2/2/07, 5:30 pm EST

Week Four Finalist: Grace Labatt’s B Festival

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Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

The B Festival

by Grace Labatt
Age: 23

The B Festival would celebrate that most indispensable of letters, the muse of so many poets and text-messagers: B. There are too many bands and artists whose names begin with this lovely mixture of curvature and line to possibly fit into the Boston Commons, but my B Festival would nonetheless bring as many as could be enticed by money and available space. Beirut, Beck, a Beatles cover band, Bright Eyes, Blondie (or at least Debbie Harry), Built to Spill, Broken Social Scene, Busta, Beach House, Bonny Prince Billy, Black Box Recorder, Billy Bragg, Belle and Sebastian, Band of Horses, and of course, The Bees. Bowie, Byrne, and Bird (né Andrew) would naturally be excused their first names because they are simply some of the greatest B’s around. Bob Dylan would inaugurate the festival with an insurrectionary invective debasing easy rhymes and lazy rhythms, citing as his prime example, “They say I’m really sexy, / The boys they wanna sex me…Tryin’ a feel my hump, hump / Lookin’ at my lump, lump.”

Because this festival would not just be a celebration of the second, and arguably most splendid, letter of the alphabet. It would also be a call to arms. “NO MORE SLOPPY METAPHORS,” swooping banners would proclaim in majestic calligraphic print. “LEAVE THE PUNS TO FLAVA.” Though the B Festival would not denigrate the right to free speech, it would strongly urge against the temptation to bad figures of speech. Rappers in battle on side stages would have to concede immediately upon the use of food-sex analogies; John Mayer would be denied entry entirely (even if he shows up in a bear suit).

Björk would close out the three-day celebration by beat-boxing “Bye bye bye” in a cyclical drone over citywide surround sound, as Bill C. plays the banjo.