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View Full Version : 2014.07.18 - Pemberton, BC @ Pemberton Music Festival



TheBang
07-19-2014, 12:45 PM
pemberton.

ManBurning
07-21-2014, 02:32 AM
Well, back from Pemberton now...

Part of me is shocked that nobody has posted in this thread yet, but another part of me is not... considering that the only other person that I knew of that was attending this show ( @icecream (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3915) ) was at the festival probably up until now as well... if not even later, as we high tailed it out of there early today as we had enough of the festival and camping.

Anyway... you guys want a review of the show... but after reading the NIN 2014 North American Soundgarden tour thread it seems like you already have a review of the show... it was a festival 2013 rehash. Nothing else can really be said about it other than it was Lollapalooza all over again set wise. The setlist wasn't that far off either.

Now, coming from a diehard NIN fan like myself that travels often enough to see these shows, it's getting to the point where there aren't really many setlist surprises, but with that said, I was expecting a little something more than an almost carbon copy setlist and production to the 2013 festival run. Call me disappointed, BUT... that's the view from a diehard NIN fan like me who has seen 6 shows since last summer.

In the eyes of a fan who follows NIN, but not to the point like some of us on here checking the setlist night after night, and traveling every single tour to catch a show or 2 or 3 on every leg of the tour, this show would have been good. In fact, 2 of my friends who came with me to the show were quite impressed. One guy thought it was one of the better NIN shows he's seen (and he's been to a fair number as well dating all the way back to fragility to now. Probably close to 15 shows I would imagine). He said he thought it was a fresh take on NIN material and he hadn't been following the festival 2013 sets, so it was new to him. He also went as far as saying he liked it better than the Tension arena show...

The interesting thing is, the tension arena show didn't rub me the right way either for some reason, but looking back at it now... I can say I prefer the tension arena setup to the festival 2013 setup. Better setlist and better visuals. But to each their own.

The biggest surprise of the night was TDTWWA. i've been waiting to hear that song live for a while now. So at least it wasn't a total bust. And from the looks of it, that song got omitted from the Vegas setlist for whatever reason. Easily the highlight of the night.

As mentioned in the general tour thread, NIN did not have a huge crowd. I read somewhere NIN only drew about 7,000-8,000 people out of the 20,000 that attended. Makes me wonder where more than half the people went? Back to their campground to do nothing?

I hate to say this... but I think Trent needs to take a break from touring again, it's starting to get stale for me as a concert-goer I can just imagine how much of a routine it probably feels for him. You know how the old saying goes? "Absence make the heart grow fonder" totally applicable in this situation. This NIN-SG tour was totally unnecessary. I think he could have called it a day after the European Spring 2014 tour. I would have much rather him got back behind the studio and made some new music over another tour. He's a smart guy, he obviously knows what he's doing, I just don't want him to get sick of touring. This is what provoked the touring hiatus in the first place.

Oh well... I have one more show at the end of this tour, the Portland one. That gives the tour over a month to try and incorporate some other songs into the setlist. It happened on tension, so i'm hoping for a surprise or two by the end of the tour. Not expecting a whole production overhaul based on the fact that Pemberton and Vegas were almost identical production and setlist wise, but a few more rare / unknown songs would be nice. But after this... I think i'm going to take a NIN concert going hiatus myself. Even my girlfriend who attended Lollapalooza with me last summer said to me after the show, "was it me or was that almost identical as Lollapalooza", and she's not even a die hard fan... so, if she noticed it was almost identical, that is saying something.

EDIT: To give you an example of how dead the crowd was, my friends and I left our campsite at about 9:00pm to head over to the stage for NIN's 9:30pm scheduled start time and to our surprise, we walked on over right to 2nd row!!!! I couldn't believe it. Normally to get that close at a NIN GA concert you need to be lining up 12 hours before the show starts (unless you have the presale early admission tickets) but still... I couldn't believe it. I think it's because the target audience for this festival was 18-25 year olds who like Electronic dance music. At times, it felt like we were the old dudes there...

Also, just had another peek at the setlist after writing this, The Great Destroyer was the other song highlight for me. I knew there was another aside from TDTWWA, but it slipped my mind at point of writing my thoughts. But being 2nd row for the great destroyer was EPIC, especially the glitchy random noise part, holy fuck was that part ever fun to dance to.

ManBurning
07-21-2014, 04:59 PM
Here is the only video I took from the night, The Day The World Went Away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iutO25QVRY&feature=youtu.be

Also, you can see some NIN photos (not mine) about 1/3 the page down over here from the show -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pembertonmusicfestival/sets/72157645771462675/page2/

icecream
07-22-2014, 02:50 AM
Just got back in. Overall I enjoyed it very much. I really liked the festival production and was happy to finally see it in person. Got four songs I hadn't heard before. Trent's guitar malfunction during Eraser was a bummer though. You are right about the crowd, I didn't even have to wait after SG to get a good spot on the rail. I was in of Alle the whole time so I couldn't catch how big the crowd was. But, at any point during the festival you could go to the camp site and find it full of people. I think Frank Ocean was the only one that had most of the people out and I think that was because he was finalhow,Even Outkast had a surprisingly small crowd, so it seemed. I honestly think most of the people were there to get drunk and fuck.

ManBurning
07-22-2014, 03:30 AM
Oh, you were right in front of Ally the whole time, on the rail? You were probably RIGHT in front of me then, because I was second row behind ally with my buddy's. Do you remember some super drunk girl halfway into the show being a super flirt and kissing everyone? I honestly started watching her and the people's reactions to her kissing them more than what was going on on the stage because I saw the songs they were playing so many times.

I think you're right about people being there just to get drunk and fuck around. Oh, and dance. The Bass camp always seemed to be packed. I think the festival was just aimed at a younger demographic. I think there were alot of young people there, like really early 20's from what I could tell. My buddy kept saying we were those old guys that everyone hates when you're 16-21 that tell you to "turn your music down" because we couldn't get any sleep and weren't really partying at the camp site. He's kinda right though. I know i'm not a camping kinda person. This was my 2nd time camping ever (first being the Original Pemberton 6 years ago) and I swore off I would ever do it again. Thought it would be different this time and i'd give it another shot since i'd be with more friends and my girlfriend this time around, but nope, didn't like it.

Most of my group agreed we would have been better off with Shuttle passes and a hotel in Whistler. At least that way we'd be in control of our own party and when to call it lights out. Had some of the worst sleeps of my life there. I used earplugs and a eye mask to try and get some shuteye, and our group would just come back to the campsite and try and get some sleep around 1-2am. The first and third nights were the worst. First night fell asleep around 5:30am and got woken up at 8:30am or 9. The 2nd night I must have been exhausted from lack of sleep because I had a great sleep from about 2am-10am without interuptions. Night 3 was garbage again because it seems like the music wouldn't stop... It was supposed to shut off at 2am, but I still remember huge booming bass drops at 4-5am and then Outkast doing their soundcheck at 8am.

I remember my one friend said there was a guy beside him strumming a guitar and singing next to him all night long and he was so close to telling him to knock it off, hahaha. We totally were those old guys at a 20-something music festival.

If we were to do this again, we'd do the shuttle/hotel route for sure. Also, wouldn't buy tickets in advance ever again. 2 nights before the festival, there were 1000+ posts on Craigslist trying to unload their passes for DIRT cheap... saw a 3 day camping pass for as low as $175. We ended up taking a hit and letting our extra pass go for below cost. But hey, least we got some of our cash back. But if we were to do this again, i'd wait for a couple days before the show and buy a cheap pass.

icecream
07-22-2014, 03:45 AM
Being in the early 20s demo I didn't have any trouble getting sleep or problems with other campers. Hell, our group even started the yelling of Eric, Allen and Steve that I assume you heard all over the place. The only time I felt really uncomfortable was when this girl O.D in front of me during Frank Ocean's set. That was one of the scariest things I have seen. But yeah, I definitely know what you mean when it was geared toward young people. Which is strange NIN/SG headlined Friday. Camping wasn't that bad. The only problem was food and the stupid long lines for water.

I was the shorter, five foot sixish guy on the rail with my super tall friend. Don't know if you saw me or not. I saw that girl again at St. Vincent and she grabbed my water bottle and took a drink before saying thanks a bunch and rubbing my arm. If kissing me at NIN didn't give her my cold, drinking from my water probably did. I think she was on E because she kept asking for gum. Did she try to kiss you but you turned her away? A guy did that near me and I talked to him a bit before and he said he had seen NIN a bunch.

I don;t know how Whistler was but I assume it would be a party place too. Probably not as bad. Though, I would find drunks wandering around the halls more annoying than the camping atmosphere.