Monday, June 3, 2013

Free Press Summer Fest 2013!



Hey, y'all! I'm blogging again! Three times in the same decade? Uncanny! Mostly it's because I still have 2 sets of 220 essays to grade and I hate grading essays, but that's neither here nor there.

This past weekend was Houston's Free Press Summer Fest. My friends and I went two years ago and saw Cut Copy and Chromeo and Weezer and Yeasayer and Beirut and it was AWESOME. Last year the only three acts I was remotely interested in were Snoop, Willie Nelson, and Flaming Lips. R.A.N.D.O.M. But we didn't go, because we were protesting the price increase from $25 to $55. Little did we know...


This year FPSF sold out. Which is ridiculous. We bought our tickets early, then got to upgrade to Fancy Pants status (yes, that's a thing), so we managed to break even with the price inflation when we sold our original tickets. I heard tickets were going for $250 for general admission by the day of the festival. That's crazy talk!

The lineup of people I was interested in seeing:
*Saturday*
Chase Hamblin
Vintage Trouble
Alabama Shakes
The Mavericks
Arctic Monkeys
Borgore
The Head and the Heart
Passion Pit
The Postal Service
Calvin Harris
*Sunday*
Kashmere Stage Band
Mavis Staples
Matt & Kim
SOJA
Savoy
Of Monsters and Men
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Bassnectar
Social Distortion

That's a tall order, peeps.

Did you know that Free Press SUMMER Fest is a terrible idea? Why not Fall Fest? Or Spring Fest if you'd like to keep the same initials? THIS IS HOUSTON. IN JUNE. WHAT THE EFF. I thought I was going to die, y'all. Fancy Pants AC tents or not. I wasn't alone, either. Those medical tents were full of hipsters in too much fringe/not enough sunscreen. Not to mention everyone was covered in grass and mud made from sitting on the hills and sweating profusely. I even had a few minutes of feeling like a football player when I started getting leg and side cramps from the dehydration. Not my best look. But I powered through for the sake of Passion Pit and The Postal Service.








Bands I actually saw Saturday:
Vintage Trouble (SOOOOOOOO FUN!!!)
Alabama Shakes (until I got the dehydration shakes and had to take it to the Fancy Pants tent)
Arctic Monkeys (after these guys I wandered in the streets like I imagine a person lost in the desert would wander...literally going in circles and feeling faint and discombobulated)
Passion Pit (sorry, H&H)
The Postal Service




Those were some tough decisions.

Then, Sunday morning we woke up to rain. GLORY!!!! I'll take mud over heat stroke any day. Turns out, though, it wasn't muddy at all. In fact, there was a pleasant breeze and a lack of crowd (I'm guessing some of those people I saw flailing around and hulahooping the day before weren't quite up to day 2). It was like the SF gods looked down and said, "Hey, guys. You took it like champs yesterday. Here you go!"





Sunday's bands:
MAVIS STAPLES!!!!!!!! (Convo of  the day: "Why aren't you up there with her, Katie?" "I know, right! I wanna be Mavis Staples when I grow up.")
Cat Powers
Matt & Kim (so fun!)
We heard Macklemore in the distance, but we decided to capitalize on the lack of food lines and abundance of shade.
TV on the Radio
Bassnectar (WOW. FUN.)

So there you go. I don't know if we'll complete the trifecta next year or not. There would have to be a pretty good lineup. And special Fancy Pants bathrooms. And a cold front. But we'll see!