Last year was a success, no matter how you look at it, if only by virtue of its existence. It was the first year something like this happened in the area. Sure, there’s Forecastle, and there’s MidPoint Music Festival – but let’s be honest here; MidPoint’s offerings are relatively unknown and considerably more “indie”, barring a few notable bands, and Forecastle is, well, Forecastle. Bunbury, in contrast, aims to be a little more “pop.” It’s embracing a larger spectrum of the mind-numbingly vast world of music. But why? There are already dozens, maybe hundreds of music festivals doing the same thing. What’s the point?

That’s actually pretty simple when you take a close look at who is playing the festival.

There were some lamentations – my own included – about who was and wasn’t playing this year’s fest. Compared to last year’s inaugural lineup, it seems a bit… underwhelming. In the midst of a somewhat sarcasm laden conversation, I had a bit of a realization, though – the “big” bands aren’t really the point. Cincinnati has been off the national radar for a long time now (at least the last decade, and I’m willing to argue that with anyone). Somewhere along the way, national touring acts started forgetting about us. Either by accident or by looking at things like attendance and ticket prices and venues, finding Cincinnati lacking on all accounts. Even smaller bands stopped coming around, not for lack of trying, but for lack of any way in to the area (one of the things The Lonely House has been working on, though). The local music scene suffered in a big way, too. There was a significant amount of time that it was basically dormant – or, that very least, hiding well underground. MidPoint changed that in a big way. The proverbial breath of fresh air. I’d be willing to argue that when MidPoint started, Cincinnati music started to wake up from its too long slumber.

So what does that have to do with Bunbury? Right.

What we have with Bunbury is a local showcase in the guise of a regional music festival, with internationally known bands and musicians. The way a good festival should be put together. Plain and simple. It’s 3 days of some extremely well known acts – bands that have been around for a while (Tegan and Sara, The National, MGMT) or bands that have been making more recent waves (fun.), but almost everything leading to those acts is locally owned and operated. Bands, businesses, location. This is meant to celebrate Cincinnati. The local bands announced are kind of all over the place sonically, but each one is set to play on a day where they more or less line-up with a headliner of similar qualities. That’s not an accident. Going to see fun.? Awesome. Show up early and see Walk The Moon and The Mitchells. You dig MGMT? Great! Get there in time to see You, You’re Awesome and The Pinstripes. Even better, with each day’s programming being laid out like this, you might only need to go one day out of the three. So when Forecastle announces their line-up, you can plan accordingly. There’s room for all of these things. Too many choices is a good problem to have.

You don’t have to be a fan of a single band playing Bunbury this year. And I get it if you’re not. But instead of complaining about what’s not happening in Cincinnati, who’s not coming around or hasn’t been booked, trying having a bit of pride about what is happening. Be excited that anything at all is taking place in a city that a lot of bands, labels, booking agents, and PR people had written off not too long ago.

I don’t know if you’ve been out and about in Cincinnati recently. There’s a lot happening. There are people doing what they can to make this city better, to make it important in some way, to make it fun. They’re not always going to get it 100% right, by your terms or theirs. But they’re trying. Bunbury, whatever you choose to make of it, is undeniable proof of that.

Here are the Cincinnati artists we’ll be rooting for come July 12-14:

• We Are Snapdragon
• Josh Eagle
• State Song
• Ohio Knife
• PUBLIC
• The Mitchells (whose frontman is doing an acoustic house show with The Lonely House on April 12)
• Seabird
• The Pinstripes
• You, You’re Awesome
• The Upset Victory
• DAAP Girls
• New Vega
• Margaret Darling
• The Ready Stance
• Messerly and Ewing
• Taylor Alexander
• Ben Walz Band
• Black Owls
• Tim Carr
• Billy Wallace
• Alone At 3AM
• Pete Dressman
• Buffalo Killers
• Walk The Moon
• Jake Kolesar
• Mark Utley
• The Harlequins
• Daniel Martin Moore

Also new for this year is CincyMusic.com’s “Battle For Bunbury“, which is an online Battle of the Bands.  Music fans can visit CincyMusic.com every day from now through May 31 to vote for their favorite local artist.  The band who wins the Battle For Bunbury will earn the opportunity to perform at the Bunbury Music Festival PLUS airplay on The Project 100.7 / 106.3, so get to voting!

We’ll see you at the festival!

The new album is a pop Janus:  written around a unifying theme, but laden with potential singles.  The underlying story revolves around a girl named Lafaye; a lifetime of unpleasant memories, disappointments, regrets are ghosts which surround her.  One wonders where Lafaye’s sense of loss ends and the band’s begins; somehow, the group has taken a loss and used it as a springboard.   By their own account, things are better this way.

“I think it’s the way that people perceive us – in my mind anyway,” said Deheza.  “The records before [Ghostory] were mainly Ben and I anyways.  We were always the main songwriters, so we were fortunate.  We were already in that habit, instead of having to completely reconfigure what we were doing.  I think it was more having to present it in a different way to the fans and people who had gotten used to seeing . . . “  She paused, looked down at the table, then looked back up – resolved.

Alejandra “Alley” Deheza

“You know there’s something really charming and romantic about siblings in a band, and I totally understand that.  I mean, I’m smitten by it, too,” Deheza smiled.  “So I think for us, it was more presenting it in a way that wouldn’t be as shocking as it probably was to a lot of people.  But as far as creatively, I think the energy in a band is really important.  When everybody’s there that wants to be there, it’s the best thing that could happen to anybody.  Everyone’s happy now, so it’s better than ever.”

I turned to Curtis.  Did he feel there was tension prior to Claudia leaving?

“Obviously,” he said with a wry smile.  “She quit.”  Deheza looked at him and they laughed, maybe a little nervously.  They have clearly moved on from whatever unseen drama came before.

“We’re so happy making music right now,” Curtis said, with Deheza nodding her agreement.  “I think we’ve never really been inspired more to make this thing work and last.  We’ve never had more energy for it than we do right now.  We were writing so much – we’re just trying to find a way to do everything that we can do whenever we want to do it.”

I asked Deheza what that meant.

“Put out music whenever we want, you know, not have to wait for any schedule or anything like that.  I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out, is a way for us to be able to do that ourselves and not have to ask anybody, you know?”

School of Seven Bells’ late efforts have been noticeably engaging.  In the course of producing my radio show and sourcing new tracks, I inevitably share impressions with peers.  A DJ acquaintance, Matt Barker (host of “Totally Wired” on Juice 107.2 FM in Brighton, UK), and I find ourselves largely in agreement:  many of School of Seven Bells’ recent B-side releases have been strong in their own right.  I was flabbergasted that “Love from a Stone,” backing their “Lafaye” single, wasn’t included on the album.  The same might be said of “When She Was Me,” the alternate track on their Record Store Day 2012 Siouxsie and the Banshees cover, “Kiss Them for Me.”  I asked Curtis and Deheza who decides which tracks are released how.

“It’s funny, because we never have songs that we think are going to be a B-side or anything,” intimated Deheza.  “We’re excited to write another one.”

Benjamin Curtis

Curtis half-shrugged and smiled.  “The way we feel about it, in this digital age, every mp3 is just as available as any [other], and they exist forever.  It’s not like a limited pressing.  I feel like every song’s gonna have its day between now and infinity, so we don’t really stress [about] what side of the record it’s going to be on.

“It’s more a function of time,” he said.  “I think the real quality that we have is we really don’t have the energy to finish something we don’t like or something we don’t think is great.”

“Yes.”  Deheza nodded.  “Yes.”

Curtis continued.

“I don’t know how people write songs that they know are not as good as the last song they write.  Our favorite song that we’ve written is always the last song we’ve written, and it’s been that way since we started writing together.”

So their latest favorite song is . . . ?  Deheza and Curtis shared a tentative grin.

“Well, we have a new . . . ,” she trailed.  I have them on the spot.

“There’s a song called ‘Ablaze’ that no one’s heard yet.  We have a bit of a backlog.  It’s gonna be a B-side.”  Curtis looked at Deheza; they giggled.  “It’s headed in that direction.  Lots more B-sides.  It’s gonna be all B-sides from here on out.”

Jason is, for my part, one of the best singer / songwriters working in the Midwest today.  At the time of the wreck, he was in the process of writing and recording new projects, but the loss of his instruments and daunting financial responsibilities threaten to sideline the work.  Luckily, we live in an age of altruism at the click of a mouse.

Jason launched a Kickstarter campaign yesterday to attempt to regroup and continue recording the new album.  Among the many perks, contributors can receive anything from a thank you in the liner notes and a free song download ($5 level), an exclusive Kickstarter release mp3 download ($25), signed record ($50) to the opportunity to have for algernon write and record a song about a topic, and in a genre, of your choosing ($100+ level).

Personally, I will be asking them to rap about a man with a disturbingly intense love of old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  Or maybe a calypso song about a casaba melon who comes to life, earns a doctorate in immunology and invents a vaccine for herpes?  We’ll see.  Either way, I’m going to make them work for it.

Every year, around Christmas time, for algernon puts together a Christmas showcase — a who’s ho ho ho, if you will, of Cincinnati musicians.  It’s a great show — and Jason has told me that it’s his favorite show to play.  I recall George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life — someone who is a quality individual, upstanding and wants others to be happy, who finds himself in a financial pickle.  And I recall, too,  the ending scene, when George Bailey’s friends each give back a little something.  Maybe Christmas can come a little early this year for    Mr. Wells?  He certainly deserves some goodwill.

Jason will be our in-studio guest on Salina Underground on Monday, Aug 13 (7 – 9 pm EDT on wvqc.org / 95.7 FM-LP in Cincinnati) to talk about the campaign and play some live cuts.  We sincerely hope   you’ll join us in supporting him.

If you can’t donate, please share the link with others.  He has 24 days to raise $6,000 . . . and the clock is ticking.

We also had a chance to talk to one of our most-anticipated performers of the weekend, Imagine Dragons.  If you haven’t yet heard this Vegas-based band’s EP Continued Silence get on that right now, then check out our getting-to-know you Q&A with them after the jump:

Click to view slideshow.

TLH: I first heard you guys first on Sirius Satellite Radio’s AltNation.  Do you get that a lot?

Daniel Platzman (drums): You know what? I think the most popular one we get these days is the Perks of Being A Wallflower trailer. It’s like, “Oh, we heard you on that trailer!” But we do get a bit of the Sirius radio stuff.  That was a fun day.

Ben McKee (bass & keys): AltNation was one of the first places I ever heard us on the radio.  I have it in my truck and I remember getting in there on my birthday, turning on my car, and it was right in the middle of the first verse of “It’s Time“.

TLH: It’s like happy birthday to you!

Ben: Yeah!

Daniel: They were one of the first people to get on board so we really appreciate those guys. They’ve played us from the beginning and have been big supporters of the band.

TLH: How did you all get together and get started?

Daniel: The three of us (Daniel, Ben, and guitarist Wayne Sermon) went to Berklee College of Music in Boston and played in a five-guitar fusion ensemble together for like three years.  Wayne and Dan (Reynolds – lyricist and lead singer) actually knew each other from back home, so when Wayne finished school the two of them decided to start this band and got in touch with the rest of us.  And here we are.

TLH: Did your experience at Berklee influence your sound at all? Or how did it develop?

Ben: I don’t know that Berklee influenced our sound so much as we took what we were doing there and started doing it somewhere else.  It definitely opened us up to a lot of different kinds of music and we were able to hone our skills there.  I think that really, it was us going back to our roots of what we grew up listening to and getting together and sharing the music that we all loved.  It was bringing all our individual influences in and trying to solidify it into something that was Imagine Dragons.

TLH: Who was it that you were listening to growing up?

Wayne: Oh man, the first guitar solo I ever learned was a Pearl Jam solo so I was into grunge and stuff quite a bit.  Nirvana, for sure.

Ben: Yeah, I listened to a lot of weird singer-songwriters like Tom Waits and even Willie Nelson.

Daniel: Van Morrison!  Ben is a huuge Van Morrison fan. I was learning all the drum beats from the Foo Fighters original album where Dave Grohl was playing every instrument.  So Dave Grohl, definitely.  Back in the day, I was also listening to a lot of New Found Glory, believe it or not.

Wayne: Oh, wow!

Daniel: Yeah!  I don’t know that I’ve ever shared that.

Dan: Arcade Fire, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin.  We listen to all kinds of stuff.

TLH: So what about your lyrical influence? Is it based on life experience or is it more of a fictional storytelling thing?

Daniel: Well, Dan actually writes all the lyrics.

Dan: Yeah, just life experience.  Dreams, sorrows…

Wayne: Nightmares…

Dan: …things that bring happiness.  Things that I’ve experienced or want to experience.  Just life.

TLH: Where does the name Imagine Dragons come from?

Ben: The name is actually an anagram.  We came up with a phrase that we liked a lot – we all really believed in it, but we didn’t want to call the band that phrase, so we jumbled that letters up and came up with Imagine Dragons.  And then we swore to secrecy about what the original phrase was.

TLH: So it’s up to everybody else to decipher the code…

Ben: Oh yeah.  We get some interesting guesses sometimes.  We love hearing it but we’ll never tell.

Wayne: (to Ben and Daniel) Man, you guys’ chest hair is magnificent right now.

Daniel: The name might have something to do with chest hair, it might not.

TLH: Maybe beards?

Daniel: It might!

Wayne: I have a beard, but not a lot of chest hair right now.

Ben: (pointing at Wayne’s collarbone):  Yeah, it like stops right there, huh?  You’re literally showing every bit of chest hair right now.

Daniel: You really chose your wardrobe to accentuate the chest hair you do have.

(Everyone laughs)

TLH: So your full-length album is coming out in September? What can you tell us about it?

Dan: We worked pretty closely with Alex da Kidd as a producer on some of the songs, and we did a lot of self-producing.  So between us and Alex da Kidd, that’s kind of how the album came together.

TLH: How did you get hooked up with Alex?

Wayne: It was really as simple as his assistant driving him around in his car and popping in our CD and Alex saying, “Wow, this is cool.  Who is this band?” He brought us in, and we didn’t really know what to expect from a hip-hop producer, but we really loved what he did with Eminem, Skylar Grey and all these great artists that he’s worked with.

TLH: Yeah, that’s an impressive resume.

Wayne: Definitely. We’ve enjoyed working with him.

TLH: What’s your favorite show you’ve ever played to date?

Ben: We played a festival in Norway called Bergenfest that was an amazing experience.  It was our first time getting out of the country and the only time we’ve gotten to go overseas.  The city was so beautiful and the culture was just awesome.  Nobody had ever really heard of us over there before, but we played three or four shows and by the end of the festival, everybody had just kind of accepted this new band. They just came out and supported us.  It was unreal.

Wayne: Yeah, Ben became good friends with a couple vikings, so that was cool.

Ben: Yeah, I got into a little trouble over there.  Woke up one morning on a completely blood-soaked pillow, my head totally split open, no memory of the night before.

TLH: Seriously?!?

Ben: Yeahhhh.

Daniel: True.

Ben: We still don’t know exactly what happened.  There are rumors…

Wayne: Vikings were involved.

TLH: Did you end up with one of those hats with horns?

Ben: No, but I did have the phone number of someone named Ken in my pocket, which is a mystery that still hasn’t been solved.  I didn’t want to make that phone call.

TLH: Is this your first time in Cincinnati?

Dan: We’ve played Columbus before but we’ve never played Cincinnati.

TLH: Awesome!  Have you gotten to check it out or has Bunbury taken up your time?

Daniel: No, we haven’t been around yet, but I hear the chili is supposed to be like, the best in the country.

TLH: That’s what Cincinnatians will tell you.  But I think it depends on your taste.  If you like the flavor of cinnamon, then yeah, it’s the best!

Daniel: So what should we eat while we’re in Cincinnati?

TLH: Well, you can try the chili just to say that you did.  Get a Chili 3-Way, which sounds awkward but it’s food.  I would check out the Dojo Gelato tent at the other end of the festival.  They sometimes have the weirdest flavors.  One time they did a Sriracha gelato.

Daniel: Ooh!  I’ll have check it out!

TLH: Yeah, definitely!  Well, I’ll let you guys go but thanks so much for your time!

Photos credit to Brittany Hedin (via Facebook), Brian J. Bruemmer (via Flickr), Ashley Elfers (via Facebook) and  TLH’s Jon Goolsby.

Karin Bergquist, of Over the Rhine.

“It was a no-brainer to play [here],” siren Karin Bergquist advised.    ”Please enjoy the park.  It’s for you.”

While their career was still somewhat nascent, Bergquist and her songwriting partner (now husband), Linford Detweiler, lived on Main Street and they took the name of the neighborhood for their project.

“We wanted our songs to be beautiful and ragged, like this neighborhood, so that’s why we chose ‘Over the Rhine,’ and we still wear that name very proudly,” she said.  ”Wherever we go, in any part of the country, or whatever country we travel to, it means a lot to us.  And that’s why we’ve kept the name.  So thank you for having us back here.”

Bluegrass guru and WNKU jockey Katie Laur (right) joined Jake Speed (left), Kentucky Graham (center) and the rest of the Freddies for an uptempo “Deep Elem Blues.”

Local bluegrassers / jovial populists Jake Speed and the Freddies opened the show with a Cincinnati-style 5-way of special guests:  Dan Dorff (Stomp, Daniel Martin Moore collaborator) played washboard for “Leaving Cincinnati,” former Cincinnati City Councilman / Over-the-Rhine denizen Jim Tarbell wailed harmonica on “Tennessee Waltz,” and WNKU’s Katie Laur picked the guitar and sang on “Deep Elem Blues,” before Bergquist and Detweiler sat in with the Freddies on their newest song, “Washington Park Waltz.”

Last weekend’s show served not only as a homecoming, but a reunion — original Over the Rhine guitarist Ric Hordinski joined the frontcouple for for the entire set, along with Nashville drummer Tony Perkinson and Band of Joy bassist Byron House.

“The fellow anchoring it all over here, my better half, is Linford Detweiler,” Bergquist teased during band introductions, “and he’s the reason we’re all here.  I wake up every morning and say, ‘Honey, it’s all your fault.’”

Playing in the shadow of Music Hall at sunset, Detweiler waxed nostalgic about Over the Rhine’s long career.

Linford Detweiler. If Over the Rhine is, as his bandmate / wife Bergquist asserted, all his fault, we’re sure he sleeps sound at night.

“We’ve been writing songs together for over twenty years now,” he reminisced.  ”In 1995, about six or seven years into our music career, we’d been on a major label, IRS Records, for several records, and that kind of went away.  We were seriously thinking about packing it in at that point, but we recorded some songs over on Main Street, some demos that we were thinking we’d re-record in a real studio at some point,  and we put a record out for the fun of it — called it Good Dog, Bad Dog.”

He paused while the audience knowingly applauded.

“I don’t know, many of you I guess found that record, and gave it life, kind of put some gas back in our tank.  Thank you very much.”

He smiled.  OTR closed with two cuts from that album:  ”All I Need Is Everything,” and “Latter Days.”  They would return for a two-song encore — and a well-deserved bow.

(PHOTOS:  Jonathan Goolsby)

11:00 am

Sean Hickey, 30, of Cincinnati, who is of no (known) relation to Rick Hickey, gets the award for T-Shirt of the Weekend. I love an obscure “Saved by the Bell” reference.

I arrived to the venue with rain threatening.  I thought I was prepared – plenty of plastic bags in my backpack to protect computer, phone, various chargers and digital voice recorder.  I grabbed a hot cup of coffee and settled in at a table near the aliveOne Stage to finish up my Day 2 wrap-up and listen to Black Owls, due on at 1:30 pm.

The sky started to spit; at first, it was manageable.  I pulled a few garbage bags out, built myself a rainproof computer fort and ducked my head under black plastic to type.  I endured odd looks from folks every time I came out from under for a peek around.  It was hot, but I was getting the work done.  The weather had other plans.  At 12:45 pm, lightning – big, nasty, forked, cloud-to-ground lightning.  I looked to my immediate left:  metal light pole.  I looked to my right:  wires and soundboard.  LZ was hot  It was time to di di outta there.

2:00 pm

I was glad I had paid extra and parked close.  45 minutes in the car with full-blast air-conditioner turned to the warm setting dried my hair, socks and shoes.  The sun would take care of the rest.  I felt like steamed cauliflower.

I made it back in to the venue and found, to my dismay, that Belle Histoire had managed to get on, albeit late – my original itinerary saw me splitting sets between Black Owls and this up-and-coming Northern Kentucky outfit – and they were just finishing up.  Schade.

A few quick calculations and phone calls found me rearranging an interview time and starting over toward the media tent to file my story while listening to Maps and Atlases.  I scribbled to a finish and kept an ear on the band, only to find the storm had knocked out the wireless.  Filing would keep.  The lesson in this:  if you cover a music festival,                                                                                                           have alternate objectives pre-planned.  Mine was a date with Wussy.

3:25 pm

Chuck Cleaver (left) and Lisa Walker (right) of Wussy. Do yourself a favor: go get a copy of “Funeral Dress II,” their acoustic re-recording of 2005′s “Funeral Dress.” Put your Neil Young hat on when you listen to it. Revel in the abandon.

Following the rain, Bunbury organizers rearranged a few set times and pushed out the changes to festival-goers via the Bunbury smart phone app.  That was handy.  Wussy had been scheduled to go at 3:00 pm; they were rescheduled for 3:15.  I got there ten minutes later, and they still hadn’t gone on.  Once again, problems with sound on the Landor Stage; they repeated over the weekend like a bad refrain.

The sun was out and I was baking dry when Chuck Cleaver, Lisa Walker and company launched “Funeral Dress.”  Just returned from an extensive West Coast tour, Wussy are darlings of the Cincinnati music scene for good reason:  Cleaver and Walker’s songs live between intensive storytelling and mischievous lyric wit, complemented by well-crafted hooks.

Wussy’s stage banter matches the dark humor of their compositions.  Walker made a Ludditesque rant about phone apps.  Bassist Messerly cajoled the audience at stage right – well-covered in tree shadows – for leaving their fellow Wussy watchers out in the pounding sun.

“The had an app that told them where to sit,” Walker chimed in, with a grin.  “It said, ‘the shade.’”

Wussy was able to fight through more microphone SNAFUs during “Pulverized” to deliver a reasonably satisfying, if abbreviated set, which included crowd pleasers “Airborne” and “Don’t Leave.”

“Man, I don’t know what cartoon you’re feeling like, but I’m feeling like Jem and the Holograms today,” Walker deadpanned to Cleaver.

My own feelings on the set were mixed.  Wussy, I believe, is at their best when they forget rocking an audience and focus on their more emotionally-charged songs.  This performance, they settled for loud, leaving out “Motorcyle,” “Waiting Room,” “Little Miami” or “Shunt” – for my money, their four best.  Maybe the shortened set time had more to do with their decision than a desire to enlist the audience; I hope so.  In an instance when Wussy could have shown the out-of-town crowd who they are and what they’re about – on their own turf, with a friendly audience – it seemed a missed opportunity.  People should know them for who they really are.

4:45 pm

Margaret Darling (left) and Joe Frankl (right) of the Seedy Seeds.

Over on the Bud Light Stage, another Darling of the Cincy scene was playing – one Margaret Darling, with fellow Seedy Seeds Mike Ingram and Joe Frankl.   Sporting the first installment of a new light display, the Seeds played to a crowd that started off thin, but rapidly built as their set continued.  As a longtime fan, I was happy to overhear multiple instances of people in the crowd asking others, “Where’s this band from?”

I split my set here – Ume was playing concurrently over on the aliveOne stage.  Whereas I was happy that I didn’t recognize many faces over in the Seeds’ crowd, I was just as enlivened to see many I did recognize checking out Ume.

Herein is the promise Bunbury offers – going forward, one hopes it will remember to invest itself as much in promoting Tristate artists to visitors, as it seeks to showcase national touring bands to the locals.  A good festival is an open radio channel.

5:30 pm

It was hot.  I bought some Dojo gelato.  Vanilla and churro, mixed.  Well done, Jared Bowers, well done.  I got my Tillers on at the adjacent CMC Stage while I sugared up.  Just as the cinnamon in the churro flavor complemented smooth vanilla, so too did the sweet pickings of the punkgrass Tillers back up well to the Seedy Seeds’ electrofolk.

My computer bag being heavy, and my poor back being tired after a long weekend on my feet, I bugged out early for the car.  The plan was to stash my pack in the trunk and book it across the venue to Main Stage for one of the acts I was most excited to see:  Good Old War.  I made the drop, headed back in and waited.  And waited.  And waited.

6:30 pm

Remember that pack I left in my car?  Well, hellfire if it didn’t have my itinerary folder in it, containing one critical tidbit:  I was at the wrong ever-lovin’, cotton-pickin’, chicken-pluckin’ stage.  Good Old War was playing on Landor.

Frack.

Keith Goodwin, of Good Old War, threw up his arms in disgust. He was all like, “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been singing this whole time. Yeesh!”I hung my head, deeply chagrined. 

Now, I’m not a tall guy – only 5’8″.  My stride is accordingly shallow.  But had you been standing between the Main Stage and Landor at about this time, you would have seen one quick streak and heard a blue other.  I was moving quick and cussing hard.  Basically, I’m an idiot and I was letting myself know so in concrete terms.

I caught the last song in Good Old War’s set.  They sounded great.  I wish I could say more.  I would plead heatstroke or sleep deprivation, but in the bush, a soldier is accountable for his actions even under duress.  I fell asleep on watch and I paid for it.  I could only gnash my teeth and swear never again.

Off to conduct an interview.

8:00 pm

Guided by Voices. There were giant balls.

I had always heard about Dayton’s Guided by Voices.  They’re legends of the regional scene, usually mentioned in the same breath with early ’90s contemporaries such as the Ass Ponies, the Breeders and the Afghan Whigs (who, incidentally, reunited to replace GBV on the 2012 All Tomorrow’s Parties lineup back in May).

I was underage in GBV’s heyday, so I was eager to wipe away my ignorance of their live show.  I was frenzied for it.  I got back to Landor early and took a seat.  Festival staff brought in a stable of giant, yellow beach balls – they were corralled to one side of the stage.  Things were surely going to get lively.

“People always throw beer at Guided by Voices shows,” a friend assured me.  “Their rider actually includes having a puke bucket on stage for Bob Pollard.”

The crowd was undeniably GBV-friendly.  Cheers were intense when they took the stage.  The Serpentine Wall was packed.  Drum roll, please.

I promised you heresy.  Having now seen GBV, I can say it:

I don’t get Guided by Voices.

There.  It’s out.  Can’t take it back.

Guided by Voices sets are almost entirely comprised by 45-second songlets.   I’m told this is their MO.  But they are lyrically nonsensical.  Bob Pollard’s gimmick is tired:  beer-drinking, faux English accent, Who-esque microphone twirling, abortive high kicks.  He’s made a living out of it since the early ’80s.  But their guitars were far out of tune.  Pollard was off-key.  I didn’t see the attraction.

“They’re prolific songwriters,” my friend advocated.  “Bob turns virtually anything into a song.”

That’s exactly my problem.

It’s true – I wasn’t witness to their locally-legendary club shows.  Maybe the great outdoors isn’t their venue.  And maybe if I’d been standing elbow-to-drunken-elbow in a dark, sweaty room, maybe if I’d been completely FUBARed, maybe if I hadn’t been a journalist with the mantra “Writers Make Choices” etched indelibly onto my brain . . . well, we could maybe this thing to death.

I submit that being “prolific” does not “talented” make.  I’m not saying that Guided by Voices doesn’t have their place – I happen to like their track “Hold on Hope.”  But I found their live show befuddling, boring and anticlimactic.  I don’t see the attraction.

Go ahead – I can take the heat.  I can hear you now.  “Who are you, man?  You just don’t know.”

I challenge you to enlighten me.

I take my rock the way I take my bourbon:  straight up, honest, without pretense.

8:30 pm

Now here is the moment you will fancy me mad:

I didn’t see Death Cab for Cutie.  I was lying on my back, in a grassy field, looking up at the night sky, listening to the cosmos.  One star was particularly bright.

This is late getting posted.  It stormed (briefly) on the venue on Sunday, which knocked out the wi-fi over at the Bunbury media tent.  Hopefully, it was worth the wait.  If not, I obviously I hadn’t been drinking enough when I wrote it.  I blame nargles.

Right then.  On to the scribbling.

******

SATURDAY

3:00 pm

The rigors and responsibilities of crack journalism (*snicker*) delayed my arrival to Bunbury on Saturday.  I didn’t even start down to Sawyer Point until 2 pm or so.  After Friday’s access challenges, I was nervous that I would miss the sets through five o’clock.  Turns out that concern was unfounded; flow was better organized.  I bit the additional cost to park on the Ohio side of the river and got right in.

I met up with my radio co-host, Alicia Inman, to take pictures for her interview with Imagine Dragons.  Caught a bit of Jukebox the Ghost’s set on the Main Stage.  The crowd was into the show and farther back along the field than they were at comparable shows same time the day before — attendance seemed up on Saturday.

3:45 pm

Brad Schnittger, of The Sundresses, snarls his turn at the mic in their Saturday set.

Cincinnati’s trio The Sundresses are equal parts straight rock, punk and psychobilly — Stray Cats, in heat.  They played on the aliveOne Stage and delivered as expected – searing, uptempo, engaging tunes.  For my part, they’re a candidate for Top 5 up-and-coming band in the Cincinnati area, if not the Midwest.  Word is they are putting together a new record; I’m eagerly looking forward to it.  The crowd was dancing near the stage and they drew well.  It shouldn’t be long before they’re scooped up by a label.

4:30 pm

Beer break.  I know, I was on the clock, and I said I wouldn’t.  But I’m weak.  Come on, I’m a writer.  You think this is easy stonefaced sober?  I’ll give you some time to name great novels written by teetotalers . . . see how quick that went?

One thing I’ll say about Bunbury – they got food vendors, merch vendors, ATMs, water stations and restroom facilities right — and out of the gate.  With a bigger crowd yesterday, the lines for some food vendors were slightly longer, but they weren’t ridiculous.  Beer was flowing quickly and at reasonable prices.  A little high, but not Live Nation high.

Michael Raidt, 26, of Louisville, enjoying the buzz.

The twitter buzz was right – there were NO bathroom lines.  Plenty of portables and such.  Well managed.  They even had two charging stations for cell phones.  They filled up quickly, and turnover was naturally slow, but they were attended by staff.  I took a bit of a risk and walked over to catch a set yesterday while my phone took a charge, but there it was, safe and sound, when I got back.  Bravo.  A suggestion for next year – maybe more chargers?  This is a stellar idea – it allows people to build buzz for the event on Twitter, via text and Facebook, allows continued usage of the free downloadable Bunbury app (I’ve used this quite a bit to find out where various bands are from, and to listen to Bunbury Radio (playing all Bunbury acts – great for sampling and planning my listening experience) and, ultimately, is good for patrons’ safety (if you’ve been tweeting and Facebooking all day, and run out of juice, what happens if you have an emergency in the parking lot at 11:30 pm?  A little planning and no problem).  Big kudos to Bill Donabedian and festival staff for providing these.

5:15 pm

A little bit of rain rolled in.  We got lucky – most of the storms went south of Cincinnati.  Forecastle, down in Louisville, was not so lucky – some set times were pushed back, according to our colleague Joe Long, over at EachNoteSecure.com.  No worries here.

“Landor’s not a system. It’s a stage.”

There were worries at the Landor Stage.  Sound problems delayed English pop outfit Graffiti 6′s set start, dismaying hundreds of middle school-aged girls who filled the Serpentine Wall and endured sog to see them.  Those sound problems continued during the set – the band was going back and forth with the sound tech, even during songs.  This was reportedly not the only sound issue yesterday on Landor.  According to Alicia Inman, Alberta Cross was experiencing difficulties as well.  I stayed with it for five cuts, then bugged out.  When bands are uncomfortable on stage, I get empathetic discomfort.   Besides, Manchester Orchestra was about to go off and the barometric pressure change was giving me sinus trouble.

It’s more than you want to know, but trust me:  after two surgeries and many allergy shots, living in Cincinnati is, with increasing evidence, the root of the problem.  If you’re one of the legions of out-of-towners who read my articles (*more self-derogatory snickers*), Cincinnati’s summertime allergen prevalence is so notorious as to have bred a local, grammatically-ridiculous idiom, “I have sinus,” the reply to which is inevitably an empathetic sigh and extended account of the other party’s own struggle with this dread condition.

Enough of swollen upper respiratory mucosa talk.  One hopes that the same sound tech won’t be running the Wussy or Good Old War shows on Sunday, or at least that he’ll be more on his game.  Maybe he just had sinus, too.

6:00 pm

At Inman’s suggestion, I joined her to check out Atlanta, GA’s Manchester Orchestra.  I’ll admit my ignorance – had never knowingly heard them before.  They were heavy and Cincinnati loved them.  The audience was hopping through most of their set on the Main Stage.

Manchester Orchestra’s special percussion section. Oh, marching bass, how have I missed lugging thee? Let me count the ways . . . no, wait, no. No ways come to mind.

People in this town seem to like their music the way they like their sex – hard and fast.  Me?  I’m the sentimental type.  I like to break things up with some melody, with lyrics, with synth.  Manchester Orchestra was decent enough, but they didn’t grab me; that is, until they played a slower, more melodically rich song called “Simple Math.”  And while I saw some listeners bugging out (ostensibly for a Hudy Light run – it’s a Cincy thing – or to stage up for Bright Light Social Hour), I fell in to their set here.

“Clapping doesn’t work for this song,” frontman Andy Hull stopped an intro and warned from the stage, laughing.  “It’s not you, it’s us.”  He paused.  “Eh, fuck it, we can try it.  We like to keep it real.”  He grinned.  We all ate it up.

6:45 pm

Dan Deacon, Lord of the Strange

Inman moved on to check out Bright Light Social Hour.  I headed off to catch some of Cincinnati’s 500 Miles to Memphis.  I didn’t get there.  I was arrested by strange sights.  On the Bud Light Stage, acid rave jokester (and Ninja Turtle t-shirt clad) Dan Deacon, of Baltimore, MD, was organizing his audience into competing dance halves.  He chose one person on each side to be team leaders – each side had to follow their leader’s moves, and with a characteristic subversive twist, he encouraged tap-out coups d’états.  To stage right, in the middle of a human pyramid construction, he warned:

“I think you guys may be building an unsustainable system, but that’s you guyses decision.”

Deacon was the surprise of the night.  He’s hilarious.  He’s fast.  He’s electro goodness.  It’s just he, his board and two backing drummers.  They were in perfect synch.

“OK, when we start playing this one, I want everyone to run away from the stage as fast as you can.”

And they did.  For 45 seconds.  He stopped again.

Deacon’s audience was hypnotized by his ancient Ninja Turtle arts of subterfuge and persuasion into running like a horde starving zombies scenting blood. One of them tried to bite me. I did look plump and tasty, sure.

“I like the spread out feeling.  OK, now on this one, I want you all to come back toward the stage.  But slowly.  Really explore the space.”

I’m now a Dan Deacon fan.  He even had the audience doing a giant Virginia reel, building a human tunnel.  Politicians and CEOs take note:  if you want people to do things, making it seem fun works a lot better than fear, threats and money.  Not that money matters to Deacon.

“So we’re on the Bud Light stage.  Don’t drink it, they’re evil.  Sorry, I know we have to subsidize costs, but still,” he cajoled.  “And I know this is the Proctor and Gamble stage and they built it, but that company does nothing but destroy the earth . . . go to hell, Proctor and Gamble.”

I’ll nominate Dan Deacon for co-Surprise of the Festival thus far.  I’ve never had so much fun.

More of the audience listening to / obeying Dan Deacon. That’s Luke McGlasson, of The Minor Leagues, in the center, there, exploring his space.

7:45 pm

Caught a little bit of Gaslight Anthem, who I was really excited to see coming into the festival.  But I find I’m suffering from a curious disease endemic to journalists covering music festivals:  Transient Audio Attention Deficit Disorder, the inescapable feeling that one is missing something huge just over on the next stage.  It’s pervasive.  I love Gaslight Anthem.  But I’ll admit it:  I forsook them.  I’m ashamed.  Headed over to RJD2.  Caught part of DJ Spider’s set on the Red Bull stage – first time I’d encountered a crowd paying attention to a DJ set this weekend.  He was busting it out.

8:30 pm

Left my phone at the charging station and headed over to the Bud Light Stage again fordowntempo  Ohio native RJD2.  The set started out a bit muted – almost demure.  The audience were tentative.  But darkness having drawn nigh and down, RJD2 picked it up.   “The Horror” and “1976,” sure pleasers had the trip-hoppers in gear.  The glowsticks came out.  The audience was chanting.

“R-J-D-2!  R-J-D-2!”

Welcome home, RJD2. Thanks for “The Horror!”

Then, a skip.

“Sorry, that got a little clusterfucky for a second.”  A sheepish grin.  “Records do weird things sometimes.  You take your chances with this shit.”  We loved it.  More dancing.  The crowd surged.

Set finished, still chanting.

“R-J-D-2!  R-J-D-2!”

“Thanks.  It’s great to be back in Ohio.  I appreciate you all sticking with me,” he gestured toward the Main Stage, where headliner Weezer had started 15 minutes prior.

Most people left then, satisfied.  Then, unexpectedly, graciously, he came down from the stage and greeted the remaining people.  Individually.  Took pictures with everyone who asked.  Spoke for 10 minutes or so with a DJ hopeful.

RJD2 was happy to be home.  We were happy to see him.

9:30

All week long, people had been telling me Weezer was rather notorious for putting on a boring show.  “Weezer?  I don’t care about Weezer,” one punter told me, as we talked on my way over to the Main Stage.  He was on his way out.

Evidently someone cares about Weezer.  The field was packed back to three-fourths of its length.  Rivers Cuomo, dressed as a dead-ringer for Woody Allen, according (aptly put) to one Twitter user, was in capital voice.  The band was on.  People were jamming.

I was eight million miles away from the stage when I caught this reasonably clear snap of Rivers Cuomo. You’re lucky to get it — it was akin to Hubble snapping a photo of an Earth-sized alien planet in the middle of an intense meteor shower, with fried logic circuits, all while zipping around the world at a bajillion miles an hour while its bourbon-soused NASA controller played Tetris online and puked. Odds were astronomical. I’m basically a wizard.

Whereas the audience seemed disengaged the night before during Jane’s Addiction, Weezer and the people were in synch.  Heads were bobbing.  People were climbing trees to get a better look.  They sounded great.  This is the Weezer I remember – the blue album-era, not “Beverly Hills” pop-schlock (although they would play it in their encore).

That’s right – Weezer gave us an encore.  They played past Perry Farrell’s curfew.  Noise be damned.  Ordinances be damned.  One-percenters in adjacent high-rise condo buildings be damned.  Rivers was wearing his sweater vest.  And a cowboy villain’s hat.  And it’s July.

Weezer played all their hits.  And say what you want about that, but for a band at this stage of their career, that’s what I want to hear.  I cut my teeth on “Buddy Holly” and “My Name is Jonas,” when I was 15, impetuous and just learning what music would define my life’s soundtrack.  We got both.  We got “Say It Ain’t So” (which, two cents, I believe is in the conversation for Gen X anthem, every bit as much as “Piece of My Heart” or “For What It’s Worth” would be to my parents’ generation).

If they played “Undone (The Sweater Song),” it came before I wandered in.  But I didn’t miss it.  They were spot on.  They came off at 11:00 pm sharp.  We wondered, “Is it over?” – Jane’s Addiction had, after all, not graced us with an encore.  But Weezer and the audience were locked in.  Few left.  And Weezer stayed.

“This was a song from when we were young,” Cuomo said, taking the mic.  And they launched a driving cover of Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me.”

I love a complete circle.  It is beautiful, it is symmetrical.  It is perfect.

Click to view slideshow.

Holy whoa I saw a lot of bands yesterday.  And a lot of people.  I’m 97.5% sure I’ve never seen that many people all in one place in Ohio before, so good job Cincinnati.  

My day started off with Alberta Cross – who, though their name might suggest it, are not from Alberta.  They’re from New York, but their frontman sounds English, which is fine by me.  He’s reminiscent of a British Kurt Cobain, in my opinion.  And his band rocks, but not in the way Nirvana did.  Alberta Cross is much more anthemic and melodic.  I’m seriously looking forward to their album coming out on Tuesday.

Salina Underground’s Jon Goolsby and I also got to interview Imagine Dragons, who were on my must-see list.  Gotta say, they’re super-nice guys and they put on an awesome live set.  Hilarious banter – frontman Dan Reynolds told  the crowd it was their tour manager’s birthday, but reneged after the “Happy Birthday” was sung, claiming it was actually his own birthday. And since Cincinnati is full of the awesome people it is, the crowd sang him “Happy Birthday” too.
Every single member of Imagine Dragons actually sings, loudly, and they have a killer use of percussion on “Radioactive”.  Calling it now – they’re going to blow up about like Foster the People did last year. Keep an eye out for the interview early next week.

Favorite local act on Saturday was The Sundresses, who killed it to a crowd full of dancing people at the AliveOne stage.  If you’re into Jack White’s Third Man label, you need to check out The Sundresses.  ASAP. You can actually hear the smoke and whiskey in the rumbling bass and beats.

For my last set of the day, I decided to see The Gaslight Anthem – the Springsteen and the E Street Band of the Millenial Generation.  I’m really glad I did.  I saw a rainbow over the river, grown punk men belting out every word at each other, and tons of smiling from Gaslight’s frontman Brian Fallon due to the crowd’s extreme levels of participation.  Actually, he wasn’t the first frontman I caught with a grin on his face – A Silent Film, Alberta Cross, Imagine Dragons, and Manchester Orchestra all seemed the same level of pleased.  It made me proud of Cincinnati music fans.  Hopefully it all bodes well for Bunbury 2013.

Handing out gold stars for the day to:

• Drunk Music Reviews – this twosome from Each Note Secure gets drunk and reviews the bands in an inebriated state, which makes for tons of snark and hilarity.
• The chick doing the can-can at one of the beer tents who kicked me in the shoulder as I passed by.
• The greek food truck next to the AliveOne stage.  That was a really freakin’ good chicken gyro.

Here’s what I’ve got on tap for Sunday:

• 1:30-2:15 — Belle Histoire (Bud Light Stage)
• 2:15-3:00 — Maps & Atlases (Globili Stage) 
• 3:00-3:45 — Now, Now (Bud Light Stage)
• 3:45-4:30 — Lights (Globili Stage)
• 4:30-5:15 — The Seedy Seeds (Bud Light Stage)
• 5:15-6:00 — City and Colour (Globili Stage)
• 6:00-6:45 — Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s (Bud Light Stage)
• 7:30-8:30 — Guided By Voices (Landor Stage – for now)
• 8:30-10:00 — Death Cab For Cutie (Globili Stage)

I’ve been waiting for this to go off for eight months, now.  Bunbury Music Festival.  Cincinnati’s new (other) gaga rock gala.  An upstart child of Bill Donabedian, one of the sires of our own MidPoint Music Festival, seeking to supplant Forecastle and other regional festivals and keep the dollars right here, downtown, in the heart of the Queen City.

5:30 pm

Access to the venue was difficult at best.  Sawyer Point’s natural choke points, compounded by traffic from the Reds game next door, normal rush hour on I-71 and I-75, and a lack of clear wayfinding for the festival made obtaining my credential and getting in the door a sweaty two-hour ordeal.  Thank God it wasn’t 110° F this weekend.  Consequently missed the Minor Leagues’ set and only barely caught Henry Clay People’s last song – an F-bomb laced cover of “Born to Run”( during which the band paused and ordered the crowd to one knee in a candidate moment for Misplaced Narcissism Binge of the Century).

Oddly, most of that traffic doesn’t seem to have been coming down to Bunnbury on Friday afternoon; the crowd is light.  Uncomfortably light.  I run into my WVQC colleague, Bree Moss.

“It’s been like this all day,” she said.  “This is the peak, so far.”

True – Bunbury is aiming big.  To go head-to-head against Lousiville’s Forecastle and Chicago’s Pitchfork in your inaugural year is gutsy enough.  To do so while competing with big local events – the World Choir Games, the Reds-Cardinals divisional series, the Newport Sausage Festival, for goodness sakes – that’s ballsy.  One wonders if it might not all be a bit too much.

The American Queen rolled up the river.  She’s a big boat.  Don’t see that everyday.  I hope Bunbury is able to gather steam, too.

6:30 pm

Caught Ra Ra Riot on the Bud Light Stage, situated about dead center in the long festival layout.  They played well, smallish crowd aside.

Vocalist Wes Miles, in between songs, looked out at the audience.  “Man, it’s hot out here.”

Should have been here last week, Syracuse.  A guy standing next to me nudged his buddy.

“You cold?”

“Fuckin’ freezing.”

Ra Ra Riot played well.  I like the juxtaposition of Harold Faltermeyer’s long-lost synth versus cello.  But strings in indie rock are the “in” thing.  What they’re doing, they’re doing well.  Are they catchy?  Certainly.    Are they decent remix artists?  Yes – I don’t fault them for signing on to remix Freelance Whales’ travesty “Hannah.”  (I fault Freelance Whales’ ungodly lyrics – who rhymes “lemon Now and Later” with “playerhater?”  Ugh.)  But are they very different?  No.  They live in their genre, and they don’t seem poised to break away.

FOREGROUND: Megan Saile (left), and Peter Goldstein (right), both 26, of Cincinnati, love Ra Ra Riot. And, apparently, “Duck Tales.” Quack.

6:50 pm

Spoke with a UC grad student, Jamie Busch, 23, of Newport, about her Bunbury experience.

“It’s pretty light tonight,” she said.  “I know a lot of people who went to Forecastle tonight, but they’re coming up tomorrow.”

Why did she choose Bunbury over Forecastle?

“I can stumble home,” she laughed.   ”You’re right in the middle of the city, you’re close to bars.  Whereas at [a festival like] Bonnaroo, you’re up until 4 in the morning and then you crawl back, you get a couple hours of sleep, get up and do it again.  I’ll be here all three days – why wouldn’t I be?”

The music?

“So far, so good.  I like OAR – I’d never heard them before.  They were pretty fun and energetic.  I’m here to see Foxy Shazam.  I’ve seen them five or six times.  They always ask the crowd for cigarettes and then smoke them all.”

Venue impressions?

I like the stages better at Bonnaroo – they’re a lot bigger.  I’ve noticed the screens, like at the Main Stage, are small.  There’s not a lot of vendors or merch tents [on the eastern side of the park] – at Bonnaroo they’re everywhere you turn.  It kind of makes the atmosphere.  But at Bonnaroo you camp and here, you get to go home and sleep in your own bed.  There’s still after parties,” she smiled.

7:45 pm

An Airborne Toxic Event had been detected on the Main Stage (which, note to organizers, is designated “Globili Stage” on the set time grid, but “Main Stage” on the map, resulting in wasted minutes conducting a process-of-elimination cross-reference – wayfinding has been, ah, less than easy).  And I found the crowd.  Now we’re talking – maybe the after-work crowd was our fifth column.  People were packing into the westernmost pocket of the park.

There should be a merit badge for getting a Cincinnati audience to jump and sing along.  It would be hard to earn, but this Loz Feliz, Cali-based outfit should get one.  My first time seeing them — they won me over.  Highly energetic, excellent stage presence.  As a drummer, I tend to watch the rhythm section to evaluate how well a band is playing together.  ATE seemed locked in.  Drummer Daren Taylor has quick, clean hands; he and bassist Noah Harmon held it down, allowing Mikel Jollett to kick loose.

Bands:  crowd engagement is tough.  It will make or break you in a city (see forum comments about this past June’s Radiohead show at Riverbend).  If you want to learn how to do it, go to an Airborne Toxic Event show.  Take notes; remember the reaction when Jollett throws Taylor’s drumsticks halfway out into the audience, or Steven Chen perches tiptoe on a monitor and plays guitar over his head.  Consider similar tactics.  Carry insurance.

Drew Polk, 26, of Cookville, TN, caught one of Daren Taylor’s drumsticks during Airborne Toxic Event’s set. Lucky bastard. They’re 7As, in case you’re curious. That’s, like, half the circumference of mine. My sticks, I mean. No, really. I’m a drummer, too. That’s what I was talking about. Yeah.

Toward the end of their set, ATE also covered Bruce Springsteen – “I’m on Fire.”  What Fleetwood Mac was to hipsters in 2011, Johnny Cash was in 2010, the Cars were in 2009, and Brian Wilson was in 2008 – well, that seems to be case now for the Boss.  Springsteen is in this year – very in.  And having a violin chick in the band is the new Clarence Clemons arms race.  Everyone must have one.  I don’t fault any of those fad choices – it’s just that I lived through and actually remember the Boss’ heyday.  Maybe some sour grapes as I approach my mid-thirties.  But you what?  My back hurts when I wake up every day now.  So pass me some Aleve and some rare Nirvana or Meat Puppets 7″ vinyl.  Because I’m betting heavy on a Kurt Cobain / grunge echo next year, and I could use the money re-selling them on e-Bay to kids who think they found something.  Sigh.

After Bruce, a Bobby Fuller cover.  Sensed an anti-establishment theme.  It’s good for the millennial kids; of Cold War paranoia, they know anon.  Thank God they’ve found their parents’ turntables, or they might all have gone forward thinking this extended stagflationary period was the first time in history when America needed a kick in the ass.

A technical note – ran into Brandon Losacker, of the Black Owls, during this set.  “I can’t hear the guitars,” he said.  “It’s all keys and bass.”  Agreed.

8:30

Caught a little bit of Minus the Bear.  They were what I expected; nothing more, nothing less.  They were technically proficient, sounded good and indie as All Get Out.  Musically, nothing stood out to me, good, bad or indifferent.  But I saw the kids crowdsurfing.  And on the night of a Jane’s Addiction headline, dredging up the Ghost of Lollapalooza Past, it warmed my heart.

A funny moment:  vocalist Jake Snider to the audience.  “We were in Covington last night.  We got into some shit.”

“They can cook a pork chop, tell you that,” rejoined Dave Knudson, with a grin, tuning his guitar.

9:30

Cincinnati’s darling Queen reboot, Foxy Shazam, was holding Church of Rock and Roll services and the Serpentine Wall in front of the Landor stage was packed.  Much neon.  My synaesthesia kicked in high gear.  I finally caught a whiff or two of reefer – it had been notably absent all day, although by all accounts (and personal experience) incoming searches were virtually nonexistent.

An acquaintance tweeted that “faces were melting.”  True that.  Eric Sean Nally has been described as “Freddie Mercury and Noel Fielding’s love child.”  I’d believe it, but only if they had had a double male-gamete conception after a coke-fueled ménage-a-tois with Ted Nugent following a Detroit special engagement.

I learned something here – at Bunbury, if you’re under six feet tall (I’m a lamentable 5’8″), get to the popular sets early.  You’re going to get aced out.  I almost didn’t see Foxy Shazam take their keyboard into the crowd and surf with it, or Nally’s thrown mic / Jedi-esque telekinesis retrieval act.  And he did it all while wearing leather and flats.  “I Like It,” indeed.

9:45

Jane’s Addicition.  The show I wanted to see twenty years ago when I was but a young buck, thinking I had found something when I dusted off my dad’s old Zeppelin albums (see how I did that there?  I’m not above self-reproach.)

The crowd in front of the Main Stage was packed in.  More grass wafts – ah, there it is.  Now we felt rock.  Two giant nude female statues and video displays behind the band.  Jane’s Addiction has apparently attained Rush-level performance pretension:   they employed non sequitur actors on stage.  Two girls in wedding dresses swinging on trapezes twenty feet above the backline, a man in a fedora walking across the stage, toting a plastic garbage bag full of baby dolls, which he subsequently empties before repeatedly punching the dolls in the face and dashing them against the raised platform onto which he climbed, odd sadomasochistic imagery – cutting, replete with fake blood – and two gagged Asian women gyrating and crawling about in mock sexplay with a shirtless Perry Farrell.  Hm.  Things got habitual.

I looked at the lady behind me – Jackie Dillon, 37, of Fairfield, had brought her twin five year-old daughters, Sunny and Kayleigh Dillon, to the show.  They had neon necklaces on.

“Sunny, what do you think of Dave Navarro?” I asked.

“I like him.”

I stifled it and smiled at mom.

“Did you catch their ’91 Lollapalooza farewell tour ?”

A quizzical look.  I think I know how people around felt when my parents took me to Paul McCartney at Riverfront Stadium.  Crikey, aging’s a bitch.

Top row: Kayleigh Dillon (left) and Sunny Dillon (right), 5, of Fairfield, Ohio. Sunny loves Dave Navarro.
Bottom row: Jackie Dillon (left), 37, of Fairfield, Ohio, will have her hands full in 11 years or so, when Kayleigh and Sunny are crushing on guys like Dave Navarro. Jeff Darnell (right), 44, of Madeira, Ohio, loved it when the sound guy played Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” album prior to Jane’s Addiction taking the stage, although for a second, he thought he was at the wrong concert. 1977 acid flashbacks are tough.

Tracy Hooks, of Madeira, was into it.  Jane’s Addiction was on her bucket list.  “I just assumed Perry Farrell would OD and die.  I didn’t think I’d ever see them.  Ever.”

Me, not so much.  This was the headliner I most wanted to see this weekend.  And they weren’t bad – it certainly wasn’t for lack of effort on JA’s part.  Farrell did a super job of engaging the front rows of the audience – jumping down and slapping fives.  At one point, he fell off the end of the stage – took a licking and kept on ticking, as they say.

But try as they might, Jane’s Addiction had trouble getting the crowd going.  Farrell’s stage banter was at times forced, and seemed like a rehearsed effort to meet audience memories of him, off-his-gourd smacked out, in past years.  It didn’t fly.  The audience seemed muted and confused through much of the one hour, fifteen minute set.  Farrell either wasn’t in good voice last night, or just doesn’t have the pipes anymore, to hit the nasally highs that made him an icon of the Alternative Nation.  “Been Caught Stealing” was short and unremarkable – Farrell simply couldn’t hit it.

There were sound problems, too.  During the third song, there was a sudden burst of static over the PA.  The sound repeatedly cut out during the set.  Dave Navarro was visibly annoyed, and I don’t blame him a bit.  Another oddity – Bunbury employed American Sign Language interpreters superimposed in the lower corner of the Main Stage screens to sign the lyrics during the Jane’s Addiction set.  I applaud the accessibility, but it took out ¼ of an otherwise smallish screen size, and detracted from the experience (especially of a short guy in the back.)  Recommendation – separate signer screens, or larger screens entirely, with the signer on a split-screen feed.  I didn’t like the picture-in-box quality especially when it covered half of Navarro’s tattoos.

That said – I give JA a lot of credit for playing well.  Navarro is still on top of his game; new bassist Chris Chaney was grooving it, and Stephen Perkins did a satisfactory job (albeit giving an uncomplicated solo) behind the kit.  A look around at the audience, though, revealed a mixture of child-saddled Gen X-ers whose minds may have been willing to do what the bodies or the bounds of responsibility no longer couldn’t, and kids who came to see Jane’s Addiction because, well, hell, it’s Jane’s Addiction.  My youngest uncle loved those guys.  I have to see them, right?  I mean, Dave freakin’ Navarro!  And they were twittery tweeting and faceyspacing all about it on their smart phones during the show.

The crowd was just coming alive when Farrell uttered what he called, “a dirty word, one that should never be uttered – we have a CURFEW.”  This is a major limitation on Bunbury – one that I’m not sure bodes well for the future of the festival.  It takes place next to the Lytle Place “Apartments for the One Percent” – where, aside, I saw no one out on their patios listening to the show.  City noise ordinances, presumably, limit the time bands can play.  Death Cab will have to wrap by 10 pm or on Sunday.  This is a problem that Bunbury should consider, if they come back for another year.  Sawyer’s Point is not kind to vibe.  So, at 11 pm, out came the steel drums, and Jane’s Addiction played their signature “Jane Says” (taken down a half octave, so that Farrell could hit it without snags), for a somewhat muted finale.

I have heard it said, repeatedly and from many sources, that Bunbury’s headliners are the show you wanted to see fifteen years ago.  I can’t disagree.  And when you’re up against Forecastle’s Wilco and My Morning Jacket engagements, a 75 minute set from Jane’s Addiction doesn’t cut mustard.  The mid-majors are where it’s at with Bunbury.

Honors to California’s Airborne Toxic Event, for set of the day on Friday.

I’d give Airborne Toxic Event the honors for set-of-the-night, with Foxy Shazam a close second; people around me were buzzing about them.   So – if the hive reconvenes next year, Bunbury, you might consider booking the acts the kids want to see.  As much as I loathe saying it (big sigh), let we Gen X-ers follow, or fade away.  Most of the Alternative Nation has an early bedtime.

***

Up early tomorrow and back to the venue.  Will post a wrap article — I found carrying around backpack with laptop, camera, chargers, water bottle, etc., tedious and trying on my poor, old thirtysomething spine.

Will be live tweeting from our radio show’s Twitter account.  Follow @salinaundergrnd and our blog partners, @lonelyhouseOH, for the latest news, notes, snark and randomness @bunburymusicfestival.  We’ll post under #bunburyfestival.