Switched on Pop - The Joy of Music Festivals

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

For the past two weeks, our series on summer music festivals has uncovered the interplay of festival fashion and music and examined festival subcultures. But we've so far overlooked an essential reason that people attend music festivals: to experience transformational joy. At the start of summer 2021 it seemed like the pandemic was waning and that live music was coming back. But now, heading into the fall with the Delta variant, the fate of live music is once again in question. Caught in this limbo, we thought it might be a good time to get nostalgic and reflect on joyous music festival moments as we hope for more live music in the future.  This week's episode features seven stories from listeners about their most surprising and wonderful moments at festivals past. The first story comes from musician and producer Dave Harrington of the band Darkside, who was once helped out of a musical rut by a Phish festival set Songs Phish (live Aug 4, 2017) - Everything In Its Right Place, Axis Bold As Love, Prince Caspian Darkside - Only Young Music scored by Zach Tenorio of Arc Iris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. So over the past few weeks, we've been doing this festival series, uncovering the interplay of festival fashion and music, looking at festival subcultures, but I feel like we've been missing the main reason

that people attend music festivals. Overpriced hot dogs. Ecstatic experience of joy in a temporary utopia. Oh, yeah. And that too. That and overpice hot dogs. Together unmissable. It feels like an appropriate time to think about the great moments that we can have at festivals because we're in this tough situation where it felt like live music was absolutely coming back and now it's in question again. And so I thought today we could take the time to tell

stories that reflect on the most ecstatic experiences at music festivals. And the first story comes to us from a musician you and I greatly admire. Hi, I'm Dave Harrington. Dave Harrington is a guitar player, multi-instrumentalist, producer, member of the critically acclaimed band Darkside. And of course, you're a longtime collaborator and best friend from childhood. One of my favorite human beings in addition to one of my favorite musicians. Here's a story Dave has for us. I was working in a studio with Nick Murphy, aka Chet Faker, aka Nick Murphy. And that whole week, I'd been trying to get this guitar solo together on this one track. And I just kept hating everything I was doing.

And I was just like, oh my God, guitar solos, are they even a thing anymore? I was in the middle of an existential crisis about like the nature of a big guitar solo. Now, this is a big issue for Dave, right? His bread and butter is literally long, free improvised guitar solos. People literally hire him for his uncanny approach to the guitar. It's like athletes get the yips. You know, musicians get the what is a guitar solo anyway. Yeah, Dave wasn't going to solve this problem by sticking it out in the studio.

He had to get out into the world. A friend of mine, he offered me tickets to go see fish. Madison Square Garden. I had like really no expectations and I didn't have a lot of connection to Fish, but it seemed obvious to me that I would go. So Fish, the jam band from Vermont named after their drummer John Fishman, maybe way off the pop music radar, but you know, for nearly 40 years, tens of thousands of people have filled up stadiums to see this band. They have like one of the most long-running and avid fan bases of any band in history. Including you and I, Charlie.

I will admit, I have been to a show or two. As have I. Hershey, Pennsylvania, 2001, unforgettable. The show that Dave was about to go see wasn't just any normal fish show. He'd been invited to see The Baker's Dozen, a sort of festival-like run of 13 shows in the summer of 2017. that was this sort of like one long, strung out performance where the band challenged themselves to never repeat a song and do all these covers and pull all these really goofy pranks.

If you showed up early enough, you could get a free donut because donuts are a thing with Fishman and his outfit and there's fish donuts and stuff. And each night the donut is flavored with a theme that relates to like the set list they're going to play or like covers they might do. On my night, it was lemon night. They did everything in its right place by Radiohead because of the lyric about sucking on a lemon.

You know, the donut gag might seem extraneous and silly, but it's really all part of planting a seed in the audience for the music that they're going to hear. And as soon as the donuts get passed out, people start guessing what song are they going to cover to match the flavor of the night? So there was this element of anything can happen that had. already been kind of seated. Fish launches immediately into a short, funky song to kick off the set, but from there the song starts to get longer and longer because obviously, you know, a fish show is all about the jam, the long, drawn-out middle sections of song with spontaneous improvisation. So the band would start the jam from a song, from inside of a song somewhere, but there's a moment

where they start to leave the song behind and take off into jam territory. Usually this happens when they kind of explore a groove. They'll use the groove or the structures or the core changes from that song as kind of building blocks to extend or create moments inside of the jam. Then there's kind of an open question at a certain point of where will the jam go? For Dave, the answer to that question of where a jam is heading is all about a particular musical moment. The development of the jam in service of a good peak is, in a way, the most important part. Do you know what he means by a good peak moment?

I mean, I've been to fish shows. It's when there's like this sort of cresting crescendo in the music and you can feel the energy in the crowd and people are. kind of yelling and blowing their tops just at this instrumental apex. That's exactly right. It's like this moment when all of the cacophony of the jam coalesces into this apex, this climax. And Dave specifically remembers an experience of one of those peaks that night, and it was transformative for him. And I remember specifically at that show, there was one very long jam. It was late in the set, and it was after they had done.

on the radio head cover. The true moment that it all crystallized for me was just, they were two peaks into a great jam and Trey is cruising along. Trey Anastasio is the band's lead guitarist known for his meandering solos. And the band is just chasing him. You're grooving along, do-de-de-l-d-l-d-d-d-do.

And then they'll begin to ratchet up the tension. They'll build energy. There's a sense that you know that they're building. to something, faster notes or a repeated motif in the solo, and it's this feeling of going up and up and up, suddenly everything kind of coalesces and ratchets up. It's a very intense version of doolid-de-de-dee, dole-d-d-do-l-l-do-l-do. And then everyone's kind of flying. And then in this one moment, Trey climbs up the fretboard.

He hits, like, the highest node. Doodly-de-le- squee! And then fishmen. smashes and Mike and Page smash and like it's as if the lighting guy Corota like put all of his palms and his face on like every button and everyone in the crowd goes at like the same time. It was like this pure moment of collective experience because everyone in the stadium knew it was coming and felt like they had also built it together. You know, the peak isn't just about the musical moment for Dave.

It's about something much bigger. That's that feeling of community compressed into a moment. It's laid in the groundwork of them having their own universe and the importance of donuts and having fun is like all part of this same thing. Remember how Dave went to the show while he was in the middle of a creative rut and existential crisis about the purpose of a guitar solo.

Watching Fish hit this peak moment over and over was the tonic to Dave's crisis. He realized that extended guitar solos aren't necessarily gratuitous. They can even be necessary to create peak musical moments. It's like a musical wandering. That's what allows for the delivery of a great moment. You have to take the journey

and you have to go on the wander. I went to go see Fish at Madison Square Garden. I saw Trey, you know, lead the great revival meeting with his guitar. It felt like a whole night of peak seeking. And then the next morning, I woke up early, I went straight to the studio. Before Nick was there, me and Phil the engineer, plug in, get a tone, take the guitar solo. I asked Dave if he could play his guitar solo for us. That song is unreleased.

That song got cut from the record. Okay, even though Dave doesn't have that song to play for us, he did just release a new album with his band Darkside. It's called Spiral. And on the last song, Only Young, he takes us out on one of the most epic guitar solos. That is such a killer solo. And I love this story because I think it speaks to the way that that live experience. experience and and hearing something, you know, improvised and being sort of formed in front of your

eyes and ears can be so inspiring and then can be like transported into this whole new context for Dave. I think that just speaks to the way that these live festival moments have an afterlife. They're fleeting, but then they imprint on your brain in these ways that shape you as, as like a musician, as a person. No, absolutely. I got to go to a lot of music festivals starting pretty young. I somehow convinced my parents when I was 16 to take their car to go to festivals all around the country. And I saw a lot of shows in my teens and 20s that stuck with me. And if I'm being honest with you, I've been feeling like I got so much of that that I'm now a bit jaded on the festival experience. But after hearing Dave's story of these peak musical moments, it made me want to

find other stories about celebration and revelation and joy at music festivals. So I reached out to our listeners and asked them to share their experiences. And honestly, they maybe laugh, cry, and even reignite my love for festivals. And I'm going to share all those stories with you right after the break. Great. Let me grab some tissues. Attention, Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera. A fragrance intense with caratte gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, tofu caramelized, and tonka-tosted. A combination that seduce from the first instant and

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we're going to move from Dave's peak moments to that all encompassing continuous experience of temporary utopia

my name is Inbar I live in Brooklyn and I think that music festivals are the most euphoric places in the entire world for two reasons. The first is that they're just perfect bubbles, and by that I mean that

when you're in a music festival and you're doing it right, then nothing else exists. Your only responsibility is to enjoy your time there, and everything else can just wait until you're back. The second reason that music festivals are just the best place in the world is that they have a completely different set of rules from regular concerts at regular venues. the first time I crowd surfed was at Firefly Music Festival and I'll just never forget that feeling or getting a barricade spot and waiting through five sets

just to see your favorite band from the barricade of a festival and feeling the energy of like thousands of people behind you being so exhausted but just getting that energy and dancing, it out with the strangers. Those are the most euphoric feelings in the world. I love that because there are those magical moments at a festival when you turn to your left and you turn to your right and suddenly these people who are utter strangers are like your lifelong friends and then you never see each other again. But you had that moment and I totally relate to that. I love that.

And you can kind of be anybody who you want to be. You know, people might believe anything that they want to even believe about you. Here's a story from Sadie about exactly this. Hi, Switched on Pop. I've got a funny summer music festival story for you. I was in a band that played the Milwaukee Summer Fest the same year that the Jonas Brothers were headlining. And so the way they got bands around was like in these tinted, windowed vans that sort

of drove around in the backstage areas. So when my band was getting driven to our stage, all these little, little tween age girls were basically like three deep against a chain link fence that we were passing. And our bassist who looks nothing like a Jonas brother rolled down the window. And all the girls just like through sheer imagination and hopefulness, they saw a Jonas brother. And they screamed. And we just got hit with this like wall of happy screams. And it was such great energy.

And it was so fun. And so then we like got to our stage and then we played kind of a crappy set. But anyway. That's hilarious. I wish I could have witnessed that. Yeah, it's a really sweet story. And moving from the perspective of pretending to be somebody to getting to really fully be yourself is the subject of our next story where we go into a music festival subculture where listener Rachel finds the capacity to move beyond all of our creature comforts and really embrace some of the more challenging parts at being at a music festival. I love the Irish Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When I went in 2009, I was really excited to see the Dropkick movies live. They played on a covered stage outside, and as we stood in this field in front of them, listening to them as they got started, I was really nervous because the forecast had called for rain. I was distracted by the thought of getting wet and muddy, and I was not at all in the moment. But when the rain started and the band started playing, shipping up to Boston, you could feel the whole mood of the crowd change. We were just leaning into the grime. The energy was just absolutely electric and I stopped caring about the rain. It was wet and muddy and jumping with this sea of people, pun intended.

This reminds me of when I was a teenager and I drove like 17 or 18 hours to the Bonnero Music Festival and I was really excited to go see The Dead. And they were supposed to go on after Steve Winwood of traffic. But Steve Winwood's set was supposed to end like in the early evening and he kept going on and on and on. And I'm like, okay, Steve Winwood of traffic. Like, I don't really know your music at this point of my life. I'm not that interested. Like get off the stage. I want to hear the Dead.

What I didn't know was that the third. festival promoters were like, hey, there's about to be this giant rainstorm that's going to come through and is going to delay the dead set. So just keep playing until the rain hits. So like after way too many hours of Dean Woodwood, then the rain comes in. And it goes from like, you know, 95 degrees down to 60. We're all wearing basically nothing and freezing, huddling under our little like crazy creek chairs that we had brought with us for an hour or more until finally the rain lets up. They take the tarps off of the instruments. Dead goes on. And they just like launch into, so many of my favorite songs, and I just

stood there freezing an utter joy to see my favorite band of when I was a teenager. It's those moments where it feels like everything is about to collapse, but then it comes back stronger than ever, that makes that unpredictability of the live experience so remarkable.

I mean, it's more fun when it rains or something goes wrong than if everything just went according to plan, I think. Yeah, and sometimes it's even more fun to find yourself in situations you didn't mean to get yourself into. Here's a story like that from Lauren. In like 2005, I was 21 and I dragged my mom to the van's Warp Tour in Cleveland, Ohio.

When my mom and I entered the venue, they ushered my mom over to the parents' tent where there were other moms and dads who were not into the music. Cookie, my mom, she was like, I don't think so. And she, like, led me to the front of one of the Mosh pits. from one of those stages and I think that was when my mom became a 13-year-old skater boy

having in love with like yellow card and Green Day like their new stuff the next year and many years after I was in college I lived in Italy and then I moved to New York City

but Cookie still went to the van's work tour every year she always dressed up with her pearl necklaces which little did she know was actually very popular in like the emo punk fashion scene. She'd come home with bruises on her wrists from slamming her arms on the guardrails to the beat of the music.

And she was probably the saddest when Warped Tour ended. But she still goes to bands when she can in Cleveland and sometimes alone. And sometimes she brings my dad, but she's always wearing her pearls. This one resonated because I've had so many moments where I've been dragged to a show, or a stage that I was reluctant to go to

and then totally fell in love with an artist. And sometimes it's as much about the music as it is the gathering of the crowd. Here's Adrian. This comes from 2006 Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee. At the time, I was 17 years old and I was deeply closeted in lots of ways, but music was my saving grace.

and the catharsis moment was the headlining set of Radiohead. There were 90,000 people. The band itself was just on fire. The crowd was just feeding that energy back to the band. And I've never quite felt that level of connection, even though it was 90,000 people. We all felt like one organism connected to the band. And I remember Tom York at one point saying,

like we love you all in all the ways that there are to love you or something like that. This felt like, oh my gosh, we have broken through something, something special and transcendent is happening here. I found the story really moving because there's something powerful about this experience of moving from the individual to this feeling of being in touch with a higher collective power. You know, it's almost like a religious sort of moment which connects to the thousands of years. of history of humans gathering and festivals to have these ecstatic moments. Like you can go all the way back to the like Roman Greco Bacchanalia festivals that, you know, over 2,000 years old and people have been celebrating in wild ways just like we do today because we thrive off of these experiences.

We find ourselves in being small and being in the crowd. Yeah, there's something about the modern music festival that feels very contemporary as a phenomenon. But, you know, hearing this story. reminds me that this is like this is ancient stuff this is this is the the original thing to do on the the ancient equivalent of the weekend like this is get together and get lost at some communal musical religious experience you know he was talking about that experience of being in it with 90,000 people and sometimes when I'm in that big of a crowd I get kind of anxious and I've always wondered what it's like to be the person who decides to go all the way up to the front

which is exactly what listener Erica did. It was Coachella 2004. All my friends shipped in for my birthday to get me tickets. I was 22 and flat broke. And I was really excited to see The Cure. The Cure was headlining. I remember at like noon watching Muse, who were just starting to get popular at the same stage

the Cure we were going to be playing at later that night, like eight hours later. And I hadn't planned for this. I looked at my friends and I said, I can't. I'm staying right here. I think we were about six people back from the stage. And they were like, choose your own adventure, babe. And they all gave me all their water bottles and made sure I was covered in sent screen and left me there.

And I watched, I think, Bell and Sebastian air flaming lips. That was the year Wayne Cohen came out in like this giant bubble and like rolled through the crowd. And he definitely rolled right over me. And then the cure came on and I lost my damn mind. And I definitely made eye contact with Robert Smith and I was so pressed up against everyone in the front of this crowd. I remember like my sweaty face was pressed up against some dudes sweaty back and I just put hand sanitizer on my face and like put my face back on his sweaty back.

And at one point during the Kyrs set, I don't think I'd actually looked around me. I looked back and there's like, you know, 30,000 people just like behind me. I didn't mean to cry right now in the field. And I was six people away from the stage watching my favorite band. And it was totally worth it. And yeah, glad I did it. Definitely would have gone to the bathroom before. So really this episode is just one long, very meandering PSA of realizing you should go to the bathroom if you're going to go to the front of the stage.

If there's one thing you take away from this episode, that is it. All kidding aside, Eric Astroy is really wonderful. I really love it, and I think we should end right there. Just before we go, I want to say thanks to everybody who submitted a story. We received so many voice notes. We could not play them all. But we do hope to see you sometime at a music festival and the crowd. Switched on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan, Megan Lubin,

me, Charlie Harding. We're edited by Julia Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Ira Scott Leib, social media by Abby Barr, and our executive producers, Ernest Chorua, and Hannah Rosen. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. Today's episode was scored entirely by Zach Tenorio Miller. He's the keyboardist for Ark Iris, Kimbra, and John Anderson, formerly of the band.

Yes, you can find him at Zach Tenorio on Instagram. Thanks to JBL for hooking us up with the gear we need to make this and all of the episodes that you've heard this summer. You can find more episodes of Switchdown Pop anywhere. You get podcasts on Spotify, on Apple, and all. always at our website, www.switchedonpop.com. Also, hit us up on social media. Tell us about your unforgettable festival experiences at Switched-on-pop. We're going to be back next week with the final installment in our summer series. We're going to be doing another modern classics looking at one of my favorite artists, Cat Power. Until then, thanks for listening.