This Summer I got the chance to work Beyond at The Gorge in Washington State. For those who don't know Beyond is one of many festivals put on by Insomniac, the same promoter behind EDC Vegas, EDC Orlando and so many others. These days such festivals are widely considered as raves however, raves are traditionally underground and far from mainstream. Insomniac events have essentially become the epitome of mainstream so here's to calling these shows what they are.
I had wanted to work this one for years and was excited to get to cross this one off of my work bucket list simply because of the beautiful location. I was also excited to be working with a skelton crew of my boss and my co-worker who's been working with our boss since the begining. They're both pros at what they do and I consider myself very lucky to get to work with them and therefore learn from them.
Out of the three of us working this EDM festival none of us are fans of EDM.
Our drive to and from site every day was at least 45 minutes with the same commute time to look forward to in the wee hours of the morning after a long work day. My coworker drove so by default he was the DJ (no pun intended) and took full advantage of listening to something very different from the noise we were subjected to for hours onsite.
He likes rock. Rock n roll. Punk rock. Hard rock and everything in between. Along with learning tricks of the trade on-site from him as I do at every show we work together and have for years, this time I also learned about a specific genre of music I have since deemed Gainesville Rock.
Gainesville is in Florida and my co-worker is from Florida, not Gainesville but close enough. If I hadn't worked Beyond Gorge with him I don't think I would have ever known about the Gainseville Music Scene and all of the bands that have come out of it.
One of his favorite bands, Hot Water Music, happens to be from Ganiesville and that's who we listened to the most on our drives to and from work. Music blaring, he'd feed me information about the band, album or song that was playing much in the same way my Dad has always schools me on music while listening to it. Both instances are first hand encounters of the power of music: grown ass men fully enthraled by the influence of this art form and spreading the love of it.
Aganist Me! and Less Than Jake, both of whom I'm more familiar with than the latter, came in the rotation a couple of times and I was surprised to learn that they too are from Gainesville, FL. There were a slew of others he'd play a song or two from, they're sounds ranging from punk to hard to harder and thrashier. So many bands have come out of and are still popping up from the Gainesville music scene. A scene that's seemingly underground if you're not already in the know, as underground happenings go.
In true, fuck the man fashion, this year's The Fest was announced weekend two of Coachella. Along with the multiple venues and long list of acts, there's also been quite a few changes to the bill making it hard to keep up with who's playing at The Fest. One band in particular stood out to me and that's Tsunami Bomb straight outta Petaluma, CA. Back in my local punk show attending hayday I'd seen Tsunami Bomb around The Bay and was tickeled to see them on the bill all these years later.
"Technically" show day one is this Friday, October 24th but like any good music festival now a days there's a soft launch of the madness that is The Fest tomorrow, Thursday October 23rd. Even punks got make an extra buck when they can.
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