misses out on the lower price tickets. Happy Valentines Day Lovers! Case in point… I hesitated to buy my tickets to the 2010 Beloved Festival on Friday when they went on sale.
The price Friday was $108 (single ticket) for the four day festival, but I didn’t think that I needed to buy right that instant. Wrong! When I looked today the price is now $144!!! Darn, missed the lowest tier again! Oh well. The month of August is just about booked for me now. And the tickets made a really nice Valentines Day present too
Beloved - Oregon Open Air Sacred Art & Music Festival
Last year’s Beloved was one of the best festival experiences I have had in a very long time. The coastal forest setting in the hills just West of Waldport, Or was wonderfully calm and comfortable for this Northwesterner. It almost made tears come to my eyes when I thought about how much easier to survive it was in the forest compared to the desert of Burning Man. Fog instead of windy, dusty whiteouts – what a concept! And not a single stumbling drunk in the bunch to bother anyone as you might have had at a more rawkish festival such as Coachella or Sasquatch. The intent of creating a sacred event in which people could share the beauty of living on this wondrous planet really shined – from the booking of the talent (so tasty and juicy!), to the sound and light crew who kept things clear throughout, to the workshops, to even the choice of food vendors and the portable sauna and shower company that provided the space to go get squeaky clean. All my interactions with festival staff was amazingly positive considering the workload that was thrust upon them as camping and parking space rapidly dwindled. I’ve already gushed about Beloved on this website earlier – please check out the short excerpt of the Beats Antique performance I video recorded here. One of these days I will get around to posting some of the photos I took at last summer’s Beloved.
“In the absence of peace and love, we teach war and hate as an escape from the problems we are too lazy to solve” Attribution: Justin Barber, 16 years old, currently living in Japan. Here’s a link to visit his gallery of other art at deviantART.
Hailing from good ol’ San Francisco, California, they have one of the best nouveau-vaudevillian shows on the planet. Basically rock stars in that milieu actually. Talented musicians, burlesque dancers, magicians, fire eaters, sword swallowers, accordian players that tap dance upside-down, who name it! And stylish? They got the whole steam-punk ethic and look down pat. Of course, none of that is evident from this video. Did I mention they are contrarians of a sort?
“Lucky Day” was produced 7 months ago and is presented here now for your pleasure. Forget about all the wars and health care debates going on right now and simply enjoy this little piece of sunshine for a nice, lazy, hot August day!
Last weekend was the 23rd and final Oracle Gathering. It was a sweet, intimate festival, a fitting conclusion to an eight year run of near mythic parties. The setting was magnificent. The people were kind and friendly. The music was danceable and spatial and sounded great – Filistine, Bluetech, Androcell and Pitch Black were highlights for me. The prayer-formance of “The Fountain” was moving and verged on trancendent. The daytime weather was hot and the river was cool. My good friend Lorenzo Hagerty was there to give a lecture about the Genesis Generation, visiting all the way from San Diego with his lovely wife Mary C and their friends from Ashland who I got to hang out with for a few hours, which was nice considering none of us are going to Burning Man this year.
If you are interested in finding out more background, visit the official Oracle Gathering website – they actually lost some money on the festival, so maybe you might want to order a deck of the Oracle cards or something from them.
One worthwhile note: judging by the evidence left on the ground Sunday night, the attendee’s adoption of the Leave No Trace ethic seems to have been near 100% .
This is an animation by Steve Scott that was created for the song Kashmir and projected during that song at the Led Zeppelin reunion concert back in 2008.
