Sleep Spent

We arrived at about 2:30. We walked twenty minutes to the entrance, where we queued to have someone check our tickets and bags. Once inside, we grabbed some food ($7 for a hot dog!!!!) and headed straight for M83. Here’s the list of bands and times for Saturday.

So we saw M83. That was all right; a little repetative and boring. (Mike and I agreed that it was good music to listen to while coding, but not really concert-type music.) Then I headed over to see Snow Patrol. They were pretty good. They played a few new songs and a bunch of songs off Final Straw, but nothing from any of their other albums.

I stopped by The Kills next and was unimpressed, so Mike and I laid down for a bit in the shade. We got up in time to make a Bloc Party CD/poster signing. I got pictures with them too! :-)

The part of the Wilco set we saw consisted only of songs from the new album, which I hadn’t heard. One of them got jamming pretty good, but they were mostly only so-so. I took in Weezer next. They split their time between songs from the blue album and ones off their new album. Nothing from Pinkerton, sadly. Again, their set was all right, but nothing to write home about.

After them I headed over and caught the end of the Secret Machines set, and they were excellent! They were having a great time on stage, you could tell. And they tore it up. I’ve been meaning to put one of their songs on the SOW list since last year when Mike turned me onto it, and I’m going to do that as soon as we get back.

After Secret Machines, some people left and the rest of us tried to get as close to the stage as we could. Bloc Party showed up and kicked some serious ass. They played all the songs I hoped they would, and the crowd was really into it. I must admit, there were a couple times where I couldn’t understand what Kele was saying between songs, but it all worked out. The (completely psycho) drummer took off his shirt after the first song. This was the best set I caught all of the first day.

After Bloc Party I wandered over to the big stage and watched Coldplay. They were the exact opposite of Weezer, totally excited to be playing here, digging the huge crowd, putting on a great show. For one of the songs Chris asked us to all take pictures at one point. That was a pretty neat effect, to see all the flashes continuously.

I left Coldplay before the encore to hit up the last 15 minutes of Spoon. They were all right, but not anywhere as excited as the last two bands.

And that was it. We came back to Mike’s dad’s place. I read a fascinating and deeply disturbing article in The New Yorker about how climate change has effected civilizations before ours. (This article was the second in a three-part series. The first one is available online.) And then bed. We’ll be leaving for Day 2 shortly.