It was in spring that I heard about the inaugural All Points West Music & Arts Festival. I was examining Radiohead’s website in hopes their tour would bring them close to my locale (then Winnipeg), within a couple of thousand kilometres even. I looked to August’s North American schedule and was puzzled to see not one but two dates booked at something called All Points West. Two consecutive concerts in one place—that must be something special, I thought, before looking up the festival. Little did I know that I would make it to New York—via Toronto—for those very shows. But while they may have been the festival’s biggest attraction, All Points West (APW), August 8-10, was more than a double dose of Radiohead.
APW was created by Goldenvoice Concerts (a division of giant promoter AEG Live), organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, and also responsible for Virgin Festival and Edgefest in Canada. Goldenvoice decided to adapt the magic Coachella formula for the east coast, albeit without camping and what must have been lowered expectations regarding ticket sales (now a staggering 60,000 per day in Indio). The APW plan included forty-seven bands on three stages over three days.
Over the years the New York City area has hosted fewer massive outdoor festivals than you might expect for a city its size, in part due to the lack of wide-open spaces needed to accommodate tens of thousands of eager listeners. Enter Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ, on the west side of the New York Harbor. Next door to Ellis Island and offering backside views of the Statue of Liberty, the park marks the site of the former railway hub from which immigrants dispersed, to you guessed it, ‘all points west.’ The 1,100-acre (445 ha) park proved to be an adequate size for the twenty thousand people who showed up each day (my wild estimate), but would be strained by greater ticket sales. Not that more attendees would be a good thing from a fan perspective—APW was large enough without being overwhelming.
Friday
Andrew Bird whistled pitch-perfect tunes while cajoling sweet sounds from his violin. His Armchair Apocrypha was one of last year’s most interesting releases. Bird could not quite, however, recreate the lush symphonies of his last few albums to the same melodious extent in the live setting.
Girl Talk brought 300 rolls of toilet paper and seventy-five beach balls to decorate his mash-ups, creating a strange visual collage: a stage full of eager dancers bouncing to the likes of Kelly Clarkson and Jay-Z, dubious props filling the airspace, and a crowd whipped into a frenzy. When compared to the low-key head-bobbing found at most other stages, it seemed like at least Greg Gillis’ fans had the most fun of anyone the whole weekend.
Radiohead somehow exceeded the headliner buildup, with a two-and-a-half hour set powerful enough to eclipse the entire careers of most bands. Adding to the effect was arguably one of the most innovative, spectacular stage and lighting designs in rock tour history. Andi Watson, longtime visuals designer for the band, has engineered a transition to an exclusively LED lighting system.
Luminous rods dangled from the stage’s superstructure as if held by a chandelier, and they came alive with the first crackling beats of opener “15 Step,” from In Rainbows, flashing purple and green down their lengths. On went the video screens, rectangular banks of six to the right and left of the stage, and a long panel behind the band. They cycled between live images of each musician. Then two extra large drums sounded out the introduction to Hail to the Thief single “There There,” and Johnny Greenwood’s savage wailing somehow turned “Morning Bell” sinister; from then on the band never lost its intensity for a moment. Other set list highlights were “Weird Fishes (Arpeggi)” (the LEDs lit up like candles), duelling acoustic guitars on “Reckoner,” Yorke’s dancing on “Idiotheque,” the first encore closer “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and “Just” from 1995′s The Bends.
Saturday
The busiest day for ticket sales, Saturday’s main non-Radiohead attraction was The Roots. Vocalist/MC Black Thought was alternately playful and angry with his delivery, but always commanding. Questlove’s jazzy drumming was outstanding, but the sousaphone of Tuba Gooding Jr. was the visual, if not the auditory, scene-stealer.
A definite surprise was that Radiohead chose to play virtually the same songs on consecutive nights, mixing up the set list only as much as they have from city to city on their current tour. Notable Saturday differences: rotating in “Where I End and You Begin,” “Fake Plastic Trees,” “National Anthem,” and two cover songs.
Sunday
Cat Power didn’t do much to shed her reputation for awkward performances, though she was a lot more engaged with her audience than in years past. She focused on her current stylistic interest, ie bluesy numbers that rely on a backing band much more than her early material.
After Radiohead, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals may have been the highlight of the weekend. Harper’s enthusiasm and sheer joy of performance is sublime, not to mention his prowess on the lap slide guitar. His direct, ‘music with a message’ approach also stuck out among many of the experimental, introspective, or precious indie beloveds.
Most large summer festivals seem to schedule a chilled-out closing performance rather than going out with a bang, and Jack Johnson was an obvious choice for the role. He strummed and soothed his way through his newer material, backed by an artful arrangement of video screens offering abstract blends of the guitarist and his small band playing, as well as peaceful nature images.
Miscellany
The festival organizers did more than pay lip service to the arts side of the equation. Christopher Janney’s Sonic Forest installation—also featured at Glastonbury last year—involved sixteen eight-foot sensory columns (would-be trees) that would light up or play different sounds as they detected motion. Some curious hipsters cautiously tiptoed through the forest while others could be seen to dance—or at least flail—creating their own textured tunes. The Do LaB, a colourful, Shire-esque mini-village by the Los Angeles art collective of the same name, was predominantly home to DJs that kept the party going at all times. Mega Mites, Jason Hackenwerth’s massive yet intricate balloon sculptures were regularly paraded around the grounds as costumes before being devoured at hands of stage-front crowds. The most striking piece was Bamboo DNA, Gerald Minakawa’s woven bamboo tower, easily the festival’s most iconic image set eighty-feet high against the backdrop of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.
APW ran a ferry from Manhattan’s Pier 11 to the park, by far the most practical (direct and least stressful) commute from anywhere in the New York area. Compared to the $12 return price tag for the regular weekday NY Waterway ferry, however, the daily $30 (for two ten-minute rides) amounted to a soaking. Driving was a much cheaper alternative, no help to the stated “green” goals of the organizers. While derogatory murmurs or angry rants were heard about the restrictive alcohol sales policy, a five-per-person beer limit seemed to keep crowds more calm and relaxed than one could expect for such an event. The allotted forty-five or sixty-minute set times for all but the closing acts often felt too short. Attendance figures have not yet been released, but it seems fair to say that the organizers would be somewhat disappointed.
With a bit of tweaking for a presumed return in 2009, look for All Points West to earn a reputation as ‘Coachella East.’
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