{"id":3705,"date":"2012-08-07T10:10:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T14:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=3705"},"modified":"2012-08-20T10:23:45","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T14:23:45","slug":"the-forecastle-music-festival-in-twenty-first-century-spontaneous-prose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/the-forecastle-music-festival-in-twenty-first-century-spontaneous-prose\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forecastle Music Festival in Twenty-First Century Spontaneous Prose"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There\u2019s something incredibly self-righteous about smelling like you\u2019ve been rotting in a vat of sweat for three days. It means you play too hard. It means you\u2019ve been to the 10th annual Forecastle Music Festival 2012. It means you\u2019re us.<\/p>\n

JakeSteve (left): This last of the bro-hicans uses each show as an excuse to work out via excessive dancing, with a girl on his shoulders, of course. Apparently he plays \u201cfootball.\u201d Whatever. Jessie Modi (so far right): prone to oh so delicate blackouts and passing out while standing up at concerts after eating three times her body weight in funnel cake. Kevin (centerfold): contributes 80% of sweat vat stench, and also doubles as our gang\u2019s jorts aficionado.<\/p>\n

I (of the latter description) have camped out at multiple music festivals before, and was skeptical about Forecastle\u2019s urban location in Louisville. I wasn\u2019t sure if the festy-spirit, which depends on somewhat ostentatious abuses of freedom, would remain intact without the possibility of running back to your tent between shows. Transportation might quickly become an issue, and oh, crap, what about housing? The lineup, which was curated by hometown heroes My Morning Jacket, looked killer, but what was up with the music ending at midnight each night? I have to go to a bar and pay more money for an after party now? Why did shows start so late in the afternoon? One speculation led to another, and it was difficult to put such thoughts behind me as we made our way from Charlottesville, VA down to Louisville, KY.<\/p>\n

The definition of a (or rather, the) Forecastle, as given by the festival\u2019s website, goes as such: Fore\u00b7cas\u00b7tle (f\u2019ok_sol) n. ~ A superstructure at the bow of a ship where the crew is housed. Hard at work in the unruly sea, a place workers gather to unwind after a hard day of labor. A place where the people come together.<\/em> The notion of a \u2018gathering\u2019 quickly extended beyond Waterfront Park, where the festival was held on the banks of the Ohio River, and became very real when we first arrived and met our CouchSurfing host, Scott. He showed up late, so we spent our first twenty minutes chilling on his front porch. We never really left. When we weren\u2019t dancing our sweet little tails off at concerts, we were kicking back at a porch session at Scott\u2019s, or casually hanging ten on the abandoned couch on the sidewalk outside his house (coincidence? I think not!).<\/p>\n

CouchSurfing (or CS) is\u00a0so<\/a>, <\/a>so<\/a>\u00a0hot<\/a>\u00a0right<\/a>\u00a0now<\/a> (this New Yorker<\/em> article will flesh out the general CS experience in a way I won\u2019t be doing here, but I do have a few things to mention). I first surfed when I was 18 in Auckland, New Zealand. Let\u2019s just say that experience was \u2018interesting\u2019 (homeboy got real<\/em> friendly). But I stuck with it, and have met some of the most open-minded, hospitable, sincere, crazy (in the Keruoacian sense), and piss-yourself-laughing-funny people in the world. On the surface, does CS qualify as totally insane? Hell yes. Having strangers sleep on your couch acts as a reasonable indicator; yet one quickly finds is that these people aren\u2019t so \u2018random.\u2019 The CS community revolves around sharing and a collective interest in the feeling of deep-seated meaning sometimes brought about by such mutual experiences.<\/p>\n

One of the ways I wanted to cover the festival was by documenting each escapade by creating a thread of \u201cTweet\u201d style texts. Needless to say, the wheels came off quickly, as we competed for the most over-the-top updates. Why tweets? JakeSteve, our miscreant gang\u2019s resident twitter artist, offers: \u201cTwitter is the best way to pretend people give a shit about what you have to say. But whether they do or not, Twitter still gets you a seat at the table bumpin\u2019 elbows with the best of \u2019em. People like Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson (@TheRock), Snooki (@snooki) and yes, even The Biebs (@justinbieber). Why not join the conversation? Give birth to your words and set them free. And who knows, maybe the Biebs will hit you with a retweet!!! #followme @jakeestevee ;).\u201d<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I think that our \u2018tweet\u2019 thread allowed us to sort and register experiences. We didn\u2019t shoot for objective truth, but tried to articulate our varying emotional states. This allowed us to channel our overstimulation into little words and phrases that built upon one another.<\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: What follows is a script of sorts, a transcript of tweets, a disparate dialogue between our harangued heroes.]<\/p>\n

DAY ONE<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Feeling incredibly good about ourselves in our not-so-designer threads, we rolled through the gates and never looked back. Swagger never knew what hit it.]<\/p>\n

July 13, 5:13pm Kevin: MORECASTLE<\/strong> [Commence long running joke of adding timely words to the \u2018castle\u2019 post-fix, something that was never really all that funny but that was responsible for countless tears of uncontrollable laughter and approximately three underpants changes throughout the festy.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

July 13, 7:09 Jessie: spotted: girl smoking weed in a crack pipe at the Head & the Heart show. #classic<\/strong><\/p>\n

July 13, 7:22 Kevin: Ben Sollee guest spot at the Head & the Heart! Cello never did so much for mankind #sweetlord<\/strong> [Louisville hometown hero Solle had just met the Seattle indie folk-pop outfit that day, and apparently they completely hit it off. He looked at ease amidst the rampant flannel and beards, as his his cello seemed to slide gently beneath lead singer Jonathan Russell\u2019s belting.]<\/p>\n