The Reason I Haven't Otherwise Been Posting This Weekend

I spent this weekend (Saturday and Sunday) at Atlanta's inaugural Shaky Knees Music Festival.  Held in the Historic Fourth Ward Park, the city's newest municipal park, brought thousands of people (a security guard told me 5,000 on Saturday) out to hear music.

It should be noted that it rain relentlessly all day Saturday, nearly three inches of rain and with nary a break, and intermittently on Sunday, but that didn't diminish the fun - it just made it more of a challenge and therefore more rewarding.

Midsummer Music Festival

Okay, so I've bifurcated.  The music posts, which have been taking over Water Dissolved Water for some time now, have been moved over to the Live Journal site (WDW Live), leaving this blog free to be about . . . what?  Zen?  The life and strange times of a typical 50-something Zen Buddhist in Atlanta?  Liberal politics? Or all or none of the above?

I'll also confess that I've posted this on Sunday but back-dated it to Saturday to keep it chronologically correct.

Today (actually yesterday), I attended the free ($5 for a wrist band if you wanted to buy beer) Midsummer Music Fest in Atlanta's lovely Candler Park.  The weather was beautiful - pouring rain broke out during last year's festival headlined by Dr. Dog, which made today's conditions all the more special.  Additional pictures of the festival are posted over at the Live site for those interested, but here are a few just to document the day.

The truth of the matter is, I wound up enjoying the festival much more than I thought I would.  I had forgotten, almost until they started playing on stage, that The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, long a favorite of mine, were a part of the line up, and they put on a terrific show on good old New Orleans funk and jazz that had the whole audience dancing, some even up on stage with the band.  And G Love and Special Sauce, instead of sounding like some warmed-over 90s act, has really entrenched himself in the blues, and you never really go out of style as long as your music is rooted in the blues.  Plus, he's a terrific showman and put on a wonderful show.  

Finally, before each act, the sponsors of the festival threw a totally insane number of oversize beach balls out into the audience, so that for first one or two songs of each act, the entire audience was getting clobbered by bouncing balls (in a good way).  It enlivened the proceedings and added to the fun, and for the almost 8 hours that I was there, despite all the sun, all the beer (the lead sponsor was Red Stripe Beer), and the large crowd, I not only didn't see a single act of violence, I didn't even see any anger or tension.  A good time seemed to be had by all.

The Wood Brothers

Futurebirds

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

G Love and Special Sauce

Yacht

Artlantis

Picture-perfect weather for a Saturday afternoon in Atlanta: uncharacteristically mild and dry, but sunny.  The kind of day that as soon as you step out of doors, you know you won't be going back inside for the rest of the day.

Which is all fine and good, as today marked the annual Artlantis festival on Ponce De Leon.  Like last year's festival, the event was held on the steps of the Druid Hills Baptist Church and featured both local bands and an arts market.

When I got there, Muleskinner McBride was playing his old-fashioned Appalachian blues and Carter-family vintage country songs.  Muleskinner recognized me from the Music at the Crypts benefit and acknowledged me from the stage. "I think you got there just as we were wrapping up," he correctly observed.

MULESKINNER McBRIDE

MIRROR MODE

Atlanta's electro-pop duo Mirror Mode, who also played the Music at the Crypts benefit and are a part of Lotus Plaza's touring band, were up next, accompanying each other on keyboards and guitar as they traded lead vocal chores.

WET RAINBOW

Wet Rainbow is a straight-up power-pop/rock band from Atlanta with a garage-y vibe.

KID PYRAMID

I saw Kid Pyramid open for Ava Luna and Twin Sister earlier this year at The Earl and thought he was terrific, but was not sure how his act would come across in the daytime, out of doors, and on such an unusual stage as the steps of the Druid Hills Baptist Church.  As it turns out, he came across just fine, and did another outstanding job of playing his soulful, energetic pop songs.

GHOST BIKINI

Ghost Bikini played a noisy and enjoyable fuzzed-out set of reverb-laden blues-punk.  Lead singer Anela  occasionally contributed some fun harmonica riffs.

FAUN AND A PAN FLUTE

How to describe this?  Faun And A Pan Flute play music that can be triangulated somewhere between math rock, jazz fusion, and prog rock, with long, complex song structures and diverse instrumentation, all infused with a sort of jam-band approach.  The octet completely took over the steps of the Druid Hills Baptist Church, setting up musicians on the stairs and the bushes surrounding the stairs, and still had players to spare.  The audience was quite receptive to their cerebral and idiosyncratic sound.

According to my calendar, today actually was National Barefoot Day.

DOG BITE

The last band up and the day's headliner was Dog Bite, a new band (they played their first gig last February) fronted by former Washed Out percussionist and keyboard player Phil Jones and Mood Rings guitarist Willaim Fussell (seated), who also played Music at The Crypts.  They played a very nice set of dream-pop and indie rock.

Finally, for those who might for some reason want to see a noisy, uncut video summary of this whole event without any editing or polish, six-and-a-half hours compressed into six-and-a-half minutes, here you go: