Photography by Philip Cosores
How do you know if a music festival is successful?
Is it all about making money? The fan experience? Being able to book top-tier artists? There seem to be countless metrics for which to grade a music festival, and none can really capture the sum total of the event. You can’t be everywhere at once. In the end, you are just one person with certain standards of what is “worth it” and was is not.
In its second year, Pemberton Music Festival saw between 25,000 and 30,000 fans enter the grounds each day in one of the most scenic locations on Earth to see one of the year’s most eclectic and inspired music lineups. In many, many ways, Pemberton is a rousing success.
But maybe the most important take away is in a very specific demographic: the 16-23-year-olds who populated the festival’s Bass Camp, which featured top-flight DJs and hip-hop artists, and made their way to the festival’s main grounds for acts like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi, and Weezer. For young people, the festival felt like a pinpoint in the arc of their life, with four days of camping and partying playing as much a role in their entertainment as the actual music. Getting off a flight in Los Angeles the next evening at the festival, three teens could be overheard saying they wished they were back in Bass Camp. Even the four days for them weren’t enough.
On top of that, there was a water slide, well-curated late-night sets that let the party extend until two am, a comedy tent, free water refill stations, and many of the other amenities that meant a good time for the fan that was truly able to immerse themselves, that didn’t mind either not showering or waiting more than an hour to clean off, and whose answer to last night’s hangover was to just go harder on the next day. In short, if you came to party, Pemberton provided the setting for a great one.
Of course, pleasing this group means a less desirable experience for others. Despite inspired sets from Broken Social Scene, Father John Misty, and Beirut, Pemberton Music Festival was not kind toward indie rock, where the acknowledgement that most of the attendees had little to no interest in them alleviated any tension that they were playing to small audiences. Despite the eclectic billing at more and more festivals, the reality is that fans of a BSS are getting too old for a music camping festival, and would rather see a band like The Decemberists on their own tour. Yes, there are many young people that don’t relate to EDM and hip-hop culture, but it seems like the word is now out on many music festivals, with certain music fans well aware that the environment just isn’t a fun place to see The War on Drugs.
The only way the consumer really knows if a music festival is doing well is whether it appears the next year, and the hope is that Pemberton keeps doing what they do, because the setting is gorgeous, the majority of the fans seem pleased, and the organizers appear to have a real passion for putting it on. Of course, there could be improvements. For one, the food selection was a notch below what Coachella and Outside Lands and many others are bringing to the table. Another would be inserting more shady areas on the grounds, as unexpectedly hot weather kept many of the day time sets from great vibes as fans were unwilling to deal with the heat.
But these are minor points that can’t take away the conversations heard about the best weekend of many young people’s lives. Is it Canada’s answer to Bonnaroo or Coachella or huge European camping fests? Not yet. But the raw material is there for it to grow into one of these landmark events. Nevertheless, here’s a complete rundown of the most notable performances we caught.
–Philip Cosores
Contributing Editor
