The Meadows 2019

Especially since this shit isn’t happening.

Founders would be wise to never book a band like that as a headliner again. Sorry, I appreciate them for what they are but if they (ever again) book a “legacy” rock act it really has to be an A-list act whose songs stand the test of time AND are popular with all demos (think RHCP, Foo Fighters, Green Day, etc), unfortunately. They’d be wishing for death putting The Cure as a headliner. GovBall ‘18 made it very clear that almost nobody is going to these fests for rock anymore.

Wouldn't this tip Founders hand on who may end up headlining Gov Ball '19 since they are on "retainer"? Probably why he keeps ignoring answering this question.

Seems way too late to announce a full festival at this point. Maybe they'll do a "The Meadows Presents" multi-act concert to keep the brand fresh if they plan on maybe returning next year.

I’m assuming that the festival was intended for the same weekend as last year, and that the new location was intended to be Flushing Meadows Park; I just don’t see any other available non-Randalls site in NYC that would work. The Paul Simon tour-ending show there in September indicates that local officials have overcome at least some of their resistance to using the park for big concert events, but so far it appears that they've approved that one-off event to the exclusion of any multi-day annual festival. Perhaps it's a test case for opportunities that will be open to one or both of Founders/Live Nation and AEG next summer.

As far as the ‘headliners’ that were on retainer go, my best guesses are Kanye (and/or Kendrick?), The Chainsmokers, Vampire Weekend, and maybe a harder-rocking PTBNL - I have some guesses but no prime candidate. I'll bet Kanye's political meltdown earlier this year didn't help things along.

Not without a venue.

Citi Field is unavailable on what I understand to be the intended weekend (the same as last year). The following weekend is conflicted out by the Paul Simon concert. The one after that I'm expecting to be up against Global Citizen. The weekend before the intended one is the same as Pitchfork's OctFest (and Rosh Hashanah).

1. (Overlooking "reported") I don't see that statement anywhere in this thread. Is it somewhere else?
2. Either way, that wouldn't be inconsistent with anything I said.

Yeah, I saw that. It doesn't say what you said it did and isn't inconsistent with anything I said.

We know they had headliners on retainer, that they leaned hiphop/r&b/pop, and that Kanye, who just released a new album, never got to do his Gov Ball set. I doubt they had headliners on retainer for a weekend TBD, but instead for a specific weekend - the same one as last year.

Citi Field is not available that weekend, so the organizers looked instead at other venues (all "on grass"), a decision it appears they made early on given Launchpad's query re: new venues in this thread a week after the MLB schedule was released back in September, which I assume they knew before the announcement. Randalls aside, I can think of only about three "grass" sites of sufficient scale for an event of this type with the transit accessibility they want and ability to handle the infrastructure (particularly access restriction) they need - Central Park, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and maybe Prospect Park; I'm skeptical that Van Cortlandt Park would work even if they were interested, as I doubt they would be in Cunningham Park or Floyd Bennett Field. These are city parks, and unlike Randalls, which is on an island where no one lives, they don't have much history of hosting commercial events that restrict public access for a whole weekend. While Central Park occasionally hosts large and sometimes ticketed concerts on the Great Lawn or other meadows, those have all been free, single-day events like Global Citizen, which AEG presents along with paid shows at Central Park Summerstage/Rumsey Playfield. AEG is also first past the post to do a paid show in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park with the one-night Paul Simon show there in September (which isn't going to happen again and which has sentimental importance to the city and lyrical tie-in to the neighborhood), but as I said above, local officials appear unwilling thus far to let either them or Founders do a paid weekend festival on an annual basis anywhere besides Randalls. Maybe that will change next year, but I'm not holding my breath.

Until one of the other city parks is made available to Founders, it seems they're stuck with Randalls and maybe the Citi Field parking lot (I don't see the area around Yankee Stadium working but maybe I'm wrong), schedule allowing. I can think of another venue they may not have thought of, but I doubt it would be available to them even if they were interested.

Prospect Park has never hosted a large-scale festival to my knowledge. Googa Mooga, which took place on the Nethermead, was just 10-15K, I believe, and to the extent it discouraged officials from holding another event there, that was primarily a consequence of community uproar over access restrictions to what was a ('bourgie') mostly-food festival for non-attendees and high prices/poor execution for those who did get in.

Any large-scale music festival in Prospect Park would have to take place not on the Nethermead but on the much larger Long Meadow, which annually hosts free Philharmonic concerts and summer movies, as well as the occasional special event, though those see smaller attendance and lighter infrastructure than a commercial music festival would involve. Like you, and like I said, I don't see it happening, though I do think it's possible that like Central Park and now Flushing Meadows, Prospect may in the future host big single-day, preferably free and consciousness-raising concerts like the Woodstock anniversary event that promoters sought to hold in 2009, two years after the park was considered for the Live Earth concert.

Those are the three non-Randalls park sites in the city that appear capable of hosting festivals if the politics allow, and I suspect that Flushing Meadows has a leg up over Prospect Park as far as commercial promoters are concerned because it's more easily accessible to commuter rail (LIRR), not just the subway, and maybe because Queens (and much moreso the North Shore of Long Island beyond it) has higher median incomes than Brooklyn. I don't believe that even an expanded Governors Island is an option for a large-scale festival given the accessibility issues - 2011 attendance was about 20,000, while Gov Ball and Meadows run up to 50,000 capacity, and Randalls you can actually load in and out of via roads. I assume Liberty State Park, which is neither an island nor in New York, remains an option, but All Points West proved it a failure of a venue as far as AEG is concerned, and Founders doesn't yet appear interested in trying their hand there either. Perhaps someone will give it another try in a different economy, but I don't see it becoming the location for the city/hiphop-oriented Meadows.

Seems like they're dead set on Corona Park. Hope they break through next year

RIP to my fall festival

I hardly knew ye

It's much harder to spread out a blanket, sit back and chill for a bit at a festival that's on asphalt, is my thinking. The Meadows had some seating but not really enough for the number of people there. Also harder on the knees for us olds (as I have been experiencing since a major concert blitz recently). I did a day of this in VIP (which I almost never do) last year, and thank goodness I did.