I’ll be the first to admit that I was a stranger in a strange land Saturday. I don’t follow Gorilla Vs. Bear on a regular basis. I’m not overly familiar with any of the bands on the carefully chosen line up for Saturday’s music festival. There was no clear-cut headliner, though Tim DeLaughter’s Preteen Zenith and White Denim were staged to act the part as the last two acts. But I was just, you know, there. Mostly for a good time and the possibility of good* music, but also because I was curious about how a blog’s mission translated off the screen.

Denton’s Dreamed (making their live debut) went on at precisely 6:33 PM. The Granada was dark but not pitch black, and I had the feeling that I should still be at dinner instead of one and a half drinks deep and sharing the front row with a gaggle of skinny teenagers with black Xs on their hands.

We were only just getting started. Once you walked through the doors of the Granada, you were held hostage— no exits beyond the patio, no reentry. Dreamed fans held up camera phones and yelled out for Jessica— Jessica Minshew, frontwoman, doing her first live show. Her backing beats were too loud. Her voice was lovely, but I didn’t get a word she was singing. It all just sounded like a thick fuzzy mumble, something nice and drowsy in the summer heat.

“The lyrics don’t matter,” Christopher Mosley yelled over the drum machine (keyboard generated beat, maybe). “It’s like asking Picasso what Guernica really looked like.”

Sunset came up next and all I thought about was how much the drummer looked like Cousin It. When DJ Sober spun the Ronson mix of Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie,” virtual cries of “too soon” popped up on the Twitter screen. No, it wasn’t— it’s not. Play her music. At that point, the crowd was slowly bulking up and Sober’s sets in between acts were the most dancy anyone got all evening. Which is to say, not much. It was freezing, thanks to the Granada’s new A/C unit, and I missed the sweatiness of concerts past. This crowd, even at its largest point later in the evening, was so polite. Seriously. I only witnessed one instance of intense public groping.

By the time Grimes, hands down my favorite act of the night, went on around 9:30, it was finally dark outside and there were enough people for it to feel like a real show instead of some sort of members-only showcase. She was barefoot (“I don’t trust barefoot people,” my friend said) with admittedly terrible stage banter, which was/is probably considered cute.

And if I followed GvsB on a more regular basis, maybe I’d have been more familiar with this Canadian songstress, fresh off Lykke Li’s tour. But look: the point of the blog is discovery, the editors putting up tracks they like for us all to hear. Grimes sang and moved like a hobo hipster gypsy doing the hula, but I liked it. I looked her up when I got home and I played this song all day Sunday while I unpacked a bunch of boxes from my former life far away. It’s the perfect soundtrack for feeling like an alien.

There were organizational issues. By the time Preteen Zenith and their overload of insane laser lights went on about an hour late from their posted set time, the still decent-sized crowd was yawning, anxious, and exhausted. Then there was that awkward moment when a few crowd members started chanting for White Denim before Preteen’s set was finished and the venue abruptly dropped the video screen. My two cents? Zenith’s set would have worked better earlier in the evening, both as a draw for the crowd and as a welcome break from all the breathy female vocals, like lone hip hop act Shabazz Palaces. That late at night, all I was was overwhelmed. White Denim got the bum deal, going on at 1:40 AM and playing for as long as they could.

Which brings me back to the point of all this. I wouldn’t call it history in the making. It was as if an acquaintance invited me up to their bedroom to hear the new album they just bought without really thinking about the amount of time we’d have to spend together to listen to the whole thing. It was fun, if a little odd. And like most firsts, memorable as though they might be, there’s always room for improvement.

* Music I like

Image: Grimes (Promo image)