This past Friday (August 8th) I had the pleasure of attending the first day of the All Points Festival at Liberty State Park, NJ with the wife and Mr. Jon Sykes. I haven’t been to a festival (much less a concert for adults) in quite some time, so I was pretty excited to go. Of course that excitement level was cranked up a few notches since both Underworld and Radiohead were playing, back to back no less.

APW was being promoted as a sort of “green” festival. Attendees were encouraged to use mass transit and if you wanted to drive you had to obtain a special carpool permit. We had opted for the ferry route. But since we were coming for southern Jersey, our trip consisted of 1 hour car ride, 40 minute ferry ride and yet another 15 minute ferry ride. From what I’ve read by other attendees, the ferry was the way to go.

Aside from a couple 5 - 10 minute rain showers, the weather was perfect. The view great as well with both the Manhattan skyline and Lady Liberty in the background. Since it was a “Music and Arts” festival, there were various art installations and performances scattered around the grounds.

The festival itself was well organized, but there was one aspect that felt a bit too restrictive. In order to purchase alcohol you needed to get your special “over the age of 21” wristband. Your wristband had 5 tabs on it and that was your drink limit. Each time you purchased a drink a tab was removed. I actually thought that was a good idea and it seemed to work because I didn’t see anyone acting out of line all day. The downside was you weren’t allowed out of the designated drinking areas. Which I can sort of understand since they were probably trying to prevent you from passing out drinks to your underage friends. But the issue was the drinking areas were fenced in and the view of the view of the entire festival and performances were blocked by the fences. You started feeling like a second class citizen for drinking a beer.

We had opted for the more expensive VIP tickets which included access to air conditioned lounge, more beverage choices and special VIP viewing platform in front of the main stage. But apparently the VIP viewing platform access didn’t include Radiohead since everyone with the special VIP bracelets got kicked off after Underworld for the “real” VIPs with orange bracelets. While the walled off beer area irritated me, this angered me. What’s the point of buying “VIP” tickets if you get access to the VIP area for only select times?

Because of our (early) access to the VIP viewing platform, we stuck mostly to the main stage performances. The Go Team!, who I’ve never head of, were pretty awful. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by Michael Franti and Spearhead. They had a great sound and energy. Next was the New Pornographers. I had just gotten acquainted with their music before the festival, but their live performance blew away anything I had listened to previously.

I’ve never seen Underworld live but I’ve been a fan for quite some time. While I was super excited to see them, I was a little disappointed to find out their set would be during the daylight because of everything I’ve heard and seen about their light show. But guess what, it didn’t matter. Their sound was tremendous live and their visuals carried through despite the daylight.

Then there was Radiohead. As great as all the other performances were throughout the day, they all seemed like opening acts compared to Radiohead. Both their visuals and musical performance were spectacular. The setlist was comprised mostly of their In Rainbows material with interjections from their back catalog, which was perfect. The only downside was that I had to leave before the encore in order to make my second ferry home.

Overall I felt the festival was great (even if I only went the first day). It was well planned, not over crowded and the bands had decent set lengths. I’m hoping it does really become an annual event and based on the other reviews I’ve read, they should have no problem making that happen.

I’ve put together a flickr set of the photos and videos I took throughout the day. I didn’t get any of the Radiohead set because I was too enthralled with the performance to take out my camera. But my cohort Mr. Sykes got some great photos and videos of the performance.