It’s a gargantuan journey from Manhattan to Coney Island at the southern tip of Brooklyn, but the Village Voice‘s sixth annual music festival on Saturday (July 15) featured a perfectly fun lineup that made the trip well worth it. The day’s sentiments were mixed: Eddie Argos of U.K.-based Art Brut encouraged festival-goers to forget past loves and move on with their lives in the middle of “Emily Kane” — a song about Argos’ adolescent love hang-ups — while NYC’s Scissor Sisters meditated on falling from the Cyclone, the historic and towering wooden rollercoaster, smack onto Coney Island’s Stillwell Avenue. The disco five-piece, though, then told everyone to “let fucking go” and dance like Kevin Bacon in Footloose just before frontman Jake Shears stripped to his skivvies.
The other acts on the eclectic bill — Stars, Man Man, She Wants Revenge, the Stills, Tapes ‘n Tapes, the Cribs Serena Maneesh, Deadboy & the Elephantmen, and more — may have kept their clothes on, but they delivered stellar performances for the sea of attendees who willingly braved the rain, the sun, and the hotdog lines longer than the subway line. STORY AND PHOTOS BY JULIA SIMON
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