Barely. This was yet another weekend that has brought to my attention the sad reality that I’m no longer a carefree young teen, but rather an aging raisin-wrinkled, mushy and stale! Well, that’s actually being a bit harsh on my self, but running around for three days with teenagers certainly brings out the old lady in me.
Besides coming to terms with my demise, however, the weekend was great! As always, the powers that be who work extremely hard to make this event happen put on a great show and provided three whole days of music and fun for north Jersey concertgoers. To kick things off, a secret Friday night show, called the Hoodwink Festival, was held in its own private area of the Meadowlands parking lot where the festival grounds were mapped out. A nice showing of over-anxious tweens made their way to the area that night in the hopes that some of their favorite bands would be playing, but not knowing for sure as the true identity of each special performer was kept a mystery until they were actually on the stage. I, however, was not enjoying the music firsthand, but instead working behind the scenes, checking in the weekend’s vendors who were able to show up early. But I’m not bitter, oh no, because I actually got to have a lot of fun. The night consisted of having free reign of the parking lot in my boss’s personal golf cart, so needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed my self. It was a wee bit chilly outside, so that could have caused for some drab conditions and low levels of enthusiasm, but alas, good times prevailed! I did, though, begin to loose motivation towards the end of the night, knowing that such little sleep would be had and an early start was scheduled the next day-and mind you, this was only the beginning…
Saturday morning started bright and early at 5 a.m. when I woke up, groggy, grumpy and entirely dreading the weather because I looked out my bedroom window to a cold and dreary sky. Thankfully, though, after the morning hours passed by, the sun came out and the temperature rose to provide everyone who was at the show with a beautiful day of listening to music and, in mine and my friends’ case, binge drinking, as usual. I, my self, actually didn’t drink too much on Saturday – you know, first day and all, I had work to do-but believe you me, I got my kicks in later on, that’s for sure! Anyway, I didn’t even get to listen to that many bands, and to be honest I didn’t really care to, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of a select few acts that were well worth it. Jimmy Eat World took the Now What Stage right across from where my friends and I had parked for most of the day, and they were awesome – totally worth the wait! That was actually the first time I’d seen them live and they were entirely in synch with one another, they sounded great and the crowd loved them, as did I!
Later on Saturday night, to close out the official first day of the Bamboozle 2008, the pimp of all pimps, Snoop Dog, took the Asbury Park stage and he was nothing short of awesome! I had never seen him live either – I was blown away! Of course he came fully equipped with his entourage and blinged out mic, and the best part was, was that he mostly played all old school shit! Snoop owns the stage; he’s smooth, cool and collected and he manages an entire crowd of people, all of whom are enamored by every move he makes and every word he raps! Definitely a good choice for the closing act of the night, for sure.
So Sunday, oh Sunday, I was tired. What can I say? I had been working for so long leading up to this much-anticipated weekend, and then once it finally came I was working (we’ll use that term loosely) all weekend long as well! Sunday, though, I did manage to have a bit of fun. I figured, “What the hell,” all the vendors know the drill, they’re all settled in and enjoying themselves, so why don’t I try to have some fun too? Well, this turned out to be a great day for me. I checked out an old favorite, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, I was surprised with a phone call from a new friend who is involved with a great non-profit organization called Invisible Children and they are currently on tour with my favorite band, Thrice, who happened to have a time slot on this year’s festival! So, we met up, had a beer and headed back stage to chat and then right on the stage as Thrice was playing. Their set was awesome, consisting of new material from their recently released Alchemy Index, and of course some older songs as well that are always crowd favorites, one of which is my personal fav, “Deadbolt.” I don’t think, in fact scratch that, I know, there has never been a time that I’ve been disappointed when seeing Thrice live. They always manage to raise the bar a bit for the other bands that they share the stage with, in my opinion. They present a new sound with each new album they release, they put a new social message into music and lyrics with each new song they write and they always, always seem to play with such passion and drive – there’s just no other comparable group in the genre, if you ask me.
Other than that, I got plenty drunk on this, the last day of Bamboozle, I had some fun with my friends, I sold some clothes (Oh yeah, my boyfriend and I started up a new clothing company called Archive Clothing that we debuted at this year’s festival) and I made a lot of new friends. All in all I would say it was a complete success! I may have been tired as hell, I may still be recuperating from a long weekend, but I had fun and I survived! So, see you next year!
No comments:
Post a Comment