8PM, fifteen minutes before Tegan and Sara’s set, a crowd of approximately sixty were standing at the still-unmarked Peroni stage. I finally noticed the VIP Section, which was a markedly worse angle with near-zero benefit from being in the actual crowd. A gated area all the way to the right of the stage, which didn’t come close to justifying the near-tripled amount of the tickets. I started to see people filter out of it into the main area.

8:15, the band walked out, and the majority of current attendees were still at the fashion runway stage — which lie about fifteen yards away, between the two main stages. The duo made their way on stage and started into their performance, to which the audience started filtering to their stage. An absurd amount of photographers were on hand, blotting the concourse between the barricade and the stage. A joking comment was made by Tegan, three songs were powered through, and the photographers tried to stay. Security rushed in to escort them out.

Three photographers tried to stay.

A dwarf came in and shoved the lollygaggers out. One tried arguing their case, but he wasn’t hearing any of it.

This, more than anything at the show, as a highlight I’ll never forget. Because who gets punked by a dwarf at a music festival?

Past that, Tegan and Sara did a solid set that was obviously truncated for time constraints (the artists that weren’t the main act were allowed a restrictive 45 minutes, as opposed to the typical hour to hour fifteen — likely to fit the Fashion part in). They closed with Closer, everything was solid, and at that point the crowd, now closer to a thousand, was waiting for an encore.

There was no encore. Near simultaneously with the crowd’s deflation, the inflatable stage decorations had the air let out of them. And at 9:15, something special happened.

9:15, staff finally remembers to put the banner up

Festival staff finally remembered that they were supposed to have the sponsor banner up on their main stage. Without zip-ties, they hastily duct taped it to the stage. Black duct tape, of course, to match the pitch-black appearance of everything else.

A security staffer was wandering the concourse wearing cargo pants laden with water bottles, talking to people and obviously bored out of his skull. He offered to take pictures for people, whoever was still left at that stage. St. Lucia started to play, and I debated seeing their set or to wander the grounds and see the sights and life of a music festival.

Every stand that still had staff at it was at zero activity. A beach volleyball (?) setup was empty, with its staff playing euchre on the table leading into it. Merch tables were nonexistent, with two little “shops” containing only four pieces of fashion-lacking festival merch and two Tegan and Sara shirts laid into the shipping container fortress.

Then, when heading into the restroom, the realization fully hit me. At no point did cellular data lapse during the night. There’s no line at the restrooms. The merch and branding were nearly vacant. This was the antithesis of the festival experience, a bizarre and twisted approximation of what the bloated beast that music festivals have become.

Liberty Deep Down

Walking towards the exit area, I saw the Donato’s Stage, a tiny setup with about ninety people enjoying the sounds of Columbus-area band Liberty Deep Down. Their performance at Bunbury 2017 had been pretty solid, so I stuck around. Liberty Deep Down’s energy was unfettered, a band whose infectious enthusiasm ran through the crowd. They finished their set, walked to the back, and the drummer came back out for an exceedingly long (and pretty solid) solo. Then the rest of the band re-assembled on the stage, plowed a couple of songs and a cover of Everybody (Backstreet’s Back). Whatever they were doing, they did it right, because this was the first set I’d witnessed that people were visibly excited for. They, as the last performer on the stage, ran way over. But nobody seemed to mind.

Following their set, everyone started filtering to the now-marked Peroni stage to assemble for headliners Third Eye Blind.

It was then that a redheaded woman walked up to me while I was checking my phone and messaging my girlfriend. She sauntered with all the grace of a rabies-ridden raccoon, leading with the inquisitive statement of “I’m looking for somebody, and you’re looking for somebody, so why don’t we [unintelligible].” My response, short and sweet, was “I’m not looking for anybody, I came here by myself. Are you alright?”

More unintelligible babbling happened as she got a little handsy, and I walked her back to the benches so she could sit down and try not to hurt herself or someone else. If you wanted a moment of peak sadness in this nihilistic landscape of music, it was this: a desperate attempt at a physical connection in a crowd of maybe two-thousand while wearing a blazer and breathing bourbon fumes. She was sat down, and I immediately ditched her to talk to a couple of random dudes with glitter beards and salmon shorts — hoping that seeing me talking to someone else would discourage her from approaching again.

It worked.

All of the lights went down for the closing act.