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 .
