Oakland Jazz Festival

It was a real wast of money. Good lineup, bad parking arangements, awful sound system. To much Rick and somebody. Will never attend the oakland jazz fest agin. They should have refunded our money back. I left befor it was over.

Parking was terrible, the event was totally unstructured and not prepared for the heat. There were no real instructions regarding parking, which shuttle to take. The instructions stated you could not bring this and that into the even. They NEVER checked any bags, one guy even had a blow up mattress. Kem who should have been the headline sang first the speakers did not work, he sang 6 songs, 3 from other artist and left for a bigger Jazz Festival in Los Angeles. The rest of at the 4 hours the sound was so bad we could not tell if anyone was on stage or a cd was playing, it seemed like spent most of the time listening to the MC's and various radio music. By the time Ledisi come on stage we were exhausted from the extreme heat and all we heard was a bunch of noise. When it was time to go the shuttles back to your care had not structure the people that worked there could not tell you which line you should be in the response when asked was "I DONT KNOW JUST STAND IN A LINE". Next year we will head to Pasadena for the real jazz festiva.

First, I didn't stay for the entire concert so I can only review what I saw. Parking was a complete mess! We had to park way up at the top of the hill and although this event had free shuttles, they did not come in a timely fashion. We walked all the way down the steep hill with ALL of our stuff in tow. We finally arrived inside venue at 11:00 AM, tired and sweaty, only to find space available at the top off the hill by the estate house and the stage was a mile away!!! Because we actually followed the rules and brought low-back chairs we still couldn't see above everyone else. Originally we sat by the loud speaker in the back and thought at least we'll be able to hear KEM when he took the stage, but then the speaker went out, so we couldn't see him or hear him clearly. Mind you....it was extremely HOT which played a huge part in why this concert was not a good set-up. With the heat and alcoholic beverages, people were getting sick and passing out. We literally could not stand the heat or the fact we couldn't see the stage, and the sound system SUCKED so we left!!!! But only to wait 30 min for the shuttle to take us back up the steep hill that never came. As we waited for the shuttle, there were quite a few people who left for the same reasons. We ended up sharing a cab with some cool ladies to get up the hill and couldn't get out of there fast enough!!! NEVER AGAIN!!! I want my money back!!!!!! I was told last year's concert went well, and I think they tried to pack as many people as humanly possible this year and charged a grip of money for these tickets. What they should have done was had big canopies set up (rain or shine) and chalked lines or something to guide people where to sit, also there should have been some jumbotrons so at least the people in the very back could pretend they were at the actual concert...believe me they made enough money to make those accomodations for us!!!!