@J_D_G said:

Very, very good list and analysis. Given how thoroughly you've lain out your case, any critics who merely respond with outraged rhetorical questions like "How could you put [X festival] there?" are contributing nothing. To these people, I challenge you to refute Chris's analysis with an analysis of your own.

However, this list isn't really a list of the best festivals, musically speaking. You've baked in two bits of methodology that really make it Chris Glushko's Favorite Festivals, According To The Following Rules. The list is personalized to the point that I don't think it's the universal, clear-headed analysis it would be otherwise. (The old, crucial difference between "this is my favorite" and "this is the best."

1) For reasons that are unclear, you've chosen to ignore the set from each festival that many fans would consider the *best music of the event*

2) You say "replay value," but don't seem to acknowledge that replay value is affected by bad playing. A horrendously played "Drowned" has Low Replay Value, rather than being data that is not counted, which seems to be how you've dealt with it.

I'd love to see you go through the "Extra" sets and create a definitive list! I know I have no idea how I'd rank Tower, Storage, Ambient and Drive-In (Disco at least is last), and they largely blur together in my memory.

Again, great work.

Two quick points -

1) I did not include the secret sets because they are far to visual in nature to be dissected by just through the recording. Just as there is no way one can do justice to the Tower set by listening to the recordings, I'm sure it's near-impossible to do the same with the Drive-thru set.

2) I did discount for bad play. If we were only talking highlights, Coventry would be #2 after Cypress. There's just too much meat in there. There is no exact science to this as everything is subjective and different things move different people. What I tried to get to is what recordings produce the most interesting music to hear -- just for the music and not simply to relive great memories.

Coventry is obviously controversial because of how bad so much of it is. But in the end, I thought so much of the music was so damn compelling that it deserved to be in tier 2.