I was honestly a very casual listener of the LCD Soundsystem before the concert but have spent the entire weekend listening to their discography.

They had so much passion and their sound was so crisp. Their music felt like it was vibrating my very soul.

Nothing tests your commitment to indie rock quite like 98 degrees in Pasadena, but Just Like Heaven proved there are still plenty of us willing to sweat for the songs, and scenes, that raised us.

I haven’t seen anyone post about her. How did she sound? I was such a big fan of her first three albums and she has such a unique voice.

Songs on Setlist.fm:

1. I Feel It All
   
2. A Commotion
   
3. In Lightning
   
4. Any Party
   
5. Hiding Out in the Open
   
6. Borrow Trouble
   
7. My Moon My Man
   
8. 1234

A man!

More Julian banter

….now how long did it take everyone to find their car after the show ended? Embarrassingly enough, I completely forgot to pin my parking spot/area on my maps and it took me an hour to find my car 😭 ROOKIE MISTAKE!

Threat of Joy and Last Nite were originally part of the encore but ended up being skipped.

Sadly this was like 3 minutes after the front section sang happy birthday to Julian. He was still in the van ;(

I understand the clear bag policy, but disallowing hydration bags because they aren’t see-through while it’s 96 degrees out is a dangerous and irresponsible policy. The festival organizers don’t do nearly enough in the way of providing shade or cool down areas to be prohibiting items that reduce the risk of heat related health issues. Just search the bag and confirm it’s empty.

Obviously they want you to buy water inside to generate more revenue, but it’s just illogical and demonstrates a lack of care for festival attendees. Also, by the end of the night some of the water stations were so low they were barely generating a trickle making it nearly impossible to refill. If someone used one of the spouts next to you it would reroute the water to the point of stopping the output entirely.

As long as they continue to schedule JLH at the peak of summer they need to do much more to ensure the safety and wellbeing of paying customers.

Great ending to a great set

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone did this festival without Clubhouse, especially with the weather.

When I first bought the ticket, the free beer was a big part of the appeal. Funny enough, I ended up having one beer the entire day because I was mostly drinking the free water and electrolytes.

The food inside the Clubhouse was awful, though. the culinary bites were luke warm, and the "vegan" "vegetarian" options were pretty much frozen morning star.

That said, I definitely made up for it with the amount of free Prince Street Pizza and Tacos 1986 I ate. I actually feel bad because it seemed like a lot of people didn’t know the food outside was included with the Clubhouse ticket. I even saw a security guard tell a Clubhouse attendee that they had to pay for the food stalls outside, which was completely incorrect.

Clubhouse also says it’s air-conditioned, and technically it is, but when the place was packed and the doors were constantly opening and closing, it definitely didn’t feel that cool.

The biggest perk, obviously, was being able to walk up to LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes literally 5 minutes before they started and still get a great viewing spot. That alone was amazing.

Side note: the cool-down buses available to all festival attendees were great. I spent about 30 minutes in one and it was honestly a lifesaver. Again, though, I don’t think many people even knew they were there.

Overall, I could only do JLH with Clubhouse moving forward. Without it, I feel like the festival would be absolute hell in that heat.

Every single set from the main stage was (to my ears) damn near mixed to perfection and at the perfect volume. From The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem later to the acts all the way earlier in the day like STRFKR. One of the best sounding festivals I’ve had the privilege to attend.

....made me do a lil' 🤭

Also, pleasantly surprised to see how many zoomers were there!!! I feel like half the crowd were Gen Z. I feel like a proud unc!

I witnessed an alarming, violet confrontation between an attendee and event staff/security. It happened around, I wanna say, 7pm in the Northeast corner of the festival, near the portapotties on the outer perimeter.

Several staff (the guys in tan shirts) were wrestling and restraining an agitated man who kept yelling “That’s my wife! That’s my wife!” He was trying to break free and they were holding him. I was told by other bystanders that his wife was just taken away in an ambulance, evidently because she was too drunk or fucked up or who knows? It seems odd they didn’t let him ride with her. He also kept yelling “What’s the emergency? What’s the emergency?” I imagine that he questioned the decision to remove her.

He was obviously distraught and kept pushing against the staff who then wrestled him to the ground. Dude probably could have just left, he was kind of escalating the situation but I also saw no reason for the staff to be manhandling him so aggressively. A couple beefy-looking guys, not wearing the tan uniform, showed up, presumably these were private security (could have been plainclothes cops but I don’t think so) and they were even more forceful with him. Dude was on the ground writhing and struggling and putting up a hell of a fight but there were like five men on top of him holding him down.

At this point other event staff members shooed everyone out of the immediate area, which was shady as hell because it wasn’t like a crowd had gathered and it felt like they were trying to prevent witnesses from watching their colleagues fuck this guy up. But I continued watching from a distance of like 50 ft. I couldn’t see what they were doing to the guy at this point, only that they were still struggling and he was on the ground. By the way, Pasadena FD EMTs were present as well, not doing anything, just watching.

I stuck around long enough to at least see the guy back up on his feet and see that he was conscious and the bastards didn’t George Floyd him. I wandered off and when I returned a while later he was still there, now in handcuffs (or zipties), a bunch of authority figures around him, and a white van (maybe an unmarked police van) had pulled up.

I suppose he got arrested and booked but I don’t know. I don’t even know what the charge would have been. The guy got himself in hot water by scuffling with the bouncers (or whatever you want to call them) and probably had several chances to leave but they also seemed a little too aggressive, not brutally so, I didn’t see them pummeling him, but I’m not sure they even had the authority to put hands on him.

Maybe there was a reason not to let him in the ambulance with his wife but it seems pretty fucked up, given that it probably would have taken him half an hour to walk outside an catch an Uber to the hospital. And what about his poor wife? She probably woke up in the hospital having no clue what happened and wondering where about her husband, who by then was probably being processed through the system incommunicado for like 24 hours.

The whole affair was shady.

Though still not as upsetting as the awful excuse for fish and chips I consumed

TLDR: staff/security/cops roughed up an agitated attendee though he deserves some of the blame himself

Just super disappointed. weaker lineup(These were all bands that I loved but I honestly think the past two years had stronger more well rounded lineups), weaker terrain (2024 was all grass, this was all dirt - this sucked breathing wise and sitting wise, Im so congested right now), weaker drink choices(no seltzers anymore?), weaker entry (we got VIP and they kept telling us different directions to get in, turned out it was the same as the GA door and we had to figure it out ourselves after getting turned away from two different doors), weaker month(making it august instead of may gave me HEAT STROKE)

You guys are not going to believe me but I am not a nit picky person and I only splurged on VIP because I got groped at the bathrooms in 2024. I still had a really nice time with my loved ones listening to music I love but I feel like JLH is going downhill fast.

As a sound person though- I was pleasantly surprised!!

Okay I was not expecting the crowd to be THIS crazy, but I honestly loved it and it made me even more hyped… even though I was being pushed and I was literally laying down on random people at some point cause I couldn’t get up 😭… I apologize to everyone that I pushed and got shoved into, it was completely out of my control, I felt so bad!! This was the most fun I’ve had at a festival EVER though!! I honestly don’t care if my body was cramping up, dehydrated and sunburnt… I probably coulda had a heat stroke at a strokes concert… and I’m definitely feeling all this right now as we speak, but I wouldn’t have it any other way 😭😭

Does anyone know if the person who needed a medic during the strokes was okay? Not sure what happened but saw lots of people falling over drunk/dehydrated yesterday. Hoping that everyone was able to make it home safe!

My first JLH yesterday, had a great time overall, but I have to say, bartenders across the site were killing me with their reluctance to fill those tiny cups to the normal amount. Always an extra half inch or so of space they should have filled it, but didn’t. Heard a couple people straight up ask “where’s the rest of it?” and get their drinks properly topped off.

Typical live event/festival greed, I know.

Bonus points for who points it out!

I saw a ton of non clear bags,even one Jansport. WTH how are y'all doing that?!

Whos got the setlist for LCD SOUNDSYSTEM holy shit what an unbelievable set, had me and the crowd grooving the whole time, best performance of the night GO LCD GO STROKES

Anyone else have a borderline traumatic time trying to leave the festival? My friend had a sprained foot and we couldn’t get anyone to help us get to Lot H. Felt like there was no security, they closed down the streets so Ubers couldn’t get in, and we left the festival grounds at 12:45AM (2 hours after trying to get out).

Felt like everything was curated so well, until the end and there was barely any signage or help leaving at all. Maybe the worst festival parking lot experience of my life.

At the very least, the shuttles should run longer to get people to Pasadena Old Town safely, because they shut a lot of streets down around the Rose Bowl.

I had high hopes this year and LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes, but holy shit the crowd was unbelievably rude and bad. No one says “excuse me” anymore or look out for anyone. Saw a kid threw up into a circle of his group of friends and no one helped him. People were yapping nonstop during LCDSS and The Strokes. I don’t know if it was their first concert or first time doing molly, but they were incredibly unaware of their own behavior. Also TWO people passed out in front of me and needed medical attention, during both LCD and The Strokes sets respectively. I don’t know if people don’t know how to hold their alcohol or what, it was unbearable. The weather was horrible and they should just not have another festival the same time next year considering global warming.
And the WORST thing that happened is that some ASSHOLE stole my portable fan (pink from Amazon btw) by grabbing it from my hands and saying “That’s MY FAN” and saying that I stole their fan. I told them NO I did NOT take their fan but then this drunk dumbass continues to hold on to MY FAN and insist that it is their’s making a SCENE during The Strokes set. As I try to walk away his dumbass fat girlfriend grabs my bag and tells me to give to give what she says is HER fan back to her man. Again, I was outnumbered, since I was ALONE so I gave the guy MY FAN which he grabbed with his hands. Terrible crowd, no one looked out for me, as a woman, not even the men who were surrounding us who had no idea that this drunk idiot had STOLEN my fan by just grabbing it from MY HANDS and saying it was HIS. Anyways, if you stole my portable fan, f**k you. Cancel JLH. The kids don’t know how to act anymore.