Have I Failed?

brian-brooks:

Morrissey Gets a Job by Brian Brooks (1999)

Oh yes, this is quite perfect.

Bamboozle has come and gone, and I have to say, I am impressed and relieved that the festival wasn’t a complete logistical clusterfuck like most people thought it would be. There was a considerable amount of doom saying  leading up to the festival, especially by the Asbury Park Press, about how the estimated 50,000 per day attendance was going to cripple local infrastructure and cut a swath of destruction through the boardwalk. But scare tactics sell papers, and the APP was willing to risk selling out its own neighborhood to get people to read. Hell, even I bought the hype. News 12 predicted it would be a “nightmare” for residents and drivers.

Though you could not find a single parking space in town, the roads saw little impact. Most of the concert goers came by shuttle bus, and whoever drove into town parked in the surrounding neighborhoods early on in the day. The police may have only closed about 3 or 4 local roads. I think the one thing the town wasn’t prepared for were the tepid crowd attendance in the bars afterwards. Wonderbar and Stone Pony were packed, but very few bars on Cookman were any more crowded then they usually are on a Friday or Saturday night. Well, the good publicity generated by the festival will be sure to draw some people back to the town.

The festival itself went well too. I mean, I was only going because I had free passes but at least Saturday would have been worth paying for.

Friday was interesting, particularly the crowd. You don’t often see a half mile long line of 17-year-olds, nearly all of them wearing day-glo color tank tops and neon sunglasses. These would be the Skrillex kids. I was shocked when I found out that Incubus was opening for Skrillex, only because I thought seniority mattered at a music festival. At least I could take solace in the fact that the line for beer would be non-existent. We arrived just as Incubus had started and grabbed a decent spot on the beach about 75 yards from the stage. The first thing I noticed is that Brandon Boyd has NOT AGED A DAY. Chalk it to good genes and sticking to smoking pot only. The other thing I noticed was how well their catalog has held up since 1999.

Full disclosure: in my Freshmen year of high school, Make Yourself was in my (very naïve) opinion the greatest album ever conceived my man. Now, this was at least 2 years before I discovered The Smiths, so Incubus quickly became my favorite band. Inevitably my taste in music took a hard left, and the more popular Incubus became the more bored they made me, and once I stopped listening to the radio, the band fell out of my iPod rotation. Much to my surprise, they played a considerable amount of deep cuts during their set, mostly from Make Yourself and Morning View, and reminded me that they were a more than an agreeable rap-rock alternative to Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit during their breakthrough years.

And then came Skrillex.

Now, I’ve seen my fair share of DJ’s, but I’ve heard very little of Skrillex’s music. About 5 minutes before he came on stage, a countdown appeared on the large screen behind the stage. And let me tell you, it was like the pied piper summoning the rats. Children were barreling down the boardwalk to get as close to the stage as possible. And when he started, I couldn’t help but feel entirely underwhelmed. THIS is what everyone is talking about? At one point the screen behind him began showing video of him partying and hanging out with celebrities, as if to say, “I am dubstep, and so can you!” He’s just another boring celebrity, but with worse hair.

On Saturday, after an artery clogging breakfast and watching an extremely frustrating Devils-Rangers playoff game, we went over to check out the last three bands on the main stage, all of which found fame at the turn of the century.

First up was Jimmy Eat World, a band I really, really wanted to like in 11th grade, yet could not summon the will power to admit that I found “The Middle” endearing. Same with My Chemical Romance, a band that managed to make a mockery of both emo and goth. With only 45 minutes of playing time, both bands more or less only played the hits. Neither band has put an album out in 2 or 3 years, so they were running on sheer high school nostalgia. With that in mind, they performed quite well. At one point during JEW’s set, at the beginning of “Bleed American”, Jimmy Adkin’s guitar was completely out of tune and he simply threw his guitar and started bounding about the stage, microphone in hand in lieu of a guitar. And all of this happened within one fluid motion, I might add. You have to admire that kind of professionalism. Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance was looking unusually healthy for the lead singer of a goth punk band. No longer a pale, gangly looking transvestite, he now looks like another punk singer. I really didn’t care much for their set, and although they had a pretty impressive crowd, it would’ve been double if Blink-182 had been there. There’s another band I was passive-aggressive about in high school, but I as well as everyone else in my generation secretly loves them and missed them dearly this weekend.

Naturally, Foo Fighters drew the largest crowd, and they did not disappoint. But then again, do they ever? They’re one of the very few mainstream bands that are still tolerable, and all that credit can go to Dave Grohl. Lead singers don’t get as charismatic as him, and it’s helped his band remain so endearing despite egregious overexposure on FM radio. None of the songs during the set lasted less than 5 minutes, as the band dragged out every bridge before exploding into the final chorus. They must have performed this tactic at least 5 or 6 times, but the audience still ate it up. And props have to go to the band for playing an entire 90 minutes set, and then taking a helicopter immediately afterwards to New York to play with Mick Jagger on SNL. And they still kicked ass.

I had no interest in going Sunday, as I’d rather eat at the Olive Garden than suffer through 2 hours of Bon Jovi. But thanks to the amazing set up and acoustics, you could hear every note of every song for a 2 mile radius. Thus, they were inescapable. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Here are a few random things I noticed:

- The Saints and Sinners stage, which was 80% hardcore bands, has to fucking go. Every time I walked by there was a different band screaming at the audience to “get up” and going off about “not conforming”. I feel like today’s hardcore bands are starter bands, as they require the bare minimum when it comes to musical talent.

- They definitely overlooked setting up wi-fi hot spots. If you had to send a text message, you were out of luck. Even in my apartment I could barely get a text through. But it really begs the question: if you are here to see a band, what the hell are you doing on the internet?

- I saw a drunk woman collapse into a pile of empties. I felt bad for about 2 minutes until I re watched the video I took of her stumbling about.

- While it’s understandable that there needed to be some kind of crowd control, only having one way in and out of the festivities seemed a bit dangerous. In the event of some kind of catastrophe, 40,000+ people rushing towards Convention Hall and then through vendors and small doors would not have been pretty.

- Why was no one selling funnel cake?

Overall, a lot of people stated that Bamboozle was hugely successful, and I’d have to agree. Sometime this week when I go out to the bars I’ll have to ask the bartenders how much business they did Saturday night and Sunday night. Hopefully the festival pumped enough money into the local economy to justify bringing it back next year. 

(Source: sbstnsmth)