Welcome back to our blog, everyone! This adventure is actually a local one. This past weekend, we attended Thrival Innovation + Music Festival. This festival was hosted by Thrill Mill Inc., which is a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, and is currently working with the city and local universities to inspire innovation in environmental sustainability.
For this mini adventure, we attended the two day music festival, in which over 25 musical performers participated, and where exhibitions including robotics and clean energy were featured. Though the event itself was a week long, starting on Monday, September 21st, and held in different locations all over the city, the backdrop of the music festival was an abandoned steel mill in Hazelwood, Pennsylvania,
Friday evening, after Stacey got off work, we made our way to the festival. Riding various buses and shuttles to get to the dusty field where the stages were set up was an adventure in itself: the mad rush to get on the first shuttle that arrived nearly led to the downfall of dear Cassandra. Upon arriving at the festival, we were greeted by the site of food trucks, sponsor tents, and Port-O-John's. In a move (so very) unlike us, we bypassed the food trucks and made a beeline for the stages.
The first night had a ton of performers but we only arrived in time to see the last three. There were two stages so there wasn't a lot of downtime between artists. The first artist we saw was Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness (Andrew used to be the lead singer of a group called Jack's Mannequin). Talk about an active performance. Towards the end, he set up a big rainbow colored tarp (think elementary school gym) that the crowd danced under. As shown in one of the pictures below, as he finished his set, he grabbed the tarp, pulled it from over the crowd, and stood on the piano with the tarp wrapped around him.
After his set ended, the next performer (a rapper called Wale) was on the next stage and we used the distraction to inch our way closer to the stage where the crew of Panic! At The Disco was setting up for the band's performance at 9:45. After 45 minutes of slowly moving through the crowd of pre-teen girls with way too much makeup on, we were (finally almost) satisfied with our spot in the crowd. After what seemed like the longest 15 minutes of our relatively short lives, Panic! made their way onto stage (cue screaming girls) and started their set. As fans of the band since they released their first album (all the way back in 2005), we were delighted that they played a mix of their newer songs from their early years! They played all the way until 11pm, and frankly, were absolutely amazing. With hoarse voices and smiles on our faces, we let the crowd disperse before we set off to catch the shuttles back to Southside. Exhausted from singing and dancing, we got some food and went home for the night.
Saturday, September 26th, was day two of the festival and we were excited to see more of the festival and performances. Unfortunately Stacey had to be an adult that day, and could not go with us because she had to work (stupid 12 hour shifts). Although Stacey was stuck at work, Cassandra and Nadya got to attend the festival during the day and saw more bands perform and visited the tents that were set up. Cassandra got food from one of the food trucks (BRGR, which, surprise surprise, makes bomb-ass burgers) and we sat in the grass for a few hours relaxing and listening to the different performers.
Around 7pm, we made our way to one of the stages where the two big acts of the night would be. We watched Kevin Garrett perform (who is outstanding, check him out!) and we got to be pretty close to the stage due to the lack of pre-teens who had foiled our fan-girling attempts the previous night. Lights came on at 8, and she was fantastic live. Lots of energy, and amazing stage-presence in general. Manchester Orchestra was the headliner for Saturday night and we pushed and shoved our way all the way up to the front, smashed against the railing. If you've never been at the very front of a rock concert before, don't expect to leave with good hearing at the end of the night. They got really into the songs which was really awesome to see. We did leave a little early, mainly because we wanted to beat the throngs of people at the end of the night.
Check out the pictures below and give a listen to some of the bands we mentioned (there are links to each of their websites/soundclouds), especially if you've never listened to them before because they are all worth the attention.
Day One
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Panic! At The Disco
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| Brendon Urie doing a back-flip |
Day Two
Kevin Garrett
Lights
Check in again soon for our next adventure which will be up by the beginning of next week! If you're able to go to the Thrival Innovation + Music Festival next year, you should definitely try because tickets were cheap and the experience was great. We will definitely be attending!
Check in next week and as always, thanks for reading!
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