Review: The InMusic Festival

photos by Lisa Liang

In just its first year, the 2009 InMusic Festival was an ambitious attempt – 60-plus artists over a three-day span planned by a handful of people in less than three months. There were some ups, there were plenty of downs, and making it from beginning to end was a feat few pulled off. Still, if it were that easy, then it wouldn’t be rock & roll.

Here are a few highlights:

Day 1
When SUBS hit the Main Stage early evening, lead singer Kang Mao decided to rile up the audience and surf the crowd. The audience was happy to accommodate. Unfortunately, the confused security guards didn’t understand what was going on and were instead trying to “protect” her from the grabby hands of front-row fans, at which point she pushed the baoan off, gave a finger and warned them not to get in her way. She then proceeded to climb the railing and jump into the crowd.

Day 2
Wandering through the campgrounds and happening upon a bunch of rowdy boys playing football. It took a minute to realize that these weren’t your average punks – these were rock stars (though it should have hit right away that that was Joyside lead-singer Bian Yuan in a crazily patterned ’70s-style shirt with long, wavy Jim Morrison hair blowing in the wind).

Day 3
The last day being lucky number “3,” it deserves three highlights. First, XTX – his set was one of the best of the festival, from him pushing a cameraman off his guitarist and saying, “yo dude, can’t you see he’s trying to jam?” (not in those words), to his bass man throwing his instrument off stage and into the crowd (the only one during the entire festival with balls enough to sacrifice an instrument), to the band members destroying the equipment in their grand finale, then getting yelled at by the stagehands, to which XTX gave a simple “f*ck off” (in those words).

The next highlight was overhearing a baoan go, “eh? 他从哪儿出来的?” when headliner Tricky left the stage mid-set with his band and vocalist singing “Karmacoma,” then moments later being seen gliding atop the hands of the crowd, cigarette in mouth and looking completely relaxed.

The last highlight happened minutes later, when Tricky jumped back on stage, but not before dragging 30 or so members of the audience up with him for a frenzied mosh session on stage.

All in all, nothing went disastrously bad, but quite a few things could be improved. As the organizers plan to host the festival annually for the next ten years, hopefully this initiation will bring a few valuable lessons.

A few pros and cons to be noted:

Pros

• Zhangbei was almost like an amusement park, but without people walking around in giant animal costumes (save one man in a polar bear suit from Greenpeace handing out stickers). There were plenty of activities for friends and families to enjoy apart from music: horseback riding, paintballing, a playground, hang gliding, football, volleyball, flower picking and kite flying.
• The festival grounds were close enough that people were willing to drive there and back to Beijing the same day. But it was also far enough that more people decided to camp. This is perhaps what makes a music festival true to form – when people are sleeping and waking to music, eating and dreaming to music, surrounded by music around the clock.

• Stages were close together so you could breeze from one to the other without feeling overwhelmed by walking a great distance to the next stage. You could also hear what was going on at the other stages, which meant if something intrigued you, you might just go see what was happening.

Cons

• As stated above, the stages were very close together – too close together, even. Whether at the Main Stage, Second Stage or Electronic Stage, you were always within earshot of another, often making it difficult to concentrate on the band in front of you. At times, it also seemed difficult for the bands themselves to concentrate.
• Given the number of bands and hours per day, this meant either really short sets or little time for sound checks. It seems the organizers opted for the latter, which meant a lot of time was spent on stage with bands doing the “one-two, mic check, hey hey, yo ho” business. This didn’t exactly help to keep an on looking and eagerly awaiting crowd hyped, and the process actually threw things off schedule significantly (two to three hours behind), especially on Day 2.
• Zhangbei was colder than expected – a LOT colder than expected, probably due to the strong winds blowing across the empty plains. This kind of outdoor festival would have been perfect for the height of summer, perhaps a month or so earlier.

• The grass-to-dirt ratio was less than ideal, likely due to the time of the season as well as the constant trampling of the feet.

• Transportation was messy, with long lines for buses looking intimidating and confusing. For travelers from Beijing, trains may be the better approach in the future, with buses arranged to and from the local station to the festival grounds.

When all is said and done, there’s nothing really broken here that can’t be fixed. A little experience and a lot more organization could make this music festival a highlight for many summers to come. The local lineup (though it could have used Carsick Cars, Hanggai and Long Shen Dao), was quite substantial, and getting Tricky and The Soundtrack of Our Lives together on one night to perform in the middle of rural China was also quite impressive. It will be exciting to see what InMusic does in the future.

Until next year …