Posts Tagged ‘band’

I was one of the many people to attend All Points West this weekend. It was a 3 day event at Liberty State Park. Friday’s line-up included Jay-Z, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Vampire Weekend and others. Saturdays 3 biggest performers were Tool, My Bloody Valentine and Gogol Bordello. Chairlift was also on Saturday, I love their hit song “bruises”. I only went on Sunday, unfortunately I wasn’t feeling good, so I ended up going pretty late. But I chose to go Sunday because Coldplay was performing and they are pretty much my favorite band of all-time. Also on Sunday was MGMT, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Black Keys, Elbow, We Are Scientists, Lykke Li and more. I unfortunately missed MGMT because they played pretty much the same time as Coldplay; I was quite perturbed about that. I heard the tale end of a song of theirs. I first arrived to the concert around 8:00pm or so and was very glad to catch the last few songs of Lykke Li’s performance. She had a lot of energy. I really like her sound.

There were 3 different stages throughout the park and Lykke Li performed at the Queen of the Valley Stage. MGMT was at Bullet and Coldplay was at the Blue Comet. There were a couple very intriguing abstract set-ups randomly placed throughout the park where people could sit or stand in the middle and they were lit up once it got dark.  Another cool thing was that there were 2 incredibly long lines of string with lit up balloons attached to them which floated above our heads around the park. There were also some merch booths, food tables, etc. I was very surprised to see that H&M had a tent set up with air condition inside, in which they were giving away water bottles and had a fun photo booth where anyone could get complimentary photos. So I jumped on that wagon.

It rained most of the day on Sunday, which is another reason I wasn’t so motivated to go early, but despite the fact that it stopped raining everyone still had to tread through the muddy sludge in the grass. It was incredible how dirty everyone was. I wore my rainboots, so I was pretty protected for the most part. Some people gave up and just decided to leave their shoes off, some people even left their muddy shoes behind. I saw several people with mud splatters as high as their backs.

Coldplay of course was awesome and well worth the trip for me. I was, however, surprised at how Chris Martin seemed to be having a hard time up there. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, his performance was still amazing and he sounded incredible, but there was just something hindering him a bit. It was like he was getting worn out very easily…of course he was running around a lot. They played all of my favorite songs, I even took a bit of video footage. Unfortunately my pictures didn’t come out very well, my camera isn’t exactly the best in town. Coldplay moved around between 3 different stages connected to the Blue Comet throughout their performance and at one point they came down into the mud and walked through it as well. There were also a few very entertaining points in Chris’s performance where he played off of his tiredness and acted like he couldn’t go on any longer, he went down to the ground a few times… it made us laugh. During the song “Yellow” these huge yellow balloons/balls came up from the stage somewhere and began floating above the crowd, it wasn’t too long before parts of those balloons turned brown from the mud.

Overall, even though I missed most of it, it was a pretty great experience. The night was very beautiful…I could feel a light breeze and see the moon so clearly. The view of Manhattan from the ferry was breathtaking.