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| She & Him. Photo Courtesy of Sam Jones. |
About a year ago, Milwaukee — affectionately nicknamed “The City of Festivals”—gained another festival. It, Verge Music Festival, proved a satisfying early June appetizer for Summerfest with its affordable price, impressive cache of renowned national acts as well as a cluster of tremendous local talent.
Even with bouts of uncooperative weather, a respectable crowd converged on Henry Maier Festival Park for the inaugural two-day rock festival featuring the likes of Weezer, Three Days Grace, AFI, She & Him and Eagles of Death Metal as well as local favorites such as Jaill, The Wildbirds, 1956 and the dearly departed Red Knife Lottery. The first Verge was a promising beginning with all the ingredients to become a popular and profitable yearly highlight on Milwaukee’s bursting festival calendar.
But most of the wind in the vulnerable young festival’s sails has long since disappeared, rendering the event so many viewed with excitement into a sudden source of frustration. The worst part is that nothing the coordinators did is to blame for this unfortunate turn. It’s what they haven’t done.
Being the intrepid 20-something journalist I am, I explored various mediums in search of details on Verge ’11. What I found in my pursuit were next-to-no details and an abundance of complaints in regard to the lack of details. Also, a surprising number of fan requests for Brand New to play. But I digress.
I found no date to speak of, no bands listed, nothing but … nothing. The official site hasn’t been updated since 2010, as if 2011 never happened. In fact, the only morsel of information I could harvest from the Verge Twitter was that the festival will take place at some point after Summerfest due to renovations. No more, no less than that has been publicly stated. Facebook proved equally absent on details, though it did let me know I wasn’t the only person out there perturbed by the Verge brass’s handling of the situation, or lack thereof.
“So it would be cool if someone got the ball rolling for this year. Thanks.” Joel H. said on April 17. Verge did not respond. Alicia O. echoed Joel’s request, posting, “Verge, you are really killing me here. I WANT INFO.” on April 20, again, with no reply. Three days later, Jasmine S. typed [sic], “I need to to request off of work but I can’t do that if I don’t have dates. Come on now.” Crickets.
The calendar flipped to May and Kyle P. continued the questioning with a [sic] “if verge is after summerfest what will the dates be???” Kyle’s request finally prompted Verge to grace its own Facebook wall with a response. Could this reply hold the answers we’d all been waiting months for with bated breath?
“Hey Kyle,” it starts. “The dates have not been announced yet. Stay tuned!”
Oh.
Scroll up past a few more date inquiries and requests for Brand New to play and you’ll see a wall post from this week by Justin P. “When are going to hear about the dates? I don’t want to hear ‘soon’ I want an actual date on when we will know the date of Verge.”
Aside from fixing an error in punctuation and deciding against the awkward phrasing with two uses of “date” in the last sentence, I could not have said it any better myself. This all may sound whiney or as if we detail-oriented souls feel like we’re owed Verge Music Festival. Personally, I fully realize Verge is a treat, a privilege and another excuse to see top-tier mainstream and local musicians in a community that already spoils its music lovers rotten.
I’m not demanding bands. I haven’t read nor overheard one complaint about prices or the venue. All I ask at this moment is a date and, if feeling especially generous, to wet our collective beak with the names of a few bands confirmed to play. I’m fairly certain a date has been set and that at least a few acts have been booked. Thousands of people are willing to burn sick days, hand over fistfuls of cash and carpool hours to be part of Verge — to support Verge. There’s no question that people enjoyed the first go-round and want the opportunity to be excited for a reprise of this great festival. The question is, when will the organizers let people be excited?
