Colonel Sanders at Ultra Music Festival

This weekend’s Ultra Music Festival boasts a lineup featuring EDM heavyweights Zedd, David Guetta, and Marshmello, but it was unannounced act who took the festival’s main stage on Friday who’s generated the most buzz — and not necessarily for good reasons.

It seems Ultra sold a portion of Friday’s main stage lineup to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Prior to sets from Tiësto and Marshmello, a mysterious DJ donning an oversized Colonel Sanders head took the stage and subjected the crowd to a mix of music littered with friend chicken reference. “Any of y’all hungry for some beats?” Colonel Sanders shouted at one point.



As you can see from footage below, the crowd was hilariously disinterested, which really says something given that a fair amount of people were undoubtedly on some sort of psychedelic.

Not surprisingly, the marketing stunt also angered a number of past and present Ultra acts, who sounded off on Twitter. In a since-deleted tweet, Marshmello called DJ Colonel Sanders “lame,” adding, “I can think of a lot of other artists that actually deserve to be on that stage instead. Alison Wonderland expressed a similar sentiment, describing it as “tacky” and suggesting the festival “could have found a better way that doesn’t cheapen what we do.”

But perhaps it was Alec Metric who summed it up best with this tweet: “Ultra selling ad space on the EDM Main stage at one of the most commercial festivals feels like some horrendous logical conclusion to the direction that part of dance music has been heading in. It’s not exactly Ronald McDonald at Berghain is it.”

DJ Colonel Sanders wasn’t the only negative press to come out of Ultra’s first day. According to the Miami Herald, logistical issues left several thousands concert-goers stranded for several hours as they waited for buses to take them from the festival’s site on the island of Virginia Key back into downtown Miami. Many attendees eventually opted to embark on a three-mile walk across the Rickenbacker Causeway.

Also, a tree caught on fire near the festival grounds. So, yeah, a banner first day.

Fire caused by the fireworks at ultra! And to top it off walk over a mile across the bridge smh @ultra #ultra pic.twitter.com/bv9k6KDePu — DonutCare (@aciremabc) March 30, 2019