First of all, with Coachella and CounterPoint now behind us, we here at You Ought to Hear This would like to wish all of you a Happy Festival Season!
Every music festival is different and is known for different things, and CounterPoint 2014 certainly was no exception to that rule. This year's version was filled with what I'll just describe as an "eclectic" mix of ravers, wompers, wookies, hipsters, and, of course, ATLiens. This year's edition of CounterPoint took place at a new location (the old location was taken over by TomorrowWorld) in Kingston, Georgia (a small town in between Rome and Cartersville) at the location of the Atlanta Steeplechase (an annual horse racing event). The first thing you notice when driving in and getting to the campgrounds is that the area is much smaller than other festival locations such as Indio, California (Coachella) or The Farm in Manchester, Tennessee (Bonnaroo). The area is very beautiful and is bordered by a creek that many festival goers started to utilize as the temperatures were in the mid-80's for the better part of all 3 days of the festival. At night, however, the temperatures dropped into the low 50's, which certainly made for some chilly sleeping conditions, although sleep usually isn't the first (or second, or third) thing on people's minds at these fests. 
The picture to the left was taken from the top of the ferris wheel at the festival, and basically shows the entirety of the car campground area. For those of you that have been to Bonnaroo, you'll realize that this is much, much smaller than Bonnaroo's campground, and unfortunately, CounterPoint underestimated the amount of space they would need for car campers. It wasn't too big of a deal, as they just parked the remaining car campers outside of the fence that blocked off the car camping area, so only a minor inconvenience for those who arrived later on Friday. This post will cover the festival, other than the performances by Foster the People and Outkast, which will be reviewed in forthcoming posts.
Hit the jump for all of the reviews of the shows that I saw (other than Foster the People and Outkast)
Big Gigantic
Get Em High (Kanye West) & I Need A Dolla (Aloe Blacc)
My favorite song of the set was the title track from their latest album:
The Night is Young
Matt and Kim
The great thing about a Matt and Kim show is that it is a non-stop party. The pair wants to have a good time just as much as they want you to have one. They do a great job of mixing in their original songs and some EDM and Hip-Hop/R&B covers. At one point during this show, Kim went into the crowd, walked on top of people's hands, and danced while on top of the crowd. This show was the perfect follow-up to seeing Big Gigantic, because it kept the party vibe going strong.
Ignition Remix (R Kelly cover)/Block After Block/Drop that Nae Nae
Better Off Alone (Alice DeeJay cover)
Daylight
It's Alright (Dr Dre "The Next Episode" intro)
Krewella
Krewella is an EDM group from Chicago, and they absolutely brought the house down with their late night set on Friday night. I likened their style to sort of a mesh of pop music and dubstep. Think Icona Pop mixed with Skrillex. Friday night at CounterPoint was certainly the "party night" for me, and Krewella definitely was a great act to end the party with. They even gave a shout out to Athens, GA (which got a pretty decent pop out of the crowd, lots of UGA gear was around this weekend). The only weird thing about this set (well, maybe weird isn't the right word, because "Get Weird" was certainly a theme of the weekend, maybe "off" is a better choice of words) was that they slowed everything down in the middle of their set and played an acoustic song, which caused a lot of people to leave. Still a great set though.
Alive (Remix)
Live for the Night
Run the Jewels
Unfortunately, this show was abruptly cut off due to the impending thunderstorm that rolled through the area and delayed the festival for close to 3 hours, but what they were able to perform was really, really good. Run the Jewels is the duo of Killer Mike (known for his collaborations with OutKast and Big Boi in particular) and Brooklyn based rapper/producer El-P. They were able to perform a few of the tracks off of their self titled album, and they had the crowd really hyped up. When the news was announced over the loudspeaker, you could tell that both Killer Mike and El-P were clearly upset, but at an event like this, the safety of not only the attendees, but also the artists and the crew is of the utmost importance. Much like at Lollapalooza in Chicago in 2012, people tried to linger around, but to no avail. Fortunately for those of us in attendance, this was not the last we'd see of Killer Mike at CounterPoint, but we'll get to that later. For now, I'll leave you with some random snapshots from the weekend that was CounterPoint 2014 and don't forget to check back here tomorrow for my comprehensive review of the absolutely incredible Foster the People set and on Wednesday for my review of a show I waited to see for around 14 years: Daddy Fat Saxxx and Andre 3 Stacks... O-U-T-K-A-S-T!!
(Note: If you're going to put dry ice
in your cooler, be prepared for this
to happen)
The Revivalists (who played an awesome cover of
Bulls on Parade)
Major Lazer
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