Virgin For Free

The upside of the economic downtown is that there are bargains to be had this summer concert season. (Check LiveNation.com to see if you can find any deals on No Service Fee Wednesday. All shows are not included in the promotion.) Last weekend, Philadelphia's downsized Popped! Festival was recast as a free (if shrunken) event in Northern Liberties. And on a much grander scale, the Virgin Mobile Festival, which was previously a sprawling two day event at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, has been rebooted as a 35,000 capacity free one-day show, rechristened the Virgin Mobile FreeFest. With Weezer, Blink 182, St. Vincent, The Hold Steady, Girl Talk (that's GT's Gregg Gillis pictured), Wale, Public Enemy, and Franz Ferdinand among the acts, it'll take place Aug. 30 at  the Merriweather Post Pavilion. (That's the Mann Music Center-like amphitheater in Columbia, Maryland immortalized in this year's Animal Collective album of the same name.) Free tickets are available at 10 a.m. on Saturday through Ticketmaster.com. There's also a presale - or a free-sale - on Thursday and Friday. Click here for details on that.