The Meaning of 8

Alright, I've been outta town for about a week, but the videos below might show you a glimpse of what went down. One is almost XXX....almost. While in our nations CAPITOL I saw this one....not really that funny but I liked it. Not as much as I liked seeing Toots and the Maytals though, Thanks to Mr. Matt Doc for the sweet pad and the fun times! I didn't go over the top this time!

Floyd Fest 8 was a mega-hit. Hands down the funnest festival of music, healing arts, dancing, and creative minds I've ever been to. Grace Potter rocked my socks off, Forro in the Dark took me to sudamerica, the Yard Dogs Road Show (see the vids below, if you dare) was surely the best show of all, for Adults ONLY, and the plethora of loving folks topped it all off for a perfect weekend. Railroad Earth couldn't get any more amazing. Peter Rowan's songwriting workshop was loaded with wisdom and beautiful advice laced metaphors. The Felice Bros., the Lee Boys, the Smart Bros., Michael Wallace....so much excellence! Many of the smaller bands have played the Purple Fiddle too: Boulder Acoustic Society, the Galen Kipar Project, Luminescent Orchestrii, R.I.S.E....etc.

Of course, Toubab Krewe made all feel the groove, even when the power went out Friday night and they had to do a West African acoustic jam! EOTO = Super sick w/ String Cheese's drummer Michael Travis (video below!). Panjea = mega-super sick with another SCI member Michael Chang. Check out the video!

This one below is of EOTO: good funky music to dance to, with a live drummer playing his heart out!

The Yard Dogs Road Show brought out Flamingo, the Guitar Boy...what a trip! "If you see me walkin' on, its not me because I'm goooooone!" He had good laser advice too....

Lightsaber Sword Swallower, this guy also pulled a cockateel outta thin air, no joke...."magic!"

This next video might qualify for adults only....but then again if you were NORMAL as a child you sucked on a boob to survive....and they DO have little sparklies on their nips!

The Floyd Fest is set in the most ideal place, along a ridge mtn. top at the Blue Ridge Parkway, just south of Floyd, VA, which appears to be an uber-cool town, replete with old-school music and yum-food co-ops and lots of neat looking artsy shops.

I left for Lewisburg on Sunday night and ended up getting a totally flat tire in Rich Creek, VA....around 11pm....turns out my rusty car was so bad-off that I could not get the tire off to put on the doughnut! The cops let me sleep on the roadside, after I moved the car two (2) feet over. A local guy helped me get it off the next morning....with a sledge hammer! Stayed with my sweet friend Madison A. and her family for a night in lovely Lewisburg (thanks for the ultra-sweet hospitality and the nice tour!). We dipped in the Greenbrier, checked out the Wild Bean (best breakfast burritos for only four (4) dollars!) and the local antique shops (complete with electric chairs, guillotines and ancient space-age looking medical equipment), and meandered through the civil war graveyard, next to the separate slave graveyard....Trying to get Hypno's coffee into the Wild Bean since they do not roast their own wild beans. The more "local" the better, eh? Speaking of local, there has been a budding Farmer's Market in the Hypno/Highland/Friends parking lot on Saturday, starting at nine (9) a.m.

Check out the breadshare (and garlic share) to be signed up for at Hypno....by August 8th!!! Blueberries are popping major on these mountains! Yum!

Music in the Mountains

Off to DC/VA...Blue Ridge Pkwy!

Floyd Fest 8 is on the way...

Having not seen enough music this summer I am off for some Toots Roots Reggae and then further south for the FF8. After that is likely going to be the usual abundance of performances to choose from at our local leery Purp Fid.

'Twill be nice star-gazing this week with the new moon in tow....the next weekend is Clifftop!

Todo bien

All Good 13 was the luckiest yet. I saw over thirty (30) bands and was psyched to spend each night somewhat-stargazing from my hammock. I love these West Virginia Mountains!

The Intergalactic Space Freak Party was spacey with Big Nazo!

Buckethead...this guy is totally sick.

I spotted this beauty near the front gate

One lucky morning while opening at Hypno I was drawn to the dew art world

I just moved into a new apartment in Davis. Finally, another resting place for my junk...for a year, at least.

Toots at 9:30 in DC and Floyd Fest are the next things on the radar.

Oh, and I just saw Boulder Acoustic Society at the Fiddle (Kate and Adam, check them out!), holy oh yeah yeah yeah! See these guys on top of the list I have slowly compiled, the rock with soul and their album is rad, complete with pop up 3-D viewer of band pics, way cool.

Cyber later.

....with my own two hands.

Seriously, people....

• Skeptical and uninformed? Turns out Global Warming is old news: Global Warming Timeline. "Search Newspaper Articles about Global Warming in more than 50,000 Historical Newspaper Pages." Neat site.


• The main culprit in that darnded Global Warming is burning coal, much of which has been blasted out of the mountains. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls MTR mining the worst environmental disaster in US history recently wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post: "Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams....
  On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests."
  Jr. really hits on the obvious-yet-unseen and sobering details: "Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine." Also, over-mechanized coal mining today provides as little as two (2) percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia.
  
• More skillful and heart-felt music at The Purple Fiddle: Dangermuffin! Def. a top ten favorite show in Thomas!


• All Good bound to be a bunch of blazing hot tunes and dancing goons....

What did the Buddha ask of the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.


• Food for thought: "At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. Then, there would be a real New Age."
  -Ken Wilber ^^^ %%% $$$ ### @@@ !!!

Sounds like some capture the flag is in order. S. Pitt's B'day is on August 3rd...a Monday; thus, a game will be arranged for the previous day of Sunday. Front Street of Thomas...Time? Something like four (4) or so...enough time to play for as long as people want to and celebrate a day of birth and eat yummy pot-luck food. Yes!

I see you baby....

Shakin'....

Local Phreaks Unafraid to Phreak Out!

The mesmerizing burlesque sisters couldn't even use all of their props, which were nearly all hand-made by this long-legged blond bombshell.

Catch a glimpse fo the show...and show up next time!

Two Thumbs UP to Meagan for doing wonderful work on my mop and flaky face.

As it turns out, the day after I saw Triple Cobra I was then headed to the protest. I ended up meeting two fellows who are shooting a documentary about "energy" and one fellow had a well-worn Triple Cobra sticker on the inside of his black leather wallet.....he was almost as amazed as Cobra's lead singer the night before, who, bewildered by the scene unfolding in Thomas, Dub V, had said "How did this happen?"

Yes, Little San Fran is actually an avant-garde ghost town....on the East!

Many people got dressy, many did not, the energy picked up, and songs needed repeated to feed dancing feet.

See these guys, if you EVER get the chance...they are uber-fun!