Death to the Sun 5 should benefit those with short attention spans. It's almost like a musical equivalent of speed-dating. Over the course of the ten-hour underground music festival at the North Beach Bandshell, 27 musical acts will hit the stage from noon to 10 p.m. The concert's organizer, Ricardo Guerrero, did the math for us. "Every act will get ten minutes to play, then there will be ten minutes to set up, and the next band will play. So every hour, you'll get to see three bands."
Guerrero birthed Death to the Sun in 2009. "I wanted an event that reminded me of those big summer festivals like Lollapalooza that I never had the time or money to see," he says. "I wanted this to be free so everyone can go to it and nobody is excluded." Over the years, Death to the Sun has been nomadic, held at sites across South Florida. The inaugural edition was held at Miami's now-defunct American Legion, and the second time was at the spot now occupied by Railroad Blues. The 2011 installment took a trip up the coast to West Palm, and Death to the Sun 4 in 2012 was held at Churchill's. Because of the countless hours of work that go into throwing a festival, Guerrero skipped a couple of years between 4 and 5. "There's a lot to running a festival, especially if you want it to be really tightly run," he says in a surprisingly laid-back manner for someone insisting he's stressed out. "You have to keep in touch with every band. You have to organize time slots. There's the stage managing – even with me dealing with only one stage this year. And, of course, someone has to make sure we have enough squirt guns and that they're filled with water."
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