At It Again: one long day at the Virgin Festival

It isn't summer without mud, misadventures and music and so my partner in crime and I were at it again for another round this weekend. Destination: Baltimore, for one long day of the Virgin Festival. It was a tough call on which day to pick with the line-up being what it was, but with limited funds we settled on Saturday for an earful of Amy Winehouse, the Beastie Boys, Incubus, Ben Harper and the Police (with distant wafts of Modest Mouse from the second stage). Good deal.

A walk, metro ride, bus ride, and $60 in cab fare later we rolled up in style, plastic whiskey-filled soda bottles well hidden in our purses, sunscreen soaking into our skin and all the mental preparation we could muster for porta-johns and $9 beers. The most pleasant thing about Virgin Fest was its size- 2 stages (one of which we never had to go to, because all of the good shows were on the mainstage) and about 35,000 bodies, according to Sting's calculations. We managed to get comfortably close to the stage without being touched, danced-on or spilled-on.

The shows were all good to awesome, with Amy Winehouse and Ben Harper stealing the spotlight.

Amy Winehouse is the most compelling female artist to watch, inspiring comparisons to Janis Joplin herself. She looks small and somewhat shy on stage, like she'd rather be singing to you from a couch in a hotel somewhere. She's slightly self-conscious, which makes her all the more beautiful and engaging. Other than swinging her hips back and forth every now and then (and wiping her nose compulsively) all of her movements come from her throat. And the girl can sing, which is more than you can say for so many chics making music today. She barely spoke, smiled only to the phantom offstage that can only be the husband for whom she's singing, and otherwise sang us into a blissful motown groove for one hot hour.

True to form, Ben Harper's live show kicked ass. His albums are all hit-or-miss but there is something about his live show that just brings it. His band can really jam and he puts on a moving, funky show. Burn One Down and With My Own Two Hands were right on. The show didn't quite live up to his Bonnaroo standard (John Paul Jones, where'd you go...) but it worked. Notable: Leon Mobley's thumping bongo solo and Harper's slide guitar playing.

The Beastie Boys were a great time and the Police were variably mediocre and kind of awesome. At least I got to actually listen to the concert this time (let's not talk about last time) and their classics are fun to hear live. I was disappointed with the way they did Roxanne (the encore I waited all night to hear)- it was a little too mellow for that song- but all in all worth it.

The journey back was a novel in itself, but taught me many things. Namely, downtown Baltimore is a scary place at night, all transportation is apparently free in Baltimore, a light rail is nothing like a subway, and Amtrak can sometimes feel like heaven. After the sweat, the whiskey, the beer, the crabcakes & fries, the great music and the long way home, Virgin fest was good times.