This weekend, I went to the New Colossus Festival on the Lower East Side. New Colossus is an international music festival that a few bars co-host, with the HQ at Pianos. It’s usually the weekend before SXSW, so they can catch acts coming into the US for that. This festival has been on my radar since last year, when I spontaneously caught a show at Arlene’s and had my mind blown by Yo Diablo. I was awestruck and knew I had to come back next year – and here I am!

The Basics

First off, what everyone will want to know: Pricing. The basic pass to attend all 5 days is $150 including fees, which I find very reasonable. If you get in early, you can save a bit by buying an Early Bird pass, which is $100 plus fees. The $100 + fees + taxes comes out to be about $30 cheaper than the $150 + taxes. $150 - $100 = $30 is a bit confusing, but I’m not one to complain about saving thirty bucks.

There are shows Wednesday evening that go well into the night; same with Thursday, although the acts start a little bit later on Thursday (7pm vs 5pm). Then on Friday and Saturday, you’ve got music from noon until 1am. On Sunday the music goes from noon until 11:30. On Friday and Saturday, there are nine (!!) stages; at the other end, on Sunday there are three. Super impressive. I have archived this year’s full schedule here, thanks to Internet Archive.

If you wanted to go to just one show, it’s usually $10 during the day, or $20 in the evening, but I recommend going for the pass. Each set is 30 minutes and the venues are all near each other, and again, there are up to nine stages with music at any given time. It’s fun to be able to bounce back and forth between several of them, but if you have friends who want to join in for a specific artist, then paying cover at the door is an option.

Sunday was completely free, though! So, assuming they do that again next year, that’s a good opportunity to bring friends along, or to enjoy part of the festival in case you’re on a tight budget or somehow still skeptical about the whole thing after reading this post. (Tip your bartender well!)

I’m just a fan, so I went with the cheapest pass to enjoy the shows, but they also sell “delegate” passes for folks in the music industry. You get access to special parties that I assume are good networking events.

For Me, Next Year

Here are some things I plan to do differently next year, because of course I will be attending again:

1. Take at least Friday off from work.

I briefly considered taking a half day on Friday so I could catch the Friday afternoon shows, but ended up deciding to save my PTO. I thought the only consequence of not taking time off would be missing those few hours of sets, and I was very wrong. It also meant missing all of the late-night shows since there was not much opportunity for sleeping in, unless I wanted to screw up my sleep schedule for the weekend just to pay for it on Monday.

It also meant that I was already dead tired by Friday evening. I love how chill New Colossus is, at least for those of us who live in the city. You buy your badge and then have a weekend of bar-hopping on the Lower East Side to enjoy. What I didn’t think about, though, is that I’m usually not going out bar-hopping straight from work, staying out as long as I can while still enjoying myself, going home, going to sleep, and then waking up early to do all of that again in the morning. Twice.

All that standing and dancing can really take a lot out of a guy! That being said, the venues are nice and small, and it’s usually not too hard to find seating, so if you want to just attend in the weekends and evenings that is doable. I just think that it’s not for me – I get so excited about this festival that I want to be able to go hard and not worry about anything else, so I now know that using a day or two of PTO would be well worth it.

2. Budget for food and merch beforehand.

This includes budgeting time to actually go eat! I kind of subsisted through the weekend on snacks that I would buy in spare moments between acts I wanted to see, and breakfasts at home. I definitely should have carved out time to eat a square meal – on Wednesday, I was so captivated by the music that I completely forgot to eat dinner! Oops.

As far as money goes, the prices for food and drinks definitely added up over the course of the festival, which is part of why I kept going for cheap snacks like pizza instead of, you know, a real lunch. This made it hard to decide on-the-fly whether to buy merch from the bands I liked, especially because honestly, even though I go to concerts all the time and own way more band t-shirts than one guy should, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I might want to buy merch at this festival. I don’t know why. Setting a budget beforehand would have made it easy to make quick calls about how much I was willing to pay for merch, which would have been helpful considering it’s a bit more overwhelming of a setting than a regular concert.

3. Invite more friends

In the vein of being more prepared, I’d like to listen to artists from the lineup farther in advance, not only so I can plan out who all I want to see, but so I know when to invite my friends to come enjoy the festival with me. I did invite a few friends, but only at the last minute – it’d be fun to hype this up with my friends for the weeks leading up to it so that more of them come through. (Plus, now I know about Sunday being free!)

4. Treat it a little more like other music festivals

The only other music festival I’ve gone to for multiple days was Rolling Loud NYC in September of 2022. Rolling Loud is a pretty typical music festival – tickets are more expensive at $300, all the stages are in one big parking lot and each day there’s no re-entry, presumably because if they let people leave for lunch then nobody would pay $11 for some chicken tenders that they had heated from frozen.

I’ll tell you what, I was on top of my game at Rolling Loud. Already chapped about how expensive the tickets were and the fact that they didn’t offer single-day passes, I refused to pay any more than what I already had, completely avoiding the overpriced food and drinks. Every day I ate a big breakfast beforehand, brought in a sandwich for lunch, and snuck in some edibles I had bought special for the occasion so I could avoid the obscenely overpriced alcohol on the inside and still get a little buzz. I brought a reusable water bottle with me and made sure it was never empty. I did a good job of listening to my body, taking plenty of time to sit down and rest when it felt right and going home when I wanted to.

I don’t need to go all the way to that extreme for New Colossus – I liked treating myself to the $6 happy hour frozen margs – but I could have braced myself a bit more for how tiring music festivals are. Even the chill ones that take place in bars. I should have been more on top of bringing snacks and staying hydrated, and by Friday my lower back was already killing me, so I should have been sitting more and doing stretches or something. My poor 9-to-5 body simply is not used to that much standing! I love live music, and this festival is one of the big events of the year for me, so some physical discomfort wasn’t going to stop me from enjoying myself. However, with some simple steps and just a bit more planning, I could have saved a lot of energy for myself on Sunday.

For New Colossus, Next Year

A.K.A. I take my opportunity to be an annoying armchair critic

Let me preface this by saying that I have no idea how to run a music festival or even a regular concert; I’ve never booked shows or worked in the nightlife industry; I’ve never so much as worked or volunteered a shift at a festival or any large event. I’m even less than an amateur, this kind of thing is just not something I know how to do.

Also, in no uncertain terms – I loved New Colossus, I’m so amazed by what the organizers were able to pull off and I think they did an amazing job. I think someone would have to pretty wilfully misread this post to not come to that conclusion.

With that out of the way, here are some different things I’d be excited to see them try next year:

1. More representation from non-English-speaking countries and artists.

There were moments when I felt like I was living in the inverse of that meme that’s like, “When artists announce a world tour,” and the image is a map with the US, England, and Australia highlighted. I haven’t run the numbers on it but I’d guess at least 75% of the artists were from predominantly white, English-speaking countries, especially the US, Canada, and the UK.

I have no problem with US acts at an international music festival that’s hosted in the US. I think it’s great that people who are visiting get to see some of the great talent that we have to offer over here. But sometimes it took an active effort of searching the schedule to find any artists performing who were not from these three countries.

Furthermore, all of the acts I saw, with the exception of Backdrop Cinderella, had a band member who spoke enough English to get by, talk to the crowd in English, accept compliments on their performance, sell merch, etc. Backdrop Cinderella had some crew traveling with them who spoke conversational English. I’d like to assume that the festival organizers made interpretation services available, because how could one call themselves an international festival, in New York City where an interpreter can be found for more languages that an ordinary person can even think of, and not offer any interpretation services. I’m sure that New Colossus did offer interpreters, and have absolutely no reason to believe that they didn’t – but as a fan, at the actual shows, I didn’t see any examples of artists using or needing an interpreter myself.

I’m sure that this all is mostly a matter of self-selection. For one thing, most of the American and Canadian artists simply have a shorter distance to travel. European and North American artists are more easily able to afford how exorbitantly expensive New York is compared to other cities. And, perhaps most importantly, people who speak English probably get more cultural influence from the US, and therefore are more likely to dream of playing a show in New York – in fact, a few of the artists I saw said that they were fulfilling a dream by playing their first NYC shows at this festival.

That being said, curating talent is ultimately up to the festival organizers, and as a fan I would have liked to see a more diverse array of cultures represented, particularly from Latin America, Africa, and Asia: By my hasty count of the artists page, which I’ve also archived, we only had three Latin American artists, two from Asia (not counting GOKUMON from Japan, who I was super excited to see but had to pull out at the last minute), and one from Africa.

2. Masks

Covid is dangerous, and by now we all know a super spreader event when we see one, even if we’ve given up on meaningfully protecting ourselves. I wore a mask most of the time while I was at the festival, but usually when I looked around I saw only one or two people besides me wearing one.

I guess that means my mask didn’t really do me any good, but I like to think that it still serves as a symbol to reassure people that no, it’s not weird to wear a mask when you go out, and to remind people that masking at crowded indoor events is something they might consider.

I would like to imagine that over the course of the weekend, out of the hundreds of people who saw me wearing my mask, a couple dozen of them thought, “Shoot, I didn’t bring a mask with me. Oh well.” For those people, I wish that free masks had been available in prominently visible locations in each of the venues. If it was convenient to go grab a mask and put one on, I believe that some people would have.

I guess I’m coming at this as someone who, except for concerts, isn’t all that crazy about nightlife. I’m aware that most nightlife workers have acquiesced by now and are used to going maskless and seeing all their patrons doing the same, no matter how crowded the bar gets. However, this is an international music festival, with artists flying in from all over the world and mingling, many of whom are supposed to perform at South by Southwest in a few days and would probably not like to have to cancel their set because they came down with a bad case of covid. Not to mention, of course, that immunocompromised and otherwise vulnerable people deserve to enjoy the festival just as much as the rest of us do.

Compared to all the other costs of putting on a music festival, I just don’t think that buying a couple dozen boxes of masks from Costco and putting them out at the bars participating in the festival would have been so prohibitive. And I think I’m going to feel the same way next year, and will make sure to bring masks for myself to wear again next year.

While I’m at it, I’ll piggyback on that with – it’d be nice if they did the same with foam earplugs, just bought one of those big jars of hundreds of earplugs and made it available at the table in Pianos that serves as the festival’s center of operations.

3. A few longer sets, and more time for sound check.

Obviously, scheduling something like this must be an absolute nightmare. Whoever did it is a much stronger person than me and I applaud them.

All of the sets were 45 minutes apart, with 30 minutes for the set and fifteen for bands to hand over the stage and do a quick sound check. Most artists had three performances over the course of the festival, but not all, something which I imagine had more to do with how long the artists were able to be in New York and less to do with anything the organizers did.

I did like the egalitarian feel of all the sets being the same length, with bands getting to perform multiple times. I liked that the schedule didn’t communicate any idea of the festival having “headliners,” and instead everyone shared the spotlight. It would really suck to cross an ocean to perform one, twenty-minute, midday set – and it would probably be hard to convince bands to agree to the festival if they thought that was a possibility. The quick changes also made it fun to bounce around the festival, and at these smaller stages, shorter sets can spare fans the dilemma of wondering whether to awkwardly, visibly leave in the middle of a set or just stick around for a few more songs. Finally, having multiple chances to see an artist is a huge asset where there are NINE (!!) stages at once, and great artists’ sets often conflict with each other. So, I do see the advantages, and overall won’t mind at all if things work the same way next year.

That being said, with this schedule, a third of the time at the festival is for transition time in between sets, and it’s still not really enough time for bands to properly sound check. The extent to which this festival stayed on schedule is nothing short of superhuman, so I applaud the staff for that. But fifteen minutes just isn’t much time for one band to pack up their instruments and get off the stage, a new band to take the stage, sometimes lugging their gear through a crowded room, and then check their sound – especially at these smaller venues where technical difficulties arise often. I saw plenty of bands decide to just start their set before they were fully ready and then ask for adjustments to the sound as they went along. This lead to more inaudible vocals than I think is really normal, even for these small stages.

Finally, occasionally an artist’s three sets would end up close enough together that it almost felt a little pointless not to combine two of them. The example I’m thinking of here is Ducks Ltd., who had a show late Saturday afternoon, then Saturday evening on the same stage, then Sunday afternoon.

As an aside, like at any music festival, most of the stages at New Colossus are sponsored by some organization, which you can see on the schedule. So, the Pianos showroom was sponsored by Dedstrange on Saturday afternoon, for Ducks’ first show, and then by Exclaim! in the evening, for their second show. So as someone with no clue how any of this works, I imagine that maybe the sponsors bid for certain acts to be on their stages, and that’s what caused some of this scheduling funkiness.

Still, as someone watching Ducks’ first set, it felt a tiny bit silly to watch them rush through sound check, finally get sound checked, perform a kind-of short, 30-minute set, and then turn over the stage to another band just to come back to that same stage and get everything set up again only a few hours later. I wonder if they wouldn’t rather have just stayed up there for another half hour in the afternoon and then called it a day – and I wonder if the festival organizers shouldn’t have let them do so.

All of that being said – what the hell, it’s a music festival, that’s how they go.

Advice for Festival-Goers

For the last part of this post, in case anyone reading this decides to go to New Colossus in the future – first of all, congrats, you’re in for a great time! I’ll share some pro-tips:

1. Bluestockings Bookstore

If you need a quiet place to take a breather, I can’t recommend Bluestockings Bookstore enough. It’s run by some great worker-owners who will let you sit and hang out in the store for as long as you’d like. (This is not a “life hack” kind of tip – they openly welcome people to take refuge in the bookstore for as long as they would like!) They have a café where a small black coffee costs $1, good vibes, and of course, a great book selection. Sadly, they’re currently having landlord troubles (sign this!), so I can only hope they’ll still be in the Lower East Side next spring. But if they are, I’d be so honored and happy to direct any business their way – so, go!

2. Earplugs

If you don’t already own concert earplugs, bite the bullet and invest in a pair. Foam earplugs aren’t the easiest to come by at the venues, as far as I could tell. I wasn’t looking very hard, but the only place I remember seeing them available was at Arlene’s, for $2. In any case, you don’t want those. Most of the music is loud enough that it will give you tinnitus, especially if you’re listening to it hours per day for five days, but not so loud that it would sound any good through foam earplugs.

I use earasers. (Non-sponsored link!) I bought them after comparison shopping online for a bit, and sprang for the starter kit where they’ll send you one pair of the filters and then two different sizes of the earplugs, so that you can try two sizes to make sure what you have is right for you. I really appreciate that they offer this because “How big are my ear-holes relative to other people’s ear-holes” is not something I had ever thought about for even one moment before I was shopping for these things. I paid about $60 I think, and now I’ve had them for at least a year and am still liking them. I should maybe replace the filters, though…? (Anyone who knows earplugs, feel free to drop me a line, how often am I supposed to replace the filters?) I’m no aficionado but I think they’re a solid choice.

3. Pianos Happy Hour

The best prices I personally encountered on drinks were at Pianos, during their happy hour (daily until 8pm). For $6 you can get a beer or a frozen marg. Try the frozen marg.

I think Arlene’s has pretty cheap beer available too, but I didn’t go for it this time.

4. Stop by the mixers

The festival has several sponsored parties seem to basically be networking events for folks in the music industry. They sometimes give out drink tickets, so if you’re at the festival with some spare time on your hands, it might be worthwhile to drop by one of those. (I learned about this by stumbling into one mistakenly and being greeted with a drink ticket. Pleasant surprise!)

Wrapping Up

New Colossus was an amazing experience. I was so excited for this, and it exceeded my expectations. Today’s Sunday, I came home and was so excited to share about my weekend that I stayed up late writing all this after I got home.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll go over some of my favorite acts from the festival!