July 23, 2016
Thom Carroll`/PhillyVoice
Father John Misty performs Friday, July 22, 2016 at the XPoNential Music Festival 2016 in Camden, moments before walking off stage and cutting his performance short.
Instead of playing a set from his lengthy discography at the XPoNential Music Festival 2016 in Camden Friday, Joshua Tillman — aka Father John Misty — went on a brief diatribe on the nature of entertainment and how its over-saturation has hurt society before playing a couple songs and walking off the stage, according to reports and videos of the show.
He reportedly made several references to the nearby Battleship New Jersey on the Delaware River during his speech at the River Stage at Wiggins Park. He also called entertainment "stupid" and even seemed to diss one of his own tracks, "Bored In The USA."
Here's an excerpt of the rant and a video, via Pitchfork (Disclaimer: Video and speech contain lots of explicit language):
“I always thought that it was going to look way more sophisticated than this when evil happened. When the collective consciousness was so numb and so f****** sated and so gorged on entertainment. ... How entertaining should this be right now with a f****** battleship in the background and this s*** on TV, how f****** fun should this be? How f****** fun can it be? Can it be real in any sense? Like, I cannot play 'Bored in the USA' for you right now. No no no, because guess what? I soft-shoed that s*** into existence by going, ‘No no no, look over here, it’ll never actually be that bad because we’re too smart.’ And while we were looking in that direction, stupidity just f****** runs the world because entertainment is stupid! Do you guys realize that?”
At one point, he said, “It feels better to be angry than it does to be f****** devastated that s*** looks the way it looks.” When the crowd cheered for that sentiment, he rebuked: “No no no, don't even cheer for that. Maybe just take a moment to be really f****** profoundly sad. It's a lot less sexy of a festival look.”
The artist then played a 10-minute improvised piece touching on some of those very themes, covered a Leonard Cohen song and walked off the stage, according to Pitchfork.
Afterward, he sent out a series of tweets that seemed to reference the set:
Amused to death
— FARMER JAH MISERY (@fatherjohnmisty) July 23, 2016
24/7
— FARMER JAH MISERY (@fatherjohnmisty) July 23, 2016
Pure entertainment
— FARMER JAH MISERY (@fatherjohnmisty) July 23, 2016
PhillyVoice staff writer Michael Tanenbaum, who was in attendance for the show, summed up the entire thing as "absurd." Seems about right.
