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The Strokes at Hyde Park Felt Like the Festival Scene in a Late Night Episode of 'One Tree Hill'

A safe enclosure for thousands upon thousands of human peoples in Ray-Ban aviators.

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK, hence all of the British references you may or may not get.

What kind of crowd goes to a Strokes gig in a park? I mean, apart from VICE staff writers who are fresh off the back of pestering the Noisey editor for legitimate weeks to hook him up with two tickets so he could go and see Beck play for free. The VICE staff writer like: “Please.” The VICE staff writer like: “Come on man, I’ll… I don’t know, I’ll write something about it. ‘Ten reasons Beck is good imo’, something like that.” The intensity deafening now. “Did you get my email!?” the staff writer is saying. “I sent you two. Just chasing again. The tickets. The tickets to go and see Beck. Words. I will write them for you. Send you some words in an email.” I can tell you with accuracy that at least one of these VICE staff writer types was in the crowd to see Beck and, to some lesser degree, The Strokes. Because, it was me.

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READ MORE: Noisey's cover story on Julian Casablancas

Here are some other people I saw in the crowd:

  • A man who was enjoying a song so much that he took his plain black T-shirt off to reveal that he had another, slightly smaller plain black T-shirt on underneath. I did not stick around to see how deep that particular sartorial Russian stacking doll did go.
  • Two teenagers who had tiny baby hands—tiny toy baby hands, little tiny doll hands that they affixed to the tip of their fingers—and who spent the evening taking photos of these eerie little tiny plastic hands looking as though they were manipulating the figures on stage, a thing I looked at and immediately had a loud scream in my head that went "I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUNG PEOPLE."
  • A girl who as best I could tell was trying out to be an All Saints model by just taking a thousand selfies of herself moodlessly wearing a leather jacket with her back constantly to the stage.
  • Three children who were wearing Ramones T-shirts, as though those children are legitimately fans of the Ramones. Science has proven: A child is not capable of liking the Ramones.
  • A man who was so excited when Beck announced that he was going to play “Sexx Laws” that he turned to his plus one and said “SEXX LAWS!” and then the two attempted a high five but both used to wrong arm—the off arms, rather than the arms nearest to each other—so when the hands met in the middle they just clasped into sort of a weak, aerial, mildly romantic handholding, and if I’m being honest yes this was me and yes the doomed high five did put a bit of a dampener on the ensuing performance of “Sexx Laws.”
  • Someone inflating a condom like a majestic zeppelin and bomping it over the heads of the crowd but the condom-airship floated away and landed and security immediately stamped on it.
  • One man who just held a single hand up in the air like a sort of confused Roman emperor after a barbaric gladiatorial battle, or someone who was really phoning in a Sieg Heil, a thing he did only when a particular note or moment in a song cried out to his heart and his soul, which as best I could tell was the entirety of The Strokes’ set.
  • Exactly one person who was smoking a marijuana cigarette and making cheeky faces as though they knew it was naughty and couldn’t quite believe it was happening to them.
  • Exactly one person attempting to dance.

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Continued below.

Essentially what I am saying is there is a certain weirdness to being in the crowds at one of these slick sort of corporate-tinged music events, a weirdness that settles over everyone like a fog, everyone not really drunk enough to dance yet as they’ve only just come there from work, most not really ever knowing what to do with their arms, like amputation would be a relief. So, what do you do in a crowd where the crowd doesn’t really know what to do? The answer is "you all collectively stand there like bored dads waiting outside a big Topshop."

I suppose it is the single-serving sterility of British Summer Time at Hyde Park (sponsored by Barclaycard) that makes it this way. Because it feels like you’re somewhere that’s doing an impression of a festival, but not quite hitting the mark: The stage is sandwiched between two gigantic plastic trees; the park itself is surprisingly litter free; nobody had managed to destroy a toilet with an appalling shit, yet. The bar was unrealistically well run. Nobody had that weird vinegar-y body odour you only get after three days wet wiping your savouries in a tent. It felt very much how a festival might be portrayed in a late-night episode of Hollyoaks: a safe and inaccurate enclosure for thousands upon thousands of human peoples in Ray-Ban aviators.

Photo by Laura Lewis

Is this the future of enjoying music? I’m not sure. Because I spent more time not knowing whether to dance or not than I did actually losing myself in the noise. Was I ever, truly, in the moment? Was I ever topless and sweaty, shouting the word “YEAH!”? Was I ever on the shoulders of another man, locked together in physical matrimony, his head, my legs, while I wildly gestured at Julian Casablancas until it seemed like he’d kind of looked at me? No, I was not. I was edging out of the way and softly apologizing to polite people and wondering when next might be an opportune time to get a £5.50 pint from the bar.

Once, on another one of my infernal VICE jollies, I went to a Dortmund–Arsenal game, and marveled at the contrasting crowd. On one side, the home support: quiet, middle class, wondering distantly if Waitrose will still be open on the way home; on the other, the visitors, a swelling sea of yellow, chanting and dancing in perfect unison throughout the entire 90 minutes. And if you squinted down and looked, you could see why: At the front of this lot, with his back to the game, a sacrificial lamb to the fine art of football chanting, was a teutonically hench dude in a T-shirt instructing the crowd like a fine conductor. They knew how to make noises because someone was telling them how to make noises. They knew what to do with their arms because everyone else was doing arm stuff too.

Am I saying music festivals need crowd conductors? No. It is an unfeasible and unworkable plan; plus the only people who would volunteer to do it are the kind of people who pick litter in an Oxfam vest to gain free Glastonbury tickets, and thus nerds. But maybe the BST Hyde Park crowd situation is more a commentary on our times: That we’re all a socially awkward collection of angles, looking at Facebook and Twitter for support, not really knowing how to react to music when it breaks out of the confines of Spotify and happens, loudly and in front of us, on a stage in central London. That the wisdom of crowds is no more because we’re not often in them enough: That the future of live music is tiny, involved performances, and that stadium rock needs to be shot in the head. Or maybe everyone just had a big off day because their hayfever was acting up.

Anyway: Beck was good; The Strokes were good; thanks for sorting me that ticket out, Noisey.

You can follow Joel on Twitter.