and whoever its benefactors may be have planned some cunning attempt to steal my hard earned money.

I don’t know if you realize this, but with all the surcharges and convenience fees the tickets for one day of your fine festival came to nearly $100. Now I was fine with this otherwise outrageous price by rationalizing that I would get to see several artists that I would normally pay $30-$40 each to see. However, by your clever scheduling techniques, this will indeed not be the case. Now I personally see nothing wrong with charging $100 to see one big act. Indeed, we live in a free market economy and entrepreneurs should be able to charge whatever the market will bear in exchange for the goods provided. I am also aware of the current economic problems in the recording industry due to illegal downloading and I realize that artists receive most of their revenue from playing live shows. However, it is common courtesy (as well as a commonly recognized legal necessity) to properly advertise to the consumer the product that will be exchanged. If there is no way of seeing all of the big acts on the poster, simply advertise this fact from the outset. This would have been fine. Had I seen advertisements that read “Radiohead tickets $100,” I would have thought, “Wow, that would be fun to see Radiohead, but that is too much money for me to pay for that concert. I hope those who go to this concert will have fun, but I will not be going.” However, four big acts for that price starts to sound more reasonable. I think that you realized this and deliberately charged your patrons the price of 4 big acts when really they will be able to see at most two of these.

I just wanted to let you know how I and the rest of the Outside Lands Festival attendees feel about your unbelievably idiotic scheduling decisions. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that in one fell swoop you have pissed off each and every one of the music fans that were looking forward to this festival all summer long. I still cannot fathom why one would ever think of schedule a concert in a way that would deny their patrons the ability to see the artists they paid good money to see. Please give me an answer because I would really like to know. Financial reasons? Artist contracts? A man with a monocle and a top hat twisting his handlebar mustache in a downtown corner office? The thing I can’t get is that you must have had to pay all the artists the same amount, so why not schedule them in a way in which everyone could see them? And don’t tell me this impossible because I could easily reschedule this festival in a better way in thirty seconds without leaving my bedroom. If you need me to do that I can offer my services free of charge. If this is not the correct email address for answers to the questions I have presented kindly forward this email to someone who can provide them.

I suppose it was my fault that I was under the impression that a concert could be about music rather than making as much money as possible for concert promoters. Once again I am reminded that the spirit of Woodstock is dead, music is solely about capitalism, and I am (ironically) forced to watch the Cold War Kids.

Sincerely,

David Priddy (a music fan)