Firefly Festival, June 18-19, 2015

Day One (Thursday) – first impression: I'm at the Firefly Festival, learning that most festivals pale in comparison to Austin City Limits. It's day one and I'm contemplating skipping half the festival, especially if it rains again. Mud pits; undersized, low-slung stages for the crowd size with too few, too small screens; outdated app; inadequate signage; poor lighting near dangerous terrain at night; hidden port-a-potties; no frozen non-alcoholic drinks; no labeling of vegan food; very drunk 20-somethings; not the best lineup; not enough water refill stations; horrible mud pit choke points between stages. I'm scared of what Saturday brings when the other 2/3 of the crowd arrives. ‪#‎fireflysucks‬‬

My friend Jill described the Firefly lineup as very alt-nation, but all of us that went are more XMU. That difference in taste skews my perception of the performances. The only acts I remember from that horrible first day were Grizfolk and the Kooks. I saw others, but none of them made any impression, and that was before I started taking notes.

Grizfolk had their name big on the screen behind them, which always makes me happy – festival and opener bands should never assume you know their name. The lead singer cursed a lot, and not because it made sense to do so. I think he must have thought that the audience would like the cursing. It made him sound stupid.  I honestly remember nothing about the music.  Before I go to a music festival, I make a spreadsheet of all the acts and preview each of them, keeping notes. The purpose is to not miss an awesome act just because I haven’t heard the name before. My preview of Grizfolk was “boring pop.”  I stand by that description.  According to Dana, we also say Ryn Weaver, Panama Wedding, and Young Rising Sons that day.  I took photos of these bands, but I really don't remember them:

The Kooks sounded wonderful. I’ve got to give it to Firefly for hiring the best sound techs I’ve ever come across. There wasn’t a single performance all weekend where I thought the bass was overwhelming the vocals. That’s a very rare and appreciated experience.  The Kooks are British alt rock. (“Bad Habit” is the biggest hit right now.) We were close enough to see, but there was nothing special in the performance that stood out. Just fun, danceable, sing-along rock.

The forecast for Friday was a little hot, but no rain at all and some breeze, which was promising as we left the gorgeous AirBNB house we were staying in. (SO much better than glamping!)  We arrived at the festival and were immediately impressed by the effort they had put into mud abatement overnight. The worst problem – the path between the two sides of the park – had mud bulldozed to the size and gravel laid down, creating a very nice walkway. Other areas had some extra mulch, and over the course of the weekend, plywood and wood shavings appeared in other locations. I give it to them for trying. Friday, there were INSANE lines for the water stations – they needed about 4 times as many stations.

By Saturday, they’d jerry-rigged about double the number of faucets. Still not enough, but they were aware and responsive, which counts for a lot.  They never did fix the signage for the port-a-potties. The problem was that they used the same color green fence covers around the restrooms as they did the perimeter fence, so it all blended together visually from a distance, and restrooms and water were not on the maps.  I was still discovering restroom locations late Saturday. That’s ridiculous. They should have used neon yellow or something contrasting so you could tell where they were at a distance. The lawn stage toilets were in a prime spot near the stage that was always crowded, so most people couldn’t reach them – bad planning. They also needed more hand sanitizer stations – the ones in the port-a-potties were usually empty.

Another permanent problem: the screens by the stages were much too small and placed too low to the ground. The people in the back couldn’t see anything. And all the stages were fairly low to the ground. Put them higher so that people can see the acts over the crowd and the totems!  This part of my review is going to be emailed to Firefly. Maybe they will improve, but I won’t be coming back to this festival, mostly because of the crowd.

Food: Wok on the Wild Side and Tico’s Tacos were my staples. The blackberry lemonade at Tico’s was my crack all weekend – mostly for the ice. I also went to the place that sold salad and giant hunks of watermelon – yum! Loved the veggies in the Wok noodle stir-fry. Loved the pork carnitas at Tico’s.

About the crowd: I think that Dewey Beach must have been pretty empty this weekend, because all the drunk, doped up college kids were with me at Firefly. A couple of the housemates we stayed with commented that at 25 years, they felt old for this crowd. My peeps of the middle-aged persuasion were few and far between. Plus: the half-naked crowd often had pretty bodies that could pull off half-naked. (And I mean that literally. I saw girls with just pasties on top. Plenty of men in just speedos, too. One girl in a thong bikini.) Minus: pot smoke and vomit. Dover, DE is also the middle of nowhere. That’s why we had such a hard time finding a place to stay other than camping. Plenty of people drove an hour or more each way each day just because there are no hotels near, and the town itself is run down with lots of vacant store fronts and dilapidated homes. That’s a shame, because there’s some pretty architecture in that town.

Since I’m on a roll, I’m going to comment on random memories. I wanted to have ribbons to give out for best totem, most courageous fashion choices, most festive, etc. The totem award would have gone to Ross, who wrote his name in glow in the dark tubes and held it up on a stick. You could see through it to the stage, but couldn’t miss it. There were lots of 20-somethings that seemed to misunderstand the purpose of the totems (finding your friends in a big crowd.) Instead, they used them to wave to the singer, blocking the view of everyone behind them. There were lots of face cutout totems that blocked views very effectively, and one jellyfish totem that pissed me off. I barely saw one of the bands because it was so big and blocked so much of the view.

 

A few of the courageous fashion choices included crochet afghan capris and a paper mache cat headdress. There was one death metal dude in full leathers in a head index above 100. There was a gay guy in speedos with a photo of a cat on his crotch. That was probably the closest a pussy every got to his penis. There were a LOT of cat clothes, on the guys and the girls, both. There was the happy drunk boy and his sober friend/babysitter who joined Jill and me for lunch. One lady with a rocking body wore the perfect sundress – casual, light weight, flattering. Win. Others wore fancy lace and couldn’t sit down because of the mud. Fail. There was this mismatched couple that drew my eye – a gorgeous, youngish, statuesque dark black women in skimpy outfits and a grizzled old white man with a leg brace that looked former military to me. He was smiling like he won the lottery, staring at her. I wondered if he’d hired her, or if he was her sugar daddy. There was an old dude with awesome tats, and he was standing near a guy with a romance-cover worthy chest. Might have even had a nice face, but I can’t remember anything but that chest. Wowzers! There were lots of pretty muscles on display, and some not so pretty guts, but mostly better than average. One nice thing about the party-hard camping and pot smoking: no one gave me a hard time about napping or reading a book in the back of the audience during a so-so act. They were all napping too. I dyed my hair pink for this festival and was in good company – tons of others had dyed their hair too.

So, onward to the acts.  First up Friday was Phebe Ryan. I’ve never heard of her – she’s a pop girl who went viral with a cover mash up of R. Kelly’s Ignition and Miguel’s Do You. She had green hair and took a video of the audience to show to her mom. We saw the last part of her act for Dana because Dana is a fan. I thought she was unremarkable.

Stetson Rose was my second stop on Friday. It was an acoustic set in the Coffee House tent. She had a sweet, nice voice. Typical inward-looking girl music done well. Not my thing.

Next was Clean Bandit at the main stage. The vocalist was an awesome British black lady who had a big personality. I loved the use of strings in this electronic dance group. This act was more interesting than most. The black lady is not in their publicity photos, so I wonder if she might have been hired for the tour.

Knox Hamilton was next up on the Lawn stage. This is a band fronted by a long-bearded dude who looks like he belongs in a folk ban, singing like he’s in the Bee Gees. The had an electronic dance sound and all wore black on the black stage (a pet peave of mine.) Work It Out is the song you might know from them. Pretty standard alt rock.

We tried the “beercade” for the air conditioning. I don’t know why they put beer in the name, and calling it air conditioned might have been a bit of exaggeration.  All the game were free though, and it was shaded, so we tried dance revolution while cooling off. The machine told us we’d all FAILED. Not going to be winning any dance-offs anytime soon. Bummer.

Wolf Alice was next. It was an English band with a harder rock edge, okay in the background, but we didn’t stay long.

Manchester Orchestra was exactly the same as the last time I saw them. They just stand there and sound awesome. I listened while resting in the shade. The inadequate screens made it impossible for me to see anything.

Sylvan Esso was a highlight of the festival. They played on the Backyard stage, and I couldn’t help but comment that the dude in the duo got so lucky when Amelia agreed to work with him. She owned that stage and the audience. Fun, vibrant, confident, engaging – she’s the bomb. She told the audience that she practices dancing by seducing herself in front of the mirror and they should too. Then maybe they would sometime be performing in front of a thousand people in a full spanx onsie. She had impressive platform shoes and still MOVED in sinuous, unexpected ways. She’s not perfect bodied or classically beautiful, but it didn’t matter – she was sexy. Great voice and music, too. It made me more of a fan to see this show.

There was a very festival moment at his act where a college kid asked the beer vendor for some ice from his empty bucket and the beer vendor offered him an ice bucket challenge – the kid was very into it. I loved that vendor for it.

Walk on the Moon was next for me. It made me cringe to hear the pretty boy front man appeal to the crowd for positive energy. So young and naïve, so hippy-dippy. Shut Up And Dance With Me sounded good, though.

Bear Hands was one of the acts I was looking forward to most, but they turned out to be unremarkable live. They do a dancy alt rock, like most of the acts at this festival. The jellyfish totem was my enemy at this set.

Awolnation came out in white outfits, which is a plus for me, but this was the only act were I thought the sound quality was bad, though in retrospect, it could have also been the singer’s voice was bad. I left quickly to go see Big Data, which was a HORRIBLE disappointment. They didn’t use the screen behind the band for Siri, and she makes the show fun. Big Data doesn’t have good vocals. Epic fail.

Odesza used recorded music and appeared as silouettes against a pretty screen. I didn’t stay. I wonder if Amelia from Sylvan Esso made a guest appearance for her song with them?

Morrissey was poorly attended. He went on stage a little late after a film montage intro that felt out of touch and inspired by a cool-factor that was dated a couple decades. He looked his age and had changed some arrangements, perhaps for his voice.

All the people who weren’t at Morrissey were at the small Forest stage for Glass Animals.  It was packed. I couldn’t get even a glimpse of the band. They were bass-heavy on some songs, and sounded good for others.

We finished Friday with most of Modest Mouse’s set. I had been picturing a different look for the lead singer, and had no idea the band had so many members.  Was it 7 people on stage? We were pretty far away, so it was hard to tell. There were fun songs I loved and some jamming that bored me. We left a little early to avoid the max exodus.