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Folklife: A giant, aromatic commercial for cosmically carby food booths, with some music crammed into the interstices. Or am I cynical? I was doing pretty well. I'd accepted a couple of Hal's rather yummy asian calimari rings(breaded), and the odd nibble of his alligator on a stick (equally breaded, tastes like chicken) so that I could hold my head high the next time I'm in Minnesota, but I'd resisted the blandishments of Pennsylvania Dutch funnel cakes, red beans and rice, beignets, roasted corn on the cob, even strawberry shortcakes, each surmounted by its very own miniature model of Mont Blanc in whipped cream; the fried this and the frittered that (each item rolled in flour before and doused in powdered sugar after) quite well. Especially considering how fabulous everything smelled. Then we finally managed to raise Mary Kay in person on her phone. She was having a sit down by one of the stages, in the beer garden. The *beer* garden. Right. Might as well lie back and accept the inevitable.

At the beergarden we found Mary Kay and Jordin had glommed some other fannish acquaintances, and so we sat around drinking beer an discussing fanzines and conventions and other fans not present, and film and tatoos, inspired by the flames on the girl with the Betty Page haircut. We decided that Mary Kay's black-on-black Hawaiian shirt (yes, she went back and bought it) was the perfect kernel for a Goth Hawaiian outfit, and amused ourselves speculating on what that might look like. Dogs in tow where everywhere, which made me vaguely sorry we'd decided to leave Sarah home.

The rock-n-reel group -- Coventry, by name -- were technically adequate, and had a good selection of songs, but the soprano who fronted them just didn't have the power and the grit in her voice that their orchestrations really wanted. Sort-of all right for a poor man's Maddy Prior, but only sort-of. "Carlow" in particular wants to be belted out when it's done as a rock arrangement, and she couldn't. I'd had enough beer to sing along to "Saucy Sailor," though and thought I acquitted myself well. After them came the four-member Saturnalia Trio, self-styled purveyors of "post-medieval progressive folk", and their opener rocked nicely, thanks to underlying structure laid down by their two drummers, one Celtic, the other African (hmm, where have I seen that combination before), but by then the group was breaking up to wander off to the four corners, and so we didn't hear more of them.

On the whole I came away comparatively unfleeced, having resisted tie-dye, jewelry, and even music cds from the groups at the festival, but resisting temptation did make it seem that much sillier that we resorted to taking the monorail downtown to find an ATM machine that still had any cash in it.

Date: 2003-05-26 07:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marykaykare.livejournal.com
I'm glad you had a good time. I came home and took ibuprofen and laid down I'm afraid. Must be up and doing tomorrow as I leave on Thursday for 12 days. Jordin says next year he's going to do a lot of the festival. He really liked it but wasn't much in the mood for sitting around listening today for some reason. It's too bad he was out of town Sat. and missed the sea chanty spectacular.

MKK

Date: 2003-05-26 10:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] numbat.livejournal.com
I think I'd like to spend the day at something like this but mostly so I could sample what the food stalls had on offer. Not that I would reject the music, it's just better for me to let unfamiliar stuff flow over my subconscious so it can work out what it likes at its leisure and tell me next time I hear X. There are very few bands whose songs I warm to on first listen. About the only example I can think of right now are The Eels. Heard their latest song, Saturday Morning a couple of days ago and without even knowing it was them and went, yeah!

Oh, and by the way, I've been to Nashville and eaten battered and deep fried corn on the cob. Stick or no stick I can look any Minnesotan in the eye. . .

March 2022

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