Wow.. what a good decision it was to drive all the way to Chicago for the event i have heard my midwest friends going on and on about the past 5 years. No one in the East Coast it seems even knows about Even Furthur, and that is a damn shame. Until this, i wasn’t this excited about going to an event in YEARS, and now afterwards i doubt anything can top the experience i had here. First, a little background on the event. The idea started back in the early 90’s by Kurt Eckes and Woody McBride of Drop Bass Network, after being inspired by the book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, about a group who called themselves the “Merry Pranksters” in the 60’s who went all over the US in a bus with the misspelled word “Furthur” written on the front, turning people on to LSD. The first event was held in upstate Wisconsin, and 1500 people braved the snow and rain to make it a truly spiritual event. Every Furthur until this year was characterized by rainstorms which did not damper the enthusiasm of the attendants who grinned and beared the event to make it memorable. Each year features the best in techno talent, and past performances include: Aphex Twin, Roland Casper, Frankie Bones, Adam X, the Hardkiss Brothers, Micro, Barry Weaver, daft Punk, etc. Last year i was going to run a bus/van trip from the area out to Furthur 97, but both the lack of interest and the fact that Drop Bass lost their space and were forced to throw a smaller version, called Little Furthur, made me decide not to. But this year all systems were go, so we made the 17 hour drive out to rural Illinois. By the way, don’t ever use Yahoo maps for directions; they skip all kinds of roads. It took 13 hours coming back with GOOD directions. We arrived at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds (heh) as it was getting dark and set up the tent and began to run around to find everyone. Everyone was psyched already; the night’s music was about to kick off in the main room, and people were running around screaming. The main area was located under the bleachers of the stadium (fully enclosed), and was very long with steel beams of columns that divided the space into thirds. The lighting was incredible, and for most of the sets the sound was intense. One of the Kanzlerampt guys were on when we first walked in, it said Johannes Heil, but i saw the same guy spinning later on when Heiko Laux should have been. So i dunno what happened there. They both (he? clones? i was sober i swear) played some nice hard techno. Doormouse was the next act i caught. Hmm.. lemme just assure anyone in doubt that Dan is definitely as crazy, and even more so, than people say he is. He definitely gave the whole weekend it’s character. For his live PA, he mixed between two computers running Fastracker as if they were turntables. This was probably the best live PA i have seen, and the smoothest.. he was tweaking the EQs the whole way. The end was soo crazy- a computerized voice spelled put “B-E-E-R” faster and faster as the rampaging beats kicked in. The next track was just as crazy- with a satanic, Darth Vader like chant of “jooooin us!” which was followed by the all too familiar America Online “welcome” sound, then the “you have mail” sound, each sample followed by a throbbing measure of 909 beats, and finally concluding with “good-bye”, which raised all kinds of hell afterwards. Everyone was screaming and laughing and just basically going nuts. Drew Young (Milwaukee) played a really nice live PA of acid/melodic trance afterwards. It was very smooth, but too much acid at the beginning. His melodies were very nice at the end, and should have been more of his act from the beginning. The rest of the night i lost track of. I was more or less trying to track down all my friends. Saturday was the day most people showed up. There were about 3,000 people there by early Saturday afternoon. During the day a lot of the sound systems were going on, and soo many djs were seen running from tent to tent to play. Yours truly played on the Dynamic Groove system, but my set was shortened because the cops were shutting off the outside systems earlier. Everyone was just running around meeting people, firing up grills, being nuts, etc. Nighttime came, and a ruckus erupted at the Massive Magazine’s theme camp, as a drunken Doormouse stripped naked, stuck a finger up his butt, smacked his penis with a dildo, let people pee on him, then tore down the tent twice. Following that, the fireworks display took place, then we all made our way up to the front to see the best performance group i have ever witnessed. They made Stomp look like the people on a Pringles commercial. Starting out as a tribal funk band, Savage Aural Hotbed (Minneapolis) began utilizing saw blades, barrels, power sanders and grinders and all sorts of junk into a rhythm of industrial sounds. At one point, 4 members (all dressed in plastic bags) wore these harnesses and attached huge springs to themselves, then began banging and grinding the springs to produce this awesome crunching sound. After they blew our minds, a group of half naked men covered with mud and wearing devil masks and skeleton masks busted through the crowd with torches and surrounded the burning man effigy (with a chicken head) and began to pace out a circle around it, directing people away. A man in a Merlin outfit gave a speech then, and it was soo powerful i should reprint it to give the effect of the moment: “Our scene has its roots in the fertility cults if prehistoric times. These come down to us through mystery cults like the wine cult of Dionysis in ancient Greece. In this cult they worshipped wine, got naked, got drunk and partied through the night. You can see their influence in the modern festivals of Mardi Gras and Carnival. These are the party religions. Aristotle wrote about them and said they are more about an experience than teaching. What we are doing is an extension of that. We are taking these pagan party rituals into the future.”
“Pagan ceremonies have historically been about the cycle of the seasons and the birth, death and rebirth of crops. Mankind attuned himself to the forces of nature through rituals to insure his own survival. Now we are no longer confined by the seasons for our survival. We are confined by our outdated modes of thought. Our institutions which once served us have over the passage of time become oppressive and need to be destroyed. The Burning Man is our symbol of that. The natural progression of ideas from birth, to death, to rebirth so that we can promote our own evolution and attune ourselves to change in the universe.”
“Throughout human history there have always been political leaders/religious leaders/educational leaders who have tried to control us by giving us their rules and regulations. These leaders want to give you rules to run your life and determine the way you think. YOU are responsible for operating your own brain. You must learn to think for yourself, know yourself, question authority and create your own reality. Just say know!”
“It’s not what your parents want you to be or what your schools teach you to be or what the governments and large corporations try to force you to be. It’s about being yourself and changing yourself; morphing yourself into whatever person you want to become. It’s about having fun! That’s why we have these parties. That’s why we express ourselves. That’s what it’s all about.”
“All of us, most of our lives, live in a media whose reality is controlled by others, television networks, radio stations, newspapers, magazines... the entire mass media conglomerate is controlled by politicians, by large corporations, by the rhetoric of religious institutions who are not interested in communicating a reality that is in your best interest. The words you use, the modes of communication you follow, direct your thoughts and determine the realities you inhabit. The media is the message. If you want to change yourself and change the world- change the words you use, change the clothes you wear, change the music you listen to. You control your own media. If you change it, you change your message, you change yourself, you change your reality, and you change society.”
“That’s what the Burning Man ceremony is all about- our ability to change ourselves. We are the human race one thousand years from now. We are the Burning Man. We burn bright, we party all night- our seasons change with sequencer upgrades. We are melting down into one big beautiful hive of humanoids. Let the revolution begin!” I got kinda long with this, so i will just summarize the rest of the weekend by saying Dj Slip, Pablo Gargano (of Eve Records), Laurent Ho, Richie Hawtin, Dan Efex and Fishead had INCREDIBLE sets. I predicted the weather would be good this year since i would be coming, and except for a tornado the day before the party, a little rain Saturday morning, and it getting cold as shit Sunday night (the night i finally decided to sleep), the weather was BEAUTIFUL. Already thinking the East Coast was lame, this event has spoiled me even more, and made me reevaluate all the events throughout the years that i thought were soo awesome. I really believe this event wouldn’t have happened had it been on the East Coast. So, should i give up and move out there? Or can anyone here bulk up and do something this good? Let’s see what you got, East Coast. And if anyone is interested i am going back next year. Bus trip anyone?
PICTURES
|
