Just walked the seven-block route where Saturday's Neon Desert Music Festival will take place.
There are signs that a festival is going to happen, but not that many — yet.
There are six-foot chain link fences going up around the various festivals areas, most notably at San Jacinto Plaza, where DJs and dance acts will perform.
No sign of the stage at Mesa and Main, between the Chase and Bank of America buildings, but organizers say that stage should start going up around 3:30 p.m. or so.
The area where the Dick Poe Hoy-Fox Stage will go, near the entrance at Franklin and Oregon, is already fenced for construction workers who've been toiling on the nine-story Mills Plaza parking lot next door.
The lot will be open for the festival, though the ingress route is still being worked out, an attendant told me. Parking will be $5, same as the convention center lot. That's cheap folks. In Detroit, we paid $20 and up at official lots.
While no stages are up yet, I did see two trucks from Mobile Stage Rentals, one parked by the Mills parking lot near El Paso and Main streets. The other passed by San Jacinto as I was walking.
Organizers say the three stages that will be erected for the festival should all start going up around 3:30. The fourth stage in San Jacinto is the permanent bandshell in the park.
The Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group (with Cedric Bixler Zavala), MSTRKRFT, Dirty Vegas, Kinky, CSS, Los Amigos Invisibles, Girl in a Coma and 22 other bands (including locals Radio La Chusma, Frontera Bugalu, Mexicans at Night, the Lusitania, the Royalty, the DA and Bulletproof Tiger) will perform on four stages between 11:30 a.m. and 11 p.m.
Gates open at 11 a.m.
A couple of things that came out of producer Zach Paul's live chat on elpasotimes.com: There is no re-entry; once you're in, you're in, you can't come and go from the festival site; beer will sell for $4-$7; and it's a cash-only festival.
You might want to have at least $50 to pay for parking, food and drinks, merch, etc.
Make that $100 if you haven't bought your ticket before you get there.
Tickets are $35, $25 for military, on sale at All That Music & Video, the Headstand, Western Beverages, all three ITR locations on Fort Bliss and neondesertmusicfestival.com.
$35 for this one day event? Sorry I like that these organizers are bringing all these bands together to perform in Downtown El Paso but charging $35 just for one day and not counting that you will not hear every band and that you might not stay the whole day, sorry but I'm going to have to pass on this. If it was a 2 or 3 day event, then maybe. In fact I'll be attending a performance by a nice Arabic Music Ensemble from UTEP at around the peak of this music fest and for free. Should be nice.
Posted by: Paul R | April 29, 2011 at 10:20 PM