Hangout Music Festival 2011 | Review | Pics

Hangout Music Festival :: 05.20.11-05.22-11 :: Gulf Shores, AL

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Ah, summer vacation. Swaying palms frame the cloudless blue sky. A salty breeze cools your skin while you dig your toes into fine white sand. Hot sun, cold drinks, boats, bikinis and your best buds. Sounds just about right doesn’t it? Now, add one of the best lineups the 2011 festival season has to offer and you’ve got the Hangout .

In only their second year, the organizers of the Hangout Music Fest achieved every event promoter’s dream - a sell-out. 35,000 festival fans descended on Gulf Shores, Alabama, a long-time summer vacation destination that is still reeling from the effects of a painfully slow economic recovery and the devastating Deepwater Horizon spill that occurred just a few weeks before last year’s inaugural festival. And although the 2010 fest drew less than half of this year’s numbers, it was more than enough for the word to get out that a music festival on the beach = best idea EVER.

Friday

The linear layout of the fest [a similar but thoroughly stretched out version of last year’s] consisted of two massive stages facing each other, approximately one-third of a mile apart, and flanking a neatly ordered configuration of vendors, carnival rides, and various V.I.P. accoutrement, as well as three more venues. The Boom Boom Tent hosted the first act [and first highlight] of the weekend, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe . Folks who were just arriving were treated to a feast of funky grooves from Karl D’s soulful sax. A little further down, the Grooveshark Stage featured a duo of sunny, beach-friendly acts from Easy Star Records: Cas Haley , a big ball of fun with a huge and heroic voice, who ended his set with “Got My Mojo Workin’;” and the Easy Star All-Stars , the reggae collective that brought us island adaptations of Pink Floyd and Radiohead, among others. Covers from those two iconic acts, including “Money” and “Paranoid Android,” were interspersed with dread-bobbing originals from their recent release, First Light .

Seattle songstress Brandi Carlile opened the Surf Style Stage at the eastern end of the beach.

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, “The Pretender” won three Grammy’s in 2008, Best Rock Song, Record of the Year, and Best Hard Rock Performance. While Dave Grohl never cites specifics, he has said that the lyrics deal with the feeling at the time of political dissatisfaction. He says of the lyrics, “Everyone’s been fucked over before and I think a lot of people feel fucked over right now and they’re not getting what they were promised.

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