Category Archives: Festivals

Chicago NYE and 2013 Preview

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We’re only one week into the New Year; people have had just about enough time to recover from their Chicago New Years Eve festivities and right off the bat we get bombarded with big news announcements and plans for this year’s summer festival schedule. I’ll get to all that in a second, but first let’s look back at some of the more EDM focused events Chicago hosted while ringing in 2013.

Vision or The Castle had Mr Paul Oakenfold for the evening. This just shows that some of the more “original” popular EDM DJs (I include ATB and Tiesto in that list) still got it. If you need any convincing try to remember his set at North Coast last year. He showed he can still compete with today stoop talent, though trance has taken a back burner to Dubstep and Trap.

Congress Theater was packed for New Years Eve and the day before having Hardwell and Deniz Koyu on Sunday while The M Machine ,Mat Zo and Porter Robinson rung in the New Year with 4500+ ragers going crazy. This was probably the youngest of all the events as most catered to a more dressed up older audience. But it’s good to see the kids had somewhere to party as well.

Big Gigantic played with Griz at The Aragon ballroom for his second New Years Eve in a row in Chicago. Big Gigantic brings something different to the EDM scene, as they blend saxophone with percussion performance with and electronic twist. Griz can be best compared to Pretty Lights. If you haven’t checked either of them out you definitely should. They were fun to watch at electric forest last year.

The Hilton Chicago had its new year’s celebration hosted by Playboy Playmates while Mike Posner and Chicago’s very own Bad Boy Bill performed.  The night also included a dinner. This event was more of a dress up even but WhySoChi did have some friends who attended and said they had a blast.

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But enough about 2012 time to take a quick look at 2013. Today 1/9/2013 tickets go on sale at NOON for EDC Las Vegas 2013! Follow this LINK to the EDC website to get your tickets. If you are like me you might consider skipping buying tickets as EDC has been confirmed for a Chicago debut this year. So far no lineup has been release but rumors have spread that it will be located at a racetrack and that Memorial Day weekend is the target date. But stay tuned because Pasquale Rotella, the owner of Insomniac Events who throw EDC has announced that on January 16 more details of EDC Chicago will be released.

city-of-miami

We also posted a picture on our facebook page late last night what seems to be a document showing that the city of Miami is trying to stop Ultra Music Festival in March to last two weekends. This year is the first year Ultra has been split for two weekends and allegedly the authorities want to keep it just to one. More specifically week two would potentially be cancelled. I guess well have to see what happens, this could also be hoax.

541998_373169849446334_1960559246_nWe also posted a picture we found out and about on the town showing a nice little preview of what to expect from this years Spring Awakening music festival. Form what we can tell in the picture (to your left) we can see that Calvin Harris fans and Bassnectar bass-heads will be in attendance this year. Just a few weeks after EDC Chicago.

That’s all I have for now, thanks for reading we do appreciate it. Be sure to “like” us on facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

North Coast 2012

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Originally posted on Undercover Clubber on  Tuesday September 18, 2012

It’s been two weeks since “summer’s last stand” or Chicago’s 3rd annual North Coast Music Festival and I’m still having a hard time putting into words a concise non rambling review.  I’ve also been attempting to judge North Coast by its own merit but I do have to compare it to Spring Awakening (which I attended) in order to make some of my points clearer.

The Good:

Lineup – Unlike Spring Awakening North Coast focuses on 3 genres of music not 1; hip hop, EDM and jam bands vs. just EDM respectively. This is not to say that Spring Awakening was not a great festival to attend, but it’s good to get away from the heavy bass lines and drops even for a few minutes to catch your breath. The music selection also ties into the crowd.

Crowd- With a mix of new age hippies, hipsters (for the jam bands) hip hop enthusiasts and of course the ragers, you saw a pretty diverse crowd which added to the festival experience. This is somewhat comparable to Electric Forest minus the hip hop enthusiasts.

Vendors- I know there are many vendors at each music festival one attends, but North Coast’s selection of merchandise, food and beverage vendors seemed larger. Some vendor tents did run out of water towards the end of Sunday, but the variety of products attendees had to choose from should be commended.

Prices – Clothing was roughly 20-25$ a Dos Equis beer was $6 red bull $3 and water $2. I don’t think those are bad prices at all when other festivals would charge you $5 for water or upwards of $8 for a beer.

Other – With Groupon hosting its own huge tent with a silent disco (everyone entering received headphones with 2 channels, each channel had a different DJ spinning you could alternate between the two) and Dos Equis having its own birling arena, it kept festival goers occupied while they waited for their favorite acts to hit the stage. There were some performers spotted that walked around all which contributes to a festival feel.

The Bad:

Location – Last time I checked React Presents claims that over 45000 people attended North Coast over the 3 day weekend.  That’s only 5000 less of what React claims showed up to their first Spring Awakening Music Festival. The difference is that the 50000+ at Soldier Field had a lot more room to move around. There was never a time where you couldn’t get through from one stage to the next. This should be addressed if North Coast continues to grow in popularity. Union Park might not cut it in the next few years.

Stage Set up- I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I think the North and Coast Stage are way too close to each other.  This not only left many gaps in scheduling acts for both stages (when you look at the schedule, acts alternated between the two stages) but also caused a huge stagnant crowd to form very close to  the main part of the festival.  My suggestion is consolidate to 3 stages giving enough room for maneuverability between stages or maybe put in some kind of other entertainment in the open space. This would also potentially allow that one stage (Dos Equis Stage) to be closer to the major crowds and not stuck in a corner of the park.

Water Refill Stations – With the crowd getting larger each day of the festival which actually caused some beverage tents to run out of water; couple that with Chicago humidity (especially Sunday after a drizzly Saturday evening) it was a no-brainer for North Coast organizers to have water refill stations set up around the festival grounds. The only problem was, I was only able to locate one, which had a 30 minute wait for it by Sunday. Now I know it wasn’t like Spring Awakening where we had the scorching heat of a mid July Chicago summer, but there should have been more water refill stations.

Summary – All in all North Coast Music festival is a great way to end your summer, with a variety of acts and activities that will keep you entertained all 3 days of the weekend. But be prepared to fight your way through the crowds progressively throughout the weekend which makes getting around and getting some food or beer a hassle. I’d like to point out that even though Union Park gets filled quickly it is easily accessible by the green line (even though the stop was packed with people in the evening) and street parking was not that hard to find within a few blocks of the entrance all 3 days.

Electric Forest 2012

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Originally posted on Undercover Clubber on Saturday July 7, 2012

Enchanted from 6/28/12 till 7/2/12

So for those who actually follow this blog you know that I drove up to Rothbury Michigan over the weekend for the second annual Electric Forest Music Festival while most of Chicago was partying on Montrose beach for Chicago’s first annual Wavefront Music Festival. Words almost cannot describe the vibe that permeates everyone and everything at this festival but I’ll try my best to share this epic experience with you.

Given that this was only my second music festival ever (never been to North Coast or Lollapalooza, Spring Awakening was my first) I came in with pretty much a clean palette of expectations; which were blown away. Not only is this 4 day music festival filled with amazing bands (many of which I’ve never heard before) the DJ line up was great as well. Add to that camping which is half of the fun since you are meeting and partying with new friends till the sun comes up and a forest that was transformed into a crazy laser filled wonderland with surprises and artwork around every corner. Even if you weren’t trippin, you were trippin when you walked into that magical forest. Everyone here was friendly and just happy to be there to experience everything. I did not have a bad interaction with anyone that I met.  The music fit the atmosphere well too; many bands were dub, dub electronica, jam bands or just a mix of electronica with some instruments (Big Gigantic) as one example, which worked very well. String Cheese Incident had 3 3-4 hour shows and they were great too, especially if you needed to get away from some bass drops for a while.

The festival held different events in order to get people engaged with a food drive (Roy Price Memorial Food Drive) from which you were rewarded a free limited edition poster if you brought 20 non perishable food items to donate. Add to that Electrocology, or in normal terms a recycling competition where every time you brought a bag of recycled material (beer cans, plastic bottles, paper) to a specific location you received an “eco point” which then could be redeemed at the vendors for merchandise. Each trash can location was split up into compost recyclables and trash to promote keeping the grounds clean and to make it easier to drop off recyclables for the competition.  There was also the ultimate camp competition which encouraged people to get creative with their campsites. A winner was chosen on Saturday of the festival. The winning camp received 4 free tickets for next year and I believe a very special VIP show by some artists. During the entire weekend you also had performers walking around the different venues. From jugglers to magicians to people walking on stilts and even “statues” just added to the wonder of the forest and event.

The festival had vendors by the campsite and inside the festival grounds by each stage where you can anything from the typical “MDMAzing” hats to hammocks to led lights to hula hoops and even some decent food (ranging from breakfast to fast food) and of course water and beer n so forth. Each stage had a water bottle refill station next to it and thank god because it was super hot all 4 days. There was a good amount of porta-potties by each stage as well.  First aid stations were plentiful just in case you couldn’t deal with the heat or god forbid something else happened. There was a general store near the campgrounds where you could buy anything from ice to toilet paper to 12packs of coke. Prices were decent on items you would need but slightly steep on things you could consider a luxury (12 pack of coke $10/ bag of ice $5) showers were available but for $10/shower so if you wanted to shower all weekend you’d pay $40 for just a shower a day.  You also had plenty of security guards walking around or riding around on golf carts and horses. Over the weekend when more people showed up with weekend tickets you could also see state police patrolling the grounds.

Originally I chose to come to this festival because of the DJ lineup which was fantastic. I’ve never been to Lollapalooza or other festivals because if I’m paying a few hundred dollars I want to make sure it is worth it to me. The DJ lineup alone at Electric Forest seemed worth it to me, but I was pleasantly surprised with other acts. Ghostland Observatory, Reggie Watts, String Cheese Incident and Big Gigantic are only a few that stood out and blew my mind all weekend.

With 25,000+ amazingly fun happy and nice people all weekend and amazing musical line up Electric Forest in Rothbury Michigan is something everyone should experience at least once. But be sure to come prepared for bare bones camping if you don’t pay extra for the good life packages or VIP. Come with an open mind and let your inner child run free through the magical forest and its interactive art displays.

It’s a good change of scenery from the typical club heads you see in Chicago (even at the Spring Awakening music festival) no one here wants to prove anything they’re just here to enjoy themselves whether on chemicals or not.

I know I’m going back next year and I’m taking part in more festival activities, are you coming? You definitely should.

Did you travel to Rothbury or maybe know someone who did, leave a comment down below and let’s hear your story.

Spring Awakening 2012

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Originally posted on Undercover Clubber on Tuesday September 18, 2012

Experienced on 6-16-2012 and 6-17-2012

If you were in Chicago and you like EDM and you didn’t attend the first Spring Awakening Music Festival you should be disappointed in yourself. Everyone I had a chance to see, from the lesser known names to the headliners was on point and delivered a great show. This doesn’t come without some criticism, which I’ll get to in a second.

First I want star off by giving a lot credit to the staff at React Presents, Congress Theater and the entire staff working the whole weekend for making it run really smooth.  After Saturday I saw a lot of people complaining on facebook and twitter about how they weren’t allowed to bring in empty water containers, camel backpacks and such, to which I say there were plenty of water fountains in or around the stadium and cooling stations. So if you bought one water for $4.50 or $4.75 whatever it was you could refill it  for free. I see no problem with that, when you see any type of festival like this obviously the organizers are going to try to make as much money as possible. The DJ s that performed probably cost a lot of money to book, and that price gets passed on to the consumer. But I do have a problem paying $8.50 for a bud light, even though I drank a bunch of those anyway, given the limited choice. Though I made it to the festival at 5:00 pm on Saturday and 4:00 pm on Sunday I still think I got more than my money’s worth in terms of music. Given the heat wave that weekend I give props to anyone who attended both days fully.

On day one I fell in love with Morgan Page, while Benny Benassi was ridiculous at the main stage and Skrillex absolutely stole the show to close out day 1. No one seemed to mind when it started to drizzle and then pour especially when Skrillex said “It’s the rain dance Chicago!!!” causing everyone to go nuts. The rain chopped up his laser show making each beam look like a million little bright dots. After the show ended and everyone’s energy levels came back down to earth, the long walk from the stadium back to the city in an attempt to hail a cab in the rain was not only impossible but also torture. As thousands of other soaked party goers were trying to do the same.

On Day two I finally got to see Nervo who I missed during the MiD‘s 1 year anniversary week. They were awesome, Felix Cartal was great, Datsik satisfied as always, Flux Pavilion  (Base Cannon was especially sick) rocked the main stage and so did Derick Carter and Carl Cox from what my buddy told me. Later in the evening I had to decide between Wolfgang Gartner and Laidback Luke, so I decided to see half of Wolfgang and half of Luke, only to be disappointed for leaving Wolfang’s amazing set. Laidback Luke at least finished it off right with his collaboration song with Chuckie “1 2 3 4”. Unfortunately Afrojack let me down but maybe I was setting myself up for failure after watching his Ultra 2012 set live in my friends living room (same time I bought my Spring Awakening tickets) and expecting the same sort of set. I personally didn’t like that he mixed in Beyonce and Pitbull songs because this was not the B-Bash. This time around the walk back to the car was a lot more enjoyable as the weather was perfect on Sunday night and this beautiful city of ours just looked fabulous.

Thank you everyone who made it out to make this amazing festival a success, thank you to the new friends I made and thank you Soldier Field for setting the stage for something very memorable, I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing everyone next year when this is even bigger and better .