The most important part of a music festival, besides the music, is the logistics. How are people going to get in? How will they receive their wristbands? For these two questions, it’s simple. Multiple entrances, a lot staff and mail them their wristbands.
Bunbury Music Festival in Cincinnati failed to do all three of those things. Ok, they did have two entrances, but they were so understaffed that the lines were multiple city blocks long. To make matters worse, concert goers were issued paper tickets which they had to use to get in the gate, then wait for someone to put their wristband on for them. This process made the lines move even slower.
Today may be better. Fans that downloaded the Bunbury Music Festival app were sent this notification this morning.
You see the second part of that? Yeah, about the bottled water. It’s because some stations ran out of water. Of water. This made the lines at the stations that actually had water longer than the lines to get into the festival.
This was PromoWest Productions first foray in to the music festival scene and it is quite obvious that changes need to be made. Mailing three day wristbands to fans should be number one. Second would be to link the wristbands to bank accounts to allow for quick transactions when buying beer and food. The ATM’s were either out of money or couldn’t connect because of network overload.
Our disappointment from the line waiting was quickly washed away, though, when we posted up for Bleachers. Jack Antonoff (Fun.) had the crowd pumped full of energy and then turned it into a dance party with their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.”
Cincinnati’s own Walk The Moon kept the party going with a special show. You could hear how happy they were to play in Cincy in their performance and when lead singer Nicholas Petricca talked about all the bars around the festival they used to play.
As Walk The Moon closed their set, the skies opened up and dumped a sizable amount of water on the festival. A note for anyone potentially hitting up a music festival, if you get stuck in the rain, just embrace it and dance. Or be completely prepared. Otherwise, you will let it ruin your night. I was under a overpass at the ATMs that barely worked, so I was spared. But people coming from Matt & Kim (which were phenomenal from what I’ve heard) were soaked and doing the right thing, embracing it.
The rain ended just short of the Friday headliner, The Black Keys. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney came out with their foot on the gas and never let up. “Lonely Boys” was an intense lesson in rock ‘n’ roll and they closed out the show with a sing-a-long to “Little Black Submarines” that made the the thousands in attendance feel like they were at an intimate house show.
Overall, I would say the good outweighed the bad on day one. Sure, they had their problems but as a friend told me, it was mostly growing pains. I talked to people who have come to Bunbury before and they never had this problem. The festival has become bigger and popular, so I guess it’s a good problem to have.
We’ll see how day two goes…
