Virgin Mobile Free Festival Tickets

The Virgin Mobile FreeFest will be held August 30th at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, and will feature headlining performances from Weezer, Blink-182, Franz Ferdinand and Public Enemy.

Economic downturns have forced concert organizers to move the once sprawling, 3-day event at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, MD, to this scaled down one-day version in a new location. The free admission is an added bonus with the intent of letting concertgoers simply let loose and have a good time without breaking their budgets.

This year's offering will still bring several musically diverse acts including Jet, The National, Girl Talk, The Bravery, The Hold Steady, St. Vincent, Wale and Taking Back Sunday. More artists are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Merriweather will be expanded to accommodate crowds near 35,000, with plans in the works to add multiple stages and a dance tent. In addition, and in the spirit of economic relief, the festival will feature a "Layoff Lounge" stocked with "surprising treats" to ticketholders who present proof of unemployment. And parking at the venue will be free.

The festival is a version of the V Festival in Britain, and has spawned events in Canada. The inaugural U.S. event was held in 2006 and featured performances by Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, The Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley, The Raconteurs, The Killers, Wolf Mother and The New Pornographers, among others. In 2008, Foo Fighters, Jack Johnson, The Offspring, Wilco, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Kayne West, Bob Dylan and Lil Wayne were among some of the highlighted performances.

But, as usual, its not just the music - the tour has been known to offer up Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a band that plays car parts, roaming bushes, graffiti artists and the Charm City Roller Girls, fire sculptures and kinetic robots.