Voodoo Music Experince 2008: Nine inch Nails, The Mars Volta, Lil Wayne

Last week we made a last minute decision to go to New Orleans and catch the Voodoo Music Experience this year. We spent most of the trip on Bourbon Street and in the casino, but we did attend Voodoo last Saturday to catch Lil Wayne, The Mars Volta, and Nine Inch Nails consecutively on the main stage, and it was a ton of fun. We arrived a bit late for Lil Wayne‘s scheduled time, but luckily he was running behind too. I will say that I did enjoy hearing the songs live, but Lil Wayne was rather unimpressive in person. He seemed like he was stoned out of his gourd, it felt like most of the vocals were pre-recorded, and the set was filled with predictable events like a prayer session and a taking off of the shirt. I rarely enjoy hip-hop live, so I’ll chalk a lot of this up to that, but to sing a song sitting down holding a guitar, and then to never actually do anything with the guitar but let it sit in your lap seems pretty lame

It appeared most of the crowd was there on Saturday to see the hometown acts, and as soon Lil Wayne finally got his mic shut off, most of the crowd took off enabling us to get very close for The Mars Volta. TMV were their typical amazing selves playing mostly newer stuff, and in long, extended jam versions. Cedric seemed angry about something and was taking on-stage lights, his mic stands, and whatever else he could find and smashing them, and even tried to mess up Nine Inch Nails‘ lighting system that hung above the stage for the entire day. While that spectacle is fun to watch, I find myself being fascinated much more by Omar’s forceful conducting through the jam sections. I keep trying to decipher what all of his hand signals denote. It’s unbelievable to me that there are still so many people out there who hate this band because I can’t get enough of them:


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The Final Fests of 2008: CMJ, Voodoo, The Fest, Troika, Fun Fun Fun, Nophest

The 2008 festival season is coming to a close, so before the best-of-2008-list season begins, there are still a few fests worth looking into:

CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival (Oct 21-26) (New York, NY)

CMJ is New York’s version of SXSW, but instead of hipsters descending into a small town for a week, It’s mostly bands and music biz folks descending upon the hipster capital. I have yet to go to this but I have heard great things about it. The quantity of quality bands you can see across New York City on an average night is mind-boggling alone, so to increase that exponentially is something that shouldn’t be missed. If you want to keep up with all of that, my two favourite New York music blogs, Brooklyn Vegan and Earfarm have you covered.

Earfarm’s Guide to CMJ

Brooklyn Vegan’s Guide to Hip-Hop at CMJ

KEXP @ CMJ live shows

CMJ Website

The Voodoo Experience (Oct 24-26) (New Orleans, LA)

Check out our coverage from last year’s Voodoo.

This year, I will be making it back for my third ever Voodoo appearance, but I will just be going on Saturday to catch The Mars Volta, Nine Inch Nails, and Lil Wayne. You can take a look at the Schedule here, but other notable artists include: Stone Temple Pilots, TV On The Radio, DevotchKa, Man Man, Wyclef Jean, Josepth Arthur, Ghostland Observatory, Thievery Corporation, Fishbone, Dead Confederate, Good Guys, R.E.M., NERD, Butthole Surfers, Ozomatli w/ Chali 2na, Tokyo Police Club, and Quintron & Miss Pussycat. Here are some photos Clint Miller took from last year:


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Festival Madness



Summer is upon us and that means festival season is in full swing. 2008 is a banner year in the history of US Festivals, both in terms of quality and and quantity. It wasn’t so long ago that Coachella and Bonnaroo stood alone as revolutionary festivals steering the US scene in new directions. As the touring fests dominant in the ’90s began to lose their luster and become just another tour, a new model, or rather the reintroduction of the original model, began its ascension. 10 years ago neither Bonnaroo nor Coachella existed, and now there is like a billion fests all over this country that would never have been born without the two OGs. It is hard for me not to believe that over-saturation of festivals is on the horizon, but so far, 2008 is another high water mark. Some fest news:

Monolith fest, going down September 13 & 14 at beautiful Red Rocks, CO has an indie dominated line-up that hadn’t existed outside of Pitchfork fest until now. I really think I may get tickets to this one:

Saturday, September 13
Devotchka
Silversun Pickups
Neko Case
Vampire Weekend
Mickey Avalon
Del tha Funky Homosapien
Cut Copy
The Fratellis
Superdrag
The Kills
Holy Fuck
White Denim
The Night Marchers
A Place to Bury Strangers
The Photo Atlas
The Hood Internet
John Vanderslice
Darker My Love
Cameron McGill & What Army
Blitzen Trapper
The Presets
Pop Levi
Pwrfl Power The Morning Benders
Boyhollow

Sunday, September 14
Justice
TV on the Radio
Band of Horses
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
CSS
The Avett Brothers
Tokyo Police Club
Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip
Akron/Family
The Bronx
Tilly and the Wall
The Heavy
The Cribs
The Ting Tings
Airborne Toxic Event
Bright Channel
Chester French
Grampall Jookabox
The Rosewood Thieves
Hearts of Palm
The Giraffes
The Elms

Tickets go on sale tomorrow. More info at the Monolith fest website.

Virgin Mobile Fest, going down in Baltimore, MD August 9 & 10 announced its full line-up this week:

Saturday, August 9

Main Stage

Bloc Party
Cat Power
Chuck Berry and The Silver Beats
Citizen Cope
Duffy
Foo Fighters
Gogol Bordello
Jack Johnson
KT Tunstall
Lupe Fiasco
The Offspring
Paramore
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
The Swell Season
Wilco

Dance Tent

DJ Dan & Donald Glaude
Erol Alkan
Ferry Corsten
Soul Wax
Steve Lawler
Underworld

Sunday, August 10

Main Stage

Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire
The Black Keys
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Bob Dylan
The Go! Team
Iggy & The Stooges
Kanye West
Lil Wayne
Nine Inch Nails
She & Him
Shudder to Think
Stone Temple Pilots
Taking Back Sunday

Dance Tent

Armin van Buuren
Chromeo
Deadmau5
Moby (DJ Set)
Pendulum
Richie Hawtin

Tickets for this one also go on sale tomorrow, so check out the Virgin Mobile fest website.

Voodoo Fest in New Orleans on Halloween weekend has announced its headliners will be R.E.M., NIN, and Stone Temple Pilots.

Awesome Festivals coming up this summer:

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2008 Festivals Preview

After the end of the year best of lists are done for and the holidays are over, it’s the season for rampant speculation about who is playing what festival. The fun rumors this year include Metallica and Led Zeppelin at Bonnaroo and My Bloody Valentine at Coachella. Here at Ohmpark, we heart festivals and will be keeping you informed on all of these developments. Here are the fests I’m looking forward to:

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Photos: Voodoo Festival 10-28-07 at City Park – New Orleans, LA

Christian Scott

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Good Guys

Quintron and Miss Pussycat

Wilco

Live Review: Voodoo Music Experience

The weekend before Halloween, we went down to New Orleans to catch Voodoo Fest. We arrived downtown early Friday, checked into the bed and breakfast we were staying at, hung out for a second, and headed down to City Park where the fest was located. Since the line-up had been announced, one of the acts I was most excited about seeing was Ghost, whose album from this year, In Stormy Nights, I’ve loved. Unfortunately, when we went to set up to catch them, they weren’t the Japanese noise-rock group Ghost, they were the New Orleans nu-metal, rap-funk group Ghost. We felt like we had just got punked. After that debacle, I went to catch Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and they were ok, but nothing really special.

Next up was Porcupine Tree, who put on a hell of a show jamming out hard. There was a relatively small crowd for this show and even Steven Wilson joked around about no one there knowing who they were. If you still haven’t looked into this band, do it now!

After wandering around the fest for a little while, we caught M.I.A. from afar while we waited for Rage. I was disappointed with her sound live, but hip-hop live almost always leaves me wanting and i was pretty far from the stage, so I won’t hold it against her, but I just don’t think I understand completely why everyone is so into her. Her rap style is so monotone and repetitive. I’ve listened to her new album a few times and I just don’t think she sounds that special.

After that, it was time for the main event, Rage Against The Machine. I had caught them at Phillips Arena back when they were touring for Battle Of Los Angeles and had loved that show so I was very excited to catch them here. They played a little longer than an hour, went through most of the hits, and by the end, I didn’t think it compared to the first time I saw them at all. They were very sloppy and didn’t sound like they were together at all, which is surprising to me since most of them have been playing together in Audioslave. The other main problem was the crowd didn’t really seem to be into them at all. When I caught them before, my favorite part of the show was watching the entire crowd go nuts, and this time it just didn’t seem to inspire that sort of reaction. Overall, though, it was still great seeing them again.

When we got back to our place Friday night, before heading down to Bourbon St. until 5am, we found a note from the woman running the bed and breakfast accusing us of eating her food in the freezer. The next morning, Biggie C woke up first to go through his photos from the day before and the woman came out and started screaming at him about the supposed missing food. After about an hour and a half of drama, the end game was that she was mistaken about the food and since Biggie C didn’t apologize for disagreeing with her about the fact that we didn’t eat the food, she kicked him out of the bed and breakfast. So we then had to waste another hour finding hotel to stay at for the rest of the weekend. The crappy B&B‘s email is hosts@ArtsBandB.com, so we urge all our readers to have some fun with that.

Saturday I didn’t really get to catch much music because of the above fiasco, but i caught a little bit of Ghostland Observatory, Ben Harper, and Spoon, who were all decent but not inspiring.

The best show of the weekend in my opinion was next, The Smashing Pumpkins. While I had some trouble enjoying the Asheville show I had caught over the summer because I didn’t know most of the songs they played, now that i know and love Zeitgeist, they were simply amazing. The almost two-hour set contained very little old-school hit songs you would expect from the typical festival show, but rather put on a compelling display of why the nu-Smashing Pumpkins are phenomenal in their own retro-rock ‘n’ roll way. If you can score a ticket to one of the make-up Atlanta shows this month, do it. For all of the music critic masses that just won’t take the new album seriously, you’re only depriving yourself of some great tunes.

After that, I caught the Tiesto set, who did some pretty good trance, capped by a Tegan And Sara remix that was, for better or worse, stuck in all of our heads for the rest of the weekend.

Sunday I started on the tiny stage to check out Good Guys, I really interesting hybrid of metal and Lounge music. This New Orleans native band came out dressed in Ghostbuster uniforms and were really cool and weird. If you want to hear something unlike anything you’ve heard before, i recommend checking them out.

Next up I checked out Quintron And Miss Pussycat. Despite the fact that Miss Pussycat , Quintron‘s wife, seemed more like a prop than a musician, Quintron tore it up with a really interesting array of instrumentation that apparently he has invented or built. I was way in the back for the show so I didn’t really get to see everything he was using, but I hope to catch this New Orleans act again, maybe at one of their upcoming Mardi Gras shows.

After that I caught the end of the Black Crowes show, and it was better than the first time I saw them at Bonnaroo, which was terrible, but they just aren’t my thing. Common came on next and I thought he put on a really great show, with a full band backing him. After that I caught Wilco to close out the fest and they rocked just as hard as their spectacular Bonnaroo set earlier this year, but I didn’t quite like the song selection as much. There is no denying that Wilco as it is now is a pretty top-notch band and I will go see them every chance I get.

My overall impression of my second Voodoo experience was overwhelmingly positive. I’m a big fan of the two opposing stages going back and forth keeping music constantly going that both Pitchfork Fest and Lollapalooza also employ. The sound systems seemed to have a minimal amount of problems, although I did hear a few. My biggest complaint about the weekend would be the crowd. At the peak times on Friday and Saturday, there were ridiculously long lines for the bathrooms and food and beer outlets, but the Voodoo Fest’s estimates on attendance were over 150,000 people for the weekend, up over 50% from the previous year’s 93,000, so i don’t think they were fully prepared for so many people. Also, the crowd seemed to remind me most of the Music Midtown crowds of a few years ago that don’t exude the same level of respect for their fellow festival goers you expect at hippy fests like Echo Project and Bonnaroo. But for me, those were only minor annoyances that did very little to curb the fun I had this year at Voodoo and I’m looking forward to checking it out again next year.

Photos: Voodoo Festival 10-27-07 at City Park – New Orleans, LA

Spoon

Tiesto

The Smashing Pumpkins

Photos: Voodoo Festival 10-26-07 at City Park – New Orleans, LA

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Porcupine Tree

M.I.A.

Rage Against The Machine

Back From Voodoo Fest

Just got back last night. We intended to be posting all weekend from New Orleans but the fun yet drama filled weekend involved the Ohmpark crew getting kicked out of the house we were staying in so we didn’t have the internets. We’ll have full details on that, plus tons of great pics from Biggie C in the next couple days.

Remember this Saturday is Home Park Fest. Loads of great music and it is totally free so there is no excuses for not showing up. See you there!

Voodoo Festival Initial Line-up!

This is a great line-up and now I’m definitely skipping ACLFest for this:

Rage Against The Machine
Smashing Pumpkins
Wilco
Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals
tiesto
Sinead O’Connor
Kings Of Leon
Porcupine Tree
Black Crowes
Fall Out Boy
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Mute Math
Common
MIA
Paolo Nutini
Spoon
La Coka Nostra featuring Everlast and members of House Of Pain
Coheed And Cambria
Galactic featuring Lyrics Born
Ghost
Dr. John
Toots and The Maytals
JJ Grey and MOFRO
many more… (see festival homepage)

Voodoo Fest takes place in New Orleans City Park October 26th-28th. Tickets go on sale for $100 this Friday at 10am, and then get more expensive as they sell. I attended the last one before hurricane Katrina and it was a really great time.

Voodoo Fest Website