When I get bored, I sometimes run searches for lineup posters. I claim this is to see if any festivals have slipped through our web of digital alerts and sources and to find festivals that are not always on our radar. The truth is I love looking at lineup posters. Today, I forgot to include a date in one of my searches, resulting in a sea of images of lineup posters from over the years. As a I started looking at them – a question popped into my mind: what’s the best lineup you have ever seen past or present? And why?
I not only pose this question to you our lovely readers…I asked the LTFL Team to think it over as well. One interesting thing that came up in our discussion is how you determine what a good lineup is – is it the headliners, the undercard – or the combination. Are you assessing the lineup as it was then or the lineup as it would play out today? For me, I think one of the marks of a great lineup is the longevity. Meaning, if I can look at a lineup from 4 or 5 or even more years ago and be hypothetically willing to buy a ticket for it now – then that’s a sign to me that it was a great lineup.
Here are our thoughts:
Our team actually met through the brand ambassador program for Firefly – so most of our conversations tend to start there. When it comes to Firefly, the group consensus was that 2014 was our favorite/best lineup year – with 2015 taking the second most votes. Looking at this 2014 lineup, my first thought is that there are some really awesome (now very popular) bands near the bottom of this one – reminding me how good Firefly has been at pulling people who are about to blow up.
Continuing the 2014 trend, another member of our team put forward the 2014 Shaky Knees lineup as one of her favorites (along with some of the old Roo lineups and Firefly 2014).
Brownie and I both picked different BottleRock Lineups as our favorites. He chose 2016
A real blast from the past came from Megan who sent us a 2006 lineup from The Bamboozle Festival – which is apparently so obscure that all I can find is a website, oddly called lamb goat…
https://lambgoat.com/news/6095/The-Bamboozle-2006-info
My two picks were 2017 BottleRock and 2013 Bonnaroo. Despite being on opposite coasts four years apart, they share some interesting overlap. For BottleRock 2017 – there are just a ton of acts I LOVE: Saint Motel, Dirty Heads, Catfish & The Battlement, Macklemore, St. Lucia, Pell, The Strumbellas – and I could go on and on. For Bonnaroo 2013, this lineup is, to me, completely stacked – top to bottom with awesome talent. Had I not been in a clerkship with no time off at the time, probably would have finally made the trip to Tennessee that summer.
Now that we have shared a few of our favorites … we hope you will chime in and share your favorite lines up with us.
Leave a Reply