July 19, 2008

1st: Astronaut ; Ladies jam into second Voices! 2nd: I-MAN ; Dribble for Aucoin's defiance of physics and time. 3rd: House Dog & MEMPHIS Robots!!! incredible half hour for Marc. All sorts of mind numbing jams, sounds and effects through these tunes. The place was stinky, moist and going bonkers.

Mad props to The Egg...great sets. I only saw the Saturday one with the closing "Number Cruncher" from heaven.

Never, ever miss a Sunday Camp 3rd set!

I get so many good vibes, memories and met the best people when I think of the Indian Lookout in Mariaville for all the Camps played there as well as many other fests, Camp Creeks, Vibes, SCI etc.... A 20 minute walk to the lake to scrape off the ick and replenish. Try to remember to leave the sheet on the shore, ya momo.

I got a Camp pass that year to help with the stage teardown and to steer cars in the proper areas with parking as well as post show dehydration. Niacin & Vitamin B baby. It was a breezy 95 degrees midday all weekend save a few rain teasers to pump up the humidity.

Awol had the absolute best pingers we ever took. I married a tree and made great friends with various pints of ice cream. The serotonin syndrome was non-existent. Got benzoquinone?

“So long as large sums of money are involved – and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal – it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.“

Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist

The opening jam in Astronaut has an extended SITA jam. This lasts a lot longer than usual, and frankly a lot longer than was necessary. They stay firmly in type one territory the entirety of this jam, and while it lasts a very long time and is generally pleasant (as I think all SITA jams are), this is nothing you haven’t heard 100 times before. The second jam has some fantastic stuff going on around the 19-minute mark. Brownstein begins playing a four-chord progression and the rest of the band eventually follows suit. The real meat here is mostly Magner and Brownstein, but in general I enjoyed the entirety of this section. The jam out of Voices develops fairly quickly into an uptempo dance jam which features a lot of Magner. As they hit the start of the Ladies track, he comes up with this ascending melody with a peak on the penultimate note. This has such a neat sound to it. The rest of the band is sort of just along for the ride, and eventually Brownstein gives them the focus to head over to the Ladies peak, which is well done. The jam back into Voices has this weird circus-y patch from Magner that I couldn’t have hated more. The rest of the jam is not all that interesting beyond that, either. Shelby Rose has a typical drum and bass jam, and this is essentially an ending jam for its entirety. Nothing interesting, no thematic work, nothing.

The first Dribble jam is about as straightforward as it gets. This is exactly akin to 100+ Dribble first jams you’ve heard, with nothing really unique or interesting about it. Near the end of this jam, they shift uptempo into a drum and bass jam, which leads into the punk rock sound of Chilled Briefly. This is a neat novelty song, though ultimately, like the jam which preceded it, not all that interesting. The second Dribble jam begins with this sort of death march sound, featuring Brownstein using a heavily distorted bass tone. While not directionless, I ultimately felt like this was totally uninteresting. The band was completely on the same page and communicating very well. However, the page they were on was just a fairly boring one. From there, they abruptly and out of nowhere switch into an extremely fast trance beat, and it quickly becomes apparent that they’re headed for the Crickets peak. The remainder of this jam is essentially a telegraphed Crickets peak, with nothing really all that interesting going on yet again. The Crickets jam is 15+ minutes long, and yet most of this is somehow forgettable. The last few minutes the band lands on a neat little theme featuring a solid Magner hook, but otherwise this is a lot of filler. I listed this as a highlight, but really the only worthwhile part is the last few minutes before I-Man. The I-Man jam begins where they would have normally already had two small jams, which is a nice change of pace. This turns into a multi-chord jam which I generally enjoyed despite being fairly straightforward. This is a bit more of a rock jam than usual, and somehow Barber manages to stay fairly restrained throughout. He knows exactly when to build and get more intense. The second I-Man jam begins with a type one jam, but quickly turns into something else. Magner and Barber craft this theme that almost sounds like something out of an electronic Last of the Mohicans. Unfortunately, they end this the fairly quickly. The resulting jam is filled with Magner playing panflute, and most of what he does here is really cool. This turns into a thematic, multi-layered him with an absolutely incredible peak built by all four players. They absolutely crush this jam and its ending.

The Memphis first jam features Brownstein’s on a heavily distorted bass tone. This is a little monotonous, and there are points where it felt like they were stuck as to where to go next, but eventually they find themselves in a segue to Robots. Overall, I didn’t think this jam was bad necessarily, but it didn’t necessarily interest me either. I did enjoy the last few minutes before the drop into Robots, as the band gets into a fantastic groove buoyed by Brownstein’s catchy bass hooks. That said, this sounds essentially exactly how you would expect a Memphis jam leading into an inverted Robots. The three jams that follow (Robots DNB, return to Memphis, and Memphis > Basis ending) are all paint-by-numbers and do nothing for me. First HDPF jam is as straightforward as it gets. Second jam has some solid stuff although this is fairly safe, inside-the-box play, as is the final jam into Spacebird. Pretty solid show to end the festival despite some pretty boring segments.

Highlights: Astronaut (2), Voices**, Crickets, I-Man (1, 2**), HDPF (2)