Yesterday we went to the Rock the Garden event presented by the Walker Art Center and 89.3 The Current. Artists on the bill included Andrew Bird, The New Pornographers, Cloud Cult and Bon Iver.

The performances were good, but the setup was awful. They shut down Vineland Place and set up the stage across from where the old Guthrie Theater stood. It was pointed east towards downtown, but there were several problems with that: people in the street had to look right into the setting sun, most of the food vendors were also set up in that area and a large part of the crowd sat on the hill to the south, which had terrible sound.

We missed most of the Bon Iver set waiting in line – first to pay at the automated parking kiosk and then to get in to the actual performance area. Once inside, it was wall-to-wall people everywhere. This was made worse by a large fenced off VIP area that hardly had anyone in it. The only uncrowded area was the aforementioned hillside, which would have been perfect if they had any speakers pointed that way. I’m sure that was to appease the neighbors, but it would make the venue so much better.

Most interesting performance thing we saw (before we left early) were the two painters in Cloud Cult creating new artwork during the performance that they auctioned off afterward. Never seen anything like that before…