Virgin Blogging

The best part about telling people you're going to the "Virgin Festival" is that there are a lot of people who have no idea that the "Virgin Festival" is, in fact, a concert, and not just the greatest sounding idea ever.

Anyway, here's my review of this year's Virgin Festival, held at Pimlico Raceway up near Baltimore, Maryland this past weekend. We went to the Saturday show, skipping Sunday's show for three reasons:

1.) I had seen most of those bands already;
2.) Tickets were almost $100...A DAY
3.) We guessed (correctly) that Saturday would wear us out, being 134 years old and all.

The Disgruntled Girlfriend and I had gone to last year's Virgin Fest, and besides seeing some great shows (The Who and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah especially) and some alright shows (Red Hot Chili Peppers - Flea was more interested in some chick crying in the crowd than playing awesome music), we also were able to wander around the premises a bit, checking out the freak show, the side stages, and some of the booths handing out free condoms and whatnot.

This year, however, we did not wander around at all. The reason?

It was 105 degrees out.

Last year's show was smartly scheduled for mid-September, and sported a reasonable temperature of about mid-80. This year, for some reason, they decided mid-August sounded good. People were dropping like flies, and, probably for that reason, there weren't a whole lot of drunk concert-goers there. It was just too damn hot to drink. And when it's too hot to drink (ex. if you didn't chug your beer all at once, after a couple minutes it started boiling), you know it's too hot. So, we planted ourselves at the main stage and stayed there the whole time. This meant we missed Peter Bjorn and John, and LCD Soundsystem, who I wanted to see, and a Luche Libre wrestling match, but no matter. Who we did see more than made up for it.

Amy Winehouse was there, at least physically, and phoned in a set while we waited in the water refilling station line (for about 45 minutes). She then left, found her "shooting-up vein", pulled a Belushi on a bottle of Jack, and boarded a plane for Chicago, where she likely phoned in a set at Lollapalooza. Whee.

After AW, Incubus came on stage. I like this band a lot, and they didn't disappoint, going through all of their best songs with all of the energy missing from Amy's set. However, being somewhat heterosexual, I failed to anticipate the panty-wetting reaction lead singer Brandon Boyd has on women. I was slipping around in female orgasm juice the entire set! (If that line doesn't get me on Blogger's "Blogs of Note," I don't know what will...)

After Ben Harper sang about pot for an hour and a half (I'm not complaining, it was awesome, but I don't want this posting to be too long), the Beastie Boys came on stage. I was supposed to see these guys, along with Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, and Jurassic 5, about 10 years ago, but Mike D broke his leg on a BMX bike or something and they had to cancel the whole show. I was pissed about it, and thought, "Well, why doesn't he just sit down during the show, goddammit!" Turns out, it's because Mike D jumps all around the stage during their shows, and they didn't want to cramp his style. As an example, here's a picture of Mike D and MCA in action I took from the crowd.



Anyway, they were much much better than the live feed we listened to on XM from the Live Earth shows, and was worth the 10 year wait. I think the picture above, by the way, is from when they were doing "Brass Monkey." Awesome.

Finally, The Police (or The Po-lice) came on, and rocked the shit out. Awesome awesome.



All in all, great show, shitty time of the year to do it. Well organized like last year, but not enough water-refilling stations and misting stations. Still we were able to tailgate beforehand, and in the extreme heat, three Miller Lights got me more fucked up than I have ever been, so that worked. One final complaint was with the scheduling of bands - the multiple stages meant some tough decisions had to be made. For example, they had two bands closing the show on Saturday - The Police on the main stage and Modest Mouse on the second stage. I love Modest Mouse, and was really looking forward to seeing them, but had to go with The Police, because, I mean, it's The Police. I think I made the right choice, but it sucked not seeing Modest Mouse. Oh well. Anyway, all in all it was worth $100 and I'll definitely be there next year as well.

Oh yeah, as promised, a bootleg picture taken of the Disgruntled Investor. Man, he's really let himself go...