Day 3 of the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Madness Music Festival ended with a concert featuring Melanie Fiona and Ms. Lauryn Hill. Unfortunately I missed Melanie Fiona’s performance – a miscommunication about the shuttle service, my fault – sigh, but I did make it in plenty of time to see Ms. Lauryn Hill.
I looked around the crowd to see total hypeness…like super super hypenessm and then realized that the drinks were on Red Stripe! Well thank ya very much!
Ms. Lauryn Hill’s DJ kept the tunes pumping with classic hits mixed in with her own until she graciously hit the stage a little past the designated time, but we weren’t waiting several hours, maybe a half hour. That’s progress right?
Her performance, well, was different than what I was expecting. I was hoping for a more sing-a-long type of session, but instead you had completely different versions of songs that you had grown to know every inflection by heart. In fact, one person thought it just sounded like she was itching to do a new album as none of the songs sounded anything like the original versions.
Now did they sound good? Yes. I loved the more rhythmic African beats, and the fact that most of the songs were upbeat. But when you’re singing Ex-Factor to a fast beat…it just messed up all of my memories, but I guess I gotta move on and let her evolve.
The other issue I had with the performance is that Ms. Lauryn couldn’t seem to let the producer side let the singer side take over. She was constantly directing, flailing her arms towards the singers or the musicians, that it took away from the performance. I almost closed my eyes as to not be distracted by it. But there was something magical about the night though. Being in the open air, with only her voice echoing through the trees. The intimacy of the crowd and only being a few steps away from the stage at any moment.
Unfortunately the magic suddenly came to an end as the show was abruptly cut off. Yes, they cut legendary Ms. Lauryn Hill off!! Eeeks! Due to city ordinances and volume laws, they had to shut the whole thing down and shuffle people back to their cars or onto shuttles back to the other parts of the island. Booooo. Fortunately, Melanie and Ms. Lauryn took the time afterwards to mingle a bit with fans and take a few pictures which somewhat made up for an encore. Okay not really, but it was nice of them nonetheless.
So that was year two of the MV Summer Madness Music Festival. I have to say they bit off a very large chunk and maybe were slightly more ambitious than they should have been, but no one who ever started doing something great, ever did so without taking risks. I commend them on bringing together such a great lineup together and hope that they learn from the issues they had this year to only make it even better next year. I also hope that they consider doing less events, to allow more time for people to enjoy the island. I also hope they think about tapping into whatever else is going on on the island to allow for maximum attendance at all events.
I can’t wait to see what they have going for next year. If you missed out, mark your calendars for the 2nd week in August 2015 and start looking for home rentals – like now!
You can also see more photos on my Instagram.
