Sunday, August 21, 2011

Baybeats 2011


A weekend at Baybeats 2011. What a treat. Bands galore showcased their genres of music. Punk, metal, rock, singer-songwriters, folk, blues, pop-ish, groovy. They played their hearts out. Some were good, some ahemm....needs to either tune their guitars or increase practice sessions, and many played with passion to an appreciative crowd.

The bay area came to life with familiar faces, the public and masses of humans. Quite a party. Chic parents with cool kids, older folks strolling along hand in hand and bobbing to Noughts and Exes, Cheating Sons, Seyra, Julianne, Nicholas Chim, etc. The line-up is diverse and appeals to different audiences at various timings. It was great fun hanging out with the friends and having random chats over both inane and solemn topics. I've always got a soft spot for this music festival that has grown to be definitive of the Singapore indie music scene. After all, I met the man at Baybeats 2004. :)

A pity that the trolleys, kiosks or whatever, sold really lame food and drinks. As far as a festival is concerned, there wasn't any good beer or food in a tent. Some business logic at work I suppose. It makes sense to have the crowd patronize the eateries at the mall, and the casual hawker stalls instead of having random food carts stationed outdoors to cannibalize their business. Or to save the cleaners alot of trouble to pick up the litter late in the night or early in the morning. But seriously, holding no beer at gigs is just STRANGE. What we did, was to pack giant cooler boxes filled with ice blocks and tightly packed with bottles of fabulous beer. Muahahhaha. It isn't illegal or disallowed to walk around with a bottle or a can in hand.

I like those whimsical installations dotting the outdoor area. Something else to feast the eyes on. There're art installations open to assorted interpretation. Rather fun to linger over. Further to the Powerhouse stage, those 4 billboards of intentional graffiti art seem...less of graffiti and instead, should be called 'street art'. Pretty morbid, creative and intense.

Thank you for this year's rocking beats. Till 2012. Can't wait already. Yay!

3 comments:

Dawn said...

Wow - has it been 7 years? :) The installations looked awesome!

Anonymous said...

psst.. was it love at first sight?
:D
-tuti

imp said...

dawn: oh my. it's been a while certainly!

tuti: heh. nope. i didn't even bother noticing him. i was dating plenty of other people at the same time.