Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Day Two

HARDLY STRICTLY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL

GOLDEN GATE PARK, SAN FRANCISCO

04 OCTOBER, 2014

Mavis Staples. In Charge.

Day two of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was taken at a more leisurely pace than the brutal day one, but it matched up in terms of diversity of acts and intensity. Fortune had us finding a base camp in the shade of the Towers Of Gold Stage, courtesy of a fellow NY expatriate and his lovely wife, which became lovingly known throughout the day as "Camp Mike". Deltron 3030 got things off to a magical start, the horn section providing an energy boost for Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Kid Koala, and orchestra conductor Dan The Automator. The ever-reliable Built To Spill carried the flag. Even having just seen them at FYF Festival, one can never get enough of Doug Martsch and crew. Soul icon Mavis Staples, having recently celebrated her 75th birthday, showed absolutely no sign of it, as she charged through a set, balancing cherry-picked classic rock tunes with civil rights anthems, along with the de riguer Staples Singers standards. She was feisty and in form, and her crack band responded in kind. Mike Ness showed no signs of slowing down, and Social Distortion danced with what brung them there, as it were, sticking to the meat and potatoes punk sound that has galvanized more than one generation, ending with their epochal cover of Johnny and June Cash's "Ring Of Fire". In a gesture perhaps most symbolic of the festival, the message was that a great song can still take flight, even (on paper) in the most unlikely of hands, and you got the feeling, as the band stampeded the chorus, that somewhere, Warren Hellman was nodding along. Finishing out the day in style, Chris Isaak packed the Star Stage, and the hometown hero noted his six block commute with no small delight. He can still hit the high notes, his Nudie-style suits got a big thumps up from fashion cops in the audience, and his latter-day Orbisonisms went over perfectly in the late San Francisco afternoon. A perfect note to finish on.

DELTRON 3030

BUILT TO SPILL

MAVIS STAPLES

SOCIAL DISTORTION

CHRIS ISAAK

miscellaneous

Best seat in the park...

Greetings from Camp Mike!

FYF Fest 2014 Wrapup

FYF FESTIVAL

EXHIBITION PARK, LA

23/24 AUGUST, 2014

A scorcher of a weekend, both on and offstage for FYF Fest 2014. Full coverage was executed with Sam Saturday for both Saturday and Sunday, via The Owl Mag. Day one heralded all the challenges of adapting to a new venue, along with some technical quirks on my end, making for a long day. Day two was a tribute to the quick reactions of Fest organizers, working hard to mitigate the issues they could. With cookie-cutter festival lineups becoming more predominant these days, FYF walked a fine line between friendly faces and trailblazers, saving their biggest punches for returning indie heroes.

Camera/computer shenanigans saw the bulk of my Saturday photos perish, including those of a monster set from Run The Jewels, one of the unquestioned Day One highlights. Did manage to salvage some video of Angel Olsen and Slint, both inside at the LA Sports Arena, and even those were truncated due to overheating/battery life, but will still give you an idea of what transpired. Sole non-phone pictures to survive were from the Saturday night set of Japanese heavy music titans Boris, an unrelenting set that put an exclamation point on the day.

ANGEL OLSEN

SLINT

RUN THE JEWELS

One of the weekend's best sets: Killer Mike and El-P are Run The Jewels

BORIS

Sunday rolled out much like the arc of the festival itself: problems were solved, and despite another hot day, things fell into place, and the day was spent careening between friends and bands, an ideal situation. Sunday was all about the new discoveries, from Dutch psych master Jacco Gardner and Wales' own Joanna Gruesome to Pennsylvania's Balance And Composure and La Dispute, from Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was an ear-opening day, segueing into the tried and true of Built To Spill, a first time in too many years bone-rattling performance from the almighty Blood Brothers, and wrapping things up with an overwhelming audio/visual feast from hometown hero Flying Lotus. By the time things concluded Sunday, the initial issues of the fest seemed a million miles away. The only questions remaining concern future venues. Will renovations be completed on State Historic Park for a triumphant return in '15, or, given the upsurge in attendance, will the festival stay at Exhibition Park? We shall see...

JACCO GARDNER

JOANNA GRUESOME

BALANCE AND COMPOSURE

LA DISPUTE

BUILT TO SPILL

BLOOD BROTHERS

FLYING LOTUS

misc.

The Delegate From Houston has a point...

Natural History Museum in Expostion Park

Mobile version of Cousins Maine Lobster was a huge hit

Goosebump moment courtesy of the Olympic Torch