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Culture
Music

Pemberton Music Festival Returns

Outkast, Deadmau5... and Randy Newman, oh my!

Alex Hudson 17 Jul 2014TheTyee.ca

Adrian Mack contributes a regular music column to The Tyee.
RandyNewman_600px.jpg
Where are they now? Randy Newman shares a set time with Frank Ocean at the newly-revived Pemberton Music Festival.

The last time Pemberton hosted a music festival, the organizers encountered a few hiccups -- and that's putting it very mildly.

Back in 2008, Live Nation brought acts like Jay Z, Coldplay and Tom Petty to the picturesque B.C. town, but Pemberton Festival was criticized for its traffic jams and garbage issues. Making matters worse, nature didn't co-operate, and festival goers had to contend with dust clouds. Follow-up festivals were planned, but these fell through and the idea was seemingly forgotten.

Eventually, someone was brave enough to resuscitate the idea, and Pemberton Music Festival will take place this weekend. (It runs from July 16 to 20, although things don't really get underway until July 18.) Despite having a very similar name to the prior event, this is actually run by a different company, since Live Nation's role is now being filled by the New Orleans company Huka Entertainment.

Much like the prior festival, the new incarnation of Pemberton is a populist blockbuster that aims to please just about everyone: there's rap (Outkast, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg), dance music (Deadmau5, Justice, Girl Talk), major label rock (Nine Inch Nails, Modest Mouse, the Flaming Lips), hotly tipped indie stars (Grimes, St. Vincent), and even a couple of dinosaurs (Soundgarden, Blondie). Tickets, meanwhile, cost multiples of hundreds of dollars.

It would be easy for indie snobs to turn up their noses and complain about how a full-weekend ticket with a camping pass costs almost 26 times more than a pass for the underground festival Music Waste (which was $15). But all corporate cynicism aside, the bill looks fantastic.

And with any luck, the organizers will have learned from their predecessor's mistakes, and the event will go more smoothly than the ill-fated event from 2008. (Highway upgrades made for the Olympics means that traffic snarl-ups shouldn't be too much of an issue this time around.)

I've spent the past couple of days pouring over the lineup, making an itinerary and agonizing over scheduling conflicts: how am I supposed to choose between Grimes, Rich Aucoin or Tyler the Creator, all of whom are playing at the same time? Should I watch TV on the Radio or Violent Femmes? The New Pornographers, Chance the Rapper or Metric? Sloan or Fucked Up? Modest Mouse or St. Vincent? Frank Ocean or Randy Newman?

Okay, I'm totally kidding about that last one. Newman, obviously! [Tyee]

Read more: Music

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