Second Fest - Hawk's Version

Well, to quote myself from an earlier post, I think that in total SecondFest, quite frankly sucks ass. I stand by everything that Jelly references below with regards to time zones, confusion, and oddities, with the exception of the fact that my Quicktime works so I haven't confined Apple to one of the lower levels of hell. The little bit of the festival that I was able to participate in today started out with a few fun things, where I found some bands I liked in the Indie tent, and also enjoyed the last few songs of the Wired Daisies show. It was an interesting take on other live shows, as the bands were streamed live from the studio via large movie screens placed on the stage. But really we were just killing time until the Pet Shop Boys were scheduled to take the mainstage at 3 SL time.

It is a classic case of expectations far outshining the execution. It is hard to think of SL in the same vein as Pong, but in a lot of ways they are breaking ground in this new area of pulling live bands and performances into a virtual world. I should expect some hiccups, and issues along the way. All that being said though, the Pet Shop Boys performance REALLY SUCKED. First off, let me say that it was a cop-out to splice together concert footage and play that as if it was a live performance. Secondly, the fact that the video was playing without sound sort of impacted the overall experience (dripping sarcasm and understatement.) Thirdly, there was a group of backup dancers that were hilarious since they used people who clearly had no idea how to navigate in SL. Maybe they recruited professional dancers, instead of hiring a few fat guys who can play SL in their underwear and throw on a pretty AV and wow the crowd? Regardless, it was at least providing some comic relief watching the girls as they plowed through each other and flying around the stage in an attempt to take up their positions to just stand there and do absolutely nothing. Sort of seems like they should have been dancing, but I dunno I always expect too much.

There is huge potential upside for this type of collaboration and event in the future, but unfortunately we will have to wait for a future event to deliver on the potential. I hope that the next round makes the improvements necessary to deliver on the goods.