A booking that would outpace Slayer playing the Basilica Block Party in terms of its surprise element, Elvis Costello’s commitment to headline Taste of Minnesota in St. Paul — on July 4, no less — has many people rethinking the haggard old Harriet Island bash. New owners promised better acts this year, and indeed they gave us relatively bigger if still not major names (myself, I’m down with Judas Priest, who were stellar at Myth last year). But the festival’s lack of diversity, unexcusable for a city-sponsored event, has clearly only worsened, with Poison’s Bret Michaels, Whitesnake and Staind among the other headliners (all metal or fluff-metal).

Costello doesn’t exactly change the old-white-guy dominance, but has it changed people’s mind about the music at the event? How many of you who haven’t been to the event in years will be there on July 4?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Concerts, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.