All of the Fests!! Pt. 2

Howdy howdy!

Back at it again with a new entry. This time I'm talking about the first Oakland Popfest!

San Francisco has an annual popfest as well but this particular one was organized by a long time online friend of mine. I had met Claude somewhere online in the very early 2000's. Either on MySpace or the Indie Boards. We both had a love for indie pop and had managed to keep in touch through various social media sites. Though we've always had mutual acquaintances and friend, we'd never actually met in real life. That was until day 2 of the 3 day festival. We're talkin' FOUR shows in THREE days! Not only that but all of the bands of the first two days were fronted by women and some of the bands were all girl bands! The last day had an early show that was a Slumberland Records Showcase at 1234 Go! Records. It was a super star indie pop line up. We played at the final evening show and boy was it a weekend to remember!

We sadly had to miss the first day of the festival due to work schedules. It was truly a bummer because there were so many cool bands playing and I wanted to see them so badly. It pained us all to miss them. The line up was:

BamBam! (Oakland CA)

Rat Fancy (Los Angeles, CA)

Horrible Adorable (Oakland, CA)

Gal Pals (Los Angeles, CA) and

Colleen Green headlining!

Doesn't that sound like a magical night?! I'm certain that it was and there was a lot of fun had by all.

We headed up to Oakland on Friday and found lodging at a Motel 6 which, to our surprise, had an amazing view of the docks and boats. It was quite lovely. We left early so that we could enjoy the day exploring Lake Merritt.

The day consisted mainly of walking around the lake, quality dog spotting, people watching and lounging about in the shade on the grass. It was wonderful. We were pretty tired when we got back to the hotel so we ordered a pizza and watched Good Will Hunting on HBO.

We then headed out to The Uptown Nightclub for a night of pop magic. We sadly didn't take the lack of available street parking into account and found ourselves driving about for a little too long until we decided to shell out some money for a parking garage. We just had to be sure to be back before 1 AM. This caused us to miss the first band, Pennywhistle Park who were reuniting for this fest. So, it was definitely a bummer to miss them. Another reunion was taking place that night with Dream Bitches who hadn't played in a few years. They were dream dream dreammy. But, so were most of the bands we saw throughout the weekend. I mean, this festival was an actual dream come true for me. Being a fan of most of these bands and then being able to share a bill with them? I can die happy. Honest. The line up was:

Pennywhistle Park (Alameda, CA)

Dream Bitches (San Francisco, CA)

Try the Pie (San Jose, CA)

Summer Twins (Riverside, CA)

Dressy Bessy (Denver, CO) headlining

I spent the entire night dancing like a peanuts character at the corner of the stage. It was GREAT! We had to leave immediately after Dressy Bessy's set because the parking garage was going to close. We made it juuuust in time.

Here's a short video clip of Dressy Bessy's last song of the night.

Hang in there folks! One more part to go. TBC.....

Also, special Happy Birthday shout out to my little broskee.