The second of two shows at Chicago's Auditorium Theater was postponed until Monday, December 8 due to Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan's illness. Having also played two previous nights at the Chicago Theater up the street, Corgan's voice could allegedly not handle a fourth consecutive night of screaming to the masses. As part of their current tour, the band decided to stop in their hometown and do an extra few shows. In many of the major cities on their tour, Smashing Pumpkins have done double-nighters in which the setlists are completely different. The band decided to give names to each performance in their traveling two-night event, the first show dubbed "Black Sunshine" and the second "White Crosses". Those who had tickets for both nights at the Auditorium Theater were a bit less disappointed at the postponement of White Crosses. The venue, where Corgan supposedly saw his second-ever concert, is a beautiful old opera house where events like this rarely occur and it's exactly the kind of place where you'd expect an overconfident band like this to play. Smashing Pumpkins, now with Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin as the only two remaining members, put on a show on Friday that left many confused as to how they should feel about the whole experience.  Read more »

We exited my apartment in downtown Chicago last night and made our way toward the Barack Obama rally in Grant Park. As Hutchinson Field had long since reached its capacity, my friends and I went to the opposite end of the park, the better part of a mile from where Obama was to give his victory speech (the stage was set up where the main AT&T Stage was at Lollapalooza). After weaving our way through the rapidly expanding mass of Obama supporters (of which there were supposedly more than a million), we spent a few minutes joining the masses in cheering and jeering at the current poll numbers being broadcast on a Jumbotron.  Read more »

We here at Festival Preview have always striven to be a non-partisan publication. I think I speak for everyone when I say that personal bias has never gotten in the way of our mission to bring festival news to the masses. It is certainly not our place to shed negative light upon any subject on which we are reporting. So with that in mind, let's discuss the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix, which started on October 10 and runs through November 2nd. The aspect of this event that's of interest to us is the concert series, which features nothing less than a wonderful...no, divine lineup of artists.

This evening will feature alternative rock band Weezer, who within the last decade have become rock superstars thanks to their Blue, Green, and most recent Red album. It's true that groups like Metallica and The Beatles have done the color concept albums at some point during their careers, but keep in mind that they only bothered to do it once. Weezer, on the other hand, went above and beyond and dared to do it not once, not twice, but three times. Not to mention, songs like "Island in the Sun", "Pork and Beans", and of course, "Undone (The Sweater Song)" are consider by many to be some of the most influential lyrical gems produced since Dylan's heyday. The band's intrigue is magnfied by their geek image (specifically shrimpy vocalist Rivers Cuomo's thick-rimmed spectacles), ironically giving them leverage to shoot a music video at the Playboy mansion. Be sure not to miss the chance to experience these alternative rock classics, made even sweeter by Cuomo's newly-sprouted upper lip fur. Hef would agree.  Read more »

Three electronic music stalwarts have surely been doing a little celebrating lately after winning audience awards for their consistent dedication to both the scene and the music.  Bill Kelly, founder of the Winter Music Conference and Miami's Ultra Music Festival both took home special trophies at the recent DJ Awards held in Ibiza, Spain while the South By Southwest Conference, dubbed the "biggest industry party in the world" was awarded the title of Best Party of the Year by the Austin Chronicle.  Read more »

Despite several rain and storm warnings, the sun was shining on the Bay's parade this weekend.  Storm clouds knew better than to mess with San Francisco—we had partying to do, and we take our fun very seriously.

Exhibit A: Saturday's LoveFest was, to put it redundantly-a love fest-a full blown cornucopia of dance beats, happy feet and skimpy costumes, overflowing from Civic Center park out into the surrounding areas. Tens of thousands of short shorts wearing, glow stick wielding, feather boa rocking revelers partied from noon till late night to every type of electronic music imaginable.  Yes there was dancing, yes, there was wild and crazy times, and to answer the question posed by one shocked onlooker—yes, it really was okay to walk around naked during LoveFest. Check out the pics and feel all that sticky, gooey "effection."  Read more »

When the SF LoveFest rolls through San Francisco this Saturday expect a fleet of huge multicolored floats blaring their dance music soundtrack through the city streets and a liveley crowd sporting wild outfits with colors as loud as the sound systems.

Now in it's 4th year, the event has evolved from it's original status as the US version of Berlin's annual Love Parade into a completely autonomous event drawing one of the largest crowds of dance music enthusiasts in the nation.  Over 40 of the area's most prominent nightlife promoters and production companies have created elaborate floats and stages for daylong event and around 100,000 people are expected to descend on the city for the parade and to hear a lineup of internationally known DJ's including Ferry Corsten, Armin Van Buuren, Adam Freeland, Donald Glaude, Benny Bennasi, Kaskade and Mark Farina.  In addition to the official parade and party, accompanying large scale and underground events are scheduled throughout the weekend.  Read more »

Florida's first-in-the-season mega rock festival will move to Miami's downtown Bicentennial Park for its seventh running in 2009, after a one-year experiment in the Everglades that was marred by logistical problems.

The move continues the trend begun by Lollapalooza of siting large rock festivals in major urban parks. In 2008, Outside Lands in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park also joined that trend, while All Points West in the New York area and Mile High outside Denver also selected urban locations that did not accommodate on-site camping, a feature previously thought to be essential for successful megafests.

After its innaugural event at Fort Lauderdale Stadium and four years at Markham Park in suburban Sunrise FL, Langerado 2008 was held at the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in the Everglades. While the event attracted a record attendance of up to 25,000 per day, poor weather and transportation logjams detracted from the attendee experience.  Read more »

With the decline of the large scale raves and Massv's of the 90's, the glory days of US Techno have gone the way of the dodo, the glowstick and the shiny pants raver.  Unlike in Europe, where electronic strains still have big sway on the dancefloor and bar scenes, with the exceptions of a few large events like the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and the Florida Winter Music Conference, the scene is mostly kept afloat by smallish communities of dedicated promoters and partiers throughout the country.

So for the tech inclined, the excitement around this weekend's Minitek Music Festival is understandable.  The 3 day event, which runs Friday through Sunday and places a large emphasis on techno and it's musical spinoff-Minimal-is bringing some of the biggest names in the scene to New York's Coney Island and combining the beats with a program focusing on digital innovation in art, design and technology.  Read more »

The schedule for San Francisco's 2nd annual Treasure Island Music Festival is now available.  Following events like Outside Lands and Power to the Peaceful, this festival confirms San Francisco as having played one of the biggest roles in this year's summer/fall festival season.  And it's about damn time.  Golden Gate Park is one of the best places in the area (if not the country) to hold a large music festival, as is Treasure Island, located right in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.  Once a naval base and now pretty much just a small stretch of land connected to that big rock that the Bay Bridge runs through, it didn't really occur to most Bay Area residents to hold a music festival there.  But when the announcement came out that the event was to take place, everybody went, "Oh.  You know, that's actually a pretty sweet idea.  Why not?"  And as last year's debut of TIMF was such a success, all the kinks ought to be worked out by now and all the elements should be perfected.  Read more »

One of the most talked-about sets of the roots festival year, the Levon Helm Band performance at MerleFest 2008, is now available for paid download from FestivaLink.net. There were many reasons I was sorry to have missed the festival, but not hearing the comeback performance by the one-time vocalist/drummer/mandolinist of The Band topped the list. Sad to say, I also missed his only other 2008 festival performance in August at Newport Folk.

Now I can enjoy the live MerleFest performance in its entirety thanks to the lovingly produced downloadable recording from FestivaLink. I have written before that live festival sets are not always unique enough to merit paying for. This one is — without question.  Read more »