Wonder how things went for xork...
It went great, exhausted now, even after sleeping for 12 hours last night. Friday night I got pretty poor quality and short sleep and Saturday night I didn't sleep one wink, I just kept walking around and finding more people who wanted to jam and then at 1:30pm yesterday I drove 4 hours home.
Anyway, I probably should have done the ALD-52 differently... I took it right when I got there, before my friends' band's first set, but I hadn't figured out where anything was yet, and I wasn't fully comfortable with the band yet either, I mean they had me audition too so they knew me sort of but that was just one evening. So I had a bit of that thing where I didn't know what to say to anyone, and I was kinda following people around because I had no idea how the festival was laid out and it got dark quickly after getting there, and I was tripping pretty hard. So ultimately I felt slightly anxious on the ALD-52 trip and that didn't really wear off until the next day. Kinda bummed that I used it because if I had saved it to take a day adventure with a good friend like I was originally going to, it would have been a better use of it. Oh well, the festival was amazing.
I didn't know any of the bands going in except my friends' band, but without exception every band was amazing. No huge acts (well the Punch Brothers are pretty big) but I am actually really glad it wasn't like String Cheese and the standard jam band thing (despite the fact that I love that music)... the music was intensely varied, lots of it was extremely funky, and there was a lot of world music. There was this African woman and her band, Fatoumata Diawara, and I cannot possibly begin to know how to describe the sheer unfathomable glory of her set... it was quite literally the most magical musical performance I have ever seen. She has this way of subvdividing her voice that's mindblowing (all African words too), and she traditional dances on stage and the band is phenomenally good and they rock SO hard and combine funk, rock and world music... much of the audience was literally crying in catharsis because of the overwhelming positive intensity of parts, it was just like, so overwhelmingly powerful and amazing that you'd just start crying randomly. It was the best thing I saw out of a whole bunch of really outstandingly good things, for hours afterwards there was an electric buzz over the whole festival, I felt stunned and speechless for quite a while. My friends and I were just like "....uh, huh? What? That was... heh heh heh... overwhelming" (etc). I wish everyone could have seen that. I bet if you look her up there will be great stuff too but being there was something else.
I wasn't able to play my keyboard because the cars were all far away from camping, but I did jam with a lot of people using my hands/drums and/or my voice. The second day I took DOC and at night some MXE, and I was in the greatest state of mind (I fully believe DOC is a superior festival drug to LSD), super social, witty, and inspired, and totally fearless. I did give myself the most crazy-looking and alarming leg bruise from drumming on my thighs, it looks like I have some sort of skin disease there or something, it's so weird-looking. After morning fully hit, me and 2 friends were walking around and encountered this guy with a guitar who was softly singing some songs he wrote, and I started drumming and singing harmonies and it was so beautiful, we never said a word to each other but he was glowing and so was I.
A little before that, me and the guy I was hanging out with at the time were wandering around right after dawn, and we came upon some guys playing frisbee in the big field area, so we jumped in. I was playing really well but then I slipped in the mud trying to catch a frisbee, while running really hard, and slammed right into the ground directly on my shoulder, going uphill. I hit it VERY hard, and I thought I broke it for a second. I think I probably got close to breaking it, within 2 hours my shoulder started hurting so bad. Driving home, if I tried to even hold the steering wheel with my left arm, it sent alarming shooting pain through my shoulder. Today it's actually a little better, surprisingly (usually after sleeping once it's the worst it'll get), so I don't think I actually damaged anything, I think it's just very bruised. I still have to hold my arm and that side of my body pretty still, but it's not SO bad today. But, that's the only negative thing that happened. Best festival I've been to, it was a few thousand people but every single person I saw was super nice and chill, no sketchy element at all, there were police but no one felt the slightest bit watched or nervous to be open with stuff, and you really never saw them. There were kids and teenagers around but everyone was cool and chill. And the music... well I already mentioned that.
Best music I've experienced at a festival, I did not hear one thing that wasn't great, and I saw the large majority of all the acts, or at least parts of them all (and there were 60 bands between 3 stages and 4 days).
