Corey On: Governors Ball Somehow Not Sucking Too Bad

Governors Ball is decadent but not all that depraved. I was hoping it would be more depraved, so then I could make an obvious Hunter S. Thompson reference here, but people were surprisingly mostly sober. 

I badly wanted to make fun of this festival because they denied me press credentials.  I wanted to call it “Governors Ballz.” But, alas, Governors Ball, you win this round, cuz you were pretty fun.

Governors Ball is decadent because it cost a load of money to attend: $115 for one day and this was a three-day thing, so I just went for the Saturday, when The Strokes were playing. They almost never perform anymore and I was too young to see them in their heyday. “Is This It?” was the first record I bought solely based on a good review, via the BMG Music Club “buy one CD, get 12 free deal.” I read the review in Rolling Stone, which I had a subscription to during the overhyped early 2000’s garage rock revival, with The White Stripes, The Vines, The Hives, and The Strokes leading the way. To me, this hype was all worth it because it gave us the music video for “Fell in Love with a Girl.”    

I was a freshman in high school during this hoopla and a friend might have called me a bad name after I expressed interest in the “Last Nite” video. This same song is now my go-to whenever I do karaoke, because I like hanging on the mic a la Julian Casablancas.

After I purchased my ridiculously expensive ticket, I realized that, aside from The Strokes, the rest of the bands playing on Saturday were pretty bad. At best, there was Spoon and Jack White, but the drop-off from there was catastrophic. Everyone else sounded like they were into synth pop and dub step or a combination of the two. At the front-end (The Strokes, Jack White, Spoon) we were stuck in 2001, and at the back-end we were stuck with my two least-favorite styles of music. I thought I was going to be stuck with a buncha kids strung out on Molly and Ritalin and jungle juice and bootleg Four Locos, all listening to boom-boom music, and things just weren’t looking so hot. 

Festivals are for people who don’t go to shows regularly but want to list that they’re interested in music on their Facebook or Tumblr or Instagram or OKCupid. Festivals are for people who think they’re being subversive when they use Pandora. Festivals are sold as destinations, a place where you can experience once-in-a-lifetime moments. Festivals are perfect for taking poor-sounding videos and selfies and immediately posting them on Instagram, cuz that’s more important than curing cancer these days. 

Overall, in reality, festivals are just prepackaged cool, consumerism at its finest. It doesn’t take too much thought to press “buy” on a website after plugging in a credit card number, at least compared with actually critically thinking about anything at all. Truly unique and interesting festivals are hard to come by. They’re always overly expensive. I usually avoid them because I can just go see most bands when they’re on tour and not have to go through all the trauma that is almost guaranteed at a festival.

On the positive side, Governors Ball offered a much better line-up than, say Boston Calling, the other big hipster/indie/trendfest situated in the Northeast this year.  That nonsense featured Jack Johnson, The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Brand New, and Death Cab for Cutie. It hurt my hands trying to type that list of bands into my computer. Hey, 2004 called, they want their shitty soft white fake-interesting music back. Jack Johnson is only played at frat initiation parties. Lastly; fuck you, Portlandia.

Also cool: Governors Ball was on Randall’s Island, which is situated off the top right-hand corner of Manhattan. If you wanted to be a lazy spoiled rich kid, you could pay twenty bucks and take a shuttle bus or ferry to the island. It was more worthwhile to pay $2.50 to take the 4 or 5 to 125^th, and then walk thirty minutes to the island, via the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. There’s something exhilarating about walking over a bridge to go to a festival and hearing carnival-esque sounds in the distance and seeing some of the stages and knowing you were going towards something potentially interesting or disastrous.

We started the festival with Chance the Rapper, from Chicago. I had attempted to listen to his tunes a few times and I had to shut that down before he could even get to the chorus. Fortunately, he was much better in this setting. Although I could barely see him over the massive crowd, we were at least under a tent. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have shelter from the sun at one of these all-day events. 

Chance had a band, with horns, and this stage had a great sound system. The music was loud and visceral. 

I saw the only person under thirty at Governors Ball at this performance. He was a white-haired elderly gentleman and was jotting notes down on a note pad. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. 

After Chance the Rapper we headed to Disclosure and that wasn’t under a tent. Before Disclosure, while I was in the water re-fill line, I zoned out listening to Fitz and the Tantrums. They played mild, unimaginative, mediocre, inoffensive pop music. 

Unfortunately, the line took forever, and I got separated from my friends at the start of Disclosure’s mind fuckery. I attempted hunting them down in the swamp of bodies and felt like I was stuck in a crushing undertow. I felt overwhelmed and the loud dub-step was agonizing so I retreated to the stage where Broken Bells were performing. I never thought I’d ever be comforted by such bland music.

Glitch Mob came up next and did some stupid dub-step thing that I secretly liked. I ate a couple hot dogs with peanut butter and pork belly toppings and some French fries and washed it down with decent iced coffee. I don’t want to think about how much this cost me. My friend bought us a round of four large cans of Fosters and they cost more than $50. Did I mention this shit was decadent?

The Strokes were on next and were better than I was expecting. Sure, there were a few moments of feedback in the vocals, and Julian had a Jim Morrison paunch going on, and he was wearing this bizarre and terrible blue Hawaiian shirt. But the dudes looked like they were actually having fun up there! Julian wasn’t attempting to be too cool for school. He kept looking at the crowd with a mildly shocked expression and he kept chuckling and making funny comments. Maybe he did this because there were so many goddamn people at The Strokes. It had to easily have been the biggest turnout of the day for any act, maybe of the whole festival. Childish Gambino, who was scheduled at the same time on another stage, could not have taken too much of the crowd away. It was an endless ocean of people everywhere you looked. I think it was the biggest mass of people I’ve ever been in for a live concert.

Luckily, for such a big crowd, the sound at this stage was also excellent. Both Julian and the guitars sounded perfect, and I got the sensation that they were playing right in front of me. I wasn’t familiar with many of their songs after “Room on Fire” and I was pleasantly surprised how good much they rocked. They started with “Barely Legal.” I had been curious about how they’d approach their set list and I appreciated what they did: they played a classic, then a new one, then a classic, and so on, for pretty much the whole show. I never got bored.

After an hour, they ended with “Last Nite,” and we started shuffling our way towards the other side of the festival, where Spoon were playing. No encore, poor us. Then, suddenly, The Strokes were back onstage, and the crowd was stampeding towards them. Our New York heroes broke into “NYC Cops,” and my friends and I started a circle pit.

Before you start imagining my four-person crew as a buncha of hardcore bros, let me just clarify: nope. The real problem was that the crowd was pretty wimpy. There were not many people freaking out or dancing during The Strokes at all. It was astonishing that a circle pit broke out due to our enthusiastic, excessive dancing. Don’t get me wrong, we were freaking out, but the people around us were way more sensitive to their personal space than necessary. 

We were properly satiated at that point, and the rest of the festival felt pretty anti-climatic. There was no way to top that. We headed to Spoon, but the sound at that stage was some weak bullshit and you couldn’t hear Britt Daniels’ wonderful voice at all. Still, I was briefly separated from my friends cuz they played a song that I love and I started drifting towards the stage like some magnetic pull had come over me. I love Spoon, it makes no sense cuz all their songs all sound the same, but whatever, Britt Daniels voice is flawless, and they write great songs. Why am I defending myself? 

After hearing half of Spoon’s set, we stumbled back to the stage where The Strokes had played. Jack White was going on next and we hung out way in the back on a nice piece of grass. JW wasn’t very interesting. “Dead Leaves” was cool, and “Hotel Yorba” sounded good, but his new solo stuff is pretty much garbage, and that’s what he mostly played. Sorry Jack, you aren’t Led Zeppelin. All I could think during the non-White Stripes songs was: “70s bloated rock guitar God excess.” I kept repeating this to myself like a Buddhist prayer. I just wished he had gotten rid of the violin player and every other instrument except the drums, and substituted the drummer for Meg White, and only played White Stripes songs.

On the way out, we caught twenty minutes of Skrillex. I was content observing this scene at a far distance as we departed.  We walked back over the bridge, the boom-boom music fading in the distance, and headed back into Harlem. 

@whatgoesonline

I Didn't Write How NFL Teams Are Like Game of Thrones Houses

By: Ben Johnson

Fake Bears sweater design by Dave Gilley

Dear God what a terrifying 15 minutes that was.

Some internet friends of mine designed a Chicago Bears sweater to say “Winter is Coming,” you know, for yuks, and then somebody else was like “you should do one where the Steelers are the Lannisters” and I was like “no way, the 49ers are the Lannisters,” and then I ALMOST SPENT 4 HOURS WRITING A THING WHERE THE NFL TEAMS ARE LIKE GAME OF THRONES HOUSES.

My brain said “Hey, maybe here’s a thing. I like the NFL and I like Game of Thrones. Man, what if I, like, made those two things into one thing? Would that be fun?” I said, “Sure, brain, whaddya got?” And my brain said, “well the Seahawks are like the Greyjoys, swarming and nautical, capable of…” and I told my brain to go to hell because I do not have time for this. I mean I clearly have time for this, but I would prefer not to have time for this. I would prefer to teach myself Portuguese, or learn about American steel-string guitarist John Fahey, or Google “lamprey disease” and IMMEDIATELY REGRET IT. The internet also has those things, and they are exactly as good and as necessary to me as making the Game of Thrones references about the NFL, but they are maybe less obviously nothing. Game of Thrones NFL team houses are exactly, glaringly nothing.

That was a real close call.

I just checked to see if anybody made the NFL teams into Game of Thrones Houses. They did not yet. That means somebody is going to do that soon. Somebody is probably working on that now. Possibly many somebodies. I hope I can get this thing, about how I almost wrote out the NFL teams as Game of Thrones houses but then decided not to because that would be stupid, done before anybody finishes writing their version of that eventual thing. Maybe I could publish this and then all the people working on a “which NFL teams are like which Game of Thrones houses” thing can, instead of making that thing, instead go “oh shit, I have to scrap this right now, somebody pre-made-fun-of-me for it.”

Like for instance the Ravens are totally the Order of the Night’s Watch, and that is not even up for debate except if you wanted to say that the Raiders are that, in which case you could also make that argument. The Raiders and Ravens both wear black and could maybe be shoehorned into an extended analogy about the order of the Night’s Watch, a fake organization of people from some books and TV shows set in a fantasy world. Man, if I talked about the Raiders and Ravens and Night’s Watch from game of Thrones for a while, and made some jokes about that, I bet people would read that for three or four paragraphs. I would write it and then people would read it. That would be great.

Except no, that would not be great. That would be a giant waste of everybody’s time. Everything is a waste of everybody’s time, and we’re all going to die, and we’re not going to accomplish anything first, and the whole of human existence is a giant pointless swindle. I hate it. At least that’s how I feel when my brain is trying to tell me that the Broncos are like the Tyrells. “They are very pretty and rich, they have a tendency to influence events without claiming supremacy, and they’re always lurking,” says my brain. “Shut up,” says me, to my brain, “your life is ending, slowly, as you speak. Also the Vikings are like the wildlings.”

“Yes,” says my brain, “and the Saints are the Martells.”

“Oh good one, but also: shut up,” I say. “Shut up shut up shut up and leave me alone please. The Bills are House Mormont of Bear Island.”

“No. NO NO NO NO NO. Please.”

PLEASE NOT THIS.

@itisbenjo

Reminder That Louis CK Exists

By: Ben Johnson

Isn’t it great that this guy is here, being here? He exists. He says things that are funny AND true. He’s Louis CK. He’s great. We all like him a lot. Remember that time he was talking about his daughters and he said that true thing that was also funny? That was great. He is great. LOUIS CK!

Louis CK is a comedian. If you like comedy, you would think he’s great. He has a show on TV too. If you love to laugh, you may or may not think his show is great, depending on factors beyond Louis CK’s control. Louis CK doesn’t waste a lot of his time worrying about factors that are beyond his control, such as “how come I don’t think Louis CK is funny?” He doesn’t have time for that. He’s too busy being Louis CK. This is one of the things that makes Louis CK great. He doesn’t care if you think he’s funny, and sometimes he is very funny, and other times you get to wait around for Louis CK to be funny, and it’s still great either way, because he’s so funny and truthful.

He says things like “big fat fuckin’ head” that are fun things to say and hear. He’s good about using words. He talks about his life. He talks about things he’s noticed. He has interesting thoughts about common things like rental cars and cell phones and dating. He has an interesting brain. He does weird things in his life because of his interesting brain. One time he talked to Jerry Seinfeld on a boat that he owns. Louis CK owns a boat. He doesn’t really do a lot of boat-owning jokes because he knows that most of the people who like to listen to the things he says don’t own boats. Louis CK is smart. When you hear him talk, you get to say “ha ha ha oh man that is hilarious and also SMART.”

Louis CK!

Sometimes, actually every single time, when Louis CK does anything at all, you get to see all about it on the internet. People like Louis CK, a lot, and people will therefore go online and look at a thing Louis CK did. This isn’t about anything Louis CK did, it’s just about how Louis CK exists, and that’s pretty good too!

Some facts about Louis CK:

1. He has hair and eyes.

2. Walking man. Sometimes he is a walking man.

3. I bet he has teeth too. So hair, eyes, and teeth.

Please share your favorite fact about the continued existence of Louis CK in the comments section.

@itisbenjo

Quality of Life

By: Kelly McClure

"I haven't left the apartment in five days," Erin says to her roommate through the receiver of the cell phone dangling off her chin. "I'm trying to find that video store we went to that one time. The one where we bought all those old Joan Crawford VHS tapes for a dollar. Do you remember where it was?"

"Wait, I don't understand," Steph (the roommate) replies. "So when I leave for work, you're just, like, there? What do you do all day? And who goes to video stores any more? I think it's on Franklin."

"I work, Steph. I work from home. It's a thing. A normal thing. I have a very enriched life."

As she said this, she noticed that her legs were wobbly from not having been used enough the past week. She tried to correct her stride while crossing the street. She felt crazy. She wondered if she looked crazy. Sometimes she got so out of sorts the minute she left the house that she could feel herself going blind. Going blind in this way where she could see so much, every person, every trash can, every clump of dried up dog poop on the sidewalk, that it became over stimulating and her eyes started to just close in on themselves like tiny brown umbrellas. She thought about how her Dad always tells her to get out more, see the world, and how it will never be altogether possible for her to fully explain to him, or anyone, that there are things in "the world" that she just doesn't want to see, and that can't be filtered out. "Like that lady over there scratching her vagina through sweatpants in front of the Dunkin Donuts," she thinks to herself.

"Your world view is exhausting," Steph says.

"I know. My backbone weighs one million pounds and it's crushing me." Erin followed this up with a laugh that was a bit too practiced and loud because she knew that Steph had no idea what she was talking about, and didn't care anyway. Her favorite TV show was Felicity, like actual reruns of Felicity on Hulu. Her opinion obviously didn't matter.

"Alright then. I'm at the video store. I'll talk to you later. Wait. Do you want anything from here?" Erin asked.

"Yeah. Please get me a box of Red Vines and Point Break The Musical. I think it's in the new releases section. NO I don't want anything from the video store! Freak!" Steph said, and then disconnected the call. She wasn't very nice. Point Break The Musical would be awesome, Erin thought and she walked into the store.

Immediately inside Erin began to sweat. Upon starting to sweat, she started up her usual inner monologue that took place whenever she was on the brink of a mental breakdown situation in public that went something like: "Why are you such a retarded idiot? Why do you always have to act like an actual crazy person? It's just a store. It's just the outside world. You're going to die and people will refer to you as "that person who had breakdowns in stores all the time while also always sweating."' Sometimes this inner monologue made Erin laugh. Sometimes it made her laugh out loud. Which didn't really help her case much.

She started for the back of the store where the used VHS tapes were and passed by a row of windows. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a lady sitting in the passenger side of a red Jeep Cherokee, holding a lit cigarette out of the open window while she waited for her family, or so Erin presumed. This immediately made Erin think of her Mom, who wasn't around to wait for anybody in the passenger seat of Jeeps anymore, because she was dead. This fact didn't seem real, but what did seem real was how the musty carpet smell of the video store, mixed with the plastic smell of tape cases, and a pinch of wet air conditioner filter for good measure took her right back to a time when she and her parents would go to Blockbuster Video for the usual: two new releases, one she liked and one her Dad liked, and two packs of microwave popcorn and that would be a big night for them. A nice night. Now that her Mom was gone and her Dad lived in a different state, Erin thought about how this made her a ghost. An almost orphan ghost who will haunt video stores forever and then try to hop in Jeeps with strange families to go watch movies in strange homes. Ridiculous.

"Eat your beets, Harold." Erin said out loud quietly to herself. This of course being a reference to a line from Harold and Maude that would mean nothing to anyone else, but comforts Erin for some reason. She always says this to herself as a way of cleaning her mental slate after she's lingered on a depressing train of thought for too long. "Eat your beets, Harold."

"Are you over here talking to yourself, Erin McFadden?"

Erin turned around too fast to see who had just spoken and knocked over a little clump of mini chocolate bars that had been set up on a display table that she had subconsciously been hiding behind while browsing. She left the candy on the floor and focused her attention on the person in front of her, James, a guy that she knew from the internet but hadn't met in real life until just then. That's a thing that is a normal thing now. Which is neither depressing or exciting or anything else. It's just a thing.

"James from the internet!" Erin said to James from the internet. She wondered if she sounded like a normal person when she said this, or if she sounded like someone who doesn't talk out loud to people very often. "What are you doing here? And yeah, I was talking to myself. I'm a freelance writer who works from home. Talking to myself is part of my quality of life map."

James thumbed his name tag at Erin indicating that he worked at the shop. "I work here. Well, part time anyway. I'm saving up for a record player."

Something about that sentence made Erin want to immediately walk outside and lay down in the street.

"Oh! Well that's cool. It's probably nice to work in a place where you get to see other people. I pretty much spend every day alone with my cat, sitting on a chair staring at my computer. It must be nice to have a daily excuse to go outside. Maybe I should get a part-time job. Are you hiring?"

Halfway through what she had just said to James, which was a fairly short combination of sentences, as far as conversational sentences go, she noticed his eyes glass over. She had lost him and he was making the facial expression that Erin knew from experience meant that if she were to keep talking, he would interrupt her and start talking about something else, and then eventually walk away, so Erin just stopped talking. Being interrupted was Erin's biggest pet peeve. It happened to her often, because she was quiet and people who are loud assume that people who are quiet don't have anything to say. Or people who are loud are so loud that they don't hear well anymore and don't even notice when a quiet person is talking. Either way, it's annoying.

"Well anyway, how's your blo ..."

"I should get back up to the registers," James cut in with as she was about to ask about his fucking blog. "Want me to ring those up for you?"

Erin handed him her copies of Mildred Pierce (a steal at 99 cents) and Hotel New Hampshire and followed him to the front of the store. Once at the registers, James eyeballed her selections with a wrinkled brow.

"These any good?" James asked. "I've never even heard of them."

"They must be! I'm buying them!" Erin replied. She was over it. She just wanted to get on the bus home. She left the house today and now she can celebrate with movies and beer, her favorite antisocial pastime.

James handed her her change and did this sarcastic nod thing that people do when they do not at all relate to anything you've said, or will ever say in your life.

"Keep passing the open windows!" Erin said as she walked out the door. Her favorite line from Hotel New Hampshire. As she rounded the corner she snuck a peek at James, who was still looking at her. He was making a face like he had just smelled a really bad fart.

"Retard," Erin muttered under her breath as she situated herself in line for the bus.

As she waited it started to rain a little bit. Erin always liked the way the city smelled when it rained. It was a certain mixture of garbage and childhood purity that she couldn't quite describe. Warm, damp concrete is a childhood smell. Or maybe it's just a specific smell that can be attached to anything. She was staring at the ground while thinking about this, watching the rain drops collect and change the color of the sidewalk under feet, when the lady behind her elbowed her with her sticky, bloated elbow - indicating the line to get on the bus was moving. Erin bit the inside of her lip as her whole body grew hot with anger at the moment of being interrupted, even if just interrupted in her head. Her mouth filled with the taste of blood and she turned back to the woman who had poked her and spat the blood onto the lenses of her glasses. The blood stuck there in the humidity on her lenses.

"Fuck you."

Erin got on the bus home.

@WolfieVibes

Everything You Really Need To Know About The San Antonio Spurs

By: Ben Johnson

The San Antonio Spurs are basketball guys.

@itisbenjo