All the stages in Shambs are top notch, world fucking tier. I fucking love Shambs. The people behind it, the creativity, the history, the amount of work that goes into this place is top fucking notch. Putting this type of shit on is hard fucking work, from small festivals to large. And the constant clash of money, resources, and artist vision is always at odds and it sucks, but a god damn reality.

Now for my old man, crunchy get off my lawn rant, but out of true love.

The Amp Stage.. The new stage compared to everything else in the world and the baseline of world stages, it kicks so much ass and so far above the bar.

But this is Shambhala. You all are among the best rave stages in the world, period. The new stage, it's a beautiful stage, but it's too nice.

What raises shambhala above the rest is you can tell the history of these stages and them starting from a ring ding, hop podge of idiots who love to party. Then things started to grow, escalate, people got behind it, and came together to produce these unbelievable works of art and technology. When you u come to Shambhala, and go to the stages, u realize, Pagoda is THE PAGODA, the grove is THE GROVE, fractal forest is THE FRACTAL FOREST, etc. Every stage is truly its own thing and a complete unique entity.

The Amp Stage is still a fucking blast and I'll be raging there. But it has no identity anymore. That place was the big circus tent with a fuck you, we're doing grimey bass, to the point the decks are about to be bounced off table from the shit on your chest sound (really). And also that circus tent catches all that bass and it feels like ur in the subwoofer. But now what is it?

It feels like your favorite dive bar was torn down and some high rise condos was put in its place with those bs commerical spaces that could be a grocery store, bar, accounting firm, or funeral home. It's basically some LEDs, standard wooden shelter that belongs in a Home and Garden magazine, and some metal snakes as like a oh fuck, this stage has nothing so let's just put something to make it seem hard.

This kind of goes for the Grove too (where the hell did the owl go by the way), but I almost can't tell the difference between the Groove and the Ampn now, and those are completely different types of music and stages. The trend is starting to feel that every stage will feel the same and that is not Shambs.

I know this seems so harsh, but I truly love this place and will always come back (unless it goes too far off from the core). But as any good friend, you have to call your buddies out, lovingly of course and in the joking way (we're all just dumb meat sacks), and keep each other from going to far off the rails.I know these stage builds are so complex, so many expertise needed, so many hands in the pot, it's honestly crazy and a miracle these things get made.

So this is basically a brotherly, mother fucker who has been so good damn side ways on the farm with truly deep moments here to call out to the people who make the decisions. Cause I know, I'm sure there are very similar sentiments with the people who have seen this place evolve and are part of the hard work to make this happen.

But we all know, the new AMP stage is not Shambhala.

The reason this place is where it is, the reason people come out for a whole week, spending insane money, living in the dust and heat, is because of the basic under current that runs these place, just friends doing fun shit. It's not tangible, no metrics, but it's known and felt.

So if you want keep people from blindly buying the tickets no matter what and keep the gravy train going, it's not hard. Just the build the sandbox for us idiots and let it flourish. You don't need to spend a lot of money, keep pushing for the next money growth (it's not sustainable, and will kill it). Just fund the sand box and logistics, then let us morons build our sand castles. I know this shit is not that simple but u know, it also doesn't need to be that complex.

So much love and truly grateful for the work you all do from the top people down to the people working the gates for 12 hours. Life changing moments here seriously. This is just loving call out to keep this place from going the road of so many other things. Cause the people who started it, the owners of the farm, the volunteers, the workers, etc. All of you don't deserve to see it swallowed by the bullshit that seems to swallow all the things we love.

Happy Shambs!! Love you all! And let's party baby.