I’ve been hoping to see Broken Social Scene and The New Pornographers for years. After what I felt was a less than stellar Bunbury line-up this summer, I was ratcheting down my expectations for MPMF. The MPMF announcement of the fest shrinking to two days and significantly less acts was counterbalanced by The New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene as headliners.

Walk The Moon is headlining too. Don’t interpret my lack of excitement to mean they aren’t a great live show. It’s just that I’ve seen them at least 10 times now. BSS and TNP are just all aglitter with the unknown.

I literally have today and tomorrow to talk about what I am pumped to see, so tomorrow I am going to dig deeper into the line-up. Big picture, I think this line-up has packed in a ton of diversity in terms of sound and tone.

The format is changing this year too. Last year we all baked in a parking lot, so moving to some indoor and some outdoor stages is welcome. The fest will be relocated to 5th street using, MEMI’s own, The Taft and The Taft Ballroom as venues. I’m happy, as I thought it a reasonable risk that MEMI would relocate to one of the other venues in their stable, Riverbend. God, I hate that venue. It’s massive, soulless, and very far away from my home.

A niggling thing I cannot do without mentioning:

MEMI, yes you, I know and accept the fest has changed. Fine. Please rename it. I think you can leave behind the disappointment you’ve faced from long-time MPMF fans by just wiping the slate clean with a new name. Let us have the name as part of our nostalgia for the fest as it was years past. And I bet most of us will move with you into the present and future.