Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Voodoo Music Festival

This past weekend, my wonderful girlfriend Andrea and I attended two of three days of VooDoo Fest. Voodoo is an annual rock festival here in New Orleans that has grown largely over its ten-year history. It was great this year, despite Death Cab For Cutie bailing out on the event before it even happened, and N*E*R*D* canceling without any prior notice to expectant fans.

We got a couple weekend passes from Leo @ ANTIGRAVITY , which was really nice of him to do. This means the only money I spent was on a t-shirt, food, and drinks. Saturday night we caught part of local favorites Rotary Downs set, and the vaudevillian antics of the New Orleans Bingo! Show. Whilst the close of the evening brought the once-huge industrialists Nine Inch Nails to the stage. We watched most of their performance from afar on a screen. I did walk up toward the stage between masses of people to view NIN performing "Closer". Hearing 10,000 people sing aloud, "I want to F you like an animal" is awkward in any setting.

I did not expect to go to Voodoo on Sunday because I had to work. But, my boss texted and said I had the day off (and I would get paid since she took my shift!), so Andrea and I booked it down to City Park to catch 25 minutes of Dashboard Confessional. I saw Chris and crew back in 2002 when everyone still sang along. He performed "Vindicated," a cover of that new Pink song, and closed with "Hands Down". He sounded good. We headed over to see N*E*R*D* (before we knew they cancelled) and ended up seeing most of Lupe Fiasco's show, which was actually quite good with the live band. Next, we sat down, and again, watched a band (Panic At The Disco) play on a screen. Although I did stand up at some point, and was impressed by how tight their harmonies were live, these guys are overrated in my book. Finally, as the picture above denotes, we saw R.E.M. play a fantastic set to a very eager crowd. Stipe’s political views may not be mine, however, he can perform very well. Besides his blatant support for Obama, he spoke a lot about his love for our city, and I thought that was nice. They played some songs I knew, and some I had never heard of, but it was good nonetheless. We were eight rows back so it was a great experience, both visually and musically.

This weekend was a lot of fun. I cannot wait until I get to see live music again. I love music. I want to be in a band.

P.S. I got the picture of R.E.M. from Tamera, and you can see her photography here.

1 comment:

Freezer said...

Clearly I haven't checked your blog in a while, but I'm glad I did today to see what you've been up to. I'm jealous of this post. Sounds like some good times. I saw Dashboard in Orlando two summers ago. That was the third time I've seen them. I think I got lucky that show because Chris got nostalgic because he was in Florida and his family and friends were there so he played about 25 minutes, just him and his guitar the way it used to be. That part was fantastic. The rest of the show, I just felt really old.

I would love to see R.E.M., but I would want to hear their old stuff - pretty much the songs on Automatic for the People.

-Jared