VIRGIN FEST

After going to Coachella and Paleo this year, I think I’m a bit spoiled on what constitutes a well-organized music festival. Though excited to see the Police, as the last time I’d seen them was at a Day On The Green show at the Oakland Coliseum 1983 (with The Fixx, Madness, Oingo Boingo, and The Thompson Twins!), I hadn’t given too much about Virgin Fest while I was in Europe, and when I returned realized I had an extra ticket. Not much into doing this alone, I asked my old co-worker from Avalon Justine if she wanted to go a couple days before the show.

Getting there was something of an ordeal in itself. A three-hour bus ride took us from NYC to Baltimore and dropped us off around 1pm near an incredible ratty and depressing bus depot where we had to catch a cab to the Metro station downtown. From there we caught the subway (a rather small one-line city system) and rode until a designated event rendezvous where a shuttle bus took us to the event site at Plimico racetrack. Calculations were necessary for the return bus that was to pick us up at 11:30. I figured we’d have to leave the show a little before 10pm, right before it ended.

It was hovering in the 90s by the time we got there with atrocious humidity. The grounds were a mix of spotty earth and large patches of dead lawn that as the day progressed gave off a dusty residue that permeated the air and turned snot black. Immediately I noticed that vendor food stalls lacked any sort of individual personality. In fact, the entire event with inundated with a lame, poorly designed graphic identity that had all the charm of a strip mall. People were allowed to drink overpriced libations freely on the grounds and those that chose water were given a handful of fountains where lines of up to a 100 people had to wait to fill up. As hot is was there were only a couple of tents for shade that were filled to capacity, while a handful of tents with cooling mist were set up for relief, with only one having actual fans and showers inside to help prevent people from overheating or getting sun stroke. It was to put in mildly, brutal.

A few performance artists dotted the landscape with little fanfare as opposed to the incredible array of work and value put towards it I’d seen at Coachella. We started off watching Amy Winehouse put on a rather disconnected performance and found the young women wandering around emulating her beehive two-tone coif far more interesting. Hungry, we sampled some of the food, settling on burgers and a sausage sandwich, Justine having beer, her drink of choice and me trying to get as much ice tea and lemonade in my system.

We spent the afternoon wandering from stage to stage, watching Peter Bjorn and John’s set for a bit, checking out the dance tent, standing in lines for drinks, stopping at some random booth where I got a stick-on tattoo on my ass from a rather attractive young girls-gone-wild type, checking out some performance art and watching LCD Soundsystem’s kick-ass set on the small stage with James Murphy making a rather amusing comment about the race track stands that loomed in the distance.

“Anyone know what that building is? Is that the future in there?"

The Beastie Boys picked things up, but the throng was so huge we watched the big screens. Night fell and the landscape become noticeably more agreeable so by the time The Police came on, people’s energy was either peaking or totally wiped out by the day’s inferno. We stayed for about half of a great set, then hurried over to watch Modest Mouse for the remainder, still kind of blown away that Johnny Marr is in the band and reminding myself to actually just go see this band do their own gig.

We left before the throng grew too big, making it through the shuttle/subway/taxi gauntlet to reach the bus rendezvous at the ratty depot. A van pulled up at about the time our bus should be there and I decided to make an inquiry. Yes, this was our bus, operated by Double-Happiness bus lines, which serves primarily Asian clientele. We waited in the back seats while the driver gathered up more people outside, a radio station in Cantonese (I guess) broadcasting at an incredibly uncomfortable volume what sounded like the last transmissions from an ill-fated plane disaster. Informed that this was actually a shuttle to the actual bus we left and drove for awhile to a parking lot where a larger bus arrived and we boarded, actually getting two seats together right next to the bathroom. The bus reeked of fish sauce and something had gone horribly awry in the bathroom, emitting pungent ammonia piss odor that initiated gagging and coughing. The bus left, making more stops, allowing those without seating reservations to sit on stools in the aisle.

“Can you believe this shit?” a man sitting next to me said. “They don’t care about anything.”

The trip was long and uncomfortable, odors and all. We made it back in NYC at around 3am, Justine left for Brooklyn and rather that suffer the subway I paid through the teeth for a cab ride home. The lackluster Virgin Fest was fun in most regards but definitely my last festival venture this year.