A Music Festival In The Sky? A Soaring Idea

Sure, music on a boat is pretty cool (just hold your Lonely Island jokes please) – such as the recently announced SS Coachella Cruise that turns a three-day seafaring yarn into a music festival or the weezer’s own cruise earlier this year that included bands, movie screenings and 80s prom night - but floating on the ocean is for chumps.

Why not use all that luxurious space up in the sky to stage a music festival instead?

That’s the question that the organisers behind the “I’m With The Band” cross-country flight asked themselves and this October they’ll be achieving just that.

FILTER Magazine announced its unique flight plan in a partnership with Virgin America as a way to kickstart their annual Culture Collide Festival, allowing concertgoers attending the four day music event in Los Angeles to take a very special musical trip to get there.

Tickets for the “I’m With The Band” flight from New York City to LA, will feature exclusive in-flight entertainment in the form of live performances and DJ sets from the likes of New York dream pop duo School of Seven Bells, Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes and an acoustic set from electropop act Penguin Prison.

Sounds like much more fun than a safety demonstration.

Those flying on the exclusive ‘music festival in the air’ will receive a four-day wristband to the Culture Collide festival – whose bill includes Of Montreal, Patrick Wolf, Blood Red Shoes and more – will also gain access to exclusive giveaways and “gift bags.”

It’s a pretty cool initiative, maybe Australian festivals could take a leaf or two from FILTER/Virgin America’s pages and sweeten the deal for those travelling within Australia. Imagine heading to Perth’s Big Day Out and being serenaded by Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson? Or flying to Byron Bay with a plane full of Splendour In The Grass acts?

Pipe dream? Maybe. Though, in related news, Qantas have certainly been increasing their music-related portfolio.

Yesterday, Tourism Australia launched a new worldwide ad campaign between the Australian airline and an all-star list of musicians celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Icehouse’s unofficial anthem ‘Great Southern Land’.

Qantas also roped in the services of Daniel Johns, in his first post-Silverchair material, to pen a symphonic instrumental for a new advertisement to update their age-old “Still Call Australia Home” campaign.