Pop Mayhem: A New Indie Rock Fest For Spring
May08, culture, cover, music April 27th, 2008By Susan Cohen, May 2008
Pop Mayhem: an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, living dead or Microsoft Works.
But Joe Baca, Josh Ney and Dan Sostrom (with help from Pablo Rios, Travis Fristoe, Carly Nelson and Ciera Galbraith) are creating some Pop Mayhem with their new music festival, May 7-10 with day shows at the Kickstand and night shows at Common Grounds. Performing are local bands like Oh Fortuna and Nervous Systems, as well as national acts like Human Television and Erin Tobey.
Baca and Ney moved to Gainesville more than 10 years ago and have been playing in bands ever since. Sostrom also plays in bands and owns Tonevendor, an online record store in town, and label Clairecords.
Explaining Pop Mayhem’s history in a kitschy northeast Gainesville home, Baca says the idea for the festival came about when he and Sostrom wanted to do a show for the 10th anniversary of the first show of Brittle Stars, Sostrom’s old band.
“We’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll just have a show,’” and then the next thing you know we’re like, ‘Let’s just make it a festival and invite a bunch of bands that we like,’” Baca said.
Pop Mayhem might remind people of another Gainesville “Fest” – you know, that little thing that happens in October and brings in punks from all over the world.
Indeed, the guys have friends over at No Idea Records, put on the annual punk rock FEST, but Sostrom says that Pop Mayhem wanted to do their own thing and didn’t seek out too much advice.
“I think we’re both cognizant of each other and have a mutual admiration for what each other does, but do our own separate things,” Sostrom said.
The festivals are clearly different, starting with genre. Pop Mayhem bands are arty and underground indie rock. Pop Mayhem also isn’t going to have the stress of multiple venues having shows at once, and the guys never want their festival to get as big as The FEST.
The organizers started talking about Pop Mayhem in August 2007, but real planning began in October, when they booked Common Grounds for night shows. They recently added on The Kickstand as the day venue.
The guys tried finding city-owned venues, but said the process was a “nightmare.”
“They didn’t really understand what it was we were trying to do,” Sostrom said of city officials. “I had a hard time describing it and getting whomever I talked to to understand and listen to me.”
Baca adds that the city seemed indifferent and that renting such a facility would have been ridiculously expensive regardless.
While it was easy to get a hold of Common Grounds for the evenings, finding a day venue was much harder.
“A lot of the spaces were really expensive and for a day show, the amount of people that would come out and the amount of money that we would make would not even pay for the facility,” Sostrom said.
Unlike other summer music festivals – ones that require your wallets to purge on expensive passes, empty gas tanks and price-gouged bottles of water — Pop Mayhem is entirely major-label free, corporate sponsor-free and not-for-profit: All the money is going to the bands.
With Pop Mayhem, the guys didn’t want to have to deal with contracts or agents, preferring person-to-person contact rather than “third party nonsense,” according to Sostrom. Baca says he grew up being able to directly ask a band to play a show and have them say yes.
“There’s enough venues or avenues for those people to pursue already, so I don’t feel like working for free to give them another one,” Baca said. “If I’m going to donate all this time and all this energy and work, I’m going to do it for bands that don’t have those avenues available to them.”
Baca also says that dealing with extra people makes the process more expensive, with “middlemen who are expecting to get paid for doing nothing.”
Ney says that he hardly listens to major label bands, and realistically believes that they wouldn’t play something like Pop Mayhem anyway.
Even some more mainstream indie bands, on labels like Kill Rock Stars, said they wanted more money than the guys, having no idea how much Pop Mayhem will take in, could commit to.
Oddly enough, one of the easiest bands to work with were traveling the furthest to be in
“They were the nicest people to deal with,” Ney said. “They were just like, “Cool, yeah, we’ll play.’ They haven’t asked anything about money or anything.”
Ney also recommends Boyracer, who haven’t played a show in three years, and A Faulty Chromosome, which he describes as a rare good Myspace find.
As far as sponsors are concerned, Sostrom says they wanted to keep things local and have sponsors that were businesses they like and personally support that they can then draw attention to. They are currently working on getting places like their favorite restaurants to help out.
The first running of Pop Mayhem (and, depending on how well it goes, possibly the last) is truly as the guys describe: a guinea pig experiment.
“If it works this year, there’s no telling,” Ney said. “We could do it next year, or, this could be just a one off.”
If a second annual Pop Mayhem festival occurs, the guys have learned from this experience. They say they would start planning even earlier than August, even having benefit shows to pay for things down the line.
“We all have jobs, some of us more than one,” Sostrom said. “Our time is limited, so even though we started back in October or August, it just takes some time to get everything together that we wanted. We had some big ideas early on that aren’t even going to happen just because we haven’t had the time to come together.”
One such idea was an indie rock flea market, kind of like 2nd Street Bakery’s Memaw Menagerie. It may still happen, but on a smaller scale than what they may have wanted.
If Pop Mayhem doesn’t work, they are expecting to be in a lot of debt, paying bands out of their own pockets. Their biggest hope for the weekend is that all the bands show up and that they make enough money to pay them.
They’ve been honest with the bands, telling them that they really don’t know what is going to happen.
“It’s so new to us that we just don’t know what to expect, so we don’t really know what to promise the bands.” Baca said. “So the bands are just taking us kind of out of blind faith.”
Sostrom says it’s hard to get a pulse on how big of a crowd Pop Mayhem will get. Passes for the three-day event, which cost $32, are only available online at tonevendor.com, but at the time of the interview, sales had been slow.
Still, they are upbeat and expect people to buy tickets at the door.
They’re also not sure how many people will be attracted to Pop Mayhem from outside of Gainesville, though Ney has seen talk about organizing rides from the northeast on the Internet.
Pop Mayhem kicks off the night of Weds, May 7 with a free show at Wayward Council. Tickets for individual day shows are $6 while night shows are $11 for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
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Pop Mayhem: A New Indie Rock Fest For Spring
May08, culture, cover, music April 27th, 2008By Susan Cohen, May 2008
Pop Mayhem: an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, living dead or Microsoft Works.
But Joe Baca, Josh Ney and Dan Sostrom (with help from Pablo Rios, Travis Fristoe, Carly Nelson and Ciera Galbraith) are creating some Pop Mayhem with their new music festival, May 7-10 with day shows at the Kickstand and night shows at Common Grounds. Performing are local bands like Oh Fortuna and Nervous Systems, as well as national acts like Human Television and Erin Tobey.
Baca and Ney moved to Gainesville more than 10 years ago and have been playing in bands ever since. Sostrom also plays in bands and owns Tonevendor, an online record store in town, and label Clairecords.
Explaining Pop Mayhem’s history in a kitschy northeast Gainesville home, Baca says the idea for the festival came about when he and Sostrom wanted to do a show for the 10th anniversary of the first show of Brittle Stars, Sostrom’s old band.
“We’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll just have a show,’” and then the next thing you know we’re like, ‘Let’s just make it a festival and invite a bunch of bands that we like,’” Baca said.
Pop Mayhem might remind people of another Gainesville “Fest” – you know, that little thing that happens in October and brings in punks from all over the world.
Indeed, the guys have friends over at No Idea Records, put on the annual punk rock FEST, but Sostrom says that Pop Mayhem wanted to do their own thing and didn’t seek out too much advice.
“I think we’re both cognizant of each other and have a mutual admiration for what each other does, but do our own separate things,” Sostrom said.
The festivals are clearly different, starting with genre. Pop Mayhem bands are arty and underground indie rock. Pop Mayhem also isn’t going to have the stress of multiple venues having shows at once, and the guys never want their festival to get as big as The FEST.
The organizers started talking about Pop Mayhem in August 2007, but real planning began in October, when they booked Common Grounds for night shows. They recently added on The Kickstand as the day venue.
The guys tried finding city-owned venues, but said the process was a “nightmare.”
“They didn’t really understand what it was we were trying to do,” Sostrom said of city officials. “I had a hard time describing it and getting whomever I talked to to understand and listen to me.”
Baca adds that the city seemed indifferent and that renting such a facility would have been ridiculously expensive regardless.
While it was easy to get a hold of Common Grounds for the evenings, finding a day venue was much harder.
“A lot of the spaces were really expensive and for a day show, the amount of people that would come out and the amount of money that we would make would not even pay for the facility,” Sostrom said.
Unlike other summer music festivals – ones that require your wallets to purge on expensive passes, empty gas tanks and price-gouged bottles of water — Pop Mayhem is entirely major-label free, corporate sponsor-free and not-for-profit: All the money is going to the bands.
With Pop Mayhem, the guys didn’t want to have to deal with contracts or agents, preferring person-to-person contact rather than “third party nonsense,” according to Sostrom. Baca says he grew up being able to directly ask a band to play a show and have them say yes.
“There’s enough venues or avenues for those people to pursue already, so I don’t feel like working for free to give them another one,” Baca said. “If I’m going to donate all this time and all this energy and work, I’m going to do it for bands that don’t have those avenues available to them.”
Baca also says that dealing with extra people makes the process more expensive, with “middlemen who are expecting to get paid for doing nothing.”
Ney says that he hardly listens to major label bands, and realistically believes that they wouldn’t play something like Pop Mayhem anyway.
Even some more mainstream indie bands, on labels like Kill Rock Stars, said they wanted more money than the guys, having no idea how much Pop Mayhem will take in, could commit to.
Oddly enough, one of the easiest bands to work with were traveling the furthest to be in
“They were the nicest people to deal with,” Ney said. “They were just like, “Cool, yeah, we’ll play.’ They haven’t asked anything about money or anything.”
Ney also recommends Boyracer, who haven’t played a show in three years, and A Faulty Chromosome, which he describes as a rare good Myspace find.
As far as sponsors are concerned, Sostrom says they wanted to keep things local and have sponsors that were businesses they like and personally support that they can then draw attention to. They are currently working on getting places like their favorite restaurants to help out.
The first running of Pop Mayhem (and, depending on how well it goes, possibly the last) is truly as the guys describe: a guinea pig experiment.
“If it works this year, there’s no telling,” Ney said. “We could do it next year, or, this could be just a one off.”
If a second annual Pop Mayhem festival occurs, the guys have learned from this experience. They say they would start planning even earlier than August, even having benefit shows to pay for things down the line.
“We all have jobs, some of us more than one,” Sostrom said. “Our time is limited, so even though we started back in October or August, it just takes some time to get everything together that we wanted. We had some big ideas early on that aren’t even going to happen just because we haven’t had the time to come together.”
One such idea was an indie rock flea market, kind of like 2nd Street Bakery’s Memaw Menagerie. It may still happen, but on a smaller scale than what they may have wanted.
If Pop Mayhem doesn’t work, they are expecting to be in a lot of debt, paying bands out of their own pockets. Their biggest hope for the weekend is that all the bands show up and that they make enough money to pay them.
They’ve been honest with the bands, telling them that they really don’t know what is going to happen.
“It’s so new to us that we just don’t know what to expect, so we don’t really know what to promise the bands.” Baca said. “So the bands are just taking us kind of out of blind faith.”
Sostrom says it’s hard to get a pulse on how big of a crowd Pop Mayhem will get. Passes for the three-day event, which cost $32, are only available online at tonevendor.com, but at the time of the interview, sales had been slow.
Still, they are upbeat and expect people to buy tickets at the door.
They’re also not sure how many people will be attracted to Pop Mayhem from outside of Gainesville, though Ney has seen talk about organizing rides from the northeast on the Internet.
Pop Mayhem kicks off the night of Weds, May 7 with a free show at Wayward Council. Tickets for individual day shows are $6 while night shows are $11 for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Leave a Reply
Pop Mayhem: A New Indie Rock Fest For Spring
May08, culture, cover, music April 27th, 2008By Susan Cohen, May 2008
Pop Mayhem: an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, living dead or Microsoft Works.
But Joe Baca, Josh Ney and Dan Sostrom (with help from Pablo Rios, Travis Fristoe, Carly Nelson and Ciera Galbraith) are creating some Pop Mayhem with their new music festival, May 7-10 with day shows at the Kickstand and night shows at Common Grounds. Performing are local bands like Oh Fortuna and Nervous Systems, as well as national acts like Human Television and Erin Tobey.
Baca and Ney moved to Gainesville more than 10 years ago and have been playing in bands ever since. Sostrom also plays in bands and owns Tonevendor, an online record store in town, and label Clairecords.
Explaining Pop Mayhem’s history in a kitschy northeast Gainesville home, Baca says the idea for the festival came about when he and Sostrom wanted to do a show for the 10th anniversary of the first show of Brittle Stars, Sostrom’s old band.
“We’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll just have a show,’” and then the next thing you know we’re like, ‘Let’s just make it a festival and invite a bunch of bands that we like,’” Baca said.
Pop Mayhem might remind people of another Gainesville “Fest” – you know, that little thing that happens in October and brings in punks from all over the world.
Indeed, the guys have friends over at No Idea Records, put on the annual punk rock FEST, but Sostrom says that Pop Mayhem wanted to do their own thing and didn’t seek out too much advice.
“I think we’re both cognizant of each other and have a mutual admiration for what each other does, but do our own separate things,” Sostrom said.
The festivals are clearly different, starting with genre. Pop Mayhem bands are arty and underground indie rock. Pop Mayhem also isn’t going to have the stress of multiple venues having shows at once, and the guys never want their festival to get as big as The FEST.
The organizers started talking about Pop Mayhem in August 2007, but real planning began in October, when they booked Common Grounds for night shows. They recently added on The Kickstand as the day venue.
The guys tried finding city-owned venues, but said the process was a “nightmare.”
“They didn’t really understand what it was we were trying to do,” Sostrom said of city officials. “I had a hard time describing it and getting whomever I talked to to understand and listen to me.”
Baca adds that the city seemed indifferent and that renting such a facility would have been ridiculously expensive regardless.
While it was easy to get a hold of Common Grounds for the evenings, finding a day venue was much harder.
“A lot of the spaces were really expensive and for a day show, the amount of people that would come out and the amount of money that we would make would not even pay for the facility,” Sostrom said.
Unlike other summer music festivals – ones that require your wallets to purge on expensive passes, empty gas tanks and price-gouged bottles of water — Pop Mayhem is entirely major-label free, corporate sponsor-free and not-for-profit: All the money is going to the bands.
With Pop Mayhem, the guys didn’t want to have to deal with contracts or agents, preferring person-to-person contact rather than “third party nonsense,” according to Sostrom. Baca says he grew up being able to directly ask a band to play a show and have them say yes.
“There’s enough venues or avenues for those people to pursue already, so I don’t feel like working for free to give them another one,” Baca said. “If I’m going to donate all this time and all this energy and work, I’m going to do it for bands that don’t have those avenues available to them.”
Baca also says that dealing with extra people makes the process more expensive, with “middlemen who are expecting to get paid for doing nothing.”
Ney says that he hardly listens to major label bands, and realistically believes that they wouldn’t play something like Pop Mayhem anyway.
Even some more mainstream indie bands, on labels like Kill Rock Stars, said they wanted more money than the guys, having no idea how much Pop Mayhem will take in, could commit to.
Oddly enough, one of the easiest bands to work with were traveling the furthest to be in
“They were the nicest people to deal with,” Ney said. “They were just like, “Cool, yeah, we’ll play.’ They haven’t asked anything about money or anything.”
Ney also recommends Boyracer, who haven’t played a show in three years, and A Faulty Chromosome, which he describes as a rare good Myspace find.
As far as sponsors are concerned, Sostrom says they wanted to keep things local and have sponsors that were businesses they like and personally support that they can then draw attention to. They are currently working on getting places like their favorite restaurants to help out.
The first running of Pop Mayhem (and, depending on how well it goes, possibly the last) is truly as the guys describe: a guinea pig experiment.
“If it works this year, there’s no telling,” Ney said. “We could do it next year, or, this could be just a one off.”
If a second annual Pop Mayhem festival occurs, the guys have learned from this experience. They say they would start planning even earlier than August, even having benefit shows to pay for things down the line.
“We all have jobs, some of us more than one,” Sostrom said. “Our time is limited, so even though we started back in October or August, it just takes some time to get everything together that we wanted. We had some big ideas early on that aren’t even going to happen just because we haven’t had the time to come together.”
One such idea was an indie rock flea market, kind of like 2nd Street Bakery’s Memaw Menagerie. It may still happen, but on a smaller scale than what they may have wanted.
If Pop Mayhem doesn’t work, they are expecting to be in a lot of debt, paying bands out of their own pockets. Their biggest hope for the weekend is that all the bands show up and that they make enough money to pay them.
They’ve been honest with the bands, telling them that they really don’t know what is going to happen.
“It’s so new to us that we just don’t know what to expect, so we don’t really know what to promise the bands.” Baca said. “So the bands are just taking us kind of out of blind faith.”
Sostrom says it’s hard to get a pulse on how big of a crowd Pop Mayhem will get. Passes for the three-day event, which cost $32, are only available online at tonevendor.com, but at the time of the interview, sales had been slow.
Still, they are upbeat and expect people to buy tickets at the door.
They’re also not sure how many people will be attracted to Pop Mayhem from outside of Gainesville, though Ney has seen talk about organizing rides from the northeast on the Internet.
Pop Mayhem kicks off the night of Weds, May 7 with a free show at Wayward Council. Tickets for individual day shows are $6 while night shows are $11 for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Leave a Reply
Pop Mayhem: A New Indie Rock Fest For Spring
May08, culture, cover, music April 27th, 2008By Susan Cohen, May 2008
Pop Mayhem: an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, living dead or Microsoft Works.
But Joe Baca, Josh Ney and Dan Sostrom (with help from Pablo Rios, Travis Fristoe, Carly Nelson and Ciera Galbraith) are creating some Pop Mayhem with their new music festival, May 7-10 with day shows at the Kickstand and night shows at Common Grounds. Performing are local bands like Oh Fortuna and Nervous Systems, as well as national acts like Human Television and Erin Tobey.
Baca and Ney moved to Gainesville more than 10 years ago and have been playing in bands ever since. Sostrom also plays in bands and owns Tonevendor, an online record store in town, and label Clairecords.
Explaining Pop Mayhem’s history in a kitschy northeast Gainesville home, Baca says the idea for the festival came about when he and Sostrom wanted to do a show for the 10th anniversary of the first show of Brittle Stars, Sostrom’s old band.
“We’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll just have a show,’” and then the next thing you know we’re like, ‘Let’s just make it a festival and invite a bunch of bands that we like,’” Baca said.
Pop Mayhem might remind people of another Gainesville “Fest” – you know, that little thing that happens in October and brings in punks from all over the world.
Indeed, the guys have friends over at No Idea Records, put on the annual punk rock FEST, but Sostrom says that Pop Mayhem wanted to do their own thing and didn’t seek out too much advice.
“I think we’re both cognizant of each other and have a mutual admiration for what each other does, but do our own separate things,” Sostrom said.
The festivals are clearly different, starting with genre. Pop Mayhem bands are arty and underground indie rock. Pop Mayhem also isn’t going to have the stress of multiple venues having shows at once, and the guys never want their festival to get as big as The FEST.
The organizers started talking about Pop Mayhem in August 2007, but real planning began in October, when they booked Common Grounds for night shows. They recently added on The Kickstand as the day venue.
The guys tried finding city-owned venues, but said the process was a “nightmare.”
“They didn’t really understand what it was we were trying to do,” Sostrom said of city officials. “I had a hard time describing it and getting whomever I talked to to understand and listen to me.”
Baca adds that the city seemed indifferent and that renting such a facility would have been ridiculously expensive regardless.
While it was easy to get a hold of Common Grounds for the evenings, finding a day venue was much harder.
“A lot of the spaces were really expensive and for a day show, the amount of people that would come out and the amount of money that we would make would not even pay for the facility,” Sostrom said.
Unlike other summer music festivals – ones that require your wallets to purge on expensive passes, empty gas tanks and price-gouged bottles of water — Pop Mayhem is entirely major-label free, corporate sponsor-free and not-for-profit: All the money is going to the bands.
With Pop Mayhem, the guys didn’t want to have to deal with contracts or agents, preferring person-to-person contact rather than “third party nonsense,” according to Sostrom. Baca says he grew up being able to directly ask a band to play a show and have them say yes.
“There’s enough venues or avenues for those people to pursue already, so I don’t feel like working for free to give them another one,” Baca said. “If I’m going to donate all this time and all this energy and work, I’m going to do it for bands that don’t have those avenues available to them.”
Baca also says that dealing with extra people makes the process more expensive, with “middlemen who are expecting to get paid for doing nothing.”
Ney says that he hardly listens to major label bands, and realistically believes that they wouldn’t play something like Pop Mayhem anyway.
Even some more mainstream indie bands, on labels like Kill Rock Stars, said they wanted more money than the guys, having no idea how much Pop Mayhem will take in, could commit to.
Oddly enough, one of the easiest bands to work with were traveling the furthest to be in
“They were the nicest people to deal with,” Ney said. “They were just like, “Cool, yeah, we’ll play.’ They haven’t asked anything about money or anything.”
Ney also recommends Boyracer, who haven’t played a show in three years, and A Faulty Chromosome, which he describes as a rare good Myspace find.
As far as sponsors are concerned, Sostrom says they wanted to keep things local and have sponsors that were businesses they like and personally support that they can then draw attention to. They are currently working on getting places like their favorite restaurants to help out.
The first running of Pop Mayhem (and, depending on how well it goes, possibly the last) is truly as the guys describe: a guinea pig experiment.
“If it works this year, there’s no telling,” Ney said. “We could do it next year, or, this could be just a one off.”
If a second annual Pop Mayhem festival occurs, the guys have learned from this experience. They say they would start planning even earlier than August, even having benefit shows to pay for things down the line.
“We all have jobs, some of us more than one,” Sostrom said. “Our time is limited, so even though we started back in October or August, it just takes some time to get everything together that we wanted. We had some big ideas early on that aren’t even going to happen just because we haven’t had the time to come together.”
One such idea was an indie rock flea market, kind of like 2nd Street Bakery’s Memaw Menagerie. It may still happen, but on a smaller scale than what they may have wanted.
If Pop Mayhem doesn’t work, they are expecting to be in a lot of debt, paying bands out of their own pockets. Their biggest hope for the weekend is that all the bands show up and that they make enough money to pay them.
They’ve been honest with the bands, telling them that they really don’t know what is going to happen.
“It’s so new to us that we just don’t know what to expect, so we don’t really know what to promise the bands.” Baca said. “So the bands are just taking us kind of out of blind faith.”
Sostrom says it’s hard to get a pulse on how big of a crowd Pop Mayhem will get. Passes for the three-day event, which cost $32, are only available online at tonevendor.com, but at the time of the interview, sales had been slow.
Still, they are upbeat and expect people to buy tickets at the door.
They’re also not sure how many people will be attracted to Pop Mayhem from outside of Gainesville, though Ney has seen talk about organizing rides from the northeast on the Internet.
Pop Mayhem kicks off the night of Weds, May 7 with a free show at Wayward Council. Tickets for individual day shows are $6 while night shows are $11 for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
