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Kick off the first weekend of 2025 with an evening of live music that marks another first: (Sounds Like) You Had to Be There, a festival billed as “the first-ever hybrid electronic, slowcore and shoegaze festival to grace the Bay Area.”
The festival takes place Jan. 4 at The Guild Theatre and is organized by local independent promoter Zack Hage, who grew up in Menlo Park.
The nine-act bill is diverse, bringing together local, national and regional artists. Headliners Lowertown, out of New York and Atlanta, play psychedelic folk and slowcore. Also in the festival lineup is dreamy, nostalgia-tinged electronica with death’s dynamic shroud; electronic and post-rock with acloudyskye; electroclash duo Somewhere Special; electro-industrial artist Ada Rook; and noise-pop and shoegaze musician Kraus. The show includes some artists from around the Bay Area, as well, with Oakland electroclash act Technopagan and Northern California artists Chuquimamani Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton performing together as Los Thuthanaka, highlighting Native American sound collage, ambient and folk. The festival also will mark the final U.S. performance of Bay Area-based High Sunn, playing a unique blend of dream-pop and screamo.
Most artists will play 20- or 30-minute sets, with headliners Lowertown closing out the festival with an hourlong set.
“I’m really excited about the genres that are being showcased. A lot of these artists have very varied catalogs. It’s gonna be cool to have artists that do electronic and artists that do rock at this show, but it’s also going to be really cool to have artists that bridge those two together,” Hage said.
Though the acts represent a range of genres, the late-’90s genre electroclash, which draws on influences that include synth-pop, new wave, techno and electropop, is a kind of undercurrent in the bill, he said.
Hage came to his work as a promoter in an unusual way: For a lot of people, stressful times in life can trigger a need for some quiet downtime, but not for Hage, who instead organizes shows. When medical and personal issues and an academically grueling quarter led to a particularly challenging time in college, Hage gave himself the incentive of a big celebration if he did well and graduated on time. He worked a lot of jobs over the summer and “saved up like crazy” to bring a DJ called Gum MP3 to perform at a party celebrating his graduation.
“It just started a new kind of path for me in terms of realizing how much I like to showcase artists that are just about to kind of peak out into, like a bigger hemisphere within their scenes,” Hage said, noting that two weeks after the DJ played at his celebration, he played for Todd Edwards, a backing vocalist for Daft Punk.
Similarly, Hage said he tackled some personal challenges this summer by putting together a show at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco with the bands CFCF, Midrift and Argo Nuff, which sold out. The show was called “You Had to Be There” — the Jan. 4 festival is what Hage describes as that show’s “spiritual successor” and so its name riffs on that previous show.
“If this goes really well, I want to throw more events where it’s a lot of genre diversity, a lot of artists that are flying in, that are starting to have a lot of buzz, but I want to do a different name each time,” he said.
(Sounds Like) You Had to Be There offers a mix of genres that takes inspiration from a practice that was more common in the ’90s and ’00s, Hage said, where you might see electronic artists and rock artists on the same bill. He notes that, as he’s learned from friends who work for large commercial promoters, those companies now tend to avoid taking risks in booking lineups that mix genres.
Hage has been working on the festival for about six months, and many of the acts are ones he has personally chosen, but also has had help filling out the bill from friends Jasmine Martin Partovi, Ryden Seccor and Brandon Gleneicki who describes as “immersed” in various music scenes.
As someone who grew up in Menlo Park, Hage said he likes the idea of hosting the festival at a local venue, also noting that The Guild Theatre is a good fit for the festival, with its intimate size and proximity to Stanford University. Hage suggested that the festival may draw some newer audiences to The Guild.
Looking back on tough times, Hage said found that he doesn’t dwell on memories so much as he recalls how he got through hard times and succeeded.
“For me a lot of the really, really good memories I’ve made in my life — even when I’m not actually organizing the concert myself — are concerts. So something like this, where it’s just this innovative genre whiplash, I think, is just honestly going to start the new year on a really good note for a lot of people,” he said.
(Sounds Like) You Had to Be There takes place Jan. 4, 7 p.m.-midnight (doors open at 6 p.m.) at The Guild Theatre, 949 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. $63.74-$70.69. guildtheatre.com. For more information about Zack Hage’s future shows, check out @applezacks_
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