Three Energies to Manifest a Festival Threesome

Whether you are single in search of multiple partners or a couple looking for a playmate or two, there are vital energies to channel to actualize this fantasy into your tent or Subaru or riverbank or tree. Obviously, you do not want to scan the throbbing dancers at the stage like an iFestyBot tallying yays and nays while everyone's culminating to expand consciousness and jam-thrive a moment, yo. Enjoy the experience simply and enjoy it fully. Give into the music, celebrate and project these energies, and the sex will manifest itself.

Bangor, ME Phish Tour Opener 2013

1. Openness.

Naturally, right? If you're seeking to maximize your sexual horizons at a festival, I'm guessing you're not very close-minded. When we're open, we bring and even suck others in, inviting their beings to dance as hard as our revved-up bodies are sparkle-splurging . So if you are rolling ready raring to jump on some laps, simply put it out there; dance your out your desires and pull others in like snakes being charmed. Basically, whether it's solo you or you and your girlfriend etc. seeking steamy tentmates, don't hide it. Be overt and the overt will find you. You're at a festival, a natural haven for human wildness. Open up, let it in, and the lovers will be as free and flowing as you expand your own self to be.

2. Sexuality.

Really, sexuality is not an energy that has to be distastefully presented. We can totally project this in an inspiring and tickling way that isn't offensive or compromising; sexuality should celebrated and uninhibited, especially at events like music festivals where people want to jam without feeling judged. Nervousness and second-guessing has no place in portraying our sexuality. Though my sexuality does not present itself the same way, what could be more fulfilling than watching the topless pixies fluttering around with painted chests and daisy headdresses and palm-leaf skirts? I mean have you ever seen anyone more free?

The point is not that I necessarily want to sleep with these earth-wild spirits, but that I can appreciate their blithe freedom to beam their carefree sensuality. We definitely have to be comfortable with the unbridled sexuality of everyone (even/especially those we don't want to sleep with) to be fully comfortable with our own, which projects an accepting, warm intimacy simply in our demeanor and brings all colors of lovers into our path. Accepting all shades of personal sexuality brings us to the nonjudgmental, unhindered plane of having multiple partners and truly enjoying the multi-vibrational experience. Three- and four- and five-somes are much more likely and lovely to occur when we aren't trying to “get” something out of the partners or experience. It's not about how many orgasms we can get in a night. It's about amplifying individual sexuality through one another's, raising the collective experience into the most ecstatic it can be, bringing us to our last critical energy to exhibit in the search of multiple lovers at a music festival.

3. Ecstasy.

This is the most attractive and powerful energy we can project. When every breath is ecstatic, our whole core glows. Our entire body sweats in smiles and exalts with the bliss of uninhibited love. When we laugh, skip, hum, drum, dance, narrate a story, look into others with our real eyes, people get high on the energy at an ecstatic vibration. Like a vast majority of jammers, dancing is my plunge into ecstasy, so this energy always bursts open at festivals, inviting others into my auric field and tempting them there. In the presence of ecstasy, people cannot stay away. No one can resist the sublime contagion of inner and outer joy. When we act from our true sexual nature, not a place of possessiveness but a divine will to interconnect, we pump the environment with orgasmic glee, digging the perfect rabbit hole for others of the vibe tribe you manifest for a night, or many.

In no way am I advertising music festivals as a Craigslist-hub for orgies here. But since many jammers either encounter threesome opportunities with uncertainty, I wrote the previous post about avoiding potentially uncomfortable and compromising situations. And since many jammers are also seeking how to channel multidirectionally enthusiastic sexuality, I present you with this list of energies in the hope that we can approach omniorgasms with the most uplifting, mutually beautiful intentions that will feed the most fruitful experiences. After all, drugs are superfluous compared to the highs we can reach together.

Three Guidelines for Avoiding Unwanted Festival Threesomes with Swingin' Hippies

If you're touring or hitchhiking or hanging out with a couple or crowd of swingin' hippies, you may not know it yet, or you may be hoping they don't hit on you. There's nothing wrong with an orgy unless you feel forced into it. This creates tension and imbalance in what could be a beautiful connection, platonic or not. So follow these rules if you want to keep or make swingin' hippie friends yet do not want to engage in a sweaty tent threesome.

1. Don't take the molly.

This is paramount to resisting any sexual advances really. If you outwardly do not want to sleep with anyone, do not take this drug. Because all of a sudden, you will.

2. Don't slap the bag. Don't try the moonshine. Avoid the ice luge. And definitely turn down the tickle-my-pickle.

You might think you will be more comfortable with swingers if you kick back a few drinks, but you could lose composure and control. Blacking out is really common where people are getting more inebriated with every hour we're raging this mountain together. At least with the molly, you're a revved up, happy and cognizant participant. But if you hit the tequila, you might vaguely remember ripples of entangled bodily flashbacks in the morning. So yes the tickle-my-pickle (tequila shot chased by pickle juice shot) is exhilarating, but it's so great that especially at a festival, there's no reason to ever stop drinking them. Point being, if you are camping with some swingin' hippies you don't want to swing with, save the boxed wine and liquor for another night.

3. Keep it real.

How do you say no if you are unwilling? Well if the swingers are true heads and not free-love-pretenders, they will respect your boundaries graciously and pass you the joint like nothing happened. But, as ever with sex, people can get frustrated and pushy. Are these cats really your friends? Keep it real. If they do too, yes, they are.

Basically, if you really like hanging out with some hippies and just don't want to sleep with them, never feel obliged to. Swingin' hippies can be the most providing, gregarious, loving people on this festivus planet, but no matter how many shows they take you to or chemicals they feed you, you don't “have” to swing if that's not your way. I'm an enthusiast, but not an advocate.

Everyone has their boundaries and the right to have them respected. Take me, I'm a belly sleeper; don't snuggle me until the morning. You, who knows, you might love swingin' shows with swingin' hippies. But don't feel guilty or like less of a open-mind if you don't swing all the way. If they are your friends who love you, the love will be stronger from a more clarified light. If they are random campsite neighbors who became your new best friends in two hours, keep keeping it real and gauge what their intentions are. Obviously not every hippie couple is trying to swing with you (though if you put that energy out there, it might seem that way). The thing about festival sex is you're either gonna do it or not, so ensure your decision is enhancing your festival experience, not compromising or dampering it in any way.

NOTE: This post uses “swingin' hippies” as a generic term for festival goers who like sex with multiple partners at the same time. They are not always middle-aged and living in a curtained van with three pitbulls asking whether you'd like to go twist palm-leaf roses on the side of a road on the other side of the country. (If this happens, definitely establish whether you want to be in or outside the couple's bed-life, because you're going to be sharing the back-of-the-bus mattress either way.) But sometimes the festival people coming onto us are doped-up dubsteppers or overstimulated twenty year-olds or vegan pagans. In the frenzied festival uproar, we can't always choose our suitors. But we can take simple, common sense steps to avoid discomfort and regret. Nobody likes to wake up in an irrelevant town in a strange van entangled with not one, but two random wooks. But in case you do, read on.

Rising Appalachia Bringin' the Heat this Spring

Rising Appalachia hits the road this spring, from the south to the west to the northeast and all over in between! After -22 temperatures and 60 mph winds this winter, I am stoked as a fiddle to catch the soul-spirit, razzity folk-hearted jam in Portland, Maine again. Sisters Lea and Chloe throw down and flow a lulling warmth in their music with a smooth kind of friction, like elegant but tribal, spiritual but dirty, vocals both haunting and enchanting, music both Southern but global, old world but new. It all grooves and grinds together in an entrancing melodic haze punctured by rolling rhythms, soul-dripping voices, and “LISTEN THE FUCK UP” lyrics.

Rays of Sandstone drummer Ben Rayborne introduced me to Rising Appalachia and Nahko Bear on Southeastern travels last winter, and I've been hooked since. My alienation to modern music dissolved; the music so spoke to what I was feeling in sound and intention, after YEARS of not hearing any new music that sparked me up. Truly I'm picky and have no patience for radio indie-pop or the soberest kid's Macbook dubstep. But I have seen both Rising Appalachia and Nahko Bear and Medicine for the People this past year, and totally have my show calendar marked to see both bands again.

Rambling bongos and bouncy banjos, the three friends I brought to the July 2014 show in Portland actually danced as hard as I did (which usually only occurs with a drug-induced endeavor.) But there were no drugs—can't even remember drinking, and we were skip-dip-hoppin' with the high swing-around energy of a hoedown, then wiggle-wham wormed into the deep, low bass notes that follow you creeping “Downtown” through a dark alley to swerve your limbs like snakes. These ladies and their high energy band raised my auric plane into a sunrise over the Blue Ridge parkway and sent it falling fast but featherly all at once. That alpine mountain soul-jam is gonna rage Wakarusa this year, hot damn. And it's a lot of things, but mostly magic when artists hook you somewhere no other music can take you. I'm sure as hell not gonna miss what's next. Check the dates and make sure y'all don't either!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOsEvYBLo7I&list=UURmxz4fw_LzwQF19LKXgRVg&index=1

Of Modest Mice and & '90s Children

Modest Mouse is absolutely the first band to awaken my jam-dance: unencumbered catharsis extreme. 2006 on the NJ Transit to the city, we were rolling our 16 year-old faces off each with an earbud in, the entire discography up until their latest album Good News for People Who Love Bad News on my iPod set to shuffle. The train was stopped for an hour because a man had jumped in front of it. We compensated by raging our whole bodies up and down the slippery seats, elbows flying, heads thrashing as far as our shared earbuds would allow. "Teeth Like God's Shoe Shine" was so wild and heavy that when "She Ionizes and Atomizes" came on next, my thumb hovered over the next button, ready. Fast as a snap, Meg grabbed my hand in hers and gasped, "I love this song!" My heart nodded and body smiled as i sailed on the dreamy twang cascade.

"I hope we move soon," I commented, rolling my wrists and arms into waves forward. Meg's hand jumped from my hand to my thigh.

"WE HAVEN'T BEEN MOVING THIS ENTIRE TIME?!"

Obviously we sprinted and wormed our way through the blue-lit crowd just as Modest Mouse came onstage, immediately plunging into "The Ocean Breathes Salty." Through the show, my whole dance spark inside woke up thrilled and ready to light up with the music. "Bukowski" moved my snakey limbs in new twisty ways and "Paper Thin Walls" had me jumping hard enough to feel my skeleton reverberate off my ankles. I've only heard secondhand stories about a bad Modest Mouse show. They've had me dancing just as hard every time I've seen them. And after their latest album, this anticipatory hunger in my soul pocket has been ceaselessly squiggling to see them again this summer.

En route to the Colimbus Circle show, 2009. On the way to an "All Nite Diner" not to mention "Cowboy Dan"

I'll admit. When Ophelia hit me up with the early Internet release of the "Lamp Shades on Fire," track, I had high expectations of a dirty, out there Mousey wilderness, because she kept going on about how great it was and how she couldn't stop listening to it. But when she came over and we listened together, I shrugged. "It sounds like it could be on 'We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,'" I said, following the uppity layers and buh-buh-duh-duh bridges between them. She went upstairs to pee and came back down with a partially melted moleskin notebook. 

"You left this on your fucking LAMP!" she said. "We're listening to that song again!" We did, and my opinion was the same. I didn't listen to it again until this girl at work asked if I had. When I reactively replayed the song in my head, I fondly craved the rugged frenetic  riffs that appeared and wanted to hear them again. Beyond that, I also enjoyed getting it stuck in my head as Amy continued streaming it from YouTube multiple times a shift. I gotta say, yes! It's Totallyyyy fucking Mousey.

There are some musicians who clearly use their instrument as an outlet for the soul, like this guitar riff is rolling directly out of a facet of its player. It's why no one can echo or come close to singing like Isaac Brock or Janis Joplin; its why Mousey riffs, tempos, and layers can only be described as Mousey,  and why the glurbdacular culmination of funk and foodling can only be described as Phishy. There is a distinct difference in musicians playing from their inner-selves compared to music that all sounds the same on the radio. So after jammin' out the cafe two days to  "Strangers to Ourselves," I feel guilty for my initial reaction that Isaac Brock was recycling a sound. Hell no, this album is Mousey as ever.

"Nobody really likes this song, but they just don't get it," says Amy, the first time she plays me "Pistol." "But I LOVE it," she says, bouncing on her combat booted ankles to the thwackiting of drums as she turned the tiny speaker-knob up with a cheesin' smile. Amy's 18. And she's geeking out about Mouse as I've been for oh-my-oldness, a year and a decade now.

And head bangin, feelin that low-to-the-ground, grimy subway-fog beat start to build with frisky piano, I stop stocking coffee cups, look up at Amy and say, "HELLLL YEAH!" She claps and jumps up and down, and even throws both arms into the air with a triumphant "YAY!", and we dip our heads in and out of the whacky abrasion of lyrics that make us laugh and the taser-arcadey spook-beats. We dig it.

Through the years; Modest Mouse has steadily been a prominent favorite; I love it all. They've got a new flare on the distortion layers, which riddle and rattle, pump and pulse, blorp and bang beneath the distinctively haunting guitar ring-around that it could only be Isaac. Again, hell yeah. Each album carries its own taste, vigor, environment, dream-world, one for every mood and mindset, yet all share that striking Mouse sound and play. Even though it's hard to fathom an album to pin my soul down harder than The Lonesome Crowded West does, Brock's musical vernacular has spanned so many portals and forms, all while channeling that unmistakable Mouse jam, that yeah, it's spanning generations and bringing us together in our own esoteric Mouse hole. It's dark, it's bright, it's wig-out weird and dancehall explosive. It combs your brainwaves and flogs your ears, flings your neck and knocks your knees, pulling your cerebrum and forcing you to know: WE HAVE DEFINITELY BEEN MOVING THIS ENTIRE TIME.

"Fare Thee Well" Shows July 2015: Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock your pockets

Some Phish vs Dead stuff is just true. Like with my ex-boyfriend. He could hear any Dead track and tell you what members were playing, what early to late decade, or even what year it was, and anecdotes about that tour. But get him on Phish tour 2011 right my ACL surgery, and I literally danced the fuck out of my wheelchair more than he did in his healthy two feet. He danced to one song. ONE SONG. Okay, I get that it doesn't exactly blither and flow so smooth-ecstatically through everyone as it does through me, but like, can't you open up a bit? Really, spanning 14 shows, six states, and the only song to stimulate you to shimmy and snake around is “It's Ice”?!

Bethel, NY 2011

I know what you're thinking. There's got to be something else going on there.

And yes, it's called “NOT BEING THERE FOR THE MUSIC.” This boyfriend made thousands of dollars off phans, and that was his sole reason for following a band he resented with a trunkful of crystals and wire-wraps. But it's not the Dead, right? So how could it ever be good enough? So goes the logic of the Dead elitist (at least this one), so set with the Dead on the top of the pyramid that nothing else could possibly reach those heavens and therefore really matter at all. And man, those elite show-goer heavens are higher than my high-interest student loans could dream of surmounting to. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars high. EVEN with a splash of Phish.

Because here we are, facing our last ensemble of the Grateful Dead this July, with three 50^th anniversary “Fare Thee Well” shows in Chicago, Trey billed as lead guitarist. Come on, hyping up the mail-in ticket-order tradition and giving heads three days to gather hundreds of dollars for the threat of the last-ever Dead shows is not all that bad. Because after selling out 210,000 mail-order tickets, the band's heavily rumored to be announcing more shows. Really, why have one last show when you can have lots of lasts shows?

Right, so Trey is playing with the remaining original members of the Grateful Dead. Those stuck in the Dead vs. Phish complex are forced to accept the culmination of energy. My best friend growing up/tour wingman says, “It's pretty much my wet dream,” despite the fact that she among millions of others did not get tickets after coloring an elaborately beautiful Steal Your Face envelope in a potentially expensive effort to see that wet dream fulfilled. Instead, the Bears season ticket-holders got precedence in their Chicago playground, but at least they've been willing to sell tickets back to heads and custies for 1000% mark-up value. 

Truly, the music of these bands are food for my soul, and every head I've ever met is going/trying to go to Chicago this summer. But $200 for parking is not my wet dream. It's exploitative. The more I hear about it, the more I cower in the "REALLY JAM GODS?!" corner. This is a horrific jam scene rape.

“Oh it's totally about the money. If it were about the heads, the community, they would have done it where people could camp!” laments Ophelia, the space-cat spinning a magic wand center-forward of every lawn. As a Libra who loves both bands, Ophelia is positive about the musical potential. “I think it will be interesting! I've never felt the Dead and Phish were at all the same, except for the fact that they both jam. Obviously Trey is not Jerry, but I don't expect him to be. It will be a totally new musical thing...Basically, I imagine it as Phish playing Dead covers. For both bands, the lead guitarist is the one with the inimitable sound.”

Live artist Kait Buckley, actually an electronica-hooked hooper who's grown up on the Dead, speaks to the inevitable Trey-zy nature of Anastasio, explaining, “I've seen [Trey] play with Furthur before and at first, he was a little all over the place 'cus he's used to his own thing, but he got in the groove as the set went on. I'm sure they will be practicing a lot together for those shows and he will have a lot to live up to, so I assume he is taking it seriously.” Stoner Bob Pirrone is optimistic, saying, “He basically took over the jam band scene after Jerry passed. It feels right to give him the honor to play some Jerry. I mean, he plays well with Phil and Friends.”

Pirrone has a point about the scene takeover. The jam-world lost Jerry as Phish's following swarmed and swelled to a cult level. Trey has been quoted as saying that he used to avoid listening to the Grateful Dead to prevent being overly influenced by Jerry while coming into his own sound. These days, he details to the Rolling Stone, “I've made a conscious effort to learn everything I could about Jerry's incredible style.” From tripping on acid at his first Grateful Dead show and being trance-formed by the music to learning it inside and out twenty years later, “Fare Thee Well” is sure to be a collectively epic-beyond-jamtabulous-fathomability phenomenon of the decade. If of course, you can afford it.

Jerry's daughter Trixie announced the 4^th of July shows online as a celebration of American culture and history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3LaG4vcBk). With Scorsese filming the shows in the city of the Dead's last concert with Jerry, the event seethes the high profile status that hotel hippies like my ex cream over, a circus for glampers. 

Sure at first, even I was set on heading to the lot and the slim chance of a miracle, but the fact that three day passes are going for over $100,000 on StubHub turns me off from the whole jam porn wet dream thing. Maybe Meg, it is too good to be true! Go follow Phish for a whole Tour for the same cost!

This was the basis of my ex taking me on Phish tour: money. After too many months on the road driven by the hustle, I refuse to go anywhere where the spirit of money is heavier than the music. Monetary flow is so much more tainted than the organic/gasmic potential of jam. You can always tell a custy fest from a grassroots one. I'd rather pay twenty bucks to a family farm who hired their friends to rage bluegrass in their cow-field all weekend. But of course, I say that as someone with 20 grand in student debt and no degree...Are you an affluent grower/capitalist stoner like my ex? Have a blast! Maybe you can tell me about it at 3DL! (Check it out)

Welcome to Jam Sauce

Jam Sauce is your ultimate tour guide for the ins and outs of festivals, shows, and other manifestations of the collective consciousness. Much of Jam Sauce will come from my experiences. I've done the lush tour life vending every show with Orbitz discounting pet friendly hotels all across the country, and I've followed Phish seven months pregnant selling organic iced coffee out of a cooler on wheels, renegade camping in fields and up mountains (so long as you get there before sunset, depending on the mountain.) But, my expertise are limited to my own experiences, and this project is largely about the collective momentum that generates the jam love flow. For example, I have not toured in a camper yet, but perhaps you have; maybe you're the four season glamping guru who has all the rooftop gardening wisdom and bathroom systems down, and you want to write about your invaluably unique experiences. Email me at wordsthatwander@live.com and help stir the sauce. 

Any given jam is a melting pot of everything within its vortex vicinity--sights, smells, thought, desire, action, intentions and outcomes, energy and vibes, colors and filters--so what has your vortex encompassed? For lively glimpses into each other's vortexes, tune into Jam Sauce for lot life, live art, miracle tickets, hustlin', swingin', and the warbling gaps in between.

Bear Creek, FL

The Festy Forensic: How to Spot Fake Tickets, Bum Drugs, and Cops Disguised as Hippies

We'd all like to think of music festivals as free-loving escapes from the mainstream world where we can let our whole freak fly without inhibition or looking over our shoulder. But, flouncing around like there are only daisies and no aphids will catch us in compromising positions. Like when Meggy spent two hundred bucks outside MSG for a New Years Eve Phish ticket.

1. Does the scalper look like a head? Hemp, crystals, smiles, dreadlocks, moccasins, festy bracelets?
2. Look at the ticket. No, really. Is it a printed out Ticketmaster ticket? An old roommate of mine saved our friend fifty bucks at the Charleston with the simple observation that the page said VOID behind the event information.
3. Is the scalper going to the show as well? If not, did his/her girl/boyfriend get stranded hitchhiking or what? In Meggy's case, why is he or she not going to the sold-out, most coveted show of the year and instead, selling a ticket for five hundred less than they are selling for on Stubhub? And is this person alone, or surrounded by flowery, trustworthy hippies around to reassure good intentions and vibes in general?
4. Why is this person selling a ticket? Did a friend bail? Did he have extras and all his friends were already going? Or did she decide to go to the Biscuits show across the city instead? And most importantly concerning all of these points: do you believe this person?

Generally, your vibe-o-meter should be able to tell whether someone genuinely has an extra to sell or is trying to take advantage of go-lucky jammers. Unfortunately in Meggy's obsessive desperation to get into the New Year's Eve show, she overlooked her scalper's telltale sketchiness. Yes the majority of Phish-heads are white college kids (or graduates/drop-outs), but if the scalper is not and he's a middle-aged bald-head trying to sell you a ticket in Manhattan, he should be gregariously jolly and explain how he's come to sell such a cheap ticket for such a high profile show over a joint or coat-sleeve beer. The scalper should definitely not take your money and leave the scene without joyous tidings for a helluva show.

Blackwater Festival, FL

And ah, the drugs. The bum-drugs are trickier to identify because 1.) they are more common, and 2.) because what hippie doesn't look like a head shuffling through the campsites and dance-crowds, sputtering, “Moon rocks, mushies, oil, dabs...” And really, there's only one direct way to know if a chemical is what is said to be—try it! But indirectly, the best way to make sure your “mescaline” isn't 2CE or that your molly isn't meth is to only buy what trusted friends and heads have tried and recommend. There are (or always should be) those heads you trust through and through, to the point of saying, “If she did it, I'll do it.” The more acclimated you are to the scene, the less likely you are to be sold Shitake mushrooms on Shakedown Street. No, but really. It sounds preposterous, but there are real-life gutter-skunks who actually try to get away with overcharging 14 year-old rave bunnies household herbs and bicarbonate soda. My ex Mikey would always close his eyes and go on “antenna mode,” where he could read energy in rainbows and even dance without knocking into anyone this way. Sure he went schizophrenic, but he was an excellent judge of character. You don't need a spirit-antenna, but always be aware of your vibe-o-meter.

Plus the cops. There are the venues like Suwanee in Live Oak, FL where cops are allowed to assume duty so long as they buy tickets along with everyone else. So if you are you are tucked into a tick nest in the very back of the 300+ acre music park in Florida and a cheerful dude with a shaved head and crisp new tie-dye stumbles in looking for his cell phone, you can rest assured he is not there by accident. His shoes should also be a dead giveaway. Wooks don't wear stiff, brand new Nikes.

If you are on the lookout for under-covers, it should be fairly easy to pick up on scripted dialogue. “Cold night. Rad show!/Do you go to festivals often?/Do you have anything to smoke?”) These guys are like Porky Pigs in a field full of Roadrunners, but there are, however, the very schooled “dready feddies.” In 2011, I watched one standing in a line of busted wooks with his hands behind his back like the others. When the others were taken away however, he dropped his hands unbound and walked away, this dirty blond six foot something dready guy in Charlotte. An older, raspy guy with blue eyes and shaggy hair under a mad-hatter of a chapeau had come to my vending table on Shakedown and narrated this whole literal shakedown scene to me. When he called that the alleged dready feddie would walk away untouched, I was amazed, though not surprised when that exact action transpired. Unkempt teeth and parking lot hygiene should never be a ground for who to trust on tour—the older, crustier spunions have made it this far along for reasons.

Also, be it known that there is no magic “If I ask if you're a cop, you have to tell me” rule. Take it from undercover turned activist and legal consultant Barry Cooper, who explains, “I'm not sure how this rumor started but it is not true and actually helps law enforcement. Many times as an undercover, suspects would ask if I were. I would respond, 'No. I'm not a cop and you are correct. I would have to tell you if I were.'” To really tell if someone is a cop, Cooper suggests offering him or her a bong rip, as cops can be trained to fake a joint rip through their noses, and undercovers are often drug-tested following a bust.

Also, listen for the Rainbow children and other helping friends on scene. If you hear funny numbers and encoded words being thrown around, be on your guard. But in general, although it's super omni-chingadaza-blisstastico to lose yourself in every moment and be fully immersed in the groove-adelic magic of jam, always holding onto at least a kite-string of a clue is paramount. When any spunshine sprites of the festival-love-flow get taken away or even advantage of, the whole festival gets tainted; it's the manipulation of purity. Taking personal responsibility with even a toe-hold in reality can keep us out of jails, hospitals, even rude awakenings in the wrong states. (Been there...and other places too.) Because even though the smooth roll of ecstatic dance-shine moments can feel perfect and infinite, we have to wake up somewhere, and we can totally prevent unnecessary loss of money, rights, and control. Just remember your bag, your phone, your stash, and your Shakedown Street smarts.

For more on Barry Cooper, check out www.nevergetbusted.com for an inside look on preventing nonviolent drug crimes.

That's Not Blood, Man; it's Glo-Stick Goo: Nonviolence and the EcstaticDance Party

The only fight people seek out of a Sound Tribe show is a glow-stick war. And while I've known some to trip out from being on the “wrong” side of a color exchange, electronic enthusiasts pulse with the innocence of neon for the simple sake of bright and shiny. Initially, I struggled with that ease of satisfaction. When I first came onto the scene as an overeager Earth pleaser, I spent countless hours talking to the most tripped out chemists on lot to try to devise a way to recycle the thousands upon thousands of damn glow-sticks that always end up painting the grass in clear plastic by the end of the night. And really, not one of these new wave ravers wanted to hear or think about their toxic footprints. In fact, many say, “I never thought of that before!” with complete wide-eyed honesty and just as sincere a smile as they plunk right back into their dance or bra or pocket for some molly to share.

Admittedly, I've always seen the sparkle-faced Bratz Dollz generation with glow-sticks and dubstep as “them.” Evil. I saw plastic and computer glitch-beats as a robot-zombie plague upon the purity and synergy of jam. But when ecstatic Dave at his first Bassnectar concert squealed, “It's expendable energy!” and began collecting and throwing glow-sticks like flowers bursting from the pit of his highlighter-yellow soul, the electronic scene finally clicked into mine. Ah! These self-proclaimed “bass-heads” don't want to suck away souls, not out of the earth, music, nor each other...they just want to have a good time.

And that time that my friends and I left Charleston's Music Farm extremely perplexed as to how Nate acquired a spatter of blood on his T-shirt after the STS9 show/danciest energy-a-thon ever, it took us to be in the dark crashing five people on a bed and a couch to recognize the neon nature of the stain. And yes, it tickled and cheered me to know it was the reckless innocence of glow-stick goo.

Yes I will always be a jam band purist, and in the electronic realm, I will always pick a band like Sound Tribe or Lotus over a Macbook party like EOTO or Pretty Lights. Still, I must pay tribute to the nonstop party wizzam-wow that the dubsteppers celebrate and chase, as the ecstatic dance party is now a routine therapy for my daily kitchen sanity. My gay best friend in college explained the hypnotic rhythm of dubstep as such: “Sometimes you don't need the fucking intricacies of everything. You just need to wobble.” Me, still no—I'm not a wobbler, I'm a prancing jamming pirate with skippy, stampy gazelle legs and a punk-rock head-bang, and music like Phish and Toubab Krewe will always foremost satisfy my multilayer thirst for kick-offs and crescendos. But electronic music and the ecstatic dance parties have become a parallel friend instead of an opposing force of evil: I love the dance for the sake of feeling good, the wobble for a speedway into the collective zen flow, and the oblivious love of everything for the oblivious love of everything.

After the pounding headache that consumed my body after vending Electric Forest summer 2011 next to a K-holed kid pressing WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH on his warble machine and slapping “DIRTY GIRLS LIKE DIRTY BEATS” stickers on every shoulder passing by, I was convinced these electronic dubsters truly were part robot, digitized beyond salvation of the human soul, a foreign species—the enemy. But at the end of that weekend, when a shirtless boy in a pink bandanna, cargo shorts, and cowboy boots spray-painted the clop of cop-horse shit razzle-sparkle pink, giggled and ran away with kicked up heels like a naughty elfin farmhand, I had to smile, and even giggle too. What, really, is evil about bright and shiny? After all, calculating the damge of glow-sticks to the soil is not celebrating a festival to its highest potential, and it is human nature to want to have a good time,

Photo Credits: Meggy Schaeffer

Instagram @Nut_Meggy