|
|
innerspace #13 - Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered -
Camp Bisco and the Mysteries of the Muse
by Carol A. Wade - caw39@columbia.eduThis installment is going to be about Camp Bisco...although not really. Summarily, Camp Bisco, the ambitious, excellent, well-run, end-of-summer musical blowout sponsored by The Disco Biscuits, was a triumph of spirit, will and organization. Tim Walther, the financier of the event, along with his crack corps at Walther Productions, pulled off a festival show that will go down in infamy, with its attendees, as one of the most enjoyable ever.
I might talk up and down a bit later, about how practically every band involved really grabbed my attention at some point: the gripping, supertight Lake Trout; the edgy, pointed funk of Fat Mama; thick and rangy Ulu; Sector 9 with their abstruse, airy and potent tech-jams; Deep Banana Blackout...the list goes on.
I may even spend a second or two ruminating about the elegant fineries of road travel, the likes of munching hummus and chips, going 80 mph on the Interstate, encountering the cleanest service station bathroom *ever* somewhere in Central PA, and Kirby and I roiling dizzily in the our seats because the volume knob of Ed the driver's stereo was broken and only went just so high, and you simply can't be denied when you need that one extra notch for that CRAZY-ass Biscuits "Helicopters" jam from Chicago...
There are lots of things I can talk about concerning Camp Bisco, but none of them can erase the unerasable recollection in my mind concerning the event: musical creativity is, to me, the most incredibly overwhelming force, for good and for bad. The full-throttle freakout of that force spent most of the already schizophrenic weekend properly kicking my ass. Evangelists preach and naysayers warn against the powers of sound being the most potent, the most revelatory magic, capable of both uplifting to tremendous heights, and devouring all notions of 'sense' and 'reason'. The magnetism which has drawn me into the vortex of performed and recorded sound has beguiled me since birth. Through my formative years, it shored me up during periods of chronic depression. At other times, it caused me to long and pine for it, due to inaccessibility.
Now that I'm a little older, it has come to pass that I've become (by dint of my sheer adoration of the form) a sort of presence amidst the hoards of admirers of musical arts, feeling the vibe of the "kids," capable at times of penetrating to the heart of the matter, to examine the interior minds of the people who walk the stage. Outside of actually being a musician (which I am as well, so I get to really straddle the horridly wobbly fence), examining the textures of musical life from a journalistic perspective is one of the most mysterious things to ever have to do.
Being a writer, musician, artist (or whatever other sticky labels I can attach to myself), I am always fascinated by the crosstalk between states of "doing art", "being art" and "living art". In a world so saturated with potential and actual "art objects" as ours, so hypnotized by ownership and agency, propriety and purchase, I find myself constantly attempting to extricate myself from coercive and corrosive unwritten rules and regulations, set up in midair by those damnable, elusive Powers That Be. However, at intervals, I still come across moments when I stand miserably by and watch my usual reasonable, well-functioning internal logic of "all things being equal" melt into a brackish puddle of insecure self-questioning: The Kiss of Death meets the Full Pouty Lips of Life, with a rude "SQUISH".
Oh yeah, Camp Bisco. Even before I left New York City, I waited anxiously on the steps of my old apartment for Ed and Kirby, my two partners in crime, to arrive. I ruminated nervously about my impending opportunity to converse with The Disco Biscuits, and other luminaries that would be around at the event, which had been being planned as early as the Spring before. I gnawed pathetically at my already abbreviated fingernails, and poked uselessly through a copy of "Teachings on Love" by Thich Nat Hanh (a brilliant, sanguine Vietnamese Buddhist monk). But for some reason, the nebulous threat of my own journalistic "performance" terrorized me.
A little optimistic, I knew I'd have at least eight-plus hours to concoct and organize any thoughts I might have in my mind. On the drive there, I'd also have more than ample psychological sedatives, flying therapeutically up and down the gorgeous rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania. The breakneck amplitude of New York, and the hectic, unendingly maddening pace of my summer so far would be fading in the rearview, as a weekend of music and hypnotic engagement approached.
The ride was delightfully mellow, but frighteningly quick. Eight and a half hours and a late departure brought us into Oil City, PA at moments past 9:00 PM. We'd missed the larger part of the early evening's musical offerings, I'd lost a lot of time to calm down and get used to the idea of schmoozing. I ended up backstage for about five minutes, staring absently at the back of the stage and peering around in the limited light for signs of life. Jon "Barber" Gutwillig, the Biscuits' lanky guitarist, loped around and talked to some people, as Marc Brownstein, the bassist, did the same. Many others were present, longtime fans and friends, chatting casually, but mildly hurriedly, since the first night's Biscuits show was nearing its beginning.
Francisco de Goya, the 19th century Spanish painter of somnambulant and dream-blurred images, fraught with fantasy and piercing reality, did an etching called, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters." It pictures a dozing man with his head down on a table, while at his back encroach a whole slew of awful, drooling beasts awaiting their dinner: the same man who is catching some Z's in their midst.
The Biscuits seem to do nothing but dream when onstage, except in a permutation of awakeness, rather than sleep, as such. Aron Magner, the band's poker-faced keyboard player, most seems to musically punctuate these dream-states with sweeping electronic soundscapes which open the mind to wandering into the Unknown. This reasonless dreaming, the in-between state (not sleeping, but dreaming), still produces monsters, but rather than slimy, malevolent things, they are monumental sonic shapes: great, throbbing light formations that rose from the silence that Friday night and twirled slowly in the clear, starry sky like small, impressive planets.
The second set ruled, starting with a one-two-punch of the stately, ambitious "Magellan," and "Once the Fiddler Paid", a touching, tender-hearted tale of loss and hope. These songs set the stage for all to have their butts finely polished by a sudden turn towards evil, with songs like the sinister, marauding Arthurian funk of "Spaga", the ominous, limb-busting ska of "Mindless Dribble," and "Nughuffer," a romp of almost incomprehensible energy through a day in the life of altered beasts.
Picking myself, in pieces, from between the loose rocks that lined the ground in front of the stage, I drifted, elated and four feet from the grass, back to the tents. There, my new, ersatz Bisco-freak family awaited me, some others dragging dumbstruck back from the stage in slow but steady numbers. Around the warmly glowing campfire, we all sat, murmuring in exhausted and fascinated tones about what we'd seen.
The lights were stunningly provided in a royally ever-improving manner by ex-Wetlands lighting guy, Matt Iarrobino, who is now on The Disco Biscuits' full-time crew roster. The sound was powerfully orchestrated for a large outdoor setting by the bands' longtime soundman, Jon Lesser.
Even the stage decorations were an in-house affair: created by The Disco Biscuits' roommate, Rick Rood, and a team of artists, they were a provocative and spiritual blend of large-scale, painted Eastern Hindu themes, Western Renaissance "Vitruvian Man" images, and enormous magnified cell-like structures, and giant DNA helixes which framed the stage. Even the weather, which had been unpredictable all day long, suddenly improved to cool, comfortable and starry perfection moments before the band took the stage.
Completely overwhelmed by feelings of inexplicable love and terror at the near-perfection of feelings that were coating my insides, I stared into the fire quixotically. I still had a lot of time to pick the band's brains the next day, but, with my head spinning and my jaw ajar, I found it difficult to decide how I was going to muster the Sisyphean strength to do so. Weird...a couple of nice people I'd already met and spoken to had suddenly become ten-foot-tall strangers engaged in a profession that I know well, but which seemed so foreign, so much like private, tenacious and secretive sorcery, that I felt very small and starkly unable to approach it at all. In retrospect, I know I was maybe being a little overdramatic, or if not that, then I was probably just high from the sheer physicality of being dragged from earth to the sky, to watch mind and heart and tones unite in four hours of aspiring divinity.
Groggily, I blinked into the brightening sky, staring up into the trees the next morning. I'd slept in the open air the night before, since I could barely muster the mind to negotiate some tent space, and the weather was nice enough that I just unfurled my sleeping bag and tilted over. The whole next day was spent sleepily spreading hummus onto slices of bread, munching bits of food off paper disks in our little Tent City, and taking a trip into Oil City to scavenge for more food and plunder the local Salvation Army. I scored the top prize of the excursion: an old, bright blue t-shirt emblazoned with the logo, "Get High On the Right Stuff!", with a madly grinning 1970's-looking cartoon basketball player (who, looks amazingly and ironically like the Biscuit's Barber), soaring through the air and hovering inches from sinking a catastrophic slam dunk.
Insanely clad in all blue for most of the day, I stomped around the grounds, twirling around in my long, satiny skirt and peering at the sky towards ominously approaching clouds. Ulu was the last band to play before One World Tribe appeared, and got to The Rain Set: at about 3:00 PM, the sky yawned and brought forth a deluge that sent kids tearing a blue streak back to the tents. I, too, ran with them, but ever-prepared as all ex-Girl Scouts should be, I produced a garish bright yellow poncho, on the back of which I had drawn a talisman of good vibes, The Moon Rock, with a Sharpie marker. Determined to get my groove on, my blue satin skirt soggy around my ankles and dragging in the dirt, myself and said brightly-colored poncho danced to One World Tribe, then Fat Mama and Sector Nine, until the sun had no choice but to show who was boss.
Then, night came. As dusk settled on the rain-riddled environs, my sensibilities became more and more damp. Hiding in my tent, I poked through the Buddhist tome, attempting to pierce my anxiety, or at least make it just go the hell away. What was I so nervous about? What doubts did I have, I who am always such a detractor of doubt? I couldn't place it. The sounds of Project Logic boomed out over the fields, the voices of women and men of my tribe twittered outside the thin nylon, and dark gathered around us, a dim circle thrown out by the hearth. The blonde and soothing Chrissy padded around gently with The Disco Biscuits' mascot, Vasillios the (stuffed) Llama cradled in her arms. Colleen and Evan hugged; Laura nursed a sick Bill in the big red tent; Jesse chatted animatedly with others about music; the stars came out one by one. And I sat in my tent, at once so very grateful to be alive, and concurrently in the miserable, intractable midst of recurring depression.
I resolved both to not be so hard on myself, and to try to focus on the things that were happening that would be marred by sadness, if I didn't make the effort to really pay attention. The sky unwrapped the night, studded clearly and cloudlessly with stellar effusion, and a fine, eerie fog blanketed the gentle slope that led from the stage back to the vendors and campgrounds. With the lights peering over the landscape, the scene was right out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", silhouetted figures wandering around in the haze, waiting for the alien mothership to spirit them away...
Rather than engage myself any further in my inexplicable angst, I decided to wander the grounds with my camera as the boys took the stage, even if I was too freaked out to take any pictures. I stood well back, regarding it all as if it were science fiction (which, by that point, it almost was), and waited. Soon, they emerged, crapping around jovially for awhile, checking their instruments. Starting with the fairly new, aptly pompous "Pilin' It High", the night's tone was set...another four-hour pummelfest of endlessly spiraling jams, and inspirational sorties into the rapid-reflex side of rock 'n' roll adventure. By the time the end of set one rolled around, more stunned forms hunched their way back to food, drink and rest till the next onslaught. The paranoiac "Voices Insane" capped the set joyously for me, as I twirled to the rhythms of my own shaky sanity, and I thanked the Bisco overlords for hearing, in some sense, the quiet echoes of my stupid, incalculable confusion.
The second set brought to life a kind of naked, unexpurgated lunacy that only seems possible at summertime shows. With the stars peering down mutely and majestically from above, there was a crackling and uncontrollable energy permeating everything, the fog still swirling gently around moist, heaving, eager animal bodies.
Right at the start of the second set, a wild-eyed blond kid, shirtless and out of his mind, wandered around the front of the stage. Incidentally, he had a deep gash in one of his hands, but he was obviously a little too chemically altered to know what to do, or how to handle the situation. As the Biscuits did their job up onstage, drama unfolded as some heavily tripped-out kids got bled on and stared at funny by the guy. For some reason, though, although people were horrified and distracted, the kid sort of seemed to will himself to believe that he was alright, then crept under the stage, and just sat there.
"Basis for a Day" seems to be the Biscuits song which, in my experience, always seems to attract bedlam when it's played...the last time at the Wetlands on 8/11/99, a pack of hooligans invaded the club as the song raged on. However, with due drama surrounding the stage, the set boomed on with the new "House Dawg Party Favor", a bouncy, sassy orchestral orgy the likes of which give the boys from Philly their distinct blend of classical urban grit. Another new one, "Chemical Warfare Brigade" followed suit in this vein.
Luckily, by the time "House Dawg" had finished, the Camp Bisco crew were alerted of the bleeding and wasted person under the stage, and as the first strains of one of my very favorite Biscuits tunes, "The Very Moon", escaped from the stage, the kid was being lifted off gently and compassionately to safety and assistance. Score a big one for Walther Productions...
I lost it during "The Very Moon". At some point during the song's whirling, entrenched and hapless optimism, I realized that even if I felt really bad about myself, like some strange, loony slacker who just couldn't get it together, that the four guys onstage were also just a bunch of regular, albeit monumentally talented, guys. I've witnessed similar inklings before with the likes of moe.: drive, talent and passion will make a person do the damndest things. People fall in love with you, if not only because you have the courage to leave your house every day, much less play the stages of theaters and clubs in unknown cities all over the country, more than one hundred times a year. As a performer, such things can make you fall in love with yourself, often to the point of the well-known disgusting, self-indulgent rock 'n' roll narcissism.
However, the kind of unbelievable, innocently bold inner confidence that "The Hot Air Balloon" rock opera is comprised of aspires above all manner of hoopla and strife, eventually getting one to a place where the experience of constant joy, creation, happiness and possibility all have no choice whatever but to emerge.
After Saturday's show, I attempted to make use of the all-night rave which took place in the field after the music was over. Eerie, potent techno shot through the air, making a group of scattered takers move and groove. By 4:00 AM Sunday morning, I was way too drained to keep it up, and had to conserve energy for making the 8- plus hour trip back to New York as early as possible, to make it to band my own band's practice at 10:30 PM. I felt like the subject of the Biscuits song, "Morph Dusseldorf," a chameleonic soul who spends time flip-flopping between realities, with the greatest of ease. Morning rolled around, and stricken, exhausted figures roamed the grounds of the show. I dissembled my tent and solemnly packed my belongings, sluggish and sad for all the mental uselessness which I engaged myself in for most of the weekend. I also had to find a ride...luckily, an unhinged fixture of the Bisco scene, Craig Beezley, hooked me up with a from a bunch of kids heading back to Boston.
Walking back to my collapsed tent and all my stuff in a pile, I glanced over to see a small crowd around Jon Gutwillig, who looked haggard yet sunny in the aftermath of some hardcore partying the night before. Walking over to where he stood with Erica and Jamie (more beautiful luminaries), we hugged. I stood there feeling lost and odd. Knowing of the fact that I wanted to do some kind of piece on Camp Bisco, he asked how it was going. I suggested that it wasn't moving too smoothly.
In a moment of the kind of sage-like blurriness that can come from people who are extremely talented, Jon said to me: "Well...just write about this [gesturing towards the stage, and thus, Camp Bisco], and channel it through your emotions."
Perplexed, I thought..."Well, that's what I ALWAYS do." I nodded, stared. Then, he lowered his head, peered at us strangely for a second or two, the proceeded with Matt Iarrobino back to the hotel.
I guess even if my emotions are muddy, to run life through them, I can't possibly go wrong. Sure, I incur the lion's share of terrible panic, but when I'm lucid and untroubled by doubt, the emotionality of seeing a band grow and hurtle through its most exciting times is...without parallel. Some of this installment of my column was written on a bus to Northampton, MA, to see the Biscuits again, and soak in that amazing transcendence of matter, without amnesia about humanity. Now, I'm finishing it all from my parents' house on Long Island, the voices of Melstock prodding me from the speaker of my portable Dictaphone, the upcoming taste of State College in PA begging me for a return tomorrow
On the way home from Camp Bisco, I drove a car belonging to a woman named Elle, who, with the rest of my travelers, were largely partied out and snoring in their seats. I drove five hours through the aforementioned gorgeous rolling green of Western Pennsylvania, listening to a fine crop of Bisco CD-R's from the past Spring and Summer. At one point, I looked out the window, and saw a hot air balloon cruising across the sky. Not surprising amidst the hills of PA, I was not too impressed, until that at the very same moment, the song "Hot Air Balloon" began to play. With my eye on the sky, I'll dream of the day I will rise above all else, to see the world from above, with a measure of love, and the desire to rise even higher.
Carol A. Wade spends a lot of time freaking out about lots of different stuff...kindly interrupt her with a message to "carol@jambands.com".
September Issue: Home | Editors | Features | Columns | Photos | Regional | New Groove
Road Trip | Tour Journal | Venue | Levels | Ghosts | Homegrown | Inaudible | CDs | Charts
JamBands.Com is published on the 15th of every month. Submissions are due ten days earlier on the fifth of each month. Please contact the specific editor for the section you are interested in contributing to. For general content comments, please e-mail jambands@jambands.com. For all technical web site related issues, please contact Sarah Bruner or David Steinberg