The main cool thing about attending a festival is that you get to see a bunch of different bands. That gives you more bang for your buck, leaves you clamoring for more if there’s a band you like, and enables you to quickly move on if there’s a band you don’t.
The main cool thing about blogging a festival is that you don’t have to write as much for each band. They play fewer songs, so it’s perfectly acceptable to write less. Yay, laziness. I hope to continue this laziness at Austin City Limits and Bonnaroo in the near future. ;) For now, here are four capsule reviews from the 2008 Virgin Mobile Fest.
Wilco
“Spiders” still rocked! I thought it would be a letdown after the mind-blowing Merriweather performance the year before, but it sounded as good. “Muzzle of Bees” and “Sky Blue Sky” sounded just as smooth. A.M./Summerteeth songs sounded better because this time I’d actually heard the albums before the concert. ;)
Both aspects of the concert that I found disappointing were out of Wilco’s control: (1) There were not enough Wilco fans in the audience. A fair number of morons talked through the performance. Great as festivals can be, the presence of non-fans is a definite disadvantage. (2) There were not enough Wilco songs. I said earlier that it’s good to be left wanting more, but here it was simply too few to be satisfied.
Grade: B
The Offspring
It was a solid show: they brought a ton of energy, made several genuine attempts to talk with the crowd, and played as many hits as time would allow. I particularly liked “Self Esteem,” “Original Prankster,” “You’re Gonna Go Far Kid,” and “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” “The Kids Aren’t Alright” was the best for me because I’d already connected to it through my kids at school. To get the kids pumped for the school-wide ping pong tournament I organized, I played a You Tube version of the song in all the classes. The song plays as each of the Top Ten Ping Pong Shots of All Time are revealed. After watching the clip, one of the kids even said, “The shots wouldn’t be the same without the song!”
Solid as the show was, it couldn’t enter the “A” range because the Offspring didn’t have the gravitas of a dark punk band. The moshing was fun, and “Pretty Fly” was amusing, but you didn’t feel the weight you’d feel at a Rise Against or Alkaline Trio concert. The performance also felt…forced at times. True Punk is about cunning, menace, and focused aggression. It’s a metaphorical finger to the Man. If you feel the need to actually extend that finger every three seconds, to shout “F’in A” after every song, you’re not true Punk. You’re just trying too hard.
Grade: B+
Jack Johnson
My minor Offspring criticism was that they tried too hard. My MAJOR Jack Johnson criticism was that he didn’t try AT ALL. He strummed, he mumbled, and he left. He made no attempt to emote, no attempt to relate to the crowd; he just stood there and strummed.
As I said in my Death Cab review, I’m not expecting someone with a soft sound to go hard. A rendition of “Flake” that included guitar smashing would be amusing -- but ridiculous. Finishing “Bubble Toes” with a feet-first slide across the stage would be just as unfortunate.
Your job as an acoustic artist is not to rock out; your job is to draw your audience in. If he’d made minor alterations in certain melodies, shared a few insights into the creation of certain songs, threw in a witty comment or two, he’d have been golden. These touches would not have detracted from the songs themselves; they would have enhanced them. Yet…he stood there and strummed.
The infuriating low point of the show was the gnat. Midway through “Wasting Time,” a gnat buzzed around the frets of his guitar, causing him to mess up the melody. Here it came, the human moment, the opportunity to augment the album, to show everyone the man behind the ‘magic.’ “Oh. Again, I guess.” That was his response. The backup guitarist tried to help him seize the moment, goading him about how rude the bug had been. “Oh. Yeah. Ok.” The gnat continued to buzz. Johnson started playing again. Eventually, the gnat went away – as did any chance that this concert would end up as anything other than the worst that I have ever attended.
Grade: D- (He escapes without an ‘F’ because, performance or not, “Breakdown” is still so smooth.)
Foo Fighters
Other than having a few less songs, this Foo Fighters concert was a virtual repeat of the Montreal one. The lack of originality did not remotely dampen my enthusiasm, though, because it was still a first-rate, fist-pumping performance.
If anything, I enjoyed this show more because I had something to directly compare it to – the Jack Johnson debacle two hundred yards away. I actually started at the Jack Johnson concert, intending to check out Foo Fighters only briefly, since I’d already seen them. (Why festival organizers forced festivalgoers to choose between the two headliners in the first place is another question. I suppose they thought the bands would not have overlapping fans, but the bands were high profile enough that people would have wanted to hear both.) After discovering that an insect flying on stage had more stage presence than the actual performer, though, I fled to Foo and never went back.
The only awesome element I did not mention in the Montreal review was the Triangle Solo. You kind of had to be there to appreciate it, but there was this hilarious moment during the acoustic section of the show when Dave Grohl gave generic props to everyone in the band, paused, paused again, and said, “And finally, we have Drew Hester. Drew Hester, you see, is no ordinary triangle player. And you’re not about to hear any ordinary triangle solo. Get ready, because you are about to hear a triangle genius perform the greatest f'ing triangle solo you’ve ever heard!” Grohl was right. Drummer Taylor Hawkins also did well on the extended solo he was given later in the show, but nothing could compare the triangle…
Wilco
“Spiders” still rocked! I thought it would be a letdown after the mind-blowing Merriweather performance the year before, but it sounded as good. “Muzzle of Bees” and “Sky Blue Sky” sounded just as smooth. A.M./Summerteeth songs sounded better because this time I’d actually heard the albums before the concert. ;)
Both aspects of the concert that I found disappointing were out of Wilco’s control: (1) There were not enough Wilco fans in the audience. A fair number of morons talked through the performance. Great as festivals can be, the presence of non-fans is a definite disadvantage. (2) There were not enough Wilco songs. I said earlier that it’s good to be left wanting more, but here it was simply too few to be satisfied.
Grade: B
The Offspring
It was a solid show: they brought a ton of energy, made several genuine attempts to talk with the crowd, and played as many hits as time would allow. I particularly liked “Self Esteem,” “Original Prankster,” “You’re Gonna Go Far Kid,” and “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” “The Kids Aren’t Alright” was the best for me because I’d already connected to it through my kids at school. To get the kids pumped for the school-wide ping pong tournament I organized, I played a You Tube version of the song in all the classes. The song plays as each of the Top Ten Ping Pong Shots of All Time are revealed. After watching the clip, one of the kids even said, “The shots wouldn’t be the same without the song!”
Solid as the show was, it couldn’t enter the “A” range because the Offspring didn’t have the gravitas of a dark punk band. The moshing was fun, and “Pretty Fly” was amusing, but you didn’t feel the weight you’d feel at a Rise Against or Alkaline Trio concert. The performance also felt…forced at times. True Punk is about cunning, menace, and focused aggression. It’s a metaphorical finger to the Man. If you feel the need to actually extend that finger every three seconds, to shout “F’in A” after every song, you’re not true Punk. You’re just trying too hard.
Grade: B+
Jack Johnson
My minor Offspring criticism was that they tried too hard. My MAJOR Jack Johnson criticism was that he didn’t try AT ALL. He strummed, he mumbled, and he left. He made no attempt to emote, no attempt to relate to the crowd; he just stood there and strummed.
As I said in my Death Cab review, I’m not expecting someone with a soft sound to go hard. A rendition of “Flake” that included guitar smashing would be amusing -- but ridiculous. Finishing “Bubble Toes” with a feet-first slide across the stage would be just as unfortunate.
Your job as an acoustic artist is not to rock out; your job is to draw your audience in. If he’d made minor alterations in certain melodies, shared a few insights into the creation of certain songs, threw in a witty comment or two, he’d have been golden. These touches would not have detracted from the songs themselves; they would have enhanced them. Yet…he stood there and strummed.
The infuriating low point of the show was the gnat. Midway through “Wasting Time,” a gnat buzzed around the frets of his guitar, causing him to mess up the melody. Here it came, the human moment, the opportunity to augment the album, to show everyone the man behind the ‘magic.’ “Oh. Again, I guess.” That was his response. The backup guitarist tried to help him seize the moment, goading him about how rude the bug had been. “Oh. Yeah. Ok.” The gnat continued to buzz. Johnson started playing again. Eventually, the gnat went away – as did any chance that this concert would end up as anything other than the worst that I have ever attended.
Grade: D- (He escapes without an ‘F’ because, performance or not, “Breakdown” is still so smooth.)
Foo Fighters
Other than having a few less songs, this Foo Fighters concert was a virtual repeat of the Montreal one. The lack of originality did not remotely dampen my enthusiasm, though, because it was still a first-rate, fist-pumping performance.
If anything, I enjoyed this show more because I had something to directly compare it to – the Jack Johnson debacle two hundred yards away. I actually started at the Jack Johnson concert, intending to check out Foo Fighters only briefly, since I’d already seen them. (Why festival organizers forced festivalgoers to choose between the two headliners in the first place is another question. I suppose they thought the bands would not have overlapping fans, but the bands were high profile enough that people would have wanted to hear both.) After discovering that an insect flying on stage had more stage presence than the actual performer, though, I fled to Foo and never went back.
The only awesome element I did not mention in the Montreal review was the Triangle Solo. You kind of had to be there to appreciate it, but there was this hilarious moment during the acoustic section of the show when Dave Grohl gave generic props to everyone in the band, paused, paused again, and said, “And finally, we have Drew Hester. Drew Hester, you see, is no ordinary triangle player. And you’re not about to hear any ordinary triangle solo. Get ready, because you are about to hear a triangle genius perform the greatest f'ing triangle solo you’ve ever heard!” Grohl was right. Drummer Taylor Hawkins also did well on the extended solo he was given later in the show, but nothing could compare the triangle… Grade: A
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