Wakarusa: Flaming Lips, Bad Camera Policy, Thieving Wookie and More!

By Chris Tackett

Saturday, June 7, 2008

After the Thursday storm, with the campgrounds soaked and in slight disarray, things got off to a sluggish start on Friday morning. Folks were trying to regroup, some needed to pick up the pieces, literally, repairing fallen or broken tents, hanging out soaked sleeping bags and clothes to dry and trying to fix whatever ever else had been broken by the night's powerful winds.

Thankfully everything in our camp survived the night and by mid morning the energy within the campsite had changed as people were telling their storm stories and celebrating the fact they'd made it through the night alive.

Sounds pretty dramatic to say that people feared for their lives, but I know some - at times - certainly did. But with all that behind us, the music resumed and people got right back into party mode.

It was decided amongst my 8 or so friends that I'm camping with that anyone that skipped Thursday night and missed the storm shall be marked with a Scarlet Letter, so it will be clear to all who is and isn't a weathered survivor. You'd be surprised how serious the sense of accomplishment one can have from sleeping in their car because their tent was flooded. :) And with our chests broad with pride from not getting electrocuted, we set off to do what we'd actually come to do - see some music.

Random Thoughts

I'd forgotten the interesting sensation of slowly sinking into the damp soil with each step through the main walking areas. Later, in the Revival Tent, which was eventually a muddy mess, it was necessary to keep your feet moving otherwise you really would slowly sink deeper into the mud. One friend actually had his sandal rip apart from the suction effect of the mud. He hadn't planned on it, but he quickly found himself forced to turn into one of the Shoe-less Mud People that are known to roam through all music festivals. He handled the transition like a champ and actually took to the Mud Man lifestyle pretty quickly.

Another friend of mine, Mahoney, is experiencing Wakarusa for the first time and says he is wowed by the way people are so courteous to one another. This thought came about when we sat near a couple napping just outside the The Porch tent during Turbine's performance. People were giving them plenty of space and making sure not to step too close to them and disturb their rest. This is something I've always liked about the festival scene and Wakarusa, in particular - most people are just super nice. There's a live and let live atmosphere and people not only let you have your space and do your own thing, but also look out for one another. It's great.

The Thieving Wookie with the Shifty Eyes

Not everyone that attends is so nice, however, and by luck of the draw, we ended up camped directly next to a guy that could be best described as a thieving Wookie.

This guy was probably 18 or 19 and apparently showed up to the festival with no tent, no clothes other than what he was wearing, no food, no beer, but a lot of drugs. He must have been tripping acid or something, because he was doing some effing weird-ass shit everytime we saw him. Within 5 minutes of our arrival on Thursday, he was already bumming beer and stole a sandwich from our camp. We let it go because we'd given him the beer and he was so skinny we didn't care that he took a sandwich. But things got crazier. At one point he had a fishing net that he'd gotten from God knows where, wearing one sock, sandals and camo pants and said he was going to catch some fish in the lake. Hours later we saw him again with a tree branch wrapping duct tape around one end saying he was making a fishing pole. So, maybe that's what he was trying to do for food, but it didn't work. For shelter he'd taken a canopy and duct taped it to the side of his car making a type of lean-to, that was actually pretty impressive for its ingenuity and ample use of duct tape, but ended up with a ruined paint job on his car.

Well, last night we arrived back at our camp around 1am and found his parents who had shown up to get his car and were trying to remove all the duct tape and figure out how to get into his car so they could drive it out of there. Apparenly their son, the wookie, had broken into an RV and stolen a motorcycle and was arrested by Lawrence's Finest. The parents were really nice and we all sympathized with them for having such a terrible child.

"That Camera Doesn't Look Professional!"

My biggest annoyance of the weekend so far has been getting seriously hassled by security guards while in the photo area during a few different shows. See, I have a press pass w/ access to the photo area, which I would think should be all I need to get in and do my job of shooting the performance, but that's not the case. See, the security guards were adamant about the need for me to not only have a press pass, but also have "professional" photo equipment, whatever that means. I was using a Flip Ultra video camera and a Diana+ medium format camera from Lomography. Neither of these are high-tech cameras with huge bulky lenses, but they are cameras which I think should be enough. Any camera should be enough if you have a photo press pass. But that isn't the way Wakarusa looks at it. Instead, I was interrupted at least 5 times by different security guards telling me I had to have "professional" equipment to be in the photo area.

What's the criteria, I'd ask? How many mega-pixels? What screen resolution? How big of a lens to I need for you to think I'm a professional? If I'm getting paid and I have the media credentials granting me access to shoot the event, it shouldn't matter if I'm using a damn pinhole camera made from an Altoid tin, if it's a camera and I'm getting paid to use it, it's professional. Thankfully, none of the security guards persisted after I let them know how ridiculous their "professional" equipment policy and I was allowed to stay and shoot the thing, but it was still a huge annoyance because each time someone would bug me about my camera size it would end up taking at least a minute or more to defend my right to be there and ate into the amount of time I was able to do my job. The festival only allows you to shoot the first 3 songs (or first 15 minutes, whichever comes first) and I had to spend several minutes of trying to get some security guy to leave me the hell alone.

Moral of the Story: Wakarusa, I understand the desire to keep Scene Kids from stealing a press pass just to get up close, but you have to realize that technology has advanced and one can get high-quality pictures and videos without having to lug around a massive DSLR and bag of zoom lens. And if you're not going to ask each person you grant photo press passes to what kind of equipment they are using prior to giving them media access, then don't hassle them while they are trying to do their jobs with the camera equipment of their choice.

Okay, with the complaining done with, I should probably talk about some music.

Galactic, Flaming Lips and Everyone Orchestra

Galactic and the Flaming Lips were both great, though I was surprised and a little disappointed to realize how similar The Lips' show was to their previous appearance at Wakarusa two years ago. They do put on an incredible show and I had a great time, but I thought it was a little lame that lead singer, Wayne Coyne's comments to the audience were at times almost exactly the same as what he'd said two years ago, which made me question how genuine he really was with the things he was saying. But, that aside, the man knows how to work a crowd and it's nearly impossible not to get into the show and eat up everything they throw at you.

Here are a few clips of the bands in action:

Galactic:

Galactic from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

Flaming Lips Opening song w/ Wayne in the 'hamster' ball

Flaming Lips: opening song w/ hampster ball from Lawrence DautCom on Vimeo.

NSFW clip of some lovely naked ladies dancing with Wayne:

Flaming Lips: yikes! from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

The big star of the weekend for me, so far, has to be Everyone Orchestra. I love big bands and this one was certainly big. As you may have guessed from their name, the Everyone Orchestra is a collection of various musicians that changes night to night. With the evening music canceled due to the storm on Thursday, there were a lot of bands that weren't able to perform, so during the EO show, a lot of those folks got to play, which was a nice treat for them and those that came to see them.

There were about 20 people on stage at the beginning: a 4 piece horn section, a keyboardist, a xylophonist (or a similar instrument), a fiddle, banjo, mandolin, 3 or 4 guitars, two bassists, two drummers, a couple percussionists, three singers and the maestro, Matt Butler who stood at the front, back facing the crowd as he directed everyone via instructions on dry erase boards and frantic, sweeping hand gestures. The orchestra sounded great together, though he was really the one to watch. Not having seen them before, I'm not sure how many of the songs were improvised, but it seemed like a lot of it was as he was busy throughout every song scribbling instructions on the white boards and counting off the section changes.

Check out these clips to see them in action:

Everyone Orchestra from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

Everyone Orchestra pt. 2 from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

Today, I'm excited to see Alejandro Escovedo, Leftover Salmon, Old 97's, STS9 and Keller Williams.

I'll add more videos and photos as they become available. Like I mentioned before, the wi-fi is not great out there, so it's slow going. Check back here for more.

Here are a few clips of Truckstop Honeymoon from Thursday

Truckstop Honeymoon - the ordinary things from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

Truckstop Honeymoon: from Lawrence DotCom on Vimeo.

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Posted by chewyfally (Falestine Afani Ruzik) on June 7, 2008 at 5:10 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Yeah, muddy revival tent. Felt like the horse from the Never Ending Story every time I stepped into it.

Posted by alm77 (anonymous) on June 7, 2008 at 5:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"but I thought it was a little lame that lead singer, Wayne Coyne's comments to the audience were at times almost exactly the same as what he'd said two years ago, which made me question how genuine he really was with the things he was saying." That's so funny. We were watching the online stream and my husband kept saying the same thing.

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on June 8, 2008 at 3:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Falestine,

Great comment. Just learned that that horse actually died in the swamp scene during filming. ARTAX!!

Alm77,

There were lots of people commenting about that during and after the show, too. It's stuff like that which leads to the 'hate' part of my love/hate feeling towards this scene. Several times Coyne said something to the effect of how cheering for his band was "what it's all about" and doing so "will make a difference". It's that empty rhetoric that drives me crazy. I understand that one should seek a balance between too much preaching and saying nothing, but the unoriginality is annoying. Michael Franti overdoes it sometimes too, but I expect it from him because the political nature of his lyrics, plus he's a big activist when he's off-stage. I'm ignorant to what Coyne does to actually make a difference other than talking about it.

I heard both Alejandro Escovedo and Vince from Leftover Salmon make political comments encouraging people to vote, but they were a single comment and came across in a genuine way.

Posted by Charles (Charlie Naramore) on June 8, 2008 at 9:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Chris,
I was reading this to my girlfriend, she put it best when I got to the point how anything should be good enough when you've got a press pass and are being paid to cover it.
"Well, especially when you're just some d-bag with a stupid shirt that some guy gave to you so you could hassle everyone trying to do their job."

Anyway, the next morning I drove John McCrea to the airport. An hour and a half of one-on-one time. We're friends now.

It was great to see you this weekend! If you make it back up soon we should make Phil have barbecue. Or gardening party. Or just something rural.

-Charlie Naramore

Wakarusa: Flaming Lips, Bad Camera Policy, Thieving Wookie and More!

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