GRATING SPACE

PERSONAL FEST 2007
Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7-8
Buenos Aires, Argentina

This post appears simultaneously on Stop Smiling Online.

All photos by Caroline Bennett

However charming they may be, music videos that show ghetto luxury spa nymphos primping, pampering, and preparing Snoop Dogg for everyday pimp life become decidedly less amusing when they run through your head while you wait 45 minutes for him to show up to a headlining slot that has already been pushed an hour behind schedule.

“He’s at his hotel. He’ll be here in five minutes,” the lady apparently in charge told us in the photo pit.

On the other side of the barricades, the weight of thousands squashed those who had fought for front-row spots and had the fortitude to maintain through the sets of Tego Calderon and Cypress Hill’s B Real. Anxious and annoyed, the throngs alternated between chanting soccer cheers and throwing debris toward the stage. Snoop’s band dinked around, complacent, fiddling with their instruments. Somewhere in the crowd, a tumult broke out. A stampede of festival-goers dispersed to reveal a young man bleeding on the ground. The word among reporters was that he had been stabbed. Snoop’s band conjured an impromptu jam and a festival official urged everyone to “Remain calm, Snoop is on the way.” Two minutes later he was there, tight pigtails, chrome mic, and all. He sang lots of classics — “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” “Lodi Dodi,” “Murder Was the Case,” “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” — and a miscellany of later hits. The language barrier somewhat impeded the call-and-response aspect of his show, but Snoop left the stage to a loud, concordant cheer: “Olé! Olé olé olé! Snoop Dogg! Snoop Dogg!”

Personal Fest is the annual product of Telecom Personal, one of South America’s largest telecommunications companies, in conjunction with Motorola. The two businesses nailed the advertising aspect of the festival to a “T” — people used their Motorola camera phones, powered by Personal provider chips, to snap photos of artists yelling, “What’s up, Personal Fest!” in front of JumboTrons flashing Personal commercials.

The most unfortunate consequence of Personal Fest’s corporate bent was that the best eclectic Argentine bands were relegated to early slots, before 7 PM, when most of Buenos Aires had just finished lunch. Bandajamoncrudo, No Lo Soporto, El Mató a un Policía Motorizado and Mi Tortuga Montreaux all played to mixed bags of lackluster enthusiasm and reserved attentiveness. Of the Argentine indie acts, Orquesta Típica Fernandez Fierro impressed most. The group consists of a dozen players on accordion, piano, violin, cello and upright bass, who alternate between accompanying a bard who spins tales of love and death, and rip-roaring through cacophonous baroque-tango canciónes.

Orquesta Típica Fernandez Fierro

The physical geography of the festival venue differed from the typical U.S. setup of large open space, big stage in one corner, big stage in the other corner, little stages in between. Walkways and board-paneled corridors divided the grounds and lead to open spaces where one could find any variety of the festival’s ridiculously diverse lineup. A short jaunt down an asphalt path, around the corner through a tree-lined passageway could lead from a Brit-psych noise jam by the Dandy Warhols to a Jock Jam extravaganza by 2 Unlimited (Ya’ll ready for this?). The two members of Brooklyn-duo Fischerspooner spun a Euro-trance-dance DJ set on Friday in a curtain-adorned tin building. Twenty-four hours later — and a stage away — Happy Mondays and Chris Cornell finished the weekend with a double-shot of nostalgia rock.

Friday’s offbeat highlight was CocoRosie, the worldly sister twosome who never fail to expand upon their fantastically weird recorded sound when they perform live. They employed a table full of noisemakers laid among votive candles, a bearded beat boxer, and an angelic black-haired teenage pianist to help them accomplish this task. Their revisions of “Good Friday,” “K-Hole,” and “Tekno Love Song” all added layers of lyrics and music that allowed old songs to hint at where the group’s artistic progression might take them next — “Tekno Love Song” featured Jamaican keys played at video-game speeds that seemed the audio equivalent to R.E.M. sleep.

CocoRosie

Saturday’s best was Kid Koala, the Montreal-based turntablist known for his ability to actually create melodic notes with records, rather than just mix them together. He manipulated a Louis Armstrong song to fashion a horn solo all his own, and diced “Moon River,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, into something simultaneously heartbreaking and modern. He spoke to the crowd by reading prepared Spanish phrases: “Este es la canción favorita de mi madre,” he told us before “Moon River.” Considering the fervor with which he pounced between four turntables, grabbed records from piles all around him, and tossed others into a discard bag, it’s surprising that he can maintain the round, chubby face of his marsupial namesake.

Watching Kid Koala

To my severe dismay, I realized only upon arrival that Buenos Aires had extended to Personal Fest its practice of not selling alcohol at soccer games, where drunken crowds easily transform into drunken riots. Not only was booze prohibited on the festival grounds, but stores within a five-block radius were also forbidden to sell it. Still, the festival was a festival: big, disorganized, probably not worth the price of the ticket, but alluring nevertheless. Everyone there saw too many shows in too short a time, met people we will never see again, and left with stiff backs from standing too long. The major festival experience always seems both over- and underwhelming, wherever in the world it might occur. In Buenos Aires, at 3 AM, after leaving the show in the still-hot night, perhaps the most striking moment of the weekend, to this yanqui, was walking into a coffee shop that had a singing Santa on its countertop, and remembering it was almost Christmas.

B Real sets ‘em straight

The minstrels from Club 69 made an appearance

2 Unlimited: Still hot

Chris Cornell is amazingly popular in Argentina

Happy Mondays