If all good things must come to an end, then so must the mediocre. Entering the 2024 Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival, it’s a perfect example of a festival that should have bowed out gracefully but is still clinging to life. So after this year’s poor lineup, we have no choice but to call it quits.
The recently revealed lineup is an embarrassment of everything; a mirror image of struggling Seattle.
Struggling summer festivals have announced their 2024 lineup and it’s hard to fathom what they want to do. Festival organizers managed to find one of the least impressive and most forgotten rock bands of the mid-90s, Pavement, to be the main headline act. Obviously, the rest of the lineup isn’t much better.
Perfecting so-called top talent? Cypress Hill (the fun rap group you forgot existed), James Blake (the guy who performed a song you can’t remember but you remember his name), Marc Rebillet (who?) and Courtney Barnett (also, who) ?
Bumbershoot What happened to the Seattle lineup?
Bumbershoot, once the pride of Seattle, has struggled with mismanagement, costly and devastating pandemic disruptions. Attempts at revival – such as slashing ticket prices and shortening the number of event days – have failed miserably.
AEG took over for One Reel, providing big-name stars, but ultimately the cost was too high for the average fan to attend. Combined with poor management and extremely high production costs, it was unlikely to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it was a primarily outdoor festival.
Ultimately, Bumbershoot went on a three-year hiatus, not returning until 2023, with cheaper tickets, reduced show dates and little fan interest in headliners Sleater-Kinney, Fatboy Slim and Dandy Warhols. The interruption should be permanent.
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It’s time for this music festival to end
The 2024 roster has nothing to make up for. The $70 single-day pass is even lower than the 2023 discount, but still seems too high based on the lineup.
I know the insufferably elitist music critics will probably love this lineup. Michael Rietmulder of The Seattle Times even called it a “knockout game.” People like this are passionate about claiming to appreciate things that most people don’t and think it makes them look evolved and cultured. But in fact, it’s not. They are just braggarts.
The glory days of Bumbershoot were you’d pay any price for a day because you’d spend that much on one or two of the headliners (Bob Dylan, Mary J. Blige, Weezer, Hall, Ellie) Goulding).
Even if you were forced to endure the poor, sub-par acoustics of Key Arena at the time, Bumbershoot was worth it because you could see M83 or Heart.
Instead of just focusing on local bands that have no prospects but are cheap enough to book that you can say you have local talent, there is more booking discernment (Secret Weapons, Watsky, Børns, Saint Claire and Noah Gunderson).
It’s okay to let go of tradition. Some people need to die. Bumbershoot 2024 does a disservice to its legacy. It’s time to lay this once grand festival to rest. At this point, it’s cruel to watch it become painfully irrelevant.
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