混凝草音乐节 :: 上海

Of all weekends, Concrete & Grass Music Festival 《混凝草音乐节》was held on the weekend of two typhoons swirling in the region. Super Typhoon Meranti brushed by Guangdong and Fujian provinces and swept big winds and torrential rain over to Shanghai. The season's 16th typhoon in the form of Typhoon Malakas was headed for northern Taiwan and up to southern Japan and would likely make the weather report for Shanghai be 'blustery'.

Day 1 of Concrete & Grass was a wash-out by the evening. Amps, speakers, extension sockets and all were cling-wrapped. The wet cables on stage were a scary sight. Didn't even know how the organizers managed to set up the stages and tents in the howling wind in the previous days.

Managed to catch Perth's Rag N' Bone in light rain during their early afternoon set, along with Beijing's Birdstriking. We didn't stay long. By the evening, the huge thunder and lightning and horizontal rain caused Silverstein's 7pm set was canceled, and Shane Told did a strange solo acoustic few songs that was pretty fun. Really liked a new-to-me Shandong death metal band Zuriaake | 葬尸湖, but their set (after Silverstein's) was cut too. What a pity. Apparently they went out to Yuyintang Livehouse to do their set instead. Yup, mud all over, but nothing mud-o-stronomic like Glastonbury.

Day 1: Rag N' Bone.

Day 2 was fabulous. Blue skies!!! Hot! Wow. Typhoon Malakas clipped Taiwan and went up to Kyushu, but drew the winds and rain away from Shanghai. What a huge difference it made to the vibes at the festival grounds. The crowds rolled in early. All the Shanghai peeps came to the festival even though this venue is a good 45 minutes away from town. Ugh. But the fair weather more than made up for it. YAYY! Good seeing everyone and got many hugs.

I literally walked around with a cup of Chicago's Goose Island IPA (only this and no other choices of beer styles lah) all of Day 2. Heeeheee. Plenty of food available at the stalls including Bumbu that sold Indonesian satay and corn begedil. Got SAMBAL. Pretty all right. Woot.

Our very own Singapore progressive rock band In Each Hand A Cutlass rocked out LEFT Stage. Hurrah!!! Not impressed by The Cribs. Stayed on for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. And couldn't resist watching Health and they did a really tight set. It was a really well organized festival. The crew, staff and volunteers worked so hard to get the artists comfortable, and ensured logistics ran on time with as few delays as possible. Kudos to the organizers.