As I mentioned last week, we attended the first annual Mile High Music Festival over the weekend, or what I hope is the first annual. Overall I felt that the event was a huge success, easily deserving of a B or B+ grade, and with a few changes could become one of the truly great festivals in the country. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from the weekend.

The first highlight of the event was the lineup. For me, there was no better festival lineup this year than this one, although Rothbury was very similar. Though, due to tight scheduling, I missed a few artists that were on my list from last week, I still managed to catch most of them. Steve Winwood was probably the surprise show of the weekend, he and the accompanying band sounded great and I was shocked at how many songs I knew. The headliners provided amazing shows as well, especially both Tom Petty and the Dave Matthews Band.

Another positive from the weekend were the sound systems. The sound setup on the main stage was perfect, well unless you were off to the far side of the stage, but who wants to be there anyway. The addition of a secondary stack of speakers was perfect for those of us who don’t want to fight to the front of the crowd. The sound was also very good at one of the smaller stages, aka the Bullsnake Stage. From the few shows I saw in the tents, I would also say the sound there was acceptable. The one stage that needed work was the Lizard Stage, which I felt really affected some of the performances there, especially Jason Mraz’s.

As far as lowlights go, the top of the list for me is transportation. I am still shocked that the promoters didn’t setup shuttle buses from downtown. If this is going to be anything more than a local festival, meaning people coming to town just to see the concert, then there needs to be a better way to get there. We took a cab back and forth both nights. We paid $60 for a minivan full on the way there. When we attempted to leave the festival grounds, we were greeted by a huge line of people waiting for cabs, and no cabs to be found. Fortunately we were able to get the same driver to come back and pick us up, but it came at an even larger price.

Another thing that could use some improvement were the available vendors on site. True, there were some good vendors on hand, but there is easily some room for improvement. Budweiser is easily the most unlikely vendor I would have thought would have been at the festival, but they were there and that was all that was there. That’s right, no micro-brews. This must change. Food vendors were hit or miss, and unfortunately we missed on the first night. Oh well, not much you can do about that, just hope for a better choice next time.

I’m hoping that they will learn from the mistakes and make the changes needed to make the festival even better than it already was. I know that I will definitely return.