Who'd want to be a fussy follower of fashion? While the trend for all encompassing music festivals has now more or less gone the way of zoot suits, ponytails, gurning and hula hoops, it seems that something somewhat more defined has taken their place. Not so long ago, the likes of Lisdoonvarna and Feile would gather together over the space of a few nights and stage a vast array of acts - from Jackson Browne to Moving Hearts, from Christy Moore to Simply Red, from Sharon Shannon to Primal Scream.
Pretty much all points of the popular music spectrum were covered. The audience comprised music fans as opposed to fans of folk or rock or pop or traditional, people who nodded to Mary Black as much as they did to INXS.
These days, musical tastes have not only diversified but become more focused. A music-loving audience has turned into discerning customers who will shell out for selective, channelled events.
Inevitably, promoters have gone with the flow. Next Bank Holiday weekend there are three festivals taking place in Ireland that have their own musical agenda, targeting their own specific audiences - Dublin-based Heineken Green Energy Festival, Co Meath-based Homelands and Kilkenny-based Carlsberg Rhythm & Roots Festival. Heineken and Homelands (at Mosney Holiday Centre; Butlins to the over-25s) look to the youth and post-25 vote with their mixture of indie, DJs, commercial rock, left-of-centre dance, AOR, commercial singer/songwriter, a band challenge and frantic club culture realism.
The Rhythm & Roots Festival in darling Kilkenny, meanwhile, is clearly pitching for the sensitive, more mature side of the music lover with its blend of blues, country (old, new, borrowed and a morose shade of blue), gospel and various bummed-out angels of the badlands.
From a business perspective, the fact that the festivals coincide represents a direct head-to-head between music promoters, particularly Mean Fiddler (Homelands) and MCD (Green Energy), for the youth market. It's interesting to note that the night that Homelands takes place the Green Energy festival has scheduled Bryan Ferry, who would appeal to a non-Homelands audience.
Even the casual viewer of popular culture would detect a notable difference between these festivals. While there is a small degree of crossover in each (typically, Heineken's Joe Strummer would be ideal for Carlsberg's Kilkenny, while Mosney's Ian Brown could easily transfer to Dublin, etc), it's fair to say that each festival is talking directly to its own constituency.
"The public has become incredibly more discerning in their tastes and in what they will listen to," says publicist Buzz O'Neill, the person in charge of media coverage for the Homelands event. "They tend to vote with their feet as to what they like. There was a time when people were just into music per se. Now they're very much into specific styles of music."
Within dance music, says O'Neill, there are even specific subsets of music. In Homelands there are eight different arenas - in essence eight mini-festivals going on at the same time, each one catering for a different musical style such as drum 'n' bass, techno, trance, etc. "The home arena might be the only one that would crossover in that there are rock acts such as Primal Scream and Ian Brown," says Buzz, "but even these bands would have dance music as their roots. They're headlining acts who have been inspirational for many other acts on the bill, and who actually got people into dance music."
The major ironic contention here is that rather than looking at these specific festivals as being in any way elitist, people are being fastidiously specific and careful about the music they listen to. Once upon a time it was the music industry. Now, the music industry acts as an umbrella title for the rock industry, the folk industry, the dance industry, the pop industry, etc. In Homelands' case, in particular, and to a lesser extent Carlsberg's Rhythm & Roots, it's about music genres and styles growing up and out beyond their initial subculture remits.
"Ten years ago, dance music was very much an underground thing," notes Buzz O'Neill, "but it's now mainstream with over half of the UK Top 40 dance or dance-related tracks. Dance used to be sidelined at open air rock events, where you'd initially have a dance tent. The following year there'd be two tents. The next it would be on the main stage. Homelands is a real live grown up event."
As well as being a sign that the future consumption of music is a very personal, essentially tribal matter.
Heineken's Dublin Castle concerts preface the summer open-air season. To date, coming your way, totally impervious to weather conditions, are Tina Turner (RDS, June 11), Oasis (Landsdowne Road, July 8) and Witness (Beck, David Gray, Travis, Paul Weller, etc., Fairyhouse Co. Meath, August 5/6). A date for the open air event at Slane Castle has not yet been made public.
Homelands
Mosney Holiday Centre, Co. Meath/ Sat, April 29th to Sun, April 30th
This is for the Kevin & Perry crowd, the kind who do like to be beside the seaside with their supply of Class A-Z drugs, paper-thin T-shirts (tsk, tsk, kids these days, etc., they're bound to catch a cold) and woolly hats. In essence, Homelands is an organised rave for the 18-30 year old age group, a healthy mixture of males and females from all over the country and, according to the promoters, from socio-economic backgrounds as diverse as accountants and Supermac workers. There are subcultures and subsets within the remit of dance music that means different things to different people, however. If the words Techno, Spiral Tribe, Shiny Protein, Drum 'n' bass, Billy Nasty and Cyberpunk don't mean anything to you, then perhaps it's time to give up the ghost, forget about buying palmtops and WAP phones and say goodbye to Broadway. It's been said by some that Homelands is the new Feile, the new big event for people to go to no matter who is on. As history has proven, this is not a good thing.
Irish Times Tip: Primal Scream - just to laugh at Bobby Gillespie's attempts at rapping. Otherwise, David Holmes.
Heineken Green Energy
Dublin Castle and other venues Sat April 29th to Mon. May 1st
This is cool for mostly young cats, as well as students of rock music in all its indie forms. UK funk-stew band Gomez is possibly the most experimental outfit these students have heard, while they remember the Cranberries' first couple of hits from their primary school days. Heineken Green Energy people wear the T-shirts of their favourite group with pride, all the while holding a plastic mug of cold beer that sloshes on the ground as they jiggle about.
They like The Charlatans but have no idea that Bob Dylan influenced their sound. They like Embrace but through a fog of beer and guitars wonder why they sound ever so slightly like Oasis. They think Tracy Chapman is A1 and reckon Joe Strummer just isn't as good as their dad's Clash records. As for Bryan Ferry - they think he's dead.
Irish Times Tip: Funnily enough, Bryan Ferry, but only if he does a few Roxy Music songs.
Carlsberg Rhythm & Roots Weekend
Kilkenny, various city venues/Fri April 28th to Mon May 1st
This is the festival that appeals to lovers of roustabout country music, delicately honed sensitive songs and bruised lovelorn singer/songwriters. It's roots with knobs on as Kilkenny plays host to a wide range of relatively low-key roots/folk acts. The difference between this and the other festivals taking place over the same weekend is that there will undoubtedly be more American accents, bald heads and beards per square yard (so ironic for a roots festival, don't you think?). More a connoisseur's event than a crossover one, the fundamental premise here is the art of the song.
Therefore, no stroppy poses, very few chemicals, lots of beer and lager (naturally), most definitely more homely interaction with the audience and the chance to talk with the acts after the show. A tad too serious for some, mind, but as the age group for this one is squarely levelled at 30 years-plus, that's okey-dokey.
Irish Times Tip: Peter Bruntnell for his song-writing, The Derailers for their uncompromising approach to country music and Stacey Earle's stark honesty.