Not everyone had as much fun as the kid pictured above did this past Friday night at the Big Brooklyn Pig Roast/EAR FARM 3rd Anniversary Party presented by Brooklyn Based, Sweet Deliverance, and EAR FARM. Let’s face it, although the event sold out, it was more or less a disaster. I know it, you know it. Here is a countdown of the top ten things that went horribly wrong this past Friday night at The Yard.

#10 - That Smell: the scent of The Gowanus Canal didn’t exactly fill the air, and wasn’t noticeable from most places in The Yard, but whenever you (meaning me, or any of the bands) went to the back side of the stage a certain nasty odor hit you in the face and reminded you that the body of water directly in view is diseased and gross. “Ewww canal!” does not pair well with “yummm, food!” Plus, I needed a #10.

#9 - The Guestlist Situation: all tickets were ‘will call’ and this created a list of names a mile long for the door people to have to sort through and decipher. Example: co-EAR FARMer Mike Grimes even had trouble getting in… to his own show.

#8 - Sold Out: already mentioned, the event sold out. Awesome! Or, not so much… As you’ll see, the selling out (and selling of non-food tickets) overpopulated the venue and made many of the following situations much worse.

#7 - The Bar: this could be its own list of ten things… ten things that went wrong with the bar. It didn’t open until 6:20pm, the bartenders from the venue didn’t know what on Earth was going on. A line formed immediately, there were only two taps for the delicious Sixpoint Ales. People were allowed to order as many beers as they wanted at a time (up to 10, or more) which created an instant bottleneck. The line grew exponentially as attendees wanted to take advantage of the $1 beers from 6-7pm. The wait in line extended up to an hour, or more, to get a beer. At one point, I heard someone say “$6? But I’ve been in line since 6:30 for the $1 beers!” to which one of the bartenders responded, “yes, but the dollar beers only lasted until 7.” Madness. It was then that I had all of my friends who were attending the event take over half of the bar, and the wine duties. People were literally yelling at them and I told other friends who called me to say they were on their way to not even bother coming to the show at all. Nobody was getting served, mutiny was imminent. A plan was needed, fast. Co-EAR FARMer Mike and his brother went out and bought cold beers from a grocery store to hand out to the people in line just to satiate them until they could actually reach the real bar, an hour or so in the near future. All told, my friends worked the heck out of the beer and wine and served everyone they could as fast as they could - somehow the insanity was dealt with. Bravo guys, and thanks so much to everyone who helped out. The Surge worked, the disaster at the bar was handled, and the line problems moved to another area…

#6 - The Food Line: honestly, by the time the food was served, I was done trying to put out food and beverage fires and had my hands full trying to deal with the other issues you’ll read about below. But it looked awful, and just as long as the beer line had been. People were most certainly waiting in line for an hour or more to get their pork tacos and BBQ. Terrible.

#5 - No Trashcans: during a brief moment when I was behind the bar sorting out one disaster or another, a woman walked up and asked if we had a trashcan behind the bar. We had many, but the kegs of beer were in them. I couldn’t find any place to put garbage so I offered to take from her whatever she needed to throw out. It turned out to be a bone, not something either of us wanted to hand off. I quickly found an empty box, which she happily discarded into, and we both moved on. However, I noticed many many people unable to dispose of their garbage after they finished eating and plates were just left ‘wherever’. Sweet. You’d expect a venue to have ample trashcans…

#4 - Only One Bathroom: that’s right. Rather than the portapotties we were told would be at the event there was just ONE measly bathroom. And it was all hidden in the back of the venue, inside of the office, where nobody could really see or tell that that’s where the bathroom was. Somehow people found it though, and the line for the bathroom was just as long as the lines for everything else. Also, oh yeah - in this bathroom there were no paper towels of any kind. Nice.

#3 - No One In Charge: towards the end of the night, a woman walked up to me holding a plate of food. She said “I know you work here, and I just have a few complaints and things I’d like to say. First of all, it took me over an hour to get a beer and another hour to get this food. That’s unacceptable! And $32 for the little bit of cold food I have here?! Where’s the music?! Someone needs to do something because there are a lot of things going wrong here.”

#2 - No Food For You: neither myself, the sound guy, nor any of my friends who PAID MONEY TO GET IN, and ended up WORKING, were able to eat any of the food at the event. We were just too busy and the lines were too long.

#1 - Power Outages: from my perspective, nothing was more terrible than this. Because, if there was one thing I expect a venue to be able to handle it’s the power that runs their stage. And, if there was one thing I expected to be able to manage, it was the music. The Jones Street Boys, Motel Motel, Bel Air (and my DJ talents in between sets), were the things EAR FARM was supposed to bring to this party. Sadly, the music was a failure. At 6:20pm the first band, Bel Air, took to the stage and played a full set. An amazing set. Right as they finished we lost power on the stage (and behind the bar too, where my friends dealt with all of the bar issues mentioned above by the light of a single candle). The second band, Motel Motel, setup their gear and waited. Over and over again I attempted to get the people at The Yard to sort out the issue with the power on stage. A friend of mine in attendance offered to go get a generator, The Yard said no and that they’d fix the problem themselves. They did, over an hour later. Therefore, when Motel Motel took the stage at 8:40pm they only had twenty minutes to play before sound curfew. The third band of the evening, The Jones Street Boys, didn’t get to play at all. Boo.

By the end of the night it seemed as though we were able to salvage some semblance of a good time for a certain portion of the crowd. At the very least, the kids seemed to be having fun dancing along to Motel Motel and Bel Air. However, things didn’t go as I would’ve liked. Not at all. I was disappointed and embarrassed… especially considering this was the night we picked to debut the brand new vinyl EAR FARM banner.

I’ll tell you what though, I’m going to do two things as a result of this disaster: #1 - have another EAR FARM show with the same three bands on the bill, this time with ample electricity, bathrooms, and bar service; and, #2 - I think I’ll have a proper EAR FARM sponsored pig pickin’, likely back home in Raleigh early next year. Stay tuned.

***also, please don’t let any of this dissuade you from coming out to EAR FARM’s CMJ Party at Pianos on Wednesday, October 22nd from 2-7:30pm. There WILL be power; there WILL be fun!***