Download Festival

Last October 8 Jody, John and I attended the Download Festival in Shoreline. I had been looking forward to this music festival for several weeks before the event and it was a great way to spend my first weekend back in San Jose after my two week flyback in Manila.

Unfortunately, Jody and I got caught up playing the new NBA Live at his apartment. These games can get heated and we were unable to leave in time to catch British Sea Power, the first band on tap for the day. Sayang, I wanted to see them play pa naman. This is the second time I missed them, having also missed them play in Coachella since their set coincided with another band that we liked.

I was glad that I decided to bring my sweater with me as it was freezing as we settled in on our seats, just in time to catch the start of the Doves' performance. It would get even colder during the later performances as the sun went down. By now we were joined by Jody's friend, Shirley, who was sitting at the lawn area with her own friends. She wanted to see Doves up close and since we had an extra ticket because Topher bailed on us, we were happy to oblige her. Shirley and her friends have been there since earlier in the day and she told me that British Sea Power, disappointingly, wasn't that good. So that consoled me a bit for not catching them play.

Doves on the other hand were great. Admittedly, Ive never heard any of their music before. I just heard people say that they were good. I wasn't disappointed. Their style was right up my alley: melodic, multi-layered brit-pop.




There was a 30 minute interval between the end of the Dove's performance and the start of Arcade Fire's so we decided to look around a bit. There was more to the festival than just the bands and we wanted to see what else was there.

Shirley said the game lounge was good so we checked that out. The game lounge turned out to be this domed, circular tent. In the middle of the tent, a DJ booth was setup while all around the circular perimeter of the tent were videogame kiosks interspersed with sofas and loveseats where people can chill and relax. The DJ was playing some pretty cool tunes and people were dancing to them. She also played two of the best mashups that I've heard: Jay-Z's 99 Problems mixed with 99 Luft Balloons and Bizarre Love Triangle mixed with Madonna's Ray of Light.

The coolest thing of all about the game lounge was this video they showed. At the middle of the DJ's booth was this hi-tech, three pronged video projector that projected videos (mostly of videogames) on to the domed roof of the tent. The technology was such that the whole dome roof was filled with the displayed image and because of the curvature of the dome, the effect was such that the video on display looked like it was 3-dimensional. Think of it as a high-tech, full-color version of the Planetarium Dome Display that we all used to go to on field trips back in Grade School.

After grabbing some food (pretzels and garlic fries) and buying some merch (a Modest Mouse t-shirt) we headed back to the stage area to catch Arcade Fire. Hands down their performance was the best of the night. Their final song, Rebellion, just blew me away. They perform with such manic energy that borders on the theatrical while still continuing to rock-out. They play with such a cacophany of sounds (they had aside from the standard musical instruments, a person playing the violin, french horn, accordion, xylophone, piano) but are still able to bring it all together into a cohesive whole. They got me and everyone on our feet.

Modest Mouse played after Arcade Fire. They were good but unfortunately their musical style was such that they were not suited to play in a large amphitheatre and were better appreciated playing in a small venue. The crowd was pretty much sitted and subdued during their performance.

Lastly, Killers was on. It was around 11PM by this time and a good number of people have already left, leaving a lot of empty seats. We occupied some of these vacant seats so that we can get a closer view of the stage. The Killers were the complete opposite of Modest Mouse and their dance/alt rock style got people jumping in their seats again. Their stage was decorated in glossy silver and it totally complemented their glitzy musical style.

The most surreal incident of the night happened as the Killers left the stage before their encore. All day they've been giving away these white, square, padded seat cushions and during the lull between the Killers regular set and their encore, people just started throwing those things like a square frisbee. It was just surreal...and a bit scary. As we looked behind us and up, you'd see these spinning, white squares flying all across the black sky. We were on the lookout to make sure none of them hit us but I was still hit in the back of my head by one. Parang may nambatok sa akin yung feeling. Those things were still flying when the Killers got back on stage and the members of the band got hit several times. Buti na lang professional sila and they just ignored it. After one song we quickly made our exit before things got more rowdy.

It was past one when we got back to San Jose. After stopping by La Vic to get some burritos we headed on back to Jody's apartment to play some more NBA Live. Shirley invited us to this party in Burlingame but playing 4 player NBA Live to the wee hours of the morning was the best way to end the night in my opinion :)