There are thousands of music festivals every summer all around the world. Now I will try to give a summary of the most important ones and help you decide which one to visit if you ever get the opportunity to attend one of them.
US: Mostly American and Canadian acts.
Crossroads Guitar Festival: Held in 2004, 2007 and 2010. Location: Bridgeview, Illinois. Brings the world's best guitarist under one roof. Created by Eric Clapton. He picks the performers too. If you are a guitar enthusiast, it's your place to be. Personally, I would give away one of my kidneys to be there, or even both of them and put myself on bypass or whatever.
Lollapalooza: Word derives from the meaning: very impressive. Main genre: punk rock. First it was a travelling festival. Created in 1991 by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell. Location: Chicago, Illinois. Held in various times. Probably the most energetic festival in America. It has helped many rock bands to achieve success. If you want to be part of a huge party, then this is your place to go.
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival: Location: Indio, California. Duration: 3 days. Unique because it is held in a desert. Genres vary. Was already held this year in April. No single-day tickets from this year. This can be a downer, but otherwise it must be an experience to suffer through the circumstances of the desert to see your favorite bands.
UK: Mostly British acts.
Glastonbury Festival: Largest festival in the world at present. Held on last weekend of June. 3 days long. Supports artistic acts other than musicians. Location: Pilton, England. An interesting fact is that it was organized by a farmer. Unique because of its scenery and the Pyramid stage. Its only problem is the occasional flooding. Probably the most enjoyable festival for everyone in the world, because of its diversity, but really expensive as well. If I could choose one festival to go to, it would be this one.
Reading Festival: Oldest festival still in existence. Since 1971. Held at the end of August. Unique because of "bottling off", which means that many musicians have been sent off from the stage by being thrown bottles at them by the audience. Two sites: Leeds site and Reading Site. Major stages: main stage, NME stage, Festival Republic stage. Main genres: punk, rock, indie.
T in the Park: Since 1994. Scotland's biggest music festival. Held on second weekend of July (same time as Oxegen). Three-day festival. Camping available before the first day. Three major stages: main stage, NME stage, King Tut's Tent. Its line-up is usually the same as Oxegen's and does not change much from one year to another. Main genres: pop, indie.
I had the chance to visit it, and it felt much like Sziget, except it was smaller and the range of genres was not as wide. Similar to Glastonbury and the other British festivals.
Other:
Oxegen Festival: Location: County Kildare, Ireland. Ireland's biggest festival. Held on second weekend of July, same time as T in the Park. Voted best festival of Europe. First held in 2004, so it is just a baby, but it is already very popular. Genres vary, but the headliners' shows are always visually profound. Unique because, as its name suggests, it is a green festival.
Pinkpop Festival: Location: Landgraaf, Netherlands. Genre: rock. Held on Pentecost weekend. Duration: 3 days. Its name comes from the dutch word pop, which means doll, since its logo is a doll in a pink dress. It is unique because it is in the Netherlands. If you want to headbang with thousands of people and legally smoke marijuana, this is your place of destination.
Montreal International Jazz Festival: Biggest jazz festival in the world. Held when June turns into July. Annual attendance is about 2 million. Concerts are held all over Montreal. Held since 1980. The main genre is obviously jazz. If you love jazz, then there are no more questions. You should be there. I would give away my two kidneys to be there as well.
I hope all you readers can pick one place that you would visit. For me, those places would be Crossroads, Montreal and Glastonbury, because I like how the atmosphere mixes with the music. What each of you should do is make it your dream to go to one of these places. I am sure you will not regret it your dream actually comes true.
Since the internet has become the number one source of entertainment in the whole world, thus providing accessibility to everything from anywhere, the television industry could not just stand by watching its star fade away. It had to do something, and it did.
The first main innovation was to include television series into the iTunes Store and the creation of Hulu. These are sources from where you can download basically anything that has been shown on television in America. Of course, this service comes with a price, but that price is reasonable. Its only problem is that it is not accessible from everywhere. Due to "geobanning", most countries are excluded from these services. Hulu is only available in America, while this part of the iTunes store is accessible almost exclusively from the world-leading countries, such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, etc. Until this changes, the only opportunity that little European countries are left with are the use of torrent sites. This is not profitable for anyone included in the production process, so these companies should expand their area of services. They are under the illusion that there is not a big enough customer base for these kind of services yet, but based on my experiences, they are wrong.
Another path that the television industry tried to follow was the creation of webseries. These series are created exclusively for internet viewing. They can be original series, such as Take Me Back - the best try so far -, or Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog - a series by Neil Patrick Harris -, or they can be miniseries that somehow relate to the original series, such as Office, True Blood, or Rescue Me webisodes. TV channels may try to keep up the buzz and the hype of their shows throughout non-airing times as well by using the opportunities that the internet offers. Series such as Heroes or Lost invited their fans on investigative journeys by creating websites and tasks to complete each week. Or, in the case of Dexter, creators used the interactivity of the internet to advertise the game, which we can see in the video below:
One more interesting thing in the connection between the internet and television is the opposite of what we have seen so far. It is when the internet is trying to work its way into television. In the case of the webseries Quarterlife, NBC decided to do what no channel has ever done before: to broadcast it on national TV. The website Funny or Die, which is a site full of humorous videos, such as the Between Two Ferns series with Zach Galfianakis (below) has made it onto television just recently. It is very interesting to see how the internet and television are changing each other mutually. And, for sure, we haven't seen everything yet. I'm looking forward to what the future holds.
The Parents Television Council is an organization responsible for rating television series so that parents will know what their kids should and should not watch. This would actually be a respectable job if it wasn't completely pointless.
The way this organization works is that they record every show each evening on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, ITV, UPN, and the WB, plus original programs on cable channels. So far this means that they have a lot of data, in fact, they are in possession of more research on the networks than the networks have on themselves. From their website, we can retrieve the information that in the last 20 years, they have recorded more than 100,000 hours of television programming on over 15,000 VHS tapes. Here is where it gets funny. Each day, analysts sit down before these shows and write down each curse word and the number of sex references they have heard, and, based on all that, they rate the shows into three categories: red, yellow, and green. What this means is clearly visible from this picture:
Also from their website, we can see that there is only one program in the whole week that achieved the green status. What is even more funny is how they refer to these analysts on their site: "These analysts are men and women with stomachs of steel." HAHAHA. All those millions of people who watch these shows every week have stomachs of steel too, don't they?
But that's not all. Each week they choose the most disgusting program on television. As if that wasn't enough already, they also archive their selections and justify why it is so disgusting. You can also search for TV shows individually (e.g. Fringe), and get to know why they are rated red, yellow or green, or what companies are sponsoring them(!!!) so that you can make sure not to buy their products again. I mean, that's just insane.
But here is where it gets even more obscure. They have stored their data on VHS so far. Now, they want to convert it to digital format. However, they don't want to simply put it on computers. No, they want to store it on DVDs!!! I'm just curious... do they think that those are irresistible? I'm not done yet. They want you to help them in this process. According to them, around two million dollars (WTF?) would be enough. If there are people who actually pay for this, then they deserve it. That's all I can say. I would really like to meet some members of this organization and do a CT on them. They must not be normal!
