Not knowing what a “hipster” is so 2011
Just to be clear, by hip I mean “hipster” and by “hipster” I mean that positively and do not mean to get into existential debate about what that word means. Not knowing what “hipster” means is so 2011. Hipster means you are in your 20s or 30s, unmarried and are not a Dr., a pharmacist, paramedic, police officer, nurse, astronaut, or any normal job you said you were going to grow up to be in the first grade—likely you work as a bartender and barista and are pursuing an artist endeavor.
Okay, that out of my system, back to Iceland Airwaves. What to the bands Clap You Hands and Say Yeah, The Rapture, and the Bravery Have in common?
Think about it and onto my next question: What to the groups Crystal Castles, Thievery Corporation, Sparta, The Flaming Lips, Fathov Slim, The Kills, The Stills, TV on the Radio, Keane, Hot Chip, Ratatat, Architecture, and Hercules and Love Affair all have in common?
Besides the fact, hipster, that you listened to these groups BEFORE the rest of us knew about them, the answer to the first is that they had their careers launched at Iceland Airwaves and the answer to the second is they have played at the festival. Music genres being what they are today today—post-industrial indi-folk gutter vamp gerber baby rock—perhaps rather than going with a Pandora classification based on strophic structures, we should employ a secondary classification that classifies music based on the audience.
We could classify music based questions like: What is the density of beards in the audience? How much flannel are the non-actual lumberjacks wearing? What percentage of moustaches are ironic? How many of them are pulling off scarves?
Iceland Airwaves brings musical outfits and their fans from around the world to arguably one of the hippest cities on earth—Reykjavik—and spreads out their venues all across the city in music halls, books stores, bars and coffee shops—just the kind of places scarves, beards, New Balance shoes and vests like to take in their melodies.
Hide Your kids place at Eymundsson Books, Iceland’s next big musical export? No one knows and it’s so exciting!!!
In 1999, Iceland Airwaves began as a one-off event in an airplane hanger. Since then it has taken off (see what I did there) and is a festival where music fans and their scarves and beards from both side of the Atlantic can convene to join in what Jonah Flicker called an festival with an “unbelievable zest for music and celebration.”
David Fricke from Rolling Stone agrees with me and said it was “the hippest weekend on the annual music-festival calendar.” The names on the bill are big, but not so big that anyone in the frat house has heard of them. The fans coming here are hardcore music lovers to have A) known about the festival and B) flown to Iceland to do more than gaze at sites of geological wonderful.
Even if you can’t find a ticket, many of the on-venue bands will play at off-venue sites, cafes, bars, hotels and hostels. So if you happen to be in Iceland (as I just happened to be when I forgot to be on my flight back to the motherland) you can catch all of the action. If you are here and need a guide to all of these awesome off venue happenings, click here bees.
Full disclosure, this is what I am wearing (I stand by it):
