The sun shone bright Saturday at this year's Virgin FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and while the grounds were a bit muddier than last year, at least the Dance Forest wasn't as dusty. It was the first nice afternoon in weeks—as well as the day before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the start of Ethiopian New Year, as we learned from Patti Smith—so this year's lineup, heavier on the synth and electronica acts than years past, provided an upbeat soundtrack to a beautiful day.

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Cut Copy

!!!

Patti Smith

Cee Lo

TV on the Radio

The Black Keys

Deadmau5

Additional photos from Virgin FreeFest sets and people can be found here.

On Saturday, the Virgin Mobile FreeFest dodged rainy forecasts and generally moved forward on the Merriweather Post Pavilion grounds with the efficiency and grace of a Tony Romo drive, at least for the first three quarters. The Ferris wheel was steady; burritos in the press tent were easy to smuggle; no one in the dance forest got too handsy; and none of the homemade paper mache Deadmau5 helmets led to accidental death by asphyxiation. Let's go to the highlights:

RAMON SAYS

Patti Smith still has it, by which I mean seeping paranoia. Smith spent an hour on on the main stage rocking hard, fast, and with feeling. In between, the civil rights rants lacked direction and taste. Smith took surveillance cameras in bathrooms to task, and complained because John Walker Lindh is in prison. Her big picture, "wake up, sheeple" appeal was at least poetic: "We must remember more than two buildings and three planes."

September 11 marks the beginning of the Ethiopian new year. Thanks, Patti Smith.

Lead vocalists felt added pressure to soapbox before the last song. Big Sean was straightforward: "Don't let any of these motherfuckers tell you shit." Will Sheff of Okkervil River was self-effacing in thanking folks, "even if you were dragged here by your boyfriend. Even if you were dragged here by your girlfriend. Even if you're just waiting around for the next band." TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe had this well-meaning bit about turning on the lights in the dark.

Patron patriotism levels were underwhelming. FreeFest boasted minimal waving of the American flag, and only one dude showed up as Uncle Sam. None of the hoopsters thought to at least rock a Dream Team jersey. A missed opportunity.

I was able to see a lot of stuff because the grounds' three stages were walkable, and human traffic was well-organized. Scheduling overlap of talent often means black and white programing decisions, but logistics made the whole event a grab bag of 20-minute sets. In ninety minutes I was able to catch Cut Copy, !!!, Cee Lo's ghastly scavenging of dead ideas from black music, and the aforementioned Smith. Chris, what resonated with you? How awesome was it to see TV on the Radio fill out the Pavilion Stage like it was a sold out, stand-alone performance? Who was straight up terrible?

CHRIS SAYS

Biggest Winner: TV on the Radio, duh. I'm not exactly courting controversy here.  Tunde Adebimpe was the only performer I could see sweating through his shirt from the back of the house, which is my admittedly arbitrary standard for who on stage means it.  Their powerful baker's-dozen-song set, culminating in a "Wolf Like Me" that brought even the lawn contingent to its feet, was hypnotic.

So why were they slotted next-to-last on the Pavilion Stage?  That meant the Black Keys had to follow them.  While the Akron, Ohio, duo sounded admirably greasy—except for when they brought a touch of class by covering The Kinks—for a two-piece, even a very loud two-piece, to follow a shimmery wall of sound like TVotR, they're just outgunned, is all.  Who was opening for who here?

If TVotR played like they owned the place, we'll forgive them on grounds of them owning the place.  But the other acts should've campaigned a bit harder. Okkervil River's set was the first I saw (and the first of any consequence, according to at least one credible observer who arrived in a timelier fashion than I did), and I appreciated Sheff's wry acknowledgment that not every face in the crowd was necessarily there for him. Grace Potter & The Nocturnals probably won some people over with their heavy-footed midday set.  I never noticed how much she sounds like Melissa Etheridge before.

Biggest Loser: Cee Lo's Wardrobe. I wondered where I'd seen his all-sexy-ladykind backup band before.  If Cee Lo turns up to perform in a plain white T-shirt and trousers, does he make a sound?  A: Yes, but after his cover of Pussycat Dolls' "Dontcha" gave way to "Crazy"-=-recalling his appearance with Danger Mouse at this event's ancient ancestor, the Virgin Mobile Festival in 2006—I was already hustling back to the Pavilion to catch TVotR.

Oh: Watching James Murphy spin records is just a lot less interesting than watching him front LCD Soundsystem, the champions of last year's FreeFest.  But that's just genre prejudice on my part, I guess.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Patti Smith. Someone had to do some sloganeering, but Smith's repeated references to John Walker Lindh—"And what does he do in his prison cell that so frightens our goverment?  He prays."—were less coherent in context than her admonition, "Remember who you were on Sept. 10th."  To my ears, her condemnations of the post-9/11 surveillance culture and the Iraq War brought brought cheers and boos in more-or-less equal measure, but the way all those responses turned into howls of approval whenever she spoke the word "freedom" was kind of depressing.

RAMON
Right there with you. James Murphy is a folk hero to any rock writer worth his denim jacket because he writes poetic, enduring dance rock with immaculate references. Watching him spin records started off looking sweet—check all that vinyl!—but the pesky sunlight was a major buzzkill. On the whole, a huge day for electronic and dance music. Teddybears got a nice groundswell when festival organizers fabricated a pre-game interview and broadcast it over the Pavilion Stage's screens just before their dance forest debut. People saw them and realized, "Holy cow, that's a bunch of European men in crisp suits with giant bear contraptions on their head." They sounded pulsing and sludgy, like a less gloomy Rammstein. Ghostland Observatory was pinned against a West Stage-headlining gig from Deadmau5, but their crowd was vibrant, loyal, fluorescent, and they funneled experience as a band that has performed on bigger stages with university marching bands into targeted firepower.

Biggest winner: Without question, electronica was the dominant and most fashionable genre. Neon and war paint for everyone; non-stop dancing even during Calvin Harris' electro house, fist-pump-with-a-turkey-leg rager.

Other winners: People that love the smell of manure. People that love to decorate shirts with Japanese letters while simultaneously contributing to Japan's tsunami relief efforts. People that love discarding plastic water bottles on fields. Virgin Mobile and its cohorts, as this year's edition marked an all-time attendance total more than 50,000.

Biggest losers: The Best Buy emerging artists that played from noon-2p.m.. Most of their fans had been delivered in mom and dad's Nissan XTerra. More power to their sincere enthusiasm, but it felt like when studios don't hold advance screenings of movies because they must minimize negative buzz.

Other losers: Deadmau5 seemed inflated to a stature the Toronto DJ hadn't earned. He doesn't have an album out, and people just wanted to see the million-dollar head gear light up before walking out of the park. Big Sean was the default hip-hop representative and despite his cool Detroit Red Wings T-shirt, lacked the catalog and crowd-control ability to curate. He also ended songs with the sound of broken glass, something that hasn't been cool since the OutKast dropped ATLiens.

CHRIS

Yeah, the festival brand has clearly shifted in a more electronic direction in they years since it became free.  In the Pimilico Era (2006-8), there was always a big boomer act (The Who, The Police, Bob Dylan) and a big Clinton-era act (Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo Fighters) anchoring things.  Even more than in the prior $0.00 installments, this year's turnout skewed under-25 and skewed heavily in favor of kids unafraid to spend a hot day beneath a flourescent clown wig.  The ubiquitous Deadmau5 masks and merch had me kind of curious, but I resisted the urge to check him out on account of my fear I'd be instantly Logan's-ran into powder if I got any closer to the West Stage than the Ferris wheel.  Also, I had homework that night.

Save for TV on the Radio, again, I didn't come away with from any performance smelling singed flesh on my face this year. I have fond memories of fandom-renewing or allegience-solidifying sets in Virgin/FreeFests past from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Spoon, She & Him, Ludacris—a fairly diverse list.  I'll probably listen to more Grace Potter and Okkervil River this week than I did last week, but I can't say I had anything approaching a conversion experience this time. I also remember the underdogs of festivals past—performers you might think would be cowed by their early timeslots or just the festival format, but weren't. Amy Winehouse and St. Vincent are two from previous festivals whose sets felt like that. I didn't see anyone rise to the challenge that way this year, either.

Formed in Libyan refugee camps in ‘79, the band spent over a decade exiled from its home in Mali. The group didn't put out its first widely released album until 2001, but it's been growing a broad international fanbase through ruthless touring ever since. The band literally encompasses generations of Taureg musicians, all nomadic denizens of the Sahara.

Tassili lacks some of the fire of the band’s earliest work, however: While the 2004 album Amassakoul had a Hendrix-like ferocity, subsequent albums have favored more trance-inducing jams. This time around, the band plays all acoustic instruments, but the formula is familiar. Leader Ibrahim Ag Alhabib sings for a few bars, his 16 or so bandmates respond, and then long, meandering guitar work ensues. Alhabib’s virtuosic fingers still speak volumes, even as he becomes progressively more restrained.

The unamplified percussion and acoustic vibe brings less rock ‘n’ roll and more earthiness to the table. I have no way to verify the label’s claim that the band’s lyrics are now less political, but stripped-down tracks like “Tameyawt” offer the kind of intimacy that would support a more personal approach.

The album features guest spots from Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, Nels Cline of Wilco, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which might lead you to believe Tinariwen is reaching for some kind of crossover. The ensemble may be reaching out to other audiences—and its latest single is perhaps its most accessible yet—but you’d be hard-pressed to find any artistic compromises. Cline offers an eerie, effects-drenched atmosphere to the opening track, and the Brass Band melds its instruments organically into “Ya Messinagh.” Adebimpe and Malone make their most prominent appearance on “Tenere Taqhim Tossam,” which meshes a TVOTR-style chorus into the Taureg framework, but they also add subtle harmonies and guitar work elsewhere that’s appropriately hard to notice.

Collaborations aside, the album shouldn’t shock longtime fans. The gradual move toward quieter songs has been a long time coming, and while the band may have opened itself up to a few unexpected visitors, the still-beating heart of the desert blues remains the same.

But there's another recent Fugazi interpretation the Post missed: "Not Playin'" by Charlotte, N.C., rapper Stranger Day. For the track, Philly producer Emynd sampled Fugazi's "Blueprint." According to URB, Ian MacKaye cleared the sample, too.

The Fugazi part sounds a little strange when matched with Stranger Day's rhymes about girls with "pretty tans" and turning parties out. Nevertheless, in his description for the song's video, Stranger Day writes: "the video will show how we get down in the south (fugazi samples, moonshine, skateboarding, chicks, 71 riviera and partying!..."

Fugazi and Moonshine?! Now we've heard everything.

You can grab the EP Barstool Bounce for free at Stranger Day's website.

• Spread across two mainstages: The Black Keys, Deadmau5, Cee Lo Green, TV on the Radio, Patti Smith, Empire of the Sun, Cut Copy, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Okkervil River, Big Sean, Two Door Cinema Club, Alberta Cross, and Bombay Bicycle Club.
• In the Dance Forest: James Murphy, Calvin Harris, Ghostland Observatory, !!!, Porter Robinson, Eclectic Method, and Teddybears.

And here are the most relevant details:

• You can acquire your free tickets on Friday at 10 a.m. via the Virgin Mobile Live Facebook page, but you have to "like" it first. Whether you like it or not. Loyalty bonus! If you're a Virgin Mobile customer or have held tickets to the festival in the past, you should get a text message or email soon, inviting you to get your tickets on Thursday at 10 a.m.
• There won't be any VIP tickets this year (which last year were the only way you could sit in the covered seats closest to the pavilion stage, until parts of that area were opened to everyone late in the festival). Instead, you can buy a "Premium Ticket Package" which gets you early admission, some FreeFest swag, and drink specials. You can buy those at the Merriweather or Ticketfly sites.

Now, some observations.

Kudos, Virgin and I.M.P, for freeing the pavilion seats.

This isn't the most populist FreeFest (see Weezer, Blink-182 in 2009), but marquee sets from The Black Keys, Cee Lo, and to a lesser extent Deadmau5 still feel pretty damn populist. (Frankly, I'd be happy if the headliners were Patti Smith and TV on the Radio.) Like last year, the lineup is weighted toward mainstream-y indie rock and poppy, internationalist electronica. There are a few great bands. For better or for worse, there seem to be fewer buzz bands (i.e. No Sleigh Bells equivalent).

Very little nostalgia here (see 2010's Jimmy Eat World, Joan Jett), and don't file Patti Smith in that category. She's the biggest surprise on the bill, and probably the act I'm most excited about. I also have no idea what she'll play (it's been four years since her last studio album), but I suspect she won't just be rehashing hits from her late-'70s/early-'80s heyday (I wouldn't smirk at most of those songs, though). The last time I saw her play was at a Ralph Nader rally in 2000. It was the best thing about the experience.

Why so little hip-hop? Big Sean will be lonely.

A bill featuring both Two Door Cinema Club and Bombay Bicycle Club is confusing.

James Murphy and TV on the Radio are pseudo-veterans: Murphy's LCD Soundsystem capped off last year's festival with an ebullient set, and TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek used way too much air horn during a DJ set as Maximum Balloon.

It's taking place Sept. 10, after all. Click Track was dinged for reporting the concert's date last week: Should they be miffed or feel vindicated? Side note: The WaPo blog correctly predicted threefour of the festival's 20 announced acts.

I foresee spending a lot of time in the Dance Forest. Suffocating dust storms be damned.

Kyp Malone

What drew you to this event?

The invitation drew me to the event, but I was happy to accept the invitation because I like Ginsberg, I like the cultural space that he occupies and what he represents, and I like D.C.

Do you have a favorite piece by Ginsberg?

The first thing I was ever introduced to was "Howl," and I've revisited it several times over the years—it's made me feel different each time. "Father Death Blues" is one I like, too. I'm also just particularly fond of the person he presented as a personality.

How so?

In interviews and arguments...I wasn't alive with him as a contemporary in the '60s, which is what period I was introduced to, but it seems like it took a lot more to stand up and live your life outside of societal norms in a loud and vocal way, especially in terms of sexuality. The queerness he identified with and celebrated is starting to be accepted more in the mainstream today. Living a creative life, it takes a form of bravery in a lot of ways. His life and how he led it—at least what I've seen in his writing and hearing him read—it's heroic in a sense to me. I only ever saw him read one time, and it was the day Kurt Cobain's body was found, so I must've been like 21 or so. It was a very weird moment in time. A lot of my friends were pretty upset. Kurt Cobain was for us in that moment a poet, and someone we identified with. Maybe not everyone, but I certainly did; his songs were undeniable to me. His death was a pretty big shock and a blow to me. To see Ginsberg that day and hear him read and speak on things in regards to mortality and death and the continuation of the spirit...it was very healing.

Did he speak purely with his work or did he talk about death outside of his poems, as well?

He, more than anyone I can think of who has a listenership, he synthesized and then translated a lot of Eastern spirituality for a lot of people. That's in a lot of his writing, and he talks about these metaphysical things in his writing. If I remember correctly, and it's hard to remember because it was a long time ago, I believe he did address the situation for a moment outside of the poetry. It was a respectful, mourning moment.

At the Ginsberg-inspired event, will you be performing Rain Machine?

Yeah, probably. I try to have a plan, but sometimes it's whatever the moment calls for.

Do you have more than is what's on Rain Machine?

I have a lot of songs that aren't on anything, and then there are some TVOTR songs I wrote that I play solo if I feel inspired.

Does Rain Machine draw inspiration from the Beats or their legacy at all?

I feel like anyone who is writing verse is connected somehow to all people who have written verse. So, I feel an affinity toward them. But also, they were doing that in their time and living their lives on those specific paths. That might not be my path. As a younger person I remember trying to emulate that and recreate those experiences. We're all given our own trips, but I'm a father and I'm pretty square now. I still like psychedelics and everything, but I'm not in a position to drop everything to go to North Africa. But of course, I find [Ginsberg] and the Beats were an inspiration.

The Beats often interacted with the social issues of their time. Do you feel like your work connects to broader social issues as well?

I know people who are living their lives as activists, but the music I make—it's a commercial endeavor. It gets tricky to combine the two. It is still what I do for my vocation, so it is still a commercial endeavor. I'm working on some things, and there are some things in embryonic stages that I don't want to talk too much about, but I'm working with some friends to organize a concert to bring attention to the perpetual trampling upon of native people's rights, particularly in regards to mining corporations and extractions in the Southwest. I'm talking to people from the band Blackfire from Arizona. People in that band are in a Navajo tribe. We're trying and protest that and raise money for people in that situation.

But lyrically, these things do come up in the context of songs that I've written. Lately, I'm writing right now for a project, and there's a lot that I feel like deserves questioning and condemnation for what's going on. In this world, and in this nation in both foreign and domestic policy. That stuff is coming up in songs, and it's easy to come up as a complaining blowhard Jeremiah...you could go hoarse telling civilization how fucked up it is, but the list of complaints would just never end. Still, I don't want to shut up about it, but I don't want to just write and just sing about it. That's not the entirety of my experience, and I don't want it to be my only reality. That would be a pretty narrow field of vision.

Kyp Malone performs for free on Saturday, July 24th at 10 p.m.  outside Busboys & Poets at 5th and K streets NW, following an 8 p.m. performance inside the venue by Anne Waldman and others ($10). "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" runs through Sept. 16 at the National Gallery of Art.

On Monday night, TV on the Radio exorcised any demons lingering after February's uncharacteristic misstep on Saturday Night Live with a triumphant sold out show at the 9:30 Club. They opened the cage on the postmodern menagerie of sounds harnessed in the masterful Dear Science while keeping the layered electronic howl respectfully danceable.

Front man Tunde Adebimpe conducted TVotR's avante garde ruckus, which bordered on a revival meeting and rarely slacked off even during slower numbers. Adebimpe used Science's opener "Halfway Home" as a template for the set, propelled by drummer Jaleel Bunton. Touring sax player Stuart Bogie spent one half of the show delivering well timed honks and the other half on his knees engaged in the percussive arts.

Guitarist Kyp Malone kicked off a roasting version of "Crying" and put his playing out in front on "Red Dress." Both "Wolf Like Me" from Return to Cookie Mountain, and "Golden Age" made clear the depth of TVotR's musical gifts by replicating the textured sound of Science while still sounding spontaneous. This is a band so in sync on stage that they all took a simultaneous towel break after the chugging majesty of "DLZ."

Photos by Edward Lockett

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2009/06/10/tv-on-the-radio-930-all-blown-up-like-a-ghetto-blaster/feed/ 0 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2009/01/14/rolling-stone-reaches-new-lows-with-top-50-albums/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2009/01/14/rolling-stone-reaches-new-lows-with-top-50-albums/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:19:49 +0000 Hilary Crowe http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag/?p=3141 With the new year comes not-so-new traditions: purging your closet of heinous holiday sweaters, resolving to dissolve your waistline and, if you're Rolling Stone , looking to Top 40 lists and tired-and-true troubadours to compile your list of the 50 "Best" Albums of the Year.

I've suspected this Stone of rolling downhill for a couple years now (when Beck's "Modern Guilt" engenders the same critical acclaim as the Jonas Brothers' "A Little Bit Longer," one questions Jann Wenner's editorial prowess). But the magazine's ranking of the top 50 albums of the past year was the nail in my subscription's coffin; 2008 seems to have forced Rolling Stone's critical condition into just that.

Number one is TV on the Radio's "Dear Science," a solid, if predictable, choice. Having no real gripes with that one, I turn the page to find Dylan's dusty bootlegs "Tell Tale Signs" stealing Lil Wayne's #2 position. Neither new nor revelatory (nor objectively musically "good," if such a thing exists), the Dylan album seems out of place on this list. What's more, British divas Coldplay clock in at #7, while refreshing and revered eponymous debut of Ivy-punk/Afro-pop darlings Vampire Weekend rounds out the top ten.

These are but minor and (by now) expected disappointments from Rolling Stone. And for the most part, I can live with the flaws and false praise until I get to numbers 39 (Taylor Swift, "Fearless"), 40 (Jonas Brothers, "A Little Bit Longer"), and 41 (AC/DC, "Black Ice"). Teen queens Swift and the Jonas Brothers not only beat out time-addled Aussies AC/DC, but the trinity takes precedence over David Byrne and Brian Eno's collaboration "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." Eclectic, fresh and always creatively relevant, Byrne and Eno's work is everything that trinity is not – heck, everything Dylan's bootlegs, at #2, are not (there's a reason Dylan is just now releasing those cataloged cash cows).

So that I may let my frustration with Rolling Stone's list rest in peace, I've rearranged their top 10 of their 50 "Best" Albums of 2008:

1. Vampire Weekend, "Vampire Weekend"

2. Lil Wayne, "Tha Carter III"

3. Beck, "Modern Guilt"

4. David Byrne & Brian Eno, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

5. TV on the Radio, "Dear Science"

7. No Age, "Nouns"

8. Fleet Foxes, "Fleet Foxes"

9. The Magnetic Fields, "Distortion"

10. Girl Talk, "Feed the Animals"

[Ed. note: Rise Records distributed three of my choices, and Vagrant distributed two–I can assure BPB readers that I was in no way compensated for my shameless whoring.]

1. The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV, Thrice (Vagrant)
Below: "The Sky is Falling"

2. Lost in the Sound of Separation, Underoath (Solid State)

3. Life Is Not a Waiting Room, Senses Fail (Vagrant)
Below: "Ali for Cody"

4. Blessed Be Our Ever After, Burden of a Day (Rise)
Below: "Sorry Seacrest It's Casey's Countdown"

5. Dear Science, TV on the Radio (Interscope)

6. Heart Is Long EP, Idiot Pilot (Reprise)
Below: "Retina and the Sky"

7. Dance Gavin Dance, Dance Gavin Dance (Rise)
Below: "Rock Solid"

8. The Tide, Oceana (Rise)
Below: "The Accountable"

9. Get Damaged EP, Be Your Own Pet (XL)

10. Secrets are Sinister, Longwave (Original Signal)

Below: this year's top-sellers at Melody Records. Glad to see Gnarls on there; chagrined to see Coldplay; not surprised to see either; curious whether any other stores were able to move the Hancock album like this.

1. Madonna, Hard Candy
2. Coldplay, Viva la Vida
3. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One
4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
5. Portishead, Third
6. Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson
7. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
8. R.E.M., Accelerate
9. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
10. Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple
11. Sigur Ros, Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust
12. The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
13. TV on the Radio: Dear Science
14. Herbie Hancock, River: The Joni Letters
15. Duffy, Rockferry