Sunday, 18 April 2010
6:23 While there'd be a body of opinion to suggest that I'm taking things a bit far I crank up Firefox, surf over to the Moogis website and log in to catch the first of two webcasts from the Wanee Festival. The sun is up (just), the sky is blue and having laid out $US25 for the Wanee extension to the Moogis service it's time to check out what I've bought into.
Now, as stated, there may be people who'd say I was taking things a bit far. Certainly, I've got no burning desire to see Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman, & Jay Lane Are Scaring the Children (love the name, though), but I've been carefully avoiding exposure to Stephen Stills (a long-term aversion) and having paid the money, it's time to use the service.
If the he's getting carried away factor's still there, I can counter it by pointing out that I could have been up much earlier to catch 7 Walkers Featuring Bill Kreutzmann and Papa Mali and The Wailers but that would've meant a 1:30 a.m. start and subsequent need to wander back to bed (or do something else) as a Stills-avoidance mechanism, which would be fine if I wasn't keen on catching Widespread Panic around 8:30. No, rise as usual, catch Weir & Co. and follow that with Widespread Panic and the Allman Brothers Band.
I could have the same issues tomorrow, when Dr John and The Word (featuring John Medeski, Robert Randolph and North Mississippi Allstars) are playing in the Wailers and Stills slots...
Diplomacy and maintenance of domestic harmony demands I do this in the office with the door shut and the volume well down, but with the Moogis mini-window showing blue skies and three blokes of a certain age seemingly in catchup mode in the foreground, yep, we've got a live feed folks.
6:28 Seems like a good time to duck outside to see if The Weekend Australian has arrived (it hadn't) and when I get back the point of view has changed and we're apparently looking out from the stage. Dylan's intoning when you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Easter time too... over various bangs and thumps.
6:30 Another change of view, side stage this time. Wasserman's acoustic bass is lying on its side. Momentary glitch and an upswell of crowd noise, a couple of tuning noises and we're live on stage. Vision freezes as the music stages a slinky sidle into Maggie's Farm, Weir playing acoustic slide, and making a pretty fair if basic fist of it. Vision continues to hang intermittently, but the music flows along just fine. Since I'm watching in full screen mode on the desktop I'm minus the handy time references I get on the TV (that's why they're temporarily absent, folks).
Weir takes a slide solo, and it looks like he may well have taken a leaf out of the Lowell George book and uses a wrench socket as a slide. Well that's what it looks like.
Seems like we're having some sound issues as Weir reminisces about a previous appearance at the venue, though he's not sure which band we were.
Me & My Uncle
Friend Of The Devil (vision and sound not quite in sync, but no big deal)
A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Loose Lucy
A Jerry track that I'm unfamiliar with. At this point I'm splitting my attention between the paper (arrived a few minutes ago during Lucy, which has never been a great favourite) and the screen, and pause to reflect that Weir's semi-solo act is better than I'd expected. Wasserman's a class act. Maybe that's the difference.
When I Paint My Masterpiece, then Weir switches from acoustic to electric.
Tomorrow Never Knows