Pompano Beach Amphitheatre

I saw Meatloaf 2 years ago here, very intimate smaller place.
During the last 2 songs I walked all the way up to front of the stage,
I may gotten some sweat from Meat on me.
The place is close to us that live east of I-95, free parking on grass.

This is a fantastic, underrated venue for concerts. It's a small amphitheatre, so unfortunately I don't get to come here much because the bands I like gravitate to bigger places like Bank Atlantic or Cruzan. But its size is what makes it great - there really isn't a bad seat in the place, and there's quick and easy access to the restrooms and concession stands. They also don't have attendants everywhere checking your tickets, so when I came here the other night for the Monkees concert, I easily upgraded myself from my Groupon tickets in row 23 down to row 11.

Now, should this place be an appropriate venue for a multiple-stage music festival like Vans Warped Tour? Nah. For the record, it used to be held here for many years. Let's face it, most of the people would want to form a mosh bit, which is rather hard in a place that has, you know, seats. So for what this place is, it's great. It's got really good acoustics, wide aisles so it's easy to move around, and a comfortable, intimate setting. And did anyone bother mentioning free parking?? You can't get much better than this place.

Now that I've attended multiple events at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater, I feel I can give it a well rounded and honest review.... and sadly, I can only say it is A-OK.  

1st time I came here was for the Matishyahu concert - and I thought at the time that the venue was pretty small and the turn out was pretty weak.

But no matter - we had a GREAT time, the show kicked ass, and I, for one, love it when I can walk from the front of the stage to concession for a beer and be back in 5 minutes or less.  

If I were reviewing on that experience alone, I would give it 5 solid stars.

2nd time was just this weekend for the Southern Monster Smash - and this is where it gets iffy.  First of all, I'm not sure the event was properly promoted or organized.

My group of 6 arrived at 3:00 to check the place out with intentions of coming back later (the event was from 11 - midnight, main acts going on around 8ish).  We got our tickets scanned, walked in, and saw... about... oh... 50 people. Now, this was supposed to be an all day event - where the heck was everyone?

We looked around and the main stage didn't even appear to have had a soul on it all day, so either we missed the first two acts or they didn't bother. The side stage was kinda lame and really unnecessary. And there were a grand total of 3 vendors selling merchandise for us to peruse.  

We figured we would come back later when things started to liven up, but found out that instead of re-entry til 7pm, it was only re-entry til 5pm. So we decided to venture out for a quick lunch and come back right at 5.  

We got there by 5:00 on our watch, but the lady controlling entry had a cell phone that said 5:05. So no dice.  With a grand total of 100 people in this venue and 11 bands playing all day, they were actually denying us entry.  

Thankfully we got loud enough that she let us in,... but we still had to sit there until 7ish for the main stage to get any action. Eventually the night livened up - JJ Grey and Mofro killed it. But overall, our entire day was thrown off by having to be back to a pretty dead venue at 5pm.

Good things tho: Again, it was incredibly easy to get a drink, go to the bathroom, and even grab a table with chairs out in the lawn to sit back and enjoy the weather (with great acoustics for the live music on the stage).

I would definitely attending future events at this venue - just check the re-entry times.  And I would also recommend the Pompano Beach Amphitheater and Live Nation staff chill out, sit back, and let people come back into their venue so that more acts and vendors will come in the future.  

Otherwise,... we'll just hang out in the grass with the other hippies and spend our $60 in tickets on a cooler full of beer, at their expense.