Catalpa NYC w/ Snoop Dogg, Girl Talk, A$AP Rocky, Matt & Kim and more – July 29th – Fairgrounds – Randall’s Island, NY
It had been pouring down raining for three days straight, and I could have actually come to this yesterday as it was a two day event but there really wasn’t anyone playing that would have got me out in the rain. Not to be cynical but their wasn’t anyone playing today that would have got me out in the rain either, so lucky for them it was nice and sunny today haha!
Since Snoop Dogg was playing naturally High Times Magazine was a sponsor and we have done some work with them and my buddy Billy from the magazine invited me out to represent TrickyKid at the event.
I love coming out to Randall’s Island, I’ve only been here really one other time a few years ago but its a really cool spot.
This was the festival’s inaugural year, and music festivals without a historical following or a known brand identity can employ many strategies in their inaugural year, one of which is “Appeal to as many prospective demographics as possible.” so they decided to combat this problem by throwing together a bunch of popular-ish acts and some quirky attractions—art, fire, a chance to “elope” with a fellow Snoop Dogg fan.
The musicians played across three stages, with a whole host of corporate sponsorships filling the gaps between the performance spaces.
A car company set up an obstacle course to demonstrate the trunk space and cool factor of its new trucks; a web site handed out face paint and animal masks. My personal favorite booth promoted a kind of guarana/caffeine pill that is supposed to be dropped into water, making it turn all fizzy and orange like an Alka-Seltzer from Hell—half an hour after it’s imbibed, your heart is doing high-speed interval training inside your chest. Vodka was hawked in what looked like a sprawling series of igloos and at Billy’s insistence I had to play corporate whore and take a branded picture for one of the sponsors.
There were other, less corporate, uninjectable attractions, many of which failed to reach their full potential due to Saturday’s rain. A fire demonstration was canceled; the bumper cars were nowhere to be found; one operations employee informed me that it took nine hours to set up the bounce castle that would serve as the “house of sham marriages.”
Matt & Kim
Matt Johnson and Kim Schilfino‘s brand of joyous, keyboard-driven dance-pop was more in line with festival-goers’ tastes. It also helped that after a six-month hiatus, Matt and Kim were grinning like fools on laughing gas and kicking into each and every song with abandon. Kim volunteered to the crowd that she had been aggressively Kegeling because she wanted “to fuck the shit out of you tonight.” Matt demanded that she booty-dance on top of her drum kit & both performed exuberant acrobatics that left the crowd whooping, cheering and trying desperately to catch up through the power of stomp-and-shout dancing.
Kim was particularly bouncy, covering the crowd in confetti, booty dropping, and inadvertently hitting Matt’s mic during their predictable finale Daylight.“I get crazy and just wanna hit shit,” she apologized. They recovered quickly, starting over again from the top of the very long introduction.
In my last entry I spun a seething, spiteful tale resonating with resentment about the current crop of hipsters and just hipster culture at large. To be clear I never said I hated fun and as minimalist as their music is and how much of it lends itself to all of that, just on their positivity and sheer enthusiasm alone they get a pass. I’ve seen Matt & Kim close to 30 times now and they never fail to put a smile on my face.
Girl Talk
So I left that stage and took a break by exploring some of the other areas of the festival. As I was coming out of this maze like structure I spot a girl who is just too cute to let pass and she is alone so I approach to say hello. She returns my warmth and in seconds we are laughing and telling stories – She is beyond hot.
So much so that I lose track of logic, but I was quickly headed for Earth when her boyfriend shows up returning from the restroom.
You know how when you are in public at a high traffic place like this and you leave your girl for a second to go the restroom, and on the way back it occurs to you that your girl is fine enough that when you return their is gonna be some asshole trying to talk her up? – In this situation I am now that asshole.
The awkward introduction is made and I leave them to it and head toward the stage where Girl Talk is starting.
If you don’t already know, Girl Talk uses samples to incite a fever in the crowd, though he doesn’t tease them out slowly; he introduces bushels of familiar singles to the crowd, tossing off old pop songs and rap hooks like grapes. I’ve seen the show a few times and this one was essentially the same act, with slightly new 20-second sound bytes, wisely pulled from this year’s top 40.
But very few people at Catalpa minded. The move toward the main stage when Gillis started whipping his hair back and forth was by far the festival’s biggest migration, and that’s because Gillis is really good at what he does. He knows the songs that make a certain group of people go “ooo!” He knows surface-level pop in nearly every genre.
He compensated for his lack of showy instrumentation by hopping up and down & pulling dozens of young people (almost exclusively female) on stage, and blinding the crowd with neon letters to “JUMP JUMP JUMP.” a few alcohol-soaked guys shot streamers of toilet paper into the crowd, its all well suited to the ADD Twitter generation.
For a festival without a solid identity, where no one could really decide exactly what they wanted to hear, Girl Talk was a perfect fit. After all, he played everything.
A$AP Rocky
It was now dark and I wandered over to the other stage after Girl Talk had finished, for no other reason than just to see who was playing. The only other group that I knew that had yet to perform was Snoop Dogg, and despite his Willie Nelson-like status, I’ve seen it more than once and if there was something over here more interesting than I would just stay put.
A$AP Rocky was the last of the idiosyncratically New York acts to perform; he was competing directly with Girl Talk’s mainstage set, and he was finishing up by the time I showed up. He was plagued by relatively poor sound quality, but his desire to “fuck a jiggy bitch” was received with raucous laughter and a succession of enthusiastic candidates who were clearly confident about their inherent jigginess. (Rocky was one of only three rap acts, all of whom were slotted in on Sunday.)
I honestly could care less, though I like that he is probably the only person I have heard of to denounce homophobia in Hip-Hop, I saw him twice earlier this year at SXSW, including the festival-ending riot of violence that his group caused and I was really none too impressed. People will say that nerdy dudes like hip-hop to be subdued and conscientious and a guy like ASAP is too “thug”, but to be clear ASAP Rocky is marketed to the same Pitchfork driven social construct as any shoe-gazing indie-rock band. If just by being here doesn’t prove that, I have another example later in this entry.
Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg, has quietly transformed into a new-school American icon with a long career and a safe persona. But even though he’d clearly been chosen for his relative mass appeal, Snoop played the entirety of his 1993 classic Doggystyle. Though Snoop’s set was practiced and smooth, aided by pulpy videos which furthered his myth, it was funny to see the crowd bemused by such classic rap tracks as Murder was the Case or Stranded on Death Row
G funk is fast approaching its thirties and not aging well, by this crowd as they responded most to the two songs Snoop played last: Drop it Like it’s Hot and Young, Wild, And Free the latter of which has what may very well be the dumbest lyric enunciated most sincerely ever of “Sometimes we get drunk, sometimes we smoke weed, we’re just having fun, we don’t care who sees… we’re young and wild and free.” It’s probably the least divisive chorus that could be performed at a music festival.
I was standing watching him sidestage and thought I was getting a contact high cause I looked over and did a double-take to see Cyndi Lauper standing next to me.
People watching at these things are way more entertaining than most of the bands usually and this being NYC it can make it even more so.
Here are a few interesting things I saw –
Gossip Girl’s Queen Bee herself, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a huge fan of the show though its total bullshit I watch it religiously (at least I did when Taylor Momsen was still on) – I thought it was cool that she was out in the crowd rawking with everybody else instead of watching from backstage.
Cyndi Lauper
Like I mentioned earlier, I thought I was getting a contact high during Snoop when I spotted Lauper standing next to us.
..and let’s not forget the fans – One thing I enjoy, especially in NYC is their is always “the trend” – it happens every Summer and you will see every girl of every walk of life sporting it. This year some may find a bit more difficult to attempt as the thing I saw everywhere was really high-waisted short shorts.
All in all for this festival for me the results were mixed; the lineup succeeded in having a broad appeal, but lacked a coherent musical aesthetic. Many of the non-musical attractions were spoiled by the rain yesterday and, faced with the prospect of surviving on its artists alone, it became a referendum on its performers’ current positions within the musical landscape.
Catalpa didn’t quite deliver on its admittedly ambitious extra-musical plans, but it provided a great opportunity to investigate those artists operating at the borders of the mainstream.
