There Comes An End To The Late Night Disco

I'm back on the radar!! I got back last night from a 10 day (whew) trip to the Midwest including seeing Umphrey's McGee and STS9 (including the STS9 late night at the House of Blues) on July 19th at the Charter 1 Pavilion continuing onto the 10,000 Lakes Festival in Detroit Lakes, MN.

Thanks to everyone in Chicago that showed me a fabulous time. It all started with a party on the lake on the Rosalyn Marie then into the show. I made it downtown on public transportation (yay!) and truly wish we had that here in Texas. Saving gas? What a novel concept. Too bad that won't be happening any time soon. The crowd was a little nutso at the show, but the House of Blues late night crowd was incredible. We had a really good vantage point from the balcony which allowed us to see the entire stage and the crowd below us. It was a late night, and worth every second. I can't wait to download the STS9 late night and experience it all over again.

We decided to take off early evening on Tuesday for the 10 hour drive to Detroit Lakes and stopped outside of Minneapolis at a Motel 6 to get that last shower and a nap before hitting the road again the next morning. When we were finally within arms reach of 10k (literally, about 5 minutes away) we were pulled over for a "vision obstruction" in the rearview mirror aka one of those scented hanging things aka a reason for them to try and search our car. Thankfully we're clean cut (or relatively so) individuals and kept a clean front seat so they had no reason to search us. Still, I spent about 10 minutes nearly shitting my pants in the front seat before it was all over. No search! Yay! Needless to say, that scented hanging thing was thrown away. It had bad juju.

We arrived at the campground and didn't even have to wait in line for Lake Sallie campground. We found a spot to settle for the next 4 days and were SO pumped to have port-a-pots right across the road (turns out in my years of festival/show going they were the worst shitters on the face of the planet - but still a place to go)! There was even a disco ball at the people's campsite behind us, which I was especially excited about. Surely forecasting a good time, right? Turns out the disco ball meant a late night disco party that ran until 4 am the first night (due to rain they shut it down) but raged on until sunrise for the next few days. We were great sports about it and decided if you can't beat them, join them! It's not every day you're camped next to a group with amps and lasers for a late night dance party :) I poked my head out of the tent around 5 am on a night we decided to shut down early and there was still a full-on rave going with at least 100 people about 10 yards behind our tent. I know it doesn't sound fun, but it was quite hilarious. UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ! Broder also brought along his star projection machine which gave *us* quite a bit of entertainment not to mention people that would walk by and wander into the canopy to figure out what the hell was going on. At one point I think we had about 10 people in there with glow sticks just going to town. I'm laughing even as I think about it now.

The trick to 10k that we found out is that night time is the right time. The line-up wasn't as stellar as it has in the years past, which was a blessing in disguise. The day is the time to rest, drink beer, hit a show here and there, swim in the lake, hang in the shade, and cruise around. As soon as the sun goes down, that's when the magic happens. I've never seen so many costumes at a festival before, so it was right up my alley. I even bought a lime green wig for the occasion which I rocked a few times along with various other costume articles. Oh, and 10k also has FLUSHING TOILETS in the concert bowl. That's right, FLUSHING TOILETS. Take note. I've never seen that at a festival before not in the VIP area. It was so worth holding it until we got into the venue from the campground to just sit down and use the facilities :)

I'm not going to go into the deets of all of the shows we saw, but the highlights were (and i'm looking at the line-up as I do this):

the FLAMING LIPS (where we were about 20 feet away from Wayne's huge gerbil ball), Phil Lesh & Friends, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mickey Hart Band, Leftover Salmon, Slightly Stoopid (a song or 2), George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic (where all I could think of was how jealous I was of the people with the sequin cloaks... gotta get me one of those), EOTO, Dark Star Orchestra, Phix, Wookiefoot (a rip off of the Lips), TR3 w/ Tim Reynolds, JJ Grey & MOFRO, Papa Mali, and Everyone Orchestra (one of my favs of the weekend). I'm sure I'm missing a few, but whatever, you get the idea. It was a pretty damn good time. :)

I have to say, I'd love to return to 10,000 Lakes. It's a smaller festival, so I never felt over-crowded at any show. It all seemed to be pretty organized, and was a fantastic time. Now it's back to reality, job hunting, and running :) Stay tuned...