The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival was ill as fuck last year, when I went with some of my close personal bros and saw motherfucking Tyler, the Creator (made me grin but feel old), Brand New (made me grin and feel old, but in a good way, like the movie Boyhood or Timehops from when I was fatter), and Anamanaguchi (made me grin and feel young and turnt), as well as a buncha other artists with average scores in the 3’s or higher in our humble little database. The festival is held in Montreal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau, right on the Saint Lawrence River.
I am going again this year and am pretty stoked. If you’ve been to these kinds of massive festivals before, and I imagine that many of you have, you know that scheduling conflicts come with the territory (and that, no matter what, you will underestimate how long it will take you to make it from one stage to another). Here are a few conflicts that are burning me up inside,so you help me make the call:
My first experience with event production company the Do LaB came about in what I imagine was a similar way for many unfamiliar with the groundbreaking visual artist collective – the Oasis tent at Coachella, where the relentless heat is blessedly filtered through a prism of high-pressure water for a few merciful moments. People came for the hoses, but they stayed for the art, that uniquely visual spectacle that accompanies every Do LaB production in the desert and the underground acts the company usually has rocking its stages with the help of a costumed menagerie. Their ninth year at the festival was no different, with Gaslamp Killer, Kaminanda, Idiot Savant and a whole host of acts turning the art installations into a wild, somewhat nightmarish (depending on whether the light was by the sun or the oscillating lights), always unforgettable scene.
Shame on me, then, for not realizing until 2013 that the Do LaB actually curate their own festival just a couple hours south of Los Angeles. Lightning in a Bottle runs from July 11-15 at Lake Skinner County Park in the wine country near Temecula, CA, and is less a musical festival as the common summertime denominator goes and more a cultural event; a hip Burning Man without the blasted landscape and blasted hippies. It’s apparent in the lineup – a smorgasbord of Low End Theory-mainstays and buzzworthy indie pop, furious electro grooves and exotic world music, deep house and chillwave. Few festivals emphasize the human component as…
This past Labor Day weekend brought magnificent weather to the New York City area, as Hurricane Earl bypassed the area completely, allowing the second edition of the Electric Zoo festival to thrive. For a total of 24 hours split between Saturday and Sunday, Randall’s Island was New York City’s hottest club, and potentially a newfound earthquake hotspot. Booming beats resonating from four precisely placed stages likely sent the rest of the island humming.
Festival goers dressed in green latex suits, deer costumes, and tiger body paint, among other bizarre outfits littered the grounds, provided a unique flavor of diversity. While the average stereotype of dance music and the New York area would assume that it would be thousands of juicehead guidos with blowouts, it was hardly the case, in fact quite the opposite. The mix of concert goers among the 25,000 plus each day was welcoming to all sorts of characters geared with pacifiers and surgical masks.
Starting off on Saturday, LA Riots brought early excitement, mixing Estelle’s “Freak” with distorted beats while catching onto the infectious “Pon de Floor” by Major Lazer in what proved to be a house filled weekend. Forty minutes felt like five minutes during LA Riots set as climaxes and crescendos came at perfectly timed moments. After a glorious start, I quickly made the rash and hasty decision of watching Boris (not to be confused with Japanese noise-rockers Boris) at the Main Stage, whose set was slightly disappointing and underwhelming. Coupled with…
North by Northeast is not South by Southwest. Not yet, at least. They’re on separate scales, so when you’re reading what will ultimately be a three part write up, keep that in mind. With that out of the way, I’ve got another disclaimer: NXNE ran, officially, from June 14th to June 20th, and I’ll have three day-each write-ups. The math doesn’t make sense because not every day was worth writing about. The 14th and 15th were part of NXNEi, the festival’s inaugural interactive conference series.
Onto the 16th, the opening day of performances. I came in from Hamilton, which is about a 45 minute bus-ride from Toronto, to get my pass. Having seen Shad—who was as incredible as ever, by the way—the night before, I was at least a little bit hungover, but since NXNE is an event filled with media and musicians, I was definitely not the only one. I got my pass and looked at that night’s schedule and, well, it sucked. Wednesday night was barren. There was an ‘invitation only’ event featuring k-os, Kathleen Edwards and the Arkells. I wasn’t invited. The Eagles of Death Metal were playing the Phoenix, but it was a regularly ticketed event with only the first 200 wristbands guaranteed admission. I had a priority pass, not a wristband, so I could probably have gotten in, but not only is the Phoenix out…
As I walked across the ruins of the What Stage early Sunday afternoon, I had no envy for the cleanup crew of Bonnaroo. Bottles of water, beer, and god knows what else lay scattered across the immense area, trampled upon, despite Bonnaroo’s valiant efforts to get the concertgoers to take care of their own waste. I never remembered, in 2009 or 2010, seeing so much waste anywhere in Bonnaroo the day after a big show. Even the Flaming Lips confetti extravaganza seemed much less of a shock. Perhaps Bonnaroo was trying to send a message to the 80,000 strong who seemed to care very little about the sustainability portions of Bonnaroo. The sight was frightening.
Equally dirty, grimy, but in a very different way wonderful was the first set I saw at the Sunday portion of Bonnaroo, Japandroids. Perhaps it is a curse I have, but I only manage to see the second half of any Japandroids set. My day started later than I anticipated, so I got there a half hour late. A similar thing happened to me a few months ago at South by Southwest, when I found myself wandering Austin looking for the venue. I showed up in time for “Heart Sweats”, and saw most of the end of their breakthrough album Post-Nothing. Thrown into that set, however, was a surprise performance of “Darkness at the Edge of Gastown” from their compilation of old EPs, No Singles. With a stronger, fuller repertoire, Japandroids were able to present…
Manchester, Tennessee is one of the most unlikely places for a major music festival. It could hardly be called a suburb of Nashville, more than sixty miles outside the city, and has very little to offer to a huge influx of people. Most of all, the town of Manchester is a conservative place (drive around reading the church signs for proof), and hardly seems to accommodate the most liberal music festival in America that spends as much time promoting sustainability as it does music. Yet, the festival goes on, and Manchester seems to eat it up more and more each year.
The 80,000 that multiply the population of Manchester, Tennessee by eight for four days descended upon the isolated farm slowly on Thursday, as an inconvenient, inefficient will call line miles away from the festival, plus a reportedly day-long traffic jam caused massive delays. Through various means, I managed to get to the farm at about noon, four hours before any of the music began, and established my bearings in Centeroo, the area where the main attractions of the festival took place. The festival consists of five main music areas, broken into two stages (What Stage and Which Stage) and three tents (This Tent, That Tent, and The Other Tent), and assorted other stages such as the Troo Music Lounge, where lower-profile groups would play, and the Sonic Stage, where groups would perform short, stripped-down sets.
Fanfarlo kicked off my Bonnaroo at The Other Tent on Thursday. Their 2009 album,…
