After a long wait, our Associated Students brought back the biggest music festival at California State Monterey Bay: the Otterlands Festival! This year’s festival promised food trucks, fanny packs, and live music for students to decompress before finals.
The pre-festival included glitter stations, where students were decked out with high quality, chunky festival glitter on their faces- a great way to advertise for the event through social media posts of sparkling student faces. Also at the pre festival gathered various food trucks such as Ivan’s Baked Potatoes (where I had the honor of eating a delicious, loaded baked potato almost as big as my head!), a local Taqueria truck, and a juice stand with assorted agua frescas. This was a welcome change from the students who have inevitably grown tired of the same campus dining food options throughout the whole year, as stressed by Associated Student Peyton Huck: “Thank you Associated Students for blessing us with food that is not Chartwells <3”.
Opening for the two main acts was “DJ Fernando” Garcia, the winner of CSUMB’s very own “Battle of the DJs”. He created a great energy for the crowd with his movement inducing Electronic Dance styled music- even though he unfortunately got cut off for a “bad playlist” at the end, as said by students and himself on MyRaft. Garcia said, “Man, that was messed up :( #otterlands”. Regardless, students bounced to his beats in anticipation of the next acts: XYLO and Smallpools.
XYLO put the audience in a trance with her immense stage presence, dancing, and of course lovely singing. She performed some of her big hits like “yes & no”, “Afterlife”, “ride or die”, “Setting Fires” and more. After a brief intermission, the last act of the night, Smallpools was on!
The indie rock group made the audience feel alive with hits from their new album: Life in a Simulation. They featured hits like “Lovetap!”, “Dreaming”, “Street Fight” and a cover of “Creep” by RadioHead! The band talked about how they would google their name, Smallpools, and search results would pop up about orca whales trapped in small pools. Along with the clever meaning of feeling trapped, the band was inspired to make a song called “Killer Whales”, which especially invigorated the audience when they threw a big inflatable orca into the crowd. After the song, the band even let student Teresa Dennis keep the inflatable whale! However, her joy was cut short when a school official took the whale back to “get it signed” by the band, but actually ended up taking it to keep in the office, where she was told that she could only take pictures with it. This prompted students to speak up on MyRaft to “#freethewhale”. Shoot a comment on our instagram: @Otherottermedia if there are any updates on the status of the orca!
Overall, Otterlands was a much needed break for the hard working students at CSUMB, especially when the event became free later in the night and clear fanny packs were given out. Our Associated Students sure know how to throw a party, and next year will only get better!
To the Otterlands!
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