Miguel shows off his dancing skills Saturday evening at Landmark. Tom Hausman/The Diamondback
There are too many moving parts in any festival to make the concert-going experience concretely good or bad. The first-ever Landmark Festival, held in West Potomac Park next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, was no different. Here’s a look at at went right and what went wrong.
Good: The details
The festival’s five stages were laid out simply, and the walks between them were delightfully short. Despite this, sound bleeding was kept to a minimum, and each stage and set created its own little atmosphere. The length of the festival itself (12:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. over two days) seemed right, and the late-September calendar placement brought about the best aspects of fall without the cooler temperatures. West Potomac Park proved a good location, and the lack of a campground took away the aspects of sloppiness that might have arisen otherwise. The crowds behaved themselves for the most part, and in all, the event had an organized, somewhat quaint feel to it.
Bad: The lines
The wait for food, drink or a place to relieve yourself was the subject of much frustration, especially on day one of the festival. There was a seemingly interminable wait for the porta-pottys that lined the edge of the grounds and an even longer one for the overpriced adult beverages. The food lines fluctuated but never approached what someone could call “small” on the first day of the festival. Yes, there was a certain what-are-you-gonna-do vibe to it all, especially given the overwhelming crowd, but the lines were much too long to go without mention. Providing more options for food, drink and bathrooms has to be the number-one priority going forward for the event’s organizers.
Good: Lord Huron
Lord Huron’s mid-afternoon set Sunday was a pleasant way to spend an hour. The group provided a range of talents and sounds, and frontman Ben Schneider delivered the perfect chilled-out combination of charisma and cool. Highlights included “Ends of the Earth” and “Fool For Love.”
Full disclosure: A man standing next to me held up a stuffed raccoon on a pole for most of the set, so that could’ve influenced the favorable review. But Lord Huron was still solid.
Good/Bad: Miguel
I love Miguel. Let’s start with that. And he was impressive Saturday, using his one-of-a-kind vocals to swoon the crowd for an hour. Often, his songs dragged on long after their final verse as he played with his voice, but we didn’t mind. But we did mind when his between-track talks went from nice, somewhat uplifting messages about not trying to fit in to cringeworthy sap fests in which he repeated the same point over and over. By the fourth or fifth time Miguel asks you, “What is normal, anyway?” you kind of just want to say, “Not this, Miguel, not this. Play music.”
Good: TV on the Radio
Early in his band’s set, TV on the Radio guitarist Kyp Malone asked the crowd members how they were feeling. The response was a roar with positive connotations.
“I can match that,” Malone said with a laugh.
And match that Malone and his bandmates did. This set might have had the cut-loose festival feel to it more than any other as the group came out with some explosive energy. A sweat-pouring performance of their 2011 song “Repetition” produced more free-spirited dancing on Sunday at 5 p.m. than just about anything not sung by Drake to that point.
Bad: The exit
Leaving any festival is sure to be a mess, but exiting directly into a large city full of tourists made for a bad situation at about 10 p.m. The easiest option for concertgoers was a Metro stop 15 minutes away, and anyone seeking a cab or Uber was stuck waiting on one of the crowded streets nearby. Walking wasn’t really an option unless you were planning on crashing inside the Lincoln Memorial. This is the only downside of the beautiful location and there’s not much that can be done about it, but the whole process was bad enough that by day two an early-exit strategy was necessary.
Good: The cause
The festival was the first event to support the Landmark Campaign for the National Mall, a movement to help restore the area that has not seen a major renovation in nearly 40 years. The most-visited national park in America, the Mall currently faces hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance backlog, and it was nice to know the money spent to have such a good time would go toward such a cause.
