I spent a week trying to organize thoughts on Voodoo, generally along the lines of costume/production/show biz vs. something more grounded/musical/”honest”, and that’s a subtext that’s hard to ignore when you’ve got as much hamburger helper as Kiss and the Flaming Lips brought to the stage. (Not to lump the two too together – if both bands went to the same pantry, the Flaming Lips came away with the stuff to make something for Iron Chef Japan, and Kiss got the goods to super-size a Big Mac Combo.)

But overall pronouncements inevitably miss more than they cover and impose one narrative where many exist. Instead, here’s some observations/thoughts/high points/low points:

TribeCon, a tech conference that piggybacked on Voodoo, started the festival on a positive note as a network of activists and others united through social media and technology discussed how to use tech to bring about physical world activity. During a panel discussion on Katrina lessons and how we can better prepare for the next one, Brian Oberkirsch said that in addition to evacuation plans and provision plans, we now know we’ll need to work out communication plans. As a media guy, I hate to hear discussions of citizen journalists reporting via Twitter, FB, etc. – I like my job – but it’s true, and as he pointed out, the best thing to do is get information out so that it can be scrutinized, corrected, challenged, etc. As we all learned, we can’t count on the mainstream media to perform those functions.

I’ve heard quibbles with ticket prices – and will always hear ticket price quibbles forever and ever, amen – and grumbles about Voodoo’s headliners, but as an event, Voodoo seemed to realize its potential most perfectly this year. The urban Burning Man/freak festival vibe meant simply being on the grounds was always interesting, and the booking was distinctive, even on the SoCo/WWOZ Stage. It has often seemed like an attempt to pull the Jazz Fest crowd by recreating the Gentilly Stage at Voodoo. This year, the acts on it would make sense at Jazz Fest, but they often represented the more progressive end of the fest’s booking. It’s a shame the mud moat around it was particularly daunting.

I missed Down, so I probably missed the heaviest set of Voodoo, but Justice had to be a close second for sheer aggressive sound and relentless pounding. At first, I was unsure if a DJ set from Justice was what I wanted, but in retrospect, hearing them remix their own work and segue it into other songs and beats was likely better than any recreation of the group’s [Cross] album. It was also entertaining in a perverse way watching two guys chain-smoke their way through an hour-and-a-half of knob-twiddling. Unfortunately, the weather screwed up any planned coordination between the light-up balloons near the main stage and Justice’s set. Perhaps to address the promised interaction, three of the large balloons were tossed to the audience, but their weight and the wind meant they rolled to the back of the crowd within minutes and were never seen again.

Eminem’s set was fine, but it never caught fire because it was broken into segments – new album stuff, D12 stuff, medleys of older songs. It was also hard not to notice that when he sang, the volume and tone of his vocals changed, and where there was once clearly one voice, he sounded double or triple-tracked. And sometimes his voice came out when his mic wasn’t near his mouth. Ventriloquism, I guess.

The talk of Sunday was the Pogues and Shane MacGowan’s sad performance. By now, MacGowan’s history of onstage drunkenness is well-documented, but he seemed in particularly raw form Sunday. Evidently he’d gone AWOL in the days before Voodoo and when he showed up onstage, he was curtly received by the band. He staggered around and could only manage a couple of songs at a time before he had to stumble back to the wings for a breather and a smoke. Still, when he sang “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” the emotional authority in his voice carried the moment, despite his failed struggle to remember the words. The moment and much of his performance also had a sad drama as he struggled to continue to be heard despite being toothless and treating the language like a bowl of oatmeal, and you could imagine old guys in Irish pubs who rouse out of their soused state to break your heart with a song, then return to his mess. Unfortunately, by the end, MacGowan had passed that point and sat onstage, head hanging and mic about to fall out of his hands, unable to keep up with the band in a song that required unison singing. For the closing “Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” he simply slurred the melody, not even bothering to try to chop up the melody into word-like segments. It was hard to imagine that we’ll see him again, but a friend said he’s seen him worse, and that the thought, “This is the last time I’ll see this guy,” has been crossing people’s minds for the last 20 years.

Glad I saw: Ledisi (who played a great set for the smallest audience she’s likely seen in years Friday afternoon at 1:30), Alejandro Escovedo (who played his heaviest set since Buick MacKane days), MyNameIsJohnMichael (particularly his rearrangement of “Breakaway”), the Vettes (I admire anyone willing to commit to his/her thing and do it well, even when it’s ’80s new wave dance pop), the Drive-By Truckers (with all members in Ace Frehley makeup), and the Happy Talk Band (who sounded epic at times. I wish more people than Coheed and Cambria and the Mars Volta fans wanted epic songs). 

The attempt to break the record for largest gathering of zombies came up short – 1,700 vs. the 4,600 needed. But our effort was even more uphill than we knew. That day, a friend told me that a gathering in Los Angeles the weekend before pulled 6,800 zombies. Still, zombies added a lot to Voodoo, and next year we can show L.A. who’s really undead.