For Virgin Free Fest, the Fourth Time's the Charm

Some of that surely had to do with the bill of musical fare — necessarily lighter on megawatt stars like Kanye West, who headlined last year, and also on the venerable granddads (The Who in ’06, The Police in ’07, Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry in ‘08). But the Clinton-era nostalgia of prior festivals, which saw Nine Inch Nails and a reunited Stone Temple Pilots perform, was much in evidence yesterday, when Weezer and Blink-182 anchored the lineup on the Pavilion Stage.

That’d be the stage where you’re used to watching bands at Merriweather, which turns out to be a boffo site for a daylong rock festival like this, what with its abundant shade and on-site sculpture gallery and general ease of access — all attributes not available at the dusty Pimlico horsetrack that hosted the first three V-Fests. Diversions like karaoke and wandering hula-hoopers were everywhere, as were surprising amenities like a free cell-phone-recharging station. (Branson and Flavor Flav also briefly served drinks at the “RE*Generation Karma Bar,” which DCist is loath to have missed because we lost track of time watching The Hold Steady.)

Food, drink, and lavatories were all easily available. The only long lines were for admission to the pavilion’s seated section, a queue that snaked up either side of the lawn all day as fans hoped to catch (in order of appearance) Mates of State, Taking Back Sunday, Jet, The Bravery, or Blink-182 from up-close. DCist didn’t even try, content to take in Weezer’s energetic, warmly-received set from the back of the lawn.

Otherwise, we kept largely to the West Stage, a temporary structure built on an adjacent paddock. Whether it was manifest destiny or just the vagaries of scheduling, the West was where the real action was, hosting a strong bill echoing the impressive diversity of V-Fests past. It was also utterly free of shade for most of the afternoon, save for a coveted patch of real estate in the shadow of the covered soundboard and the VIP viewing stand. No problem, though: The weather was as inviting as it gets ‘round these parts in August, with low humidity and lusty breezes. A hat and a little sunblock would do ya.

St. Vincent might have been advising the same when she performed “Your Lips Are Red,” one of her oblique mini-symphonies, which features the refrain, “Your skin’s so fair, it’s no fair.” Who’d have guessed the Artist Also Known as Annie Clark would be so great in a big outdoor venue in the middle of the day? Not us, but her 50-minute set drawn mainly from Actor, one of 2009’s strongest albums, was confident and absorbing. And her guitar-crunching solo cover of The Beatles’s “Dig a Pony” was a treat, even if much of the crowd greeted it with blank stares. Damn kids!

The District of Columbia’s own Wale was up next, and we’re confident he expanded his cult with his crowd-pleasing set backed by go-go outfit UCB. In the space of an hour, he threw in more locally themed Easter eggs than you could process, while paying tribute to a Tribe Called Quest with “Award Tour” and attempting to save at least one overzealous merry-maker from getting booted. “Listen, you: Condoms and no more liquor!,” he scolded.

Another D.C. emcee, Tabi Bonney, who just played “Rock the Bells” at Merriweather back in July, even joined Wale to perform “The Pocket.” Still, Wah-lay's winning self-promotional campaign wasn't quite enough to stop some of the crowd from referring to him as Wall-EE, like the adorable Pixar-bot.

Tireless road warriors The Hold Steady were up next, rocking reliably and seemingly intent on packing as many tunes as possible into their 70-minute slot. (The absence of banter was fine; their songs are verbose enough). It was around this point that the airplane trailing the banner advertising a Baltimore strip club began circling the field.

Soon the clock around Flavor Flav’s neck struck 1989, and Public Enemy took the stage for what would be the most rewarding set of the day. Chuck D and Flav reminded everyone that they’re one of the great musical duos of their era, delivering a commanding set long on cuts from 1990's towering Fear of a Black Planet, with a tantalizing bit of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, which they’ve spent much of the past year reviving in its entirety.

Flav plugged “I’ll Never Let You Go,” the single that finds him singing (contains Auto-Tune; listener discretion advised) while Chuck articulated an emphatic but confused political platform, something about easing restrictions on immigration while assuring us that “if you build a wall of unity, no one can come in and tear it down.” As metaphors go, “Fuck war!” and “Fuck racism!” were easier to decode.

Chuck D was also the author of the day’s first and probably only tribute to Sen. Edward Kennedy, which segued into a remembrance of fallen musical heroes recent and not: M.J., of course (with Flav improvising self-aggrandizing new lyrics to the tune of “Billie Jean"), but also Rick James, Biggie Smalls and, er, Bernie Mac. Hey, it's your stage, Fellas.

Later, Flav and Chuck gave us a kind of comedy routine called “Boy, Do I Miss” where they honored deactivated hip-hop acts from the Wu-Tang Clan to Naughty by Nature. The closing “Fight the Power” had Flav crowd-surfing and climbing the scaffold holding up the stage, while Chuck interpolated verses of James Brown’s “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved.”

The National were up next, specialists in mannered, wintry chamber pop. They didn’t stand a chance! But these harsh transitions are part of what we’ve come to love about Virgin Fest.

Weezer preceeded their hour-long set with a funny video trumpeting some Merriweather milestones (the 1969 performance by The Who and Led Zeppelin, for example) as well as some of Columbia’s more prosaic attractions, like the King’s Contrivance shopping plaza with the Harris Teeter. They opened and closed with Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” respectively, while going easy on the post-2001 half of their own songbook. A lot of the audience looked to have been barely out of diapers when Weezer issued their 1994 debut, but they still seemed to know most of the words to “Buddy Holly” and “Undone.”