Article Contributed on: 10/1/2009 3:47:22 PM
Denver, CO - Denver's Endotrend music festival narrowly escaped a devastating blow after bureaucratic differences forced a last-minute venue change for Saturday's event.
Dramatic changes have swept though the Endotrend festival following the announcement on Wednesday that the festival would no longer take place on the Auraria Campus downtown as scheduled. It has since been relocated to 3 Kings Tavern, TS Board Shop, and The Oriental Theater.
The split occurred after last-minute stipulations were added by officials at the university that have not yet been made public. According to festival co-founder of Endotrend and creator of the Jeremy Gregory of the Bands for Lands organization, the decision to switch venues was difficult but necessary.
"There were some financial things that caught us off guard and would have broken us financially. We felt we had no choice but to pull off campus to protect the mission of the event."
Gregory stated that these types of situations often occur in the process of planning grassroots events like the Endotrend festival that is billing itself as the nation's first altruistic and philanthropic festival.
" I think that grassroots movements always have an uphill battle to climb and unfortunately, we are not immune to that either," he said.
Since the announcement, the Endotrend organizers were forced to scale back the original plans of the festival including several sustainability and environmental accountability measures like using a wind-powered campus like Auraria's to reduce the festival's environmental impact.
" Our festival took a big hit. It was bigger than any one person though. It was about the cause and this is really unfortunate. Now we've had to take away many of our altruistic and philanthropic components," Gregory said.
These were not the only losses however, as a handful of local acts pulled themselves from the event following the relocation. Despite the negative reaction on the part of these bands, a vast majority of the line up remains the same including performances by national acts like Edie Sedgwick. Nonetheless, the withdrawals struck a personal chord with Gregory.
" It isn't about the bands, it's about the cause. Being a musician myself, I believe that there has to be sacrifice otherwise the music community and the activist community suffer. The bands that are still playing are the bands that truly believe in the cause and are bummed but playing despite the circumstance because they believe in the cause," he said.
In the wake of such hardships, the Endotrend creators have already set their sights on a more reliable location for next year's festival in the University of Denver's campus. As soon as Saturday's festival wraps, Gregory and company will begin planning and hopefully submit proposals to the university in early November.
"We want to find a campus that is willing to welcome this event into the community as a chance to do something really cool and purposeful" Gregory stated.
Gregory said that DU is a good option because the university is home to several very active student organizations as well as the world renowned international studies program.
" It was a huge bummer about Auraria, but maybe it was a blessing in disguise and was meant to be on the DU campus," said Gregory.