Virgin Festival 2007 Recap: It was hot, we got crabs, M.I.A. truly saved the best for last

Congrats again to Ryan D. on winning the contest, as he was treated to one hell of a show. Turns out he's a fellow music blogger - check out his site for a YouTube'd post of M.I.A.'s insane video for Jimmy.

So here's the deal: the Virgin Festival was the same weekend as Lollapalooza, which I think may have drawn off a lot of out of towners. There were a few points that set the two apart, the first being it apparently rained a bit in Chicago, whereas we were treated to hot-as-ferret-sex-in-wool-sock weather (with an unbearably high NSMQ to match, natch). The most notable being that CSS was in Baltimore, and not in Chicago, with a very heartfelt screw-you going out to United Airlines as the culprit. But because I'm a selfish bastard, I was thrilled that they got to play in my home town, and all in all the festival was just the right amount of insanely good music, fresh steamed Maryland crab, shugary rum drinks and sun to make for a great weekend. Finally, the massivee sensory overload band list at Lolla kinda scared me off, and Charm City is, well, charming after all.

The short version: three cheers for all the artists who braved the heat to deliver the goods. The long version? Click the read more link for a full recount (with photos galore!)...

We kicked off the day with Shout Out Out Out Out, recently featured here on MFR. Four Outs is a lot to type, so we'll just refer to them as my new favorite band. Seriously, in the tradition of Out Hud, !!!, Hot Chip, and every other band that leaves everything they've got on stage to deliver a live dance set, they do not disappoint. The crowd loved them, totally loved them, and they kicked the Dance Tent right in the ass to start the festival off on a strong note. Highly, strongly, dearly recommended - wifey and I listened to their CD non-stop driving around Baltimore for the rest of the weekend.

After they finished up, we popped out to see some Cheap Trick, which was guilty, pleasurable, but mostly guilty. Damn those wacky guitars, they just want me to want them. We took as much as we could stand (okay, I loved every minute of it), and wandered back over to the dance tent to see Booka Shade. And damn.

Never seen these guys, heard of them, but jeebus. They whipped up most of what the crowd was hearing on the fly, and and it was driving people insane. We couldn't help but get to dancing, burning precious calories only an hour or so into the festival. It was an amazing set - if they hit your local club, put on your dancing shoes and go see 'em. Amazing set. Samples and streams of their work and remixes by Tiefschwarz and the like on their web site.

We passed a WHFS tent on the way to grab a drink, which elicited a long sigh from me. Then it was back to the dance tent (we're not ravers, I swear) to see Felix Da Housecat:

As an aside, I was surprised (pleasantly) to note that almost every DJ was using Serato. It's really taken off at the digital gold standard the way the 1200 MKII has been for DJ's for years, and I'm all for it. It doesn't make a bad DJ good, but it'll make a good DJ able to stand up straighter (not having to lug around 200 lb. flight cases full of wax). Anyhow, Felix was killing with his set, my favorite series of mixes being when he mixed Harder Better Faster Stronger into Laid Back's White Horse, then into the beginning of Daft Punk's Around the World cover from Van She, mixing in Digitalism's Fire in Cairo remix (the one with the bonkers Cure sample and the slow, deadly build). Damn. I know I've been saying that a lot, but his performance deserved it. Note the HUGE monitors he had set up to blast his house line back at him.

Then we went to see Peter Bjorn & John (no more dance for a bit), and ran into these guys:

They danced like robots, sold us some Old Bay-caked steamed bluefins, and took off. So most of the PB&J set was watched from the lawn, munching on fresh picked backfin meat and getting spice in the little cuts you always get on your fingers from the crab shell. PB&J were good company to eat with.

Next up was LCD Soundsystem, my first time actually catching them live (I know, I know...). It was damn near a religious experience, and if M.I.A. hadn't been so fucking incredible, they would definitely have been best in show for me. I think they in fact were hands down best performance I saw at VF (or anywhere else this summer), I just really, really dig M.I.A.'s sound and whole shebang. But back to LCD - they were perfect. Finally seeing the live show put it all together for me - they're simply one of the best performance bands out there. Seriously, one of the most put-together, mature acts of musicianship I've seen in years. Again, damn.

I should mention it was direct sun, high 90's in the percent humidity and somewhere around 96, so we were sort of melting at this point. All of the festival made things worse by packing in to see the Beastie Boys around the time that LCD was finishing up. I should probably pause and say that there are really very few options on the radio in Baltimore, and all of them (the rap station, the rock station, the alt and indie station) all played Beasties back in the day. So they were a big draw. And despite the heat and their incessant aging, they delivered a pretty solid show. No pix, since we watched it from waaaaaay far away on the big screens, but it sounded great. Only a few songs from the new album, which is good, because Bawlmer really is a Brass Monkey kinda town when it comes down to it. Ask me about the puking girls of VF'07 sometime.

Personal favorites and de facto neighbors TV on the Radio played the South Stage next, and totally roped in the entire crowd with their set. They continue to be incredibly passionate without really fitting to snugly into any style of music that would peg them to a single or even multiple genres. The live show brought all of this out in the open, though poor Tunde was melting onstage. He gave up drinking water and just started dumping it on his head between songs. A great set, which we cut a tiny bit short to see the Police. They played the two songs I wanted to hear (Message in a Bottle and Synchronicity II) first, so we skedaddled and watched as much Modest Mouse as we could, but we were kaput from the heat. Thus endeth day one.

...And day 2 kicked off in the best way possible: CSS! Which one could consider a B-more exclusive of sorts for the weekend, with the airlines shenanigans that prevented them from playing Lollapolooza (which sucked equally for the fans and the band - Lovefoxxx was pissed when I talked to her). They opened the main stage, and they wasted no time in somehow finding three magical dancing trees in the audience and pulling them up on stage to dance around with them.

I have to say, seeing CSS in my hometown was really special, after the all the history between CSS and MFR. From the first note Lovefoxxx sent us out of the blue to the kick-ass shirts she designed for us, we've got much love for the LVFX and all the great kids in CSS. How cool is it to watch a crazy, original act like CSS pop up in Brazil (did we mention they met Blair's wife at an Avenue D show down there ages ago?), kick up a buzz, get scooped up by a great label up here and now open the main stage at a huge summer festival? On a weekend they were scheduled to play two huge summerfest no less? My wife hadn't had the pleasure of seeing CSS live yet, and she was blown away - they sounded great, and as always, the show was a pure delight. We robots couldn't be happier for the band, and hopefully things will keep heading on the up and up for them.

The entire second day was one of nervous anticipation. The acts I wanted to see most were on first and last in the day, and so in between it was hard to focus. I played a bunch of Guitar Hero at the VIP lounge with a kid who was on the 4th season of the Wire (Donut I think), was charmed by Regina Spektor (wife and I agreed - not our musical cup of tea, but she's excellent at what she does, and really puts on a great show), still bafflingly unstimulated by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and was kind of more prone to enjoying a few Panic! at the Disco songs after seeing how young and tiny they were wandering around the artist compound. But then it was time to head back out into the heat for Interpol.

Interpol is easily my wife's favorite band, so seeing them was of paramount importance. Their live act impresses the hell outta me with its fidelity to what they sound like recorded. The band is so damn tight, and the sets sound terrific, though it's a pretty predictably stoic and mellow stage show. No dancing trees a la CSS. What was baffling is that even though we were right up front and it seemed like a ton of people were there to see them, it really wasn't the case when I turned around to take in the crowd. Why? Well, Wu-Tang Clan, namely. I was shocked, but I swear to Gza the Wu-Tang boys drew a crowd that rivaled the one for the Police the night before. Baltimore hearted the Wu. Whu knu?

Finally, it was time for the event I'd waited 48 hours in the hellfire heat for.

The exact same energy that Mark wrote about at M.I.A.'s first US show was so thick in the air in the dance tent when M.I.A. came onstage that the place practically went all ball lightning. Spank Rock dancing on the side of the stage, amazing visual loops running throughout the show, people foaming at the mouth, and there's M.I.A. doing her thing, crawling her way out of the decorated poncho she wore onstage like some sort of danceybug working out of a cocoon to an insane hybrid dance beat. She played $20 followed by $10, a whole mess of cuts from Kala, and had people going utterly apeshit. They correctly mention the B'more sound as an ingredient in the aural blender that is her sound in the latest URB interview, and so her being in town was pretty close to the catalyst for a perfect dance storm. She rocked us. Blew my face off. I danced my ass off. All the hater anti-hype that killed the buzz around her first release in 2005 can still eat my sweaty boxers; Arular was the best album that year, and Kala is going to drag dance music into new territory, do a guerrilla makeover of clubs everywhere and move more asses than Richard Simmons at fat camp. And I'm loving every second of it. She was the perfect closer to an amazing weekend, and an impossible act to follow.

So that's it. We had an amazing time - such a rock-solid lineup spread out over 2 days in a venue that is so perfect for an event like this one made it just exhausting enough, and sent me back up the road feeling great. It's a hard act for Virgin to follow next year, but I'm looking forward to VF 2008. What a great excuse to visit my parents again.