I just got back from Hellfest number six and wanted to talk a little bit about why in America we don’t have the same festival culture that is so treasured in Europe. Sure it’s starting to happen, and it is, to some extent, creating a sense of competition with the festivals across the pond, but I think we can all agree, the US doesn’t really have anything that competes with a festival like Wacken or Graspop. I figured in today’s article we could get into four reasons why this is. These reasons range from the attitudes of the different cultures to the infrastructure those cultures provide by way of how the market looks in Europe and of course the basic principles that make their festivals better. So yeah – we are going to get deep here and talk about some weird economic factors that are hard to quantify, simply because we don’t have the infrastructure to quantify them. However, it will hopefully get everyone thinking about festival scenes and the future both at home and abroad. Continue reading →