What is your favorite music festival, past or present?

Woodstock sounds like it would have been a cool experience. Unfortunately, I was not alive. =[

I concur with Lollapalooza. The first two were fun. My dream festival would be The Redding festival.

I, and 200,000 other fans, attended the California Jam at Ontario Motor Speedway on April 6,1974. It was a great festival, very well planned and executed. The fans were fairly well behaved, with few incidents. It helped that the acid was good and clean because there was a lot of it being freely offered up. And of course the entire speedway was covered with a huge cloud of marijuana smoke…even non-smokers couldn’t help but get stoned.

The line-up was incredible. Acts that performed at the festival in order of appearance:
Rare Earth
Earth, Wind and Fire
Eagles
Seals & Crofts
Black Oak Arkansas
Black Sabbath
Deep Purple
Emerson, Lake and Palmer

I thought Black Sabbath put on the best show followed closely by ELP. Deep Purple was also great, but they were not my preferred line-up with David Coverdale (Whitesnake , Coverdale and Page) having replaced Ian Gillian on lead vocals.

Needless to say, traffic (not the band) was a nightmare.

bonaroo or vegoose

Well, the worlds largest and best is Summerfest http://www.summerfest.com and has been for well over 25 years. It would be hard to beat the number and variety of acts at any other festival. Plus, Milwaukee in the summer is just a wonderful, rocking, lesbian loving town! That said, if you’re talking about a one or two day fest I always loved Lillith Fair.

The Black Mountain Music Festival in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Three days of camping inthe mountains, 5 stages with performers from 9am til midnight, musicians from all over the counrty and all over the world.

Well so far the Cygnet Folk Festival since that’s the only one I’ve been to and it is a lot of fun, but The Falls Festival would be pretty damn awesome and I can’t wait to go to that. I’ll miss it next year as I’ll be in India but I’m definately going the year after.

the Montreal jazz festival. 6 blocks of festivities and free shows every hour.

New Orleans Jazz Fest is simply the best!

Concurring with Lollapalooza and the Jazz Fest. San Diego’s Street Scene is a lot of fun, too, not technically a festival I suppose.
No takers for the Drop Dead Festival?

NOLA Voo Doo Fest is pretty cool too!

I always try to go to a lot of music festivals every summer. Usually local ones that are cheap, but always a lot of fun. This year im going to one up in New York and I cant wait. Camp Bisco mmmmm psytrance/techno festival yay 3 day rave ^_^

I don’t see ACL on this list yet, and that makes me sad! 3 days in beautiful Austin tx, with big names like Flogging Molly, The B52’s, The dead weather, and all the indie music your lil heart can take. And all the local austin eateries turn out in a football field-sized display of awesome food! Cant beat it!