I talked to my friend Brian today and he lives up in the north west so his festival of choice is Sasquatch while mine is Coachella (I live in southern California).  And he told me that Sasquatch is only going to sell 4-day passes.  Honestly it's kinda sad to see that this is becoming a "thing".  Coachella did this years ago and it sucks for the people that really want to enjoy the festival but can't commit to the whole thing.  And I gotta admit, a day or two of Coachella is all you really need.  Three full days is a little much (I'm an old guy now).  I can't even imagine FOUR days of Sasquatch.

I understand that at the end of the day it's just a business, but there's no reason to exclude a minority of fans that can't do it.  What I don't understand is the lame excuse, "there's such a high demand for tickets so we'll only sell 4-day passes".  It just translates to me as, "We can force people to pay $300+ for tickets, so why would we bother to accommodate the people that can only go one or two days?"  This year's Coachella is in such a high demand that they booked two full weekends of identical bands and sold them both out.

So as the demand increases it's just going to push the more casual fan out.  I know people really love the festival (I really do), but there are clear benefits of living in a major town with no festival scene.  At least then you have a fighting chance of seeing only the bands that you want to see and not have to put up with parking, dickheads, heat just to see Gotye.

Hallelujah! Expect Hey Ma on 9/16.  A N. American tour will follow in autumn.  Track listing for the set:

Bubbles
Hey Ma
Waterfall
Oh My Heart
Boom Boom
Semaphore
Upside
Whiteboy
72
Of Monsters & Heroes & Men
I Wanna Go Home

View the cover art here. - Source

An impressive return to form from a group who continue to craft their own distinctive brand of understated, uplifting rock. - Source

James have announced details of their first album in seven years. - Source

And one by one, the mighty are indeed falling this year, as an official announcement on the band's website is today confirming that JAMES are splitting with vocalist Tim Booth at the conclusion of their forthcoming holiday tour. In the same message, Booth lays out his plans to go solo as both a singer AND actor, and briefly mentions a screenplay that's in the works. It's as yet unclear what will become of the rest of the band, though Booth's posting hints that the band might soldier on without him.

There's an interesting auction going on this week at Interactive Collector (http://www.icollector.com) It's called HITS UNDER THE HAMMER, and it's a charity auction of autographed/hand-written lyrics to benefit the Nordoff-Robbins Trust. Among the auctioned items, which are available for bids online, are the original working lyric sheets of "Wake Up Boo!", a lawn chair with the lyrics of "Sit Down" scrawled across it by Tim Booth, as well as lyric sheets from Supergrass, The Cure, and many others.

It's just becoming the month of bad tidings... it's now been announced that JAMES have pulled out of Scotland's T in the Park festival for the second year in a row. James vocalist Tim Booth has been diagnosed with a nasty bout of bronchitis, and the docs have told him to rest his voice for the next 30 days -- hence, all July shows slated for the band have been cancelled.