The popularity and profitability of multiple day music festivals seem to be on the increase. New festivals are cropping up, such as the BottleRock Festival in Napa, California. And well-established festivals are gravitating toward adding a second weekend that mirrors the first. Coachella went to two weekends in 2012 and Austin City Limits is doing so in 2013.
The festivals are great opportunities for music lovers. Depending on the festival, there are between twenty and sixty bands to listen to each day. But it is not uncommon to have overlapping performances by bands you want to see. So, strategies must be developed. Some strategies are entirely within the control of the festival-goers, such as attending the performance of a particular band for the first 15 minutes of the set, then quickly moving to a different stage to catch a different band. Other strategies are less obvious and completely out of the control of the fans. One example is basing the timing of your movement from one stage to another stage upon hearing a "bucket song" at the first stage.
The term "bucket song" is unabashedly taken from the movie "Bucket List," a film about two terminally ill men with a list of activities to experience before moving on ("kicking the bucket"). At a festival, a bucket song is "The Song" we want to hear from a band before moving on. Interestingly, many bands don't save their fan favorites for the end of their festival setlists. Encores are almost non-existent. And if you’re a band attempting to gain additional fans, you want to put your best foot forward before potential new fans migrate to an alternative opportunity. However, the “bucket song strategy” actually creates the opposite result, since hearing the song may trigger migration.
According to the bucket song strategy, if there are overlapping performances by two bands we want to see, we will start with “Band A” but quickly move to “Band B” after hearing a particular song.
Some songs are easily identified as being a band’s bucket song. The band may have a number of other songs that we would otherwise look forward to hearing, but one song (sometimes two) stands out. That leads us (finally?) to the song “Stickin to the Sheets” by Hello Ocho. Early in the song, the percussions have the sound of fast-paced mechanical factory work. Then, the vocals enter with the same pace. Some of the transitions within the song are accented by screams. The song seems to end around the 2:30 mark, but then comes back with force. If Hello Ocho can do this song justice in a concert setting, we want to be present!
Hello Ocho is based in Atlanta, Georgia. The band members are John Gregg (percussion), Chris Yonker (vocals and electronics), Clinton Callahan (bass/guitar), Tim Kohler, and Chris Childs. For more information about the band, their webpage is http://www.helloocho.com/ and their Facebook page is CLICK HERE.
"Stickin to the Sheets" by Hello Ocho
The song (in fact, the entire album) can be downloaded on a "Name Your Price" basis by going to the Bandcamp site - CLICK HERE
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