My apologies for the lack of a column last week as I was busier than I’d anticipated (no surprise) running around the Rothbury Festival in western Michigan photographing bands, chatting up old friends, grabbing free drinks and ice cream from the media area/artist lounge (the real reason I do all this?), and trying to take in as much as I could while still trying to actually enjoy myself. Rothbury, like Bonnaroo and some of the other, larger hippie music festivals is practically a free-for-all of hedonism. Last year my friend Dave witnessed a couple having sex near one of the stages surrounded by onlookers. This year I didn’t hear about any public sex, but did see a number of naked folks at the Dead performance on July 4th, as well as numerous women whose torsos were clad only in paint. More than sex or nudity (yes, you know where this is going – fill in the blank: sex, _____, and rock & roll) this year’s Rothbury Festival was a veritable smorgasbord of mind-altering substances. This list ran the gamut from booze and run-of-the-mill marijuana to nitrous oxide balloons and psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA/ecstasy, and DMT and even much harder drugs including cocaine and oxycontin.
Please note that neither I nor MOTORCITYBLOG
advocates, condones, or endorses drug use
I’m simply reporting on the scene at Rothbury.
You didn’t even need to go looking as all one needed to do was hang out in their own campsite in the general campground and the drugs would come to you. In fact, I was getting ready to turn in for the night/morning at about 4am last Thursday when I heard the unmistakable hissing sound of an unsilenced tank of nitrous oxide or laughing gas coming from nearby. It turned out that some d-bags were going around selling balloons of the stuff drawing crowds of kids wherever they went like dreadlocked hippie Pied Pipers. After politely asking him to move on sooner than later (I got tired of asking people not to sit on my car and not to throw their used balloons on the ground around my tent), he glared at me and said in a harsh and mocking tone, “What the hell, man! This is a drug festival! People come here to do drugs, what do you think is going on?” To which I replied, “Well, I thought this was a music festival where some people choose to take drugs.” He then asked me what I did for a living, and after I replied, “I’m a scientist,” he said, “Well this is what I do, and I’ve been doing it for thirteen years, and I’ll do it ‘til I die!” I could only think that it would likely be sooner than later.
I’ve long been fascinated by the connection between drugs and music, particularly with young people. From the days of ancient Egyptian "festival of drunkenness," to early jazz pioneers sipping weed and some shooting heroin, drugs and music seem to go hand in hand. It seems that homo sapiens is evolutionarily predisposed to altering our minds with substances; evidence of such is found the world over in cultures from primitive to modern. What’s more, music has also been used as a means by which to transform consciousness whether it’s for a rite of passage into adulthood, chanting Sanskrit in meditation, or as part of a healing ceremony. To take that idea one step further, many cultures have combined music and drugs in these ceremonial settings ranging from the ayahuasca ceremonies of the Amazon basin tribes to peyote rites of the American Navajo where chanting, music, and rhythms are combined with powerful hallucinogenic drugs to yield beneficial effects rather than just for the sake of a party and seeing some cool visions.
Our culture seems so divorced from the dictates of both our cultural and evolutionary lineage, that we have essentially repressed, compartmentalized, and largely criminalized what is in all appearances a very natural human desire.
The messages that are generated are essentially, “Alcohol is the only acceptable recreational drug,” and “Marijuana is bad, even if seemingly everybody has tried it at one point. ” But I digress – as a researcher, I have deep loathing and resentment for public policy grounded not in science, but in the politics of fear, and the U.S. drug policy of the last 40 years is a big example of such antiquated thinking. Mostly what really gets me about the Controlled Substances Act is that we have literally millions of people, mostly young people, doing drugs, the long-term effects of which (not to mention the mechanisms of action, or what goes on in the brain) are very poorly understood because of the laws. In essence, any drug that has no medical value and a high risk of abuse is not a legal candidate for human research. I’m not necessarily saying that we should return to the days of the CIA and project MK-ULTRA where the government dosed people with LSD without their knowledge to observe their behaviors. Rather, methodologically rigorous, scientifically sound research is needed both to understand how these drugs work on the brain and the consequences of such drug use over time. Additionally, I’m incensed that the war on drugs is like abstinence only sex-education: the idea that if we don’t educate people on a topic (sex, drugs) they won’t want to do it is as naïve as it is irresponsible. End of rant.
The headlining acts on Friday and Saturday at Rothbury were String Cheese Incident and The Dead (formerly the Grateful Dead until Jerry Garcia’s passing in 1995 when they became ‘The Other Ones’ til 2003). These two bands have mass appeal for the hippie scene, which is synonymous in some circles with the ‘drug scene.’ In fact a number of my friends belong to the clean and sober fan groups of these bands – either because they were already in recovery, or because they just went way overboard with the drugs and partying. Those in the latter boat are now in recovery but need to learn how to enjoy seeing the music they love performed without chemical aid. It’s a great thing that these folks can go to a show and despite the swirl of pot smoke and freaks with pupils so dilated their irises are barely visible, these sober fans can have a safe harbor and even have meetings during set breaks. But most of the crowd was just plain out of their gourds and I’m not really sure on what. The Grateful Dead really got their start as the house band in Ken Kesey’s Acid Test parties and their music evolved from the most conducive music for LSD trips to today’s modern performances where only half the audience is on LSD. No, seriously, I don’t really think that half of Rothbury was tripping on acid during the Dead show, but then again… Much of the modern scene with bands like String Cheese Incident, Phish, Widespread Panic, and older bands like the Allman Brothers evolved out of this idea – combining drugs and music into a modern rite.
Rothbury’s producers have also embraced psychedelic art installations as is evidenced by the festival’s famed Sherwood Forest which sits smack in the middle of the festival grounds. In fact, Rothbury’s Sherwood Forest is a psychedelic wonderland seemingly designed as a giant chill out zone for people tripping out on drugs. Replete with color-changing lights moving through the trees, fluorescent-colored shapes twisting in the wind, a hidden stage, and an ensemble of buskers and performers moving through the woods entertaining people and messing with their heads, the Forest has proven to be one of the festival’s most talked-about features. I think it’s a good thing to have some kinds of spaces like this at festivals and raves because 1) I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea for people to do drugs and hang out in crowds, and 2) people are going to do what they want (remember, I think it’s part of our human nature), so you might as well make it as safe as possible.
Enough about drugs and rock and roll for now - I could go on for a long time. What can I say? Brevity has never been my strong suit.
Here’s something I ran across that you might want to check out if you’re nerdy or cool enough. This group of Stanford students made the coolest and dorkiest hip hop neuroscience parody I’ve ever seen here http://www.scivee.tv/node/11181 to the tune of Wu-Tang Clan's "Gravel Pit” – check it out and be edutained or entercated or something.
My pics of some choice things going on around town this weekend:
Friday - 7/10
High strung CD release party @ Berkley Front on Friday
Saturday - 7/11
Greensky Bluegrass @ the Magic Bag
The Square Boys @ the Rock Dog Music Fest in Livonia
Sunday - 7/12
Tom Jones @ Freedom Hill (aahhwww yeeeaaahhhh) – You CAN keep your hat on.
Have a great weekend y’all!!
WERD!!
-drew