So yesterday, I attended the Big Summer Classic in Indianapolis. Talk about off the hook. It was 95 degrees and I almost had a heat stroke, but I have not had this much fun in a loooong time. AND I was sober the
entire day.
New Monsoon opened at 1:30 pm. They were a lot of fun. They had a guy from India playing traditional Indian bongo things, a couple guitars, and a great percussion setup. Good band, look into it.
Michael Franti and Spearhead. I wasn\'t really looking forward to them, but after they started, 5,000 sweaty hippie bodies went nuts. They have a rock-reggae thing going on, and they know how to get down. They even have a guy on sax.
Umphrey\'s McGee. I don\'t have to say anything...they\'re getting better every time I see them. They didn\'t play Triple Wide like my section kept chanting, but we\'ll come back to that.
Keller Williams. My first time seeing him live, and it was a treat. I never appreciated his talent until I saw just what he can do with a guitar. He played Gate Crash, which is near and dear to Indianapolis\' heart (Deer Creek) and we all went insane. Also played Stupid Questions, covered The Dead\'s Dupree\'s Diamond Blues, and Boob Job ("she got a WHAT?!"
). Mad talent in this guy. Go see him live.
Yonder Mountain. So about 4 minutes into their first song, me and the 30 people around me erupted in a completely spontaneous hoedown 50 feet from the stage, dead center. This continued for the next 45 minutes. We cleared a 20-ft circle in the middle of the lawn and shoved people into to have dance-offs. The guys in Yonder kept laughing and pointing at us.
I am now officially addicted to bluegrass. They threw down HARD.
String Cheese 9 pm. By this time we are all exhausted and couldn\'t be happier (or so we thought). My dream came true during their set: someone had brought in 3 whole bags of glowsticks, and there was a half-hour war on the lawn. I\'d never seen Cheese, but I\'ll definitely be listening to them now. They were so tight and their jams never lost direction.
Encore 11 pm. They announced that Keller would be doing the encore. He came out. Then the drummer from Cheese came out. Then the bassist from Spearhead came out. Then I said to my buddies, \'that sounds like Triple Wide by Umphrey\'s.\' Thirty seconds later the guitarists from Umphrey\'s came out and started playing Triple Wide. This trend continued until there were SEVENTEEN musicians onstage jamming their souls out. There was a guy onstage holding up sheets of paper with keys written on it, and he\'d hold one up and all 17 musicians would change keys right on target. At 11:30 the venue turned the stage lights off indicating curfew, and the guys just kept playing right through it. At 11:45, they pulled the plug to the stage at the climax of the jam. I\'ve never seen anything like what I saw last night. Franti also passed out trash bags from the front to the back of the lawn, and everyone picked up their beer cans and water bottles. We left that place spotless.
Moral of this story: if you missed Big Summer Classic, you really did miss it. If you have an opportunity to go, GO!!
