Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2007
Our whimsical thoughts...
North West Bluegrass
News
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2007
Our whimsical
thoughts...
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It's amazing how this festival seems suddenly to become imminent - for us this happens in April, when we have to make our flight arrangements while it's still possible to book Air France to fit our schedule; We fly Manchester-Paris-San Francisco. The flights can be exciting... We arrived at SFO on the Tuesday, in good time to get over jet lag, but were nonetheless worn out by our daughter dragging us around various gigs and events, including the Atlas Café Jam on Thursday night and her own band's gig on Friday night (Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys.) We didn't make the Friday concerts and were still worn out come Saturday morning!
We have attended all seven festivals to date and reckon we have accumulated
more year-miles than anyone else. "What's a year-mile?" I hear you ask. If
you multiply the number of years you've attended by the number of miles for
your return journey, that's your year-miles. Ask a stupid question and you
get a stupid answer. Anyhow, at about 12,000 miles 2-way, that comes to 85,000
year-miles for each of us. Well, 84,000 actually, but the idea's the important
thing. If you can beat 84,000 (2001 to 2007 included) we'd like to hear from
you. Maybe Warren should give an annual award to whoever holds the highest
year-miles… is there any mileage in that? Perhaps a book of complimentary
festival admission tickets for the next 5 years? The beautiful settings of the festival - Main (Banjo) Stage
Derek had been already at 8-00 a.m. Saturday morning to set us up with our usual good spot to the right of the stage. What a hero! People wonder why we don't grab a close-up centre stage spot; well, that would be easy but make it hard to get group or whole-band shots. Derek can get centre stage anyhow to do that. We were very pleased and grateful to discover that this year, thanks to 'she who can organise anything' (and you know who you are!) we had passes which included backstage access, which makes taking pictures much easier than usual. We could stay well off-right in the 'Friend's and Family' enclosure - a very nice place to be but almost useless for photos.
Despite our passes, it was hard to get to and cover many of the performances we wanted to. With all the extra security, necessary as it might be, the extra barriers everywhere and record attendance (500,000) it was very hard to move between the 5 stages. One problem (as we saw it) was that there are now many different genres of music, of which perhaps only one or two appeal to individuals. However, these are spread over all the stages, which can be a long way apart. For us, who want to watch bluegrass mainly but not bands blending bluegrass with chamber music, pop-rock-blues combinations, new-roots-rock, Indie and the like it was hard. And the bluegrass bit might not even be blended in. One band served up (it claimed) a "psychedelia, country, surf and cosmic American music" blend (whatever that is). Viewing some of the video clip examples included below we were reminded why we (but not some others) didn't want to see some of the bands, which ranged from the outrageous to the utter boring. Try the Avett Brothers and The Mekons, for example.
We fought hard, life in the balance at a time when there was little of it to spare, to get to see Bela Fleck, but would have preferred to pass on the progressive jazz we found (brilliant though it was - see Videos in the article) to cover a Bluegrass outfit. And there were times when we were torn between two really good bluegrass acts on at essentially the same time and had to spend a short time at each (with a trek between them). There were a lot of non-bluegrass acts we wanted to see but had to pass on. One example was Jean's all-time favourite John Prine, but here's some HSB 2007 Video links for you: John Prine: Clip 1 | Clip 2 | Clip 3 | Clip 4 | Clip 5 | It seems to us that it might be a good idea for the overworked organisers to try to concentrate the main genres, if not on one stage, in close-together areas to avoid thousands of long-distance contra-flow trekkers fighting against each other. The significance of that hits home when you realise that the crowd numbered 500,000 this year! (official figure).
But then, who the heck are we to moan? Like you, we get to see a great show, surely the greatest in California, with the normally excellent weather and in the most beautiful of settings, for free. Richie's Security Staff are great; they couldn't be friendlier or more helpful. They just get a bit strict when people try to enter zones they're not entitled to, or won't toe the line on clearing passages, and so on. And there's no trouble, no fighting, no obvious drugs (except the air gets a bit thick sometimes…). And by 'none' I mean none. The Police just hang out like everyone else, enjoying the shows. More than once I've heard them comment, as they enjoy their free music, food, sodas and coffee, etc, "Gee, what a gig! All this - and we get paid, too!"
For your
enlightenment! We didn't miss this: The Family Atmosphere But we did miss these bands (listed alphabetically):
Avett Brothers:
Clip 1 |
Clip 2 |
Clip 3
2006: Gillian Welch & Dave Rowlins
Clip 1
Full alphabetic list of performers / bands:
The Abrams Brothers |
By Derek & Jean
Brandon 
Gillian Welch, David Rawlinson
and
I
must apologise up front for the poor quality of some photographs; for example,
some of the photos suffer bad solarisation. I forgot to take my SLR photo
camera and had to use my 3-CCD camcorder for all photography. It takes fantastic
video but isn't designed for great still shots.
Hoot Hester, fiddle with Earl
Scruggs
The Arrow Stage, looking towards the Ocean
Security Chief Ritchie
(right)