All Points West? More like South...

Those of us with festival experience – or should I say real festival experience – were wary about what to expect from the inaugural “All Points West Music and Arts Festival” in Jersey City, NJ. The venue was promising enough: Liberty State Park, the proverbial welcome mat for millions upon millions of immigrants during the late 1800s to the mid 1900s, has iconically timeless views of the Statue of Liberty and New York City skyline, which make up for what the park lacks in natural beauty (there are virtually no trees at all, and the grass runs from plentiful stabbing crabbiness to thin and balding). The “festival,” which did not involve any sort of camping option and had beer drinkers relegated to only five beers at three nonsensically placed tents from which no music could be seen or heard, was plagued by long transportation waits (the only viable options for 30,000 on each of the three days were the ferry from Manhattan or the Light Rail from Hoboken), and even longer entry lines of up to an hour once the more big-name bands started playing in the evening, giving the entire event the vibe of a crowded concert rather than a bustling festival.

Bands were given only one hour to play (plus or minus fifteen minutes), with a half-hour between acts for breaking down and setting up, which was more than enough time for the lower-tier of performers (see examples below). For the better bands (Radiohead aside, whose set ran for over two hours, but was still over in time for the early bird special at 11:00pm, whereas most festivals run until 3:00am), the set times were ludicrously short. Treating The Roots like an opening band by putting them on stage during the waning daylight hours of 7:15pm to 8:15pm is simply inappropriate. The Roots open for no one! They were barely warmed up by the end of the hour and seemed to have at least two more hours of performance left, since that's what their normal shows entail. They are one of the premier musical performers on today's scene and are widely accepted as the greatest live hip-hop band EVER. And All Points West relegated them to one hour, which led immediately into the 8:30pm Radiohead set. I was just as excited as anyone there to see Radiohead play, but making them the only band that plays for longer than one hour is just disrespectful to the other worthy acts. A more apt name for the APW would have been "Radiohead featuring the All Points West Music and Art Festival," and not the other way around. They rightfully received top billing, but at the expense of a longer Roots performance. If acts were overlapping all day, as they are bound to do at festivals, why not give people the option of staying an extra hour with The Roots and cutting down the crowd for Radiohead? I still would've gone and paid homage to the musical gods, but many would have opted to stick with the kings of hip-hop.

Despite all of the unfestive logistical nightmares, the arts part of the “music and arts” festival was a smashing success. The tone that organizers were going for (AEG Live of Coachella and Rothbury fame) was one of environmental responsibility, a theme that I didn’t even know about until after the festival was over and Nate Chinen of the New York Times revealed that All Points West was “expressly full” of “environmental selling points.” All bitterness aside, that green goal, while virtually invisible and unpromoted, is what led to the relaxed and entertaining atmosphere inside the festival. There were water games and modern abstract sculptures galore, and before 5:00pm rolled around, when thousands of people started filing in, there was room to play frisbee and walk calmly from stage to stage. And it's a good thing, because it was impossible not to want to wander.

The music was the most perplexing aspect of the entire affair. Saturday consisted of a few great acts (Radiohead, The Roots, Animal Collective, Sia) interspersed with a majority of mediocre-at-best artists (K'Naan, Nicole Atkins, Chromeo), which were all painfully bogged down by some that were simply unbearable (The Felice Brothers, Exit 105, Your Vegas). The former musicians were all saved for evening slots, which explains the mad rush to get in. The latter two groups, however, were arranged in ascending order by quality (because first is the worst), leaving that calm and pleasantly festivalish part of the day filled with lots of background music, but essentially devoid of any band truly worth sticking around for...hence my gratitude at the plethora of activities (frisbee, photography, art exploration, etc.) at my disposal. In true "festival" form, the pre-evening day was a lovely refuge from the usual hustle and bustle of living in or just outside of Manhattan.

Day and night at All Points West were polar opposites. They were like...well...like night and day. Once the front runners showed up -- that is, those who paid $110 to go to a festival and just show up for the headliners -- All Points West went South. Not musically, of course, because Radiohead and The Roots were in the line-up, but the calm, happy-go-luckiness of the first five hours vanished in a flash of Prada bags (did I just date myself, or are those still popular?) and Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. Call me cynical (I am) or just plain bitter (I am NOT, you son of a bitch), but those New Yorkers turned my festival into a jam-packed concert, complete with requisite dirty looks, pushing, rubbing, yelling, and "fuck-off"s.

At other festivals, the crowds exude positivity (see my posts about Rothbury) and consideration for each other. Just by attending a festival together, all those in attendance foster a sense of community and belonging that only music can create. I did not find this at All Points West, and I would argue that any festival held in New York City (even via Jersey City) will be hard pressed to maintain that positivity. Most people who live in the greater New York area will counter that All Points West wasn't like other festivals because Manhattan isn't like any other city. I quite agree, but this time it wasn't for the better.

Dear Kings of Leon...

I'm sorry that I've balked at the very mention of your name since Bonnaroo 2007. Playing before The Police was a tough spot to be in, and the pressure of the massive crowd must have been simply too much for you to bear, which explains why you put on such a boring power-pop performance on that fateful June day. I vowed to never even consider seeing you again. I swore to myself that I'd go out of my way to discourage my friends from even considering attending one of your shows. And, when I found out that you were playing at All Points West on Saturday, August 9, I took it upon myself to ensure that everyone that asked my advice knew to stay away from the likes of you.

I'm sorry.

Saturday was a beautiful day, with the Statue of Liberty and New York City at my back, and ten hours of music in front of me. We got in early, threw a frisbee around, played some Frog Bog, and enjoyed the small-town atmosphere of the under-attended early hours of the festival. I spent the better part of the day floating from stage to stage, taking in pieces of music that caught my attention and moving on as soon as it drifted. It was a noncommittal day, but the one thing I was gung-ho about was not letting your waves of sound so much as move the hairs of my ears. At 6:30 pm, I thoughtlessly wandered towards the food court that was nearest your stage, turned to my concert companion, and asked excitedly, "Who is this?!"

I'm sorry.

I never even gave you a chance. Sure, I tried your studio stuff and I don't like it that much, but everyone knows, most of all me, that bands are different live. And lots of people seem to like you. In fact, other than Animal Collective, you were the first band that really packed the field. That's rarely how I measure a band, but in this case it was surprisingly accurate. After a day of relatively unimpressive bands, you got me to turn my head. Your drummer, tastefully interspersing cowbell hits with tom fills in the middle of a verse, really grabbed me and put me on my ass, and your bassist not only drove the song but steered me to a nice spot in the grass where I could marvel and eat my $10 hot dog.

So, Kings of Leon, I'm sorry for my doubt and unfounded hatred over the past year. I may be late on the bandwagon, but "Sex On Fire" really, really, reallyreallyreally rocks hard, and I'd be a fool to deny it just because of pride. When you come back to New York on September 23^rd I'll make it up to you in person.

Virginia is for Lovers

We drove for over three hours in the pouring, blinding rain to see Radiohead last night. The venue, Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, VA, is only 40 or so miles from DC, but due to flooding and general hickishness, roads were awfully crowded. Somehow we got to the show in time to catch more than half of Radiohead's epic set (see below):

All I Need
Jigsaw
Lucky
15 Step
Nude
Pyramid Song
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Paranoid Android
Just
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers + Mash
Bodysnatchers

Like Spinning Plates
Optimistic
Karma Police
Go Slowly
Planet Telex

Fake Plastic Trees
The National Anthem
House Of Cards

Now, I could spend hours complaining about the terrible traffic patterns and disappointment I felt at having missed such an undoubtedly memorable first ten songs. I could tell you for days about how frustrating it is to drive stop-and-go for 7 hours just to see the greatest band on Earth play music for roughly 1 hour.

But those are not my overarching memories of last night. In fact, our exodus through the rivered streets and mucky highways of rural Virginia led us to a Garden of Eden, adorned with shifting camera projections and hanging lights, ruled by five Gods and Devils on a stage. Seeing Radiohead on stage for the first time was something so surreal, so religious, that it is hard for me to put into words.

For years, Radiohead has existed solely on my car radio, on CDs, on my iPod. When we took our seats in Row 19 in between "Paranoid Android" and "Just," the band was doused in white light. They looked so...human. These machines that lived in my electronic devices were there, real, making music for me. As soon as "Just" began, in a flurry and flash of bright lights, Radiohead became much more than a band. They were, in spurts of a few minutes at a time, entities all their own. In between songs, the human light brought them back to Earth. Thom Yorke even casually chatted with the capacity crowd. He was personable, fun...even humorous. He humbly thanked the crowd on the lawn, the masses willing to stand in the thunder and rain. However divine the musical performance was, the rehumanization of Radiohead between songs was tangible.

And then "Reckoner" started.

The dangling LED lights, fading from purple to blue to white, and the honeycombs of spotlights and video screens lifted the band to a new level of Godliness. As the drums pounded out the opening beat, tens-of-thousands of people were silent, in awe, waiting. Yorke's breathy falsetto started softly, tenderly and continued unabated through verse and chorus until, at the most transcendent of moments (2:23 in the MP3 on the right side of the page), the band fell out and Yorke was alone with his guitar, wailing, imploring, declaring, "Because we separate, it ripples our reflections."

And the drums were back in, driving the song forward toward its inevitable end. The crowd remained in a reverie, grooving and bobbing to the music. My eyes were wider than they've ever felt, and for just that one breakdown we all felt so connected.

The high was maintained for a few more songs and then, in a flash of blood red, Radiohead ripped us from Heaven and showed us the depths of a fiery angry Hell. From the opening chords, "Bodysnatchers" was a flailing, angry rant by Yorke. He was yelling, he was screaming, and his awkward scrawny body was writhing, as he preached to his loyal followers, "Has the light gone out for you? Because the light's gone out for me. It is the 21st Century. It is the 21st Century...I've seen it coming."

It scared me to feel so drawn to this leader, this God or Devil (or whatever the Hell Thom Yorke really is) on stage who seemed to bring thousands together, bring us to spiritually musical heights rarely known, and then leave us standing there dumbstruck in his wake. People sang along as if chanting to their supreme cult leader, carrying them on toward the afterlife. For the hour that I saw them on stage, they could have led 25,000 young adults willingly to drink the Kool Aid.

It is rare that a band can reach out to so many and grab them all at once, losing no one in its grasp. Somewhere between the human light, which revealed their instruments so clearly to me, and the reds, greens, and blues that accompanied me to Heaven and Hell and back, lie five real people with an incredible power.

"I really hope it was fucking worth it," nudged Yorke as Radiohead left the stage last night. And though my ratio of car-time to Radiohead-time was 7:1 instead of 2:3, I can say that no concert that I have ever been to was more worth it than last night's. To be Baptized by Radiohead in a deluge the likes of which I've never seen was worth it. To actually feel transcendent from listening to music was worth it. And to know that it was only a preview of what I'll get at All Points West on August 9th made it more fucking worth it than Thom Yorke could even imagine.