The Goose

Ah the post-Vegas fog... This past weekend, I attended the Vegoose Music Festival put on by the fine people at Superfly. It was a relatively last minute decision for me to go as I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hang out with my California peeps who I haven't seen in three months. JamBase was on the scene - we conducted a bunch of video interviews which will be broadcast throughout our website and then in a format that we don't even know about yet.

The festival itself was fantastic... Musical highlights for me? The Raconteurs blew most everything else away. The set was identical to the sets I saw at The Warfield and at Lollapalooza this summer but that's just it. When Jack White and crew hit the stage, they just do what they do: rock your face off. The Jim James set is tied for first place for me. It's no surprise that I love him but he has come so far from the first time I saw him perform at Slim's years ago, hiding behind his hair. Now to see him with a nice suit, singing to an adoring crowd with face clear and present... The sound bleed from the other stages was ridiculous - an acoustic performance was placed in between The Roots and Widespread Panic on the other stages. But Jim gracefully told the crowd that he was going to close his eyes and pretend that we were in a silent forest (and that we should too). Somehow, Jim's voice, his acoustic guitar, and his accompanist Carl Broemel (also from MMJ), managed to drown out the other sounds and put the people there in a beautiful trance.

Certainly there are plenty more stories to share and I will be putting together my ofoto chronicle sometime today. But I would like to share this moment which was the conclusion of the Jim James set. Jim told the crowd early in the set that the pumpkins at the front of the stage would be smashed at the end of the set and he delivered....