(The pic on the left, as well as many others from Saturday night, can be seen on Sally Glass' flickr.)I might be naive or something, but I really didn't think our
awards show at Fra House would get shut down by the cops. Maybe I underestimated the number of people who would show up, or maybe I though we'd be able to keep everything relatively calm no matter how many people came. You can call it wishful thinking I guess, but I just figured everything would work out the way we planned.
As more and more people started to arrive on the Fra House grounds early Saturday night, however, it became clear that the party would be difficult to manage to say the least-- by 10, there were already enough people there to make it a fairly epic event, and it seemed that the Denton Police would probably end up taking notice at some point.
And sure enough, right at about 1030,
the cops arrived and told everyone to clear out. I never heard whether it was just a noise complaint or something else, but whatever the cause, the party either had to be moved to a new location or killed off completely, because it would not be happening at Fra House. I was pretty freaked out about the possibility that the Fra House guys would all receive tickets, and I was also concerned that many of the bands and DJs would not be able to play. But thanks to the organizational skills of the Fra House crew, the openness of Denton DIY, and the willingness of Dentonites to hear good music and drink shitty keg beer for free, we were able to shift to Plan B and move the party to new locations with a good deal of success.
Since there were too many acts to shove all into one venue (which is why Fra House seemed to be the perfect place for this show), Ed and the rest of the Fra House guys decided to split the party up by sending the DJs to the
8th Continent and the rock bands to
Secret Headquarters (who had previously agreed to serve as a back up venue for us in case Fra House was busted). Of course, we never anticipated the party getting busted as early as it did, so it was quite a relief to find that SHQ was willing to accomodate us and let our crowd and our keg into the party for free. And when we arrived at 8th Continent to check out the dance party, we walked in to find Lars of
War Wizards and
the Undoing of David Wright already DJing some great tracks while the guys from the Party waited on some equipment to start their set. Unfortunately, the 8th Continent party was eventually shut down by the police as well, but I guess that is what happens when you have too much fun. I'm also sad to say that Ghosthustler wasn't able to spin at all, and the Party was only able to play for a limited time-- very unfortunate, sure, but under the circumstances I'm glad that anyone was able to play for any period of time.
Although we were a bit bummed about the events of Saturday night, we still had a great time, and everyone involved with WSJR was very happy to see Denton DIY come through and make the best out of a bad situation. Every performance we saw was fantastic (especially Akkolyte--absolutely punishing), and the fact that the shows were able to continue in new locations within such a short period of time was quite amazing. We want to thank all the bands, venues and individuals who helped us pull this thing off, and we want to thank everyone else for coming out. We'll certainly put more thought into crowd control and security in the future, but I don't regret trying this out at Fra House for a second. We hope everyone had as good a time as we did.
