North Coast Music Festival: Inaugural Year Gets Its Shine On
By Jake Guidry in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 6, 2010 5:45PM
Labor Day weekend afforded us many things: an end to excessive white-wearing, beautiful weather and a fine array of music at North Coast Music Festival. In a summer filled with festivals of all types, North Coast rose to the top as one of the city's most enjoyable events. Logically scheduled and highly navigable, these factors alone made North Coast a perfect example of how a fest should operate. Not to mention, of course, a lineup featuring genres largely ignored in the local festival circuit. Our highlights include good beer, food, people, and these acts:
Friday night The Chemical Brothers took over North Coast with a set that reminded us why they are pioneers of electronic music. They opened with "Galvanize" and explored all segments of their deep, rich discography. They were easily the highlight of Friday's shortened bill, but that's not to say Pretty Lights or Paul Van Dyk didn't get crowds moving.
Saturday, however, was much more dense and was the best of all three days. Jay Electronica offered a hip-hop set that will likely go down as one of the best we've ever seen. Highly political and engaging, Jay ripped up the crowd with crazy-good emceeing, J Dilla and Nas cuts, and puffs from a crowdmember's blunt. His set transitioned us nicely into De La Soul, who offered a show right on par with what we were expecting. They sounded excellent and they had the party going, but we cut our time with the hip-hop crew short in favor of Boys Noize, the act we were most excited for all weekend. Boys Noize owned the crowd at the relatively tiny Coast Stage, playing both originals and remixes of his nearly flawless discography. It was our third time seeing him play, and this was as good as we've seen him. He set the stage for electronic music icon Moby, who carried Boys Noize's energy extremely well, opting to play bangers for his entire set. Though some may have expected or wanted something more reminiscient of his own work, Moby did what he needed to do.
Sunday nearly matched Saturday in energy, and not many seemed to show the effects of a long, grueling weekend on the body. Benny Benassi, the house electro maven known for his tune "Satisfaction" played an all-banger set with plenty of corniness, but it was about what we expected. It was a bit stale, though, reminding us of what we saw at Perry's stage at Lollapalooza this year. Holy Ghost! gave us some variety with their indie-electro-pop which then led to a low-key Mayer Hawthorne set that was oddly much more jammy than we anticipated. Clearly a sign that he and his band haven't had much time to hone themselves. We then made our way over to the North Stage for Flying Lotus, who played, without a doubt, the best set of the weekend. Unlike times we've seen him in the past, FlyLo played less of his own stuff, and while that may be off-putting to some, it fit perfectly in the festival setting. He played everything from his ethereal work off Los Angeles, to Dr. Steve Brule clips, to Radiohead to dubstep to electro, and we left that stage in complete awe of what had just gone down. Flying Lotus is a man we will forever keep our eye on.
Lupe Fiasco was different than the other hip-hop acts of the weeend, going with a live band as opposed to a DJ. He even covered Radiohead's "National Anthem", one of the many highlights of our weekend. The set was fun and easy-going, which was an appropriate tablesetter for Nas & Damian Marley, the reggae-hip-hop hybrid. Nas did reprise some of Illmatic, but it wasn't enough to keep us entertained through the rather dull reggae. We then stepped over to the Red Bull stage for local outfit Gemini Club, who played their increasingly popular electro-pop. It was a fitting end to a weekend filled with high energy tunes.
Overall, North Coast Fest was one of the most enjoyable fest we'd been to all summer. Temperatures were perfect, the crowd was ruly, the music was fantastic, and, seriously, kudos to scheduling a festival where the day after is a day off.