Fort Green Fest
Since yesterday was so gorgeous, the woman and I decided to hit Habana Outpost for some environmentally friendly food and frozen margaritas. While there, we ran into a couple of friends who explained that the bass booming in the distance was coming from the “First Annual” Fort Green Fest. We hadn’t heard of it, but they said Talib Kweli would be performing, so we went to check it out.
The park was pretty full of a fantastically diverse crowd. There was a decent sized ring of vendors with a surprisingly good sounding stage on one end. Unfortunately, the performers seemed as though they would have been more comfortable in a small club with everyone’s undivided attention as opposed to the wide open space they needed to fill with energy. One act, Liz something, even tried to teach the crowd about phonics… It didn’t go over well.
By the time Talib came on stage, people were dying for him. Unfortunately, I gotta say, he wasn’t as hot on stage as he is on wax. His voice, normally high-pitched and somewhat nasally (giving him a unique sound) was horse and scratchy. One very cool moment for me, though, was when he performed Old School from the ultra-geeky Dangerdoom album: The Mouse and The Mask. People who had known all the words to all the other tracks he’d been performing seemed to have never heard this fantastic song before. The worst part, though, was that they practically threw Talib and crew off the stage but turning down his mikes and music before his set was done. Lame.
I should remember to see whether it makes it to a second annual gig.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:54 am
[...] Kweli was amazing this time around (none of the voice issues from last time), although I got the feeling that the crowd wasn’t really there to see him. The headliner [...]