Camp Bisco: The Experience (2018)

A few months ago, an anonymous reader went through my past posts about Camp Bisco and commented on each one, noting that I was wrong to call it “Bisco” when everyone refers to it as “Camp.” That person, however, is wrong, because I still call it “Bisco” and my friends still call it “Bisco” and if that offends you, sorry. Actually, I’m not even sorry.

In any case, here is what went down at Bisco this year, my third time at this festival. Or click here to get a refresher on last year.

Check-In/Security
My friends and I went the VIP route this year, which meant we were able to arrive early. The process for lining up VIP cars and processing them was incredibly orderly and this was just the beginning of my weekend-long amazement at what a well-oiled machine Bisco has become since they first arrived to this Scranton, PA location 3 years ago.

The Crowd
As far as festivals with heavy electronic lineups go, this crowd was pretty fun and relaxed and non-obnoxious. The only exception to this are the Bassnectar die-hards, who are largely awful (yet again, sorrynotsorry). I saw a huge crowd of them rioting and nearly beating down venue staff because the staff was trying to regulate the crowd going into the VIP section of the main stage during Bassnectar’s set. It was honestly terrifying. Dear everyone: be cool to festival staff. Trying to deal with hordes of people is hard, they’re just doing their best.

Fun Stuff
Water park water park water park! Last year I shamefully did not use the water park at all due to a combination of rain and laziness, and I made sure to correct for that in 2018. I spent considerable time floating in the lazy river, took a number of turns down some water slides, and danced with my feet in the wave pool during both Jai Wolf and Mija’s sets. For the third year in a row I tried and failed to go on the zip line. Maybe 2019 is the year?

Water
Gotta be honest here, the VIP lounges at both main stages had free bottles of water, an incredibly clutch perk that I didn’t know about in advance. Because of this I only infrequently used the free water stations, though they were plentiful.

Layout
Bisco is relatively small for the number of attendees, so it’s not too bad walking back and forth across the festival grounds, although there are some hills that really kill your thighs at the end of a long day. My least favorite part of the Bisco layout is that they emphasize the goings-on at the Renegade Stage, which is not a real festival stage but a stage set up on an RV that has late-night music after the main event is over. The RV lot is FAR from the regular camping area, and trying to go to the Renegade Stage is a mistake I only  made once. While it’s not terrible getting there, the walk back to camp afterward was just toooooo long.

Transportation
You pretty much have to arrive by car, though public transportation can get you decently close to the festival.

Price
I have mixed feelings about this, particularly because I went the VIP route this year. I’m so glad I did because as I get older I’m starting to feel less excited about some of the non-glamorous components of camping festivals, but I’m also not super sure that the VIP price was worth it. VIP at camping festivals pretty much always means you camp in a separate area from General Admission, with nicer bathrooms and showers and easier access to the festival grounds. Though VIP tickets at Bisco allow you early entry and thus you get to pick a great (i.e. close to the entrance) camping spot, there’s no separate VIP camping and as such, no separate bathrooms or showers. VIP was supposed to have separate air conditioned bathrooms inside the venue, but…we did not.

Bathrooms
In my first year at Bisco, I found the indoor bathrooms by the main lodge, and was delighted. Last year, I discovered an additional set of indoor bathrooms, and was further delighted. This year I discovered yet ANOTHER set of indoor bathrooms, and man, the bathroom life was just so great. Indoor plumbing feels so decadent at camping festivals. Are there even more, to-be-discovered indoor bathrooms on the grounds of Montage Mountain? That remains to be seen.

Misc
A I mentioned earlier, the festival is incredibly well-run compared to the disaster that was 3 years ago. They’ve ironed out a ton of kinks, particularly regarding entry and exit, which can be challenging in the mountain environment where no one can camp near their cars. Moving people and their belongings up and down the mountain has become super efficient and I was impressed by how well the organizers have paid attention to the pain points from prior years and fixed them.

Also in the “Misc” category is the VIP perks. In addition to early entry, we had a private BBQ and Disco Biscuits performance the night before the festival, 3 food vouchers, separate viewing areas, the air conditioned lounges with water and charging stations, and some merch. Without separate camping or bathrooms it’s hard to say it was really worth it, but I’m still not sure I’d go back to regular GA after having some of these little bonuses.

Stuff I Sacrificed to the Festival Gods
This is a new section that I should have added to my festival recaps long ago. Every festival involves losing or breaking at least one item, hopefully of minimal importance although 2 years ago at FARM Fest I managed to lose my wallet, keys, food, prescription meds and some other stuff all in one fell swoop.

What I sacrificed to the festival gods at Bisco were my sunglasses, which I loved although they were cheap plastic sunglasses that I got at a bachelorette party. So it was hardly tragic. I bought new, cheap plastic ones from the general store and did not bat an eye at this loss.

I’m not sure what the rest of the summer holds for me, although Bisco was definitely my last big multi-day festival. It’s sad to think that festival season is somehow kinda, sorta, not really over, but I am certainly not sad to be back in a real bed after 4 nights on hilly, rocky ground. Stay tuned for the music recap, coming soon!

Minus Zero: The Music

In my last post I covered all the juicy details of my first time at Minus Zero, so now it’s time to get down to the real business – the music.

Marvel Years
I always refer to Marvel Years as “Pretty Lights junior” because their sounds are pretty similar. And since Pretty Lights doesn’t appear to be touring at all in 2018, MY is the closest I’m going to get. Thankfully, he crushes it every single time. Love me some electro-soul vibes.

Bleep Bloop
Bleep Bloop was okay but I got kind of bored and wandered away to check out the barn for a little bit during this set. Bleep Bloop is solidly in camp “weird bass music,” which I think I just have to be in the right mood for. My main takeaway from having Bleep Bloop on the lineup was having a good 10 minute laugh over the realization of just how many electronic artists’ performer names are a bunch of random syllables. In fact, the only other time I’ve seen Bleep Bloop was at Farm Fest in 2016, and the only comment I wrote about it was, “Bleep Bloop hahah.”

Tipper
Tipper is one of those legendary artists who I have never, and may never, listen(ed) to at home. I cannot name a single Tipper song or album, I’ve only heard his music out and about in the scene, and prior to Minus Zero I had only seen him live once before (Camp Bisco 2015). This was the set I was most excited for, and it was definitely great, but not as great as the Bisco set from 3 years ago. As I was dancing to this set I thought to myself, “This music sounds like outer space.” Take a listen and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you. This also started off a great trend for the weekend of saying, “_____ is the music of ______.”

Jai Wolf
If Tipper is the music of outer space, Jai Wolf is the music of the universe.  This was heightened by the visuals during his set that depicted the outline of a person floating off amongst the stars. I’m sure you remember (just kidding, I know you don’t) that a couple got engaged on stage during Jai Wolf’s Electric Forest set last year (video in that link!). That’s how happy his music is. Not an overwhelming, upbeat kind of joy, but a peaceful contentedness. The video below really captures the #universe quality of Jai Wolf’s sound.

Odesza
Odesza is the music of eternal springtime. They are just so good that I’ve more or less run out of words for how great they are after writing them about so much on this blog. One of my favorite parts of this set was right when it ended, and the whole crowd kept yelling, “ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!” desperate for an encore. Suddenly, recorded music started pumping through the crowd, the #2 sign that a set has ended and there will be no further music (the #1 sign is, of course, when the lights go on in a dark venue). The song blasting through the night was Three 6 Mafia’s, “Ass and Titties.”

Everyone booed, sad that Odesza wouldn’t be returning to the stage. And then my friend yelled, “What?!? Y’all don’t know that new Odesza track ‘Ass and Titties’?!?” The story is probably not that funny in the retelling, but in the moment, particularly considering that “Ass and Titties” is basically the opposite of the kind of music Odesza plays, it cracked me up. The next night, after Zeds Dead was finished and everyone was yelling for an encore, I laughed about it all over again. While the video below from the set closer doesn’t include “Ass and Titties” (how many times can I say that in one blog post? 4? Amazing.), it DOES include some excellent end-of-set pyrotechnics.

Rezz
To be honest, all of day 3 was the music of darkness. Every single artist was heavy and trappy and loud yet, as I mentioned in my last post, the crowd radiated sheer joy. “Ass and Titties” friend (5!) and I saw Rezz around a year and a half ago, except a 2+ hour long line outside Webster Hall meant we missed around 60 minutes of her 75 minute set. So I was pretty pumped to have my first proper Rezz experience. She has absolutely exploded over the last few years and I imagine she has inspired so many women to get into music production (yay!). Rezz won best set of Minus Zero, hands down. The one Minus Zero video I found of her wasn’t great so I’m using a Coachella video instead, but it’s worth noting that the Minus Zero video, which is of her set opener, has someone saying very clearly in the background, “She’s gonna kill it. She’s literally gonna kill me,” as her first track started. Rezz killed us all that night.

Zeds Dead
I did not expect to love this set as much as I did. Half of Zeds Dead couldn’t make it due to a flight problem but the other guy absolutely crushed it. At one point, he turned “Eleanor Rigby” into an absolute dubstep banger, and I was speechless.  In all my years of going to shows and festivals I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone even try to touch The Beatles. Because, I mean, they’re The Beatles. But he went there. Right after the drop in this video (just after the 1:00 mark), someone yells, “OH SHIT!” and that basically sums up how I felt, too.

After Zeds Dead was the absolute longest end-of-festival fireworks display I’ve ever seen. Even after so many hours of angry music, it was really something beautiful. What an incredible way to end the weekend.

In just a few short weeks I’m heading to 2 days of Jazz Fest in New Orleans! I don’t know if I’ll do a full recap but either way I’m super pumped to keep festival season going strong.

Camp Bisco: The Experience (2017)

Camp Bisco was a fun – if slightly damp – weekend. It was my 2nd time at this festival, my first being in 2015, which also happened to be the festival’s first year on their new grounds in Scranton. It was exciting to compare notes and see how much has changed for the better.

Photo from 2015 because I took 0 photos this year whoops

Check-In/Security
We arrived to Bisco around 11pm Wednesday night and were completely set up by 2am. Considering that others who arrived later had to wait as many as 9 (or so I heard) hours in the car to check in, I would say we got super lucky. If you’re heading to Bisco in the future, perhaps the best piece of advice I can offer you is – BUY A PARKING PASS. If you don’t have one you’ll have to park in an off-site lot which can add many many hours to your journey. Don’t get stuck without one. They sell out quickly, so hop on that as soon as tickets go on sale.

Crowd
Bisco has a mix of ravers, cool hippies, and wooks. For the uninitiated, Urban Dictionary defines a wook as:

“A wook is a hippie without any ambition, motivation, or drive other than drugs and image. They’re generally in their twenties, college students (or dropouts) at small-town liberal colleges (such as Appalachian State University) and dependent on an income other than their own. 

Wooks tend to travel in packs, they smell strongly of patchouli and are in constant search for free drugs. One of the defining characteristics is an excessive amount of unkempt hair, usually in dreadlocks. 

It is important to make the distinction between a hippie and a wook. Hippies can generally be viewed as positive, optimistic members of society with an idealistic goal for the betterment of society. Wooks are everything that you’ve been warned about in regard to hippies wrapped into a neat little package.”

Fun Stuff
Bisco has a water park, which is super cool, except for the fact that I didn’t use it. At all. I went on 0 water slides, did not float in the lazy river, and didn’t even put my feet in the wave pool. It rained quite a bit which is part of my excuse – the other part is being too lazy to go back and forth between my campsite and the festival grounds so many times. I really wanted to go on the zip line, but like in 2015, I didn’t make it on that either. SIGH.

Water
Bisco has a few water stations that are poorly marked, and there were definitely fewer water stations than the printed map said there were. This is an area in which they need to do better.

Layout
The layout of this festival is pretty long and narrow, which can create significant bottlenecks at the end of big sets when thousands of people all try to navigate their way to a different stage via narrow pathways. But what I will say is that the indoor lodges with REAL BATHROOMS, and a mostly-covered main stage area more than make up for the inconvenience of the bottlenecks. I should also add that in wintertime these grounds are used as a ski resort, meaning you set your camp up on a hill. So you sleep on a slant. You win some, you lose some.

Transportation
If you don’t have a car I guess you can arrive by a combo of Greyhound and Uber? I’m not sure and I wouldn’t try it. But Bisco is around 2.5 hours from NYC which is excellent (looking at you, Electric Forest,  you 14 hour drive, you).

Price
Pretty standard festival pricing but if you have to rent a car (as my friends and I did), make sure you book that early. The rental car added a good chunk of money to our festival costs.

Misc
I have such mixed feelings about this festival. I had an amazing time both years that I went, but I also feel like I got super lucky both times regarding the time to get set up, getting a camping spot that wasn’t too far up the hill, not getting my belongings stolen (I heard a lot of reports of this), and other factors that really could have brought it down. I might consider getting a hotel if I wanted to go in the future.

ALSO – while I love the amphitheater main stage with concentric half circle rows of seats and a lawn behind it, the significant rain at the festival meant that at some points, tons of people were trying to squeeze in to the seated area because it was covered. At one point, my friend and I were making our way to that stage because it had started to rain. Everyone else had the same idea, and we were maybe 10 feet away from being under shelter when the crowd came to a standstill; the amphitheater was packed and there was no room for anyone else to get in. The rain came down harder and harder, and within a few seconds it felt like someone was dumping a bucket of water on my head. Everyone panicked and started pushing and shoving, trying to get into the amphitheater, and getting caught in that was one of the more terrifying moments of my life. Thankfully my friend and I were near a small alcove that housed a tented beer vendor, and we pushed our way into the alcove away from the crowd, and the bartender let us hide out from the storm and the near-riot under the edge of her tent (and gave us a free beer!). But it sucked, a lot.

Despite the drawbacks, Bisco was far better organized this year than it was 2 years ago. There were orderly lines for things that had previously been chaos, better logistics and more-informed staff (most of the time). Rumors have been floating around that Bisco is not being asked back to this location next year, and if it moves, I’d be skeptical of going to a new venue as it would mean being a guinea pig yet again. But I suppose we’ll see.

This marks the end of my camping festivals for 2017, but I still have some daytime festivals happening (hi Elements!!) because summer isn’t over yet! Onward!

Camp Bisco: The Music (2017)

Camp Bisco has come and gone and I have no more camping festivals for 2017. SAD TIMES. Just like Bisco 2 years ago, I saw some fantastic sets. Highlights below!

Gramatik
This was easily the best set of Bisco. It started off with some of his older works; really mellow, jazzy tracks. It slowly escalated until by the end he was throwing down some crazy dubstep heavy bangers. I’ve never seen a set progress like this and it was so weird but just SO much fun. Most people I talked to agreed it was the best set of the weekend.

GRiZ
This man never disappoints. He opened with the theme song from The Office (a popular choice for many artists seeing as Bisco is in Scranton, PA) as well as a clip of one episode and even though I don’t watch the show I’ve still listened to it on repeat because it’s fire. Check out the first 2 minutes of the video below.

Break Science
Break Science is an electro-hip-hop and funk duo that I haven’t seen in its pure form in years. I’ve recently only seen them with a full band, which is amazing but a different experience somewhat. I was pleased to see just the duo at Camp Bisco, and it was interesting to notice how their jam band side project, called Breaking Biscuits, has really influenced their sound a lot.

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
I did not actually go to this set, but we could hear this stage from our camping spot. I was hanging out under our canopy when all of a sudden I heard Hava Negila playing, and it made my whole day. When my friends got back from the set they told me that when that song came on, everyone went totally nuts dancing like fools, and our other friend said, “Arielle would have liked this.” So true.

Shpongle
This was probably my favorite Shpongle set ever. Which isn’t necessarily saying much because I think I’ve only seen him 4 or 5 times and one of the times I had to leave early because the venue smelled like BO and it was nauseating. Simon Posford is just so beautifully strange. Shpongle is an amazing late night festival act.

Escort
This Brooklyn-based disco band is the best. I was singing their song “Cocaine Blues” for a full day afterwards. Listen below and you will too (though this recorded version is nothing compared to their live performances). Their lead singer is super talented and she’s a total badass.

Pretty Lights
This was such a special set because the band played a ton of rare tracks that don’t come out often. A friend of mine who was also at Bisco but not with me during this set texted me afterward and just wrote, “Holy fuck,” which just about sums it up. It was an amazing way to close out the weekend. If you have an hour and 20 minutes, just put this set on in the background and enjoy the magic. It was incredible.

The Disco Biscuits
Camp Bisco is named for the Biscuits and they play 6 sets throughout the weekend. In 2015 I went to about 1.5 sets, but this year I actually ended up going to 5 (I skipped one to catch Opiuo on a different stage). It was awesome to see how diverse their sets could be and feel the energy of all the diehards in the crowd. The video below is a Muse cover from Bisco 2015, which I will remain obsessed with for all time. And it feels appropriate because I’m finally seeing Muse live next week. EEEEEEE!

Elements: The Experience

And what an experience it is! Even though it’s just a one-day festival, Elements has so much character that it’s really fun and memorable. If you want to read about all the great music I heard that day, clickity click on over this way.

Check-in/Security
The line to get in to Elements was lonnnnng. We waited for around 30 minutes to get up to security, though the actual security process itself was pretty brief. The ticket scanning seemed to also have a pretty short line, unless you were an artist/press/guest list (like myself), in which case you had to wait in line for about 10 minutes. It wasn’t terrible but it was a surprise considering last year’s nearly nonexistent line, although the success of 2015’s event should have cued me in to the fact that it would be busier this time around.

Crowd
BangOn!NYC always throws these outlandish parties, and Elements was no different. Costumes and levity are always encouraged and the people who come out to their events are always pretty lively.

The Fun Stuff
Elements had fun stuff galore! From wakeboarding demos to artists to dancers to art cars to vendors to body painters, it was a bit like being at an awesome carnival. Plus, the waterfront industrial setting and the set production were really top notch.

All photo credits: Jim Simonetti

Water
I must admit, I completely failed to find the one water station that was supposedly on the grounds. Having access to the artists lounge because of my media pass allowed me to go in there and grab a botte of water when needed, but even that ran out towards the end of the day. I tried to get in the beer line to buy a bottle of water but didn’t have the patience for it, so for the last hour or so of the show I was just thirsty.

Layout
As I always say, I love small festivals. How Elements managed to pack 5 stages in such a small space is positively miraculous, especially because it never felt cramped. From the open areas to the pier to the grain silo (which they used as an area to display art and for people to just hang out), BangOn maximized the space incredibly well.

Transportation
Despite being just 1.5 miles from my house, this Red Hook location is actually kind of a pain to get to. The closest subway is far enough away that Elements ran shuttles back and forth, though I used Uber on the way there and my good ol’ legs on the way back. But on the bright side, there aren’t a ton of spaces in New York City where you can really be secluded, so the middle-of-nowhere-ness of it all is sort of a bonus.

Price
Ticket prices varied depending how early (or late) you bought them, ranging from around $55 to $90. Even though the price was severely jacked up from last year (my Excel spreadsheet tells me I spent $32.64 on my 2015 ticket), it’s still completely worth it for what you get.

All in all, for the second year running Elements has proven to be one of the best NYC events of the summer, and definitely my favorite of any BangOn!NYC event I’ve attended. I hope they continue to put on this festival because I love having this awesome day of music so close to home.