I’m happy that concerts are back in full swing, although I know a new strain of Rona is waiting in the wings. Regardless, I’m taking all the precautions I personally can and am getting back out there to enjoy live music! A new experience this year included heading down to Daytona Beach, Florida for Welcome to Rockville!
Technically, the festival itself was held inside the Daytona International Speedway. And when I say in the speedway, I mean only one corner of the speedway, and it was hugely sprawled out. I can’t even really wrap my head around how big that place actually is! There were four stages set up pretty well spaced from each other, and in between all of that were a plethora of food vendors and various merch tents selling both band tees and some of the most random things ever. I was glad to see that there were a fair number of water refill stations throughout the festival grounds because let me tell you what…it was HOT. But also, when it wasn’t scorching, it was storming. Those storms are sadly what worked to the disadvantage of the festival. Rain is not the issue here, but lightening, and unfortunately, there was a lot of it on Friday and Saturday. Even more unfortunately, that means a lot of bands got cancelled because there just wasn’t enough time left in the day or, in the case of Saturday, the storms just weren’t going anywhere.
I was less upset than a lot of other people, but that’s because a lot of who got cancelled I have seen before. The biggest letdown was that the headliners, Korn and Guns ‘N Roses, were both cancelled. Korn, I have seen before but would have enjoyed seeing again, so I was bummed about that. Guns ‘N Roses was no big loss to me. Aside from the headliners getting canned, so did a lot of other big names leading up to those! For instance, Breaking Benjamin and Shinedown were some large loses. Of everyone that wasn’t able to perform though, missing out on Underoath is what probably made me the most sad. I know I just saw them in March, but they’re so good! Another reason I wasn’t as deeply upset as a lot of the other festival-goers is because I know there’s always a risk with the weather and I value my safety more than live music. I will say though, the cancellations and then the hellishly hot weather are the number one reason why I will not be heading back to this festival in the future.
Some bright spots in the trip included sets from Seether, Nothing More, The Struts, Papa Roach, and Nine Inch Nails. It’s sad to know that Nine Inch Nails were replacing Foo Fighters because of the tragic death of drummer, Taylor Hawkins, but having never seen these guys before I was pretty excited to check them out! And they delivered! Another disadvantage of this festival was that it was four days long. That’s kind of a lot of time in the elements, whether it’s rain or the hot sun. That kind of made Sunday a bit of bear to handle, and probably made the Nine Inch Nails performance a little less exciting than I was hoping. Overall though, the bands I did get to see sounded great! Radkey was a band that I’d never really listened to before, and they were pretty dang good! They reminded me a bit of The Pink Spiders, so I’ll for sure be checking them out further. John 5 is another act I had never really heard of, but the half set I was able to listen to sounded incredible!
All in all, some unfortunate things happened with the trip, but I was glad I got to hang out with some good friends, check out live music at a new venue, and get some much needed beach time on top of it! It doesn’t sound like this festival is going to be moving out of Florida’s rainy season, so I don’t know that I’d recommend checking it out, but you can live vicariously through me this year.