Blue and Green Grass

This weekend was the San Francisco madness that is the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I rode down with my band (as in, I OWN them, not like I am IN them) on Saturday morning, sharing a car ride and much musical geeking out with the wonderful-as-usual Cooper. He has a CAR, folks! It is truly amazing, and smells like new car and cigarettes, a combination which I actually like. It reminds me of airport shuttles.
San Francisco was ACTUALLY sunny, a beautiful hot stunningly blue-skied day. There was a big crowd for the DM3, who were on first at the most remote-yet-big stage. I am used to Santa cruz lazyness STILL, and was shocked that all the hippies got to the park that early. I mean, the concert was free but still-- before noon!!?? The crowd got bigger, I got an all access backstage pass (which allowed me to begrudgungly pull rank and go use the star porta-potties so I didn't have to wait in line), and I began to meet up with almost all of my good friends:


(You can tell who they are mostly because of all the black they wear. They look like a pool of ink, or like a 9 person Motorhead cover band..haha.)

Ryan Rinker, Siobhan and Davey, JJ and Renee, Rico and Molly, Amelia and Jevin, and then my Mom and Pop showed up too. Pop has been in Canada, working on the cabin they are building up there, and coincidentaly decided to come down for the bluegrass fest. Good thing too, or else I wouldn't have gotten to see him until I came back from Antarctica.

I think the highlight of the first day was Seeing Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and Rico Bell, all of the incredible band of Welsch punks (who STARTED alt. country with their album from 1985: "Fear and Whiskey") The Mekons, do their silly and sarcastic banter on a stage about a fourth the size that the DM3 played on. They played this awesome song that Paul Davis sent me about a week ago, written by Jon Langford.
OK, for some reason that is the one song that I can't upload onto my website. Weird. Instead, on a totally unrelated note, you get The Gossip (soul-gospel girl-punk) covering Aaliyah (Glammy young soul singer who died young in a tragic plane crash)....
"Are you somebody"-The Gossip
Don't think I don't care about your musical needs.

Day 2 of the festival I had contracted a nasty cold from my tattoo artist. I'm not bitter, cause it hit her harder than I (Ha!), and besides I have a strong immune system that I put through it's paces pretty much weekly. The music wasn't that stunning, but the sheer volume of people that were there sure was. It was one of those, Oh-shit-I-am-at-a-fuckoff-BIG-festival moments, where you want to just lose your friends, eat some greasy food and lie in the mud. There is no way you are ever going to get a good seat...UNLESS you have a backstage pass! AHA!

They also have free tea, as I learned, and free beer, as my father learned in a story-for-another-time. It soothed my throat, and I was able to not go competely bonkers cause of the mass of people and pot smoke (that's the "green grass" reference in the title. Hippies love Bluegrass music, and think that everyone loves to inhale their disgusting second-hand smoke, including people who react badly to pot (me) and small children in the vincinity.) and uptight aging hippies. I'm such a hater, I know, but I really think that baby-boomers are some of the most wound-up, insane, an self obsessed people. SF has a lot of folks still pining after the 60's, and any free thing in the park brings them and their folding chairs out in droves. OK, now I'll stop being mean. Baby-Boomers that RULE include my parents;



with whom I had a tearful goodbye in a crowd of 10,000 people listening to Emmylou Harris. I don't like drawing out goodbyes, it makes no sense to me, and so by a certain point I had to GO. And so I went.

More later. But i must go pack my art supplies for a four month stint in Antarctica. You know how it is.