Stomp stomp stomp ... the dust forms a palpable haze in the early evening air. Dirt covers everything with a fine layer. It's impossible to really feel clean. The line for the showers is so long that it's basically not an option. The opening jams of Spearhead's headline set waft across the valley. Welcome to Dirtdance 2008. Laytonville, California's ostensible Woodstock type thing. Mendocino County. 5000 of the stinkiest, dirtiest, hairyest sideways wasted hippies you've ever seen in one place gathered in the time honored tribal tradition of getting together, getting dressed up and promendading (or stumbling) down the thoroughfare.
Three stages and three discussion-workshop-yoga spaces ... tons of people peddling their material and immaterial wares. Random hippies pledging fealty to various Native American slash Rastafarian slash Hindu worldviews. Tons of feather, leather, hemp, and DMT. I had no idea there were so many hippies out there. And how so many of them look and act like they just walked out of 1969. And this being their big party, there wasn't an existential connundrum in the place. Everyone was feeling VALIDATED. And that's not a good thing.
It's funny how even counter-cultural "movements" will tend to fall into an orderly line ... and display all the inherent characteristics of any human culture (and certainly animal ones as well ... check out my tail feathers!). What makes (some) hippies so annoying is that they seem to think that they're different (or better) than everyone else. Different flavor perhaps, but that shit's still ice cream. They're just the rednecks of the left.
Whatever. We came we saw we conquered. We sold a ton of T-shirts for Rise Up and we got some quality heckling in. I checked out some bands ... some vendors ... and we blasted out before the rush. The Redwood Highway is as nice as ever. The redwood country is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
The main highlights of the festival included being able to walk between Vibesquad playing and Digable Planets and stopping for a hot fry bread drizzled in strawberry jam and honey on the way. One of the main let-downs was Digable Planets, though.
Certainly ... Digable is one of the best hip hop bands in all of recorded history (though it's rumored that the Babylonians could freestyle like crazy). But ... unfortunately ... it was somewhat clear that they hadn't really been playing many shows (or practicing at all) before this gig. Perhaps they were just having an off night, but they were pretty loose. Their dance moves were mad rusty and they were wearing some indexplicably lame outfits. Not exactly living up to the pedestal that I had them on ... but I realize that's mostly based solely on the fact that I just love their music and nothing more really. But I had envisioned them as some sort of uber-humans possessing ... nay ... dripping with such cool that it would make your eyes cross if you even tried to look at them. But ... apparently they're just people in the end. Their attempts at hype-the-crowd hip hop were lackluster and out of character and they just didn't have the fire that some of the younger acts had. Understandable I suppose.
I skipped the Saturday "Prayer for Peace" which happened in syncronicity with the other 260 Earthdance parties happening around the world on the same day. I failed to understand how that would affect the powers that be and I grumbled that those hippies are too lazy to write their representatives for the most part but just delight at synchronized prayer. No small coincidence that they're not calling the shots.
I spent the afternoon reading Chuck Klosterman's "IV" ... a collection of essays about pop culture which was pretty fucking delightful wherein he deconstructs facets of American life like our obsession with pirates (considering that actual pirates are not nice people) (Sept 19 = National Talk Like a Pirate Day) and what bands are overrated, underrated, accurately rated, and why that's all silly anyway.
There was some good music ... but it was difficult to enjoy it many times ... big crowds of foul smelling hairy hempsters were distracting. At one point in the "Temple of Electronica" dome ( Worst. Name. Ever. BTW) some random woman came barreling out of the crowd in front of me ... proceeded to give me a huge bear hug, then a kiss right on the face. Not sure what she was aiming at, but it was one of those awkward kisses where one person is kissing but the other person is not. Her girlfriend (and her boyfriend) were tugging on her arm saying "come have sex with us" ... she turned to me and almost apologetically informed me that she had to go have sex. "Yeah, knock yourself out."
The rastafarians were in full force and effect ... rocking their adopted cult-isms about Marcus Garvey and Babylon and so forth. Jah ... etc. Mixing Star of David iconography with red-gold-n-green and some emperor from Ethiopia. Needless to say this seemed as strange as ever for suburban white kids to be doing this. But I doubt many of them have really considered it. It's all just about belonging to something and songs about weed.
Like the woman who was standing before a makeshift shrine to Ganesh ... holding her baby and waving the baby's hand at Ganesh and saying "hi Ganesh" ... "hi Ganesh" ... "we love you Ganesh". I just happened to be there looking for an electrical hook up and I chuckled as I squeezed in front of her and plugged my phone into Ganesh's power strip.
Overall the festival was fine ... ish ... if that's your thing. The area was suffering from a 60 year high drought which meant that the river was not even flowing ... in fact, it was mostly dry ... which made the hot dusty days a bit of a bummer. The food and vendables were stupid overpriced ... which was also a bummer. One thing that baffles me about hippies is their ability to just fuck you on the price of things and not feel bad about it. I tried to buy some ice from the festival ice vendor ... and they wanted $12 for a 20lb bag. Of frozen water. That shit *retails* for about $4 at the supermarket. Tickets were $180. Food was similarly jacked up. And nobody thinks that's antisocial behavior. They talk the love but they act like your average Moroccan hawker (or Regal Cinema) most of the time. Selling $0.15 bottles of water for $2. One dude was selling cart-based solar power rigs ... integrated 120w panels with a battery and charge controller and inverter. That setup costs about $500 max. Or $3,900 from this guy. So ... you're basically profiteering on people's desire to buy renewable energy. AND you think you're soooo "conscious". I love it. And when you come to our booth ... where we're selling t-shirts for less than anyone else and routing the proceeds to humanitarian efforts and you're going to try to get "deals".
Now ... it's certainly no fair to stereotype an entire group of people based on some bad apples ... but ... yeah. I just needed to vent, I guess. Hippies are certainly not even in the bottom half of unpleasant people. They're pretty awesome, actually ... but ... it's hard to have your face stuck deep in that smelly armpit without making a face.
Anyway it was a good time in Mendocino. Mostly because rolling with Nolan is just classic every time right down to the broken down on the side of the road in the mystery RV at 6 in the morning. Hell yeah!
.
No comments:
Post a Comment