Seeking An Extraordinary Life - A Travel Journal

Before my shift I'm chatting with Travis, a newly arrived resident, who tells me he saw Go Team just a couple of nights ago across town, and they're playing again tonight. I'm electrified - I've been wanting to see The Go! Team in concert for ages and it's serendipitous to get this opportunity now when I had no idea they were even in town.

The Go! Team are an experimental hiphop/funk/indie rock band from Brighton, England who make simple upbeat incredibly catchy tracks with a lot of fuzzy guitar, harmonica and intricate drum work.

They're playing Mezzanine, which is only about ten minutes walk from the hostel, and booked online the ticket is $24.00 - very reasonable indeed. I book my ticket right away and look forward to the evening in anticipation.

I'm at the venue shortly after the doors open at 9pm, and the bands aren't coming on till after ten o'clock, but DJ Amplive is already playing when I arrive and has some great tracks, so it's no trial waiting. I have a beer and a vodka and coke, but don't particularly feel like drinking any more (particularly since drinks are $6.00 each).

The crowd are, predictably, mostly indie kids in standard plumage. On the dance floor this means very little movement whatsoever, mostly people just stand around in little knots and sway a bit. But there's a good crowd gathering and when the opening act come on everyone hustles up to the stage at one end and there's life in the party.

Bodies of Water are supporting, and actually make a pretty good set - lots of close-harmony singing/yelling and 70s hippie rock sounds, with good energy and real heart (and a couple of very impressive moustaches). The crowd are pretty into it, lots of dancing, fist-pumping and cheering throughout. Meanwhile the venue continues to fill up. It's got a 1000 person capacity and there have to be easily 500 people in here already.

Then, after fifteen minutes or so of tuning and preparation of the stage covered by the return of DJ Amplive, The Go! Team arrive on stage in a series of flying leaps out of the shadows, and launch into Panther Dash. The opening chords are near-deafening, the drumbeat electrifying, and the total wall of noise and rhythm lifts me off the floor.

The entire crowd surges forward, ramming the barriers into the edge of the stage (and nearly crushing the cameraman) and a mosh pit forms the likes of which which I never expected to see in a crowd of indie kids - most of the crowd is dancing, jumping up and down, waves of collision spread back and forth across the room, we sway and crash into each other and yell and punch the air and dance and do it again. By now it looks like the club is almost at capacity, looking back over the sea of heads.

The band are amazing, raw-sounding but expert and playing the crowd brilliantly. There are three skinny indie guys (band creator Ian, Sam and Jamie), two Japanese girls (Ky and Kaori) and Ninja, a beautiful black ball of fire in a pink hoodie dress and rainbow kneesocks who absolutely never stops moving, dancing, bouncing, chanting, rapping, singing and exhorting the crowd to greater levels of frenzy.

It takes two burly security guys to keep the barriers from being rammed into the stage throughout the performance, and when Bottle Rocket begins and the whole crowd gets bouncing it feels like the building's going to collapse. The band play a good mixture of songs from their original and new albums, all the classics, and come back on for a double encore before disappearing back into the shadows.

I'm still completely psyched up and full of energy, and a good part of the crowd stick around for DJ Amplive to play out the evening - I dance till 2am, when my feet just won't take it any more and I fade out into the cool night. I walk home on shaking legs, ears ringing, feeling totally spent and utterly at peace.

Labels: Go Team, indie rock, live music, mezzanine, San Francisco

We start the day in a very civilised manner, with brunch at Threadgills "World Headquarters" restaurant. It's an extraordinary building filled with memorabilia from Austin's live music past, much of it taken from the Armadillo World Headquarters venue which formerly occupied the adjacent site. Posters and signed photographs of legendary artists like Janis Joplin, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and Willie Nelson line the walls and there's a piano hanging from the ceiling.

On the way home we stop at Walgreens so I can pick up two spray bottles and a bag of Gummi Sharks for gifting. We hit ACL at about half past one, and this time set up base camp on the other side of the park, between AMD and AT&T Blue Room. The National are playing, nice mellow hot-afternoon music, followed by Robert Earl Keen who is frankly just dull. But next up on the Blue Room stage is Devotchka, who I've never encountered before but completely blow me away. They have a range of eastern european musical roots and rock style, and feature accordion, double bass, guitars, violin and possibly the first ever tuba in indie rock (and played with flare and passion, it must be noted). The overall sound is "Addams Family Rock" and very catchy.

Regina Spektor follows and is (in my opinion) stunningly uninteresting and possibly on drugs - she spends more time breaking off, giggling and making silly noises than she does performing her quavering vocal stylings. It's blazingly hot by now, everyone's wiping out in the heat and it's perfect time for misting - I fill my spray bottles at the water station and start making big circuits of the crowd, offering cooling spray to all comers. It's a great way to make a lot of friends very fast indeed and I end up in several interesting conversations on my way round.

Wilco are up now and I wander up into the crowd to check them out, but don't find them all that interesting - maybe it's just the heat sapping my energy. Instead Tonya and I go for more snowcones. I refill my bottles on the way down and mist the queue front to back while we're waiting. Once we've finished our ice I walk down to see the Decemberists at the centre of the park. The sun is on the way down and there's a little breeze coming up, making misting largely unnecessary, but the servers in the drink marquee are still sweating in their enclosed space so I give them my spray bottles.

On the way down to the Decemberists' stage I meet Cintia, a journalist from Monterey in Mexico who's staying with friends in Austin. She's heading the same way, and we talk about music as we walk down - her musical tastes are broad and she's been familiar with many of the bands here for years. She's got long, wavy black hair and huge dark almond eyes, and an odd mixture of shy girlishness and mature sophistication. She'd really like to go travelling longterm herself, but on a Mexican salary it's almost impossible. At the edge of the Decemberists' crowd we randomly run into Kelly and Tracy, Decemberists fans themselves and buzzed to see the performance.

The Decemberists are excellent, simple elegant but rock-and-rolling riffs with strong influence from folk music (many of their songs have a strong sea-shanty-like sound) and a great stage presence, particularly from frontman and songwriter Colin Meloy who plays his shy thick-rimmed-glasses indie-boy image off against rockstar bravado to great effect.

We all congregate at a central point - the anchor structure for one of the huge lighted balloons which go up all over the festival ground at night - and Tonya and Janet decide to go and have dinner with Bronwen, while I stay with the Tices to see Bob Dylan close the festival. All the other stages have wrapped up by now, and at least three quarters of the entire festival crowd close in around the main AT&T stage to see the legend play. The crowd is vast but loose and we work our way forward between and around clusters of people for at least 15 minutes before reaching the tightly-packed crowd up near the stage.

It's a fun game in its own right, weaving back and forth, following eddies and sudden openings, using the Brownian motion of the crowd to work around tighter groups, waiting for an outgoing stream of people to open up a new access to the next layer. At the Arctic Monkeys performance Tonya and I actually discussed creating a Crowd Manager game, half puzzle game and half simulation, playing with the streams and clusters of people in a huge festival crowd.

Dylan is still extraordinary. He's a small figure on the big screen and the stage, in an immaculate suit, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat. That always-rough voice has broken down to a gravelly rasp, he raises into real song only at odd intervals and his breath is definitely shorter but he can still hold a high note when he needs to and he hops and stamps at the keyboard with gusto. The band is great too, carrying the old tunes expertly, understated and professional on stage but throwing in flare where it's needed.

It's an unreal experience seeing such a legendary figure so close in person. Halfway through the set a stream of little hot air balloons begins to rise from behind the trees next to the stage, and drift slowly by overhead (someone has judged the wind perfectly), glowing orange messengers with a spark of real fire at the bottom of each one, slowly rocking on the wind until they disappear into the distance.

Labels: Armadillo World Headquarter, Austin City Limits, austin tx, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, live music, Willie Nelson

I get up this morning in unexpected cold, shake myself awake and walk straight up to McDonald's for a restoring coffee. As I come back outside the full panorama of the Rockies spread all around me strikes me slightly gleefully insane, and I have a small fit of disbelieving giggles which restore my good mood.

Now I'm wrapped in my fleece, my feet are propped up before the firepit, the air is just starting to warm up and I'm wondering what to do with the day.

Later

In the end I trek into town for a bunch of shopping and to update the blog. To walk through this town is even odder - like an Austrian ski resort in scorching heat, and with prairie dogs everywhere. They pop up out of lawns, tracks, there was even what I'm sure was a burrow in the middle of a thick tarmac path, which was pretty impressive. They're really tame, too...you can get right up close, less than five feet away before they first drop down, then bolt.



The town centre seems larger on foot (naturally) and it's quite a stroll to find what I need - a hardware store for a tarpaulin (the full form of the word has apparently gone completely out of use here, as I get several blank stares before someone says "Oh, you mean a tarp!". I suppose you'd get the same reaction most places if you asked for tarmacadam), a backup notebook (this one's getting perilously close to full) and the library for net access (I can get one hour per day for free, which is pretty good). Then I find an internet cafe for another two hours and I'm still not done, but catching up.

Arriving back, I find that a makeshift stage has been erected from tarp(aulin)s, rope, several small trees and various bits of decorative stuff borrowed from camp residents, and I that the Wapiti Tents First Annual Toast-n-Jam-boree open air concert is in the starting stages.

The core band now tuning up and desparately trying to get the mics to work are four guys from Ontario who are holidaying here, but eveyone has called in musician friends from around town who are ready to play and a serious night of music is in store, almost entirely organised by the camp residents.

There is even a sound engineer, a big guy with long grey curly hair and glasses in an orange tie-dyed t-shirt with a bit of professional attitude and a short temper, but who deals manfully with the limitations of his situation which include dozens of power cables snaking everywhere, anarchic and slightly inebriated musical talent and dogs attacking important pieces of equipment.

With the mics finally online the band launch into a series of 70s to 90s rock classics on guitar, bass, drums and electric fiddle, a fantastic sound and virtuoso performance even if the singing is a little more enthusiastic than harmonious. The guitarist then takes a solo spot for some dark rock instrumentals with impressive percussion tricks on a heavily distorted guitar.

At first only three of us are there watching and listening, but after the first track the space begins to fill up as people drift in from the shed, the tents and the town, settling in clusters on the grass, bringing chairs, spreading blankets and old rugs (or in one case dragging an ancient sofa out of the bush). The music continues, with players beginning to come out of the audience as band members step down to get a beer and relax. The fiddle player comes back on to play classic mountain bluegrass tunes on a banjo, then songs of his own written in the same style.

I move round from my seat at the side of the stage for a better view, and settle under the trees by my bedroll where Dave, Dale and Andy, all hairy hardened construction workers, are alternately watching the show and throwing pine cones at each other. Dave is working in Canmore right now and is a regular face around camp, with his peaked cap and bulky camouflage jacket, chortling through his moustache.

Dave owns (as far as I have worked it out) two of Wapiti's extensive and complex dog population. They are almost all related in some way - some belong to longterm residents, others are given away as puppies to visitors who then return year on year. There are consistent strains throughout - a little boxer, a little husky, a little german shepherd, a weird trace of greyhound - but it's impossible to keep track of the bloodlines without serious insider knowledge. They roam the camp freely (except for the few which are restricted to a leash due to kennel cough), getting attention from everyone, and are considered part of the family.

As it gets dark and the sound equipment is taking up all the slots in the main power box, the camp supervisor runs cables from his own caravan to hook up the spotlights around the stage. John is in his late twenties or early thirties (I keep feeling like asking people's ages is going to push me over the line into being a journalist rather than really being somewhere), blonde and unshaven under a canvas fishing hat, and wearing a pair of khakis which are splitting everywhere and held together by safety pins and big crude stitches of what looks like red yarn.

He has a permanent expression of slight melancholy around the eyebrows even when he's smiling, and a sort of zen anarchist outlook which makes him ideal for his role - officially he's just here to take fees and monitor that the rules are being followed, but in practice he also settles disputes, redistributes valuable camp accessories and tradeables like old sofas and rugs, and acts as counsellor-cum-youth-group-leader to his residents.

John is a fanatical skiier "Ski till you're free, man!" and outdoorsman - he was featured on the news last year after spending three full years living rough in the bush, but his girlfriend is more tied to her creature comforts - like a roof - so he rented a U-Haul trailer for a while "19 bucks a day, cheapest rent in town!" He's just bought his sister's station wagon and is completely in love with it. It has fist-sized rust holes in the sides, a significant radiator leak and is decorated inside with star and unicorn stickers. John is sitting on the tailgate, bouncing gently up and down with a huge grin on his face, planning what to do with it - mainly live out of it. He's going to install storage in both sides so the middle is insulated, then put his bed there.

We hang out by the car and talk for a while as various campers come and go for advice or to sign in, then John offers to show me how to split logs into cords of wood for the fire. After about half an hour of strenuous axe-work I'm getting pretty good and have no serious injuries, so John gets reckless and announces that we're going to make fence-posts from the big logs. This involves hammering the axe into one end of what I would estimate is a 60Kg length of tree-trunk, then lifting it on its end with the axe on the bottom and dropping the weight of the trunk onto the axe-blade to split it.

We are distinctly uncoordinated - John hasn't done this for a while and I really don't have the strength to lift a log of that size - and on the fourth drop John gets his fingers under the log as it comes down. He staggers around for a while saying "Gonna be fine man, gonna be fine - it's good, I'll shake it off" and holding his flattened index finger from which blood is beginning to run steadily. The nail is hanging off. Finally he sits down on the tailgate again and lets me get my first aid kit, from which he extracts a pitifully small plaster and wraps the fingertip up.

John continues our conversation calmly despite the steady dripping of blood from his finger and my increasingly worried comments and suggestions that he get down to the hospital. He shows his flattened digit to anyone who comes by and talks away without concern while they stare worriedly at the blood and his increasingly pale complexion, and intermittently shakes off sprays of red onto the back of the car with an expression of interest. Finally he lies down on the grass. "I'm just gonna lie here for a minute, man, till I feel better. This is good though, this is a good example of what you should do when someone's kind of in shock". "So are you going to go to the hospital now?" "Yeah, I'll go in a minute. It's okay, they know me pretty well down there. I kind of injure myself a lot".

Finally John consents to go to the hospital, although he insists on driving himself. I decide that there's not much more I can do, and go back to the party. A sort of supergroup has formed of all the players who still have the energy to play and can fit on the stage, and the sound is superb - we have guitars, fiddle, keyboards, one drumkit and two guys on tabla, plus a cowboy in the audience playing spoons. They're currently howling out the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" to great effect.

Two kittens have been passing among the audience for some time - someone brought them down looking to home them - and back under the trees at the edge of the audience Dave seems to have ended up owning both of them, mostly through not trusting anyone else to take care of them. He seems slightly bemused. And the so the night wears on. The supergroup seem to have hit a creative balance where they can just keep playing (barring a few technical problems), and I and a fair number of others cluster around the firepit, adding wood until it's an overflowing inferno.



We talk back and forth about music, mountains, and travelling stories. A friendly glassy-eyed guy from Ontario gives me two beers, an extremely drunk Quebecois girl borrows my socks. John arrives back from the ER, high on endorphins (but nothing else - the hospital for some reason don't give him any painkillers), with a huge bulky bandage on his finger. "8 stitches man, right through the nail!" Eventually I stagger off to bed at about 2am - it's a measure of how tired I am that I fall asleep immediately despite the well-amplified rock concert taking place roughly 50 feet away.

Labels: Alberta, camping, Canada, Canmore Alberta, live music, wapiti tents