Disappointed

Celebrate Brooklyn has yet to get me in the mood to celebrate anything. As a second attempt to appreciate the free performances that are Celebrate Brooklyn (after Savion Glover's intese yet uncaptivating performance last weekend) I journeyed out to the park for Celebrate Indie Rock night. It looked like a good lineup and was certain to impress even the most savvy critic of the modern music scene. As a sidenote, I took quite the detour on the way out to the park and found a great cemetary where the graves are just as crammed in as the people in Manhattan. I only snapped a picture from the subway, but I'll have to go back and explore more later.
So, when I finally arrived at Prospect Park, I was not alone. Megan, Jessica, Natalie and I were surrounded by every hipster in town (and an otherwise electic mix of father and son couples and women strangely sporting tin foil ponchos when it started to drizzle). We started out on the lawn, but a huge group of people standing behind the seated section kept us from seeing anything.
So we joined them on our feet. The crowd was full of hecklers and complainers. Voxtrot was very upbeat, but I couldn't really focus. There was so much going on around me the entire time, it was not my favorite concert experience. People were particularly impatient by the time Matt Pond PA hit the stage, which was my favorite performance of the night. I loved the cello. I think strings add so much to rock music. It's like falling in love.... You're just marching along to this great beat and beautiful strumming guitar or maybe a keyboard and suddenly - enter violins and cellos - everything just gets better. It started raining towards the end of the performance and several people started to leave. Megan and I got seats and anxiously awaited TV on the Radio. Everyone around us was so astonished. "Wow! They're so innovative." If the fact that they are black people playing alternative music is innovative, then yes. But as far as the music itself - nothing too cutting edge in my opinion. So we left early. And that's when we got to see our favorite performance of the night. A bassist, a saxist, and an onlooker pretending he was the drummer on the subway platform of Broadway and Nassau. I love New York.


-The Frames-