It’s official: Noise Pop ’09 is here!
The week long, city-wide festival kicked off last night at Mezzanine with a Toyota sponsored, icecream-filled, swagalicious, ear-melting opening party, complete with a performance by Deerhunter.
I’m not much for sponsored events, or in the know about how they generally go, but this one was pretty sweet (self righteous, anti-corporate hipsters may need to get off their high horses, now) — free admission, an ice cream truck, made-to-order screen printed tees (with decent graphic options), and rock band (the only thing I could definitely do without). Plus, the boys of Filter Magazine, who were organizing the aforementioned festivities, were absolute dolls.
Regardless of all the awesome free stuff, Deerhunter’s performance is what the evening was really about. When I got there during at 6pm, people had already started to line up, and there was a measurable feeling of excitement as fellow early birds shared stories of past Deerhunter experiences.
Photo credit: Jeff Luger
Deerhunter were total southern gentlemen and a blast to interview. Singer, Bradford Cox, and bassist, Josh Fauver were incredibly generous with their time, even though they had two other on-camera interviews the same night. The MezzRx team’s video interview with Bradford will be up on the blog soon, but you’ll just have to wait until late spring to pick up the latest issue of one eighty Magazine.
Photo credit: Jeff Luger
Originally, I had planned to head out after the interview, but as I became distracted by all the ice cream and good people (classmates, friends, old co-workers, even my hairstylist was there!), I couldn’t resist staying for DH’s set, and I’m glad I did. Mezzanine’s sound set up really did them justice, as did the San Francisco crowd. I only hope the rest of Noise Pop keeps up the energy level. Deerhunter has set a pretty high bar for the rest of the bands playing, but I have no doubt they’ll step up to the challenge.
Sumptuary Goodness 