5 posts tagged “concerts”

I really like music festivals, even though I've only been to two (Bumbershoot and ATP).  There's usually loads of awesome music to choose from, great atmosphere, funky vendors, and loads of weird and wonderful characters running about.

I just came across the lineup for the Langerado music festival.  It's in Florida, and I had never heard of it before, but here's a sampling from the lineup: the Roots, the Beastie Boys, REM, 311, Matisyahu, Thievery Corporation, Ben Folds, G. Love & Special Sauce, Les Claypool, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Arrested Development, and a buttload of others.

Why doesn't New York have anything like this?  Is it because so many concerts happen in the city already?  Sure, they have a horrendously over-commercialized "revival" of Woodstock every now and then, but didn't the last one turn into mud-caked anarchy?  With five-dollar bottles of water and overflowing portable toilets?  Maybe the original Woodstock brought a curse upon the state, dooming us never to have a great music festival ever again.

It's quite possible that I'm just ill-informed.  I was never a Warped Tour or Family Values guy.  There is the CMJ Music Marathon, but that's down in the city.  You can't camp out or find cheap lodging.  And from what I've heard, it's more like a trade show.  Loads of unknown bands looking to get signed.  And at $295 for students (five hundy for everyone else, which now includes me unfortunately unless I milk my Cambridge ID), it seems hardly worth it since it's spread out over something like fifty different venues.  The beauty of music festivals is that there are only three or four venues that are quite close together.  So you can drift around comfortably, check out unfamiliar acts, and drift on if you don't dig what you hear.  Not so easy to do if you have to trek the city streets.

There are a bunch of great-sounding annual festivals that I'd love to check out, but they're scattered throughout the country and beyond: Langerado (Florida), Coachella (California), Bonnaroo (Tennessee), Sasquatch (Washington, along with Bumbershoot), Burning Man (not really a music festival, but I want to go because it looks like a total mindfuck out in the desert), Glastonbury, ATP......and who knows how many others.  I suppose it's inevitable that these things all become horribly expensive corporate affairs.

I just wanna rock.

Portishead is reforming, putting out a new album, and curating the next installment of ATP (All Tomorrow's Parties, the music festival I attended at the surreal Butlins Minehead).

I DESPERATELY wish that I could go back for this!  Portishead is one of my all-time favorite acts.  This will be their first full set of new material in ten years.  Beth Gibbons' voice is seriously one of the sexiest things ever.  I'd listen to her sing just about anything.  Since they're curating the show they'll probably end up playing at least two or three sets, and show up at random sets to perform with the artists they've selected.  For those who aren't familiar with ATP, the curating artists invite acts that they dig, have been influenced by, or have been associated with.

I was pretty much entirely unfamiliar with the Dirty Three ATP lineup, but I still had a wonderful time (here's the lineup for the upcoming installment; perhaps you'll have more luck with it that me).  Groups like Portishead usually have pretty good taste in music.  If I were in the UK I'd be there in a second just to see Portishead, even if the rest of the lineup consisted of buskers and middle school marching bands.  But Aphex Twin is also going to be there <drool>.  PORTISHEAD AND APHEX TWIN!!!  To me, they represent all that is good about electronic music.  You never know what you might get with an Aphex show.  He might spin some hardcore DnB tracks, mix it with some tripped-out acid stuff, and then finish the set off with some of the most beautiful ambient music you've ever heard.  Or he might just get bored and make some weird noises.

The bottom line is that I really, really, REALLY want to go to this festival.  Too bad I'm not in England.

Q-Tip and Common co-headlining a fifteen-date tour?  Sounds good to me.  I saw a Tribe Called Quest at Bumbershoot last year, but I've never seen Common.  He's one of my favorite rappers (more for his flow than for his rhymes, which can get a bit too preachy sometimes).  I should try and track down some Tip albums.  I'm not really familiar with his solo stuff, though I'm sure I'll like it.  He's one of the smoothest emcees out there.

I love live music, but I'm really not a regular concert-goer.  It's mostly a money thing.  A movie ticket is probably going to be cheaper than a ticket to a show, at least for a lot of the bigger acts I'd like to see.  It's also about opportunity.  I don't make it my business to find out who's going to be in town when.  And I'm not always willing to take chances on groups I've never heard of.  So I don't end up seeing too many shows.  And I've never been to a live electronica show.  I've heard plenty of crappy DJ's in bars and other places, but no live performances of original electronic music.  And I LOVE electronic music.

Which is why I really wish that I had a) been in the United States on August 9th and b) been willing to cough up the cash to see Daft Punk perform at Coney Island.  I read about it on the Onion AV Club site and subsequently sought out some bootlegs on YouTube.  The entire concert is up there, shot from a variety of angles to varying degrees of audio quality.  It looked like an incredible show, and pretty much every comment I've seen seems to agree.  Pretty rare from the YouTube community, which is usually full of haters or people looking to cause trouble.

People who aren't into electronic music probably think that such a concert would be pretty boring.  I mean, the artists could conceivably just push play, sit back, and let people dance.  But great electronic artists find ways to improvise with their compositions just as any jazz or rock musician would.  I've watched a number of videos from other dates from this Daft Punk tour, and they mix the songs in different ways just about every time.  You never know what might come next and it's amazing to see how they make all of this stuff work together.  Plus they dress up like robots and perform from a neon pyramid.  Who else does that?!

So let's go to the videotape.  I'm posting two.  The first one is the best-sounding bootleg that I've found.  The guy must've had a pretty nice camera.  They start off with "One More Time" and blend into a funky rendition of "Aerodynamic," which is probably my favorite Daft Punk tune (I think this is actually from their Coachella show).  The second clip is my favorite remix from the concert, and the one that I really wish I had been there to hear.  It begins with "Around the World," and then they build up to a rather epic inclusion of the line from "Harder Better Faster Stronger."  That one must have been a real beast live.

Note: I've checked the actual post, and Vox seems to be actin' a fool.  The videos don't seem to want to play here.  If this is the case, just click on the video while it's playing.  That'll instantly take you through to the source at YouTube.  Please do, I think they're killer clips and hopefully you will too.

I flew to the UK on September 25th, 2006.  My good friend Rob was unaware of this, and as a late birthday present he bought tickets for the two of us to see Sufjan Stevens perform at Town Hall in New York City at the very end of the month.  Rob was the one who introduced me to his music, and Sufjan has been one of my chief listens ever since.  So I was both grateful and incredibly disappointed at the same time; I still owe Rob for that one even though I wasn't able to attend.

Here's a sample of what I missed.