BFF’s At BFF
It’s been a full six days since my two day, two night, sonic bender at Best Friends Forever Festival in Downtown Las Vegas. One of my personal best friend’s forever, SUNBENDR band mate, my therapist, Brandon Parkhurst, and I, flew from San Diego to Las Vegas with full intent to soak up the music, the scene, and syphon as much inspiration as we could from the festival. We went to see our sentimental favorites and veer off course to discover some new bands we weren’t familiar with. I’ll keep this brief, because if you weren’t there, you missed out, and now you have to wait nearly a full year to experience this epic gathering of mostly like-minded grownups who grew in to their formative years slathering themselves in the sounds of Sunny Day Real Estate, Braid, Jesus Lizard, Unwound, and the like.
Best Friends Forever Festival had a lineup that was like catnip to 90s indie rockers like myself. We missed day one; again because we’re grownups and two days in Vegas is two days too long in Vegas already. The first band we saw of the weekend was Phony, at the request of Inherent Bummer’s own Travis Ferre. Thank you, Travis, they were amazing, albeit played at the peak heat of Saturday, 100-degrees, only soothed by a $45 dollar mega-cocktail and a wet towel on my head. From there, it was Karate, the undisputed kings of tone, Braid kicked off their set with two hammers, “New Nathan Detroits” and “Killing A Camera”, allowing us to leave early for a quick disco nap and a dip in the pool. We returned refreshed and ready for Built To Spill who played a solid, B-side set. Then it was the GOATs, Unwound, who we had seen a few days before in Orange County. Unwound still have it, always had it, and will never lose it, mesmerizing, loud, beautiful, and powerful. The pictures tell me we were in the audience for Sunny Day Real Estate, but my brain tells me we were at a black jack table about to be escorted out of the casino for outlandish behavior, we’ll have to ask the Golden Nugget Casino to see their surveillance tapes to be sure.
Sunday came too soon, and we stayed in bed for most of the day. One great thing about being a grown up at a music festival is the wise decisions you sometimes make. We decided to get lunchtime massages, drink electrolytes, and wait out the harshest of the daytime sun while arriving just in time for the mighty, Murder City Devils. Met the bass player from The Get Up Kids before their set and he was a total sweetheart. TGUK played vibrant; fun set of indie-pop-punk and had the crowd bopping along. Then the king took to the stage, I’m not talking about Elvis Pressley, and I’m talking about the king of kings, David Yow and his band of buzz saw beasts, The Jesus Lizard. From the first note, it was clear, The Jesus Lizard feasted on us, the crowd gave themselves to the band, we served ourselves up on a platter, we went berserk. Yow leapt off stage and crowd surfed for five minutes, through two full songs, and never missed a note—legend, icon, savage.
The next few hours were spent on a Las Vegas street corner having a deep, loving talk with my BFF that ended in oblivion. Anyway, hopefully Best Friends Forever Festival comes back in 2025, this is a festival for grown ups who love good music and good times, the vibe was impeccable, the crowd kind and courteous, the youngsters that came out were refreshing with their love of “our” music—which to them is probably considered classic rock. The drinks slightly expensive, but nothing crazy, and there was free water for all to drink. Gambling between bands is fun. All things said, done, and heard—we will be back at BFF2025 searching for the serotonin we left in Las Vegas, and we hope to see you there, too.—Chris Coté
