Wavefront Music Festival

This music festival is pretty cool. Ther is a lot to see and take in. This year the line up was not as good as last year with Duck Sauce and Eric Prydz.
They need to amp up secuirty here because the entire beach smells like weed and you got all these guys selling X out in the open.
People are just blown out there minds jumping and spinning in circles.

Ok it wasn’t totally horrible, but it wasn’t as good as other electronic music festivals i.e. Detroit)
we drove for about 20 minutes and found free parking on the street.
the two main stages had perfect sound quality. the two small ones in between were placed too close to each other and the music bled. the sound was pretty bad in the tent stage. it felt like a joke. anyway, some of the artists on Friday were good. the attendance was OK. not too diverse for people watching. the weather was not too hot, but it didn’t feel quite right. there were some chairs around and shade on only one of the small stages.
we had the one day pass and no reentry was allowed, which meant that we were trapped for 6 hours in a place with fried food options, beer, sake, mikes hard lemonade, energy drinks and portable toilets only. that’s that.
during the day it was bearable but in the evening it was pretty much impossible to navigate through the disgusting toilets as they were not lit. so. great idea, but not pleasant. I will not be rushing back next year. it felt like an endurance test.

I bought an early bird presale ticket so I came all 3 days. I understand the producer’s intent to provide underground artists an opportunity to shine, but I don’t think the quality of music stayed consistent throughout the weekend. However, I can’t really fault the producer for that.
What I can point out though is that things were incredibly expensive! Parking in the lot was $ 50 on Friday and Saturday. Sunday? It got bumped up to $ 80! HOLY CRAP that is expensive! I guess it’s cheaper than the alternative (park wherever you want and get a ticket) but that is outrageous to me. Drinks were on the pricier side as well. $ 7 for a 12 oz can of beer?!
I understand that Wavefront is a lot smaller compared to Lollapalooza and perhaps Pitchfork, but you can never go wrong with having too many bathrooms! Before the day was even halfway through, toilet paper was out, lines were at least 15 minutes long and guys were peeing in the corner (I’m jealous of you by the way).
These gripes aside, I enjoyed myself. I got to see a lot of friends, partied on the beach and «expressed myself» with Diplo.
Thank you for the experience.

Wavefront was no doubt an amazing event and a fresh breath of air when it comes to music festivals in Chicago, even around other cities. As with every festival in its first year, there are always things that need to be improved on. I had passes for two days, but ended up only going on day 2. I believe that I bought a Groupon for this event, and it was super cheap. I am hoping that for 2013, they will have another live promotion. We got there around midday, which ended up being more than enough for us.
Parking — there was a lot where you can pay an insane amount of money, but it was convenient and very close to the event. Since Montrose is a public beach, we ended up waiting 15 – 20 minutes for a parking spot to clear up a bit further away, and that was way worth it! If they will have the same parking system this year, I recommend either getting there extra early, or being patient and waiting for someone who is just chilling on the beach to leave.
My biggest problem was the lineup — it wasn’t the best, but far from being the worst. I absolutely LOVED Nadia Ali. They focused on non mainstream artists, which I can totally respect. But that also affects the price, so if they will bring in more known dj’s this year, prices will soar. There were two main stages playing different types of music. I would say one was more chill, while the other was a more upbeat tempo. It was awhile ago, so I don’t remember the details. Regardless, it’s an amazing location and I felt like I was partying in SOBE rather than in Chi. The bar areas were set up nicely, so I never felt like I had to walk too far to grab another beer. With the stages being on the sand, there was a good assortment of food vendors and clothing/​jewlery type of things on top of the «hill», as well as decent amount of portable toilets.
With that being said, nothing ever felt too crowded. It was a perfect amount of people and the sound system was banging! The promoters set up bungalow’s for the VIP which was super sweet, too bad I wasn’t one of those people.
There is NOTHING better than partying on the beach on a hot summer day and listening to great music. Out of all the events in Chicago, I recommend this one because it’s so much fun. I mean, how can a party on the beach go wrong?! :)

Music festival on the Montrose Beach sand… with all the music festivals that pop up lately, why hasn’t anyone done this idea yet?
They had a hell of a line-​up, Eric Prydz was my favorite, enjoyed how they had a local stage where Milk & Cookies killed it (and a guest appearance by Nadia Ali — love her). The stages were huge, had awesome visual effects and a great sound system. Even had awesome fireworks in addition to the stage fog.
I’m glad I got to go for their first year, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be getting my tickets as soon as they come out for next year. You might wanna keep an eye out for the Groupon as well. I went both days and thought all of their stages were BOMB, and I also loved that it was (older) young adults and there weren’t teeny boppers running around. My biggest problem with Spring Awakening or Lollapalooza, is the overwhelming amount of middle school/​high schoolers. Like Adrienne mentioned, love that this hasn’t hit mainstream EDM, so enjoy it while it lasts!
The double line setup for drinks wasn’t too big of a deal to me — just go buy $ 30-​$ 50 in drink tickets when you walk in. At least that way you can just budget yourself for the rest of the day. If you don’t feel like doing that, get VIP Tickets!
Word to the wise — it’s kind of a bitch leaving this event due to there only being one big road leaving Montrose Beach. So bring your motorcycle/​scooter/​bicycle, or plan on just taking the CTA.

Wavefront needs to get some tips from Spring Awakening organizers about logistics. Why do you guys have double lines to get inside the fest and that weird, inefficient 2-​step drink ticket system?
Other than their forgivable logistical hiccups, Wavefront was AMAZING. it was one of my best fest experiences ever — definitely blew Ultra and North Coast out of the water! Wavefront’s non-​mainstream lineup (Matthew Dear, Nic Fanciulli, Sasha, Prydz, Sultan & Ned Shepard etc) was a welcome relief from the typical edm fest players…
not to point out the obvious, but it’s on the beach! talk about a quintessential summertime chi weekend. the vibe takes me back to ibiza. grooving to tech house all day under the sun — there’s nothing like watching the sunset with epic edm playing in the background, drinking 312s!
i loved how it wasn’t overcrowded and the music came across loud and clear. also, because there were only 2 big stages, it was easy to go back and forth and catch different sets. unlike other fests, I felt completely comfortable wandering around on my own and then finding my friends in the crowd again later.
the grand finale with fireworks going off for what felt like FOREVER as Sasha was closing out his set was one of the most memorable music moments of my life!
I can’t wait to go again next year — if they fix the logistical issues, this festival will be a solid 5 star experience!

Wavefront music festival is a 2 day EDM fest right on the beach. This is the first year for Wavefront, so they have a few kinks to work out for the upcoming years.
This year the fest headlined djs like Eric Morillo, Duck Sauce, and Eric Prydz. I bought my 2 day pass for $ 90, but I believe they were cheaper when they first went on sale. When we first arrived on Saturday we had to wait in line to get our wristbands then wait in another line to get inside. The line to get inside was long. They need to work on that next year. If you had GA tickets you can only buy beer and wine. Alcohol was for VIP ticket holders. You cannot buy drinks unless you have drink tickets. So first we had to wait in a long line for drink tickets then wait in a different long line for drinks. They handled things better on Sunday and the lines for drinks weren’t too bad, but Saturday was horrible.
Minus all those kinks I had a blast! The music was great and the people were fun. I can’t wait until next year. Hopefully they extend it to three days and bring in some bigger djs.