#29 California Music Fest @ San Souci on 7-3-09

We were accepted to this festival via Sonicbids, an online submission service for bands. Here is the description for the event:

California Music Fest is the celebration of the California Culture: Music, Surf, and Art. It takes place Independence weekend in the beautiful city of Ventura, CA in conjunction with the already established and very popular Ventura Street Fair. Last years street fair featured a massive turn out of over 45,000 people. This year with the City of Ventura’s inclusion of the California Music Fest, over 150 bands will be featured as well as a surf contest and visual artists from all over the country. The city is expecting an even larger attendance for 2009.

What the event was in reality was a cramming of too many bands in too many venues with the ensuing chaos. There is an outdoor stage with 'bigger bands', but the rest of it is silly. San Souci is a tiny dive bar in Ventura, and the corner we played in restricts the view of most of the crowd from seeing anyone but the person in front, namely me. We were one of 7-9 bands (!) playing, and the set was short and sweet. We played with too many bands to recall most of the names, but one was 80lb Gorilla(?). I sold an EP to a drunk couple at the bar, who insisted paying $20 for it. I was also instructed to come to San Diego.

This is yet another SonicBids disappointment, and has assured our disinterest in continuing using it.