so what's so momentous and epochal about all that? yeah, nothing really i guess. but it was fun. i'm just going to tell you about saturday now, and then maybe i'll write about my adventures with michael in a little minute. can't you detect this renewed sense of audience i'm writing with?

hearsal intil four, which put us right on time for arriving at worthstock + kielbasafest. there was a lot of good food, especially the strawberries, and the pineapple i grilled. not very good drinks though. and all the lovely people were there. i sat on the grass with them. more like i flitted back and forth among them (in rebecca's words "bopping around and being ross.")

like a parent whose child has been unjustly wrested away from her, i felt a slightly defensive vested concern and pride for the festival. i tried to encourage folks to dance as appropriate, and got a nice clump for one el guapo song (they kept alternating between dancy and non-dancy, which made it hard.) then i went home to get some cds.

some people said (and i think some of them were being sort of sincere) that they enjoyed the 'tween-set music more than the sets themselves. in some ways i did too. if you're interested, it was (after piper at the gates and joe's garage, which i did not supply) candi staton, musicology, the first call and response album, and the erlend øye dj-kicks disc, which get more fantastic every time i hear it.

so nice that it was actually in worth this year, and the big stage was fun even though a bit preposterous (for everyone except for alo brasil.) palomar especially looked so tiny up there. and we were so far away from them. but they were cute anyway.

cex, who when the final lineup materialized was the only remnant of my marginal-marginal involvement in booking, was frustrating and complicated. i was particularly amped for his set, not just because of that but because i believe he is one of the best performers i've seen. so i was going around telling everyone how great he is and that they should move up and be people for him, even though i figured he'd be able to get them up and into it without my help. and i told him beforehand i was sorry about how sparse and low-energy the crowd was at that point.

he started with his futzy electronic whizzery, and an eager bunch of us moved stageward and dancily - including my sister, and green-shirted get-up kid cob rox, and bestofall ben (stef said "i like it when ben and ross are together," and so do we.) i really liked the music he was playing - pretty straight idmmy, all instrumental except for a revamped "kill me" hook - it was much more complex and curious than the idm of his early cds. if this is what his next record sounds like, i can't wait to hear it. but it wasn't at all crowd-pumping, festivally, exciting music. (although i'll admit it was keen for relaxing back in the grass.) worse, he barely said anything to the audience and made basically no effort to engage them as a performer.

you have to understand, cex is a fking brilliant, if [endearingly?] erratic entertainer - i've seen him crazy on point, down in the crowd, taking his clothes off, putting a drill to his head, kicking audience-participation freestyles about mr. peanut, cocky as whatever. if he'd been interested in it, he could have had the worthstockers on their feet and eating out of his hairy wrist. i mean, it's cool and all that he wasn't feeling that this day. he made music for a while, and that was his contract (i'm assuming.) if i had been any degree more involved in the festival, i would have contacted him in advance and asked him to do some of his hiphop stuff.

but my friends and i did ask him, nicely, if he would do some or at least freestyle or even sing something. we were dancing for him and being good little fans and he almost seemed not to notice. meanwhile, the rest of the audience was growing more non-enraptured. (eventually he sorta-caved and did one of the b-cuts from the kind of mediocre maryland mansions [why did all the critics love that so best?])

ryan, if you're reading this - unlikely since this was a few days ago now, but you did find this site once before, when you linked to my review of td&h. i was the mustachioed guy in the pink+blue berry shirt. i don't know if you remember me, but actually i talked to you at the north star bar last year about playing at swarthmore. i did enjoy your set here, but it also made me sad that your performance was so apathetic (relatively speaking).

if you (all) are interested, you should read what rjyan himself wrote about the gig. laura thought it was sadd how emphatically (undercuttingly) he says he's not unhappy. i'll testify that he seemed really very happy when he was here - he did seem to be enjoying himself when he was making his noise, he just wasn't overly concerned about the rest of us doing same. well whatever. and for the curious, this is what i wrote about the first and second times i saw him, last april and the april before (so we were a bit late this year, maybe that's the problem.)

annywizzay. . . so it was still lush and green and hummy. the sun lowered. folks left and came back with sweatshirt jackets and vittles. i took multiple heaping plastic spoon-overfuls of cookies'n'cream ice cream and ate them like impatient lollipops. i had a can of yueng. i watched dee and lillie penny lie on their backs and compare lengths and belly buttons. rainer maria yelped and made us happy. i kept track with the glorious moon. i played some cards.

then (well, a little later than that), alo brasil got on and the place went frenzy, as planned. front and center and dancing. (not me - everyone.) it was such a relief when they played that (awesome) funky number with the birimbao, and gave everyone a break from the syncopation which is not natural for most of us to be dancing to.

the set order from that point on (massive infectious samba orquestra > lone strummy folkster > blah what-trance [okay, the dude's album is called "tribal realm"]) was the nonsequiturest imaginiable, although it made a curious logic. i have to hand it to the incredible dmcc though: his crowd-manipulation introduction of ian thomas was absolutely brilliant. ian's set was real good too.

yes, and we left not long after the moda started (i did give him a chance), and went to the wsrn party, which was kind of amazing. if i had been djing, i would have been unhappy with the number of people there, but as a dancer it was a perfect small group with all of olde club to bop around in. flav played perhaps nothing but james, george, stevie, and sly all night. what a good idea! i chicken-fighted with audrey (she on gerrit's shoulders, me on joe's.)

that's about all i have to say about saturday.

i'm just a prisoner of your good lovin'