This was equally great… and not that great… The Great: * The music. Seriously, it was amazing. It was like Niles was having a hangout session with his awesome rockstar buddies and we all got to watch. Very cool. * The setting. Festival at a vineyard. Say no more. Beautiful! * The parking /traffic. This was seriously easy. Given, there were only 3k people there, not the 10k expected, but the in/out was simple. * Since there was only one main stage, there could’ve been a long layover btw bands. They did a great job with this and during one of the longer layovers(before Beck), they put Thomas Gold on stage to keep people dancin’. Well done! The Not so Great: * Food trucks– Good idea, but with no regular tent vendors, the 3k people that were there all had to hit up 5 food trucks. It took me ANHOUR to get two hot dogs. That’s insane. * No set times. This is like festival 101 here. Publish when artists are taking the stage! Everyone I asked, from merch vendors to security guards, had NO clue. * Tuesday/Wednesday show. Yikes. Takes a lot of the NYC crowd out of it(wait, maybe that should be put in the Great column?) * Pharell had a pretty major billing here but only stayed for 3 songs. No bigs, it was still cool, but it should have been put as «Special Appearance by…» instead of his name in lights. I could see how people were pretty pissed about that. Overall, this has so much potential and the first year problems could be easily overlooked bc the music was that good. Hoping that this fest is here to stay! Great job, Niles and co.
