by fil manley
posted March 27, 2008
So, going to Langerado was an adventure. It has all of the ingredients you need to turn a “concert” into a “show,” rusty Ferris wheel, alligators, steely eyed natives, cow manure, spiny plants, fire ants, tropical storms, and some extremely good music.
Music festivals are more circus than concert and I always have as much fun watching people as I do listening to and watching the music
On the second night a person my friends described as a “dreaddy mohawked guy” randomly punched a girl in the face. She had a bloody nose, but the telling aspect of it is that the police were on him almost before it started. He wound up getting dragged around hog-tied by some not very friendly looking Seminole police who seemed relieved to have something to do. Truthfully, I can’t imagine a situation where someone could try to do something really violent or out of hand which wouldn’t be quickly and effectively squelched by the people just standing around.
Music festivals are one place on the planet where I feel safe, regardless of the hour. The overwhelming majority of people I’ve met at all of the festivals I’ve gone to have been sober, responsible, laid back people, who are there to relax and do something other than consume Americas most prevalent mood and mind altering narcotic, television.
My interview with the Wailers was pockmarked by poor planning, late busses and a lot of jumpy people. The Wailers tour bus was buried up to its frame and the mood at the press tent was what I call “ego on energy drinks and exhaustion”.
I wanted to know everything there was to know about the Wailers before I did my interview, but a broken printer, lack of readily available information and time constraints conspired to leave me scratching my head
On the day of the interview I approached Aston "Family Man" Barrett, Jamaican legend, Wailers bass player, Producer, Reggae Icon and some say the driving force behind Bob Marley’s backing band, and asked “Are you with the band?”
He looked at me sideways. I wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or tell me to go to hell. Part of me had known that anyone with that many patches on their jacket had to be someone. Not to mention the grizzled veteran mystique he exudes.
That episode is one example of the comical aspect of “stardom” at “media events”. Most of the artists are cool as they can be and “Fams” was one of the nicest people I met at the show.
I did my interview with Wailers singer Elan Attias, after standing around listening to them play cell phone tag with a bus-driver and the publicity people for ten minutes, while a publicity assistant stood by bouncing from foot to foot and looking at me like I was a rubber doorstop she was having a hard time dislodging.
The Wailers show an hour later was another thing altogether. The drama backstage is always just a preamble. It’s the music that matters. I was allowed to take photos from the stage as the Wailers played, which was an honor.
The Wailers changed the world. Not many people get to be a part of something as profound as the cultural, spiritual and musical revolution the Wailers participated in with Bob Marley. It’s easy to minimize their role, but the truth is that no one knows if Bob Marley would have turned into what he became, or had the opportunities he had without them. It was a chemistry thing, and you can no more remove them from the equation than you could remove the O in H2O and still have water.
Their music at Langerado was exemplary. Rock-steady, roots-reggae was the order of the day with all the bottom-end dub you could ask for. For a White guy standing where Bob Marley used to stand, Elan Attias came off as appropriate and well grounded in the genre. His elegant voice resembles Marley’s without sounding like he’s trying to copy him. Their set included the Bob Marley gold standards and word is that they’re working on a collaborative album À la, Carlos Santana’s “Supernatural,” which is an album I might actually pay for.
As the Wailers left the press area to do their set, Jewish reggae rocker Matisyahu showed up to shoot interviews, with his small son in tow. The press area grew quiet while he sat on the media stage with his son sitting in his lap, answering for the first time ever the deep and probing question, “How does an orthodox Jew wind up becoming a Reggae Rapper?”
It’s amazing how the technology of the 21st century has distilled every genre and bass line so that every type of music is a button push away. The truth is that Matisyahu is a living duality and proof of social evolution.
The real irony is that from what I heard, this traditionally dressed Jew was an average American kid, who went to regular schools and didn’t care a lot about the religion of his family. He spent time touring with Phish, and wound up becoming a rapper AFTER his spiritual awakening. It seems that rap as an art form, is no more foreign to his tribe than any of the other songs they sing.
I didn’t know what to think of Matisyahu until I listened to his music. His traditional dress can seem odd, given the hodge-podge of casual mall clothes America has adopted as its uniform. It’s a bit startling to see someone under the microscope draw a line in the sand, no matter what their religion. I knew that he has a core of rabid followers but the truth of him is in his music, as it should be.
Hearing him, I realized that he isn’t a man who “adopted” rap for novelties sake, but that he’s a person with talent who identified with it and assimilated it as part of a broad repertoire. Bounded by his deft beat-boxing, his music has a delving, spiritual kind of rawness and he sings with a self awareness which is both joyous and slightly deadpan.
His song “Time of Your Song” contains the line “I'm the arrow, you're my bow, shoot me forth and I will go.” It reminds me of the Christian theology I’ve been saturated in my entire life, which always talks about how hard it is to submit ones will to our perception of the “right” path as defined by an omnipotent yet observant God. Coming from the Bible belt, the whole experience was baldly fascinating.
Matisyahu set up his prayer tent, with his three or four or five Rabbi’s and opened up the doors to everyone at the festival. They were there for two days, singing, praying, teaching random people about Judaism and enjoying their day of rest.
I cornered Matisyahu when he finished singing for the Wailers and asked if I could shoot video for him. He said I couldn’t shoot during their Sabbath observation, but they wound up letting me shoot their whole show, as well as some other video when they wrapped up their Shabbos. I strolled into their tent on Friday night with my notebook and pen in hand.
There I met a man named Leib, a very Jewish yet very American guy, with a quiet voice and a slightly jaded but peaceful way about him. We started talking and he let me question him in detail for over an hour about their faith, what they were doing, how they were doing it, where they came from and where they’re going. Near the end he says “Oh, by the way, I saw the Grateful Dead 285 times.”
Hearing that, I experienced a wave of bittersweet envy for Leib and his Grateful Dead shows. I’m a latent Deadhead who never saw the Dead, who learned to love the Dead just in time to go to Jerry’s memorial on the Walnut Street bridge as the Chattanooga Police snapped photos.
At some point, I began to feel like Alice, seeing talking rabbits from my sequestered corner of the world, but also understanding on some level that all of this was completely logical and represented the essence of Americana.
I hadn’t gone to Langerado expecting to be indoctrinated into Judaism, but I enjoyed it no end. Given their history, how they’re portrayed in the popular press, as well as how I was taught to perceive them given my southern roots, it felt freeing to gather information which wasn’t second hand or hyperbolic.
It would take a sheaf of papers to report on the music at Langerado. There was so much of it and almost everything I heard across the board was both well played and well received. I had the opportunity to experience two bands I love, Blind Melon and The Wailers as they flew the missing man formation with new singers.
I saw a band called “Phix” whose musicianship and stage persona was so well done, it made me question if a band might really be able to play as a “tribute” band, as they are for Phish, and inspire similar feelings conveying music they didn’t write.
A friend of mine told me that I’m an “experience junkie” and she’s right. Langerado was one of those experiences I’m going to savor. The people I met, the “circus”, the fantastic thunderstorms and the music, my God, the music.
All of it came together to inspire in me a sense of place, purpose and time. The heat of the Florida sun on my skin was perfect, as was the breeze that cooled everything off. The trippy hippies, artists, Jesus and Moses freaks, stilt walkers and hula hoop girls all congealed into a perfect weekend. I chilled on the grass as band after band played, at turns ignoring and slapping ants, eating power bars and playing music critic as bands famous and unknown brought their “A” game to the swamp.
Most of all, I spent my time with friends, wandering around enjoying the press of sweaty, unwashed humanity stomping around in their crocs under the wide-open sky. Tents were laid out like a hive for as far as the eye could see. Langerado, like every festival I’ve gone to had a surreal quality, which I think is exactly the reason so many people of all ages go to them. It’s a celebration, and everyone who goes is a rock star of some sort.
Chattanooga is a hub for jam music at least partially because of our proximity to Bonnaroo. It’s so easy to go when it’s only 45 minutes away. I’ve met more people in Chattanooga who love jam music and festivals than I met in Atlanta, Florida or any other place I’ve been.
This years Riverbend promises to be good. I heard there were over 90,000 people there on closing night last year and if that’s true, that makes it bigger than Bonnaroo. I’m thinking that this year I might stay home and see the Black Crowes while Bonnaroo headlines Pearl Jam and Metallica, then take a ride to the 10,000 lakes festival in Michigan. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the Bonnaroo lineup, especially considering the fact that for a year everyone has been saying that Led Zeppelin was going to headline it.
Most people say the first Bonnaroo was the best ever, and that it will never be beat. Given that MTV is now one of the major sponsors at Bonnaroo, we can all look forward to slick advertisements all over the place and a mainstreaming of the lineup. Everything will turn just a little more vanilla as the spin doctors try to find the exact frequency required to pull in the most dollars.
That’s one great thing about Riverbend, the fact that it’s put on and managed by a non-profit organization. Say what you want about Riverbend, but it has its charm, and they do occasionally get some good bands, even if you have to listen to them with a football field between you and the band.
Yeah, that’s my one complaint. I heard 311’s Nick Hexum, and Blues Travelers John Popper both say it from the Riverbend stage. “You’re so far away…”
It’s amazing to me that people with this much experience who have put as much effort and time into a festival of this size can hamstring the vibe year after year by raising the stage so high and pushing the crowd so far away. If it weren’t a problem, artists wouldn’t continually comment on it from the stage. It’s as if whoever is in charge at Friends of The Festival has never been to a show.
I stood on the stage last year as Ricky Skaggs played, and looking off of the stage is like looking off of pueblo into a dark desert. The wide VIP area at the bottom of the stage is populated by expensive seats, placed perfectly so that people who sit in them can’t see much.
I’m sure they have their reasons, but the fact is that the energy of the music is dreadfully diminished and year after year, no one seems to care except the people singing up on stage. No band spends their time touring, traveling, writing and working their way up the food chain of smoky bars so they can play on a stage 30 feet off the ground, to people who are just a blur in the distance.
That being said, I’m going to be there this year. Then, maybe I’ll go to ten thousand lakes. Whatever happens, the music will be there and hopefully it will be worth the ride, whether it’s across the river or across the country.
fil manley
fm@helpforhumans.org
| Dining Out | Business | Movies | Focus | About Us |
| Church | Living Well | Memories | Outdoors | Real Estate | Student Scene | Travel |