The 2009 Festival Season Sees Its First Casualty

Festival die-hards who were waiting to traipse down to south Jersey for the Vineland Festival, the multi-day, multi-band fest that was “postponed” from this year to a summer 2009 launch date, are going to be disappointed: The festival’s plug has been pulled by C3 Presents, the Texas-based company that also puts on Lollapalooza, thanks to the immediate area being too saturated with multi-day affairs.

Late last year, C3 announced they were going to stage a three-day music festival on a 550-acre farm in Vineland, N.J., on Aug. 8-10. A few months later, the festival was postponed till 2009. Now, C3 co-owner Charlie Jones says, Vineland is “dead.”

“That particular part of the country got too popular too fast; there are too many festivals in close proximity,” he says, citing the emergence of the All Points West festival in northern New Jersey, which will be headlined Aug. 8-10 by Radiohead and Jack Johnson. All Points West is being staged by Goldenvoice, which also promotes the Coachella festival in California.

So I guess “too many” = “one” in this particular bit of math, unless Virgin Festival–which happens in nearby Baltimore–is also seen as being in close proximity to south Jersey. Or is “too many” actually code for the possibility that C3’s exclusivity clauses–which, in the case of Lollapalooza, restrict bands from playing six months before and three months after the festival, and have turned the Chicago area’s music bookings into “the long cold summer… it’s like hibernation,” according to one local booker–were just too restrictive for any major acts to sign on, given the proximity of the New York City and Philadelphia markets? Or maybe it’s just code for “the economy sucks, and we want to cut our losses before we start experiencing real deficits.”

Lolla organizers’ Jersey festival dies [Turn It Up via Consequence Of Sound]