Virgin Mobile Festival, 8-9 & 8-10-08

Pimlico Race Course · Baltimore, MD

By ROXANA HADADI

Oh, Charm City. Besides being home to John Waters, The Wire, a nouveau hipster culture and one of the highest crime rates in the country, Baltimore also graces the national music scene each August with the Virgin Mobile Festival. Past acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, Amy Winehouse and M.I.A. have drawn thousands, and this year’s line-up – boasting nearly 40 performers – was no less glamorous.

Why, you may ask? Great names, seen in Bob Dylan and Lil Wayne (even though both failed to live up to expectations); great outfits, donned by the likes of Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz and She & Him’s Zooey Deschanel; and great light shows, employed by headliners Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West (side note: West’s name was mistakenly spelled as “Kayne” on the festival’s programs – and surprisingly, he didn’t throw a fit about it Sunday evening).

But there’s a lot more to a festival than some flashy clothes and flashing lights. With two days worth of music, it’s hard to confine everything to one review – but here it is: a list of the five best, and five worst, from last weekend.

FIVE BEST

Honorable Mentions:

- Paramore: Lead singer Hayley Williams may not be old enough to drink legally, but she sure can inject some cute into the world of pop-punk. Barely teenage fans flocked to the Manic Panic-loving Williams and the rest of Paramore’s set Sunday on the North Stage, during which the band performed most of their 2007 album, Riot!, including the screams-of-glee-inducing “Misery Business.” Though the parents in the crowd looked ready to tear off their faces, the little girls who had obviously dragged them to Virgin were beside themselves.

- Underworld: Trainspotting made you choose life, and thanks to the song “Born Slippy .NUXX,” it also happened to make Underworld famous. The electronic band, led by frontman Karl Hyde (who, flailing around on stage in a silver sequined shirt, resembled a sassier Thom Yorke) performed a similarly trippy set Saturday, closing out the night in the Dance Tent as hundreds thrashed about before them. Forget Dan Deacon and Girl Talk – Underworld actually makes their own music. And gee golly, people seem to like it.

5. Chuck Berry

Similar to Iggy Pop – but, you know, with a shirt and not humping his guitar amps – 81-year-old Chuck Berry displayed impressive amounts of energy Saturday evening on the South Stage. The rock-and-roll pioneer, clad in a red sequined shirt and a jaunty sailor’s cap, may have split his hour-long set with Japanese Beatles cover band The Silver Beats, but that didn’t keep him from delivering a rousing set that included him dancing from one side of the stage to the other while performing an array of his most influential songs, such as “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Johnny B. Goode.” The downside: The crowd didn’t give Berry nearly the amount of respect he deserved, instead seeming somewhat bored as they waited for headliner Foo Fighters. But did Dave Grohl write “School Days (Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll!)”? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

4. Chromeo

“Yo-e-oh, Chromeo!” All the fans crowding the Dance Tent on Sunday afternoon couldn’t get enough of dance-synth-pop-electrofunk (all those adjectives are completely necessary, I promise) duo Chromeo, comprised of Dave 1 (David Macklovitch) as guitarist and lead singer and P-Thugg (Patrick Gemayel) as talk box and on keyboards and synthesizers. Together, the two delivered irresistibly catchy songs that got everybody’s body rockin’, including “Tenderoni,” “Modified Lovin’,” “Fancy Footwork” and “You So Gangsta,” and engaged the audience with Dave 1’s charm (probably every girl staring adoringly at him melted when he asked the crowd, “Should we have one last dance?”). Include an encore, led by P-Thugg, of classic ‘80s rock songs such as “Don’t Stop Believing’” and “Anyway You Want It” by Journey and “Your Love” by The Outfield,” and the set was pretty much 100 percent. Good times for needy girls and mama’s boys everywhere.

3. Iggy Pop and the Stooges

While fellow punk legend Joe Strummer rests in peace and Johnny Rotten has faded into obscurity, Iggy Pop continues to excel at what he’s always done best: being shirtless and partying as hard as possible. At 61, Iggy was more energetic than most of the weekend’s performers, strutting around the stage, pouring countless bottles of water over himself and jumping into the crowd of rabid fans (much to the chagrin of festival staff, of course). But even better than his performances of “1969,” “No Fun” and “Real Cool Time” was his eccentric stage banter. The always-inclusive entertainer invited fans onstage (“I want you to get the fuck up here! Let them up; let them up! Come on, you bad boys! Let those bad boys up here!”), thanked Baltimore (“Baltimore, D.C. and surrounding pools of weirdness, thank you! Fucking thank you!”) and admitted his own insanity (“I am a fucking fuck up forever and I will kill everybody! This is fucking music time!”). A real cool time tonight, indeed.

2. Gogol Bordello

Clad in an unbuttoned shirt and cutoff royal blue and yellow track pants, a traditionally gypsy coin-adorned scarf tied around his waist, multiple gold chains around his neck and a bottle of red wine firmly in hand, Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz brought the party during the group’s early Saturday afternoon set. As soon as Hütz and the rest of Gogol Bordello (including violinist Sergey Ryabtsev, accordion player Yuri Lemeshev, dancers and back-up vocalists Pamela Racine and Elizabeth Sun and emcee Pedro Erazo) hit the stage, revelry ensued, as the band brought their punchy, up-tempo sound to songs such as “American Wedding,” “Never Young,” “60 Revolutions” and “Wonderlust King.” Stretching the normally 3-minutes-or-so “Mishto” into a 10-minute extravaganza and inspiring plenty of awkward-white-people-dancing with “Think Locally, Fuck Globally,” Hütz succeeded in the latter song’s goal of “[coming] to New York to start a gypsy punk revolt.” The band’s raucous, grimy style – along with Hütz’s certifiably badass moustache – caused photographer Adam Fried to ask, “Can you imagine the drunken sex parties they have?” But if their insane stage presence is any indication, I really can’t imagine that next level.

1. Nine Inch Nails

Let’s be upfront: Trent Reznor and Co.’s “Lights in the Sky” tour is probably the coolest performance I have ever seen. Not only did Reznor and his band of brothers – Alessandro Cortini, Robin Finck, Josh Freese and Justin Meldal-Johnsen, who aren’t official band members but are currently touring as Nine Inch Nails – perform new tracks such as “1,000,000” and “Discipline,” but they also dug into the catacombs of back discography, including “Gave Up,” from 1992’s Broken; “Piggy” from 1994’s The Downward Spiral; and “The Warning” and “Vessel” from 2007’s Year Zero. All that, and classic singles such as “Closer” and “Head Like a Hole,” and a phenomenal light show that included two humongous LED screens which could be raised up above the stage and displayed giant projections, such as a thunderstorm and a reflection of the night sky. The best part, however, was Reznor’s performance of Year Zero’s “Only,” during which one of the LED screens displayed a static background and a trail of black that followed Reznor as he moved around the stage, vividly recreating the pin-art CGI of the music video. Anger never looked so good.

FIVE WORST

5. The crowds for Cat Power and She & Him

Scheduling an intense, indie female who vaguely resembles Alanis Morissette and a duo of retro soft-rockers for a festival that has a firm history in cock rock (really, what else would you call the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the festival’s first headliners back in 2006?) can’t be a good idea. And the crowds for Cat Power and She & Him made sure it wasn’t, ignoring both acts during their performances. During Cat Power’s 50-minute set on the North Stage Saturday, everyone seemed to be oblivious to her on-stage antics, instead favoring idle chatter about the best ways to trek between the Foo Fighters’ and Jack Johnson’s performances later that night. The next day’s crowd for She & Him on the South Stage was even worse, disregarding Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward and instead discussing the best ways to smoke up during Lil Wayne’s upcoming set without getting caught. Disrespect much? I’d say so.

4. Lupe Fiasco

Kanye and Weezy were Virgin’s top hip-hop contenders, but that didn’t mean Lupe Fiasco, one of the main stars of the skateboard rap scene (see: Pharrell Williams), had to take a backseat. Unfortunately, he did. Since Fiasco is known for his conscientious image (well, except for last year’s Fiascogate, referring to when Fiasco forgot the lyrics to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” during his performance of the song on VH1’s Hip-Hop Honors), it makes sense that he would write a song like “Hip-Hop Saved My Life,” a song about the struggles associated with making it big in the rap world. But seeing him perform the song to a crowd full of suburban white college dudes who don’t know any of the words and couldn’t possibly even somewhat understand the experiences Fiasco is describing seems vaguely disingenuous. Smells like Fiascogate, part II.

3. Bloc Party

The hipster darlings of Bloc Party may sound pleasantly bored on their albums – something I like to call “The Strokes effect” – but they’re not supposed to act it. Not at a live performance, anyway. But that’s exactly what Bloc Party – comprised of singer and guitarist Kele Okereke, guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong – did Saturday afternoon during their set on the South Stage, seeming triumphantly lackadaisical during their hour-long endeavor. Though the band performed a variety of high-energy songs – such as “Like Eating Glass” and “Song for Clay (Disappear Here)” – from their past two albums, 2005’s Silent Alarm and 2007’s A Weekend in the City, they surely didn’t look like they were enjoying it. It’s understandable that, for hipsters, looking bored is the status quo. But couldn’t Bloc Party find it within their little indie hearts to buck the trend? Apparently not.

2. Hollywood Undead

First, let it be known: Hollywood Undead’s set Sunday morning on the South Stage was the band’s first show… ever. So, while it is respectable that the band survived and didn’t completely fall on their faces, their specific brand of music (an obnoxious melding of Slipknot, Insane Clown Posse and generic mall “emo”) and fashion sense (a creepy mask fetish, also cribbed from Slipknot) do not a good combination make. Plus, their idea of crowd banter sucks: “This song is dedicated to the first girl who shows me her tits,” one band member said before playing their song “Black Dahlia.” Oh yeah, and their lyrics are even worse: “Let’s get drunk, let’s get fucked up,” goes their song “California.” What a mess.

1. Lil Wayne

According to Weezy, “it ain’t trickin’ if you got it.” But even if you got it, does that make it OK to be 38 minutes late for an afternoon set Sunday, pushing back every other act on the South Stage and infuriating thousands of fans? Lil Wayne was supposed to come on at 3:50 p.m. but didn’t show up until 4:28 p.m., and then proceeded to play (for approximately 30 to 40 minutes) only one to two minutes each of various older Weezy songs. Factor in that the crowd – who had been booing and cursing Wayne before he finally came onstage – didn’t recognize most of his older stuff, and it all made for a very listless, lackluster set. Though Wayne eventually broke out of his funk with “A Milli” and “Lollipop” (aided by a guest appearance from Kanye), none of it absolved his past grievances.