Wettest Ever Socks Ever.
Looking back at our coverage from Night Three of last year’s festival is pretty eerie.
History, it turns out, does repeat.
Were we to simply replace the names “Best Coast” and “Bun B” with “The Cannabinoids featuring Sarah Jaffe” and “Solange,” we could basically just massage last year’s tale of makeshift trash bag ponchos and fans content to camp out at a single indoor venue all night into a rather convincing review of last night.
Heck, that story from last year was even subtitled “Blame It On The Rain.”
So, yes, per what now seems like an annual tradition, rain played a big role in yesterday’s 35 Denton proceedings — if, granted, a slightly bigger role this time around.
Following reportedly well-received main stage sets from Astronautalis and A.Dd+, we arrived at the festival just in time to hear the official announcement from the second outdoor stage: The outdoor grounds were being shut down due to an impending, severe thunderstorm — on that threatened high winds and, potentially, ping pong ball-sized hail.
Immediate word was that The Cannabinoids’ set with Sarah Jaffe would move to the almost 1,000-capacity pop-up space, The Hive, creating something of a mad dash to the warehouse by Rubber Gloves. But it was a hurry-up-and-wait situation: It didn’t matter how quickly fans made it over to The Hive; once there, they would stand in line and wait for the 35 Denton staffers and volunteers to scan their IDs and check them in, wondering whether they’d get inside the space before the rain came. Some did, others didn’t, and, for a moment, the festival flashed a class divide.
You were a Hive or a Hive Not — and where you fell wasn’t just as a result of whether you got into that venue in time for the Cannabinoids’ set and/or just before the onslaught on Rainmageddon. The class breakdown was real; the rain seemed to dampen the overall mood of attendees, and, for a while there, frustrations abounded. Looking first and foremost to stay dry, entire masses of crowds sought shelter at venues and area businesses other than The Hive, and, in some ways, they were stuck there. So their moods didn’t exactly improve when, after some flip-flopping on the part of festival organizers, these attendees would eventually learn that Killer Mike and Solange’s sets, too, had been moved to the warehouse space.
There were other concerns: All of those rescheduled Hive sets started an hour or more past their scheduled start times; other venues saw their schedules pushed back 30 minutes because of Solange’s tardiness; a few spaces, rather confusingly, opted to run as scheduled.
Really, the only thing unifying everyone at the festival last night was wet socks.
People tend not to enjoy walking long distances in wet socks. As it were, the Burger Records showcase going down at Rubber Gloves remained pretty much at capacity for the entirety of the night. The same could essentially be said for Dan’s (for Valleys and Akron/Family), Burguesa (for Team Tomb) and Andy’s (for K. Flay, Brain Gang and AV the Great), too.
By the end of the night, everyone seemed mostly exhausted and somewhat beaten down by Mother Nature’s outpouring. The sour cherry on top: Everyone also lost an hour;s worth of sleep last night thanks to daylight savings time.
Still, if we again look to last year’s affair, we can learn another lesson: A little sunshine today will do loads for festival morale. Unfortunately, last we checked, today’s looking mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of more rain.
Next year, we’re investing in galoshes.