Medellin, Colombia
The Alta Voz Punk Festival went down this past Saturday in Medellin, Colombia in a park near the University of Medellin. It was a beautiful day for an outdoor festival, not too hot and most importantly, no rain!
I arrived around 3:30 pm with my amigos from Los Suziox (The Dirty), who were scheduled to play around 7PM. We got there just in time to hear hardcore punk band “Desercion” (Desertion) play and the pit was already working overtime with young punks throwing their bodies around to the beat of the music.
After a couple more pop punk bands like “Tom Sawyer” and “Popcorn” my good buddies from “Desastre Capital” (Capital Disaster) got on stage and tore it up.
I spent most of my time backstage giving out stickers and t-shirts or out in the crowd taking pics and video of the “faces of punk” in Medellin, Colombia.
The crowd’s anticipation was palpable when Los Suziox hit the stage around 7:20pm and delivered a fast and furious set that had the crowd waving “Los Suziox” banderas and chanting “Otra, Otra, Otra” after the set.
I stuck around to watch one more band, “No Comply” which was a a rap/hardcore fusion and then headed back to my hotel.
It was a free show and part of an entire weekend of free concerts put on by the government of Medellin and I have to tell you I was impressed by the organization (everything ran on time) of the event. There was no out of control behavior that I witnessed and all in all it was as organized as any music festival you could find in the U.S. with the perfect balance of security vs. allowing people to have a good time. Something they seem to miss in the U.S. so often (SEE MY POSTS AND ACCOMPANYING COMMENTS ON THE RECENT SOCIAL DISTORTION SHOW IN LONG ISLAND, NYC).
I took LOTS and LOTS of pics, so if you want to see the entire set be sure and visit our FLIKR PAGE HERE.
I’ll also have some video from the event with Desastre Capital and Los Suziox Video up soon, so stay tuned!
Enjoy!