The First Ever Z Generation Concert

Now that a few weeks have passed and the dust motes are in their last throes of settlement, there are a few lessons I think can be drawn from the event.

For those who’ve been living on Jupiter this last month, here’s a précis of what happened at Pod People in the Park (also known as the Sugarloaf Shuffle). A truly cross-genre concert was held in a big park by the name of Sugarloaf in California on October 24. Rock, reggae, world music, any genre you might care to name. This was a big event, a long day, and a long night. Some big big names, but also a broad, broad smattering of lesser known musicians. A common theme: one hit wonders. As with many festivals these days, there was also a personal, or spiritual, or psychological, or self-help aspect. There were even language lessons.

It was an all-ages concert, and of course it was the younger ones who fully mastered the technology. Some genius figured out a way to create a distributed electronic transmitting device, handed out to concertgoers, whose thousands upon thousands of inputs would be summed, at intervals as regular as you please, into a single, simple output.

The first few acts were massive. They only played a couple of songs each, but that seems to be the trend at festivals these days. The crowd was right into it. I won’t go into the names, but these were your top ten, grammy award winning, rolling stone magazine covering kinds of acts. The next act was just as big, but they only played one song. Go figure. The crowd seemed to like this.

The next five songs were all played by different acts, and not one of them finished their song. Weirdly, some of them went straight into the chorus, then finished. Even weirder – some of them went straight into the catchiest part of their song, even if it wasn’t the chorus, and played that, and then stopped. A few poor bands were cut off after playing the first bar – a fate that was strangely spared for songs that had a slow build up. Some bands that had already played came back and played again. The stage was a whir of roadies, instruments changed, drum kits frantically assembled and reassembled. The roadies were friggin incredible, they must have all lost 35 pounds by the end of the day.

Embarrassingly, at one point in the day a really long, and rather boring song went on for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only 10 minutes – the crowd was temporarily distracted by an event on the other side of the field and didn’t seem to mind anyway.

Well, the concert went on, and followed this same strange trend. Very frequent band changes, songs often stopped in their middle, old bands reappearing. And by the end of the night, things hadn’t changed – if anything it had gotten a bit worse. Rather than saving up the best names for the end, it was just more of the same, except perhaps their fifth or sixth best songs.

To me, the whole thing was a shambles. Yes, there was an air of expectation associated with trying something new. But in the end there was no atmosphere, no musical build up and release of tension, no anticipation. This is not what concerts are about. If this is what happens with big, bold ideas, give me small and meek ones for chrissakes.

Thing is, the crowd didn’t really seem phased – they were happy to be there, happy for their celebrity musical idols to be there, happy to be taking drugs and chasing members of the opposite or same sex, as the case may have been. I heard the organisers claiming a success and promising a bigger and better P3 next year, but I won’t be there. I’ve spoken to a few people about this and the smart ones agree, the mindless application of technology to our cultural activities is, well, mindless. These people just don’t understand the human condition. Course, seeing as I and a few smart friends are the only ones disagreeing, it could be us that don’t understand. But I don’t think so.

The iPod, and especially the iPod shuffle, are no ways to organise a concert.