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.

Finally! The second half of our belated FreeFest photo roundup. Check out the first installment here.

The evening portion of this year's Virgin FreeFest was bookended by two equally cool events. It started with randomly meeting Mark Ibold, bass player of Pavement, and ended with making out with M.I.A. (really!sorta!) But more on that shortly...

After I met Ibold and gushed like a school girl about how great it was to finally see a band I've loved for so long, I headed to the Dance Forest for Chromeo. Lots of people had been dancing about all day here so by 6:30 p.m., it was more like the Dirt Forest. But Chromeo's funky synth beats were addicting, so no one was really bothered by it.

My next stop was back to the West Stage for Ludacris, who deserves mad props for how well he works a crowd and holds it in the palm of his hand.

Pavement's current reunion tour, even if it is to pad the band's 401Ks, could very well be a one-time thing, so I didn't want to miss a minute of it. Having just been blown off my feet (almost literally because of the wind during the downpour/thunder/lightning storm) three days earlier at one of the band's Central Park shows in NYC, I was looking forward to seeing Pavement a) without wiping the rain out of my eyes; and b) capturing the group on film. Happily, I got to do both.

In true Pavement fashion, there were messed-up starts and do-over and a fizzled-out ending on at least one song. Whereas the set in NYC was all thrashy power, like a wall of sound coming at you, this set was filled with more of the slower songs in the Pavement repertoire ("Heaven is a Truck," "Stop Breathing," "Spit on a Stranger"). However, the mood onstage was playful. Lead singer Stephen Malkmus, never one for lots of stage banter, was downright chatty. He took suggestions on which Baltimore Oriole player he should dedicate a song to,  finally deciding on Brian Matusz, and commented on the Baltimore Ravens ("The Dirty Birds," he called them).

Maybe the laid-back set had to do with exhaustion from playing so much recently. Malkmus was playing with his forehead against his mic during one song, and the always-hyper Bob Nastanovich was quite a bit calmer than he was during the NYC show (except during "Unfair" and "Fight This Generation," of course).

As much as it pained me, I had to miss Pavement's last song to get over to the West Stage for M.I.A. And she was late going on by like 15 minutes. As this was the first time I'd ever seen Ms. Maya live, she wasn't gaining points with this.

But once she got started, the girl won me over. I know many other reviews said her performance just OK, and that may all be true. But holy hell-fire, as someone who has never seen her live before, let me say this: M.I.A. knows how to put on a performance visually.

And I don't even say that because she kissed me...through my camera lens.  I was shooting her up close when she suddenly leaned, grabbed the hood around the end of my lens, and brought it up to her mouth, close enough to fog the glass.

More photos of Virgin FreeFest 2010 are available here.

Being an original drama in one act.

SETTING: The press tent of a large outdoor pop music festival in the suburbs. Not far from here. Not long from now.

CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

RICHARDS, a music critic for a newspaper, about thirty

A WOMAN, perhaps thirty-five

A BALD MAN, maybe forty

MALITZ, Richards's malnourished colleague, also about thirty

KLIMEK, a writer, somewhat older than thirty

LIGHTS UP on a tent on a dusty field wherein a makeshift office has been erected. A dozen laptop computers, many of them covered in logo stickers, sit unattended on folding tables, power cords dangling precariously. The tables are also littered with piles of small zip-up nylon portfolios and maps and pamphlets. There is no more free water ANYwhere in this tent, if you can believe that shit. A MAN seated at one of the tables rubs sunscreen on his head. Music wafts in from a beyond a hill, loud but indistinct.

MALITZ uses a PROTRACTOR to adjust the bill of his SILVER JEWS BASEBALL CAP to precisely the right skewed angle while RICHARDS stands animated in conversation with A WOMAN, gesturing frequently towards his white FEIYUE SNEAKERS.

RICHARDS: ...so I bought like nine pairs! I'll totally get you some next time I'm in New York.

Enter KLIMEK.

KLIMEK: Hail, Fellows! I just thought I would drop by to charge my phone up for a minute and also, while that is happening, perhaps to engage in some collegial banter with the both of youse.

RICHARDS (To MALITZ): Don't talk to him, Dude — he's the enemy! The enemy!

MALITZ: The enemy is everywhere!

KLIMEK: What is that, a Blue Öyster Cult song or something?

MALITZ: Titus Andronicus. Heard of 'em?

KLIMEK: I KNOW IT'S A FUCKING TITUS ANDRONICUS SONG, YOU GOOF!

END OF PLAY.

The 2010 Virgin Mobile FreeFest took place at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday, and while it didn't  have quite the heavy-hitting lineup of last year's, it still had a nice cross-section of music and non-music events. The D.C. area is a smidge less humid in September than in August, and the day's weather was lovely. (Let's hope this date change from August to September is a permanent one!)

A few days late, here are our photos of Virgin Mobile FreeFest—now with more ferris wheel!

I started the day out with Jimmy Eat World. Jimmy was never really my thing—its sound always seemed a tad too formulaic to me—but the kids seemed to be into it. Internet radio stations must have been kind to these power pop-punksters in the last few years and playing their stuff a bunch, given the line of kids waiting to get down into the floor's "pit" section and the number of crowd-surfers once the set started.  Jimmy's set included tracks from its  first record in three years, Invented (which came out today), and earlier songs like 2001's "The Middle."

The area between the two stages held the commerce and non-music activities. Wooden forts and draped beds, like the one below, served as areas for folks to sit on something other than grass.

I ran across to the West Stage to catch Trombone Shorty. Shorty has long been a popular figure in the wave of up and coming musicians around New Orleans, but he's probably known more in Yankee country from his spots on the HBO New Orleans-based series Treme. So it was really neat that the FreeFest organizers thought to include someone who is hot these days but not the usual fixture in the indie pop/rock/soul realm.

Traditional Nawlin's music is always so happy and fun, and Shorty's take on it is no exception. Using his trombone like a lead guitar, Shorty and company tore up the jazz-funk with pop songs in a big way. There was a small crowd at first but  as the infectious sound caught the ears of the folks moving between the stages, much like a second line, it proved impossible to resist. Trombone Shorty definitely won some converts at FreeFest.

One of the non-musical things to do between the stages was a "Psychic Soula," or a Magic 8-ball for the new generation.  I wonder if one of her responses was, "Reply hazy, try again"?

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros came next. I wasn't really impressed by the tracks I'd heard from them as it just seemed like the usual noodle rock.  But there is quite a buzz about them so they had to have something. Maybe it was the prevalence of dirty bare feet?

Or half-nekkidness?

Or all of the above, and lots of long hair?

I think my tweet about the set went something like, "Edward Sharpe-part of the unwashed hippie movement for the indie generation, picking up where Phish left off...no wait where moe. left off. Blech." I wasn't impressed overall, but who can say what makes a person connect to a band or a song?  I think the attraction with Edward Sharpe may have something to do with his showmanship. Early on, he bridged that two-foot gap between the stage and his audience by cat-walking most of the barricade and climbing into the crowd. Sometimes it's just feeling a bit of that human touch that makes all of the difference for people. The 9:30 stage staff weren't enamored by his actions I'm sure,  but it was obvious that the crowd adored and loved him for it.

Costumes and photo flipbooks were also part of the fun things to do between the stages...

I stopped over to check out Yeaysayer. The band proclaims their sound as "Middle-Eastern-psych-snap-gospel." Uh-huh. All I heard was "plain ol' keyboard synth and guitar." Then again, I think "snap" is an activity, not a musical style, so what do I know?

Two acts I really wanted to see this year were Pavement and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. For the latter, it seems I wasn't the only one...

Joan Jett's voice can still go from lullaby-sweet to snarly within three seconds ("Crimson and Clover").  Her set also included the Runaways' hit, "Cherry Bomb;" the first song she ever wrote ("You Drive Me Wild");" The French Song" ("Love between two people is a beautiful thing. Love between three people is a more beautiful thing, especially when one of them is me," she said), and "Backlash," one of her collaborative songs with Paul Westerberg. And she got the loudest and best sing-along of the day going for "Do You Wanna Touch."

Joan Jett proved that she is still one big bad ass under those killer cheekbones. It was  cool to see kids who weren't even alive when "I Love Rock and Roll" came out be wowed by her. It was also neat to hear the collective cheer go up from the seats and the lawn when she launched into "Rock and Roll"'s opening chords. Everyone wants Joan Jett to be their bad-girl biker girlfriend.

See the rest of the photos from all sets here.

Next up: Chromeo, Ludacris, Pavement, and MIA.

The festival layout made it convenient when traveling from one stage to another to take a sojourn at the 'Dance Tent'. The above set from London based Erol Alkan was so jaw-dropping head-nodding fantastic I nearly missed Gogol Bordello's start.

The 9:30 Club deployed its elite force of security personnel en mass at the Virgin Festival. Some sets warranted the special forces of music world security from the 9:30 (Lupe Fiasco) and some had to settle for regular rent-a-cop infantry (Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings).

The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus was a pleasant palate cleanser between shows. The traveling troupe and non-profit dazzled with sword-swallowing and high-wire antics.