Winter Music Conference and Ultra Music Festival 2010: So we here at Festival Watch have spent some time watching Jersey Shore. And while we realize that it is sort of a pop-culture phenomenon and this kind of excuses the fact that we invested a portion of our evening trying to digest that particular mess, we’re still not totally comfortable with the idea that a portion of our brain is being taken up by, you know, Snookums (or whatever the fuck her name is).

Anyway. Over-under on the number of cast members who show up at this years’ Ultra Festival? We’re gonna go with three. For starters, this thing is at the beach, and those folks sure do love the beach. It’s also packed with the sort of bubble gum electronic music that might get Pauly the DJ all stoked: Tiësto, Carl Cox, Oakenfold, etc.

(Also, this is kind of off-topic, but we’d like to point out that these Ultra Music people are kind of on par with hardcore and metal bands when it comes to logo obsession.)

Anyway, fist-pumping douchebags or no (but we’ll pretty much guarantee you that attendance at this thing will put you face-to-face with some fist-pumping douchebags), the Ultra Music Festival happens March 26 and 27. Two day and single passes are still available in both VIP and regular.

MusicNOW Festival 2010: After four years of super solid line-ups—featuring the likes of Bang on a Can, Bill Frisell, and the Books—Chamber Music Cincinnati’s MusicNOW festival is bringing in Joanna Newsom. We know that this makes sense. Chamber music. Harp. Yeah. We get it. And we know that some of you think that Newsom is this totally adventurous creative thing, and that her high-pitched whine doesn’t really bother you all that much. But whatever: We here at Festival Watch are going to call bullshit. We think Newsom is kind of terrible. And totally boring.

For those of you that don’t, the MusicNOW Festival is scheduled for March 30, March 31, and April 1. Tickets are still available.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010: Back when we here at Festival Watch enjoyed the luxury of office space at City Paper HQ, we found ourselves faced with the challenge of word-processing with XyWrite. This was no pleasure. But we made do—-even when we had to type in numeric codes every time we needed to put in an accent mark.

This brings us to Dam Funk. We wonder: Will our editor have to type in some #345> shit to make the little hat appear above the ‘a’ in Dam? [I’ll let it slide this time -ed.] Does he have to do this every time some jerkwad wants to write about that duder?  [Yes. Same with Tiësto. – ed.]

Point is, Dâm Funk’s been added to Pitchfork 2010. Like as of today. Other late additions include Broken Social Scene, Panda Bear, El-P, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Freddie Gibbs, and CAVE.

Festival-length passes are sold out, but you can still get single-day tickets. It happens July 16, 17, and 18 in Chicago’s Union Park.