Cat Power and Scottish Indie Rockers’ Teenage Fan Club have been added to the line-up of the Starry Nites Festival. The event is set to take place March 18 and 19 at the beautiful Live Oak campgrounds in the majestic Santa Ynez mountain range, just above Santa Barbara. The inaugural festival is being organized by the same promoters who have produced one of the most highly regarded community festivals in California, the Desert Stars Festival, since 2007. Unlike the massive corporate festivals that have taken over the music world, the concept of the community festival is a more toned down approach focusing on a more pleasurable and intimate festival experience. Instead of massive headline acts and huge crowds of people, the community festival concentrates on a lineup of talented acts that may not usually play on the same stage. If there is a theme at the Starry Sites festival, it seems to be a gravitation towards psychedelic rock and jam music.
Longtime Santa Barbara resident Alan Parsons will be headlining with his latest incantation of the Alan Parsons Project. Parsons has rarely played live shows in the new millennium, most of which have been special benefit concerts. But recently he has launched a world tour with precious few dates for his lucky fans to choose. Parsons is a living legend in the music world. At the age of 19, he found himself working as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road studios on the final two Beatles Albums. But it was his musical engineer work on the seminal Pink Floyd album, “The Dark Side of The Moon” that put him on the map in the music world.
In 1975 he met Eric Woolfson and the two joined forces to form the Alan Parsons Project, a very progressive rock band for their time. According to Parson’s website; “The APP’s debut album, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe paved the way for a signing to Clive Davis’ newly launched Arista label and a string of hit albums, namely I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), Eye in the Sky (1982), Ammonia Avenue (1984), Vulture Culture (1985), Stereotomy (1986) and Gaudi (1987).” The band has sold over 30 million records across the world.
Parsons will be joined by another legendary Psychedelic rock band, Strawberry Alarm Clock, who are celebrating their 50th Anniversary tour. The Los Angeles band had one of the biggest hits of the era, Incense, and Peppermint, and charted five hit songs.
