ok, like i thought, this wasn\'t really a festival as much as an end of the year throwdown for washington & lee students. friday wasn\'t really the big night, either, as the students we rolled in with attested to. what you have to remember is that w&l is a 100% greek school. and not in the kinky way. its a bunch of frat and sorority folks from the genteel south living life on mommy and daddy\'s dime.
now, that being said, they do have an outstanding history of bringing in good bands just before they blow up. however, when the band got there, they said they were a little wary of the choice of gigs. when we got there, we thought it was an awfully pretty place (which it certainly was) but we weren\'t entirely sure of the crowd.
imagine pulling up to a gorgeous field, couches in the middle of the field around huge bonfires, friendly dogs running about, security consisting of parents/alumni at the gate, and then opening your door to hear \'closing time again\' blasting through someone\'s gigantor stereo system. not to say they weren\'t friendly and nice folks. all of them were. but it was unlike any other gathering i\'ve ever been to.
.... like, you know how they say dave matthews\' audience is full of frat boys...
so, obviously the guys were feeling a lttle intrepid during the first few tunes. everyone was drunk (except me, i had to be nice to an ulcer), nobody (except jill and me) knew the first few songs, and it was obviously a custie crowd. like, one of their dads had to have invented khaki, kind of custie!
but, they could tell good, danceable, funky ass music when it was right in front of them.
everything up to and including doughboy, to me, sounded kinda off. good, but not really *there*, ya know?... the crowd would hoop and holler it up, but everyone there seemed a little reserved.
and then came the glory of the cover song.
peace frog came out like an atomic discofunkrave and didn\'t let up for a good fifteen to twenty minutes. everyone in the room (which was half full, at its height maybe a hundred or so folks) knew the song and started to get down. the drunk girls started to gyrate, the dudes started to really get into it, and the boys were off and running. The Breakfast that we know and love had shown up, and it was Good!
it was very much a literal on and off switch. everyone there knew the band was good, but couldn\'t quite connect. as ron later said, the south likes things a little slower and less intense. which, as a lifelong southerner i can full attest to. but once the band put out a tune the whole crowd was familiar with, it could then do its thing with hugeness and aplomb!
after the enormity that was peace frog, hard luck harry was a little bit slow, which gave everyone there a minute to catch their breath, but, as you can imagine, ldz was a funkitfied madhouse. by this point, some sorority girl was trying to swing/dirty dance every guy she *hadn\'t* hooked up with yet, guys were whoo hooing liberally, and cute, vivacious girls had filled up the front row so the band didn\'t have to keep looking at dudes\' bobbing heads, and the place was on the tip of their fingers. the chase kicked off and kept everyone into it, when all of a sudden the drum solo kicked in and raised the energy another tenfold.
now, beef barley was very good, but here\'s the thing. the subsequent jam > Buquebus > Message In A Bottle was Absolutely UnReal!!!
ser doesn\'t even begin to describe this thing.
having been witness to the very good (but hard to hear) webster buquebus, i figured we\'d get a good one, but maybe not an end all be all insanity version like we actually got. there really should be an extra >jam between it and message. the initial jam was thick, swirling and deep. jordan and ron stole the show during this section. obviously adrian and timmy don\'t suck but what jordan and ron were doing with that propulsive groove were truly extraordinary!! i mean, vortex-like.
but then, the song got to it\'s end. it got to the part where the lyrics are over and there\'s an outro and the the next song is supposed to start. but it didn\'t. not for ten minutes, at least. and it was all tpalms stepping up.
you know that thing he does where he leans over, and the guitar is just hanging there, and he\'s really getting into it? listening to everyone else onstage, listening to the pulse of the crowd, listening to the dance of his fingers?? and then at some point, he careens back with that huge smile and that screaming peak?
it took a *while* for that peak. in a very, very good way! i, as well as some others, were hollerin\' way before he even got to the peak, and once there, he kept that crescndo going and kept that speed up and the next thing you knew, it was message in a bottle!
of course, the whole crowd knew that one, too. they even dropped out to the let crowd sing a line! while it had dropped a bit in size (some folks just don\'t have the endurance) the crowd was even more rabid now. and they got one of those extended, borderline punk rock messages that the breakfast has been known to give! it started at mid-peak and never dropped. it just kept funking and pummeling like everything from peace frog on had! once they knew that these folks just wanted to dance and get crazy, and once the crowd knew thats what they\'d get, it was a non-stop inferno!
during the break, i ran to jordan to thank him for that amazing buquebus. when they came back on for the encore, timmy announced that they\'d continue to funk it up and the gave us a five or so minute funk jam leading into tabboo. which, of course, funked it way the hell up!
it was one of those nights where you figure you\'ll get a decent show, but you end up with an astounding show. sure, it took everyone involved a little bit to warm up (oh, and i should mention, another beautiful intro jam to sleeping beauty!) but once everyone did, the crowd fed the band and the band fed the crowd, and that spark came raging out!
we found the guys after the gig was over by a bonfire. during the ensuing conversation, i was able to request my m00b00s>puppetry>v00d00, but i may have gotten too greedy by also requesting a wake up in a coma smack dab in the middle... oh well, he asked....
(oh, and on a side note, jill and i started sitting in the mountain stream next to the venue around eleven the next morning, our camping chairs in the middle, our feet above on rocks, beers in hand (ok, so i told my ulcer to go to hell) and we stayed there til three or so. unfortunately, the stream cooled us off too much and while she got the worst of it, sunburn is now a painful reminder of a glorious weekend! how she drove back to conneticut with those lobster legs, i\'ll never know!)
