Blue Ranger, reporting in!
So what is an urban festival, anyway? Sitting at the Bistro after
Fennesz and before Hamburger, this question keeps going through my
mind. My cohorts (as the greeting card companies once reminded me,
it's hard to be a hort by myself) discuss guns and gods and whatever
else (currently, country music) over between-show drinks in a bar
populated in equal measure by Big Ears passholders and regulars who
stare curiously at the lanyards around our necks.
It's...different. In an era which teaches us that festivals are supposed to be ubiquitous things which occasionally spring up from unsuspecting farmlands, the urban festival experience is a stealthy affair by comparison. No signs, no billboards, no 40-foot-high letters of fire in the sky mark Big Ears' coming. It's a self-contained secret society marked by an temporary upward swing in downtown population. If Rowdy Roddy Piper were here, I'd ask to borrow his sunglasses.
Some shows - the Matmos opener, Christian Fennesz's solo performance, the Philip Glass-scored films - draw respectable crowds. Others, not so much. Accident of venue or schedule or phase of the moon single out a few unfortunate installations in a way which wouldn't happen in an open-air scenario. More's the pity - there's entertainment value in it all, but the addition of concrete and glass to the equation seems to occasionally throw a kink into the works.
Neil Hamburger's up next. More later.
It's...different. In an era which teaches us that festivals are supposed to be ubiquitous things which occasionally spring up from unsuspecting farmlands, the urban festival experience is a stealthy affair by comparison. No signs, no billboards, no 40-foot-high letters of fire in the sky mark Big Ears' coming. It's a self-contained secret society marked by an temporary upward swing in downtown population. If Rowdy Roddy Piper were here, I'd ask to borrow his sunglasses.
Some shows - the Matmos opener, Christian Fennesz's solo performance, the Philip Glass-scored films - draw respectable crowds. Others, not so much. Accident of venue or schedule or phase of the moon single out a few unfortunate installations in a way which wouldn't happen in an open-air scenario. More's the pity - there's entertainment value in it all, but the addition of concrete and glass to the equation seems to occasionally throw a kink into the works.
Neil Hamburger's up next. More later.
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