kinsey's blog: Voodoo Festival Day One New Orleans, Louisiana 10/31/14

I recently attended the annual New Orleans music attraction, Voodoo Music + Arts Festival.

Dozens of bands across the musical spectrum performed on four different stages throughout the festival grounds.

The first day of the festival fell on Halloween. New Orleans goes crazy for this holiday and it made for some memorable costumes, such as a bottle of hot sauce, Chewbacca, a topless mermaid, assorted Teletubbies and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and numerous Where's Waldo and banana. (My best friend, Emily and I, even dressed up for the occasion. We went as Emily Elizabeth and Clifford, The Big Red Dog)

Friday was a day littered with nostalgia as

Newcomers, Twenty One Pilots;

Punk heroes, Rise Against;

Grunge pioneers, The Melvins;

Metal gods, Slayer; and

Hip-Hop revolutionaries, Outkast

all performed a collection of hits as well as deep cuts throughout their performances.

Twenty One Pilots played a set which consisted of

Guns For Hands

Migraine

Ode To Sleep

Drunk In Love (Beyonce Cover)

Can't Help Falling In Love (Elvis Cover. It has also been spun on 90.7 a time or two.)

House of Gold

Addict With A Pen

Holding Onto You (their biggest single to date)

Car Radio

Following them were Rise Against.

The change in genre from one band to the next is truly remarkable and Rise Against is a band who paved the way for modern day punk-inspired bands such as A Day To Remember and Title Fight.

They played

Ready to Fall

Give It All

Re-Education (Through Labor)

Behind Closed Doors

The Good Left Undone

Help Is on the Way

Chamber the Cartridge

Like the Angel

Prayer of the Refugee

I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore

Audience of One

Make It Stop (September's Children)

Savior

(Satellite was on the setlist, but not played)

Metal bands come in all shapes and sizes, but none are quite as influential, and, well, different as Slayer.

In my opinion, they were definitely the scariest band at the festival and they were not dressed in costumes.

However, the hardcore fan-boys lined the front row of the barricade and proceeded to head bang to every song the band cranked out from their extensive catalogue which included:

Disciple

Hate Worldwide

Mandatory Suicide

Chemical Warfare

War Ensemble

Postmortem

Necrophiliac

Captor of Sin

Seasons in the Abyss

Hell Awaits

Dead Skin Mask

Raining Blood (Made popular by the video game Guitar Hero 3)

Black Magic

South of Heaven

Angel of Death

Taking a break from main stage bands, I ran over to a smaller stage tucked away in the corner of the festival grounds, The Carnival Stage, to see a staple to the Grunge scene in Seattle, The Melvins. This band is so influential, yet overlooked in modern Grunge. Kurt Cobain idolized The Melvins and even did a short stint with them in the early days of his career (so records say). Their drummer was also on an early Nirvana demo.

In the crowd, their fans ranged from twenty-somethings to old nostalgic rocker dudes who were reliving their favorite time period.

They played

Pigs of the Roman Empire

The Water Glass

Onions Make The Milk Taste Bad

Sesame Street Meat

Moving to Florida (Butthole Surfers Cover)

Sweet Willy Rollbar

Bride Of Crankenstein

A Growing Disgust

We Are Doomed

Youth of America (Wipers Cover)

The Bit

Your Blessened

Night Goat

Fascists Eat Donuts (Pop-O-Pies Cover)

The last band of Friday night was the legendary Hip-Hop group, Outkast. They performed two and half hours of nostalgic tunes for their diverse crowd to enjoy. When an entire crowd sings all the words to your songs, you really have something special and something worth writing about.

Outkast played

B.O.B.

Gasoline Dreams

ATLiens

Skew It on the Bar-B

Rosa Parks

Da Art of Storytellin', Part 1

Aquemini

SpottieOttieDopaliscious

Ms. Jackson

Big Boi Set:

Kryptonite (I'm on It) (Purple Ribbon All-Stars Cover)