By There was a buzz in the atmosphere as I walked into Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas for the third annual Vegoose music festival last weekend that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. Maybe it was having to walk through a band of hippies having a makeshift swap meet in the parking lot. Maybe it was the hundreds of concertgoers wearing low budget, hilarious homemade costumes. Or maybe it was the electric lineup of talented musicians from all different genres that were about to grace the stages.
Whatever it was, I could tell one thing from it: This festival was about to rock.
Boasting a lineup featuring recently reunited political rockers Rage Against The Machine, French house robot musicians Daft Punk, the notorious Iggy Pop and his Stooges, English guitar heroes Muse, “Garden State” favorites The Shins and the always rockin’ Queens of the Stone Age, there was something for everybody.
Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello kicked Saturday off in style. Hailing from the lower east side of New York City, the band used every instrument from guitar to accordion to tambourine to get the crowd’s feet moving. Everybody seemed pleasantly surprised to be dancing so early in the day, and the band gave them everything it had.
The worst scheduling move ever became apparent as Cypress Hill and Public Enemy hit opposite stages at the same time (the festival had three stages with overlapping timeslots). I spent most of my time at Public Enemy watching Flavor Flav jumping around and screaming “Yeah, boooooooy!” but Cypress Hill’s beats could be heard in the distance.
The’ “life-changing” band from “Garden State,” The Shins, were up next. The indie rock group was one of few bands I saw that wore costumes on stage, and it blazed through hits like “Phantom Limb” with ease.
Josh Homme and his swanky Queens of the Stone Age were up next. Kicking off with “No One Knows,” the Queens gave the crowd a good reason to rock out.
Most of the crowd drifted away from Queens of the Stone Age over to Iggy Pop and the Stooges. At 60, Pop still jumps and dances around better than most of his peers half his age. The band was billed as “performing the album ‘Fun House,'” and it did just that.
Starting off with “Down On The Street,” the influential punk rock band played all seven tracks from the 1970 album in chronological order. Pop even invited members of the audience to join him on stage and dance. It was a wild set.
Daft Punk was given the responsibility of closing the first night, and the band did not disappoint. The DJs from Paris played a powerful one hour-and- forty-five-minute set that had every person in attendance dancing.
Wearing robot outfits and holed up in a huge pyramid-like structure, the duo played what seemed like one continuous mix of their hits sped up and slowed down and mixed together.
Watching two robots DJ for almost two hours could be boring, but the band had an awesome light and video show that collaborated with the music. Even their robotic suits lit up at one point.
So it was no wonder why concertgoers were slow to show up on Sunday. The early hours of day two were pretty empty, and when people started trickling in it looked like they were wishing they were actual robots so they wouldn’t have to deal with their hangovers.
Muse and Rage Against The Machine were the only two bands I cared to see the second day. Muse had a set very similar to the one it played at Street Scene last month, kicking off with “Knights of Cydonia” before cranking through most of the””Black Holes and Revelations” album.
But Rage Against The Machine made the whole Vegas trip worth it.
Kicking off with “Testify,” the band played an electric 80-minute set that channeled almost every single hit the band has had in its 15-year history. Absent were any antiwar or anti-Bush lectures from front man Zack de la Rocha. He let the music get the message across, and it sounded more powerful than ever.
Even though Vegoose had fewer artists and stages than last year, the names were bigger and the festival seemed more crowded than ever. The festival planners elected for fewer bands with longer sets, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. But even big names like Queens of the Stone Age, Iggy Pop and Rage Against The Machine struggled to fill their almost two-hour sets.
With some festivals struggling, this one seems to get more and more popular every year. Look out for some exciting things from Vegoose next year.
