This weekend I went to a music festival - Northern Nights - in northern California, about 3 and a half hours from Oakland. I went with my brother and his girlfriend Starla, his friend Haley and their two friends Julia and Tom. Their friend Stephan was also there. They are all super cool people. I had a pretty amazing time (with a couple of caveats). I should set the stage for you, no pun intended; Northern Nights is a particular kind of music festival that I guess you could loosely say is a sort of direct descendent of the Woodstock brand of music festival, at least in my mind; a lot of ambient music, a Redwood grove, a river you can lazily float in while you listen to music, some yoga, and …well, you can probably imagine the rest. I won’t go too much into my brother’s lifestyle choices because that’s his story to tell, but suffice it to say that there are a lot of alternative lifestyles on display there.
The entrance to the festival (literally) was pretty rocky; the festival organizers made some poor choices that caused me to spend over 3 and half hours in my car, in the heat, and for no good reason, while I watched other folks sail right past us and into the festival. It reminded me of a character flaw of mine that, while I can be patient when required, I have a really hard time with situations that strike me as being unfair. It didn’t bother me nearly as much that we had to wait so long, as it did that it was strikingly and bald-facedly unfair. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown and had to spend a few minutes gently rocking back and forth. But then I got over it.
The actual music at the festival was a mixed bag, but that’s OK. When it was good, it was very good, and when it was bad we just ignored it. I saw two bands I really liked: Steamy Windows, which was led by a friend of Jason’s named Jeff on the saxophone, and High Step Society, which was a sort of Voodoo Poppin Daddies hopped-up brass band mixed with electronic dance music and was very rockin’. They both had something in common which is something I’ve definitely noticed before, which is that they were very present and passionate in their performance. By contrast we saw another band, Night Tales, that was supposed to be popular but basically consisted of a dude pressing buttons and another guy lip syncing and it was a total snoozefest. Gotta be there for me to care.
The river was the highlight for me; tubing on a river, hanging out with friends, drinking a beer, is something I could do all day, every day. Finding and stealing different animal-shaped floaties is a mood, as the kids would say. Camping under the redwood trees was also amazing. That alone was worth it to me. The music was just a bonus.
I spent a lot of time sleeping actually, and even more time just hanging out at camp talking to Jason and the rest of them and watching them interact with each other. Their crowd is not my crowd exactly, but I admire and value them and enjoyed hanging out with them for the weekend. It was very relaxing and energizing and made me want to be creative and I appreciated it very much.
