Wow. Poo Poo Man, Sir Nose, George Clinton… wow. All photos by me. Flashlight, indeed!

Surprised as I was by how good Dumpstaphunk was, I knew P-Funk was the tops. The band specializes in crazy funk, pointless jams and repetitive, suggestive chants. It works though, because every member of the band comes on stage believing everything they sing, and it ends up being the closest thing to a minstrel show in the 21st century (save for all the racism).

I have seen George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars back in 2006 at the House of Blues in Chicago (it was the same band. For all of you who don’t know, P-Funk is basically made up, at any given concert, of any of the members who decide to show up) and Parliament-Funkadelic (sans Clinton) at Urbana’s Sweetcorn Festival in 2007. I know what to expect, that it would be funky, complete with many members and crazy outfits.

The band started a little late, but it wasn’t terrible. Security for Summer Camp told us that we were only allowed to shoot the first three songs of the band…which ended up lasting 40 minutes (remember when I said “pointless jams”? I wasn’t joking). During that time, Clinton did not even appear on stage, which was kind of a gyp to the photographers.

Also, let me clarify when I say “pointless jams.” Maybe that isn’t the best phrase for it, but their songs go long, and meander with solos, chants and grooves. The musicianship is never less than top notch, and while it can sometimes be an exercise in testing one’s patience, they are always great shows.

This show was no different. The band came on and introduced the audience to the world of P-Funk. This includes ridiculous phrases such as “get off your (butt) and jam” or “it would be ludicrous to think that we are new to this, we do this, this is what we do.” These phrases were repeated and repeated, and by the end, the audience had no choice but to believe them.

The band’s music was high-energy throughout, with Garry “Starchild” Shider orchestrating a lot of it while Clinton wasn’t on stage. Oh, did I mention he was in a diaper?

P-Funk grooved along until Clinton finally decided to get on stage. When he did, he did it slowly. The man is 66 years old, but I don’t think that was why he was moving slowly…I think it was another reason…something that was referenced many times through their set…drugs. The band is all about the marijuana, which they explicitly asked for on a number of occasions.

When Clinton did do anything, it was through small gestures. These small gestures got the crowd so excited though. It was almost as if they were in awe of just seeing him. Clinton didn’t sing much, and when he did sing or talk, it was in a very gruff voice, barely able to hold itself up. The years of drug abuse and whatever else he did have taken a toll.

Still, seeing him was entertaining, and believe it or not, those were minor quibbles. It is obvious that these days the band itself is the show, and they are a funky band. The band tore through “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker” and “Flash Light” almost completely on their own, and the crowd ate it up. Singers Kendra Foster and Belita Woods showed their chops off, especially Foster when she sang a slowed down version of “Bounce 2 This” from the 2006 album How Late Do You Have 2BB4UR Absent?”

The band played for a solid two hours, leaving the stage about 10 minutes late. At the end, it was just Clinton, who just seemed very happy. As the crew started to break down the instruments, he lead the audience through chants of “we want the funk, give up the funk” and “get off your (butt) and jam.”

The show is a hard to one to review, so look at the photos that will be posted by tomorrow to see what was really experienced.

At 2:30, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk came on. Ivan Neville is the son of Aaron Neville of Neville Brothers, and he has played keyboards with The Rolling Stones and was a member of the Spin Doctors for a little while, in addition to having some acclaim under his own name.

With Dumpstaphunk, Neville has created a bona fide funk outfit with some ace musicians, including his cousin Ian. The band started off strong with a cover of Sly & the Family Stone’s “I Cannot Make It” and it only got better from there. The group often incorporated two bassists, Nick Daniels and Tony Hall, and their interplay was essential to the music. There were even a couple times where they got to battling each other, and the results were too funkily dangerous.

The band grooved along for an hour, and attracted a nice crowd throughout. This was party music, and each member seemed like they were having a blast on stage. When the group got to the song “Put It in the Dumpster,” they had the crowd in the palm of their hand, having them chant that phrase as often as they could.

Ivan Neville’s keyboards were essential to the group, as he took many organ solos throughout that were always interesting and never superfluous. When the set was over, it felt like it was too short. This was funk done right, the kind that makes you dance. It was dirty, grimy and all around a good time. George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic had a hard act to follow, because Dumpstaphunk were accomplished and setting the bar rather high.

There were a few key acts we wanted to see on Sunday, so before that Face and I broke down our tent and moved all of our stuff to the ca. After we saw what we wanted to see, we were ready to split. It had been a great weekend so far, and even though we were excited for George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic and The New Pornographers, we were beat (and I was, and still am, very sunburned).

I was also excited to see Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, because a) awesome name, and b) I didn’t want to miss a member of the Neville family. But their performance wasn’t until 2:30, so Face and I had time to wander. We watched a little bit of the band Euforquestra at the Starshine Stage, which really didn’t do much for me. Then we wandered over to the Sunshine Stage, where all the acts we wanted to see where at.

At 1 p.m., the Bloomington, Ill. band Backyard Tire Fire played. I went to Illinois State University for two years, and while I was there, I heard a lot about this band. I had never seen them though, so I figured why not. The band came on, and for a relatively unknown band outside of Bloomington, they attracted a sizable crowd. The group’s roots rock(with emphasis on rock) was surprisingly refreshing to hear. Their lyrics were simplistic and kind of stuck to the cliche’s you would hear a roots rock group sing about (girls, driving, drinking and everything in between), but the music and melodies were often so good you forgot about them.

The drunken (or kind of drunken?) escapades lasted about an hour, and they kept the energy up throughout. The band’s covers of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” were faithful and were nice additions to a set of tunes that could have stood up on its own. It was a nice surprise to see something I wasn’t expecting.

After O.A.R., I wanted to see moe. at least once (they played five sets during the festival, so the odds were in my favor), so Face and I made it over to the Moonshine Stage to watch them. When Face and I got to the front of the stage to shoot them, we realized the crowd was crazy. Flaming Lips had a good crowd, and sure they were nuts, but I have to hand it to moe., they had them beat. The whole audience was with them, in whatever state they were in at the time.

The band started, and off they went. I think in the 105 minutes they played, they got through about five solid songs (one of which was Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” which was awesome).

Maybe I’m not the biggest fan of moe., but it seemed like they were a little off. A lot of times, their jams went nowhere, and while there were sections of songs that were cool, only the opener “St. Augustine” really grabbed my attention. The band was on, they were focused, and the music was intense. They were all on the same wavelength, playing as hard and as good as they could. The set started on such a high that it was impossible to top it, and unfortunately they didn’t.

The crowd ate it up though. Every minute of it, in whatever state they were in (altered or otherwise). Seriously, that was one of the best crowds I have ever seen at a show. There were balloons, blown-up animals and lots of other things going high above their heads (as well as some smoke…a lot of smoke…). It really was a good way to end Saturday night (oh, last thing, moe.’s light show was really really good), and was good to be able to relax a little bit before going to bed and such.

Plus, Sunday had Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic and The New Pornographers. Stay tuned…

By the graces of Warner Brothers Records and the Flaming Lips, I was able to sit down interview the bass player for the Flaming Lips, Michael Ivins. Their show was tonight as well, and the review and debacle will be posted soon. For now, here is the interview:

Eric: How did the Flaming Lips get to be a festival band?

Michael: I think with a lot of things we do, it comes out of dumb luck. [Pause] Ummm…not that you have prepared answers, but it’s sometimes things you think about a lot, so you can rattle them off, but I don’t think I’ve thought about it. We do it so much, and I think “Sure, we’re doing this thing” but I remember when we first started doing these sorts of festivals, it was purely just, for lack of a better word, “jam band” festivals. I’m not sure if right around that time it seemed like it was, not changing, but rather diversifying. People asked “why are you doing these festivals?” and I would always bring up Europe of having this long tradition and of having these sorts of festivals. I think in its first incarnation, with the first three or four Lollapaloozas, they tried to take that idea of Glastonbury or Reading from Europe and do it here and have it travel around because the states are so big. I think that’s what put people off for a long time. Not that there haven’t been festivals, but you can’t see me doing air quotes on the tape machine, but this idea that it’s becoming a sort of a tradition, especially Bonnaroo and Coachella and Lollapalooza having it not tour the country. It’s a huge three day event, with a million people showing up for three days or whatever the outrageous number of people that show up is.

I think it was at a Bonnaroo that we played and for some reason, people just liked it. It wasn’t like we changed anything or did anything different, but I think as far as fitting into a jam…well I don’t know how to say it because I really haven’t thought about it. I don’t want to be disparaging to people who like jam bands, and again I put that in air quotes, because even meeting some bands like Midlake would do a lot of the festival circuit. But there seems to be some sort of split in the jam band community. Some would be going for sort of the Grateful Dead or Phish route, and some were going for more of the Pink Floyd. Nothing wrong with either one of them, but it seems like even inside the whole community, for lack of a better word, it was starting to diversify, just as all music was starting to diversify.

What we found at festivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella was this diversity of music, where you could see Gov’t Mule to George Clinton to go to Disco Biscuits to Flaming Lips to whoever else is there. It’s just a wide range of music, and that seemed to be, as opposed to the Warped Tour where it’s just one genre of music. There’s nothing wrong with that either, but that diversity is what we’ve always liked. Here, it ends up being like The Beatles’ White Album as an actual festival, where you get all sorts of stuff. And if you don’t like one thing, you can go across the field and check something else out and get turned on to something that you wouldn’t have in the first place. I think that in some ways that happened to us at Bonnaroo. I think some people who didn’t know who we were or what to think came and saw our show. I think the way our show has evolved sort of lends itself to this setting.

I think it’s cool that America has the beginnings of a tradition. There are people who went to Reading in the 60s and now they take their kids as a shared experience. They are 50 with their 20 year olds, or even younger. It’s one of the best shared experiences you have, whether it’s family or friends or your made-up family to come and do something like this. Especially this one, all the tents are right here. A lot of the festivals have the campground to the side and you come to the festival, but this is cool. You just are walking right through stuff.

Eric: Well, with knowing that, what’s different about playing a festival than, say, a show at a theatre in Chicago?

Michael: I think it’s different. I don’t think one’s better, but we just like playing in front of people. That’s our thing, otherwise we wouldn’t be out. It just depends; there are some things you can do. We always try to squish a much bigger show into a container, but there is something crazy about being outside. There is the potential for the crowd to be an unlimited amount of people, and once you’re in here, you’re outside. That has, for the audience, a bit of freedom, especially when you are camping. When the show’s over, you can just roll into bed, as opposed to the Aragon where you have to make the trek home. It’s different. Also, they sound different, so there are different aspects to that.

For our show, I don’t think we try not to let that limit us. We’ve walked into places where we ask ourselves how we are going to fit this in here, and we sort of cram it all in and can still have fun with the confetti and balloons. I think we are always seeing how far we can go, whether it’s outside or inside. Obviously, there are differences, like you aren’t going to get wet at the Aragon, and it was pouring down rain earlier this morning, but I have a feeling that once we get to play, the clouds may even part. It always happens when we play. We have had it to where it’s time for us to play and the rain stops, and the second we play the last note, it starts raining.

Eric: Does that make you think?

Michael: Not really, it’s just a coincidence, but it’s kind of crazy. Also, this is the first show we have played since New Year’s. We have also been finishing up the Christmas on Mars movie, which we are going to premiere at Sasquatch. We are going to build our own tent, and we have a 5.1 sound system. We spent quite a bit of time working on that during the first part of this year.

Eric: What’s the mentality behind the band setting up your own equipment?

Michael: It is our way. I know, and I don’t have anything against it, because I know people are going to do what they want and I am not saying our way is better or worse, but we are used to doing it, from the old days, where you roll in and set up your gear. I think some of it has a weird specialized thing about it, especially with the sound. We know what’s going on, so why wouldn’t we set it up? We’ve always liked being part of the ambience. We roll in here at 8 in the morning, and why would we just stay on the bus or roll into Peoria? You’re out here, we can go out and take a walk and see what’s going on. Just to be connected in that way, instead of playing for an hour and a half and show up 20 minutes beforehand and then leave. Is that fun?

Eric: But some have the mentality that people get into music just to not get a full-time job. With the way you guys work, it is a full-time job.

Michael: Well, whether you are a journalist or whatever, it’s work. We happen to have jobs we really like, and I think that’s more of the point. If you get a job in accounting, and you like it, you win, because a lot of people don’t get to do what we like, and we like what we do. Everything about it, and it’s just not playing, you find out that playing is that much, and I am holding my fingers very close together. All this stuff, the setup, that’s all part of it. We come out here, and it’s not to have a good time playing with each other. It’s cool, we do, but that’s not why we’re here. We are here to put on a show for an audience. There is so much stuff vying for your attention. You can go see a band, buy an Xbox, go see a movie, or stay home and surf the internet.

There is so much to do these days, and that’s why we spend a lot of time before we go out on the road. It’s not just rehearsing, because we don’t want to get up here and find out a guitar falls apart, or an amp falls apart or the video screen doesn’t work. It’s not that we’re control freaks, but the more you can contain and oversee at the very least, the more you know it works, it’s probably going to work, and if something doesn’t work , you can know that you did everything possible, instead of turning around and putting your hands on your hips and say “Hey, put me down.”

Eric: Election in ’08, what can the Flaming Lips do as a band, if anything?

Michael: I think in a lot of ways, we are preaching to the converted. I think the people that come see different bands are interested in different cultures, kinds of food and lifestyles, people that are young or keep an open mind. I think there’s a contingency of the free thinkers, air quotes again, who don’t vote. That’s a problem. Go and vote, even if it’s just in the presidential election, be a part of what’s going on. I think after a while it becomes that we are just people. I know what I’m doing and I know the choices I’m making, because I am curious. That actually, if somebody is reading this, just be curious, go on the internet and get information on stuff. I happen to be a big fan of the internet. I’ll think of a question, and I can get the answer right now.

What I’m starting to see a little bit, and I know younger kids who might not have families or be thinking of children, but me and my wife are taking a big role in raising our niece. She’s just finished preschool and my wife volunteered helping out at the preschool and stuff. Big forest vision is great and looking at the presidential election is great, but there are a lot of things in your own neighborhood. What are your schools doing? That is just as big of a deal as getting out of Iraq. Instead of rebuilding our country, we should be fixing our country. From what I can tell, there seems to be a systematic gutting of the public school system, pushing it to home schooling or private schooling or religious schooling. I happen to be a big proponent of the public school system. There’s the whole idea that teachers don’t get paid enough, and if you look at it one way if that’s a problem you get another job. But you find out a lot of these people are teachers because they love it.

I don’t know what we as a band can do. Wayne can present our case, which we are all basically on the same page, just sometimes it gets a little silly with four guys onstage yelling and screaming. I think it comes down to avenues like this. I think a lot of people do know. I think either way it’s fine. There are aspects of Hilary Clinton I like, and there’s a lot to Obama I really like. I’d be fine with either one, but there’s the element of the dynasty aspect of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton happening that maybe with Obama that may be good to have a fresh start. But people shouldn’t vote to think they will get a Democrat in or whatever and think that gas prices will go down or the war is going to end anytime soon.

That’s why, and I know Wayne onstage and in interviews makes a big point of it being all about you with a capital “Y” and the people around you. I think if people can start thinking more locally, and thinking about things, where you shop in stores with local produce or farmer’s market. I think naysayers who say ‘oh, changing light bulbs doesn’t do anything’, but I think even doing something like that is on the path of thinking about what you’re doing, and I think if you at least can be thinking all the time about what you’re doing. Live in the moment, and I think if people are doing that, it makes people nicer. If you think about what you’re doing, then you know and other people know if you are nice or if you are an asshole. If you think about what you’re doing, and you go ahead and do things that, say, Dick Cheney do, that’s just an evil man, but everyone knows where he stands. Think about what you’re doing, because there’s nothing worse than someone who’s evil by accident. That’s the worst thing.

Eric: Have you been listening to any new music?

Michael: You know, it’s been a little bit of a genre change, especially since our niece is old enough to go places. We started off around Christmas, and ballet is a new format. This year, I happened to be home for the Cincinnati ballet season and saw five ballets and really enjoyed them. I got to see a live orchestra play most of the music each time. I actually have an appreciation. Our niece loves The Nutcracker, so we have the CD in the car and I know it by heart now. A lot of the music is really great, and that kind of spurred us to listen to more classical music around the house as well.

I don’t dig as deep either. I go through phases since I’ve become a fan of music. There’s catching up, and there’s the new stuff, and there’s the dry area, and then you dig back further or find other stuff. I think I’ve been watching of TV shows and movies.

Eric: What’s your favorite TV show?

Michael: My favorite is Battlestar Galactica. I’m a big sci-fi fan. And, just speaking of the whole everything vying for your attention, the guy we do our records with, Dave Fridmann, he’s a big videogame fan, he loves playing them. I sort of play in the studio, and he’s got every of them at the house and three in the studio. Now it’s all gone online, and Call of Duty came out. I would play in the studio and think I should just get one of those, so I’ve been playing a lot lately. I’m not great, but I know a lot of people like to play video games. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot of.