It wasn’t folk and it wasn’t a festival
We went to the wrong one.
It was marketing. Some kind of ‘world music’. It made me think and ponder about what IS folk and when are festivals good. Our pals who invited us were all insiders who’ve been going to this ‘good small’ festival for years. I don’t know what they saw in it. It was fine except for the people and the music. Is it me? The field was very nice. Except for the dust. We stayed after it was all over…moved a couple fields over in our trailer. THAT was nice. Starry night to beat the band. ALL THE STARS and Milky Way. Knock your eyes out. What was all that with the stoners and drunks those days before? Who’d do that on purpose? It seemed like pure herd mentality. Sure there were some few tiny nice things about it. But it didn’t seem to come from any of the tie-dye. You write about going to your old hippy shindigs. Maybe I’m getting claustrophobic. Agorophobic. Maybe these things simply have to be caught before the marketing sets in. This festival works pretty good, I hear: they now have some good rules that lets it prosper: no dogs, no campfires, everyone wears an armband, latenighter’s camp is off to the far side. They’re going to get rid of the cars. Hey, that sounds good. Nice simple rules, too. Well, it might’ve been a good festival BEFORE they needed all those rules to make it work. Those kinds of rules let good folk survive bad mobs. I’d rather not have any bad or mobs. I was thinking that the sign of a good festival is that no one knows who set it up or who’s in charge…that it just seems to happen with a bunch of folks help every year at a certain place. That sort of thing. Well, what do I know: I bet that real folks could run a big folk festival. No rules. Boot anyone who acts up. Of course I’ve also thought: why bother the performers and tempt them to embarrass themselves by pandering to a crowd: just listen to their tapes, let them have their life in peace. Martha’s funny like that sometimes and I’ve possibly learned that from her: she gets a group that she really likes and learns all their songs by heart but if they come to town she has no interest in seeing them. She has them already. Of course when they come to your house, you gotta feed em good and then you can play all nite. Maybe like how I used to want to do interviews with my favorite writers/musicians. Heck I even started my little mag to get ‘in’ like that, maybe get some freebies. But now I’d kinda rather not bother anyone. Let them do their art and me do mine. Except for you! 🙂 I guess if things somehow go past the marketing layer, then anything obviously reasonable is fine. But hey we’re working on something and I have your email address… –JP
