Swimming With the Sharks

Few things are more uncomfortable that wearing wet clothes, and I was soaked to the bone. My feet were wet, my shirt was wet, even my underwear was wet. It was time to go home.

But I've started ahead of myself. When I first arrived at Candler Park for today's Midsummer Music Festival, the weather was hot and sunny. Rain had fallen earlier in the day, and the evaporation made the afternoon heat feel even more humid. Finding parking in the Candler Park neighborhood proved to be a real challenge, due both to the size of the crowd already there (and taking all the good parking spaces) and the neighborhood residents, many of whom understandably put up "No Parking" signs and barriers in front of their houses to preserve their own parking rights for later. I wound up parking at the Edgewood Candler MARTA station a couple blocks away from the park itself, and walked to the festival stage. I felt good about not being invasive in other people's neighborhoods and as a side benefit, I got to walk past the old location of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center on the corner of McLendon and Oakdale, the place where I first started my current Zen practice.

When I got to the park, music was already playing, the food and beverage vendors had arrived, and games of bocce ball, hacky-sack, and bean-bag toss were in progress.

The band on stage were called The Dirty Guv'nahs. I didn't know them, but they played a sincere and straight-forward brand of very American rock 'n' roll.

But the main attraction for me and my reason for going was to see Philadelphia's Dr. Dog. A few drops of rain fell just before they took the stage, but the clouds and the moisture were actually more of a relief from the afternoon's heat than a deterrent. As the band started playing, the rain stopped, and the people rejoiced.

Dr. Dog's music would not have sounded out of place had this festival been held in 1972, what with their guitar-driven riffs, catchy melodies, and 4/4 rhythms. But on a hot summer day, with a young crowd and Red Stripe Beer as the festival sponsor, their retro sound certainly hit the spot. Beach balls bounced through the crowd, and the audience clapped to the beat. Those who knew the lyrics sang along to the easy-to-identify choruses ("Where did all the shadow people go?").

A good time seemed to be had by all.

And, so it went, all fun and games until the rain came back. Unlike earlier at the start of the set, when the rain was a gentle reprise from the heat, the latter event was a soaking downpour that drenched the audience.

But we didn't let it stop us. Very few people, your humble narrator included, left, and instead we stayed out in the rain and just resigned ourselves to getting soaking wet. "The rain is falling, it’s after dark, the streets are swimming with the sharks," the band sang, and everyone laughed at the appropriateness of that very song at that very moment. There was no real cover from the rain to run to anyway - the stage was set up in the middle of a big field - so we let the rain do its worst.

At one point, a manager came on stage and whispered to the lead singer that they had to end their set after the next song due to approaching lightning. When the band finished their impromptu finale, they got a thumb's up from the manger to continue anyway (the rain seemed to be letting up). But even as they continued, darker still clouds began approaching the stage, and during about the third song after their false finale, the plug literally got pulled on the band and they had to stop their set right there and then as the real deluge began.

With no music to keep us at the stage, we all ran for whatever cover we could find. There was a big VIP tent set up near the stage but we still weren't allowed to share their shelter even in the storm. I wound up under the canopy of a vendor's booth, in this case, the weekly Atlanta news and entertainment paper, Creative Loafing. From our canopy, we watched the inevitable spectacle of young men diving and sliding across the inevitable mud puddles.

The rain fell and fell hard for a good 20 minutes before finally letting up. After it finally finished, I wandered back out and around, carefully avoiding the mud slide area (the young men had resorted to grabbing reluctant volunteers out of the crowd). Once the rain was safely over, power was resumed to the stage and the (recorded) music started back. I walked up to the stage and saw that it was almost completely bare and that it would be a good long while before the next band (JJ Grey and Mofro) would start.

So this is where we started. I was soaked to the bone, my clothes felt heavy and uncomfortable, and I was just no longer in the mood to hang out and listen to music. Nothing against JJ Grey, or Robert Rudolph and the Family Band, the evening's headliner, but enough was enough. I only wanted to get out of my wet clothes, get something to eat, and get comfortable once again.

Of course, if I'm going to pull off my big trip later this summer, I'm going to have to learn to overcome these minor setbacks. But then again, if I'm going to pull off my big trip later this summer, I don't want to burn myself out in June.