October 2023

social media posts and, later, the news reporting, the situation on the campgrounds was dire for many people. High winds, rain, and hail took their toll. According to the reporting, it was rough out there. A great deal of news coverage is available to look over about that day, and the rest of the festival, if you are interested. I have included a couple of links to get you started. Here, though, I am going to tell you what I experienced and saw. If you want to know more about the experiences of others, there are plenty of testimonials on-line. On Friday, I got to the festival in the morning, and, looking around, the festival grounds seemed to be fine. Again, I didn’t go into any of the camping areas. There were some muddy places in front of the stages, but overall it didn’t look too bad. Day two headliners were Slipknot and Danzig. Unfortunately, Till Lindemann had pulled out of the festival earlier in the week, due to illness. I started working my way through the music in the same way I had done the day before, seeing bands I knew I liked like Knocked Loose, CrownThe Empire, and The Acacia Strain, andmixing in others I have never seen before like Demun Jones, Struggle Jenkins, and Starbenders – I was particularly taken away by Starbenders, who are now one of my new favorite bands. Around five o’clock, the weather started to look threatening again, and the wind started to pick up. Uh-oh. I was in the media tent and getting ready to go down to the Black Dahlia Murder set when I started to hear that an evacuation was imminent. After the experience of the night before, I started packing my bag. I was already on my back-up pair of shoes, and I was not looking forward to getting wet again. Most people in the media area got their stuff together in case they had to leave. I went down to the gate and things were starting to look rough, so I headed for the parking lot. It is hard to tell by looking at the sky exactly what is going to happen, so after a time, I asked a person wearing a security shirt what was what – by then I was outside the festival. He told me that they had stopped the shuttle buses from the parking lots, and that they were not letting anyone else in. He also said it looked like they were going to be done for the night. Another bummer, two nights in a row, I thought. But, you know, last night was bad, and I figured there is still Saturday and Sunday. Disappointed again, I left. It turns out the festival went on Friday night after all. I should have stayed, but based on what I heard, I thought it was over, and so I missed several bands, including the closing acts that day. Mark that up as a bad decision on my part. It does seem to be the case, however, that the shuttles were stopped for a very long time, andmany people were waiting in the parking lots for a ride for hours (refer again to the reporting linked below). I had read the tea leaves incorrectly and had taken a wrong turn. You would think I would know better by now, after all these years, but I didn’t, at least not that night. I regretted leaving when I did, but then, I told myself, there are two more days left and seventy more bands to see. That made me feel a little better. On Saturday, I went in even earlier, determined to make up for missing bands the day before. There were sprinkles on the way in, and by the time I got to the parking lot, it was raining hard. I got a notification from the festival that doors had been pushed because of the rain, but no time was given for when they would open. I talked to a couple people in the parking lot, searching for news, and there wasn’t any. After sitting in my car and walking around the parking lot for three hours, I finally decided to go in and sit in the media tent instead remaining in my car. I made the walk in, hiked up the big hill, and stepped into the tent. There were maybe half a dozen people there, and before I could set my backpack down, I was asked, “Did you hear?” Uh-oh. “Hear what?” I wondered. All programming for Saturday had been cancelled, and the festival stated they would make a decision at five o’clock concerning Sunday and then they would release another statement at that time. That is fairly straight-forward information, but it wasn’t computing for me. Why would they cancel everything for the day already? It was only early afternoon. I had just walked over the festival 16