Nov 16, 2007 1:51 pm US/Central
Lollapalooza Hopes To Expand To Philadelphia
CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) ―
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Lollapaoolza in Grant Park,summer 2007.
CBS
The promoters of the giant Lollapalooza summer music festival in Chicago's Grant Park are looking to take their act on the road, but their plan to expand to Philadelphia for a second three-day concert next August hit a snag on Wednesday.
Based in Austin, Texas, promoters C3 Presents have a contract with city officials to bring Lollapalooza here for the next four years, but the company has made no secret of its ambitions to expand. Now, in addition to hosting the annual Austin City Limits Festival on its home turf in September, it would like to host a third festival at Belmont Plateau in the City of Brotherly Love late next August.
A C3 spokeswoman could not say what the new concert would be called, but promoters told Philadelphia officials that it would follow the models of Lollapalooza and include many of the same acts as Chicago (shown).
(AP file)
A C3 spokeswoman could not say what the new concert would be called, but promoters told Philadelphia officials that it would follow the models of Lollapalooza and include many of the same acts. C3 has some competition in Philadelphia, however: A long-running local promoter — Electric Factory Concerts, which is now owned by the national giant Live Nation — is looking to celebrate its 40th anniversary next summer with a big concert of its own at the same site.
Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Commission was expected to choose between the C3 and Electric Factory proposals at a meeting on Wednesday. Last week, the commission said it prefers the C3 proposal because of the company's experience producing big events and its willingness to contribute at least $500,000 to Philadelphia's parks. But after a contentious debate about whether or not Belmont Plateau could handle a big music festival at all, the vote choosing between C3 and Electric Factory was tabled until next month pending further study of the concert's impact.
C3 representatives have often said they chose Chicago as the site of the reinvented Lollapalooza because it is such a unique music city, but they've dodged the question of whether they'd expand what they call "the brand" to other U.S. or European locales. Meanwhile, concert founder Perry Farrell, who retains an interest in the fest, made a revealing comment about how he views the new Lollapalooza in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
"The scariest predicament we face in music is that commercialization has killed off the underground scene," Farrell said. "It used to be at Lollapalooza that the audience was full of 20,000 freaks and miscreants and outcasts. But now people look like they walked out of the Gap."
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