High Water was fun. We have a lot of coverage in the works from the festival this year.
I have a lot to say of course. There was some good music to be had, and some shenanigans to be noted. I already wrote a bit about Noah Kahan’s set on this forum which you can find here.
Definitely room for improvement across the board but some of the sets were fire. I didn’t stay for Hozier last night, not because I have a problem with Hozier, but mostly because I just didn’t have a lot of interest in seeing him. Also it was cold AF, rainy, and I wanted to go home, so I did.
There are a few things I want to discuss about this event that I will dig into later this week on the blog.
Noted lack of local bands. The local music scene doesn’t really embrace the event like it should for many reasons but this is one of them. It’s not nearly an accurate cultural representation of the city and there is a lot of work to be done there. Babe Club was awesome though.
The water situation left something to be desired. Two water fillup stations that were really hard (for me) to find. The reason for this is pretty clear to me: Live Nation owns a stake in Liquid Death. Increase demand for water, sell more $6 cans of Liquid Death. Pretty lame.
Parking. This was the most popular gripe about the event, and since I left early both nights, I did not have to deal with this.
Liquor was hard to find. This was due to permitting issues that meant all liquor was served in the corner of the event at the “Cocktail Oasis” or whatever they called it. I don’t drink liquor so this really did not affect me at all. However, a bunch of people were pissed about it. Definitely shitty.
Yes, I’m going to be critical, because I’ve realized that if I don’t use my platform to say this stuff, everybody else is just going to talk about how great all the bands were and share positivity on social media. We’re moving past that phase with Extra Chill and it may ruffle some feathers in the media tent, but frankly I don’t care. As an independent journalist I feel a responsibility to speak my mind.
