Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Camp Bisco in the Words of Katherine McNamara

The Search for Health and Happiness at Camp Bisco


The splendor of camp is in its simplicity. What is an orch? What is a theme? What is a festival? Sometimes the best recipes have the least ingredients. I’ve seen them all… and somewhere between the faux Kerouac bus photo ops and the artfully calculated tripping forests that have sprung up like trendy weeds on the circuit something gets forgotten .(Although the carnival at Waka certainly a sparkling optical attraction the best ride I took was crawling underneath the stage during the bass nectar set with my girl Cate – looking out onto unsuspecting front row of rolling heads, sitting in the dirt, inhabiting the barrel of the drum) So maybe that’s just me; a preference for the quick and the dirty, the raw and the unaffected. .


What do we need? Good tunes, good folks and a plot of land for a few short but well honed days. So when I am asked to write about the healthy and happy elements of a well acknowledged drug romp that is only a shadowy vestige of the politically idealistic hippie movement of old… I have to wrack my brain if I want to be honest… and although I’m prone to dramatic exaggeration, my speech may be flecked with lies, I try to mostly walk in the light of the truth. We’re a long way from Woodstock – figuratively if not geographically – they were trying to alter the world, we are trying to alter our perceptions and escape it for a little while. Blah blah blah. So I’ll just focus on what’s going on inside that fort cause face it – that’s why we come.


And whats going on inside the fort is what is happy and beautiful, if you can let it be in its

Communal convulsion that drips into perpetual spasm; that ticks like a leak and rivets to a beat – maybe this is how we can describe good electronic music. Camp Bisco 9 fell into festy orbit with all the trappings of the best electro line up round the rotation this summer. Not to say that camp didn’t cook up some good rock and roll as well – and of course no tinkling bouncy thumpster can steal the thunder from the main act. Only real thunder upstaged the biscuits in this (albeit die hard) opinion. So the music was right – telepath took the stage on Saturday, scrambled off then on again while bisco closed out one of the best day time sets I’ve seen (this isn’t an article about music but that mr. don into pat & dex …. Even on time sounded good) aeroplane, eskmo, rusko, future rock – I’ll repeat myself and leave it at that – shit was right.


Now people are the second reason you come to camp. Look around. These are your friends. And for a few days at least these nuts along your camp site’s peripheral are your people, if only because you to hit the same scene. I tend to like the campers - everyone from dudes in skirts to tree thuggers to high school grads down for their first rodeo. Although I will admit that this year will be remembered for an insane amount of robbery – stories are all over the place - one lady I know who by karma’s laws ought to have been exempt… But such is life. Lock up your shit.


So forget the scoundrels cause you can never shut them out, and anyways you better focus on your folks who will help you when the badness comes… in whatever form it takes. Cause we’re all outlaws and I’d venture to say that we like it that way. I know I stick with the people who will allow me to expound on my future Indonesian adventures while rolling around in a muddy pit. We would be fools to deny the dark side of Camp Bisco, and perhaps health and happiness appear brighter by contrast.

The real beauty in a situation as strange and ripe as Camp is the alien inclination to interact with some stranger who (to you anyways) is little more than a well weathered yet simultaneously prolific patron of what makes the bottom of this barrel look so deep. There wasn’t even half as much rain as last year. But in Bisco land, when it rains it pours… and here we are flailing and flapping down in the muck and somehow convincing ourselves and the world what we’re doing is called ‘dance.’ In this alone I think we make a pretty good team. So despite the innumerable mocks and mark ups from the resilient, repugnant crop of seedy spunions, you never have so much fun in your life as the few fleeting days you spend getting as weird as you can with them. Well done campers.


By Katherine McNamara


Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Review: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros at Higher Ground 7/26

Me at the show
Krissy feeling the love
The band hung out with the fans after the showThey had us all sit down for a campfire song
Families were feeling to love



Their merch is so awesome. I got a t-shirt




I had been looking forward to this day for a long time. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros were here in Burlington playing at Higher Ground! I have had many dance parties to them and it was fun to have a dance party with a sold out crowd and the music really being them and not a recording. The band doesn't only give you a show, but they give you an experience. People were feeling the love so much that a couple actually got engaged on stage! Their sound is kinda like when you are at a festival late night and people start jamming...but they are actually great! You can't help but feel joyous and that you are lucky to be a part of something so cool.

Here are some quotes from the fans at the Higher Ground Show.

"So good I don't even know what to say." David T Euler of Burlington, VT

"It was awesome! It looked like an Urban Outfitters Tent Sale." Ashley Lipton on Burlington

"We are very excited about tonight's show. We heard about the band when they played at Metronome and we wanted to have them play here. We found they seem to attract many different kinds of people. It seems that people are looking for something different and this is it. They appealed to everyone and made them happy! Nothing pleases us as much as a group of really happy people." Kevin Statesir owner of Higher Ground

Photos and Review by Taraleigh Weathers
To see when Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are playing by you check out their website by clicking here!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Flaming Lips Ignite Nateva Music & Camping Festival with Spectacular Performance

The Flaming Lips Ignite Nateva Music & Camping Festival
with Spectacular Performance

STS9, Crash Kings, Grizzly Bear, She & Him, Drive By Truckers and More Highlight Saturday Line-Up at New England's Premier Music Festival

OXFORD, MAINE (July 4, 2010) - On the second day of the inaugural offering of the Nateva Music & Camping Festival the powers-that-be blessed the sight with an absolutely gorgeous summer day. Weather is hard to call in this neck of the woods. Perhaps an easier prediction would have been that the Nateva line-up of music would blow around with an eagerness to brush against so many genres.

This ideal could not have been more beautifully illustrated than by the Flaming Lips. From the bombastic opening of confetti cannons and an ad-hoc dance squad of guys and girls in fantastically orange ensembles, one could be forgiven for thinking that they'd lapsed into a time of easy air travel and readily recognizable rhythms.

Frontman Wayne Coyne was forthcoming in his Nateva love. He called out the volunteers and the workers who made the port-a-potties, "clean enough that I'd put my ass on them."
Working from a set that drew from the band's eclectic catalog, the Flaming Lips proved, once again, that they might be America's most durable band. If the instantly recognizable, "Jelly," was not sufficient proof of the band's wonders with a hook, then the plaintive cries of "Yoshimi" worked to remind listeners of an ever evolving act.

The Lips were preceded by the throbbing beats of STS9 (who also got a Flaming Lips shout-out). With an anxious crowd waiting for the headliner, STS9 delivered a beat and synth heavy set that called at points on three keyboards, and the loops that go with each, to dance with guitar. It's not easy to serve salad when the masses are screaming for steak but STS9 put enough meat into their set to warm up the masses wonderfully for the Flaming Lips.

Earlier in the day, Grizzly Bear turned out to be the wildcard on the Main Stage as tuned in hipsters stood transfixed by their "Elephant Six Collective" approach to avant rock, while far too many others hurried to the dinner bell. Those who weathered their stomach's callings caught a smart, and at times surprisingly aggressive, set. Many who didn't see this set will one day claim that they did.

Of course, She & Him didn't come as an easy act to follow. With their sound fleshed out by two backing singers/instrumentalists, a rhythm section of bass and drums, and an additional guitarist, M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel had plenty of room to stretch out. While Ward's work as a solo artist, and in such collaborations as Monsters of Folk, has cemented his credibility, Deschanel is a newly discovered treasure of a performer.

Whether behind a Wurlitzer organ that Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers described as the "Spooner Oldham Special," strumming a ukulele, or simply belting out a killer like, "Sentimental Heart," Deschanel can flat out sing. The cover of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" showed that they know their roots but She & Him can confidently move in the current day in style.

Hood should, and does, know a thing or two about performing and his Drive-By Truckers blew doors in a set slated to start at 4:20. Fresh off a support gig for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, they delivered solid hooks via ringing guitars in a manner perhaps best mastered by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. They even dedicated, "Girls That Smoke," to She & Him and "anyone who tours in England when it's cold."


The Crash Kings may have been the nicest surprise of the big stage performers with their catchy, "Saving Grace," mining solid guitar hooks and vocals that reached the same neighborhood that Hot, Hot, Heat and Wolf Mother have occupied.

With two nights down it seems that a true personality is emerging in this event that we now collectively call, "Nateva." Friendliness emerges at virtually every turn here, and with one more night, it's your call to go make a new friend. There's only one day left. This is the spot.
Today's lineup features Festival headliner Furthur, George Clinton & P-Funk, Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band, Max Creek, Zappa Plays Zappa and more.