If you think that is "diversity" or "variety", you are out of touch with what Sacto's show-going public like. No logical explanation of why the Mess fest fell flat will make sense to you then. Vintage 1981-1985 is great music, but most of the original fans of that have died off, gone to jail, or gone straight and narrow with jobs and families. All of what you described fits into the scope of the first five years of HC punk except for the powerviolence-nostalgic stuff, which we all know has marginal appeal.
I commend the planners of this fest for a valiant effort to do something awesome, but when I saw the lineup on paper, I crossed it off my list and thought to myself "Way too many bands that sound alike" and "Way too many macho knuckleheads to ridicule my cargo shorts" and "I don't wanna go deaf this week."
:DuH -- I can see your points on a lot of stuff but the thing that struck me about this fest was the quality and the diversity of the bands -- you had everything from "generic punk", to epic sounding sololess 1 minute death metal songs, to neo-Career Suicide trash, to a band that brought to mind Zero Boys, to a hardcore band that wrote really creative driving songs, to a sorta - Schlongy - spazz out band. The bill was all over the map and really surprisingly high quality (for those of us who love the diversity of what "punk" can mean).