Three Days At NY's Governors Ball Festival

“Don’t go to Governors Ball! Turn around! It fucking sucks!”

This is a bad omen. I’m walking on the Triboro bridge en route to the mammoth three-day music festival Governors Ball, getting mentally prepared for the best weekend of my life, yet dozens of teenagers are staggering the opposite direction, splattered with mud and screaming obscenities. Rain is coming down hard, and from what we can see from the bridge, there’s a lot more murky brown than green on the Randall’s Island lawns. It appears we’re heading directly towards Altamont 2013.

Thankfully, the Hells Angels never materialized during the 21 hours I was there, nor did the bad vibes with which those teenagers left on Friday afternoon. Weather notwithstanding, Governors Ball was a crisply executed, well-attended, and superbly performed commuters festival. It will likely be remembered as the day that launched a new chapter of Kanye West’s storied career, but other artists inspired throughout the weekend.

Friday

The fate of the festival is still unknown when my friend Jeremy and I cross the bridge to Randall’s Island for the first time. Although we try to step gingerly through the swampy mess, our shoes are soaked through by the time we get to the sweaty, humid tent where electronic duo Crystal Castles are playing. Attempting to dance only results in splashing and me promptly getting called an asshole. I meekly nod my head along for the rest of the time, even though vocalist Alice Glass jumps up and down ferociously, and the vicious, seizing beats reverberate through my chest.

Things get glummer when Jeremy and I wait for an hour for who we think is soul queen Erykah Badu, but actually turns out to be Beach House. We had an argument beforehand over who to see—I’ve always been bored with Beach House’s guitar drones and was itching for Badu’s neo-soul theatrics. We end up with the former on pure accident, and despite my best efforts be close-minded, poncho-clad singer Victoria Legrand sounds majestic, and the whirling keyboards fit the epic, delirious mood of the night. The few songs that we catch are enough to take us home riding a chilling high of admiration.

Beach House stayed on for less than twenty minutes before succumbing to the dangerously high winds and whipping rain. The rest of the night was officially suspended: headliners Kings of Leon were postponed, and DJ Pretty Lights was cancelled altogether.

Saturday

Storminess recedes into clear skies the next morning, and I take off early to catch an assortment of smaller acts, the most memorable of which proves to be Detroit DJ GRiZ. GRiZ an average-looking hipster with with laughably impeccable diction: “New York, we’re going to take this to the next motherfucking level,” he states carefully. But his ’70s soul samples, combined with the usual dubstep fare of screechy electro-whines and blitzing hi-hats, makes the early afternoon crowd go nuts. This audience is fairly representative of the larger population here: high schoolers and 20-somethings who dress up in what my friend Jenna terms “festival fashion,” bro tanks or jerseys and Ray-Bans for the dudes, cut-up sleeveless tees, khaki short-shorts and colorful headbands/bracelets/necklaces for the girls. For a look that’s designed to be alternative, it’s overwhelmingly standard here. You can usually tell how far out somebody actually is, though, by how unconventionally they dance and flail. Here, a couple girls spin wildly in circles, and one guy dons a horse head mask and gets up on his friend’s shoulders to pumps his fists wildly. It’s a good crowd.

If GRiZ relies on hormones, then the Dirty Projectors are fueled by intellect. Jenna hates them—without prior listening, it’s tough to understand all the moving parts, the “bird-like” shrieks, the indecipherable lyrics. The Projectors are a little obtuse, but also possibly America’s smartest band right now, combining deep songwriting craft with absurd vocal arrangements. Their recent single “Gun Has No Trigger” gives me chills with each throbbing climax.

The set also presents a fascinating study into the cohesion of two opposites. Gangly frontman David Longstreth rarely smiles or engages with anyone, instead shredding his voice to bits with scream after guttural scream. Sidekick Amber Coffman is all grace and precision, bantering bashfully with the crowd and swaying from side to side on her feature, “Stillness is the Move.” When put together, they form a whole new jagged, textured animal, as shown on the immersive 2009 cut “Useful Chamber.”

I’m pondering profound musical thoughts as I leave Longstreth, Coffman & co., but those all get thrown out the window when the next performer takes the stage. Good god, Azealia Banks. To use words like “carnal,” “dominant,” and “exhausting” doesn’t come close to capture the kind of energy she brought Saturday night. She explodes onto the stage in a bright orange Spandex suit, already dancing and screaming. This is the only show I’ve been to where the crowd goes berserk three times, first for her version of Baauer’s omnipresent “Harlem Shake”—the overhead tent trembles during the drop—for her homecoming anthem “212,” and for the encore. As she turns and runs off, men and women left and right assume wide-eyed, stunned expressions: we’re all physically and mentally drained. I run into my friend Michael, whose jaw is practically on the floor. “That was so sick,” is all he can muster.

Dazed, we trudge over to Kings of Leon on the mainstage, who provide exactly the vibe we need. It’s still sunny outside, and a mix of younger and older fans are milling about, some watching the band avidly, others just taking in the good weather. That’s fine: Kings of Leon doesn’t necessitate full attention, as their songs all seem vaguely familiar.

We’re still thinking about Azealia by the time we get to rapper Kendrick Lamar’s set, while he’s in the middle of his pillow-talk hit “Poetic Justice.” It’s probably wrong to compare the two, because their artistic goals are so different, but I can’t help but notice that where Azealia shouted every rapid-fire syllable, Kendrick skips half of his words and waltzes around in cruise mode. Even worse, he introduces “Swimming Pools (Drank)” as if it’s actually a drinking anthem and not a critique, gleefully encouraging everyone to “get fucked up” and sing along.

It’s clear that many followed his advice as he wraps up with a long-winded speech about Compton. It’s only 8:30, with the legendary Guns N’ Roses still to go, but hundreds are staggering through the mud to the exits, some slurring their speech, some crying. This is the only moment of the festival where the scene is dystopic: tank-clad bros guzzling beer and fighting with their girlfriends as their Gucci sandals get entrenched in the mud. We head home with the crowd, thoroughly exhausted and in desperate need of a change of shoes. From what we heard afterward, GnR involved a lot of flames, fireworks, double-necked guitar theatrics—we’re not too bummed over missing the pageantry.

Sunday

By day three, I’m fed up with buying $14 Fosters and $9 tacos. I’ve also figured out how to game the security guards, and we easily sneak in supplies to last the day. We munch on our deli sandwiches and sip Red Bull while Deerhunter plays hazy alt-rock through distorted speakers. They’re not very good showmen—“That’s just a little nerdy guy,” my friend Haley says dismissively of lead singer Bradford Cox—but their circular bass patterns and enveloping feedback are hypnotic.

Of course, the artist we really came to see today is Kanye, so we decide to skip out on a bunch of quality acts—sorry to the xx, Yeasayer, and Beirut—in order to camp out at the Mainstage from 4 p.m. on. (By the way, I’ve skipped over a bunch of artists that I saw but have very little to say about. MS MR, Young the Giant, Portugal.The Man, and Alt-J all were perfectly fun.) We stand through Foals and Grizzly Bear, two great bands, but through both sets, the crowd holds Kanye bigheads aloft and screams his name. Grizzly Bear frontman Ed Droste acknowledges this, asking if there’s an extra Kanye sign for when he joins us. There’s really little you can do to win the crowd when you’re opening for a man who is naming his next album “Yeezus.”

Before the man himself comes out, a huge screen above the stage goes ablaze with blinking lights: three snarling dogs bare down on the audience, their blinding teeth practically popping out of the screen, their savage barks puncturing the ear drums. They’re pretty terrifying, but harmless compared to when West emerges slowly to the rumbling synthesizers of “Black Skinhead.” The dogs are replaced by giant images of West in a black KKK robe, staring unblinkingly out into the masses; a whirlwind of grainy advertisements flash across the screen as he howls, “four in the morning, and I’m zoning / Think I’m possessed, it’s an omen” into the feedback-crazy microphone. The experience is horrific, but not in a negative way—rather, he’s found a way to channel simple images, an 808 machine, and his distorted voice into complete, visceral horror.

It’s clear that the backpacked, pink-poloed good kid is now something of a societal and artistic menace. The beats are as synthetic and abrasive as can be. The clothes are no longer laughably extravagant, but disconcertingly bare. He’s surlier than ever: it seems he never makes eye contact with his fans once, instead scanning above the crowd and into the lights. Mostly, he just looks back at the giant screen, staring wide-eyed at the psychedelic images of his own face.

The highlight of the set perhaps comes when he premieres his new song “I Am a God.” “I just talked to Jesus / He said, ‘what up, Yeezus?’” he boasts. Kanye’s self-obsession is mostly disgusting, but it’s a little hard to not believe his claims of supremacy when he’s five feet away from me, standing jauntily and surveying the mass of thousands of people below him, while they all throw up Roc-A-Fella Records signs and scream his name. The hero worship in this moment is a dark, twisted, awesome spectacle to behold.

After running through some old party classics (“Good Life,” “All Falls Down”), Kanye ends his set with a reprise of the creeping new track “New Slaves,” the hooded figures reappear, and Kanye walks off without a word. My throat is absolutely shot from three days of screaming, so I’m left to wonder to myself just what kind of monster we’ve created.

Governors Ball was a monster of another kind. It was a drenched, gut-punched monster that took a couple days to really rear back its head. And once it did, the diversity and grandiosity made it nearly overwhelming. To all the tank bros and hipster chicks, see you next year.

—Staff writer Andrew R. Chow can be reached at andrewchow@college.harvard.edu.