Governors Ball live blog/picture and video. Kanye Kendrick Nas Young the Giant, MUD!!!

Governs Ball Poster

Governors Ball will be going down this weekend starting tomorrow (6/6/13) and I will be there for pretty much all of it. KOL, The XX, Kendrick, Nas, Kanye and many others in between.

I’m going to be doing my best to include all the info and pics that I think I would want to see/know if I wasn’t there myself.

Any input on bands/artists to make sure to see or questions about whats going on will be much appreciated.

First act tbd..

545: this shit is crazy. mud up to knees in some places. namely the stage. lost my e cig into the mud already (and was feeling so content having one knowing its raining like a muther)

crystal castles is murking. young the giant and feist next.

7:15 ended up at young the giant. pretty epic in the rain. they pulled the “they told us we can’t go on because of the weather, but we’re staying on for a few more songs ” routine. pretty cool even if it wasn’t completely true.

7:28: I’m told feist stopped show n told people to go home. wtf young the giant is still on.

8pm feist apparently is soft or had stricter rules bc show will go on and young the giant played for another 30 min after I heard feist had finished.

8:05 this shits silly

8:10 andddd just dropped my house keys in the portapotty I’m reporting from.

8:15 so that was just a lighter, may or may not have realized that in time to not make a big mistake…

somewhere in there caught a bit of Erykah Badu. didn’t hear bag lady, call Tyrone, huh?

waited till 9:15 and found out everything is canceled. apparently being resched to Saturday. Not sure what happened to make them cancel, it wasn’t any different than it had been all day.

Lot of fun, thank god you can walk put of this place.

SATURDAY
So I’m seeing some times have changed. Not sure why considering they haven’t announced the rescheduled KOL show. Read on billboard they were set to announce their new album “mechanical bull”. They better not reschedule them to a time that interferes with another act, although they sort of have to?

Heading over soon. First act probably Japandroids.

Per gov ball twitter
@GovBallNYC: **GOVBALLNYC Stage TODAY** 2:30-3:15 Japandroids; 3:45-4:45 Divine Fits; 5:15-6:15 Cut Copy; 6:45-8 Kings of Leon; 9:30-11 Guns N Roses

So on saturday when I read this tweet initially, on the way to the show I thought it meant Japandroids had been pushed back to 3:45 for some reason, so when we showed up and I had been telling my friends “no seriously were good” and we realized we were not in fact “good” I felt like a dipshit. I’d feel bad about potentially leading anyone who read this wrong but I did just post the tweet, so if your reading skills are better than mine (hopefully) you knew what was up.

One impending downer was the rescheduling of Kings of Leon to 6:45, the same time as Kendrick Lamar. I’d get into why this choice was extremely difficult for me but I don’t want to bore any one. Needles to say I didnt let it kill my vibe.

SN: listened to it on the way over and this j cole is something.. more to follow. crosses fingers he pops up tonight with Kendrick.

3:18

4:00 divine fits is on now, did a cover of frank oceans lost which was awesome.

SATURDAY UPDATE (put in 6/9/13)

Ok.. so service was pretty much nonexistent all day Saturday.
Saw Azelia Banks, she and her background dancers looked like Lilu from the 5th element. Was pretty impressed with her control of the crowd, they seemed super into her so it was kind of easy I guess. Still think she raps too fast for her own good most the time, she should slow it down occasionally just so she doesn’t seem like its all gibberish.

Left before she did 212 to go see Kendrick.

Kendrick came on pretty much on time @ 6:45. He came out to “Westside Right On Time” just like when I saw him in February at his own show. I still think this is an interesting choice seeing as its not an album cut and not really on anything specific that fans know, but I’m told it gets radio play sometimes (west coast maybe?).

I felt like Kendrick did a pretty good job, his set is pretty much identical to the one I saw in feb with the addition of him doing F’n problem where he “freestyles” from the last song into it (nice parlor trick, although that’s what it is since I’ve seen him do this routine on a live stream before). I went crazy when he did his RIP verse, partly bc it’s something new but also bc I can’t help but love that damn song (youtube link coming very soon).

He closed out and then re appeared with ” Cartoons n Cereal”. Again great closer but I’m not sure at a festival it works as well as his show. Overall I was content but definitely think he should of adapted to his surroundings more. Maybe a cover? His outfit was fucking crazy though. He looked like a creature from the blue lagoon with the hoodie/Jumpsuit thing he had on.

After I took a quick bathroom break. I must say of all the grossness and mud of this weekend, the entrance to the portopotties by the Honda Stage (Kendrick,nas,ytg) had to be the highlight of lowlights. It was incredibly difficult right by the entrance and I can imagine how many people fell into the horse manure like mud. Gives a whole new meaning to “yea he fell on his face and ATE SHIT”

9:30 was supposed to be the God hr, but not sure Nas came on till at least 10 if not later.

Nas was great, I mean how do you not love seeing Nas. He went with the live band which is always “interesting” with rappers shows. I think frankly it works better at your own show then a festival, but it’s sorta two fold in that some of the new songs that festival fans may not know (and there were a lot, 8/9+ songs that he did from his last album “Life is Good”) now are being performed by a band which is more in tune with the rest of the artists at Gov Ball. But I don’t know, for as cool as “If I ruled the world” sounded (no Lauren btw) with the band, “Made You Look” was lacking without those orig drums.

I mentioned that he did a bunch from LIG:

No Introduction (he introduced himself with this one)
Local Motive
Accident Murderer
Daughters
The Don
Cherry Wine
Stay
Bye Baby
Nasty

which is pretty crazy. I mean 8 songs from one album is kinda alot especially when your at a festival and not a single one of those songs is as big as any of your other big songs. As such there was a medly where nas ran through “another classic” after “another classic” but didn’t actually spit a verse on the song itself. I’ve seen nas a few times now and before the show I had said man I hope he does a bunch from the new album, after seeing him do all of it I’m not sure I was as into it as I thought I would be (loved life is good).

But all the back and forth is moot when you consider how dope it is that he can do his new classic “stay” as his farewell song. Shortly after saying peace and “leaving the stage” he came back out and said I don’t wanna go man, I wanna Stayyyyyyyy….

(I’m going to continue the performance review in a blog post prob tommrw that puts in perspective SEEING NAS and KENDRICK LAMAR the year after they both dropped the 1a&1b albums of the year. The twilight of ones career, the beginning of another’s !)

So after Nas’s show i did not in fact want to stay. Instead I walked and took the train home looking like this.

I feel bad for the non muded people on the train

It’s 2:45 and I’m still in bed. May not get there in time for Gary Clarke and unfortunately I don’t think The XX is going to be doable bc of trying to get to a viewable area for Yeezus. As far as that perf I’m going to do my best to get some video up. prob on my twitter. @sjeezs

Like yest service Terrible. Kanye murdereredddd. did like 6 new songs

Opened with Black Skinheads

Went into New Slaves, with outro/secondary song simmilar to when his video played on Walls

after that I beleive he went into Mercy and Cold

This is most likely On Site, possibly the other Daft Punk co produced/written song, (Black Skinhead being the other).  It seems this is one of the other songs along with new slaves that Hudson Mohawke played during a recent DJ set , I had heard about that, but not that it was so long ago (even before the projections and SNL performances)

This is “I am a god ” with an intro, he had a Jet Aviation theme all night, and at one point looked like Otomo’s Akira

and he  played a snippet of a song with a screwed up sounding sample? “in this bitch up, it can go down”, and then sounded like when the alarm goes off in lost, again very house EDMy

Few tidbits

Black Skinhead which he did to start and end show had new lyrics

May have been a guy with a sign that said ” i hit it first”

After I am a God he transitioned into Jesus Walks, nice touch

Here Kanye took a few minutes out to give us some much  needed  insight into his new album Yeezus.  My favorite part is that right before this was taken he goes ” you know this is the part where I would say some crazy shit” this guy gets so much flack about being a lunatic but hes so calculated with his moves. “honestly I at this point I could give a fuck about selling a million records , as long as I give yall an album you can rock with all summer” suuuuuureeee YE, not like you just subconsciously put the idea of you selling a mill first week in out head or anything..

much more to follow

Unfortunately I was mistaken about Kanye’s line about Derrick Rose on “I Dont Like” he did alter the words but they were much more encouraging than I had initially thought.  He says “Shout out to Derrick Rose, HOPE that ni**as AIGHT”. *Thanks to Cap’N Crunch for the correction