It’s called Goldstock. But unlike its 1969 namesake, Goldstock won’t be attended by 300,000 people, it won’t be three days of peace, love, and music, and it won’t be a milestone for the Baby Boomer generation.

What it will be is  more achievable: a casual, friendly two- to three-hour showcase of young, up-and-coming Fort Wayne musicians on Tuesday, Nov. 29. And because it’s indoors in the state-of-the-art Sweetwater Performance Theatre, and not on a remote upstate New York farm in a thunderstorm, the facilities will be much more comfortable and the sound quality will be excellent.

Learning experience

Goldstock is a concert put on by the students of professor Jason Lundgren’s Survey of the Music Business class at the Purdue University Fort Wayne’s School of Music. It’s a class project in how to put on a show, and it’s “powered by” the students and faculty of GoldTop Records, the school’s record label. 

As for a music business undertaking, they named the second annual event after Woodstock, which is notoriously one of the biggest money-losing ventures in the history of the music business. But that didn’t faze Lundgren.

“It had such a good ring to it, I couldn’t help it,” Lundgren said. But like the original Woodstock, “It is a free show and we definitely spend money to have it. So, there is some truth to that too.”

Well, there’s a theme here: “I wanted an event that would give my students the feel of what it’s really like to work in the live music industry, just obviously on a smaller scale,” Lundgren said. “So, that’s why they’re doing everything from creating posters, designing flyers, they’re doing marketing, and creating video content. It’s really just giving the students the full experience of what it’s like to put on a fairly big event from start to finish and have them do all of it themselves.”

Taking the stage …

So let’s get to the entertainment! 

The concert will feature 11 acts, including: 

The Indigo Society: A five-piece band from Fort Wayne with backgrounds in alternative rock, pop, and jazz, creating guitar-driven rock with modern flavorings. Their debut single “You’re So Cold” was featured on ALT 99.5 FM/102.3 FM. They’ve played in clubs around town and are preparing to release an EP.

Private Education: Five friends from across the U.S. with “the power of their passion for art and their fancy music degrees.” They’re working to develop a sonic style that’s unique, featuring “technical yet approachable guitar wizardry and a powerful groove. They aim to thrill audiences with their well-trained musical abilities and sardonic hope that the despair of humanity may yet change.” That’s ambitious.

Loud Division: A group of friends from the same high school in eastern Kentucky who have been playing together since 2019. This year they released an EP, Remorse, which is available on all streaming platforms.

The Ear Mites: Described as a brand new, two-piece psychedelic surf rock band that promise to produce ear candy sure to melt your brain. They further state they rebirth sounds from the past with a modern twist, creating a cocktail of original, astral, aquatic, metal melodies, and other stuff involving a groovy loophole into a new mind-bending galaxy where the deep blue and the planets are fused. You’ve been warned.

The Eleven Sevens: A group of PFW students that like to jam on classic and hard rock. They each have their own main projects but decided to come together for Goldstock. 

Man of the Flood: This quintethave released an album on GoldTop Records, Crystal Bawl, and were extensively covered here in Whatzup in our Aug. 24 and Sept. 14 issues. They attempt to channel a slightly left-of-center approach to their music by marrying the beats and boops of alt pop with the driving guitars of indie rock, all thrown over complicated drum grooves.

Liyaz: A singer, songwriter, and producer who has been singing since she was very young, choosing to express herself through song. She recently released her first single, “Stay With Me,” on all the streaming platforms, with more new songs coming out soon.

Sam Trowbridge: An alternative artist who name-checks a long list of blues, indie rock, psychedelic, and alternative rock acts as influences. He said, “Art is my form of emotion and communication. The world will always need inspired artists to influence new artists.” He released his 13-song album The Painter on Sept. 29. He was profiled in our Aug. 10 issue and is a Whatzup 20 Under 20 honoree.

 Working relationship

Here at Whatzup, we are the press, and the students putting on Goldstock include publicists, whose job it is to service information to the press. 

While the Goldstock crew are learning the necessary job skill of providing sufficient information to cranky journalists (I’m talking about myself here, certainly not my editors at Whatzup), we would like to compliment Man of the Flood and Private Education on coming to the game with their own electronic press kits with bios, photos, recordings, and videos, which is what the press needs to give them ink. Study them, students, for they are learning how to market themselves.

So, here’s to the music business students at PFW. I was a music business student myself, back in the ’80s, when it was cassette tapes and glossy 8-by-10-inch black-and-white photographs, the press got sent the information in FedEx envelopes or over fax machines, and posters furtively stapled to telephone poles were the main way young people found out about concerts. 

But in all decades, the young musicians want to rock, and they want to reach an audience, and young music business people want to make that connection, professionally. 

We here at Whatzup are happy to introduce you to Goldstock. Come on over and rock out with us.