90’s Nostalgia (Vid: Reversal of Man @ SRQ Fest ‘99)
Back in the waning days of of the late 90’s me and a few friends decided to put together a punk festival in the sleepy little town of Bradenton, FL. At the time, Tampa (45 minutes North of us) was a huge epicenter for punk rock activity, but we always felt like an ugly stepchild who didn’t really fit in with that scene and we really wanted to do our own thing. After attending the More than Music Festival in 1998, I thought why couldn’t something like that happen in my little sleepy hollow. So along with some other like minded individuals we put together the mis-appropriately named “Mid-West Florida Punk Fest”. It was held in conjunction with a the Youth Liberation Festival, which consisted of day long workshops that ran the gambit from Anarchist Theory to sprouting. Oh yes, the PC 90’s.
Over the span of 3 days we had between 200-300 people show up from as far and wide as Canada to California. We raised over $1200 that was put towards opening a youth run info center that actually opened and ran for under a year called the “Atari Info Shop”.
The fest itself was a pretty stellar line-up:
Dystopia, Reversal of Man, Man Cake (2/3 Frodus), Darkest Hour, Majority Rule, Discount, The Spirit of Versailles, Anthem 88, Engine Down, Portrait, Trepan Nation, Asshole Parade, As Friends Rust, Scrotum Grinder, Jiyuna, Jane LeCroy (Spook Engine, Vitapup), Runn-A-mucks, Tomorrow, Dave Deporis, and many others.
These videos were taken by one of the Spirit of Versailles guys and I figured were lost to the hands of time. My old chum, Chet Loggins, http://clogginsart.blogspot.com/ was able to resurrect my limping VHS tape and committ it to interweb immortality. Oh sweet nostalgia.
