better head back to tennessee
If your musical pilgrimages this summer include days of crowds, camping and crawling insects, you don’t need this post. But if you’re missing out on all the big festivals, by luck or design, there’s a nice little trip through Bonnaroo 2007 in the following blog.
Major highlight: live, professional recording interspersed with the running commentary. Listen in soon, word is that the music has a short shelf-life and has to be taken down by Monday. ETA: yep, they’re gone, but were good while they lasted.
Anybody here catch Bonnaroo this year? Tell us, or send us a pic. This post is naked.
Or talk about another outdoor festival experience that’s burned on your brain. What was the draw for you - the crowd, the company, the chance to hear so many bands in such a short space of time?
(more about Bonnaroo)
posted by what at 06:31 am
I’m caught between delight and frustration: delight at reading this
wonderful trip — frustration because I’m having trouble getting some
of the music to play — but I will solve that part. It leaves me with
more stuff ahead to be enjoyed and I will comment on the music after I
really hear and listen enough. I’m excited!!
The written trip to Bonnaroo is a splendid piece; I love it-great
job!!! A wonderful singer is recognized by the way they mold the
notes–a C is still a C but somehow it ‘feels’ like them; it becomes
their C. A great writer is recognized by a signature crafting of
images–places where the words are lean, places where the images draft
you so totally you have no choice -you are there. Hemingway could not
be mistaken for Proust and Ray Charles could never be mistaken for
Van. Real artists make it their own-and that’ s how you know them.
I’ve spent gobs of hours in fields at festivals getting incapacitating
sunburns while I was feasted upon by every bug that had the munchies —
I was pushover game for the bugs and oblivious to the sun cooking my
flesh — you know why? It was the music. Just like my Uncle said long
ago — “That dang music has fried the girl’s brain.” As soon as the
notes started to glide my way I was mesmerized {still am} — coming to
only after the last band finished their final encore. Yikes — (or
something more colorful) I’d realize I was in hideous pain and if it
was that bad at 1 AM I knew how bad it would be by 11AM the next
morning. — I’d make my way past the tired concession stand dudes who
were more than ready to forget the snowcones and the beer. I’d beg for
ice. I’d fill up the back of my T-shirt with slushy snowcone ice. I
remember one festival in Johnson City Tenn where a guy took pity on me
and dumped all the remaining ice from one of his barrels on the huge
blisters forming on my back. It was effective for a while. I sat down
with him on another barrel and played banjo to his mandolin. You never
sound better then in those wee hours at a festival. Everyone plays
—the parking lot pickers and the camp fire musicians — harmonies never
tried before feel like they work. Just like the wonderful review
reported — there is a harmony not just of notes but of souls that
arises at these music festivals. It’s a mini nation for a brief time
where people think as “we” and not as “I” It’s good stuff. If it could
be bottled and injected into our turbulent masses what a different
world we might have — Does it sound like I went to Woodstock ??- well
I did. I also have gone to Bonnaroo — today - so thanks for the ride.
I have music yet to hear so it’s all good.
Beautiful post, Meg! I wonder why Taylor is not playing at the festivals? It seems like the natural place for him to expand his fanbase by getting his live music out to people who would really dig him…
I thought the exact same thing. It’s a missed opportunity. I hope that next year Taylor is there.
It would be interesting to know the process of booking these festivals. Is it invitation? When are the lines up done? With Hicks new on the scene, and coming the route he did, he probably wasn’t on the radar for fesitval promoters, even if they’d otherwise be interested. I imagine it takes awhile for everything to line up just right. There’s a good interview on the review/interview page where he talks a bit about this scene. It would be interesting to explore it further.
But I’m getting a bit far afield on this discussion.
http://blueroom.att.com/events/bonnaroo.php
Bonnaroo highlights coming soon.
The ‘virtual’ trip to Bonnaroo got me thinking a lot about Michael Franti and how much his style is an amalgam. I love this sentence from our virtual trip guide: “Michael Franti, hip hop ragmaster of funk and roll.” It’s so true. He really fascinates me on many levels. Then I was listening to that cool thing he did with Gabriel Rios, “What’s this?” That is a song that makes you pay attention — even if we were not looking at the message of the lyrics — I love the interchange and the timing — the urgency of the beat. It’s great. It would arrest me even if I spoke no English.
Here’s a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0VUZJD1Cg
But then I had to go digging around for Ghostboy — Gabriel does this one with such smooth Smokey latin-reggae .
Gabriel Rios - Ghostboy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqpeMNUXr1k&mode=related&search=
About jam bands, jam bands festivals, Bonnaroo. From Answers.com:
There are well over 20 large-scale jam band music festivals each year, but the largest and most famous of these is Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. This concert brings together not only jam bands, but also artists from a wide range of music, such as jazz and bluegrass and also various stand-up comics. It is held annually in Tennessee in mid-June since its 2002 conception and receives from 60-100 thousand fans each year.
The diverse genres and styles of the jam band scene are held together by a common musical approach: an emphasis on creative improvisation and live performance as opposed to structured, arranged live performances and planned studio recordings. Additionally, another common thread uniting all of the jam bands today is a common fan base of festival-goers and touring fans.
Taping
Jam bands usually encourage their fans to make tapes or recordings of their live shows, a practice which many other musical genres call “illegal bootlegging”. The Grateful Dead encouraged this practice, which helped to create a thriving scene around the collecting and trading of recordings of Grateful Dead live performances. Most of the live shows on the Grateful Dead’s 30 years of touring were recorded.
The album cover of Live/Dead (1969) by the Grateful Dead. Critic Robert Christgau remarked that it contained the “finest rock improvisation ever recorded”.[8]It was probably the trading of recordings of Grateful Dead shows which built the band’s fan base. The bands sold “taper” tickets for a taper’s section which had a soundboard line-out for the tapers to record from. This type of encouragement has spread to nearly all of the jam bands. Some jam band enthusiasts argue that if a band does not allow fans to tape their live shows, this band is not actually a jam band in the Grateful Dead tradition.
Fans trade recordings and collect recordings of different live shows because improvisational jam bands are play their songs differently at each performance. Fans can collect various versions of their favorite songs. They can keep track of how many times a specific song has been played, and thus increase the momentousness of a rare song being dusted off and played live. [9]
Some bands play with this phenomena by throwing short little “teases” into their sets. Playing, for example, a few bars of a famous cover song or hinting at a popular jam and then either never getting around to playing the song, or coming back to it after an extended jam. The use of segues to blend strings of songs together is another mark of a jam band, and one which makes for treasured tapes. [10]