ROSfest 2022 This Weekend

[Steve F.]

The demonization of affluence is one of the greatest limiting factors to progressive and non-mainstream music.

Really?
Moreso than the popular concept that music has no monetary value?

I totally disagree.

[SteveSly]

If I was the writer (and certainly I am not), I would not attach my name to it, for in this time one could easily become a martyr for sharing unpopular truth. However, I don’t care if anybody becomes a billionaire, if they support this subculture. I Believe there are some affluent people helping, and this would be great. The demonization of affluence is one of the greatest limiting factors to progressive and non-mainstream music.

I am not privy to the inner workings of all the festivals, but know most of the prog promotors in this country. Every festival has some level of “underwriter” who put up personal money to make the festivals happen. I can speak from personal experience with ProgDay that over the years a fairly significant amount of my personal income went into the festival that I never had any expectations of getting back. Peter, Michael, and many others have been in the same boat with ProgDay. Whoever wrote this appears to have been an underwriter for ROSfest at some point. I guess whoever wrote it has no obligation to put their name behind it, but to quote Roger Waters it becomes “the bravery of being out of range.” Again, knowing most of the promoters and having been involved in ProgDay I can attest that most (if not all) of the festivals work at a level that is always close to financial failure. In the 5 years that I was overall co-coordinator for ProgDay the festival only finished in the black two of those years and broke even one. Even NEARfest had years where they had a significant amount of capitol laid out that had the festival not sold out, could have been in trouble fast. I find it hard to imagine that ROSfest was ever in a financial position where anyone could make any significant amount of money from it, but who knows I guess.

[Firth]

Good insight Steve S. I am so grateful that this last ROSfest happened and was surprisingly one of the better ones. Hoping nobody went into the hole after helping it happen.

[Flightwave]

Here is a great article about this past years RosFest
https://rosfestpast.blogspot.com/202...tival.html?m=1

Not really an “article” IMO, more like a silly hit piece posted on someone’s lame blog.

[Shadow]

Really?
Moreso than the popular concept that music has no monetary value?

I totally disagree.

The ironic thing that always got me was music corporations with labels like Sony,Denon and JVC also built and sold cd and dvd burners and the blank discs, what did they think was going to happen. Maybe they thought they would make more money off burners and discs versus selling the music and wouldn't have to share with the musicians.

[Firth]

Really?
Moreso than the popular concept that music has no monetary value?

I totally disagree.

Disagree with what? Music has monetary value, as long as it’s not given for free.

[ProgFan]

Good morning all. One thing that was a hot topic at both this past weekend’s ROSfest and the one I attended in 2019 was the advantages / disadvantages of Sarasota vs. Gettysburg regarding the festival. I was going to mention this in my review that I wrote the other day, but then decided that it deserves it’s own thread, so here goes for anyone interested and I would love to hear other thoughts on this subject.

First let me say that I started attending ROSfest after the demise of NEARfest so did not attend any of the early years and my only experiences have been Gettysburg & Sarasota. Let’s get started:

GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION: Ok, of course this is the big one. Depending on where you live the move from Pennsylvania to Florida can be a deal breaker. It is well established by this point that the epicenter of prog in the U.S. is in the Northeast with the biggest fanbase located there. Because of this, a large chunk of the audience was within easy driving distance of the festival. The move to Florida has dissuaded at least some of this audience from attending. Regarding myself, I live in Michigan, so no matter where the festival was held it involved either hours and hours of driving or flying to be able to attend. Although geographically Gettysburg is closer to me than Florida, we have found that getting to Sarasota is both easier and cheaper. We have a discount airline Allegiant Air that has direct flights from Grand Rapids to Sarasota at a much cheaper rate than when I flew to either Harrisburg or Philly. Those Pennsylvania flights were never direct ones either. Allegiant, Frontier, Sun Country, and others all fly into Sarasota and many of those flights come from east coast cities, so might be something for people to investigate if they are thinking about attending in the future. So, for me I give Sarasota the win here as it is easier and cheaper for us to get there even from Michigan.

VENUE: I loved the Colonial Theater in Gettysburg. It was a great old historical theater. The Opera House in Sarasota is similar and another outstanding venue. The sound, sightlines, staff, restroom facilities, vendor space, stage, are all about the same and top notch. The one slight edge I give to the Opera House is the outdoor beer garden. Because there is so much down time between bands it is cool to have an outdoor gathering place where people can spend time together and socialize. The addition of having live music this year was a bonus too. Bottom line, if you take the beer garden out of the equation, this one is a tie as both venues were great. If you include the beer garden the Opera House has a slight edge for me.

RESTAURANTS / BARS: Sarasota wins this one all the way. Gettysburg had a fair number of restaurants / bars but trying to get into them could be a chore as they were always busy. Often if you wanted to eat somewhere during the dinner break, you either had to leave before a show was over or have someone stake out a table for you somewhere. Then it was often a rush to get seated, served, and checked out before the next show began. Sarasota has many more restaurants within walking distance and we never had to wait for a table at any of them. We always had a leisurely dinner with a few drinks and plenty of time to get back to the venue. Sarasota wins this hands down.

HOTELS: Gotta give this one to Sarasota as well. Gettysburg had very few hotels within walking distance. Sarasota has many. It is great to be able to walk 5 minutes (or less) to the venue. Be able to walk back and forth between bands if needed and walk back at the end of the night, especially if you have had a few beers. The Sarasota hotels also all have nice bars and gathering places for people to socialize. The Sarasota hotels all have nice pool areas too, which did not really come into play in Gettysburg with the cooler weather. Prices in Sarasota might be a bit higher, but Gettysburg wasn’t cheap either. Sarasota for the win here.

THE TOWN: I will be the first to admit that Gettysburg was a cool town. Over the years we did all the historical stuff and always totally enjoyed our stay there. Sarasota is a cool town as well, but in a different way. It has much more of a “city” feel, but nothing was ever super busy. One thing that has been added since 2019 is Sarasota now has a free trolley service that you can jump on and go to various places in town, St. Armand’s Circle, Lido Key & Lido Beach. We did it twice during our stay this time and it was great. I am going to give this one a tie since I loved both towns.

EASE OF GETTING AROUND: This will vary depending on your individual circumstances, but for us, flying to Gettysburg always included having to rent a car, since none of the airports were anywhere close. If we chose to drive from Michigan it would have been around a 14-hour drive. I did that once to NEARfest and said never again. So, anyway renting a car and often having to drive from where we were staying to the venue was a pain. Since we can get a cheap flight directly into Sarasota, we just took an Uber to the hotel (it was about $13 dollars one way) and just walked the rest of the weekend. The free trolley I mentioned previously takes you out to the beach which we took advantage of too. The winner here is Sarasota for me.

THE WEATHER: C’mon man! Sarasota all the way!

So, there you have it. I loved both cities and both venues, and this is all just my opinion of course. I would love to hear others thoughts on this subject, especially those that have been to both locations.

I like Sarasota over Gettysburg. I make a vacation around RosFest and there is quite a bit more to do in the area (Tampa/Sarasota) than Gettysburg.

[Plasmatopia]

The demonization of affluence is one of the greatest limiting factors to progressive and non-mainstream music.

[Plasmatopia]

Good morning all. One thing that was a hot topic at both this past weekend’s ROSfest and the one I attended in 2019 was the advantages / disadvantages of Sarasota vs. Gettysburg regarding the festival. I was going to mention this in my review that I wrote the other day, but then decided that it deserves it’s own thread, so here goes for anyone interested and I would love to hear other thoughts on this subject.

First let me say that I started attending ROSfest after the demise of NEARfest so did not attend any of the early years and my only experiences have been Gettysburg & Sarasota. Let’s get started:

[[[SNIP]]]

So, there you have it. I loved both cities and both venues, and this is all just my opinion of course. I would love to hear others thoughts on this subject, especially those that have been to both locations.

That was very insightful, thanks!

Sister-in-law just bought a house in Fort Myers, so it might work out to attend ROSFest once again and visit relatives all in one trip.

[SteveSly]

That was very insightful, thanks!

Sister-in-law just bought a house in Fort Myers, so it might work out to attend ROSFest once again and visit relatives all in one trip.

Ft. Myers isn't to horribly far from Sarasota. I am guessing 2 hours at the most, probably less.

[Steve F.]

Ft. Myers isn't to horribly far from Sarasota. I am guessing 2 hours at the most, probably less.

75 miles / 90 minutes

[GuitarGeek]

The ironic thing that always got me was music corporations with labels like Sony,Denon and JVC also built and sold cd and dvd burners and the blank discs, what did they think was going to happen. Maybe they thought they would make more money off burners and discs versus selling the music and wouldn't have to share with the musicians.

Ya know what the funny thing about that is? Back before CD-R technology existed, some of us used to do a very prehistoric version of downloading music illegally. Here's how it worked: you went to the local library (or maybe to a friend's house), and you found a record you liked, you borrowed it, took it home, and made a cassette of it. I imagine there might have even been people who made 8-track or even reel to reel copies of stuff that way (come to think of it: that copy of the American Graffiti soundtrack we had in the house when I was a kid was on a blank 8-track), i.e. it wasn't just a 1980's phenomenon.

And in fact, I believe the industry was aware of this, because I recall that there was a point where the RIAA's motto was "Home taping is killing music" (or something like that...more like it was killing Clive Davis and David Geffen's profit margins or whatever). And reportedly, the reason the RIAA agreed to put the warning labels on records the PMRC wanted was on the condition that Congress pass some bill that hinged on hiking the taxes on blank tapes because "Oh, my god, some kid in Ohio borrowed a Kiss record from the library and made a copy of it onto a crappy Certon 60 normal bias blank cassette, and he had to put the last two songs on side two, because the tape flip occurred in the middle of Torpedo Girl".

And then there were VCR's. How many frelling music videos and concerts did I record off MTV? How many TV shows did I record onto VHS? I've got like the entire history of British TV imports (and a few Canadian ones too...damn, why didn't I ever record Seeing Things?!) on my blank VHS tape collection (well, up through about 1990 or so).

So I mean, what happened with Napster and what came after it, I'm sure anyoen who had was paying attention to what had been going on since at least the early 80's (if not earlier) had to have seen that coming. Of course, we're takling about the same industry that didn't value "alternate takes" or "session outtakes" or sometimes, even the actual master recordings of stuff that was recorded back in the day. We're talking about the descendants of the irisora who said "Nobody's giong to miss these old episodes of Johnny Carson, Doctor Who, Top Of The Pops and all these game shows 40 years from now", so I guesss they it shouldnt' be surprising that they got clobbered by downloading, the same way Joe Mannix got clobbered in the back of the head in like every episode (actually, it only happened in 55 of 'em, but the allusion is still valid).

[battema]

Downloading changed the landscape because even though "illegal" copying was possible well before then, downloading made it easy to make reasonably-perfect copies of music available to millions instantly.

The difference in volume was exponential and enough to literally change the industry permanently. Whether it was for the better or the worse is a subjective thread I don't feel like pulling just to hear the same arguments ad nauseum. If I want to deal with that, I'll go back to a Yes thread.

[Steve F.]

Downloading changed the landscape because even though "illegal" copying was possible well before then, downloading made it easy to make reasonably-perfect copies of music available to millions instantly.

The difference in volume was exponential and enough to literally change the industry permanently. Whether it was for the better or the worse is a subjective thread I don't feel like pulling just to hear the same arguments ad nauseum. If I want to deal with that, I'll go back to a Yes thread.

Thanks, John

There is absolutely no comparison of scale in making 5 cassettes or 5 CDRs and handing or mailing them individually to friends, vs.uploading something that absolutely ANYONE with the url can grab.

[smcfee]

Again, knowing most of the promoters and having been involved in ProgDay I can attest that most (if not all) of the festivals work at a level that is always close to financial failure. In the 5 years that I was overall co-coordinator for ProgDay the festival only finished in the black two of those years and broke even one. Even NEARfest had years where they had a significant amount of capitol laid out that had the festival not sold out, could have been in trouble fast.

I believe Rob and/or Chad were personally liable for NF if worst came to worst, although fortunately it never did.

FMPM was financially operated by ProgQuebec and backed by ProgQuebec and Unicorn Digital.

You don't do this stuff to get rich, that's for sure :-D.

[GuitarGeek]

Downloading changed the landscape because even though "illegal" copying was possible well before then, downloading made it easy to make reasonably-perfect copies of music available to millions instantly.

The difference in volume was exponential and enough to literally change the industry permanently. Whether it was for the better or the worse is a subjective thread I don't feel like pulling just to hear the same arguments ad nauseum. If I want to deal with that, I'll go back to a Yes thread.

I understand the point you're making. My point was that, given that the industry knew that home taping was going on in the first place, what the frell could they have possibly expected when Napster appeared?!

[smcfee]

I don’t know anything about RosFest’s inner workings, but anyone - meaning George - who does something like this for well over a dozen years, is absolutely someone who truly cares. There just is not enough money in ANYTHING associated with this music to be anything else.

It's totally believable to me that after dealing with the operating expenses of a music festival you could have enough left over to buy a Hyundai Genesis and a house, based on Facebook donations (I think that was the accusation, it was hard to parse that masterpiece of punctuation).

[Steve F.]

It's totally believable to me that after dealing with the operating expenses of a music festival you could have enough left over to buy a Hyundai Genesis and a house, based on Facebook donations (I think that was the accusation, it was hard to parse that masterpiece of punctuation).

You left out an important delineator.

‘PROG music festival’

[battema]

I understand the point you're making. My point was that, given that the industry knew that home taping was going on in the first place, what the frell could they have possibly expected when Napster appeared?!

Maybe a couple of years prior to Napster I read an article in either Keyboard or Electronic Music about the new "phenomena" of nonphysical digital media. Much of the slant of the article was on the gouging that artists and consumers were going to endure at the hands of labels; in particular I recall at least one label was floating the idea of charging some % of a "packaging fee" against royalties on digital recordings.

I don't think they were expecting it at all. I don't think they had a clue of what was about to happen. In fairness to the "them" in question here, I don't think the majority of us expected the change that happened, so suddenly and so completely.

[SteveSly]

It's totally believable to me that after dealing with the operating expenses of a music festival you could have enough left over to buy a Hyundai Genesis and a house, based on Facebook donations (I think that was the accusation, it was hard to parse that masterpiece of punctuation).

Sean, I am not clear if you are being sarcastic or serious with this statement? I assume Sarasam, but not sure?

[SteveSly]

I believe Rob and/or Chad were personally liable for NF if worst came to worst, although fortunately it never did.

This is true.

[battema]

Sean, I am not clear if you are being sarcastic or serious with this statement? I assume Sarasam, but not sure?

If he's serious, I gotta start me a festival ASAP. I got mad bills, people.

[SteveSly]

If he's serious, I gotta start me a festival ASAP. I got mad bills, people.

[smcfee]

Sean, I am not clear if you are being sarcastic or serious with this statement? I assume Sarasam, but not sure?

I might still have the ProgDay 2001 budget spreadsheet around here somewhere, but I'm pretty sure the whole thing cost less than a well-equipped Hyundai.

[Firth]

I can’t believe this discussion. What difference does it make whether George profited or not? What does matter is if people donated to the festival’s success and didn’t receive a benefit comparable to what George received. A more pertinent question is whether people think his contributions of effort were significant compared to the other volunteers.