Adjacent Festival Day 2
Posted by
Dano (aka dano)
May 28 '23, 21:37
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Got up, skipped the morning run. Checked out of the hotel, and moved the car to a more convenient parking garage to the entrance/exit. Found a place to have brunch.
There wasn't anyone I wanted to see in the first block of sets, but there wasn't really anything I wanted to do outside of the festival so I went ahead and entered when gates opened around 12:10.
Instead of going to the stage, I found a spot off to the side of the side stages and laid on the beach and listened. Jersey Calling was a local band featuring a firefighter who was injured recently in the line of duty. They were fine. Next was Candy, who were death metal which seemed like a theme for the day. Again, just not my thing.
About halfway through Candy's set, I made my way to the other stage for The Oxymorrons. Not crowded at all so I got a nice spot. They were great. Probably my second favorite set of the festival after The Happy Fits. They're hard rock hip hop with occasional dashes of funk. Lots of fun.
Caught some of a set by Reece before heading to the main stage for Waterparks. Got there early enough to get a good spot. When the set started, a mosh pit formed pretty much right next to me. I admit that the first couple bumps annoyed me, but they quickly formed a clear boundary and were looking out for each other in the pit by stopping and picking people up if they fell. So I quickly went from get off my lawn to let the kids have fun. Waterparks was good, but I preferred their recorded stuff to them live.
Next was back to the side stage for Royal & the Serpent. She was okay, but I thought she had too much reliance on the backing track. I get it - she can't afford a whole band, but it was very obvious and takes away from the performance.
As I mentioned, today seemed to be metal day and there were a bunch of metal bands all on at the same time, so I took the opportunity to grab something to eat, and found some shade and chilled for a while. The shade was to the side and behind the main stage so you could hear that there was music but you couldn't really hear it.
I guess this is a good a place as any to complain about weed. I'm all for legalization, but I can't stand the smell of it. It's much stronger and more persistent than cigarette smoke. It was everywhere. I know, if you don't like the smell of weed then maybe an alternative music festival isn't the best place to go, but it was even just walking the boardwalk. Whatever, I'll deal but I will complain.
I got up when Japanese Breakfast started on the main stage. Today was a lot more crowded than yesterday and I wasn't planning on watching her whole set so I went to the second row of speakers and watched from there. She did Be Sweet as her second song, so that's all I needed.
I went to the side stages to catch Motion City Soundtrack. I wanted a good spot for The Front Bottoms so I listened to them from the other side stage. I liked their album from 2005, so I like the songs they played from it, but didn't recognize anything else.
I had a good spot for The Front Bottoms. Their first song was fine, but when they started their second song everyone rushed toward the stage. It really felt unsafe. I dealt with it by as much as I could just getting out of the way and letting people go past me. I did see one girl getting carried out not looking specifically injured, but not looking great either. There were several others that I would describe as panicked fleeing out of the crowd. I drifted back until I could make my way out of the pack. Once I got to an area where I could watch and enjoy the show they were really good.
The crowd dissipated immediately after their set ended. Though I would have liked to have seen Turnstile, I wasn't going to bother making my way back to the main stage. Phantom Planet was on next and since the crowd was gone, I checked out one song. It was eh, and I didn't feel like waiting around for them to do California. I had my fill of large crowds of people for the weekend so I left and drove home.
I would say that overall I enjoyed the festival and don't regret going. I like live music, but I hate being in crowds so I guess that creates a bit of a conundrum. I'm not searching around for another festival to go to right away, but if the right lineup came around I could see going to another one.
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