Five posts now, and I'm only half-way through the first day of Shaky Knees. Let's see if we can't move things along a little bit quicker.
After John Grant finished at the Piedmont Stage, I took the relatively long walk to the Boulevard Stage (the grounds were fairly large) to see garage/surf punks Wavves. By this time (3:15 pm), the crowds were getting larger and it took me a while to get from Piedmont to Boulevard, so to speak, so I never managed to get too close to the stage for Wavves. Which may have been just as well - with all of the moshing and crowd surfing the band engendered, close to the stage may not have been the best place for this elderly spectator.
Despite the distance, I enjoyed the Wavves set, even if I was standing in the direct sun to see them. I stayed for their whole set, and afterwards had to choose between Mac DeMarco (who already had a full crowd waiting in front of the Ponce De Leon Stage for him) and someone called Clutch at the Piedmont Stage. I chose neither, and instead headed for the food trucks to get some fish and chips, which I ate under the shade of a big old oak tree while listening to a third performer, Zella Day, performing nearby under the tent at the Buford Highway Stage.
I had never heard Zella Day before, but her indie pop sound had me intrigued enough as I sat there eating my fish and chips that when I finished I had to go into the tent to check her out. She seemed to have a great rapport with the audience, and the whole set seemed like a great big singalong.
She was only about halfway through her set, and I would have enjoyed staying for the rest, but I decided instead to go and finally resolve the whole Mac DeMarco thing once and for all.
The "Mac DeMarco" thing is really the "me" thing, as it seems I'm the only person alive who doesn't "get" Mac DeMarco. I know people who love his music passionately and the press and internet generally consider him a favorite. I've heard a lot of his songs, including the entire Mac DeMarco 2 album (several times), but to me the songs just sounded like laid-back, throw-away pop. I get it that he's a goofball and that his live shows are unpredictable and raucous, but that didn't seem like enough to me to make up for the blandness of his music. So, fortified with a meal and at least a quarter hour off of my feet, I squirmed my way to a half-way decent position in the large crowd at DeMarco's stage to see his show for myself.
Well, I'll admit it - I liked it. I got to the stage in time to hear him perform Baby Wearing Blue Jeans - the first Mac DeMarco song I've heard - as well as the second half of his set. Live, the songs had more urgency and more sincerity than the recorded versions, and I've never denied that he was an engaging performer. At one point and to the surprise of very few, he dove off the stage to crowd surface the audience, and the event security even carried him across the barrier between the stage and the sound booth separating the audience into two so that he could surf both the left and the right side of the crowd.
I may not yet be his biggest fan, but at least I'm not going to be going around saying, "I just don't get it," whenever anybody brings DeMarco up.
So, there - I managed to cover three bands in one post and I'm now over half-way through Day One. At this new, accelerated rate, I may even finish this retrospective before the end of the month!
No comments:
Post a Comment