Recap: I Love This City Festival @ Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre, 5.27.2012

A few weeks ago Chase, who has been contributing to this site as SD at 140bpm, convinced me that since I wasn't asked to cover Lightning In A Bottle this year, that I should at least participate in the "I Love This City" tour. I'm down to go the extra mile for this site and if that means an afternoon of DJs at a festival, well, after IDentity and Coachella, I can say while you're not gonna catch me rolling or sporting a tutu, or even fist pumping when the bass drops (no matter how many beers you pour down my throat), I'll still do my best to cover events and make every effort to have a good time while doing it. Read more after the jump. (note: I started this post the day after the show, but life got in the way. Sometimes that happens.)

I Love This City Festival was a LiveNation electronic music event held over the Memorial day weekend in both San Diego and San Francisco. Originally scheduled for two days at Petco Park, the festival was downsized and moved to Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre, but that doesn't mean that it was underattended by any means. The lineup for San Diego included A-Trak, Madeon, The Crystal Method (DJ set), 12th Planet, The Twelves, Cookie Monsta, MiMOSA, and many more, with SKRILLEX topping the bill.

Gates for the event opened at 12:30, but we opted to arrive later in the afternoon. I'm still getting used to electronic festivals from a blogger's perspective. We're allowed to shoot photos for the first 15 minutes of each set, and there's no time between DJs, so I kept missing those 15 minute windows of time until I finally made a plan to be at Wolfgang Gartner's stage at 8pm. Before that, we caught A-Trak and I was actually quite blown away watching his hands work in the closeup video projected on the screens on each side of the stage. We saw Cookie Monsta at the parking lot stage and I'd say his mixing was my personal favorite of the night. We ran around, stage hopping until I waited for Wolfgang. Before he started, Madeon wrapped up his set. As press, we got an email earlier in the day that we were not allowed front-on full face photos of Madeon and I wondered why. Then I saw him and thought it might be because the kid looks like he's 14 years old. According to Wikipedia, he was born on May 30, 1994 which means he was still just 15 at I Love This City. He was pretty amazing to watch, too, though while I was waiting to get in the photo pit, I was practically tackled by some overly excited drunk dude.

While it is by no means the music in my soul, it was a pretty fun day of people watching and hanging out with a few friends. I had spent the earlier part of the day with family, so I do have to say it was pretty funny being dropped off by my mom, who lives just a couple miles from Cricket, and then being picked up by Xavie's dad. Xavie and I have been friends since junior high, so there was a bit of a flashback as we're in our mid-30's still having our parents taxi us around. It's good to have awesome parents. I will also give a little tip for Cricket...24oz beers are $10 for domestics and $12 for imports. So $5/$6 bucks for 12 oz isn't super expensive, but if you go to the concession building on the main entrance side, there's a little side window where they have a bunch of craft brews. So instead of paying $12 for 24 oz of Dos Equis, you can enjoy various beers by Stone, Green Flash and other micros for the same price.

So there it is. While this entire site exists because I love this city, I Love This City is just a small blip of all this town has to offer. It should also be noted that IDentity Festival will return this summer. If Electronic festivals are your bag, it would behoove you to check it out on August 18, 2012 at Cricket. Tickets range from $25 to $60, and more for VIP tickets and will feature Eric Prydz, Excision, Porter Robinson, Paul Van Dyk, Hardwell, Bingo Players, Showtek, Noisia, Doctor P, Arty, Le Castle Vania, Audrey Napoleon and more.