Want to see LCD Soundsystem? You can catch them at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Panorama and Way Home. Major Lazer? Coachella, Sasquatch, Firefly and Panorama. ASAP Rocky? Coachella, Firefly and Panorama. Gary Clark Jr.? Coachella, New Orleans Jazzfest, Governor’s Ball and Way Home. Don’t let us bring you down. You want to hear Haim on a field? Wewant to hear Haim on a field! But there are better ways for us to understand and describe our subject — whether we are talking about a specific performer or a subculture — than at one of these festivals.

Nobody had these conversations in 2002, when we first covered Coachella, and when it was unusual to travel across the country regularly for a pop festival. After the commercialism, cynicism, disorganization and violence of Woodstock ’99, Coachella seemed like a move in the right direction: It took the festivalgoer seriously. Now the festivalgoer is taken seriously all over the place, but something else is taken less seriously. Could it be music? (Ben Ratliff)

Where’s the Center?

Ben, I’m not nearly that cynical — LOL — but yes, there is an unrelenting sameness to this whole festival thing. Do you remember when Coachella was a festival that somehow felt particular to the California desert? Turns out, though, that people in California want the same things as people in Oklahoma and people in Baltimore and people on the Internet. (Hell, you can stream most of these festivals anyway.) Even the sense of one-upmanship of just a few years ago — where will Pulp reunite? where will the Weeknd make his debut? — is mostly gone. Festivals are too big a business not to be homogenized, smoothed out and mainstreamed. No potential customer will go unserved.

As a result, running around the country pays smaller and smaller dividends — a festival in New York is as much a slog as one in California, but at least it’s closer. What’s more, how do you thoroughly cover a typical mainstream festival that has no real center and no theme other than hugeness? There are roundup recaps, photo slide shows, highlight blurbs, fashion reports; even all of these things, together, add up to less than an ideal whole. I don’t want to say news never happens at these things, but I primarily understand the modern music festival as a social event, not a musical one

So yes, let’s not bother. Or at least let’s bother less.

Where might one go, then, to learn more about music as it’s currently being made and played in this country? My instinct for the last few years has been to look smaller. Often I see notices for festivals and gatherings that are very narrowly focused thematically and almost completely ignored critically. To be fair, there is only so much budget money to go around and perhaps even less curiosity. But let’s aim higher. This year, I think, I’ll trust Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat to keep me updated on the big tents. It’s time to go hunting. (Jon Caramanica)