THE HOODWINK FESTIVAL BROUGHT DA OLD SKEWL JAMZ

Some of you may have heard about a festival that went on last weekend in NJ called The Bamboozle. It’s basically a lot of neon scenepunk bands, and stuff like Paramore or Weezer. But there were some surprises thrown in there this year like Drake, MGMT, and my fav…Ke$ha! Woot. I’d totally go to it. In fact, I did a few years ago. But nowadays I usually don’t feel like paying for it….or traveling to NJ, so…no dice. Anyway, in recent years, The Bamboozle started doing this thing where the day before the ACTUAL festival, they do this other thing called the Hoodwink Festival where bands do entire sets of another bands’ songs. Most of you probably already heard about how Emmure did up the Rage Against the Machine jams, and we all know how much you kids hate Emmure, so I won’t bother getting into it. But a couple other groups I happen to like participated in this schtick too, and I was stoked to see that they had picked other bands I like for their sets. Here’s what we got:



A band called Say Anything took on the Misfits. And as much as I like Say Anything, I was a little disappointed in how this Hoodwink set turned out. Covering the Misfits is nothing new, plenty of bands have done it before. But I see it as somewhat of an EXPERIENCE to do so. You gotta get the fuck into to. Get into character. Max Bemis isn’t really bringing any new life to these songs, so he might as well Danzig it up. Or maybe just dress in costume…? Rock the devilock or SOMETHING. …no? Ok fine. Since most of you probably aren’t going to dig this, I invite you to check out Say Anything’s song “Hate Everyone.” It’s catchy.

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Then there’s nerd rockers Motion City Soundtrack. MCS put out their debut album I Am the Movie in 2003, and it was pretty much the most fun, catchy power pop album I’ve heard in a long time. Then again, I don’t even think I actually own that much power pop, but regardless…it’s a good album. I still dig it. Motion City are still fun guys, and put on one heck of a live show. When I heard their Hoodwink set would be devoted to Nine Inch Nails songs, I was immediately interested to see how they’d pull it off since the two bands sound nothing alike. Their performance of “Head Like a Hole” is above, and I’m not gonna say it’s awesome, or even bad, it’s just sort of…cute. Amirite? Good job, fellas. I appreciate your balls.

You can check out the rest of the Hoodwink setlists here. Would you ever like to see a band do an entire set of covers of another band? What would your ideal Hoodwink Festival look like?

-Elise