Forward Music Festival Post-Mortem

The second annual Forward Music Festival was held this past weekend. I didn't attend but, from what I've read, there were some rather nasty delays. Jason Dean expresses his frustration today at Dane 101, the group that organizes the festival.

Delays overshadowed the music at the fest with the inexcusable schedule issues on Friday. Almost every venue was running behind and no one was sure by how much.

The most discouraging part of the festival was the complete lack of communication from the festival organizers regarding scheduling issues.

Yikes!

An anonymous commenter claims that the festival organizers "hadn't thought to book a PA system", hence the delay there. However, it appears that the problem was a lot of miscommunication.

The Daily Page has some notes by Jason Joyce and Josh Wimmer, the latter of which is apparently unable to appreciate music on its own terms.

Dane 101 suffers, as I write, from a paucity of posts on the festival:

Friday Night Recap

Day 2 Photo Gallery

Photos From the Final Night of Reverence

FMF2009 Review and Photo Gallery: BLK JKS and Wavves

77 Square gives a rather generous amount of space to to the festival.

Lastly, here's what the A/V Club said:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

This being Forward's second year, I assume that many of the problems can be attributed to growing pains and the general newness of running a music festival. Presumably these issues will be addressed for next year's incarnation. From what I've read, it sounds like many of the shows were poorly attended. Hopefully this combined with the delays won't cause problems attracting bands, sponsors, and listeners next year.