Going it alone.
There’s a lot of people here. I’ve heard as many as 100,000. It’s hot, too, and you seem to wait in lines for everything. But that’s merely the nature of a music festival — finding fault in trivial things like the weather or crowds or prices just seems to be the wrong perspective.
So last night, after an exhausting happy hour pool party, I ventured out on my own for the first time all week. We’ve been using GroupMe, a pretty sweet new group text system that helps everyone stay up to to date with one another. It’s basically a chat room in the form of a text message. The group has grown every day — I think we’re up to about 30 now. Some of it is useful, some is profane, most is just silly. Nevertheless, even when you’re alone, you’re still tapped in to where your friends are finding free beer.
So come nightfall, I needed a break.
Wandering Sixth and Red River by myself last night was weird. So much noise and chaos (the number of non-festivalgoers skyrockets come Friday night, understandbly) yet it all drowned out into a quiet hum. I saw the Moondoggies at the Hardly Art showcase, then Obits at Sub Pop, then Wye Oak at Merge, then more and more until it just sort of melded together in a continuous drone. Rest assured, some acts stuck out — like Kurt Vile in the heat of the day at Club De Ville (with free Red Stripe), or MSTRKRFT at Mohawk, with a laser-heavy light show and Bam Margera making rounds on the deck. Others, however, were simply lost in the sea of buzz.
The best: Thinking I’d only chill on the side of the pool with my feet in; then ending up underwater in boxers and socks.
The worst: Catching a glimpse of March Madness on a TV and realizing I was too SXSW-obssessed to even fill out a bracket this year.
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John Hendrickson is the Managing Editor of Reverb and a multimedia journalist for The Denver Post.
