Boston Calling Takes Over Government Center

David Weiner ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Boston Calling wrapped last night with a crowd engaging set from veteran indie rock band Modest Mouse. This Spring’s festival featured a line-up of groups mainly falling under the genre of folk and indie rock. With headliners such as Jack Johnson, Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse, the festival seemed to cater toward a millennial generation’s teenage nostalgia. Nonetheless the series of artists over the course of a three day, mid-sized festival brought in a huge crowd that completely packed the fenced in Government Center compound.
A friend of mine put a single day-pass up on Craigslist for Sunday’s line-up and within minutes his phone was blowing up with users interested in picking up the ticket. He ended up making enough money to pay for September’s Boston Calling.
The festival is growing and growing fast. This year the event staff set up the Red and Blue Stages perpendicular to each other in one corner of the event space. With this new  set up, audience members didn’t have to trample each other as they ran from one side of Government Center to the other to see the next band.
The only complaint I really heard after talking with various festival goers was that there weren’t enough bathrooms. The tall blue porta-pottys were clustered together in a corner by the general admission entrance and were swarming with bodies at all times. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

As long as you stayed within the “grace-zone” (area closest to the stage) the acoustics of the all brick and concrete venue were actually quite good. I could tell the city of Boston wanted to do more with the festival to make it bigger, but there just isn’t a bigger space in the city other than Government Center that can be easily contained.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros put on a fan friendly performance that included walking into the crowd, giving the mic to aspiring singers, letting fans tell stories and taking an audience member’s phone to record a video onstage. Without co-lead singer, Jade Casrinos, the band used the audience to fill in her parts.
“Is this what you call summer in Boston?” Jack Johnson said while perched on his wooden stool in the middle of the stage. “Seriously, this is great, but I can see my own breathe.” The joke got the cramped and cold audience warmed up. All of the mom’s and young teens swayed to Jack’s acoustic strums while clouds of weed stink wafted in the air.

The temperature warmed up for Saturday, but the heavy air, sticky with moisture let loose by the time it got dark and rain began to fall on the Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie.
With weather issues Friday and Saturday, the third try was a success and Sunday stayed warm and sunny into the evening as Brand New gave their ruckus of a throwback performance and Modest Mouse graced the stage.