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I Go! You Go! We all go! To Oswego!
by David 'ZZYZX' Steinberg - zzyzx@ihoz.comI'm not a fan of the touring festival idea. Sure High Sierra sounds like it's amazing and I had an incredible time at the LaHood Bluegrass Festival, but those shows were as much about camping with thousands of your friends; about feeling the love around you so thick that you could slice off a piece, frost it, and eat it for lunch; about being able to - to quote David Bowie's "Memory of a Free Festival" - "Touch. We touched the very soul/Of Holding each and every life." Great music at HSMF is almost unfair; it's like seeing the Grateful Dead and after having adventures getting there, after hanging out and meeting cool people at every rest stop on the way, after arriving at the one place where you truly can feel at home, after all of that well then the Grateful Dead will play for two sets. High Sierra's and LaHood's are rare though. For more "mudane" festivals, the concept tends to leave me cold. A lot of it comes from being pickier than most; why would seeing 10 hours of music, only one by a band that you really liked, be better than seeing 3 hours of your favorite band playing? Sure if I were fans of all of the bands involved, I could see getting excited by the Summer Sessions shows. Since Moe and Gov't Mule do nothing for me, I'm stuck waiting for fall tour to see String Cheese Incident. So there I am, being Mr. Bitter-n-Cranky-n-Stuff, which just isn't that enjoyable. While there is some pleasure in sitting back and mocking stuff, I always find that actually enjoying the event is preferable. If only someone could put on a festival that I would enjoy... [1]
One of the ironies of the touring life is that when you can finally afford to go on tour, it's impossible to get the time off of work to do so. I've crossed all the way over the time/money axis in the last 4 years from being a starving grad student who got summer breaks ("Did you know that a loaf of bread only costs like 70 cents and if you eat that on a road trip, your body thinks that you've fed it for the day"- one of my many ways of surviving tour.), to being a microserf who flies into shows. Flying never seems like traveling to me. If you put me in an airplane, I immediately fall asleep. As a result, flying is kind of magical. I sit down, close my eyes, wake up, and suddenly I'm somewhere else. It's not quite the teleportation that I long for, but it kind of works. The only side effect to this is a feeling of disjointedness, such as I felt on July 16th, emerging from the plane in Buffalo International.
Grabbing a rental, I popped in a '73 Dead tape and headed across the New York State Thruway. As I drove east, I looked at the sign, "East Interstate 90." I could just turn the car around and drive straight back to Seattle. Instead though, I pressed on. Western New York state is kind of a no man's land. The land is flat, the flora non-distinct, and the towns are just too far away from the ones that I grew up in to get that feeling of being home. When I was at Bard, I had a line about driving to Buffalo. There's no way to predict how long it will take to get there. You just drive and drive and drive and drive, and when the Thruway Gods decide that you've suffered enough, you're in Buffalo. After I became the road warrior of the Las Cruces Years, I figured that was just me not being used to long drives. I was wrong. I-90 is just a path of ennui. The drive to Syracuse was only 140 miles, but I felt compelled to stop thrice. Anything to shake off the doldrums sounded like a good idea. I figured that I had 9 more hours until the show was going to start and most people should have arrived the night before. Despite hitting a little bit of traffic around the entrance road to the airport, I had smooth sailing into the venue.
Going back on your word is very rarely liked. However there is one exception to that rule. No one minds if saying, "We're not going to do this cool thing," turns out to be a lie. That's exactly what Phish did. "No, this will not be another Great Went or Lemonwheel," they claimed. They lied. Blatantly. I knew that as soon as I saw "The Green." The Green was the hangout area at Oswego. The theme of the shows was that this was a summer camp, "Camp Oswego." Imagine seats made out of tree stumps, giant smores, and security "rowing" around on a canoe on wheels, and you get the gist of the event. Some of the old classics from past airport shows were present - the Bubble House from The Great Went and the ferris wheel from the Lemonwheel were both there - but there was one notable addition, the Electronics House. Running off of a generator, there were synthesizers, radios, walkie talkies, televisions, and - most notably - a working Atari 2600 game system with plenty of cartridges. Alas my Space Invaders skills are not what they used to be.
While inside the concert space on Friday night, I had a revelation. Phish have created a mobile venue. When I looked around the space, it felt familiar. It felt like Plattsburgh or Limestone. To my left was the Jaffa Falafel stand, to my right was Mr. Sausage. The venue felt like home, despite never being used before; I imagine Florida will be the same.
While the weekend wasn't perfect - the heat was pretty oppressive and I spent most of the first show wondering what had happened to a friend who I was supposed to meet (It turned out that she got caught in horrible traffic, heard most of the first set during the drive in, and was about 30 feet from me for a lot of the show) - it was pretty close. I got to spend a lot of time with people I cared about, saw some great music, and finally saw the idea of a festival work.
What's the main problem with the festival idea? The bands don't play for nearly enough time. I don't think anyone thought that Phish were shortchanged at their shows. The other bands, who played before the show venue opened, also got long chunks of time. Rather than having 20 bands play a day, they had 3 or 4. Moreover, rather than have a bunch of jambands play, they got some of their influences to perform. Blues, jazz, swing, and bluegrass were the 4 sets that I heard.
What's the best part of the festival idea? Gueststars! Well getting Son Seals to sing "Funky Bitch" and the Del McCoury band to perform a mini bluegrass set should easily satisfy that itch. This really was the festival for people who don't like festivals.
After the amazing second show, I did the rest stop hop back to Buffalo, grabbing cat naps at every single stop on the Thruway. Then I napped a bit at the airport. I almost caught a huge break at O'Hare. I had a 2.5 hour layover scheduled there, but there was a plane leaving 15 minutes after I arrived that had room in it. Whoo! Get back to Seattle at a sane hour. Alas, it was not to be. Due to mechanical problems, I actually arrived about 20 minutes later than I would have had I not switched planes.
The temptation to contrast Oswego with the failed Woodstock '99 is stronger than my meager will power can resist. For if Camp Oswego was a festival so well planned that even a festival hater like me was converted, Woodstock was so poorly run that the biggest festival fan would have been tempted to stay home. What good can you say about an event that prevented people from bringing in any food or water, and then charged $4 a bottle for people trying to rehydrate? What good can you say about cops allegedly requiring women to strip before they would help them? I loved reading how stunned the promoters were that this riot happened, as thought they weren't gouging people, as though the same thing didn't happen in '94, as though the first two Woodstocks didn't have fences torn down so people could gate crash. Can someone explain to me why John Scher continues to get approval for these events? Perhaps he should be barred from any future promotions until he shows that he understands that if he plants ice, he's going to harvest wind. Perhaps Phish can give lessons on how to organize these events; I hear that there will be a tutorial in Big Cypress on December 30th.
[1]Those of us in the literati like to refer to this technique as "foreshadowing."
David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1993. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capitol Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html
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