Angry Residents Thought Bassnectar’s Festival Was An Earthquake
This past weekend marked the first-ever Bassnectar curated two-day music festival. While festival-goers were presented with a massive lineup including Porter Robinson, Flux Pavilion, Wu-Tang Clan, Flying Lotus and of course Bassnectar, residents were not pleased with the Bass Center music festival that took place in Commerce City, Colorado.
Neighbors of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park were upset over the extensive noise levels from the festival. Residents even went as far as saying that there was a “sonic boom” reaching as far as 5 miles away from the festival. One person even thought an earthquake had happened: “I thought it was an earthquake. I looked and realized it was bass. We have to be neighbors and friendly neighbors. This was not a friendly event.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/bassnectar-concert-commerce-city-colorado/
The Commerce City Mayor Sean Ford admitted that he didn’t listen to Bassnectar‘s music before issuing the concert permit, but said that the festival remained within the noise limits outlined in their official permit.
The complaints didn’t stop with just one report of a phantom earthquake. Local coverage from CBS Colorado and other Denver-area outlets picked up on a wave of noise complaints from residents living near Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, with several describing rattling windows and vibrations they felt through their homes well after the sun went down. It’s the kind of story that tends to blow up fast online, since there’s something inherently funny about a bass drop getting mistaken for a natural disaster, even as it highlights a very real friction point between festival production and the neighborhoods that host them.
Bass Center itself was a notable moment for Bassnectar’s career, marking his first attempt at curating a full two-day festival rather than just headlining someone else’s bill. The eclectic lineup, spanning bass music, hip-hop legends like Wu-Tang Clan, and left-field electronic acts like Flying Lotus, showed off just how wide his musical taste and pull within the scene had become by 2016. Commerce City’s Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, better known as a soccer stadium and home to the Colorado Rapids, made for an unconventional but roomy setting for that kind of ambitious lineup.
Noise disputes between festival organizers, venues, and surrounding residents are nothing new in the live music world, and this wasn’t the last time a Colorado bass show would draw complaints from nearby homeowners. Still, the earthquake comparison stuck around in headlines for weeks afterward, becoming one of those only-in-EDM stories that summed up just how much low end a Bassnectar set can put out when it’s dialed all the way up.
