Harmony By the Bay: Old & NewShoreline Amphitheater
Mountain View, CA
September 29, 2012
Harmony By the Bay Music Festival
HBTB is a kind of neo-hippie, organic music festival with
bottled water, kegs of beer in wheelbarrows and sustainable-living
eco-tents including an open air market selling rasta knit caps, tie-dye everything, leather minis, hemp shoulder-bags and hand-crafted jewelry all with an
environmentally-friendly bent. Oh, and there was a Yoga tent. If by 'harmony,' the organizers meant
a hodge-podge of Northern California clichés grouped together then yes, that
was this music festival. All oddly
enough, with a mostly Indie music orientation.
Mostly, but not entirely.
The Shins: Could Have Been Better
OK, you might say that it is unfair to say that The Shins
could have been better when we missed the first few songs while lingering at
another stage and also because we left when the band announced their last song. OK, maybe, they played all my favorite songs
before we came or after we left during the encore and it would be fairer to say
that the middle could have been
better but then someone might think I was talking about my waistline. In any case, if a band neglects the middle
of the show and backloads all their hits, then the show could have been better.
For all their Indie rock cred, the boys from
Alberqueque/Portland sounded very British-lite.
Very Beatles, Oasis, very derivative and a little boring. Singer James Mercer has a limited range though,
granted, he makes the most out of it. But, frankly, he did better with BrokenBells, a side project with producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse. The
band has a nice sound but seems to do better when playing acoustically which
they did not do last night. I think that the performance may have suffered from being in a large venue. The Shins may have aspirations to fill 20,000 seat
amphitheaters but the band and the music seemed smaller, more remote and lost
in the open air.
Beats Antique: Old & New
Best representing the harmonic convergence of disparate
styles that characterized HBTB was Beats Antique. Beats Antique is a local fave that combines
elements of electronic/dance, middle eastern, African etc. music. Pretty much a little bit of everything. They sound a bit like a stripped down version
of Thievery Corporation though not quite as much fun. They certainly stood as the most unique of
all the performers at the festival despite their reliance on prerecorded vocals
and other tracks which was a disappointment.
The band was accompanied by a bevy of belly-dancers which left some
wondering- why can’t all bands have belly-dancers on stage? I think I get what Beats Antique is trying to
do and appreciate the efforts to modernize some old folk and traditional
rhythms and bring those to a younger audience but I don’t think they have
realized the true potential of this territory. A for effort, B- for execution.
Jimmy Cliff: Seasoned
Every festival should have a reggae band. The music is universal and uplifting and
on a warm sunny day in California, nothing could be better than an afternoon of
reggae. And it would be hard to do
better than reggae legend Jimmy Cliff.
JC is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he proved why. He was the consummate professional and
entertainer. While many of the festival acts
seemed self-involved in their own fame and pretentious artistic doodling, JC
was simply having a good time and it was infectious. He played all his hits, The Harder They Come,
Many Rivers to Cross, Wild World, I Can See Clearly Now, and more. Despite being 64 years old, Cliff was the most
energetic performer of the day with high kicks and twirls and exultations to
the crowd. It was a lesson in
showmanship and performance for the younger bands.
Allison Kraus: What
is she doing here?
Amongst the indie, reggae, electronica, DJ-sets, and the eco-hippie
open air markets, Allison Kraus played an old set of excellent bluegrass
Americana. It definitely seemed out of
place but her wry sense of humor and the consummate professionalism of the band
was undeniable. And I loved “Man of
Constant Sorrow” to close her set.
Tegan and Sara: Tegan
and Sara
My overwhelming impression of Tegan and Sara is that Tegan
and Sara only care about Tegan and Sara.
Tegan and Sara’s performance was all about Tegan and Sara. They really need to get out of the rockstar
bubble. I’ve complained before about
stars that keep their bands in the dark behind them which is pretty much what
Tegan and Sara did in their own way.
Behind Tegan and Sara on the stage were a couple platforms, fronted by waist-high
bars of lights, where the rest of the band remained camped while Tegan and Sara
were in front singing on their own. The
songs seemed overly self-indulgent and overly self-aware. It is a pity because I like their music, to a
degree, but their performance pushed me away from them.
Kimbra: OK Pop
There were other artists before Kimbra but she was the first
we saw when we arrived. Kimbra is now
best known for her mega-viral hit with Gotye, Someone that I Used to Know,
which was destined to be the hit song of the summer until Call Me Maybe came
along. Both songs have inspired perhaps
hundreds of video parodies. But Kimbra
is a decent enough pop songstress and is likely to have a good career. Time will tell. Mainly, her performance suffered from
excessive volume that quite literally shook my entire body until I had to
leave.