General Interest > Let It Bleed
Annual Rock Falls Mid-Summer Music Fest
starry-eyed pirate:
--- Quote from: ""Eudora"" ---So you'll get there, right Frod?
--- End quote ---
Yeah! C'mon, man. Let's get smoked up and jam!
starry-eyed pirate:
hey, I just came from there. The stages are all set up. I already set up my tent and helped Bart get his tent set up too. The new stage they just built is all made outta natural tree branches.
I'll tell you about it when I get back...
starry-eyed pirate:
A damn good time!
By Thurs. afternoon half the campsites were already taken. The live music started around 5:30pm on Fri. Uhhh...let's see. I had a lot to drink Fri. night. I can't really remember a whole lot of the details, just the sound of hard edged electric blues; blues wifs teef! A big fire sort of in the middle of the grove casting it's flickering light on and silhouetting those that made the scene.
There was an ornithologist who gave a talk about 11am on Sat. morning. I wanted to catch the man's talk but just didn't have the energy to make it Sat. mornin. I ended up sittin around camp and smokin' ganja with friends instead. Some puppet-master kid about 22 or so put on a real cool puppet show about a fish that wanted to fly. He had all kinds of cool props that he used to tell the story. Actually there were 2 shows. One at noon and another about 5. There were 2 stages set up for the bands so that they could alternate stages and have less downtime between bands. Opie Killed Aunt Bee played clasic rock. Among the songs they played were 3 Zeppelin tunes and a Black Crows tune("Remedy"). Well Strung was a 4 piece acoustic string band without a drummer. They consisted of a stand-up bass player, mandolin player, guitar and banjo and they played mostly traditional bluegrass. They're real, real good but in my opinion they are missin that fiddle player. Then I think the Bootleg Brothers played next and they jammed a cool version of "All Along the Watchtower". Waldo was real good. It was dark by the time he came on and he laid down some hard blues on his acoustic guitar and harmonica. Then Left For Dead played. They were doin' "Shakedown Street" and "Eyes of the World" and the like. I danced with a beautiful Bangladeshi princess and made her smile for a while. They were gettin ready to jam all night. The guitar player asked the crowd if they were ready to get down till about 3 in the mornin. Ever't'in' was lookin so good. Beautiful women everywhere, floatin around in their long skirts. When I ran out of beer more was offered to me and the North Country Brewery, a local micro-brewery, came out kinda late Saturday afternoon and set up a tent in the far back corner of the grove that reflected the style of the middle ages and gave away all kinds of good free beer. Stuff they had brewed themselves. One of their kegs was full of Scottish ale.
Unfortunately the damn cops had to show up just as Left For Dead was ending their first set. Must 'a' been between 12:30 and 1 sometime. Told us we had to shut down the loud music. Fuckin' pricks!!! So anyway, I guess no-one felt like goin' to jail that night and so the music was shut down. After that we all just kinda gathered around the fire, drinkin, and smokin and makin' pretty girls smile and playin acoustic guitars and hand drums an' such. We carried on like that 'til dawn.
I'd guess there were between 300-400(??) people there at the height of the celebration.
We thought about you Frod. Raised our drinks to ya once even. Maybe next year...huh ??
Antigen:
Man, yenz who didn't make the trip you sure missed out! The Grove is a beautiful place. This old party has got a 20 year history and the place itself, as a park, goes back to 1932:
http://rockfallsonline.com/history.html
The place has powerful magics, it really does! Never mind the signs about leashing dogs. Only the ill behaved ones had to be tied down. The rest of them ran free and friendly all weekend long. The kids I met were just as well poised and self posessed; strong evidence of their keeping society w/ cool people. I didn't lose a single thing all weekend, no theft or even the vibe of it. I lost track of my water bottle one time, somebody spotted it and brought it back to my tent when I wasn't there. Left a ceramic cup somewhere, came across it awhile later untouched. Hell, even a cooler full of beers still had more than a few beers in it by the next morning even though the owner went out of frame for awhile.
Oh well, there's always next year. Maybe they'll have some other events in the mean time.
001010:
Twenty bucks sounds cool... Too bad I'd have to drive a thousand miles to get out there next year. It sure looked like a good time!
BTW -- Nice hat, pirate! :wink:
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