Vacation 2...

...is what this is about. I must have piqued everyone’s curiosity about my vacation 1. Most of you should be knowing. For those who dont click here and be enlightened or whatever.

Q: So where did I go for vacation 2?
Ans: Higher ground ;)

Actually it was to a music festival called ‘Wakarusa’ at Lawrence, Kansas. (BTW, did you know that Kansas city is actually in Missouri) It was a 4 day music and camping festival with about 80+ bands playing 18hrs of music each day at 5 simultaneous stages(June 15th 2005 to June 19th 2005). A guy I met here had told me about this and invited me to go along with him and his friends. The whole experience was quite awesome. It involved a 10 hour drive from Denver to Lawrence in an RV (a recreational vehicle) which was a first time for me. RV’s are a very nice concept. The downsides being that they are a tad expensive to even rent and they drink up gasoline like a ravenous monster. Still, having the RV’s helped us escape the heat of the day leaving us to stay awake most of the night enjoying the music.
One significant thing about this concert was that I got to realize something about the music scene in the United States. For a long time I was under the impression that the music which is quite popular in India (rock, pop, hip-hop etc) is the same stuff that people here listen to. I assumed I would know almost all the bands that might have a huge following here. I was wrong by a big margin.
There exists a second, very local tier of music in the States, a tier dominated by bands which (I am told) choose to not go international but maintain an extremely large and loyal fan-following in the United States itself. I’m not sure if this applies to all the genres of music but most of the bands that I listened to at this concert had a very funk-rockish sound to them. And they were good. To name a few bands which were the supposed crowd pullers, I can think of “String Cheese Incident”, “Wilco”, “Government Mule” and “North Mississippi All Stars”. All the music I was exposed to here was previously alien to me, except when “String Cheese Incident” did a cover of “All along the watchtower” which was quite an exhilarating experience. These bands release CD’s too which apparently are bought up very eagerly. They have hardcore fans that follow them everywhere in the US. And these people hardly give a damn about the more famous international bands. Another notion of mine that was shattered was my assumption that almost everyone in my age group here in the US listens to Hip-Hop and there is no other form of music alive. This experience told me that there is some non-hiphop type of music out there…it might not be pure rock and roll but its definitely something that doesn’t suck as much as rap/hip-hop (what’s the difference anyway?)!

Interestingly, the name ‘Wakarusa’ is derived from an old Indian word which means ‘Ass deep in the river”. I got a cool tee as a souvenir which says ‘Ass deep in music’!

I simply wanted to share the musical viewpoint of this trip. Please don’t mention about anything else as I wish to keep this entry only about the music. And as Ozzy once said “Thank You Goodnight we love you all”