So hey Boston, here’s that large-scale music festival we’ve all been talking about... oh, pretty much for forever now: Newly-minted Crash Line Productions is teaming up with Bowery Presents for BOSTON CALLING, a two-day, 18-band music festival on City Hall Plaza this Memorial Day weekend. Let’s get right into the lineup, because it’s an indie rock monster:
:: Day 1: Saturday, May 25, 2013: Fun., the Shins, Marina & the Diamonds, Matt and Kim, Portugal. The Man, Cults, Ms Mr, St. Lucia, and Bad Rabbits.
:: Day 2: Sunday, May 26, 2013: The National, Of Monsters And Men, Young the Giant, Andrew Bird, the Dirty Projectors, Ra Ra Riot, the Walkmen, Youth Lagoon, and Caspian.
Well hot damn.
Tickets are $120 for a two-day pass, and go on-sale Friday, March 1 at 10 a.m. EST via bostoncalling.com, ticketmaster.com, and the Sinclair box office, located at 52 Church Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge.
It’s great to see Boston repped each day, first on Saturday with post-r&b upstarts Bad Rabbits, whose debut LP American Love drops a few weeks earlier on May 14, and then with Caspian establishing the Sunday morning religious service with an instrumental post-rock sermon.
But really, with a festival of this size, this is really about the headliners. And any festival lead by New York rock titans the National, who have a new record out later this year, and Fun., a band that took a comet ride from playing WFNX Disorientation in late 2011 to owning the Grammy’s a few weeks ago, is the real deal. Marina, Matt & Kim, Young the Giant, the Walkmen and the rest should help fill City Hall Plaza, which sources tell the Phoenix could accommodate nearly 20,000 concertgoers.
Crash Line Productions, named after the New Jersey Devils’ bruising, mid-‘90s Stanley Cup-winning third line of Mike Peluso, Bobby Holik, and Randy McKay (I shit you not), was co-founded in the fall of 2012 by Brian Appel and Mike Snow, both formerly of the Phoenix Media Communications Group, who reached out to the National’s Aaron Dessner to help curate Boston Calling. Dessner has in the past developed England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties and founded New York’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival. “We worked hard to pull together an exciting group of artists,” Dessner said in a press release.
According to the same release, there will be two performance stages, plus “a spacious beer garden, a food pavilion comprised of food trucks and local food vendors, and world-class lighting and design throughout the plaza.”
VIP ticketholders (priced at $325 a pop), can party at City Hall Courtyard: “a 25,000 square foot, second-floor Mezzanine offering prime views of the main stage as well as specially curated menus and luxurious amenities.”
“Boston is such a great city for music and arts, and the city’s appetite for live outdoor events only grows each year. We are fortunate to have some wonderful people contributing to this event, and we are excited to fill a void in the New England festival circuit. Our aim is to do nothing less than exceed ticketholders’ expectations,” Appel said in the presser.
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