Somehow, magic emerges from the process. And everybody knows that the source of the magic is the music. I know that’s a cliché, but nevertheless, it’s just a fact, a fact that’s as factual as E=MC squared or what-have-you. I can’t state it plainer than that. Some people talk about “community” or whatever, but that’s just a political word. Nothing against politics — politics can be a great source for wonderfully powerful songs. But when the music works, that’s what makes the real sense of community happen. Everybody feeling the same thing at the same time, invisible tendrils of emotion stringing out from somewhere in the core of the musician, creeping into, yes, the souls of the people in the audience, fucking with their insides, messing with their way of being in the world. Changing them. I’m not into the stuff that soothes the savage breast. I want to see those savage breasts get all hot and bothered and get savage-er. That’s my agenda.
That’s why I’m so careful about working with the right musicians. Of course, almost all musicians wanna be rich and famous and get laid with people they have no right to be laid with. That’s a given. But I can instantly spot the ones for whom that’s the only reason they’re into the music. The careerists. The ones who are solely concerned with “making it,” whatever “it” is. I only work with people who expand my ideas about what people can think or feel, kind of illuminating their little corner of existence, without shame or hesitancy. That’s the key to what makes me truly great.
And the musicians need to be able to embrace the festival-ness of festivals, the possibility that someone’s, anyone’s, life could be thrown sideways, just by the fact of being there, even accidentally, for just a verse of one song.
I remember seeing that brilliant old hustler, Leonard Cohen, at the Glastonbury Festival, the biggest festival in England. The drunk Jew Buddhist monk had spent so much time on some mountain, avoiding thoughts of worldly materialism, that the World, in the form of his minx of a manager, had stolen all his lucrative publishing rights away from him, and he had to hit the road to make a buck. I don’t think he gave a shit where they put him, as long as he could make up for the five million the bitch had run off with. He’d made the mistake of fucking her, of course, so it served him right. Never play with your food, kids.
At first, it seemed like a shamefully bad idea to put the Poet Rabbi in front of 150,000 drunk, druggy, muddy English people. You could have got a similar auditory experience by sitting at home, putting on a Leonard Cohen record, then phoning up a bunch of rowdy football hooligans and inviting them over for a keg of lager. “I’ve seen the future, brother, it is murder,” intoned the low, raspy voice, and his young, stupid audience seemed to be there for some kind of jaunty illustration of the lyric.
Then an odd thing happened. The band slowly summoned up (Cohen’s band never could be described as “kicking in” to a song) the opening of “Hallelujah.” I’d forgotten that mainstream English people love Jeff Buckley, for some reason, and that Buckley’s one good recording was a cover of that. Immediately, the chavs started to hoot and scream, as if “Wonderwall” were coming on the stereo. And they ALL sang along. Every last philistine, drugged-out, tracksuit-sporting, ballcap-backwards one of that enormous throng lifted their voices and swayed together for a cold, broken Hallelujah. You could see a moment of surprise flicker across Cohen’s giant ancient eagle face on the superscreens before he also gave himself completely to the Song, to the Word. It was strange and unexpected and beautiful. Festivals are like that.
Later that night, back at the circus tent where I was stationed along with a burlesque troop, assorted jugglers, a midget swing band, and a guy who lifted weights with his testicles, Gordon the DJ and I came across a well-dressed man, lying muddy and comatose, face-down against our perimeter fence.
We roused him to make sure that he wasn’t dead. “Hey, buddy!”
“Hallelujah.”
“Saw the Cohen show, didja?”
“Nnnng. Hallelujah.”
“You all right there, mate?”
“All right? No I’m not. I’m a corporate head-hunter. I’m just making money for no purpose. I’ve been wasting my life! I’d rather die than go on as I have.”
Festivals are good for that kind of thing.
HERE COMES TEAM FUN
AT ANY RATE, ALTHOUGH MANNY would never have been booked into Calgary on his own, he had enough of a name in folk circles that if I vouched for him and made it clear that he was there as a sideman, Leslie Stark, the artistic director of the Calgary Folk Festival, was willing to tolerate his presence. She has a thing for weird shit, anyway.
I woke when I hit the back of the seat in front of me. I’d been lying lengthwise on the back bench of the minivan, taking a beer-nap.
“Mother fuck!” Jenny shouted.
Mykola was at the wheel, his panicky deep breathing interfering with his attempts to calm us. “It’s (gasp!) ooookay, everybody (gasp!).”
Jenny leaned over to take a look at the speedometer. “One-sixty! In a fucking minivan! You crazy fuck! You slow this thing down!”
“It’s (gasp!) okay, everyone! Just caaaaalm down. There was a deer or something, but we avoided it, it’s long gone now.”
Jenny’s a person who’s mastered that delightful alchemy of conquering fear by instantaneously transmuting it into anger.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll fucking punch you in the mouth right now if you don’t fucking slow down.”
“I think ya better listen to the lady.”
Mykola is not tough. Not that way, anyway. He slowed down, pumping the brakes erratically.
“Sorry, everybody, I guess I’m just sorta nervous, excited about this festival, so I wasn’t watching the speed. Sorry, sorry.”
Jenny relaxed a bit. “Just fucking watch that speed. I don’t know what you’re in such a fucking rush for, we’re probably not even gonna get to play.”
I wiped the beery eye-gunk away. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, what the fuck are we gonna do when they figure out that Athena’s not coming?”
“Look, I told you, I got that all figured out.”
“Yeah, right. I’m beginning to figure out your deal a bit more, Ouiniette. You know, Cole Dixon says he spent Canada Day in a sports bar in Charlottetown that didn’t even know he was coming, and he wound up having to buy pitchers for his band, his band that he flew all the way over from fucking England to do the gig. And they didn’t even have music at that bar anymore!”
“Look, that was a misunderstanding that was actually completely sorted out between me and Cole.”
“Oh yeah. He said you demanded a booking fee for that gig.”
“Well, listen, you’re here, aren’t you, so unless you have a different plan, let’s go with mine.”
“Which is what, exactly? They want Athena, not us.”
“They don’t know what they fucking want. They ‘want’ good music, as in, they are in a position of ‘want’ for it, seeing as how their headliners are Great Big C U
