My second day at Mamby got off to a rough, late start on Saturday. I had to attend a memorial service for my uncle in Indiana early in the day. Wanted to get to the beach in time for Gallant’s set at 4:45. Sadly I got in the VIP line around 5, and due to what people in the line were calling a ticketing issue, I didn’t get in until 5:26. Caught about a minute of Gallant’s last song, which sounded amazing, so I wasn’t off to a great start.
Most of what I wanted to see was on the Park Stage so I headed that direction to see how the crowd was over there. It was a lot bigger than the previous day’s crowd. Surprisingly, a lot of them were there to see Betty Who. She put on a fun set that kept the audience energized despite some issues with her monitors (she kept looking over at the sound guy and yelling that she couldn’t hear anything).
There was a pretty big exodus after her set and I got out ahead a bit and checked out a song from Mayer Hawthorne’s set. The beach seemed much less Full than the day before. Still, Hawthorne had them dancing in the sand. His funky jams were a stark contrast to pretty much everything else during the day and I think that contributed to how much folks were enjoying it.
I stopped by the DJ tent just to see what that was all about. Definitely not my scene, but it was a full house. It was hot as hell in there and people were sweatily raving up a storm to whomever was DJ’ing at that time. Seems like a ton of fun if you’re into that kind of thing.
I got back to Park for Lupe Fiasco and managed to get fairly close. I would’ve hung out on the VIP riser but the same group of people were hanging on the rails the whole day and I wouldn’t have been able to see. Lupe came out and chatted with the crowd about Ramadan and how he couldn’t eat or drink anything until the sun went down, so if he died on stage we’d know why. Then he hit the audience with bangers galore before breaking up the show with a much-too-long competition where he divided us in half to see which side would get more hyped when the bass dropped. He brought it back by having Matt Santos come out to sing “Superstar,” and then he closed with “The Show Goes On.”
Santigold was the main attraction and we were all packed in nice and tight by the time she went on (schedule change pushed her from 830-945 to 845-10, no idea why). Her 99 Cents is one of the best records to come out this year, and the live show was every bit as amazing. She did tracks from that, including a great version of “Big Boss Big Time Business” and “Can’t Get Enough Of Myself,” as well as classics like “Unstoppable.” Her live show is one of the best around, so if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to get out to one.
