Before I move on to Saturday I forgot to mention Friday afternoon's tent problems. As you may recall, it was raining pretty hard. As you may also recall, our tent was a piece of shit. The result was that the top of our tent was kind of like a bath filling up and slowly caving the tent in. Luckily, being the geniuses we are, we tried to solve the problem by cutting a big hole in the tent and leaking the water into a giant garbage can. About an hour and 55 gallons of rain water later, though, we realized that this was not working either. To solve this problem we had to take these 10 foot metal poles and push the top of the tent up so as to push the water off. This basically worked, other than nailing a couple of next door's customers with an unexpected mid-rain storm shower, and since we didn't have any customers, we had a lot of time to focus on getting our tent through the storm.
Saturday and Sunday:
Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, warm, and sunny; perfect smoothie weather. Thank god. We were pretty slammed from 9 until 4 both days. We must have served a million smoothies in those hours, and while it was hard work, it felt good to know that we weren't going to be total failures. We almost sold all of the fruit we came with, people seemed to love our smoothies, and we learned a shit ton. We will definitely be less of a shit-show by Rothbury, and maybe we can actually make some money as well.
Music-wise, I was working a lot more, so I didn't see as much music. Lotus was playing near our booth and while I thought they started out a little choppy, they definitely kicked some ass. I'm really loving this band these days. I was especially pleased with "Suitcases & Sandwiches" near the end of the set. I caught all of Umphrey's Saturday set and thought that, while definitely a little tame, was pretty good nonetheless. I didn't think any of moe.'s sets were mind-blowing, but I though they were all above average. Sunday night's second set was probably the highlight moe.-wise. moe. really went all out on the lights this weekend, with Saturday and Sunday being up there with some of the best lights I've ever seen. George Clinton and P-Funk were also fun, but not something to write home about in my honest opinion.
We only had one more major problem before getting home on Monday night. When we were pulling the reefer truck out of the campgrounds on Monday morning the truck got stuck in the mud. Then, while we were trying to get the truck out of the mud, the truck ran out of gas. Eventually, though, we got out and back in one piece, and I'll only be eating fruit for the next week as opposed to the next two months.
Some other highlights or things I forgot to mention
-the barter economy is awesome. Our smoothies doubled as currency for art, food, drinks, toys, and various other forms of enlightenment. We even would give the security guards smoothies to let us through the gate without standing in line.
-the other vendors were super friendly and helpful. Special thanks to Oliver from Ali Baba's, Al from Pizza on Wheels, and Ed from the Coffee and Burrito booth. We learned so much from these guys over the course of the weekend it's not even funny.
-people on acid can't read the menu
I have to say it was overall a really cool experience, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Going to a fest as a vendor is definitely different than going as a consumer, and like anything, has both its ups and downs.
Oh yea, the tent. We didn't execute it Office Space-style; instead we just dropped it off, told them it was a piece of shit, and drove off. While we technically only paid for half of the tent, those idiots got way more than they deserved.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Trey Added to Rothbury
Ear Candy: Umphey's McGee "Come Closer" 5/23/08 Chillicothe, IL
Watching that "Come Closer" video actually made me go out and buy Umphrey's Friday night show at Summer Camp. Here's a taste...
Summer Camp 08 (or how many idiots does it take to make a smoothie?) Part 3
Friday:
I wake up to the sound of pouring rain. Normally, this is good because it means extra time to sleep in the tent instead of being baked out of it by the sun at 8:00 a.m. For us smoothie vendors, however, rain could not have been worse. Not only was it raining, but it was 40 degrees and raining. Who wants a smoothie when it's cold and raining?!?! The breakfast burritos and coffee booth next door could not have had a longer line. People were waiting 45 minutes in the rain for that shit and nothing we could do was going to make anyone want a smoothie. We got a few healthier customers and some other ones who had already eaten too many drugs and needed some nourishment to continue, but still no customers!
The upside of no customers was that we had more time to see music. I caught all of moe.'s Friday afternoon set and thought it was pretty good. Hidden Track had a line "moe.ments of brilliance moe.ments of boredom" that I think captures a lot of moe. shows. The peaks were really high but the valleys were really low. Probably the best "Timmy Tucker" I've ever experienced. I actually thought the whole set was really good and above average until "Head" devolved into a lot of uninspired noodling of the same note over and over and over. You could tell the guys were having fun; some of the funniest stupid moe. banter I've heard at a show.
Next we caught most of Future Rock and I have to say that this was probably my favorite band that I had not seen before. There's not really a good way to describe the music very well but it kind of sounds like electronic acid jazz. Really cool. Lots of mooging and synthesizing, but somehow it all goes perfectly with the tight beats coming from the drum kit. The drummer for the group is also at least twice the age of the other two members, but can still hold it down better than the rest of the group. I'm in search of any Future Rock right now.
Going back to the booth, we still had not sold any smoothies. Maybe something like 25 customers all day when we were counting on more than 25 customers in an hour. I couldn't help but be worried. Was this a mistake? Luckily, I didn't have time to dwell because Umphrey's McGee was up next.
Let me just say, this show was the absolute fire. Although festival sets often get a bad rap, I think Umphrey's is one of the few bands that plays festival sets that, on average, are even better than some of their normal shows. As soon as the boys took the stage you could see that Jake was not with his normal axe, but was toting the white Gibson that I have not seen him with since New Year's Eve.
(Sidenote - if you weren't at Umphrey's for New Year's, here's a taste of what you missed)
Anyways, I had a feeling that it would be a special night., and it was. The highlight of the first set for me was Come Closer, the mash up between the Beatles' Come Together and Nine Inch Nails' Closer. Just watch the video. This is why I drive countless hours and spend hundreds of dollars a year to see Umphrey's fucking McGee. I heard mixed reviews the first time they played this, but I loved every minute of it. What a way to end the set! You remember that scene in the Matrix where all of the people in the underground civilization are having the crazy rave like the world is about to end? It was kind of like that, except the music was better.
The first half of the second set picked up right where the first left off, and from Mulche's through Divisions I was on cloud 9. The rest of the show was great, and although set two looks better on paper, I definitely had more fun during the first set.
Unfortunately, I missed the Shine On You Crazy Diamond encore because I promised one of the people that had to work at the booth the whole show that I would switch with them so they could see the encore. Oh well.
Set I: The Floor> Smell the Mitten1, Search 4, Utopian Fir> Rocker Part II2, Come Closer
Set II: Mulche's Odyssey, Divisions> Phil's Farm> Divisions, Der Bluten Kat, Wappy Sprayberry> Der Bluten Kat
Encore: Shine on You Crazy Diamond
Anyways, going back to the booth, we had sold maybe 10 more smoothies. So two full days into the festival, we had sold about 50 smoothies. Despite the awesomeness of Umphrey's, I was starting to get really worried that we were going to leave Summer Camp with 200 lbs of fruit and that I would be eating strawberries and bananas for the rest of the Summer.
So maybe it was the desperation, or the anxiety, or maybe it was the drugs, but we all decided to just start making smoothies and give out free samples into the crowd! I guess it kind of worked; we probably sold about 15 more smoothies as the result of our free samples, and 15 smoothies was almost our daily average up to that point, so that seemed pretty good at the time. Plus, it was really fun to see people's reactions: "are you actually from the smoothie booth?" "are there any drugs in this?" "do you trade for crystals?"
After another day of great music but no business, our spirits were trampled, but not crushed. The weather was supposed to be hot and sunny for the rest of the weekend. There was still hope!
I wake up to the sound of pouring rain. Normally, this is good because it means extra time to sleep in the tent instead of being baked out of it by the sun at 8:00 a.m. For us smoothie vendors, however, rain could not have been worse. Not only was it raining, but it was 40 degrees and raining. Who wants a smoothie when it's cold and raining?!?! The breakfast burritos and coffee booth next door could not have had a longer line. People were waiting 45 minutes in the rain for that shit and nothing we could do was going to make anyone want a smoothie. We got a few healthier customers and some other ones who had already eaten too many drugs and needed some nourishment to continue, but still no customers!
The upside of no customers was that we had more time to see music. I caught all of moe.'s Friday afternoon set and thought it was pretty good. Hidden Track had a line "moe.ments of brilliance moe.ments of boredom" that I think captures a lot of moe. shows. The peaks were really high but the valleys were really low. Probably the best "Timmy Tucker" I've ever experienced. I actually thought the whole set was really good and above average until "Head" devolved into a lot of uninspired noodling of the same note over and over and over. You could tell the guys were having fun; some of the funniest stupid moe. banter I've heard at a show.
Next we caught most of Future Rock and I have to say that this was probably my favorite band that I had not seen before. There's not really a good way to describe the music very well but it kind of sounds like electronic acid jazz. Really cool. Lots of mooging and synthesizing, but somehow it all goes perfectly with the tight beats coming from the drum kit. The drummer for the group is also at least twice the age of the other two members, but can still hold it down better than the rest of the group. I'm in search of any Future Rock right now.
Going back to the booth, we still had not sold any smoothies. Maybe something like 25 customers all day when we were counting on more than 25 customers in an hour. I couldn't help but be worried. Was this a mistake? Luckily, I didn't have time to dwell because Umphrey's McGee was up next.
Let me just say, this show was the absolute fire. Although festival sets often get a bad rap, I think Umphrey's is one of the few bands that plays festival sets that, on average, are even better than some of their normal shows. As soon as the boys took the stage you could see that Jake was not with his normal axe, but was toting the white Gibson that I have not seen him with since New Year's Eve.
(Sidenote - if you weren't at Umphrey's for New Year's, here's a taste of what you missed)
Anyways, I had a feeling that it would be a special night., and it was. The highlight of the first set for me was Come Closer, the mash up between the Beatles' Come Together and Nine Inch Nails' Closer. Just watch the video. This is why I drive countless hours and spend hundreds of dollars a year to see Umphrey's fucking McGee. I heard mixed reviews the first time they played this, but I loved every minute of it. What a way to end the set! You remember that scene in the Matrix where all of the people in the underground civilization are having the crazy rave like the world is about to end? It was kind of like that, except the music was better.
The first half of the second set picked up right where the first left off, and from Mulche's through Divisions I was on cloud 9. The rest of the show was great, and although set two looks better on paper, I definitely had more fun during the first set.
Unfortunately, I missed the Shine On You Crazy Diamond encore because I promised one of the people that had to work at the booth the whole show that I would switch with them so they could see the encore. Oh well.
Set I: The Floor> Smell the Mitten1, Search 4, Utopian Fir> Rocker Part II2, Come Closer
Set II: Mulche's Odyssey, Divisions> Phil's Farm> Divisions, Der Bluten Kat, Wappy Sprayberry> Der Bluten Kat
Encore: Shine on You Crazy Diamond
Anyways, going back to the booth, we had sold maybe 10 more smoothies. So two full days into the festival, we had sold about 50 smoothies. Despite the awesomeness of Umphrey's, I was starting to get really worried that we were going to leave Summer Camp with 200 lbs of fruit and that I would be eating strawberries and bananas for the rest of the Summer.
So maybe it was the desperation, or the anxiety, or maybe it was the drugs, but we all decided to just start making smoothies and give out free samples into the crowd! I guess it kind of worked; we probably sold about 15 more smoothies as the result of our free samples, and 15 smoothies was almost our daily average up to that point, so that seemed pretty good at the time. Plus, it was really fun to see people's reactions: "are you actually from the smoothie booth?" "are there any drugs in this?" "do you trade for crystals?"
After another day of great music but no business, our spirits were trampled, but not crushed. The weather was supposed to be hot and sunny for the rest of the weekend. There was still hope!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Eye & Ear Candy
In between Summer Camp posts I've got a video I took on the camera of moe. closing down Summer Camp with "Rebubula" on Sunday night.
I've also got the Disco Biscuits' "Air Song" from their 4/18/08 Athens, Georgia show which, if you can't tell, I'm still mildly obsessed with.
I've also got the Disco Biscuits' "Air Song" from their 4/18/08 Athens, Georgia show which, if you can't tell, I'm still mildly obsessed with.
Summer Camp 08 (or how many idiots does it take to make a smoothie?) Part 2
Thursday:
Based on the story so far, how do you, the reader, think we resolved the sign issue? That's right, as you probably guessed, we did in fact make a "Smoothie" sign out of duct tape on the front of our tent. Other than that, Thursday was pretty uneventful. We passed the health inspection in the morning without any problems. Go us. Smoothie-wise, Thursday sucked: we had 15 customers all day; we made more smoothies to trade with the the Pizza-on-Wheels folks next door than we sold that day. I wasn't worried yet though, because we didn't really expect anyone to buy our smoothies or fruit bowls on Thursday; you want a beer after waiting in line and setting up your tent, not a smoothie. We still came up with a bunch of stupid ways to try and get people to buy smoothies, my favorites being "smoothies, longer dreadlocks with every bite!" and "molly smoothies, extra vitamin MDA!"
Music-wise, we had a lot of down time to explore, and wound up catching a decent amount of Tea Leaf Green. Let me just say, I am now a Reed Mathis believer. This guy brought so much energy to the show it wasn't even funny; at times it sounded like he was playing a totally different and better song on the bass than the rest of the band was playing. Although it was a pretty boring setlist, this show was definitely an A-/B+. If Reed Mathis becomes the permanent bass player for this band they are guaranteed to go places.
I didn't see any of Zoso, the Led Zep cover band, but don't really think I missed anything. We closed the booth down around 11:00 and headed to the barn for the late night U-Melt show. I was completely sold on U-Melt for the first half of their set. Great, rocky dance music. They also had a fantastic light show to boot. Things started getting really hot and then out of nowhere the band went into a cover of Seal's "Crazy" (you remember that crappy song "no we're never gonna surviiiiiive, unless...") and completely lost me. Although this band is definitely legit, the poor song choice literally ruined everything they had built up to that point. I was pretty tired so we headed back to get ready for Friday morning, which we were sure would be busy as hell.
On a random side note, my friend put on the Heavy Pets' studio album while we were working and I swear, three or four times throughout the album I caught myself wondering "what Phish/Disco Biscuits show is this?" In case you don't realize this, that's about the highest compliment I could give a band.
Based on the story so far, how do you, the reader, think we resolved the sign issue? That's right, as you probably guessed, we did in fact make a "Smoothie" sign out of duct tape on the front of our tent. Other than that, Thursday was pretty uneventful. We passed the health inspection in the morning without any problems. Go us. Smoothie-wise, Thursday sucked: we had 15 customers all day; we made more smoothies to trade with the the Pizza-on-Wheels folks next door than we sold that day. I wasn't worried yet though, because we didn't really expect anyone to buy our smoothies or fruit bowls on Thursday; you want a beer after waiting in line and setting up your tent, not a smoothie. We still came up with a bunch of stupid ways to try and get people to buy smoothies, my favorites being "smoothies, longer dreadlocks with every bite!" and "molly smoothies, extra vitamin MDA!"
Music-wise, we had a lot of down time to explore, and wound up catching a decent amount of Tea Leaf Green. Let me just say, I am now a Reed Mathis believer. This guy brought so much energy to the show it wasn't even funny; at times it sounded like he was playing a totally different and better song on the bass than the rest of the band was playing. Although it was a pretty boring setlist, this show was definitely an A-/B+. If Reed Mathis becomes the permanent bass player for this band they are guaranteed to go places.
I didn't see any of Zoso, the Led Zep cover band, but don't really think I missed anything. We closed the booth down around 11:00 and headed to the barn for the late night U-Melt show. I was completely sold on U-Melt for the first half of their set. Great, rocky dance music. They also had a fantastic light show to boot. Things started getting really hot and then out of nowhere the band went into a cover of Seal's "Crazy" (you remember that crappy song "no we're never gonna surviiiiiive, unless...") and completely lost me. Although this band is definitely legit, the poor song choice literally ruined everything they had built up to that point. I was pretty tired so we headed back to get ready for Friday morning, which we were sure would be busy as hell.
On a random side note, my friend put on the Heavy Pets' studio album while we were working and I swear, three or four times throughout the album I caught myself wondering "what Phish/Disco Biscuits show is this?" In case you don't realize this, that's about the highest compliment I could give a band.
Summer Camp 08 (or how many idiots does it take to make a smoothie?) Part 1
Good morning phanners. I think that I've finally started to recover enough from Summer Camp to make a full report. This is going to be a somewhat untraditional festival report though, because I was also a food vendor at the fest. So let's see how much I can fit in before the next installment. For me, Summer Camp started on Tuesday morning, when months of planning, forgetting, remembering, and arguing about what kind of garbage bags to get finally came to fruition. We got the reefer truck from Ryder without any problems (side note: how awesome is it that reefer truck is official trucker lingo for refrigerated trucks).
Then came the three hour redneck-hillbilly-retard nightmare that is Oasis Tents & Rentals in Paris, KY. When we got to the shop the guy in charge, who looked like he ate about 100 oxycodones before coming to work, told us that they didn't have the tent at the shop and that we would have to follow his lackeys out to their warehouse a couple of miles away. When we got to the warehouse it turned out that it was less of a business-warehouse and more of someone's closet of really big crap. There was a 1960's volkswagen, a two-story elvis billboard, one of those giant signs in the shape of the state of Kentucky that you see when entering the state, and hundreds of randomly-scattered tent parts. We literally sat around this place for three hours while these two idiot 19 year olds walked around looking for all of the pieces of our tent. Three hours and two more idiot-lackeys later, they said they had all of the pieces to our tent, except for the most important part, the mast. To compensate, the head-lackey handed us a giant metal pipe and told us that we should just take this big piece of metal and saw it ourselves, because he didn't have the right kind of saw to do it for us, and that this would kind of work as a mast. Needless to say, that was not going to work. Luckily for us I guess, the owner called the lackeys around this moment and told them that he found the mast and that it was at the shop along with everything else that we had been looking for for the last three hours. After getting the tent we drove to Chicago, which was relatively uneventful except for taking a wrong turn and driving through East Chicago, Indiana, which put mildly, is not a very nice place.
Wednesday: We get the fruit from MT Foodservice and it looks awesome: 240 lbs of fresh strawberries, 150 lbs of frozen strawberries, 50 lbs each of cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon, and 180 lbs of bananas. We stopped at a Hot Dog joint between Chicago and Chillicothe where they refused to serve me a char dog as opposed to a hot dog, even though this only requires taking their boiled hot dog and putting it on their grill for two minutes, and then they served the hot dog on a bun without poppy seeds, which, to any Chicago-an, is almost as bad as putting ketchup on the dog. We met up around 4:00 with the rest of the crew at the site. After checking in we went to go the red barn to meet with the vending coordinator, Mike, who I cannot say enough nice things about. Anyway, we went to the wrong red barn, and instead of finding Mike we found moe., who was in the middle of practicing Peter Gabriel's Salsbury Hill, which they broke on Saturday night. Anyways, to make a long story short, our tent problems occupied the rest of the day. It took six of us over five hours to put this piece of shit together and it didn't help that out of the four cables we needed, the Oasis Tent fucktards only gave us three, one of them being broken. There were about four other major problems with the tent, but we eventually got it put together and got our menu boards and signs up, and it didn't look too shabby until we realized a gaping hole in our operation: we didn't have a sign. Stay tuned!
Then came the three hour redneck-hillbilly-retard nightmare that is Oasis Tents & Rentals in Paris, KY. When we got to the shop the guy in charge, who looked like he ate about 100 oxycodones before coming to work, told us that they didn't have the tent at the shop and that we would have to follow his lackeys out to their warehouse a couple of miles away. When we got to the warehouse it turned out that it was less of a business-warehouse and more of someone's closet of really big crap. There was a 1960's volkswagen, a two-story elvis billboard, one of those giant signs in the shape of the state of Kentucky that you see when entering the state, and hundreds of randomly-scattered tent parts. We literally sat around this place for three hours while these two idiot 19 year olds walked around looking for all of the pieces of our tent. Three hours and two more idiot-lackeys later, they said they had all of the pieces to our tent, except for the most important part, the mast. To compensate, the head-lackey handed us a giant metal pipe and told us that we should just take this big piece of metal and saw it ourselves, because he didn't have the right kind of saw to do it for us, and that this would kind of work as a mast. Needless to say, that was not going to work. Luckily for us I guess, the owner called the lackeys around this moment and told them that he found the mast and that it was at the shop along with everything else that we had been looking for for the last three hours. After getting the tent we drove to Chicago, which was relatively uneventful except for taking a wrong turn and driving through East Chicago, Indiana, which put mildly, is not a very nice place.
Wednesday: We get the fruit from MT Foodservice and it looks awesome: 240 lbs of fresh strawberries, 150 lbs of frozen strawberries, 50 lbs each of cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon, and 180 lbs of bananas. We stopped at a Hot Dog joint between Chicago and Chillicothe where they refused to serve me a char dog as opposed to a hot dog, even though this only requires taking their boiled hot dog and putting it on their grill for two minutes, and then they served the hot dog on a bun without poppy seeds, which, to any Chicago-an, is almost as bad as putting ketchup on the dog. We met up around 4:00 with the rest of the crew at the site. After checking in we went to go the red barn to meet with the vending coordinator, Mike, who I cannot say enough nice things about. Anyway, we went to the wrong red barn, and instead of finding Mike we found moe., who was in the middle of practicing Peter Gabriel's Salsbury Hill, which they broke on Saturday night. Anyways, to make a long story short, our tent problems occupied the rest of the day. It took six of us over five hours to put this piece of shit together and it didn't help that out of the four cables we needed, the Oasis Tent fucktards only gave us three, one of them being broken. There were about four other major problems with the tent, but we eventually got it put together and got our menu boards and signs up, and it didn't look too shabby until we realized a gaping hole in our operation: we didn't have a sign. Stay tuned!
Trey Hints at Phish Reunion to Rolling Stone!
I haven't even finished reading the article yet but here it is...more commentary later
Update:
Alright, I guess the article is only a two paragraph tease and we'll have to wait for the next issue of Rolling Stone to read the whole interview, which took place on the same day where the rehabilitating Jedi Master received a reduced sentence and probation for his legal woes. Although I usually think Rolling Stone sucks the butt on most everything, this is one of those times where I'll actually be waiting for the next issue to arrive. This quote might have put a tear in my eye:
“When Phish broke up, I made some comment about how I’m not gonna go around playing ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for the rest of my life,” Anastasio said with a laugh. “And it’s so funny because Fish and Mike and Page have been talking to each other a lot lately and now — it’s not that I can’t believe that I said that, but its symbolic of how much I lost my mind or how much I lost my bearings or something. Because at this point in time I would give my left nut to play that song five times in a row every day until I die. I certainly thought about that while I was in jail.”
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