News has broken that AEG Live, the company behind such major summer music festivals as Coachella, Firefly, and New Orleans Jazz Fest have their eyes on Queens for the location of a proposed music festival.
The tentative name for this festival for next June is Panorama and it seems more people are opposed than for it, at the moment.
Festival goers, city dwellers, lots of other folks all have opinions. Major concerns have arisen over how the Panorama would affect Queens on the whole, the area around the Unisphere and Flushing Meadows Park.
Not to mention, Panorama is due to happen just two weeks after Governors Ball, so many are worried how an AEG event would compete with Governor's Ball, New York City's only major outdoor summer music fest.
What's the big deal, isn't competition a good thing?
Generally, yes it is.
Tom Russel of Founders Entertainment, the force behind Governors Ball, had this to say to the New York Daily News: "The timing of this corporate-run event would threaten our ability as a small business to continue putting on the kind of event that has showcased the best artists, created hundreds of local jobs, and put millions of dollars back into the city's economy."
Now AEG Live has a nasty reputation around the music world for being a soulless and disgusting enterprise, supposedly guilty of fostering an inauthentic vibe in hopes of massive profits. At least, this is the gist of what festival goers and some industry workers have to say about them.
Frankly, all event producers and promotors are guilty of this to one degree or another. That's the double edged sword of throwing major events; they always run the risk of annual compounded success eclipsing the importance of and focus on conserving the appropriate ambiance.
trenton_pasic The Unisphere in Queens, NY. Made of stainless steel, the Unisphere is 140' high, 120' in diameter and weighs 700,000 pounds. I remember watching Men In Black as a kid and wondering where this was. #GoPro #foundit #unisphere #newyork
This is one major reason why Coachella, perhaps AEG's biggest festival, has a horrendous reputation of being the phoniest festival one could possibly attend. New Orleans Jazz Fest, on the other hand, is supposed to be pretty mint.
It is such a widely held belief, though, that the Coachella is a popularity contest and many attendees are just there to be seen there, and take photos wearing flower crowns that Jimmy Kimmel trolled unsuspecting festival goers by asking them what they think of non-existent bands...
Turns out, Coachella goers love bands that don't exist. New York doesn't have time or the self restraint not to eviscerate an influx of clueless people who want to act like hippies for a weekend.
Governors Ball gets NYC. AEG Live, apparently, just gets money for selling counterculture street cred dreams.
But that's just life in the big city, right?
Did you check out these 6 Outdoor Summer Music Festivals You Absolutely Need to Experience in NYC?
[Feature Image Courtesy of Isarda Sorensen]