FYF Fest Day 1: Charles Bradley, Waxahatchee, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Lots of Walking (PHOTOS)

CoolDad's LA Adventure, Part 1

I've wanted to go to a music festival all year. I'm not sure why. A friend, who works in the music industry and whose opinion I respect, has always called music festivals “the worst way to see your favorite bands," and I can get pretty curmudgeonly in large groups. Living where I do, near Asbury Park and within striking distance of New York City, I am almost always able to see my favorite bands whenever they tour. Being part of a household with two children in which both parents work has always made taking three or four days to go to a festival an inconvenient proposition.

Something, though, has been drawing me.

So, when I saw that My Bloody Valentine would be headlining the two-day FYF Fest in Los Angeles and playing along with several of my other favorites, I went for it. This weekend, unexpectedly and for a number of reasons, turned out not to be the best weekend for me to be away from home. CoolMom, though, encouraged me to go. So, yesterday, I hopped a 7:55AM flight to LA.

“DoubleTree Downtown, please.”

“Downtown? Downtown? In nineteen years driving a cab, nobody has ever asked me to take them from the airport to Downtown LA. Let me see the address... ...hmmm... OK...”

Strange start to the weekend. Other than being much more desolate than I'd expected of LA, the area around the hotel appeared to be fine. I had three hours until the gates opened for the festival, plenty of time to grab the VIP bracelet I'd sprung for: “Full Liquor Bar, Private Toilets, Exclusive Food Trucks, Shade Tents, Comfortable Couches, Much More.” More on this later.

I was on the grounds by about 2:10. There are four stages: Carrie, Samantha (actually a tent), Charlotte, and Miranda. Ha ha. Carrie is the main stage. Miranda is the smallest and would be featuring mostly punk on Saturday.

Something became clear to me very quickly. I'm not really a festival person. It's not for the reasons one might think – age, general curmudgeonliness. No, it's because I'm a bit obsessive compulsive. It's hard for me to enjoy the show I'm at when I know there's something else I want to see going on someplace else. I don't like to miss anything.

This wasn't a problem for the first set of the day. Buffalo's Lemuria opened the Miranda Stage, and the festival, right on time at 2:30. There was comedy going on in Samantha's Tent, but I was there for music. Lemuria set a great tone for the day.

The weather was beautiful, and the dreaded dust of LA's State Historic Park did not seem to be an issue.

The first half of the day saw me walking back and forth between Miranda and Charlotte / Samantha's Tent, adjacent to one another about halfway across the grounds. There is a VIP area between Charlotte and Samantha that allows you to get a sidelong view of either stage as you sit on a picnic bench, one of the four beanbag chairs, or – most likely – the ground, enjoying expensive drinks from the bar and food from one of the two “exclusive” food trucks.

I caught some of Crystal Antlers' set at Charlotte before Waxahatchee took the stage at Miranda. Katie Crutchfield seems to have intensified the rockier sound I first saw her bring out at 285 Kent, which should make for a good show at Asbury Lanes in September. I reluctantly left before the conclusion of Waxahatchee's final song so that I could see Eleanor Friedberger in Samantha's Tent.

Friedberger, too, seems to have played with her arrangements and increased the energy since the last time I saw her.

Charlotte again for Toronto's Metz. Metz are almost painful to watch as the ferocity with which they play makes you think any one of them could spontaneously combust at any moment. It was a great set.

Then, it was back to the tent for the first half of the set by Roky Erickson. This would overlap with Ty Segall over on Charlotte, but I decided to start with a psych rock original rather than one of his disciples. When I did make it over to Ty Segall, I found that he was playing a seated, acoustic set, ceding the psych rock territory to one of his major influences and providing some variety.

Then, it was back to Miranda where I thought I'd catch the pop punk double bill of Joyce Manor and Title Fight. At the last minute, though, I realized I hadn't been all the way over to Carrie yet. I changed direction and began the trek across the park.

This was about the time that I started to doubt the wisdom of heading across the country alone for a music festival. I'd seen some great sets already; and, as I said, the weather was beautiful. But I was tired, hungry, and in need of some conversation.

As I neared Carrie, though, I heard something.

“Who's ready for church?! Who's ready for CHURCH?!”

I heard the horns, the bass, the owwwws, the unhs of soul music. When I finally made it to the stage and checked my schedule, I noticed that I'd stumbled upon Charles Bradley's set. Bradley's passion and intensity came at just the right moment for me.

The entire crowd, myself included, rode a wave of passion and joy for the forty or so minutes of Bradley's set. He screamed, holding the mic stand over his head. He danced and writhed on the stage. Everyone smiled and moved right along with him. When he was done, Bradley climbed down from the stage and embraced everyone in the front row, finally trotting off while his band played.

Bradley energized me – I thought – for the rest of the evening. I pushed up front as The Breeders prepared to perform Last Splash in its entirety. I got some pictures of the first few songs, but then the claustrophobia and hunger started getting the best of me. I made my way out of the throng and toward the other VIP section alongside the Carrie stage. Despite my initial dissatisfaction with the VIP offering, it would become my oasis for the rest of the evening.

For the rest of the night, I would traverse the park for Deerhunter (Carrie), Thee Oh Sees (Miranda), TV on the Radio (Carrie), Flag (Miranda), and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Carrie). I did make a quick stop on one of my crossings to see the insanity that accompanied the Delorean set in Samantha's Tent.

The crowds at Miranda and Carrie were, as expected, much larger for the headlining acts; and moving back and forth between stages meant that I had a tough time getting a good vantage point. I availed myself several times of the “comfortable couches” (big blocks of wood, some with cushions), food, and drink in the VIP section each time after a few songs among the masses.

All of the final sets – less so for Flag, but that's just a personal preference of mine – were impressive. Thee Oh Sees absolutely blew me away, coming across even tighter and higher-velocity than they do on their records. Deerhunter and TV on the Radio are each one of a kind. And while I'm not a big Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan, Karen O is an absolute rock star.  Only Charles Bradley and Thee Oh Sees could compete with her energy, and her signature screech is one of the most identifiable sounds in rock.

As Yeah Yeah Yeahs finished up, I headed for the exit ahead of most of the crowd. I made the long walk back to the hotel and collapsed on the bed.

The first day was a bit of a mixed bag for me: great sets from several of my favorites, the wonderful surprise of Charles Bradley, great weather, but lots and lots of walking. I missed a few acts I feel like I should have made more of an effort to see (Toro y Moi, Death Grips), and most of my favorite headliners are scheduled for Night Two.

Carrie has a great run of acts scheduled for Sunday evening that includes Yo La Tengo, Kurt Vile, Beach House, MGMT, and My Bloody Valentine. Could mean a lot less walking and a lot more claustrophobia. I toyed with the idea of arriving a little later today, but Jonathan Richman gets things started; and that is an absolute can't-miss for me.

I'll let you know how it turns out, and if this festival thing is all out of my system after tomorrow.

...and, hey, I just said “Hi” to Eleanor Friedberger in Starbucks. Cool.

Eleanor Friedberger Announces Next Solo Record

Personal Record

Eleanor Friedberger, usually one half of Fiery Furnaces, has announced her second solo LP, the follow-up to 2011's genre-spanning ode to (mostly) Brooklyn, Last Summer.  I loved "My Mistakes" off of Last Summer, and I find myself still going back to it for a fix from time to time.

Personal Record is due out June 4th on Merge, and Friedberger has started streaming the first track from the new record.  "Stare at the Sun" features a sound very similar to the one I heard when Friedberger premiered some new arrangements for the songs on Last Summer, featuring simply guitars, bass, and drums, at The Bell House last year.

A Night In The Borough Of My Birth

Eleanor Friedberger / Hospitality at the Bell House, Brooklyn, NY, April 18, 2012 

I’d had these tickets since February, I think.  It isn’t always easy, even for coolparents, to get a sitter in the middle of the week; and CoolMom gets up extremely early for her commute in the morning.  So this wasn’t going to be a date night.  Instead, after I finished up my evening’s carpooling duties, I headed into Brooklyn on my own.

The Bell House is a great place to see a show if you don’t mind standing.  CoolMom and I had a great experience seeing The National there a couple of years ago.  The performance space holds only a few hundred people.  The sound is pretty good, and they have a great selection of beers.  As a member of the bridge and tunnel crowd, I also think it’s great that there is ample free, street parking near the venue.  I waited to enter behind a line of people getting their ID’s checked at the door, then the doorman just waved me through without even asking me for mine.  This happened despite my having gone to the trouble of wearing my dark-rimmed glasses, WFMU T-shirt, and Puma Suedes.

I arrived a few minutes before the nine o’clock scheduled show time and had no problem finding a decent spot in front of the stage.  I was standing among a group of about four people with big, digital SLR cameras.  Their conversation consisted of asking each other “Who are you taking pictures for?” and answering with the name of the music blog that had sent them to the show.  You, though, get my grainy iPhone shots and reviews written without any notes.

Hospitality walked onto the stage a little after nine and started right in with “Sleepover,” from their excellent, self-titled debut.  They followed that with almost every song from the album in addition to one or two that I hadn’t heard before.  Lead vocalist and principal songwriter, Amber Papini, looked a bit nervous, but that didn’t hinder her performance.  She conjures images of New York with her lyrics, and her unique voice came across just as well live as it does on recordings.  The rest of the band did a great job providing the atmosphere for those lyrics.  After the set, I was already happy I’d made the trip.

Eleanor Friedberger took the stage with her band at around ten.  It was evident that things would sound quite different from last year’s Last Summer given the composition of her band:  guitars, bass, drums, no keyboards.  “My Mistakes” was easily one of my favorite songs from last year.  The album version goes for kind of a Haircut 100 vibe with keyboards and a closing sax solo.  Last night’s version, like much of the set, was great with its new rock, almost alt-country arrangement.  Friedberger sings in an almost spoken-word fashion, but she has a very good voice.  Her voice and the new arrangements had me thinking a bit about Neko Case, especially on “Scenes from Bensonhurst.”

The New York theme, initiated by Hospitality, continued during Friedberger’s set.  Like Hospitality, Last Summer, with one exception, is all images of New York – Brooklyn, mostly.  Friedberger introduced that exception, “Inn of the Seventh Ray,” as having been written about her least favorite city.

In all, it was a great bill.  Hospitality hewed closely to the sound, achieved on their album, that’s garnered them praise.  Eleanor Friedberger gave the crowd a totally different, fresh take on her songs.

Glad I sucked it up and drove in for the show.  It beat sitting on the couch watching the Yankees lose to the Twins.