It's not quite 4/20 yet, but this is the weekend to celebrate the, ahem, "budding" holiday. Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing Company, makers of Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale, seized upon the commercial tie-ins between the date and their signature product, and for the past several years, have been holding the Sweetwater 420 Festival in Candler Park in Atlanta. As I recall, it was a smaller event back in 2011 and 2012, hosting primarily jam bands, bluegrass, and other forms of Americana music (I briefly stopped by on a Saturday in 2012) but in 2013 the festival began booking better known acts (e.g., George Clinton and P-Funk) and this year, for it's 10th Anniversary, it moved downtown to Centennial Olympic Park with its biggest lineup yet.
I got there last night in time to catch Beats Antique.
To be honest, I almost didn't go. It had rained all day Friday, and the forecast was for 100% chance of showers on Friday evening. At work, I told my colleagues that I wasn't going to go, but as I left the office, the rain had let up to a slight drizzle. I wasn't sure if the weather wasn't trying to lure me out and then turn into a downpour while I was at the park, or if it was, in fact, tapering off. "I'm not taking any chances," I said, and told the folks at work that I was going to go home and call it a night. I was still saying, "I'm not going," as I pulled my car into the Doraville MARTA station instead of driving straight home like I had said, and I was still in at least partial denial as I rode the train to Peachtree Center Station and the park. Fortunately, the rain never really got any worse than it was when I apparently changed my mind and decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
We've seen Beats Antique, the band that was playing when I arrived, before. Back during Bumbershoot 2013, they headlined the Fountain Lawn Stage on Sunday night and blew my mind with their stage show. I even took a brief video of their performance (apologies for the sound quality).
I hate to say it, but their 2013 Bumbershoot show was a lot more fun, or at least included a lot more costume changes and performances by the band's dancer, Zoe Jakes, than last night. Not that last night's performance was anything other than exotic and mind-bending, including a finale that included a giant inflatable cyclops doing battle with the band (last time, it was an inflatable giant squid).
Despite getting there late, I was able to get a pretty good position in the audience for Beats Antique, about 10 or 12 rows of people back from the stage. After the Beats Antique set, as some folks left the stage area, either to go see Cold War Kids at the other stage or to get some refreshments or to go home or for whatever reason, I was able to move forward and got a spot in the fourth row back from the stage for Thievery Corporation.
We've seen Thievery once before, opening for Massive Attack at The Fox Theater back during Rocktober 2011.
Thievery, of course, is the duo of Washington D.C.'s Ron Garza and Eric Hilton, with lots and lots of supporting musicians, singers, and rappers.
Here's Thievery's set list, including the names of the guest performers:
During the course of Theivery's set, the rain let up from a light drizzle to a mist to disappearing altogether. In my raincoat and baseball cap, I realized I was dressed perfectly for the night, and that I had made the right decision to come on down.
The crown didn't disperse after Thievery's set; in fact, if anything, more people pushed in to get a closer spot for headliner Snoop Dogg. Still, I managed to move up a little, and had an excellent spot two rows back, behind some relatively short teenaged girls who, while not tall, still threw their hands in the air like they just didn't care for much of Snoop's set.
Snoop has a reputation for being late for shows, once notoriously taking the stage in Portland some three hours after the opening act had finished. He was scheduled to start last night at 9:30, but didn't take the stage until almost 10:00, but a half hour late is almost downright punctual in Snoop time.
At this point, well over 20 years into his performing career, Snoop is a seasoned showman, and in addition to many of his own classic raps (Gin and Juice, Drop It Like It's Hot, and Nothin' But a G Thang), he led the audience through a lot of singalongs, including Joan Jett's I Love Rock 'n' Roll and Akon's I Wanna Fuck You. He also included several guest rappers in his set, allowing some to perform guest vocals and engaging other in duets/battles.
The crowd, naturally, went crazy. From where I was standing (close to the stage), the audience around me consisted primarily of white teens to twenty-somethings, but they seemed to know the lyrics to every Snoop Dogg rap. There was a lot of audience participation in the set, including not only the singalongs, but cheers, shouts, and lots and lots of arm waving as well.
A flashback moment: one of Snoop's covers/singalongs was House of Pain's Jump Around, which was also covered by the band Cypress Hill and reminded me that the forerunner of the Sweetwater 420 Fest was the Great Atlanta Pot Festival, an act of open civil disobedience and music formerly held in Piedmont Park. Not surprisingly, after a few years, the festival organizers got a hard time from City Hall getting their permits in place, but back in 1993, I saw Cypress Hill at the Pot Festival on a stage consisting of a flat-bed truck perform Jump Around, as well as Insane In The Membrane and other hits of the time. I still have the t-shirt from the festival around here somewhere.
Black Uhuru performed that day as well.
Ah, but the memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime. Back in the here and now, Snoop Dogg was on stage, leading an audience, at least half of which had not even yet been born when the song was an MTV staple, through a raucous cover of Jump Around while lighting up a spliff himself on stage (judging by the aroma in the air, he wasn't the only one toking). In case the point hadn't yet been made, Snoop closed his set with what he described as "four words of positivity": "Smoke weed, mother fuckers!"
There was no encore, and the trip home was perhaps the most arduous part of the evening. Not surprisingly given the rain and number of people, the lawn in Centennial Park had turned into a sea of mud, and sloshing out through it with the rest of the huge audience without slipping and falling was enough of a challenge in itself. But back at the Peachtree Center Station, shoes caked with mud, we all had a long wait for the first MARTA train. Although they should have known that at about 11:15, there would be an larger-than-usual number of Northbound passengers and therefore should have sent a few extra trains, MARTA stuck to their usual schedule and first kept up waiting for 20 minutes until the station was almost overflowing with passengers, and then had us cram into the one train when it finally did arrive, squeezed in so tight that most people couldn't even use a handrail, causing the passengers in at least my car to start a spontaneous singalong of Bill Withers' Lean On Me, some fun in what may have otherwise been a stressful situation. Eventually, the train made it all the way out to Doraville Station, where my car was parked, and I picked up a Fellini's pizza on the way home (I hadn't eaten since almost 12 hours earlier).
Or, to summarize this whole needlessly wordy and overly illustrated post in just four words: I saw Snoop Dogg!
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