Foodstock 2014

Some of you may remember a discussion I posted back in December (or maybe early January) about holding a music festival on behalf of Sound of Humanity that would benefit underprivileged families in the NJ area. I’ve reached out to a number of you in the greater NYC metro area and have received great responses / support for this endeavor, but now I think I can expand this to make it a truly global event.

To recap some specifics:

  1. We’re having 10 musical acts, including our very own Mark Petruzzi and Tom Zartler, play 30 minutes each with a 15 minute setup/tear down between acts.

  2. Price of admission will be 64 oz of canned goods per person, all of which to be given to Community Foodbank of NJ, a highly rated 501(c)3 charity that works with over 400 food banks in northern and central NJ.

  3. The event will hopefully be simulcast over the Internet via HomeGrownRadioNJ.org (subject to whether I can get Verizon to pony up free 4G Internet connectivity from the venue).

The date is August 30 from 11am - 6:30pm EDT.

The thought that just came to me after a humorous comment I made to Sav on Facebook is this: in between acts, I will need music for when I’m not waxing philosophical on the next act to perform. Why not, then, play music from the people here on the forum?

Since this is a benefit “concert,” I’d like the music to be positive in it’s general attitude, either in the feeling you get when you hear the music or in the lyrics. Interested? Reply in here only. Do not reply on the Sound of Humanity page on Facebook, because we’re keeping tight control on the release of information until the PR campaign gets in full swing.

I’m not guaranteeing that your music will get played, unfortunately. I’m still working out the logistics with the municipality where the event will be held (Roxbury, NJ), but I’m 99% confident that I can make this work. This is a great chance for people “across the pong” and elsewhere to be a part of this in its inaugural year without actually being here. And, of course, I’d love to have your music played since I know how much incredible talent we have here on the board.

Thoughts?

I’m already volunteering Glyn’s song Hunger from the Musicians for Haiti precursor to Sound of Humanity because it’s so damn appropriate.

Great idea, good luck with the festival!
I’m amazed by your devotion to these kinds of things, quite inspiring :wink:

HI Larry.

'King A, and anything else you need from me.

Let’s talk further on Skype.

Best wishes
Glyn :slight_smile:

Glyn,

Will do. I’m in transit for business at the moment - greetings from Charlotte, NC! - but will reach out to you later in the week.

Thanks for the moral support! The amount of effort required to do this is bigger than I could ever expend on my own. I’m fortunate enough to have an awesome support staff already working with me. The great thing is that we are fairly certain this will be “cost neutral,” i.e. we’ll be able to raise enough funds from sponsorships and vendors that it won’t cost anything.

I have two professional photographers that will be cataloging the event, or I did the last time I checked :laughing: , so there should be some good pictures to share with the forum here after it’s over.

Hi Larry, great idea, and one comment… why not use some of the material from the albums we’ve already created, or were you thinking that already, or conversely, wanting new material? What about instrumentals??? I’ve a bucket load of things laying about.

I have thought of using “old” material. But I wanted to give people a chance to get some music out there even if it will be anonymous during the event itself. After the event, however, we could - and I’m making this up as I type it - promote the “in between music” on the Sound of Humanity Facebook page. Since I imagine we’ll get a lot of new Like’s during and after the event, that should translate to more people hearing your music.

So old or new, it doesn’t matter.

Going along with this thought of promoting it after the fact on Facebook, I would like a link to the Band Camp, Reverb Nation, CD Baby, etc. site where the song can be found if people are interested. Keep that in mind going forward.

Bumping this thread.

So looking at the 3 albums that were released under the Sound of Humanity name, we have 22 tracks at our disposal. Six of those are from acts that will be playing at the festival, which leaves 16 tracks total.

Given that we are targeting 15 minutes in between acts and some of that time will be used by me to introduce the next act and thank a few more of the sponsors, that leaves time for 2 songs (assuming 3 minutes average length) times 9 breaks plus 10 songs at the end to provide something while people retreat to their cars to go home. Total is 28 tracks minus the 16 tracks we have means that I’m looking for 12 tracks total.

If anyone is interested in submitting tracks, I’d like them submitted by July 1. Preferably I’d like 2 from each artist so that a) we have some flexibility and b) just in case we don’t get enough artists here submitting stuff.

Please send me a PM here with your email address. I’ll create a folder on Box for these and give you access so that you can upload the 192kbps or higher MP3 into that folder.

Oh cool you plan on playing all the previous tracks as well, nice!
I don’t think I’ve got something that suits the event very well, my own tracks are instrumental electronic and what I’ve recorded from other artists is either very minimalistic or in Dutch.

Count me in on some level Larry. You can either take one of my contributions so far, or I will dig something out of the archives. :sunglasses:

I have no preset notion in mind for what type of music is suitable. All I ask is that any lyrics are family friendly, i.e. no adult topics and keep the expletives to a minimum. So techno is fine as well. And thanks Robin. :smiley:

By the way, the choice to use the previously released stuff is more of a brand management thing, i.e. in spite of the fact that we (Sound of Humanity) are partnering with the local municipality and the local arts group (and, as such, I have to list them as partners in the event) I do not want anyone to forget that we are the ones responsible for this event. I’m hoping that this will help us considerably for future endeavors (esp. in getting media coverage) and will also help us expand Foodstock to be an annual thing that can grow to eventually (my hope!) include subsidizing the travel cost of international act(s) to play live.

I can easily see, as an intermediary step, having a decent midrange video / audio setup somewhere in a studio in the U.K., Europe, etc. and have it streamed live to a large projection screen on the stage next year. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Awesome stuff Larry! Subscribing to this thread.

Exactly how do you do that? I’ve never found a command for it.

If I post to the thread, my profile subscribes me.

Hmm, I thought this feature wasn’t implemented - in User Control Panel, the ‘Manage Subscriptions’ is always empty.

Quick update on the festival itself:

  • Details continue to be finalized.
  • First Press Release went out last week to various local and regional media outlets.
  • Back line equipment was finalized, and I’m quite happy with it. (See below.)
  • I have 9 of the 10 band slots filled - the band Lenny is playing with can’t make it - and I’m actively contacting others to see who I can get to fill that spot.
  • I will start collecting the songs from the forum members in the coming two weeks to be used in between acts as per above, from the various Sound of Humanity and Musicians for Haiti albums.

The back line, which has been donated by both School of Rock in Randolph, NJ as well as my personal friend Matt Mead, who was on the Sound of Humanity Sandy Relief effort, 2nd album.

Amps
Fender Pro Reverb (50W)
Marshall JCM 900 Mark 3 (50W)
Ampeg BA115HP (220W)

Drums
Snare (size unknown)
22" x 18" kick
10", 12", and 14" toms
Soultone hi-hat (size unknown), crash, ride

It is assumed that all drummers will most likely bring their own cymbals and snare.

Mics
Shure SM58 (vocals)
Sennheiser 609 (guitar amps)
Shure Beta 52 (bass)
Shure SM57 (snare)
AKG D112 (kick)
AKG C1000S (drum overheads)

Miscellany
Direct In boxes (3)

PA and Board
The PA (5,500W) has 4 separate monitor busses with wedges. It also has mains and subwoofers.
I don’t have the information on the board or mic preamps at this time, but it is a 32 channel board with outboard sound processing gear (mic pre’s, reverb, etc.) and a 150 foot snake.

Larry, can you send me the promo info, or links? Also, time slot for my band?

Time slots are being finalized now, actually.

I’ll post something in the Prep FB group, although you can repost the press release from the public FB page:

Can you please remind me the name of your band? :frowning: Also, would you want a timeslot earlier or later in the day? If you did earlier then you could play a gig that night if you’re ballsy.

phpBB does have a subscription engine, but it appears to not be implemented here. Might have been because of the huge subscriber base and the amount of mail traffic it would create.

There is the “notify when a reply is posted” option at the bottom of the editor when you are creating your post, that should work in a similar way.