Friday:
- Banks & Steelz. Not that great. Most of their stuff doesn't sound properly mashed up, more like they just cameo on each others' tunes without really collaborating. "Giant" is an exception, but we just stayed for a few songs.
- Welshly Arms. Should have gone to this whole show, these guys were great. Bluesy and rockin'. I just added their album back to my Q of new stuff, I want to hear this some more.
- The Strumbellas. Excellent. These guys (and gal) were very endearing, they seemed genuinely pleased to be there and just put on a really good show. Very Canadian in their mid-song discussions and jokes.
- Foals. Favorite show of the day. These guys are really great. I want to get into their music even more now, but know that they bring it and sound really awesome.
- Cold War Kids. Better than I expected, although we only heard them from across the field so that we could get up close for Die Antwoord. I can't believe I just admitted that.
- Die Antwoord. Exactly like I expected. Terrible, but kind of like watching the Presidential debates this year, you still want to see what awful crap they'll do. We stayed for about half the show, and I got a lot of weird looks as we walked out because I was singing along to "Cookie Thumper" and I think people must have thought that was odd.
- Radiohead. Honestly, a little disappointing. I was so very excited to see them, and I think they sounded good, but they just choose an off selection of songs that hew very slow and introspective. I was hopeful that they'd go into their hits catalog, but instead they played freaking three songs from King of Limbs. Part of me doesn't want to write this, because it is kind of jenky to complain about a setlist, but its just honest. The King of Limbs music is not very good. Why use up three songs on that thing? And why did we get more than Lolla? I wish I would have seen them play in a concert hall or something, sitting down and not tired and not crowded and just listening, like it was a poetry reading. The people around me were about as excited as you would have been during a poetry reading. Now I'm mad that I skipped Band of Horses and M83 to go get in prime position for this show.
Saturday:
- Nothing But Thieves. Great show. I like this band quite a bit now, although I can sometimes feel over the falsetto voice maneuver. Not a lot of people at the park this early in the day, but a pretty good crowd over here enjoyed the show.
- Kamaiyah. Very disappointing. We spent about 20 minutes listening to a hype guy play other people's music and tell us to get turnt up, then Kamaiyah wandered out and rapped over the top of a vocal track, so that you almost couldn't tell if she was rapping live or just lip syncing, and then she wandered off. Best part of the show was the hype guy playing the "bomb drop" sound effect on his laptop about 3,000 times in the 40 minute set. That was funny.
- City and Colour. Very pretty music, but kind of boring. One of those shows where you realize that the crowd talking around you is somehow louder than the guy playing the music up on stage. We stayed for about half and then wandered away.
- Saint Motel. So fun. Wish we would have done this whole show, they were getting the crowd going, singing along and jumping and having a good ass time.
- DJ Mustard. So freaking stupid. Literally, an hour of this guy just playing other people's music. I know he probably produced a lot of the tracks, but still, it was just a bunch of people rapping along to short sections of different songs. (1) why do people want to do that? (2) I listen to a lot of rap, and yet I only knew about half of the tracks he played, while the group of 12 year old boys next to me yelled out every sexual innuendo and curse word with gusto.
- Catfish and the Bottlemen. Second favorite show of the day, these guys are just excellent rock and roll action, right up my alley.
- Melanie Martinez. I walked my buddy up to this show, and he saw the stage, which looking like a baby's playroom, and was like "nope." So we walked up towards The Naked and Famous and just chilled on the ground for a while.
- Cage the Elephant. Awesome. I like that band a lot now.
- Two Door Cinema Club. Favorite show of the day. I really didn't know this band, but my friend wanted to go see them and I'm so glad I did. They are super fun, high energy, and the entire crowd was singing along to every word. I love shows like that, where you can tell that everyone there knows all of the songs and is super pumped to just be there jamming along. The drummer was getting himself a damn workout in the back. Also, while I didn't go see the Chainsmokers, the crowd over there, which we walked through after Two Door, was absolutely insane. I bet 90% of the crowd was there.
- Kendrick Lamar. Really good show - best rap I saw of the weekend. The thing I appreciate so much about Kendrick Lamar is that he freaking brings it. He has a real band of funk players up there to go with his DJ, and every single lyric that comes out of the speakers is really him spitting those rhymes. No backing track BS like Eminem. In my mind, Lamar is super serious all the time, but that thought makes you forget that he actually makes some groovy, funky stuff that is pretty fun to bounce along with. He also brought Schoolboy out for a verse on "That Part," which was fun since I missed that show to see Cage the Elephant.
Sunday:
- Lizzo. Dude. Lizzo was freaking hilarious and amazing. She is a big girl, and just doesn't give a damn, wearing a skin tight leotard and some sort of see-through thing over the top that ended about hip level. And he backup dancers were big girls too, but they could dance like freaking champions. Lizzo spent the show twerking and bouncing and dancing and slapping her ass, she couldn't be more comfortable in that body. And then the rapping and singing (her voice is great) was top notch as well. Loved this show.
- Wild Child. Pretty good. Was kind of half listening because we found some friends to hang with and just sat in the field.
- Kacey Musgraves. I got up close for this one and loved it. Great crowd sing-a-longs, funny asides in between songs, band sounded awesome, and her voice is excellent too. She did a fantastic acoustic rendition of "Merry Go Round," with the rest of her band offstage, that brought my soft ass to tears at one point. If you get a chance to see her, I think you'll enjoy it.
- Margo Price. Good show, but as I was listening, I was having a lot of FOMO about not being at Pete Yorn. Kind of wish I would have gone to see Pete. The wife decided that Margo was a little too generic. I think she did a good show, with solid versions of her own songs and good cover, but FOMO.
- Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats. NATE FOR PRES! Super fun show, loads of energy (although the horn player from his ACL taping was missing, and I was sad to not see him up there grooving his ass off), and perfect set of tunes. The whole crowd was dancing and shouting along up where I was for this one.
- St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Sounded really good, although I didn't go way up close for this one because I needed to be up front for Nathaniel and Chris, my besties.
- Chris Stapleton. So damn good. He just does it for me, lots of blues and soul influence in his outlaw country sound, and it just makes me feel tough and smart and bad ass all at the same time. I have to say that I was disappointed that he didn't play "Whiskey and You," but otherwise a solid show.
- Mumford & Sons. Really good show. I won't give it my unequivocal seal of approval because they played so much of the new album boring soft rock stuff, but when they went back to the old school well with the banjo-fied rock of their first two albums, the crowd was bouncing for it and having some fun sing-a-longs. I was surprised that they fired up "Little Lion Man" with the second track, and felt like a crowd left to go check out LCD after that song was over, but the whole show was good stuff. The band just really seems to love what they are doing up there, just very passionate and earnest, and it translates to the crowd.
Non-music thoughts:
- I know this is why you come here, to listen to me ruminate on crap like bathroom lines, but whatever man. My blog.
- Seriously though, the bathroom lines were freaking AWESOME. I can't tell you how it was for the ladies, but the guys now have big, open areas full of portable urinal trough things, and so I never once waited at all to whiz. So great.
- No Bag Line. Still amazing. I never waited more than a minute to get into the park.
- Security. Tight as hell this year. They took away my booze on the second day, apparently shaking a bottle of water produces no bubbles while shaking a bottle of vodka produces a bunch of obvious bubbles. Which is annoying as crap, since they apparently could care less about the 8 billion pounds of weed that everyone in the park smokes around me all day, but god forbid that I bring in some Tito's. I'd guess that it is about protecting profits, but you'd think that the stoners would also drink if their schwag was taken away?
- Beers at the BAR tents are now up to flipping $9. For super premium brands like Miller Lite, Coors Original, Imperial, Pilsner Urquel, and Fireman's Four. Blurg.
- The grass is already dead. I don't know how next weekend will do it, because we even had nice, temperate weather, and by Sunday afternoon the dust in the air was pretty brutal. Time to astroturf the whole place.
- The new Cirrus stage, up on the plateau with the Honda stage in the west end of the park, made that end of the park damn near impossible to navigate after about 3 on Saturday. It was just a huge sea of people when we wandered up there to see the Naked and Famous while Melanie Martinez was playing the Miller Stage.
- East Side Kings is the FREAKING BOMB! Their chicken thighs dish is so damn good. Had a chicken tikki masala wrap that was highly mediocre, a chicken sandwich from East Side Kings that was dry, a cold chicken taco from ChiLantro, some really good meaty fries from there, and some pizza rolls from Austin's Pizza. Oh, and some good ass Torchy's tacos. I'd say that the food wasn't all that great this year, but I also refused to wait in lines so I ended up at unpopular joints. Maybe my own fault.
1 comment:
YOU ARE DA BOMB!
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