Festival Of My Dreams

I’ve been lamenting the lack of compelling festival lineups this year, and instead of whining about what I’m not seeing, I thought I’d compose a list of what I would like to see at a music festival – preferably my own. (No, really, I’m hoping to put on a music festival here in my home state of Colorado in the next year or so!)

Your Older Brother’s Music & Art Festival won’t be this big right away. But hopefully someday.

My only rule is that I’m keeping this list realistic, which is to say only booking bands that are still touring, or bands who may have broken up but with all living original members who still seem to want to play together, or at least haven’t outright said “never again” (I’m looking at The Smiths & The Police here – they’re both done). For instance, I’d want Big Country to play (they’re still together & tour), but without Stuart Adamson…sorry, guys.

All that said, there are surely bands I’m forgetting. These are in not much of an order. There are 52 bands, I think, so that’s, what…26 bands/day. If 2 stages, 13 bands/stage, if 3 stages, about 9 bands/stage. Three stages sounds about right.

So, in no order, here’s my dream lineup for Your Older Brother’s Music & Art Festival:

Radiohead
Cocteau Twins (probably the longest reunion shot here)
Uncle Tupelo (Playing Anodyne)
The Replacements
Sinead O’Connor
The National
Against Me!
Billy Bragg
The Hold Steady
Kimya Dawson
Real Friends
Deltron 3030
Skinny Puppy
Fishbone
The Art Of Noise
Pete Wylie (playing Sinful)
Diane Schuur
Standard Fare
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Afghan Whigs
The English Beat
Kraftwerk
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Sparks + Jane Weidlin (playing In Outer Space)
Dillon Fence
The Toy Dolls
Marc Almond
Skafish
Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders
St. Paul & the Broken Bones
Lux Lisbon
Lydia Loveless
Steel Pulse
Dan Boeckner – Any project, past or present
Kasey Chambers
Kevin Devine

Camper Van Beethoven

Bloc Party (original lineup)

Ride

Shriekback (Playing Oil & Gold)
Matt Wertz

PJ Harvey

De La Soul
Calder’s Revolvers
Dwight Yoakam
Todd Farrell, Jr. – & the Dirty Birds
Kotorino
The Cables (rock band from San Diego)
Teacup Gorilla
I Sank Molly Brown
aMiniature (They’re still playing shows…)
Tucker (Ok, this last one is my old band from back in the day, but I figure I can book myself to play my own festival if I want. 🙂

Who would you want to see at a festival? Give me your top 3 festival bands in the comments.

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