I love music events. I love attending them, I love hosting them, I love hearing other peep’s experiences of them. That’s a huge reason why I write about music for a living. I’ve attended concerts since I was 5 or 6, I’ve been a crew member for various production companies, warehouse events and soundsystems for 14 years, and I’ve experienced countless types of music environments. Therefore, I can say from experience that the Treasure Island Music Festival was unique.

The organizers brought the familiar elements of any big music festival and presented it like a block party: the overall event was an amalgamation of a big music festival and a traveling carnival; mainstream performers and rising local artists; commercial and homegrown. 2 stages, 1 ferris wheel, and a yard full of white tents containing food vendors, an arcade, merchants with jewels, and clothes, and various companies peddling promotional schwag. The grass was soft and plentiful (not that you could see a speck of it in front of the main stage when M.I.A. or DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist were playing!) Everyone was clearly ecstatic to have a big festival on the Bay. Finally, a chance to dance in the sun, weave flowers in their hair, and see one-after-another fabulous performance on a proper boomin outdoor soundsystem, with wide open sky and panoramic views of the city and the bay. All the artists were fantastic and energetic. It was clear that the musicians were having a blast, it was reflected in every performance. I have to admit ~ as jaded as I can be ~ I was thrilled to finally see M.I.A. live and up close, Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow with an 8 turntable 45rpm mashup, Kid Beyond beatboxing breakcore pon di mic, and so many other stellar acts!

Did I mention that the weather was gorgeous? The cool breezes coming directly off the water kept the temperature perfect while the sun poured over the island. After the sun went down, a sliver of moon emerged like a Cheshire grin over the skyline, disappearing and reappearing over the city all night.

See the horizontal line in the center of the photo? At the far end… That’s the main stage, same as the one in the photo above!^

Kid Beyond

Kid Beyond blew me away! The Kid is not only a vocal drum machine with multiple patterns, he can do tape echo and feedback too! He’s also very expressive with his body movements as he spits, which helps the sounds take shape. His movements mime the sound which starts to trick your brain into believing that he has some object that he is bouncing around that makes the noise. It creates a third dimension or something like that. The sounds take shape visibly. The only other person that I have seen pull this off as well as Kid Beyond was an Oakland MC that performed at the Otherworld on New Year’s eve a few years ago. That fella used his hands to make it look like he had a basketball. He acted like he was bouncing that basketball off the ground near the wall. As he is beatboxing a hip hop beat, it really seemed as if there were really a ball and we were hearing it bounce off the ground and hit the wall, then return to his hand with another thump. See what I mean about using body language and beatboxing together to create an illusion? That’s what Kid Beyond does, only his beats are crazy complex, rapid-fire, and interspersed with non-drum sounds!
Case in point:

Kid Beyond – live at Treasure Island Music Festival:

I wish I had more video, but after this part, the bass got bumpin, too bumpin for a likkle digital camera to process!

M.I.A. Brings Booty To Treasure Island

And Proves She Is A Worthy Pirate Queen!

M.I.A. came on stage in full pirate character, complete with parrots, a feathered pirate cap, and mast climbing skills. She wore her usual uniform of bright colors, this time as metallic gold leggings and a bright blue T, topped with a colorful bikini made up of two parrot heads. Two parrot heads?!

The parrots were the first to walk the plank and go flying into the crowd; revealing giant gold letters on her giant blue T shirt that spelled MIA. The woman who accompanied Maya on backing vocals was gorgeous, but somehow didn’t distract from the star of the show. The woman looked stunning and royal in gold leggings that matched M.I.A.’s, topped with metallic gold hip-hugging shorts, and a black tank top that showed off her lean, muscular arms. Every time I saw her face, she had the fierce and focused look of a predator. She was a perfect complement to M.I.A. both visually and vocally. Maya was in fantastic spirits! She was full of energy and her voice was strong. She whipped the crowd into a frenzy until they were cheering her every move, dancing, singing along, throwing gun fingers in the air, -the works-. The pirate queen had the audience in the palm of her mic grip when she hollered “San Francisco! Need To Make A Sound…” Sometimes she paced the stage, sometimes she skipped, sometimes she put one foot up on the monitor and leaned in, a la Buju Banton. About half way through her set, she called out for the freakiest girls to get on stage with her, said she was looking for real crazy girls. Naturally, a wave of women started pressing towards the stage and while M.I.A. was hand picking ladies from stage left, a gaggle of girls flooded stage right. There was one lady that M.I.A. had chosen – a sweet lady with a big fro, cargo shorts and a wallet chain – who was breakin and dancing up a storm, and a guy (the only guy on stage besides the dj) who could have passed for M.I.A.’s long lost brother! With his gold sequin baseball cap and freaky 80′s jumpsuit with neon accents and bustin a move, he kinda reminded me of the flashy dances exotic male birds do: flashing his metallic crown and flicking his brightly coloured tail feathers while jumpin around!

M.I.A. jumped into a banging performance of “Boyz”. It was nearing the end of her set and she was really bringin it. The bass was thumpin across the stage from tower subwoofers on either side. By the end of the song, the sub on stage left was rattling like a piece of paper caught in a fan. “Boyz” had blown the bass speaker! Unfortunately, it meant that her grand finale of “Paper Planes” was spitting and rattling outta that speaker. But, maybe it just added to the gunshot effect and the sense of destruction and mayhem… M.I.A. didn’t seem to care, and she was the one closest to it as she dangled 10 feet above it. I caught video of it, and the bass doesn’t really register in the audio; for better or worse:

Part 1 of “Paper Planes”:

Part 2 of “Paper Planes”:

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist – 8 Spinning Plates, 4 hands, 2 Pedals, 1 Repeater

Sounds Like A Formula For Mayhem!

By this point the crowd had gotten thick. I kept my position close to the stage after M.I.A.’s fantastic set, because I wanted a good view of what DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist were doing. I was told they would be performing on 8 turntables with 2 guitar pedals, using exclusively 7″ 45rpm records as sound sources! Be still my vinyl lusting heart! Well, that’s exactly what they did, only with the addition of a repeater/looping device. It’s what they call the “Hard Sell” show. As you can see from the video of M.I.A., it was pretty windy on stage. The set up for Shadow and Cut Chemist was expertly sorted and included panels of plexiglas to block the wind. With 8 spinning plates, they can’t afford to have the wind disrupting a needle on the record! This feature made photographing a bit awkward, but the audience was able to keep track of what the djs were doing via trainspotter cams that were projected on the big screen now and again – allegedly to bear witness to the fact that they were -indeed- spinning only 7″ 45′s. The video screen also showed animations and vinyl technology PSAs for the amusement of the ipod-rocking crowd. My favorite part was about vinyl pressings being “finite”, therefore limiting the number of copies that can be possessed at any given time, thus making the collecting and sharing of such things special.

They mixed a crate full of groovin hits, wandering in and out of every genre; displaying each song in a new context, from “Eye of the Tiger” to various Nightmares on Wax selections, De La Soul, Q-Tip, and everything in between. I was so busy dancing to their surreal set, that I didn’t immediately notice when they stepped out of the “dj booth” and stood at the front of the stage, wired up and ready for action. They each had a turntable and a mixer slung vertically like an electric guitar, and they rocked that shizzle with some speed metal 45s. With screeching guitars and blastbeat kick drums flying off the records, the 2 djs scratched as furiously as a 2 hair metal guitarists would riff. What a way to wrap up a show! Everyone was laughing by this point – at the hair metal with no hair and the 2 friends who were obviously having a blast on stage.
Throughout the show there were people throwing merch into the crowd: CDs, posters, schwag. When the duo finished their set, both fellas had huge grins on their faces, and they stepped up to greet the audience while throwing more merch at them.

Gotan Project

A Tango In Paradise

Gotan Project came on when the sun was behind the city’s skyline and the stage was brightly lit with coloured concert lighting. Their music was was a complete change from everything else on the main stage that day. It was evident from the moment a shiny black piano appeared on stage that this was not going to be an electronica act.

The 8-piece band kicked off their set with a french cafe-style tune that featured a strong accordion melody with a distinct tango beat. If you know the movie “The Triplets of Belleville” (or almost any Hennessey commercial) you know this style of music. Most of the songs that Gotan Project played blended the compatible flavours of 1920-1940′s era french cafe music, merry-go-round music (another style where the accordion is dominant), a touch of flamenco influence, and of course, the fierce tango beat that they are famous for. The results were like a vodka martini that stirs an urge to dance. A few of the first songs featured a hip hop mc which seemed totally incongruous. He was talented enough, but the music seemed to beg for smooth and sultry vocals. As it turns out, they had that too. They had a lovely female singer, who’s voice was gentle, yet rang out in the clear night. Her singing had the sultryness of Jessica Rabbit, tempered by the sweetness and softness of Jennifer Connely’s lounge act in the movie Dark City. You get the idea – smooth, languid, luxurious. As they progressed deeper into their setlist, the beats became more dominant and the melodies sounded more synthesized or electronically manipulated. One song started right off with a pounding 4/4/ techno beat while another incorporated a house music kick-and-snare combo and at one point I thought maybe they had ended and switched on a CD because it sounded so rave-y, but that didn’t last long and they went back to the oompa of merry-go-round sounds. My favorite pieces of their set were somewhere in between – a sludgy, laid-back tempo: a very slow 4/4 techno beat; a pounding kick drum setting the tone, and not too acoustic/classical, but not dabbling to much in electronica. These few songs (near the end of the middle of the night) completely reminded me of a slow, lazy summer in Louisiana. Gotan Project rounded out the night with more traditional sounds of flute, guitar, violin and piano contributing to the melody. They plucked notes from those instruments that sounded like stars had willingly been plucked out of the sky and were sparkling out of the speakers, looped via the eyes of everyone enjoying the music.

Treasure Island Music Festival Proves To Be A Good Citizen

Earns Street Cred For Biodiesel and Recycling Efforts

It’s exciting to know that the entire event was run on generators powered by B20 Biodiesel, that the promoters were local indie heroes of Noise Pop fame, and the food vendors featured a lot of vegetarian (even vegan) fare. The entire property was wide open from entrance to stage and you were free to wander at your leisure in any direction without being herded from one area to the next. Sponsors of the event didn’t plaster their logos all over the grounds either. They didn’t have to; the three major sponsors were providing refreshment and transportation: the over-21 bracelet said Heineken, Vitamin Water provided free samples (yay!) and the fleet of bio-powered limo buses proudly displayed the name of the limo company providing them. Numerous recycling programs were in action including rewards for cell phones ~dead or alive~ yAR!

Treasure Island Music Festival A Smashing Success!

Let’s Do It Again Every Year!

I hope this event is a smashing success for the Noise Pop promoters and Another Planet because it sure would be nice to see more events like this happening in the Bay Area. Sure, it had plenty of flaws too, but mostly the kind that happen anywhere you get a large number of strangers together in an area with an excess of sun and alcohol. All the more reason to have more events like these: we can at least diminish the strangers aspect. Also, it was a great opportunity to showcase local talent side-by-side with international acts; there certainly isn’t a shortage of local talent in the Bay Area! I think what could make this particular event one level cooler, would be getting sponsorship from a green energy resource and upping the environmental awareness, like Citysol in NYC . The festival organizers put in a valiant effort for being the first event of its kind. They balanced a lot of factors and chose good people to see it through. They also took extra steps in certain areas that counted for a lot. Nice work to everybody involved in any way, and THANKS!

All words, photos and video by Molli Fire.

Pages about beatboxing ~ biodiesel ~ Cut Chemist ~ dancehall ~ DJ Shadow ~ Gotan Project ~ Kid Beyond ~ MIA ~ Paper Planes ~ San Francisco ~ tango ~ Treasure Island