After Jon’s comment on the previous blog entry, my interest was piqued about this whole SCMX deal. It sounded like it was crashing and burning faster than Lady Sovereign’s meltdown at Silk City, and there’s nothing I love more than a good trainwreck.
The smaller stage that featured local bands was called the Limelight Stage and as I rolled up the A-Sides were playing their set. BTW, am I the only one who hates the way music festivals ghettoize local bands by relegating them to second stage? Yesterday, the A-Sides had more of a crowd than The Legendary Shack Shakers, whose only legendary feat was having a scrawny, pale white guy as their front man bestow us with the glory of going shirtless on stage. The A-Sides played a solid set, light years beyond the rest of the second stage bands on yesterday’s schedule.
De La Soul were up on the main stage and I gotta hand it to these guys — they saw right through the whole point of the festival [music disguised as marketing] but honestly tried to engage the audience with a back-and-forth of heckling and psyching people up. Best part? They were all, “We’re not gonna stand up here and grab our crothes and talk about thuggin’, ’cause we’re old…” So are they rapping about 401(k)’s? Not quite, they’re still throwing down tracks from _3 Feet High…_ and sounding solid.
I have never seen Bob Mould live so I was a bit surprised at how solid his show was and to see Brendan Canty of Fugazi as his drummer. He treated the audience with some old Sugar & Husker Du chestnuts. Good times, only to be brought down by the SoCo promo girls who went up on stage to rally the audience. Unfortunately, their voices sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Pure agony that seemed to last an eternity.
This is the part of my story where things get weird, mainly because Jon’s old lady Nicole handed me her lanyard during the Flaming Lips set. I went backstage [where there is another bar, strangely], ran into some friends and watched the show from the side of the stage. Unfortunately, with the way the Flaming Lips set everything up and the sizeable crowd there, I couldn’t see. So I went around to the front and watched from the audience for a bit. Wayne Coyne floated around in a bubble, which I caught with my real camera before I ran out of film.
I went backstage again where some folks had gotten over the little fence on the side. Much dancing and joy ensued, but it became even more so when the security guards let us go behind the alien elves on stage left. So there I was with confetti flying everywhere while the band played “Do You Realize?” and I couldn’t have been happier. Couples all around here hugging and kissing, someone proposed on stage; the enegry was unreal. I know watching the Flaming Lips is an experience unto itself but being on stage was something entirely else. Hm, I wonder if they laced the confetti…
The final encore was a cover Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and Coyne took it upon himself to get up on the soapbox. This is ultimately what drives me nuts about rock politics — it’s one thing to rant about the infinite sadness in the Middle East, but so extremely misguided on the other hand. Did he bother to pay attention to his surroundings? Any staff member in a position of power was white. The people cleaning up the mess of drunken frat dudes as we were exiting? Black. A year after the ineptitude of Katrina and nothing’s changed in our country, the divide keeps getting larger and larger — so why not use that time to encourage a crowd of 3,000 to be more proactive in their communities? Sigh. Sorry to be a Downer Debbie, but it’s been gnawing at my mind.
Anyway, kudos to De La Soul, Bob Mould and the Flaming Lips for making it a legitimate festival in the end, ’cause that thing could have trainwrecked even further. As we all said yesterday: someone’s getting fired today. And I hope it’s whoever thought up the SoCo girls.
