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Weekend Report

By aphrael (Tue Apr 29, 2008 at 11:15:45 AM EST) (all tags)

Successes:

The Verve. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I've never been a fan of theire genre, but they were simply mindblowingly amazing. (It probably helped that they were on X and the crowd had been waiting for this show for years, but still ...)
Gogol Bordello. Slam dancing in the 95 degree heat in a tightly packed energetic crowd is fun, even if it results in surprising soreness two days later.
Battles. Fantastic fun. :) A lot of the acts this weekend were threading the line of mixing the techno and rock sounds, but they did it best, and with the most energy.
Fatboy Slim. I'd expected this to be my absolute favorite, but after the Verve it was something of anticlimax. (oops). Still, it was a great show. :) He's one of the best in the world at what he does, and one of the few artists in the genre that I like almost as much as I like DJ Shadow; so seeing him was at least an amazing anticlimax. :)
Deadmaus. Great live mixing.
Diplo. The best drum and bass I've heard since I fell in lvoe with the genre in the first place.
Cafe Tacuba. Fun mexican rock.
Carbon/Silicon. Strangely endearing aging british blues-rock band.
Death Cab For Cutie: nice mellow music to relax to in the late afternoon.
Kraftwerk: This was fun, albeit surreally like reading Adam Smith.

Fails:

Roger Waters. Roger Waters is supposed to be mindblowingly amazing (see, eg, the Verve and Gogol Bordello). In fact, while the effects were cool ... the music sounds exactly like the music on the albums. This is not a good thing.
Dmitri from Paris. I suppose someone had to remix 70s r&b and soul songs with a techno beat. But I don't have to listen to it.
Luckyiam. Sounds like the dude is trying to ride the independent hiphop formula to fame and fortune, only it's hard to do, because without the soul to illuminate the formula, it fails.
The Breeders. I really wanted to like this. But I wasn't able to make it happen.
Bondo Do Role. This is totally sexist of me, but: I like guy hiphop much more than girl hiphop, and the fact that it was brazilian hiphop wasn't able to save it for me.
Portishead. It was fun to be in an excited crowd, but ... a little too downtempo for me, I think.

Unfortunately failed to see:

Aesop Rock and Aphex Twin (it was way more important to keep my sick travelling companion company).
Justice. It was fucking cold on Sunday night, and after being bored by Roger Waters, and getting increasingly cold over the course of his set, I couldn't motivate myself to get over to the dance tent. Which is a shame, as it sounded fucking amazing from the campground, where I could feel the beat in the ground ... although it was pleasant for falling asleep to. :) I still have the nagging sense that the show was mindblowingly amazing and I shouldn't have missed it.