Review By: Troy Manley
North Coast Music Festival went down over labor day weekend,
August 30th through September 1st, and took over Union
Park in Chicago, Illinois. The festival, dubbed “summer’s last stand,” started
in 2010 and was enjoying its fourth year in the Windy City. NCMF is put on by
North Coast Music Group which is a collaboration of six independent promoters
in Chicago. The lineup for this year’s NCMF was massive; Passion Pit, Wu-Tang
performed 36 Chambers, Big Gigantic, Nas, The Disco Biscuits, Lotus, Gramatik,
Emancipator, and many, many more. Although I had seen many of these bands of
prior festivals this summer, I was more than thrilled to experience NCMF for
the first time.
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| The Werks |
I was
living in the northern suburbs at the time and happened to know someone that
had a house in northern Chicago right near a Red Line stop on their subway
system, known as the “L”. I highly recommend taking public transportation to
and from the festival, it ends at 10 so you can take a train or a bus right
outside the festival – the Green Line’s “Ashland” stop is right outside the
main gates of the festival. After many complications in getting to the city, we
finally arrived at the house and were ready to be off to the festival. We
hopped on the Red Line and transferred to the Green Line and got off at Ashland
at about 6 PM. I walk over to the media tent only to find no one there.
Confused I found a security guard and he told me they kicked everyone out
because of a bad storm coming and they were going to re-open at 7. Well, after
a tropical monsoon came through and flooded the streets and soaked anyone that
could not get to cover, the festival was re-opened at 8 PM, not 7. Due to the
emergency evacuation everything was pushed back an hour and the festival ended
at 11 PM on Friday night rather than the scheduled 10 – score.
Union Park is not as big as I had
anticipated and they somehow managed to fit 4 good stages, and a 5th
tent stage into the park. The size makes it easy to hop from stage to stage in
minutes so you can catch multiple acts in the same time slot without an issue.
Friday’s lineup was awesome. I checked out: RL Grime, that was an experience;
AlunaGeorge, definitely check this duo out; Paper Diamond, you will not be
disappointed; The Werks, a jam band out of Ohio; headliner, The Disco Biscuits,
combined an amazing light show with tremendous talent on stage to give the
audience a show they will not soon forget – definitely check them out; and
Passion Pit, they get their own sentence…. Apparently their equipment had been
destroyed in the giant storm and they felt it acceptable to have someone come
on stage and DJ for their hour time slot. What the hell? They played some
decent stuff, but then the trap came out. I don’t think any of those people
went to Passion Pit to see them play trap and a bunch of other people’s music.
Passion Pit's Attempted Set
Saturday and Sunday were both
spectacular days. Big Gigantic, El Ten Eleven, Gramatik, and Seven Lions stick
out to me from Saturday’s lineup. Sunday was another awesome day with
Emancipator, Rebelution, Gary Clark Jr, Cherub, and Lotus bringing it home for
me.
However, unfortunately on Sunday night another bad storm was en route to
Union Park and the festival production team was relegated to ending the
festival half an hour early right in the middle of Wu-Tang and Lotus’ sets.
Despite this setback it was an awesome experience overall.
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| Big Gigantic |
With a plethora of food and merchandise
vendors, as well as live artists to check out, there is a never a dull moment and you should definitely
take a minute to walk around and check them out.
Good music and good vibes from
people made the rest of the weekend something that I will surely never forget. The
ease of getting to the festival and moving from stage to stage make this
festival one for the music lover that wants to see as much different music as
possible. My only complaint is the overall lack of drinking stations throughout
the festival. With only 1 listed on the map in their official program, the
whole crowd gravitated to this one station create some terrible congestion.
Throughout the weekend I found a hidden water station between the Coast Stage
and The Dos Equis stage that was not listed and had no wait because it took
people some time to figure out it existed. But other than the dismal water
refill stations, big kudos to the production staff and everyone involved in the
festival, see you next year!
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