Fest 10 Hangover: Friday

 Here is the start of the three part series recounting the weekend of Fest 10.  It started Thursday at 5 pm, when we left.  It would be an uncomfortable 20 hour drive, needless to say.  Five people in a 4runner isn't ideal, and it was hard to get any sleep.  Every time I would wake up, I would think several hours had passed.  It was usually anywhere from five minutes to an hour though.  We stopped a few times for bathroom/food/coffee breaks.

Note the worm with the long, flowing locks.

Some diner in Georgia.  Enthralling.

Once in Gainesville, we were greeted with wonderful weather.  We got checked in to our hotel, and proceeded to the Holiday Inn where registration was held.  The line was long, so we stopped at Leonardo's to get pizza.  The first thing I noticed in Gainesville was that just about every restaurant and cafe had beer and a few taps.  I took advantage, and tried what was possibly my first Florida brew, Big Nose IPA.  The beer and pizza were a nice treat after a long ride filled with snacks and fast food.

To say PBR sponsored Fest would be an understatement; there were pints of PBR served for two dollars or less at every venue.  It was the lifeblood of Fest.

The registration line hadn't gotten any shorter, so we stocked up at the party store before getting in line; the party had officially started.  Drinking in line was a commonplace, and I don't think anybody was getting in trouble for drinking in public.  After getting our wristbands and perusing the Fest 10 merchandise, we decided to head to our first show.  Small Brown Bike (download tunes here) was opening the show at the Florida Theatre that also featured Hot Water Music, The Bouncing Souls, and Kid Dynamite.  The Florida Theatre was the largest venue at fest, but also the most underwhelming for me.  I would probably end up spending the least amount of time there.  The layout was inconvenient and awkward, it was hard to get anywhere decent to watch a band.  That being said, Small Brown Bike were great, and the were a great opening band to watch and set the mood.  We watched a few songs then headed to the venue next door, 8 Seconds, to catch Tigers Jaw.  

I really enjoyed them, and I really liked 8 Seconds.  It was probably the second biggest venue and had a folksy/country feel to it.  It was easy manuevering around, and there was even an upstairs you cold see the band from as well.

We then moved over to 1982, to see a couple bands.  Up first was Look Mexico (download tunes here), and they were even better than I thought.  1982 was the second smallest bar along with Loosey's, and it was usually the first one to get at capacity because it was not only small, but they had popular bands playing it.  Look Mexico and Algernon Cadwallader (download tunes here) played there Friday, but weren't announced until a few hours before.  After Look Mexico played, I got to chat with them and they seemed interested in an interview.  I wouldn't get to it that night, but as it would turn out, I would end up seeing the band members at a lot of sets that I really wanted to see.  So it would end up working out; more on that later.  1982 was cool in that it had retro video game systems everywhere to play.  I played Super Smash Bros on Gamecube, and if you wanted they even had controllers at the bar so while you sat and drank, you could look at the TVs above the bar and play classics like Mario and Tetris.  We stayed there until halfway through Algernon's set before we moved to the Laboratory to catch Campaign (download tunes here).  I was worried about not being able to see Algernon's full set the next day, but it would all turn out well and I was glad I got to see a few songs by Campaign.  It was starting to get later, and they had a pretty sparse crowd for them.  We tried to get into Double Down after that but it was at capacity and they were letting people in as people left.  I wanted to keep going, because I wanted to see Hot Water Music or even Wavelets and Spraynard (download tunes here), but it was futile.  After the long drive, the lack of sleep, and the amount of alcohol, my body would not let me go any further.  I layed in the grass while we waited for a cab to take us to the hotel.  We vowed that tomorrow we would be able to handle much more after sleeping.

That's it for Friday, that I can piece together.  Friday is a fairly short day for Fest, because people are still trying to travel there and get their hotels.  Bands start much earlier on Saturday and Sunday.  The posts for those days will have much more content and videos and pictures.

We are doing a radio show tonight, we will feature bands mentioned in this post and such.  Saturday we saw a lot more bands that haven't been featured on here yet, so we will be playing them either tonight or next week (most likely next week).  I don't think we are doing a contest this week either, but maybe Lori has something in mind.  So, listen in.

Also, I started a team at Movember.  It is a charity/awareness group for men's health with mustaches/facial hair.  Join my team please, it's named after Lanny Mcdonald!