Saturday In The Park, Sioux City 2012 with Tom, Jason, Patrick, Josh & Travis (R)

I guess I went to this year’s SITP as Jesus because at least two people called me that: a little black kid handing out fliers for another festival and a drunk lady waiting for the buses out of the place at the end of the night. That was my first experience with that, and I don’t think it was the shirt, as Tom suggested: I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t wear Eastern Indian dashikis with Iowa Hawkeye logo hiking shorts.

I chose the combination because of the heat, the dashiki being the coolest shirt I own (temperature-wise) and the shorts being the ONLY pair I own.

I think it was “the hair” which I wore down because of a little incident last year. Last year I thought I’d do that but instead of applying Head And Shoulders shampoo just before we left I used Head And Shoulders Conditioner, wondering all the while why it didn’t suds up or wash out. When it dried it was like a cement cap the rest of the day and night and this year I repeated the procedure just to get it right and used the shampoo, not the conditioner. Everyone knows you can’t do a thing with your hair after a shampoo and that was the effect I was going for. I think the explanation’s got to be in there, even though Jesus couldn’t have used Head And Shoulders. And didn’t have grey hair typical of a sixty-year old.

But that’s only part of the point I might make. I went to this year’s SITP without any investment in any of the musicians. I know I’m supposed to like Wilco but I’m still devoutly following the musicians I originally liked in the 70’s. I bothered to spend a number of hours last week familiarizing myself with all of the artists’ material I could find on the Internet, so I wasn’t in the dark, but that’s all I had: no history of following any of them, no even remotely-related t-shirts from prior concerts.

I needed a day I could look at idly from a distance. It’s been a while. And I can watch something like SITP from the perspective of one of the older guys. Maybe they meant to call me Moses. And I’ve been to some events before, know how it goes, and over time have become acquainted with some industry people and kind of know how it goes.

First of all, those guys who organize this event get my full admiration. The thing started when they said it would, ended when they said it would (even though Wilco threatened to screw with that) and there were no strange delays, technical glitches or unneeded jabber by the MCs. They added a camera on a boom this year that could be used to show the event from almost any perspective and displayed that on a big screen to the right of the stage, which was a nice feature. I hope they add a second screen to the left side next year.

Second, it’s an amazingly well-behaved event. If there’s lawless behavior, it’s almost all concentrated in the little “dance area” below the front of the stage. I didn’t spend enough time there to attest to any of that, but from my view up the hill aways under the TV camera, something notable never happened. In my time, keeping in mind I went to Grateful Dead concerts almost exclusively, when the lights went down and the band went ker-rang…… a cloud of green smoke instantly appeared over the crowd and never went away. That doesn’t happen in Sioux City and I’m at a slight loss to explain it. Maybe the pot they smoke these days is so strong it doesn’t take enough of it to PRODUCE the green smoke, or maybe the penalties that are supposed to deter the behavior are so high and unrealistic that they actually work, I’m not sure.

I got kind of concerned about it because I was afraid it made my tobacco smoking more obvious and perhaps I’d be trapped in a place without that for eleven hours. That makes me do crazy things. But it wasn’t an issue and the crowd never became tightly packed so it wasn’t even much of a consideration. That was handy because if you’re out of your own house, there’s no place in the world left where tobacco smoking is acceptable.

No, the only OD’s I saw, and have seen in recent years, were alcohol induced. Even at that, maybe all the law enforcement guys I didn’t see anywhere else stood around the fenced-off drinking area and scared people into behaving. I’m not sure-I’ve never been on the other side of that fence and I’ve never paid any attention to that party. I don’t drink, but my companions did, which resulted in me watching “our stuff” for a couple of longish stints that were just long ENOUGH to burn the living hell out of my right thigh and a little spot on my right ankle because the blazing sun noticed right away that my lily-white self had been perched indoors at a computer keyboard for at least a year. Note to self: next year, go outside a little bit in May or June or something and get a little color.

So there I am, burning to death but blissfully smoking, thinking about my life when they interrupt it with loud music. Of course, we expect that at these things, but I like loud music by guys who have been working on their technique for forty years and have really nice equipment and lots of techs to assist them and stuff. That’s not exactly the case with the opening acts-after all, everything has its pecking order and everybody starts someplace. It’s nice of SITP to offer a few local spots to new guys, but it’s not really necessary for me to be there for it.

Lissie fixed that for me. The Dirty Guv’nahs right before her delivered a couple of interesting tunes and a nice Rolling Stones cover but Lissie had a kind of disconcerting worldly view of things you had to pay attention to. A lot of her lyrics make you go “did she really say that or did she actually say….” and she’s a pretty believable rock star, especially since she’s a guitar player. Her light complexion gives away how hard she’s actually working on a very hot day. She’s got some gritty themes. During her performance I really kind of thought she and her band were going to steal the whole show. They were um, very good.

I still thought that through the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. They were obviously competent musicians but I didn’t need to turn it up any more.

But then Gary Clark Jr. took the stage. With authority.

Bright Lights A/V

Nobody around me said it but I thought maybe Robin Trower had shown up. I’m supposed to compare Clark to Jimi Hendrix, I know that, but hoo boy………I have a lot of trouble trying to imagine Clark’s rendition of say, All Along The Watchtower or Foxy Lady. I’m pretty sure I’m completely happy studying why he says “I don’t owe you a dime”. That band played with ferocious power and offered a really refreshingly raw presentation that was devoid of the usual star bullshit. I’d travel to see these guys again, especially on a bill by themselves.

Nothing wrong with Wilco, I think the devout were pleased. I noticed they were able to sing along to every word, which I couldn’t do from just one week of listening, and it looked like the fans were getting what they expected. They certainly got a generous encore; it was kind of like a two-set performance, but Wilco is a really “distorted” band. They’re obviously masters at it, and it IS interesting to listen to guys who have been at it for 20 years with some of the best electronic gizmos money can stack, but there’s a not-so-gentle distinction between distortion, however well-managed, and feedback, and I’m more of a feedback guy. That said, they produced “moments” all over the place, and I’m certainly a new fan of numbers like Handshake Drugs and Jesus Etc. (maybe that’s where all that came from), and Impossible Germany, but I still like straight guitar-driven rock and roll like they delivered in the last two numbers. I didn’t get quite enough of that. Wish I’d kept a set list; I can’t remember what they were.

We got out of there in record time and on the bus in a reasonable amount of time and soon found ourselves back at the Holiday Inn. It being midnight, there was a consensus among our group to drink for a couple of hours and then go to the nearby restaurant, open 24 hours. That’s where I made a fatal mistake. I know there is going to be a stretch before I can smoke again, and for some reason, we hurry into the hotel (I’m not telling you the reason on purpose-you don’t want to know it) and I think wistfully as we whiz by the little group of smokers outside the front door, I should peel off and join these guys, but I don’t.

I’m completely stupid.

I KNOW the drinking part is not fun for us non-drinkers, I KNOW I can strike up a camaraderie with the smokers. You’d be surprised in a world where we’ve become the lepers how quickly we can conjure up topics for conversations where we’re huddled, always outside of wherever it is that we are, missing the event.

I’m going to leave out the fairly mundane details about our next few hours, but after a small semblance of sleep we were up in the morning, myself unhindered by physical discomforts other than two little sunburned spots, my caffeine jones and my nicotine jones. I immediately head outside to the smokers’ huddling area, joined somewhat quickly by Patrick, the other smoker in our group.

While we’re standing there considering our options, a somewhat familiar-looking hippie dude walks by carrying two gallon jugs of water. “Hey, good show yesterday” Patrick tells him and the guy says “oh thanks” and goes inside. I am inquisitive: good show yesterday? “Yeah” says Patrick, that’s the guitar player for Lissie. They must be staying here. I thought that was them last night when we came in but I didn’t want to bother them”.

Oh dammit. Now that he mentioned it, one of the smokers from the night before had been a relatively small blonde, which was one of the reasons I DIDN’T decide to hang with them: I don’t need no trouble hanging around small blondes half my age.

But oh dammit. This is the second time in two years that Tom and I have somehow narrowly averted hanging out with the celebrities, this time literally walking right past them hurrying into a hotel due to general gastronomic misbehavior, which is almost never one of my problems.

I gotta learn to pay more attention. One year Phil Lesh was standing right in front of me eating ice cream while I scanned the crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of him, and I’ve also done stupid stuff like turn down Merl Saunders when he invited us to continue on to Chicago with him from Minneapolis because I HAD to work……….I’ve bumped into Les Claypool when he was signing autographs and thought he was a clerk and tried to buy a used record from him.

We failed to consider the possibility last year that Ray Manzarek and Roy Rogers might just go next door to Minerva’s for a couple of hours when they played at Okoboji and I STILL have two great questions for Manzarek if we ever do manage to predict his next move. We even knew somebody in common that we could have gossiped about.

In 1975, I HAD to visit Coit Tower one day when The Grateful Dead were playing for free in Golden Gate Park.

Duh.

Anyway, attendance at Sioux City was light this year in my estimation. Whatever your reason was for missing the event (probably the heat or you just didn’t know who any of the performers were), you blew it, and you can’t ask for a refund because it was free. Watch for the IPTV broadcast; I heard the camera guy tell somebody “we always show it right before The Fair”, which I presume must be the State Fair.

It was a real hot show. Catch Gary Clark, Jr. someplace when you can.