HW: SD'97 Anniversary

[Eric Siegerman]

[It's long, and yeah, it drifts pretty much off topic towards the
end.  Oh well; I'm too sleepy to edit it down.  Whenever you get
bored, stop reading :-]

The *other* thing that happened five years ago this past weekend
-- the one the papers haven't mentioned -- was the first Strange
Daze Festival.  The beginning of Nik's reunion with Hawkwind,
however fitful and doomed we now know that to have been...

My brother, Jeff, was with me.  It was my first festival, music
or otherwise; I had no idea what to expect.  I believe it was
Jeff's first too.

We arrived Saturday morning at this place called the Brushwood
Folklore Center.  Looked like just some family campground.  Tents
and trailers and Winnebagos and kids and ...  we were going to
have a space-rock festival *here*?  There could be a certain
amount of, uh, tension between us freaks and the straights.  I
wasn't expecting anything nasty, mind you, just a certain edge
that'd make it hard for us freaks to completely let down our
hair.

Then I saw a small sign posted by the road:  "no sky-clad beyond
this point".  "Hmm,", I thought, "if `sky-clad' means what I
think it means, this might just work after all."  Then I saw the
huuuge papier-maché(?) flying saucer up in the trees; and the
smallish concrete-pillar-henge thing to our right near the road;
and the big wood-henge thing off to the left ...  and a bit
later, this little grotto in the trees called the Faeries' Den.
(No fairies, though.)  "Yeah, this is gonna be ok."  I started to
relax again.

We found a campsite in the woods -- no nice numbered rectangles,
just fire pits scattered among the trees.  Pick one, and the
chunk of ground beside it, and pitch your tent.

People were playing Hawkwind to the left of us, Hawkwind to the
right of us; *everybody* was playing Hawkwind.  And the T-shirts!
Everyone, it seemed, had on tie-dye, or a Hawkwind-related shirt
of one vintage or another, or both.  Many of the band shirts were
new to me; others I'd only ever seen one of -- my own.

The guys just down the hill from us had driven something like
thirteen hours, up from Tennessee or West Virginia or somewhere
-- and they weren't from the city, either.  I think I was as
impressed that there *were* Hawkwind fans in the rural South as
that they'd drive so far.

What an incredible feeling of happiness, of welcome -- of relief
-- to be among a community of folks who shared my bizarre
obsession.  Every time I'd seen the band -- or Nik, on his '94
tour -- it had felt like a Gathering of the Tribes.  That
weekend, I had the same feeling fivefold.

So on down to the stage for two days of scheduling our lives --
meals, bathroom breaks, record shopping, sleep -- around the
45-minute breaks between bands.  (Standard fest drill, of course,
but it was new to me.)

Two days of being blissed out on just the fact of being
surrounded by fellow fans, in a campground permeated by music I
loved, but never *ever* heard in the mundane world.  Every time I
caught a Hawkwind song emanating from some new campsite, it gave
me a thrill.

Two days of mostly excellent sets by bands I'd never heard of,
though many of them would become Strange Daze regulars, eagerly
anticipated each year -- Arc Met, B0rn to G0, Melting Euphoria,
ST37, Quarkspace -- discovering that there was a real *scene*
happening, if one only sought it out.  (The one band I had heard
of, F/i, I ended up missing their set, much to my disappointment.
Priorities:  had to eat dinner before Nik came on.  I was tempted
to wait till after, but I'd have been too famished to enjoy his
show, and that would *never* do!  For the same reason, I missed
Alien Planetscapes the next day.)

And at the end of those amazing two days...

After meeting lots of list members, many for the first time, the
rest for only the second (the first being the HW tour in '95).
Some from as far afield as Florida and California, having flown
in for the occasion...

After the persistent rumours -- unfounded as it turned out --
that Lemmy too would be putting in an appearance...

After Nik's excellent set with the Pressurehed guys, headlining
the Saturday night...

After the mindblowing fire circle, for that's the purpose of the
wood-henge thing we'd seen on our way in:  a big bonfire,
drumming, dancing, half-naked wiccan dryads.  (I was itching to
dance myself, but way too shy.)  A funny-looking guy in a jester
hat, who I'd seen vending during the day, screeling away on a tin
whistle -- not very melodically, but it was perfect even so...

After two days of more tie-dye than I'd ever seen in my life!
And more aliens; alien paraphernalia was pretty ubiquitous.

After all that, now here were Dave Brock and Nik Turner, on stage
together for the first time in over a decade!

I remember standing there, absolutely ecstatic -- enjoying the
mere fact of it almost as much as the music they were making;
hoping against hope that it was only the beginning, and would
lead to Nik's return to the fold.  Thinking:  "This is a truly
historic night!  To most of the world, it's a complete non-event
[kind of shaking my head at that] but for us few ... wow!"  And,
I must admit, also thinking, "the people on the list are going to
be sooo jealous!"

The drummer from Architectural Metaphor (Deb Young, but I didn't
know that at the time; I just thought of her as Arc-Met Girl)
happened to be near me.  She couldn't contain her excitement; she
was absolutely wriggling with joy.  I watched her, thinking, "she
looks just the way I feel!", glad to see someone else expressing
what for me was mostly internal -- and being absolutely blown
away that a *woman* felt so obviously thrilled by what was
happening.  (I've gotten a *bit* more used to that since then :-)

The crowd called for another encore, but it was not forthcoming.
I couldn't believe it; the energy was *so* there!  We *screamed*
for an encore.  And we waited, and waited, and waited.  But no.
It was over.  Reluctantly we left the field.

Even if Hawkwind were finished, though, the night was young.
There was a fire circle waiting.  Back to camp to get ready.
Jeff and I had almost reached our tent when ... a wailing sax
drifted through the night, barely audible over the drumbeat.

"That'll be Nik", I said.  "Uh huh", said Jeff.  Sure that it was
pointless -- that this would only be one quick Washing Machine,
over by the time we got there -- we hurried back to the stage.

It wasn't over.  It went on and on, Nik's wild, completely
unexpected, impromptu solo jam.  Brilliant; I enjoyed it
tremendously; but at the same time couldn't help thinking, "Oh,
Nik, you bastard, you've done it now.  Dave'll never share a
stage with you again!  Damn, and things were looking so
promising."

Then that too was done, but this time I didn't mind.  Now I was
ready for Strange Daze proper to be over.  The drums were
calling.

At that night's fire circle, I finally got up the nerve to dance,
and had a just amazing night doing it -- so much so that both my
big toes had friction blisters the next day.  I didn't have the
nerve to try my hand at one of those funky African drums, though,
much as I yearned to.  Probably a good thing, too...  The
Faeries' Den made a great chillout zone.

To bed, if not to sleep :-) at something like 5:30 AM.  Then up
again far too soon (in a couple of ways), to pack, and say
goodbye to friends old and new.

                                *

Little did we know on the first night that hours before, around
dinner-time in our part of the world, a car had slammed into a
tunnel wall not far from the Eiffel Tower; that as Nik and his
band took the stage, a princess lay dying; that the rest of the
world would also remember that weekend, but for a reason far
darker than ours.

I'll admit that when I heard the news on Sunday morning, it
didn't mean much to me.  "Right, I guess that's it for the soap
opera", was mostly what I thought, recalling the ending of Monty
Python and the Holy Grail.  Two weeks before, Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan had died.  Now *that* was upsetting!  It was only half-way
through the bizarre week that followed, with the relentless
page-one coverage, that Diana's passing began to affect me.

                                *

I had no clue, as we drove away, how much would flow from that
weekend.  Remeeting Steve Lindsey, which led to doing visuals,
which led to my helping Jim Lascko do visuals for *Hawkwind* --
wow, I still can hardly believe that sometimes!  (Thanks, Jim.)
Drumming: I have a djembe now, and I'm not hopeless at playing
it.  Still not good -- but at least I can join a drum circle
without embarrassing myself, as I would surely have done during
SD'97.  (Thanks to Terri and Donna and gang at SD'98 for getting
me started -- they were the crazy people with the big pavilion in
their campsite, full of drums and percussion toys, and even a
marimba.)

And an abiding love for Brushwood and the people there.  Jeff and
I both knew we wanted to visit again, for the next Strange Daze
if there was one, but also for the Starwood Festival, the high
point of the place's summer.  What with one thing and another --
work schedules, Jeff's new girlfriend, Strange Daze's move to
Ohio -- it took us three summers to make it.  But now Starwood's
the high point of our summer too.

                                *

Here's what Starwood's all about:

I've been to workshops on esoteric subjects, and skipped ones
still further out.

I've played my drum on the very stage where Dave and Nik
reconnected so briefly.  No audience, but so what?  The folks in
Einstein's Secret Orchestra host a space-rock (not!, but that's
how they bill it) jam there every year.  People bring whatever
they feel like -- mostly percussion -- and the ESO'ers join in on
whatever *they* feel like, struggling to bring some coherence to
the madness.  It's a blast, we make some cool noise -- and for
me, it's a nice reminder of a magic night.

I've done visuals for ESO, shining my overhead projector on the
outside of an inflatable dome that the band and audience were
inside of -- with The Reverand Ivan Stang projecting Subgenius
videos on the far side of the dome.  Weird.

I've met a lady.  *smile*  (She lives six or seven hours away, in
Toledo.  Bleah!  Yeah, Arin and Rich, I know; but still...)

I've been to voodoo rituals; walked a Labyrinth of Light (a
standard unicursal labyrinth picked out in candles on the grass
at night -- very beautiful, and as close as I'll ever get to the
Pattern of Amber); drummed and danced until the sun came up;
drunk mead with people from the Church of All Worlds (founded in
1962, largely inspired by "Stranger in a Strange Land"); played
for hours straight, helping drum for the creation of a huge
Rangoli in the Roundhouse, and then for the few minutes of its
purposful destruction by dancing feet that night.  (Rangoli is
East-Indian transient art, done in rice flower and spices; same
basic idea as Navaho(?) sand painting.)

Things change, of course, from year to year.  The flying saucer's
gone.  Blown down, I suspect -- the area is prone to high winds,
and even the occasional tornado.  The Roundhouse (for so the
fire-circle area is called) got rebuilt some time between SD'97
and my next visit in 2000, less like a henge and more like, well,
a roundhouse (Indian, not railroad).  They've put in a pond where
before was an intermittent swamp.

This summer, they raised a standing stone at the top of the main
ritual area.  They rolled it down to the site (or so I'm told)
and raised it (as I saw), to the accompaniment of drumming and
dancing, using methods -- a lot of sweaty people hauling on
ropes, and a foreman type yelling instructions: "slowly, slowly,
*SLOWLY*; Paul, I said NO wooden pry-bars!" -- that the druids
must have used.  (Not strictly trad, though.  The drums were
djembes, and the ropes and pulleys were thoroughly modern, as was
the concrete they set the thing in once it was upright :-)

During Starwood, the Faeries' Den is *full* of fairies.  Some
woman makes them; the Den is her vending area.  There've been a
lot of girls -- and women -- wearing fairy wings the last couple
of years.  I thought that was pretty weird at first ... but then,
what are aliens, if not the Good Folk in their space-age aspect?

The Starwood crowd out-tie-dyes the space-rockers by a long shot
-- no Hawkwind shirts taking up bodies (well, there is one, at
least once a year for old times' sake :-).  Lots of sarongs -- on
guys too, wrapped around the waist like a towel.  I wear one --
it's way comfortable on a hot day.

Lots of body paint -- orange and green and silver and purple
people wandering around the fest, not to mention the wild and
beautiful full-body designs some folks have painted on them.  (I
was in the showers once when one guy decided he'd had enough of
his all-over red paint job.  With it starting to rinse off all
streaky like, man, he looked something out of a slasher flick!
And laughed when I told him so.)

Utilikilts were all the rage this year -- on gals too (well, a
couple anyway).

My worry about the natives, as we arrived at Brushwood back in
1997, was quite unfounded; but if there was a grain of truth to
my concern, I had it 180 degrees wrong.  The Brushwood regulars
weren't the straights at Strange Daze -- *we* were!

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
[...] despite reports to the contrary, it is the rare programmer who
permanently loses his sanity while coding ("permanently" being the
operative word).
        - Eric E. Allen