The Major Music Festival Quandary

A little math for you:

1. One ticket to see Your Favorite Rock Band: $60, plus TicketBastardMaster fees $20 = $75
2. Transportation: mass transit markets $2 - $10, driving markets $15 for parking
3. Two beers = $16
4. A hot dog or some other chemically altered meat/cheese product = $8
5. All in all, $101-$114 for one person/day

Early ticket buyers for the Lollapalooza music festival this past weekend (Aug. 1-3) could snag a day ticket for $60/day plus all the above, and with 124 bands, it averages out to $1 and some change per band. A dollar to check Nine Inch Nails rock through "Closer" sounds like a sweet deal, right?

With a lineup as sweet as this year's Lollapalooza, it is a tasty-sounding deal, but bitterness overtakes when one is faced with the Major Music Festival Quandary: pick between Nine Inch Nails and, say, Kanye. If you don't like Kanye, this is no problem. That's why at music fests you have the choice of five other bands if you don't like the one. But what if you love both?

Day One of Lolla was picture-perfect, considering Radiohead was the only band to play the last slot of the day. But what about Wilco v. Rage? Sure, the two groups are stylistically different and would draw different crowds, but for the music lover, even retorting "both" is futile: to attend both would be to see dots dance on lit-up square from a million miles away.

Lollapalooza's C3 organizers have a tough job splitting these interests, but also trying to appeal to a broad girth of music lovers. There's 40 bands a day, but (believe us) you only really have a good chance to see eight or nine of them, and that's not even for full sets. You then have the adult pangs of choice.

So what it boils down to: festivals make music lovers greedy. Instead of paying  $60+ to see your favorite band and a decent opener at some amphitheatre, you pay $60+ to see a headliner, live with not seeing the other headliner, and pick between 7-8 other openers, alongside 74,999 other festival-goers. This year's first-ever sold out Lollapalooza weekend was a huge success on a curation standpoint, but for the attendee, much more complex emotions wreck the conscience as we all picked our battles between good and better.