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The inaugural Kaaboo Texas festival was pretty awkward, but at least the music was good

Ludacris, Blue October, Bush, Alanis, Lionel Richie and Joan Jett turned in energetic, professional shows.

Imagine a major music festival with plenty of artists you've loved for decades, no lines for beer, food or restrooms, and plenty of elbow room to twirl and twist around close to the stage. Now, if you've been to Austin City Limits Music Festival or any other sort of giant multi-day, multi-stage concert, you likely can't even picture this dream scenario.

But that was exactly the scene at the inaugural Kaaboo Texas festival last weekend at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Since its lineup announcement in January, Kaaboo organizers have gone out of their way to establish its brand via a buzzword grab bag. "Upscale," "full-sensory," "culinary," "craft," "indulgences" and "immersive" have all been employed by Kaaboo to distinguish this festival from others. It indeed felt more exclusive and, yes, "upscale" than ACL, for example, but not solely due to the "indulgences" or "experiences."

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Complaining about the price of beer at any large event might seem trite, but $11 to $12 for beer is pretty extreme. The same Coors Light aluminum bottle you paid $11 for at Kaaboo ran only $9 at the same stadium for Dallas Cowboys games this past season, which makes the pricing even more egregious. It's not a small thing to make a Cowboys game feel like a happy hour bargain.

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But what about the music? Regardless of the marketing buzz and ancillary trappings, it's still a music festival right?

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Well, sort of.

We were there on Friday and Sunday, and over the course of a dozen or so performances, the only gripe to be had regarding the actual music was that we didn't know whether or not Lauryn Hill ever made it to the stage to perform. (She did, eventually.) Her DJ hyped the crowd for the first 30 minutes of her Friday evening set before we decided to head over to catch Joan Jett on another stage.

But aside from that, sets from local heroes Old 97's, southern rap luminary Ludacris, Texas-bred radio rockers Blue October, British '90s alt-rock hitmakers Bush, and the aforementioned Jett turned in energetic, professional shows, even though the setting didn't seem to provide optimum encouragement for them.

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On Friday night inside the stadium, on the festival's mammoth main stage, the Canadian queen of '90s rock radio, Alanis Morissette, radiated enough energy for a packed stadium, not that she needed as much.

As had been the case for Bush before her, the crowd watching her perform might've been in the thousands, but one look around the seemingly empty 100,000-seat stadium, and it felt like you had arrived early to the show and were waiting on more folks to show up. When Blue October kicked off the day on the same stage a few hours earlier, the sparse smattering of people in front of the stage made it look like the band was doing a sound check, not performing a true main stage set at a major festival.

It wasn't intimate. It was pretty awkward, actually. And it wasn't simply because it was a chilly, gloomy day or the first day of the festival. Sunday was as stunning of a weather day as we've had in 2019, and the third day of the festival felt exactly the same sort of empty as that first day did.

Making matters funkier was the festival's dogged approach to the upscale good life. Large, gated VIP sections, complete with green turf carpeting, took up an entire half of the main viewing areas directly in front of each stage.

What this did, especially for the earliest sets on each day, was create an off-putting dynamic where the general admission side was far more crowded — we can't say it was packed, because that would've required more people — than the relatively empty VIP sections.

It was, again, awkward. Don't believe us? Take it from the musicians. On Friday, Ludacris made multiple comments about the odd nature of the audience setup, imploring the VIPs to come to the front of the area so things didn't look so weird. On the other outdoor stage a few minutes later, the Old 97's couldn't hide their bewilderment, leading to Rhett Miller and Murry Hammond making jokes about the unbalanced nature of the audience.

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Guests enjoy the pool as Mix Master Mike performs during Kaaboo Texas at AT&T Stadium in...
Guests enjoy the pool as Mix Master Mike performs during Kaaboo Texas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, on May 12, 2019. (Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

And what about the Vegas-style party pool Kaaboo installed? This was likely the most intriguing aspect of the whole weekend. But unless you ponied up for a pool-specific pass for an additional fee on top of what you paid for your festival pass, you couldn't even see the pool, let alone get in.

When Mix Master Mike, the famous DJ for the Beastie Boys, took the stage inside the "BASK" pool area on Sunday at 5 p.m., there were maybe a dozen people standing in a large grassy area as another dozen or so sun-bathers leaned over the pool's railing to watch from the side. It just felt off, and it sure as heck didn't feel festive at that moment.

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On Friday, a number of larger-than-life murals were being painted as the festival began. Seeing artists spraying colorful canvases was pretty cool, and for veteran festival fans, it was something unique to take in. But that novelty didn't last. By Sunday afternoon the murals were all completed, the artists nowhere to be found. The works felt like Instagram-worthy backdrops that few people were actually posing in front of.

Counting Crows performs during Kaaboo Texas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on May 12, 2019.
Counting Crows performs during Kaaboo Texas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on May 12, 2019. (Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

While Sunday featured a psychedelically-searing set from St. Paul and the Broken Bones, a sun-splashed burst of roots-y twang from the Avett Brothers and an hour's worth of sing-alongs from the Adam Duritz-led Counting Crows, it was impossible to not take note of how insanely easy it was to get near the front of the crowd for any of these shows.

The performances were great. For the most part, Kaaboo hitched its music wagon to bands that have been doing their thing for decades, and for that, we applaud them. They picked a demographic-specific lane and stayed in it, for better (Alanis was just sublime) or worse (sorry, Pitbull). If the music is the most important part of how a festival is judged, then Kaaboo can claim a victory in that sense.

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It's counter-intuitive to moan about never having stood in one single line for anything all weekend. After all, parking was a breeze, getting in and out of the venue couldn't have been simpler, and at no point could an attendee feel as though they were too crowded for any given element. When asked about the attendance, a rep for the festival declined to provide any specifics, but stated: "Organizers were pleased with the positive turnout for the first-year event and are excited to return next year!"

But the optics weren't great, regardless of the fancy corporate promotional tents, the array of culinary options and cocktail bars and original works of art.