Yes, this post is so deeply overdue, it’s a good-damn thing no one reads this page anymore anyway. Which is sad, but the fault does of course lie with those of us who are supposed to be supplying content for the silly thing. Regardless, I have now set my silly, sleep-deprived, ass down to actually attempt some form of summation of the inaugural Rothbury Music Festival.
The jester and plant were both there, under the auspices of things that are best left undisclosed in this public forum. Suffice it to say we had a blast, but let’s stop with the introductory ramblings and actually dig into the heart of the monster shall we?
Is there a better way to start off one’s experiences at a huge hippie-fest than getting stuck in the mud? Well, I can think of a few, but I wasn’t that lucky, so mud it was. And there was plenty of mud about for the stalwart cognoscenti crew to drive through as they attempted to figure out where in the hell they were as opposed to where in the hell they needed to go. Not being the driver, it fell upon me to doff shoes and socks and sink up past my ankles into the mud to shove at the vehicle in futility. Luckily, hippies are friendly sorts, and have this weird attraction to mud, so we got some help shoving and were soon free.
Rothbury was the first major music festival that your humble narrating jester has ever attended, and while I’m certainly not old, I have been accused of being curmudgeonly, and the crowd that plant and I found ourselves wandering through had the both of us feeling our not-all-that-advanced ages. Sadly, neither one of us are idiots, which left us in the terrible position of understanding precisely what the primary focus of the hordes gathered in the parking lot was. Comments about dentistry and an eye-popping assortment of helium balloons on nearly every corner of the festival site is a far cry from subtle, and before the drink started to take hold, I was beginning to get the fear.
Wandering around this instant city that was composed of far too many fucking RV’s for a festival that was attempting to paint itself green, surrounded on all sides by people who had gained an elevation that the jester himself was nowhere near, and utterly stunned by the lack of people playing guitars, the fear began to creep in.
Just who in the fuck were these people, and dear lord, did they actually compose my peer-group?
In hind-sight I will admit that the fault that first night was mostly my own, I have this problem with an over-active imagination that I’ve somehow managed to boot-strap onto my sense of doom-fed optimism (if that makes any sense to you at all, get in touch with me, you’re probably as bizarre as I) and the combination of these two fairly benign elements conspired to lead me into drawing up all manner of wild and far-flung fantasies in regards to the scene that I was to encounter in Rothbury Michigan.
Did I actually expect to be greeted by intelligently bizarre humans who had finally found a place where they could let down their hair and act out in all the manners that our straight-laced society would ordinarily never allow? Probably; more the fool me.
And in a sense that is exactly what I found, if you surgically remove the word ‘intelligent’ from the preceding statement. But why all these goddamn balloons? Is this really a generation so detached that the old stand-bys of alcohol and marijuana are not enough to allow folks to cut loose in their peer-group?
All signs pointed to yes. The next morning, you could find areas of the grounds positively littered with deflated balloons, sad reminders that John Lennon’s dreams of people coming together is still best accomplished with hard-core help.
In defense of this crowd I will have to drop the whole balloon issue and relate that once I’d managed to drain a goodly number of aluminum cans and gotten myself worked up the point where I would talk to absolutely anybody, the folks were cool.
And they came from everywhere, we met folks from both coasts in our perambulations that first night. I even found a couple people playing guitars, which pretty much killed whatever residue of the fear that had outlived the alcohol. With the jester’s ‘I don’t give a shit, I’ll talk to anybody’ persona taking the lead, plant and I talked our way into a bunch of crowds and were well received, despite the fact that said persona only manages to settle into the driver’s seat when I’m on the verge of falling over from beverage.
That first night, after the rest of the cognoscenti crew had passed out, I even managed to get myself involved in a great game of ‘throw the glow-sticks’ with some of our camping neighbors. And to offer up another defense of the Rothbury crowd; anytime you can have people climbing on other people’s RV’s without any sort of ugly scene breaking out, you must be in decent company.
I even managed to find my way into a circle where they were passing some sort of peace pipe around.
And as I’m sitting here, drinking beer and getting more and more tired as the moments pass, I realize that this is no place to get into the ins and outs of Rothbury, so let’s start condensing, then we’ll wrap with a few tales of a Saturday night that I can almost remember.
The grounds were gorgeous, the festival organizers had gone out of their way to provide exactly the sort of playground that people who walk around with balloons are likely to enjoy. Sherwood Forest was simply magical, and if various reports are to believed, there were a good chunk of folks there who believed in magic, be it aided by substances or not.
The music was absolutely incredible, the jester got to see Modest Mouse again, and they gave me shivers, the jester got to see Primus for the first time, and I now have empirical evidence to back-up my long-held conviction that Les Claypool is a mad-genius. I got to dance alongside a beautiful girl while Spearhead had the crowd feeling funky, and essentially I got swept up in the ‘good vibrations’ that perhaps can only come from that many people gathered peacefully together.
The organizers of the festival had even done a phenomenal job in their efforts to make Rothbury a ‘green’ festival.
But the tale that needs to be told is that of the Saturday night which the jester can hardly remember and has made him vow that never again shall he go full-throttle into the wilds of conversing with crowds lest he has some form of recording device concealed upon his person for the purpose of being able to recreate at least something of the magic that descends after the proper amount of alcohol has been ingested.
To set the scene, plant and I had made it to the start of the Dave Matthews set, only to wander away into Sherwood Forest in search of bizarre souls, and we found a few who helped us up that step-ladder so we could get a proper view of the grounds. Sat and had a pow-wow with a Michigan native and talked about the economy, which was a lot more fun than it actually sounds.
When plant crashed, the jester, being of ‘sound mind’ and wavering body made his way into the wilds of this instant city of tents and RV’s.
And now we can only provide fragments, which is sad, because Saturday night had a magic that had little to do with substances. Saturday night in Rothbury I made the momentous discovery of a brazen new way to associate with my fellow humans at festivals.
Basically, the conceit was this; I wandered about, calling out in the matter of a street-vendor . . .
“Intelligent conversation?!? Intelligent conversation, just a dollar a minute,” or variations on that theme. Anyone who laughed, or even giggled, I’d run to and engage in conversation.
To the best of my admittedly spotty recollection I made two dollars, (said dollars came from separate, attractive females that I totally failed to get anywhere with, besides feeling like a bit of a gigolo for selling my mind) was given approximately six beers, got myself invited into at least four smoking circles, didn’t have to smoke a single of my own cigarettes (because apparently cigarettes are a great trade for a spot of conversation that, while I won’t swear was intelligent, had to be entertaining [god I wish I had a recording device on me]) and put a pretty fierce dent in a bottle of Jack Daniels, which I have to say was a wonderful reward for the ten or so minutes I spent conversing with those two kind-hearted people who didn’t chase me off even when I began my drunken recitation of Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’.
On the notion of odd findings, I spoke with at least four people who had come to Rothbury from as far away as New York City and who hadn’t even made it into the inner grounds yet, being oddly content to sit in tent-city and profit from their illicit wares. What really surprised me was how open they were about it, and how nice they were to the drunk individual who suddenly came upon them and began interrogating them about their reasons for being in Rothbury. And before you ask . . . yes, I did try and talk my way into some free samples, but none of the dealers I spoke too that evening was that nice.
In the end, I have no idea how long I spent out in the wilds, mingling with my peers. But in the end, I think I walked away even more optimistic than I had been when we first established a foothold in the festival grounds.
Looking back, my recollections are colored by the news that has been trickling out about the two individuals who died at the festival, the fact that the Double JJ Ranch is descending into all manner of legal issues surrounding its fiscal solvency and the pessimistic side of my personality that keeps insisting that should Rothbury resurrect itself next year for another festival, it will have an almost impossibly hard time coming close to the fine high-note that was managed to be not only hit, but sustained over a good chunk of days.
And so, to close, all I have to say is that while I’ve always considered myself a lucky son of a bitch, the fact that I made it to the inaugural Rothbury, saw what I saw, conversed with the people I conversed with the people I conversed with and etc . . . why it would be enough to make a lesser mind believe in god . . .
As for me; the possibility of another Rothbury, the idea that humanity can actually make the needed changes to save ourselves from the brink of oblivion, the idea that there is some benevolent force watching out for all of us silly fuckers here on earth . . .
I’m staying agnostic.
- finite