Backstage at High Fructose

Author

By Stephanie Cybart

---

Background

High Fructose is the music festival that anyone who knows anything about bands that no one has heard of spends all year salivating over, held in the middle of some corn field in Nebraska. This year's line up is particularly epic: Too-cool lo-fi gods Hive Engine and cavity-inducing indie-pop darlings Vespa Avenger have been booked to play, and the audience members have never had to work harder to downplay their excitement.

Come to think of it, it's sort of surprising that Hive Engine and Vespa Avenger are headlining at the same festival, since rumour has it that they hate one another...

Of course (rumour, for once, being absolutely correct) it was only a matter of time before one of the bands pissed the other off. That's all anyone really knows about last night since the details are lost in a haze of drugs and booze and spite. The only thing anyone knows for certain is that both bands have announced their refusal to play tonight unless the other pulls out.

At least their managers have managed to nag them into meeting to work out a solution- The real challenge, however, will be to get them talking instead of making passive aggressive comments in the one another's direction. Two hours of bickering, furtive drug use, irony, fragile musician egos, and hopefully a salvageable music festival that won't result in the destruction of the careers of everyone involved will follow. And hey, who's that guy hanging around backstage? The one everyone says is the coolest person they've ever met? Does anyone know who he is?

---