On a freakishly bright and warm September afternoon in Albany, rockers Matt and Kim kicked off their street concert with a crowd of about a thousand highly-energetic, highly pumped fans. The mob spilled out onto the nearby Dunkin Donuts parking lot, and within minutes, the mass of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder were immersed in the insane performance of the Brooklyn duo. By song two, people were crowd-surfing and stage-diving, and Matt and Kim retaliated with drum-hopping, amp-climbing antics of their own. The show put Andrew W.K. to shame.

New York City has Santo’s Party House, but dammit, Albany has LarkFEST. The annual festival is meant as a farewell-to-summer celebration, but this year, it looked like a kick-off to this city’s new scene.

Until recently, upstate New York’s premier city seemed a relic of the last century, a leftover object of the industrial revolution. Litter a couple of urchins around, and one could easily imagine this could, grey city as the setting of a Dickens novel.

“Please sir, I want some more,” – and along sauntered a top-hatted merchant to grant the wish.
The merchant, in this case, is the Lark Street Business Improvement District, and instead of a little extra gruel, they dole out one glorious day of food, crafts, and music in the form of LarkFEST. This year’s headliners included international acts like Moby and Bell X1, national names like Matt and Kim, and local artists from the B3nson Collective, including Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned, along with the seemingly ever-present MotherJudge. Five stages, 20 bands, and (according to larkstreet.org) around 80 thousand attendants (it felt more like a million) proved one point: Albany can in fact, rock out, balls to the wall.
It’s no surprise; some of the best music scenes sprout from the gloomiest cities. With bad weather and little activity, people exercise creativity. The Knife came from Sweden, and Bjork from Iceland, where night reigns for six months out of the year, and people stare at light bulbs just to fend off insanity. Maybe big-name Albany band Scientific Maps hasn’t reached Bjork-level status yet – but the capital city possesses the potential to nurture both big name acts and a local scene.

With its cheap rent and active art scene (First Fridays) its no surprise Albany has also fostered an indie music scene. That scene lies almost entirely in the B3nson Collective – a group of 20 bands (some share members), six of which played the Townsend Park Stage. Although the stage was, sadly, removed from Lark Street – assembled on Washington and Henry Johnson Boulevard, in front of the Great Finds Vintage Store – the turnout remained substantial.

B3nson bands are still in the process of cultivating a strong fan base, but have already won critical acclaim. In 2009, Metroland, Albany’s alternative weekly, voted B3nson’s Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned the “Best Great White Hope”; We Are Jeneric won “Best Acoustic Duo”; “Best Pop Band” went to Scientific Maps; and “Best Electropop Band” to Beware! The Other Head of Science. Not bad for one record label.

The crowd and energy at LarkFEST are the blowing winds before the real storm. There are more efforts underway to attract artists and musicians to the state capital. Raise the Barn, which held a banner and call for donations on the Townsend stage, is a local effort to refurnish an abandoned building into an artists’ living and work space. If accomplished, it can messenger a nationally credited art and music scene to the otherwise lackluster Albany. It may also, for better or worse, further gentrification in a city pockmarked with endless bodegas, barber shops, and empty storefronts.

2009 heralded the 28th running year of LarkFEST. Moby headlined, no doubt making this year’s festival the best in terms of acts; past big-name performers include Everclear (2005) and Antigone Rising (2002). Even though LarkFEST is older than the majority of its crowd, a few kinks still need ironing.

First of all, the attendance numbers are huge –a seemingly happy problem for the BID. The goal of the festival is to “attract people to Lark Street to support our merchants,” said Michael Weidrich, executive director of the Lark Street Neighborhood District Management Association. However, with vendor booths lining both sides of the street, and tens of thousands of people crammed into seven blocks, by the time you find the stage you’re looking for, the band has often finished its performance; not to mention the cramped conditions leave you intimately familiar with everyone’s odor. Perhaps the BID underestimated this year’s crowd, but if anyone as famous as Moby plays again next year, the festival should close off more streets to vehicular traffic to accommodate fans.

Another issue was the schedule pamphlets. Finding a leaflet with a map and performance times was like finding Waldo. In four hours I spotted only one festival volunteer, and he held onto his sole pamphlet like a passport. A LarkFEST booth was also nowhere to be found. According to the volunteer, the bands' merchandise tables supposedly contained the select few schedules, but those tables were difficult to locate – and some had no idea about the pamphlets. A multi-stage festival offering neither its own booth, a horde of peppy volunteers in brightly colored shirts, nor easily accessible schedules is uncommon.

Hopefully the BID will resolve these issues next year. Executive Director Weirdrich said in an email that “we are always looking at how to improve our events. We will take suggestions/comments/criticisms/complaints about this year’s event and use them [to] make next year’s better.”

Regardless, the BID probably accomplished their purpose: allow public drunkenness, crazy loud music near residential streets, and the descent of thousands of hyper 20-somethings onto Lark Street to boost the local economy, and to make the Burrito-suit man outside Bombers Burrito sexy for one day, so that he can finally get a chic’s phone number scrawled on his arm. Rock on, Burrito Man.