Belated report from the Echo-Project Festival in Hotlanta

  Sorry it’s taken me so long to update my blog folks, but I’m new to this aspect of the website, and frankly, after writing three ridiculously long posts over the past couple of weeks only to accidentally delete them in the process of trying to get them online, I got fed up and sat on my hands for a while.

I’m a verbose bastard, so it’s my unfortunate wont to ramble on - however, I’m trying to train myself to be brief when blogging, if only so that 45 minutes worth of hunting and pecking doesn’t vanish on me like the 2 million bucks in David Copperfield’s warehouse safe.

So here are some of my recollections of the recent Echo-Project Festival in Atlanta:

This was the very first year for this fledgling festival, which aspires to be a smaller Bonnaroo, but one which promoted environmental awareness and conservation along with the standard-issue loud music, counterculture activism seminars, hemp clothing vendors, tofu burrito stands and clandestine pot brownies.

While organizers reportedly were hoping/expecting approximately 40,000 to show up for the 3-day, $190 festival held on a 350-acre swath of private farmland only about 20 minutes from urban Atlanta, it appears that only somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000 showed. Ouch.

Hopefully the organizers (who I’m told assumed that the first year would be rough) had enough of a cushion to try this again next year (their promotional material claims they have a decade-long master plan for this project), because it’squite possible they lost hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars.

Due to a prior committment, i had to miss the final day of the festival, which means I could not see acts such as The Roots and Spoon, whom I had never had the opportunity to see live and was most curious about, but it did mean I didn’t have to even inadvertantly hear any of The Dead’s Phil Lesh and “Friends,” even though one of his friends this time around is the AMAZING multi-instrumentalist and singer Larry Campbell.

My friend and travelling companion Keith and I arrived at the festival grounds about an hour latger than we’d hoped for on Friday, the first day of the event. This meant that we missed seeing the over-the-top indie-rock/choir/performance art troupe The Polyphonic Spree. No big deal to me, as they never really did much for me, and plus, the fact that band mastermind Tim Laughner used to be in that shit-ass Texas alt.rock group Tripping Daisy was 3 strukes against them from the git-go.

After getting settled in the parking area (no tents for us and no Kruggerands for David), we made our way past the already happening camping sections of the site (where hundreds upon hundreds of vans, campers, cars, tents, lean-tos, etc… were already bustling with folks who’d arrived earlier that morning, or in some cases, late the night before, to stake out great spots close to the “venue” area, so they wouldn’t have to hoof it too far back to their campsite if they were tired, drunk, high, tired or high. Or drunk.

We got to the staging area just in time to catch some of GZA from The Wu-Tang Clan perform a fairly impressive set on the biggest stage (there were five or six of varying sizes and amenities spread out around the grounds for maximum sound separation) that ended with a VERY short guest slot from old-school rap star Slick Rick. GZA seemed a little out of it, doing things like asking people how they were doing “tonight” when it was a very bright, very hot 3:30 pm.

It should be said that the weather for the event was fucking beautiful all the way around. You couldn’t have asked for nicer, clearer skies. Unfortunately, it took a steep drop in the low 40s once the sun went down, whcih left many (especially including Keith and myself) woefully unprepared as far as thick clothing and/or warm sleeping arrangements went. I’m feeling the affects from our trip in a nasty head and chest cold and sinus infection that I picked up while standing around in the bitter cold with nothing but a thin canvas jacket, turtleneck and jeans.

The sound was uniformly excellent at all the staging areas, even the giant ones. It carried far and wide, and there was not too much bleed over into the other stages (which could easily have ruined some shows, as it threatened to do at times during Cat Power’s quiet, contmeplative set (she was situated immediately adjacent to the biggest stage, where rapper Common was doing his thing to a MASSIVE crowd.

Highlights of my time at the Echo-Project would have to include (in no particular order):

1. Getting to see the infamous and rightfully legendary Flaming Lips on their final show of their summer tour (at which they pulled out all the stops as far as props, special effects and gimmicks went - except for their large UFO stage set, which simply wouldn’t fit) - including hearing them play a few older tunes less familiar to fans who’ve only come to the band post-Peach Pit. I was about 6 rows back, and got to push singer Wayne Coyne around a bit in his big, clear bubble thing that he rolls around in on the crowd for the start of the show. I got to spend most of the set showered in yellow confetti from several giant cannons which peppered the front half of the audience at regular intervals - and went on to blow around the entire grounds till well into the next day, and I did my fair share of punching huge orange baloons into the air about every 45 seconds, as they continued to drop on the crowd for the duration of the nighttime show (here’s what that looked like from my vantage point). And, most of all, I got to enjoy a pretty damn impressive set (if marred by Coyne’s rambling - if heartfelt - awkward, anti-Bush administration sermonettes) by a truly innovative and noteworthy American rock band.

More to come…

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