When you’ve been to many concerts, you begin to notice things beyond just the music. You start to really notice the stage lights, the other people in the crowd, and the energy that the combination of everything creates. After a while, you don’t just go to hear your favorite band, but to see how the stage illuminates with every beat, to befriend these people with the same interests as you, and – maybe above all else – to be a part of such a unique and consuming kind of energy.
For those of you still following me, if you know that kind of excitement, I feel fully confident in saying that you should have been at Coastline Festival.
Again, coming from someone who has been to a few too many concerts big and small, Coastline is hands down one that will top the charts for…well, probably forever.
“A Musiculinary Experience”, featuring a Craft Beer Cove and an art walk, did not lack a single thing except maybe a little extra battery life on my phone. The first day of this two-day concert series was hosted in Tampa, and the Fairgrounds were transformed into a concert-goers utopia, complete with a stretch of food trucks of various cuisines.
I often find myself noticing the lineup at bigger shows like this, and how all of the different bands from all of these different places can come together to create a fluid show. Between the Atlantic and the Gulf stages, Coastline was the epitome of such cohesiveness. I may be biased, because it seems as though whoever was behind the scenes of this festival had the same musical preferences as myself, but I honestly have enjoyed few things as much as I did travelling from stage to stage to catch all of the acts. And although at first I thought someone may have been slightly misguided in placing Surfer Blood and The Neighbourhood on the second stage, there was this quaint closeness to it that made those performances so much more enjoyable. Mind you, when I say close, I mean John Paul Pitts (Surfer Blood front man) literally stepped off the stage and sat down, on the grass, in the center of the crowd, while singing “Take It Easy”. I don’t think it gets much easier than that.
As I’ve said before, I am by no means a music critic, and I find it useless trying to describe a concert to someone who wasn’t there. But one thing I’ve found that never fails to capture the essence of a show is the crowd, and Coastline was once again a perfect example of that. Besides a few – there were the people who scoffed at me as I elbowed through to my friends awaiting The Neighbourhood (I said sorry), and the girl who told me to stop dancing during Two Door (I said no) – everyone else was exactly as happy and exuberant as I had hoped. There was never a moment that I felt I couldn’t turn to the person closest to me and share a little dance or just a nod or anything else. That in itself seems to be a perfect reflection of the success of Coastline Fest. My favorite? The middle aged woman standing outside of the 97X tent who started a serious hip swing when Cage the Elephant came on the radio. “Do you love this song?” I asked. Her response: “F*** yeah!” I guess that’s just what kind of day it was.
Daniela Ress 