Karen Sundell of Rogers & Cowan always makes sure rock nyc gets its press credentials so when she invited me to cover the annual KROQ Weenie Roast Y Fiesta at Irvine Meadows amphitheater, I made my apologies to our writer Dick Destiny, who was also playing that night night and followed the story. How could I have refused? So I headed up to Irvine around noon on Saturday, for a full day of music. The bill was heavy, Muse was the headliner, but Florence + the Machine, Death Cab for Cutie, Of Monsters and Men, Panic! At the Disco were also playing among many others… I didn’t arrive on time for the first bands playing at 2 pm, but I ended up seeing like 12 bands, again way too many for the same day, but it gave me a taste of what works for young people these days. KROQ is balancing between mainstream and mainstream with a slight indie touch, but, before anything, it is a commercial radio labeled ‘modern rock’. Still, they have ex-Sex-Pistols Steve Jones doing a show on Sunday night (Jonesy’s Jukebox) and interesting stuff like this annual Weenie Roast Y Fiesta, a multi-artist concert, which got totally sold out this year.
I started my day with some familiar faces as Saint Motel was playing on the Budweiser stage, the early stage which was presenting a few upcoming bands. Still, Saint Motel was the only one I knew, and they did their show with the same coolness and colorfulness they are used to, bringing on stage a few Folies Bergères white-feathers showgirls who made the show reach a new level of greatness. The following band Big Data was a hard hitting electronic dance group with a guy and a girl being a bit over-the-top loud. They describe themselves as a ‘paranoid electronic pop music from the Internet, formed out of a general distrust for technology and The Cloud’,… may be, but all I could hear was a hard dance floor with dense clapping and tapping, almost hard rocking at time, and so loud! The next band I saw, All Time Low, probably represents what is branded as new rock, the type you can hear on KROQ… I am not sure since I don’t listen to KROQ! But the quartet was playing a sort of sanitized pop punk, with lots of oooo-oooo-ooos sung at the top of their lungs with a sure enthusiasm and a lot of energy. They were like ‘let’s take this melancholic and depressing name’ and ‘let’s make some music with happy sing-alongs’. I have never been big on crowd participation but these guys were all about it with fervent sing-alongs, and an occasional bra on the mic, cute guys playing the bad guys, pleasing the crowd with a joke or two, an occasional calmer song and sounding quite generic.
After this, it was time for the big names and the large amphitheater, and Cold War Kids demonstrated they have certainly gained their arena rock status. They opened the main stage with dynamism and punch, constantly moving, looking good with a central-stage vintage piano and singer Nathan Willett’s energetic presence. They showed a nice choreography, feeling at ease with a few empowering songs, new and old, playing their hit ‘Hang me Up To Dry’… They were certainly the opposite of boring and talking of boring I realized that this Weenie Roast was truly adapted for the new generation’s short attention span as the bands were not playing for more than 30-35 minutes each!
I knew one song of this Australian guy Vance Joy, and ‘Riptide’ was the last one he played, as it is often the case. He was nice, tall and handsome with a sort of romantic heartthrob physic playing sentimental dream-your-life-away (the title of his album) music and a sense of drumming ascension in the melodies. A bit tearing, a bit self-deprecating, he was playing comfort-pop-songs you could play around a fire, and he soon become a wallpaper for selfies taken by all these 18-year-old girls… well he was picked by Taylor Swift as her opening act this summer in the US and Australia, did that tell you enough?
I saw the humble beginning of Awolnation at the Viper room, years ago and the stage exploded. They are built for the arena, although their heavy-on-drums punch rock is weird and difficult to follow except if you like to punch the air around you in a repetitive manner. It sure was a dancer with high-energy jumpy rhythms accompanied by Aaron Bruno’s shouted vocals, which often made him look like a marine coach in training. The music sounded different from what I could remember of the Viper room show. There was an attempt of poppiness – and Bruno asked people to hold their next-seat neighbor, and this didn’t work very well – followed by some heavy riffs,… this band sure escapes the genre category.
Walk the Moon was another one I didn’t know while everybody around was singing along… At least they were colorful (look at these face paintings!) poppy and super bouncy, a constant feature of all these new bands. This is what kids want these days, a non-stop jumping number with a forced-to-their-throats enthusiasm, a bombastic fun-fun dance, may be I saw the future and I was a bit bored…. May be this is what Imagine Dragons sounded like a few years ago? ‘Do you have a rock roll beast inside you, motherfuckers’ said the singer at one point, and I wanted to answer but it’s not rock roll that you do man! And they played ‘Shut up and Dance’, a good answer to my complain actually. People stood up, followed by a real display of energy, the type I am foreign to.
They were followed – and when I say followed it was very quick thanks to the double-side rotating stage of the amphitheater – by the flamboyant Panic! At the Disco. I have to say I had this Freddie Mercury feeling since the beginning and they finally covered ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’! of course it was by far ‘their’ best song because I am not a big fan of their glam pseudo pop-rap-emo-post-punk thing. Still it’s entertaining, a high energy number with Brendon Urie’s tenor-like voice, some occasional howls (a la Freddie) and his acrobatic backflip jumps. They all looked a bit pretentious and over dressed but Urie could sure hold a note.
I was wondering what Death Cab For Cutie was doing in the middle of all this, but the night did get more interesting after this. After a super long intro for ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ the band was floating in a green fog but they brought me back to more familiar territories. Ben Gibbard looked much taller than I had imagined, and he also looked very nervous, balancing non-stop his leg during his new song ‘Black Sun’. When I think about Death Cab, I think about sensibility, nuances, and atmospheric metaphors,… at last it was a band that didn’t force-feed the crowd with bouncing over-joyous beats, and it was refreshing, just like the desert air becoming cold after sunset.
Of course there was Florence’s voice, so strong, so powerful, almost non-human in this sense, a real machine, and even though she was sitting on a stool all-set long because of a broken foot, she kept everyone’s attention till the end. Surrounded by harp, guitar, keyboards and drums, her set sounded almost like an acoustic one, never overwhelming her incredible and operatic croon. She apologized a few times for not being able to stand up or jump, but said it should not prevent us to do so. Her songs were a lot of things, pop, folk, soul and her Topanga Canyon look with mousseline corsage, turquoise jewelry and foulard attached to the stand of the microphone, was elegantly fitting the scene. ‘This is the song that broke my foot’ she said before ‘Dog Days Are Over’ inviting people to jump even more during another grandiose bombast.. Someone carried her away from stage as she was lamenting she could not even leave the stage, and it looked very elegant… well, everything looked graceful with Florence, even on one foot.
Of Monsters and Men’s first song sounded epic and dark, so interesting in a way, but they turned to be closer to Mumford and Sons than the Pixies. Let’s say they were quite generic with big choruses and harmonies, sing-alongs and even horns, so that’s a plus for them. Again I knew one song, the very catchy ‘Crystals’, which, o a certain degree, sounds a bit like something from the Silversun Pickups because of these girl-boy harmonies. From where I was sitting, I thought that lead singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir looked and sounded a bit like Björk, and that’s not a surprise because they are Icelandic! However, they sounded nothing like Sigur Rós.
At last the headliner was about to appear on stage after this long and eclectic succession… Muse has an upcoming album ‘Drones’ to promote and they surely did sell their sound to the crowd, looking as all-mighty as ever, sounding tough and invincible. In one word, they rocked. Matthew Bellamy has to be the Tom Cruise of Rock & Roll, he has the same arrogant attitude on stage, embarking into some epic battle, while knowing from the start he will be victorious. I had the ‘pleasure’ to see their documentary ‘Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, 2 years ago and although Irvine Meadows amphitheater is far less grandiose, the attitude was there. it was an intense performance, especially because of Bellamy, displaying a theatrical attitude with a world-domination in mind, at least this what I got from it. Muse has established a sound and a look, dark and damn serious, with retro-sci-fi-looking outfits, they performed as if they were doing a Shakespearian play with battles directed by David Lynch and scored by Ennio Morricone,… well they used ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ at one point. There were new and old songs, the old ones (‘Supermassive Black Hole’, ‘Uprising’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Starlight’, ‘Knights of Cydonia’) being received with an uprising in the crowd. I forgot who said something like this, but Muse’s music is like military music, it first repulses you a bit by its authoritarian attitude but you can’t help yourself and soon tap along the beats.
Many pictures here of Muse, Florence + The Machine, Of Monsters and Men, Death Cab For Cutie, Panic! At the Disco.
