It's been a lot of concert recaps here lately. Well, no other shows coming up for me anytime soon, so eventually it'll be back to ruminations on soy and birth control pills. In the meantime...

I got there early, of course. The weather was very fine. (No hail this time. I brought sunscreen but didn't really need it.) I'd wanted to make it to the 6-string social (people bring their guitars and then just sit around and play songs together), but I was too late: when I got to the gazebo there was this band of three teenagers getting ready to play. They were pretty horrible, at least the vocalist was, so I went back toward the main stage and sat down to watch the Buddy Miller Band instead.

When that was over I moved up to the front (which was also, happily, in the shade). People were mostly sitting down while the crew got the stage ready for Geno Delafose (& French Rockin' Boogie). People were milling all around the stage and I spotted Greg Lisher, and after a bit Jonathan Segel came out too and started bustling around in his corner. I was wondering how long CVB were going to play (because I was planning to record the show and had to decide what settings to use), so finally, after some combat between my shyness and my desire for knowledge, I got up and asked Jonathan if they were going to play 2 sets (as they have usually been doing this year). He said no, they were only allowed to play for an hour and forty-five minutes, and then he said he'd come down and talk to me. (Which disconcerted me a little: I mean, I'd already learned what I wanted to know and I didn't really need to take up any more of his time, but it was really nice of him to want to be so friendly.)

In fact, after a few minutes he did come out and sit down on the grass next to me. I really didn't know what to say. I told him I'd seen them in Paris, and he said he did remember having spoken to me before. This was very possibly true; anyway, he was very sweet. We chatted for a bit. I asked him if they were going to play Sweethearts and he said they were. He'd previously told me (in Paris) that he'd just gotten his master's in music, and now he told me that he did not get accepted to any of the PhD programs he'd applied to. That kinda stunned me: I mean, my brother-in-law was able to get into the PhD music program at Harvard. What more does Jonathan Segel need? For god's sake, he's in Camper Van fucking Beethoven! I think we can safely say that Jonathan has already contributed more to music than my brother-in-law ever will.

After a bit Jonathan went back to his business and I settled in to watch Geno. What knocked me out about his band was that there were only four guys in it, and there's this guy whose sole job is to play the washboard (at right, obviously):



Geno was adorable, by the way, and he had this funky upside-down accordion. He invited people to get up and dance: "We play better when you dance, but if you don't dance, we still play pretty good." Some people danced, most didn't. I was sitting next to a friendly, chatty lady who kept talking to me about the lady on her other side, an older lady with a sequined American flag t-shirt who had brought a folding chair. This older lady was hilarious: first she complained that the people dancing in front of her should sit down, then she got up and did a weird little dance herself. Geno & French Rockin' Boogie are a zydeco band; at one point (at least an hour into the set) this lady got up and asked them, "Are you going to play bluegrass music?" The guys in the band looked puzzled. Later, after the older lady had determined they were singing some of the songs in French, she got up again and yelled, very crabbily, "Sing in English!" "Oh my god!" I couldn't help exclaiming, "I can't believe she just said that!"

I wondered what the old sequined lady would make of CVB, but I never found out, because once Geno had finished up, people started standing up and crowding toward the front. All the Camper guys came out and started milling around as everything was set up. Gear notes: David didn't have his iBook with him; he had a rack of some other electronic-y things (but he did have the theramin). He was playing a black Jackson Surfcaster rather than the green Charvel one that he usually uses. Someone asked him where the green one was and he said he didn't like to bring two guitars for some reason. (As it turned out, maybe he should have.) Meanwhile Greg had only his Telecaster and Jonathan had no keyboard, and a Strat instead of the Rickenbacker he was playing in Europe.

Setlist:
All Her Favorite Fruit / O Death / Tania / Eye of Fatima (pt 1) / Eye of Fatima (pt 2) / Mao Reminisces about His Days in Southern China / White Riot / Wasted / Shut Us Down / Good Guys & Bad Guys / Take the Skinheads Bowling / Skinhead Stomp / One of these Days / The History of Utah / 9 of Disks / Payed Vacation: Greece / Sweethearts / Where the Hell Is Bill? / Sad Lovers Waltz / The Day that Lassie Went to the Moon / Club Med Sucks / Pictures of Matchstick Men / Tusk // L'Aguardiente

They started right in, without a lot of chatter. Jonathan was wearing an odd long, brown smock, and Victor had a UCSC Slugs cap. Later on Victor remarked on Jonathan's smock (he'd taken it off by then), calling it a dress, and David said to Jonathan, "No wonder people think you're the gay one in this band."

Greg's guitar playing blows me away. Since he didn't have his Strat, some of the songs sounded a bit different (particularly Eye of Fatima, pt 1--I knew those tremolo bars were good for something), but it was all fantastic. His fingerpicking on Sweethearts is just so utterly thrilling, and slide guitar makes me want to scream.

As usual, I was right in front of a guitar amp (can I help it if I love the guitars?), so it was really hard to hear Jonathan's violin. A woman behind me kept yelling "Jonathan, turn it up!" and I yelled "We can't hear the violin!" and Jonathan made fun of me for complaining (because I was right in front of Greg's amp, so what could I expect to hear?), but I didn't mind. They did turn him up a little bit later. Not enough though, in my opinion.

Eventually, I forget at what point, Greg did something bad to his Telecaster (it made a weird noise and he looked surprised) and he put it down and ran over and grabbed Jonathan's Strat. Meanwhile David had been having problems with his electric guitar and had to finish the show on his acoustic. So if it was kinda strange seeing Greg playing a guitar that had multicolored things dangling from it (and the words "Rev. Dr. Firebrain" printed on the back), it was completely bizarre to see David rocking so hard on Club Med Sucks on an acoustic guitar. "We broke a bunch of things up here," Victor explained; perhaps that was why they only played a 1-song encore. But I had never seen L'Aguardiente before, and it was beautiful to see Greg and Jonathan playing off each other, and Greg nodding knowingly at Jonathan, like, "Watch this!"

When it was over I asked Jonathan for the setlist, and he handed one over and smiled and said he'd see me around sometime, probably. It was a damn good time.

I have photos and a setlist scan, of course, and a couple mp3s. My recording turned out pretty well--in comparing this one to the last TMBG one I made, I learned a striking lesson about just how big a difference setting the levels properly makes--and I'm open to trades, but you might want to check out that page to find out how to get probably a better recording than what I have. The CVB community is really, really nice about giving away shows of excellent quality.

So, the Old Town School of Folk Music has provided me with TMBGx4 last December, CVB this July, the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players coming in October, and guitar classes all year round. I don't know what life would be like without it.