Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Wanderland 2014

Credits to Karpos Multimedia and Wanderland Music Festival
wander
  verb
  1. walk or move in a leisurely, casual or aimless way.
  noun
  2. an act or instance of wandering.

Wanderland was all about moving in aimless ways, whether it be walking around or dancing to the music. And it was awesome.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how to write this particular entry because how does a person turn one of the most amazing days of her life into a simple blog post? 

I guess I'll just have to try.

Let me start with May 16, the day before. It was a sunny Friday morning and I was at my best friend's house. My sister suddenly texted me and asked if I wanted to go to Wanderland because her friend was selling tickets. How could I not agree, right? So I said yes and that was that.

My siblings and I decided to go at around 3 p.m. because my sister really wanted to see Franco and we weren't exactly up to waking up so early in the morning. We got to the venue when The Ransom Collective was still setting up. Unfortunately, something was up with the sound system, giving them very little time left to play songs. They played three songs in total and I quite enjoyed their set.

Franco played next and he was tons of fun to watch. He was also really funny. When he said his next song was about "herbal medication" and everyone cheered, he said we were all 'addicts'. Fun, fun, fun.

Sissy with Franco. Check the hand on her shoulder.
The next act was Lucy Rose. She was one of the main reasons why I even wanted to watch the music festival in the first place. She was absolutely adorable. I found it really cute when it started to rain a bit and she asked, "Is it bad that I'm glad? Because it always rains at home and I miss it." Something like that anyway. What made it better was that she played Shiver when it rained. Brilliant.

My favorite song of hers is Middle of the Bed and every time she'd be handed her acoustic guitar, I would be whispering to myself, "Middle of the Bed, Middle of the Bed". To my surprise, she played it last and I was extremely happy when she did.



I would've gone nearer but as you can see, there was a large crowd and my spot was pretty good.

The Paper Kites were next and I promised to take some videos, which I did. 

Before their set, however, the screen showed that Bombay Bicycle Club was coming to Manila. As an admin of their PH street team (not official but we're pretty sure we're /this/ close to becoming official), I freaked. I'm so stoked for their concert! I just need money now.



I was quite moved by their performance of Bloom and I'm still not over it. 

(Did you notice my awful video-taking skills?)

(Sorry for the quality. I had to compress the videos and they came out like this.)

The next band to play was Last Dinosaurs. Just like Lucy Rose, they were one of the main reasons why I wanted to go to this music festival. I took lots of videos of them and that left me with very little memory in my phone. Also, I could hardly breathe after their entire set. 







If you noticed, I was singing along - really badly. I apologize. Also, I don't remember screaming, "I LOVE YOU!" but apparently, I did. I couldn't stop laughing at myself when I was reviewing my videos.

Also, I apologize for covering the camera with my finger sometimes. I'm not used to it. And I accidentally pressed the search button on my phone so it cut the videos. 

I don't know what exactly was wrong with the sound system but the acts all seemed to have problems during their soundcheck before actually performing. Sean, the singer of Last Dinosaurs, would be off-key sometimes but I think something was wrong with his earpiece. Nevertheless, their performance was extremely enjoyable.

Sean talking to a girl (who is apparently from my old school). I tried to get a picture but he seemed occupied. Heh.
Top: Me and Michael Sloane from the Last Dinosaurs. Bottom: Michael and my brother.
Please don't mind my face. I was really excited. His hand was on my shoulder. My phone's camera takes a while to actually take the picture. (MICHAEL CROUCHED DOWN FOR ME, OKAY. What is short.)
Can I just say that I almost cried when they played Andy? Because that's my absolute favorite song of theirs. I also really appreciated the crowd when they played Zoom. So much fun.

(They played Chocolate by The 1975 right after their set and it brought me such joy to see almost the entire crowd bobbing their heads and singing along.)

The next act was Wonderful All-Stars. They were really cool. I just didn't like how the large crowd kind of left before their set. But they still managed to play well, even with the awful feedback from the (again) awful sound system. After their set, my brother and his friend went up to Lourd de Veyra to take a picture and he asked them if they were hipsters (lol).

The Royal Concept was next. (They had a genius entrance, let me tell you.) It was a delightful surprise to see the crowd get really big for them. I had no idea that they had such a massive following here. By this point, I didn't have any memory left for any videos of them but they were amazing! From David's (singer) jumping all over the place to him taking off his shirt to him saying, "See you next year" using the synth mic (is that what it was?). They were tons of fun.

So much fun that Lucy Rose, Allison Harvard, a few members of The Paper Kites, and Woody Pitney were watching them. THEY WERE LITERALLY STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. (There was a bouncer, though.)
Unfortunately for me, both my siblings had gotten very tired after that set. Honestly, I was left out of breath after all of that. It took them some time to convince me to leave because I really wanted to see The Drums but I gave in. I was tired, too. We got some drinks before leaving but whilst drinking, we could hear Architecture in Helsinki playing and they were great. At about their third song, we left (said goodbye to a few friends first, though).

Another great thing about music festivals is the people. I'm glad to have finally met Czar, a good internet friend of mine. I found it funny how she was kind of just looking at me and then approached me. I was going to approach her earlier but I was still trying to make sure that it was really her. Another person I met was Nina Pineda, who is actually kind of my cousin, and she was nice enough to take a picture with both me and Czar.

Realizing how messy I looked. Why.

Also, the music they would play during breaks was absolutely lovely. It's like they were getting music straight from my iTunes.

As I said earlier in the post, it was one of the most amazing days of my life and I'm definitely looking forward to next year.

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