The promised Wanderland

Call it our local organizers’ brave attempts at recreating the three-day Coachella Music and Arts festival at Indio Valley in Manila. (God knows you’ll have to stay up late the minute tickets drop, have two laptops and two pairs of able hands ready to do the clicking, and then book your flight and accommodations stat.) Or perhaps, Tomorrowland, Belgium’s three-day nonstop party that resonates with the EDM, Avicii-levels music-loving set. Whatever the case, last Saturday’s Wanderland 2013, while not the first of its kind and an admitted slow burn during the day, climaxed well into a series of heart-pounding mosh pits and music appreciation by nightfall and proved to everyone that it was the little dog that inspiringly could. “This is the best damn festival I’ve seen in ages,” an intoxicated festival-goer was overheard slurring to his companion while lining up at one of the booths. From my personal experience, this, ladies and gents, is truth in intoxication.

Given that Malasimbo has already established its bearings as an annual music and arts festival outside Manila, we once predicted that the trend would someday reach landfall a little closer to home. Vis-à-vis a one-fourth-filled Manila Music Festival last year that brought the indie-loving AB crowd out of hiding, last Saturday’s Wanderland, spearheaded by an entirely different group, a one-year-old Karpos Multimedia, was packed.

With cutting-edge design that ran across-the-board from posters to the LED wall, live art being conducted by the likes of Anjo Bolarda x Martojak, and Thursday Room, and of course, the right mix of local and international acts, Wanderland was a case study in quality, gimmickry, and marketing done right. Just about everybody from Anne Curtis to her little sister Jasmine were Instagramming posters of the event weeks before. The festival brought together scenesters, music lovers, and festival-goers from all walks of life at the newly opened Globe Circuit Events Ground in Makati which traded in the rough and tumble of harsh sands for a perfectly manicured riverside lawn, adjacent to a pleasant-smelling Pasig River. Very surprising!

MYX VJ Chino Lui Pio relates, “The location and ambiance were fantastic. It really felt like you were at a festival overseas.” Chino arrived about the time American alternative rock band Nada Surf was slated to perform — a ‘90s outfit responsible for the coming-of-age track Popular. Meanwhile, actress Jasmine Curtis-Smith, who arrived around the time female-fronted quintet Tully on Tully was serenading the audience, felt like she was lying on clouds all day and floating around beautiful scenery. She adds, “I enjoyed the vocals of Dougy the most,” referring to Temper Trap’s lead vocalist Dougy Mandagi who closed the evening with Fader, Need Your Love and Sweet Disposition in his signature falsetto. Interestingly enough, everyone mistook him for Filipino. He is Indonesian. “I get that a lot,” he related at the press con.

My version of Jasmine’s Temper Trap, on the other hand, were the Neon Trees, a group that literally made me lose my voice and left me screaming my lungs out and jumping up and down to Animal and Everybody Talks — both tracks having been covered on Glee, and reasons for catapulting the American band into summer soundtrack and pop music ubiquity. Lead singer Tyler Glenn made an incremental striptease out of his adrenaline-fueled performance, throwing everything from his Doc Martens to neon glow sticks to the audience, to everyone’s delight. Some friends of mine, on the other hand, were swaying to Armi Millare’s cool chick sounds with her OPM group Up Dharma Down. I guess, that’s the thing about music festivals — there’s really something in it for everybody.

Independent retailer Kix Suarez even relates that his favorite part of Wanderland was not so much the musical acts or the Coachella-esque environs but that there was a Velcro wall onto which you could launch your body. “Finally got to cross that off my bucket list,” he relates. Meanwhile, artist Soleil Ignacio of Thursday Room relates, “Even though we were under the hot sun the whole time, it was worth it seeing the end result and all the people taking pictures with our wall.”

Our voices lost, our feet wrecked, and our festival wear ravished in sweat, this year’s Wanderland was all sorts of awesome. In between sets, the organizers played music from other bands and hinted at a Wanderland music and arts festival in 2014. With a praiseworthy freshman attempt, now that should be #totes exciting!