By J. Freedom du Lac and David Malitz
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com
Monday, August 6, 2007

BALTIMORE, Aug. 5 -- And the bands played on. And on.

A music festival isn't a sprint, it's an ultra-marathon. On Sunday -- the second and final day of the Virgin Festival at Pimlico Race Course -- the music kept coming, from every corner of the 140-acre track. It began at high noon (higher for some than others, this being a rock festival) and moved along at a brisk pace as nightfall and rainfall arrived simultaneously.

"Feeling good!" declared Scott Weiland, the sinewy, shirtless frontman for Velvet Revolver. "Rain or [expletive] shine!"

The two-day rock bacchanalia featured countless iterations of rock-and-roll: art rock, indie rock, rap rock, electro rock and dance rock, along with hardcore, post-hardcore, emo, power pop and nu-metal. But Velvet Revolver played the sort of rock that doesn't take a qualifier. Built on power chords and driving rhythms and played in 4/4 time, it was straight-ahead rock, which was to be expected from a supergroup featuring three former members of Guns N' Roses along with Weiland, formerly of Stone Temple Pilots.

Front and center was Slash, still wearing that top hat and playing muscular, rhythmic guitar leads. He took blistering solos early and often, whether on Velvet Revolver originals ("Slither," "She Builds Quick Machines") or covers ("Vaseline," from Stone Temple Pilots). Though the Guitar Hero video game franchise had a major presence at the festival, it was refreshing to see the real thing, live and in person.

Alt-rock behemoths Smashing Pumpkins have always had a giant sound, so it wasn't surprising that the group's big-and-bigger songs translated well to the setting. Closing out the weekend on the main stage, Billy Corgan's power chords were crunchy and his solos crisp. If only he could do something about that braying voice.

The second day of the second U.S. Virgin Festival drew 32,000 people to Pimlico, according to a concert spokeswoman. (The venue could have accommodated nearly twice as many.) The lineup wasn't solely made up of rock bands. Among Sunday's biggest draws was the legendary hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, which opened with a boastful warning: "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin to [bleep] Wit." (Perhaps that explains why promoters couldn't force the Staten Island collective to stick to the schedule; Wu-Tang came on more than 10 minutes late.)

The group fought through a succession of microphone malfunctions, but with eight rappers onstage there was always someone to pick up the slack. Method Man and the RZA were most often at the forefront, with Method serving as the party man during songs and RZA dishing out instructions between songs. The most talented rappers in the Clan -- Raekwon, GZA and Ghostface Killah -- took a back seat for most of the set, but the fans weren't necessarily looking for a lesson in lyrical perfection or rapid-fire flow.

Before the rain fell, Pimlico had become something of a giant pigpen, with trash scattered all over the infield and dust everywhere.

"Dust clouds!" yelped Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie after kicking out the jams -- which got the kids to kick up the dirt. "Sweet!"

Panic! dressed down for its appearance, eschewing its usual over-the-top stage show for something more low-key and streamlined. Maybe that's because it was the most misplaced band on the bill. (It's hard to imagine the young emo-rock quartet sharing many fans with Smashing Pumpkins, Wu-Tang Clan or the bevy of current hipster favorites who fleshed out the Sunday lineup.) Still, the crowd seemed to respond favorably to such songs as the catchy "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," which followed the Panic! formula of wordy verses leading to soaring choruses.

Bad Brains singer Paul "H.R." Hudson attempted to connect with the crowd by bringing a gift: At the start of the band's set, he threw a loaf of bread into the audience. Perhaps it was a preemptive peace offering, as the area in front of the stage was about to become a war zone, what with Bad Brains playing that pulverizing hardcore punk of theirs. Earl Hudson's hyper-speed drumming, Gary "Dr. Know" Miller's savage, metallic riffs, Darryl Jenifer's thundering bass lines and H.R.'s manic braying incited the crowd, particularly on such songs as "Banned in D.C."

The Brazilian electro-rock group Cansei de Ser Sexy added a splash of color to the festival, decorating the stage with dozens of balloons and spraying the crowd with rainbow-colored confetti. The band's playful, percolating songs (about alcohol, holidays and sex) were bold and bright. And then there was the outfit worn by the group's irrepressible singer, Lovefoxxx: She had on her Sunday best -- a spangly, form-fitting Technicolor bodysuit.

The riveting Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen Orzolek wore a flashy getup, too, prancing onto the stage in a tinsel-covered cape. She also wore a mask, which hid her smeared mascara. The caterwauling singer known as Karen O is a freakish force of nature who dances, twitches, preens, skips, hops, glowers, shrieks, strips, cackles and hurls her microphone onto the stage. And that was just during the rhythmic stomp of "Cheated Hearts." While Orzolek gave the Yeah Yeah Yeahs their edge and star power, the Brooklyn art-rock band's musical teeth came courtesy Nick Zinner's serrated riffs and manufactured, manipulated guitar sounds. Those included whale calls, police sirens, squeaky wheels and fingers running over freshly Windexed glass.

Also for the guitar geeks: Explosions in the Sky, which performed instrumental progressive-rock odysseys -- cinematic, symphonic epics powered by the dreamy, chiming guitars of Munaf Rayani and Mark Smith, who played twin leads. Their lines surged and swelled before, well . . . exploding. The effect was gorgeous and gripping, but the music also became repetitive, one song spilling into the next, which sounded like the second one before it, etc.

Aiden attempted to stand out by artificially raising the testosterone level around the stage. The Seattle band landed a spot on the festival schedule by winning a contest. But singer wiL (no, not a typo) Francis wasn't happy just to be here. He wanted chaos in the crowd beneath him. So he demanded a mosh pit for the post-hardcore band's final song, "I Set My Friends on Fire."

"This is not for the faint of heart," he said. "If you have a heart condition, you might want to step to the back of the audience." The human battering rams in the crowd spent the next few minutes crashing into each other while Aiden played a hard, heavy song full of bruising riffs and howling, guttural vocals.

Other artists took a more restrained approach, with varying degrees of success.

Spoon has one of the best indie-rock discographies of the past decade, with this year's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" serving as the Austin quartet's crown jewel. Full of intricate twists and turns, the songs succeed because of their subtlety and precision. But subtlety and precision aren't exactly the hallmark of a great festival performance, so Spoon's set was a bit of a letdown. Early technical problems didn't help much -- frontman Britt Daniel didn't even play his guitar during "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" because he couldn't get it in tune. "That's the problem with daytime shows," he said. "I can't see what my tuner's telling me." When Spoon filled out its sound on "Black Like Me" and "The Beast and Dragon Adored," the band sounded as vital as it does on record.

Regina Spektor didn't worry about fleshing out her sound. In the middle of the afternoon, the Russian-born, New York-based singer wandered onto the vast expanse of the main stage alone and immediately began to sing a cappella -- her voice full, rangy and completely entrancing. It was a courageous move given the size of the crowd and venue. And she never did bring out a band, instead providing her own accompaniment -- mostly on the piano, via supple melodies with odd meters. All the better to showcase her vocal quirks, as Spektor spiked her humorous, sharply rendered character studies and narratives with yelps, warbles, moans, chirps and glottal stops (as on her unlikely hit, "Fidelity"). She also sang a little bit in Russian. But Spektor's pleasant, easily digestible music apparently wasn't quite captivating enough, as more than a few people talked through the performance.

The first hour in the dance tent was the antithesis of the ultra-professional manner in which things went down Saturday. Local underground fave Dan Deacon made a pre-set plea for a D battery, which he needed for his keyboard. There was almost certainly no other act here that asked the audience for technical support. And, in fact, there was no act like Deacon, period. This isn't a guy playing instruments. It's a man-child setting up samplers and keyboards in the crowd, getting everyone to gather around him and then bashing out hyperactive electro-jams. Deacon was like a cult leader, persuading the enthusiastic crowd to chant "Horsey, horsey!" close to a hundred times.

Pittsburgh mash-up artist Girl Talk (real name: Greg Gillis) kept the warehouse party vibe going with a set that saw 20 of Gillis's friends get up onstage to dance -- thus striking fear into the sound crew that was looking to protect hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Girl Talk seemed to be custom-made for today's short-attention-span society, throwing nearly 100 popular songs into his set. He even used songs by other festival artists, using tracks by Wu-Tang Clan, the Police and Smashing Pumpkins in rapid-fire fashion. It was fun, but it was also pure novelty, as Gillis is a pony who seems to have just one trick.