The wobble is sweeping the nation.
Still. Sure techno and electronica have amassed clusters of rave
culture throughout the decades, but much of the dubstep is something
totally else, a blurby womp attack on the brain cells. And I hear
these computer mastication beeps and beats in cafes and gas stations
now. They even ripple through the car radio in wah-wah-wobble
waves, contorting a rap or pop song with robot genocide glitches and
dubby speaker splurbs. Like, is that someone bumping Macbook beats in
the car next door at a show? ...Justin Bieber? Dubstep has wobbled
its way into the mainstream?
I've been resisting
the EOTO and Skrillex rave fests for years now, and cringed with a
groan when my little brother asked if I listened to dubstep in 2009.
And six years later, people still constantly ask, trying to
determine: are you a jam hippie or a wobbly wook? So all right, last
week I did it, I went to an art opening in Portland, ME that was
heavily dub-rave-centric, featuring local djs and button-pushers with
color blaring strobe lights. I'd rather swing sweaty hippies around
on a mountain to some bumpin' bluegrass, but I was out for a rare
time in busy motherhood and super set on having fun.
I totally found
tripped-out solace in the narrow gallery hall with big open, windows
and bright starving-eyed geometric art, but, determined not to be a
bitch in the mud, I let go of stubborn opinions and into the dance
high of the crowd. So I got out there, I danced, I jumped, laughed,
skipped, spinned, laughed more, spilled beer, made friends, laughed
and laughed and laughed my head off. I admit it—I wobbled, and I
had fun.
Still, immersion in
that glitchy gravelly womp totally spins my head like a film stuck
skipping the same bleep of a scene over and over and over. My chakras
fizzle into television vortexes staticky on snow. I calculate that
the half drooling, half dancing crowd has got to be smacked on
ketamine to have such an entranced at-homeness in their glazey-bright
eyes. Music is my home when it lights me up and charms my chi into an
ecstatic dance, but dubstep distorts and blitches it, so I tried not
to listen too intently at the show.
I suppose in the
digi-world where getting off is only a click or sext away, the
soundtrack of laptops short-circuiting totally fits the disconnected
libido of young adults. Watching everyone grind and gear their bodies
into the hyperspeed beeps and blooping bass whirls, I could not avoid
the perception that everyone was playing out sexual frustrations to
the ritualistic spooking and splitching of the speakers. We aren't
tribal anymore. Flashing lights, glazed eyes, bumping bodies
mechanical as pistons, we are technologick.
My first Bassnectar
show was neon hell. It was All Good 2010 when the festival was still
in West Virginia, and Bassnectar was scheduled right after Furthur,
on the stages immediately next to each other. Everyone was there that
weekend for either Bassnectar or Furthur. The musicians with the
biggest followings crowded twenty thousand hippies and wooks on the
mountain of an oversold, sold out festival—and the crowds clashed
like day and night, like Jerry and Schpongle, whiskey and water, coke
and dope. Bassnectar started setting up as Furthur's encoring with
“Ripple,” pushing glo-stick fanged rave fairies and freak-shows
sweaty and marble-eyed into the softly swaying Dead-heads. Of course,
half my friends wanted to stay for the last ten minutes of “Ripple”
and the others were ready to weave to the front of the Bassnectar
stage. The half-naked bass heads started spattering all over the
flowy family Dead-head crowd like glow-sticks on the trampled earth.
Yes I love the Dead
and loathe the womp, but I was also 20 with raging hormones and high
hopes of finding the Phish-head I was infatuated with in the crowd,
so I followed my younger friends up to the very very front. Furthur
literally played “Ripple” for what felt like a sweaty,
shoulder-to-shoulder, belly-to-butt-to-belly eternity. Someone
actually shouted, “SHUT UP OLD HIPPIES” before Bassnectar dropped
that glurgy, lasery bass that blew our skin back and made Dave's
pupils swallow his entire eyes.
Wedged into the
jigsawing-hip proximity of thousands of people, we recycled each
other's breath rapidly in a sea of revved-up, tongue-rolling,
screaming, yelling, and insatiable LED toy spinning and swirling
festykins. As soon as the music began skweeching, the somewhat anime
galactic gangster rave-bots collectively hooked onto the same
waist-up scissory dance groove that spiked the energy and glow-stick
war beyond anything my
journey-jam-dancing-on-the-moutain-for-ten-hours self could handle. I
didn't see that lusted-after Phish-head before the digital chainsaw
strobe show started, and no one was moving anywhere for a while. It
was not my flow.
When I asked Dave
if he wanted to find the others and he nodded fast and nervous like a
deer, I knew he was human too. We wiggled and wove back into the
shuffling trickle of bearded men lugging sleeping children in red
wagons alongside long-skirted henna goddesses.Coming out of the
day-glo painted, half-naked, wompily humping crowd, it was literally
like humans and humanoids. I left feeling antennae on the beeboppler
heads from their spines transmitting dubstep signals, that the heads
of the Furthur crowd were light-bulb brains, though some were
brighter than others. I felt like a light-bulb.
Many heads were
flickering and sputtering in the wake the wobble fest takeover, but
Furthur did play “Estimated Prophet” AND “Roses” AND
“Terrapin” into “Scarlet” into “Fire” AND an encore of
“Cumberland Blues” AND the never-ending “Ripple.” While the
30 year-olds grumbled and sighed about what the festival scene had
become, patchwork pitbull mama Janelle said, “Doesn't matter. They
played the hippie anthem.” The never-ending “Ripple.” Everyone
rejoiced. Thankfully, no one mentioned the “SHUT UP OLD HIPPIES”
interruption. At least in that moment.
Obviously, this is
not a black and white divide in people, though the shows are in
vibes. Plenty of bass heads play the Dead and go to shows where the
performing acts feature instruments, not computers. In 2012, Phish
headlined Bonnaroo with Skrillex, though they played completely
different time slots and days. But with the last of the Dead members
playing their last show this summer, what will become of the
festival scene?
Said wobble-fest takeover at All Good happened five
years ago. If Bobby and Phil don't step on a stage together again after this summer,
what will a music festival be five years from now? People are already
bringing less guitars and drums in favor of music and mixing apps on
smartphones and bluetooth speakers. Weeblin' with the wobblers yes
can be fun, but how is anyone supposed to flow music without
instruments truly? Where is the synergy? The human connection from
soul through art, through an instrument, through music? Let's try to
preserve the fuck out of that please. I push enough buttons a day to
watch someone else on a computer blaring a light show be the outlet
for my sacral chakra. Fun is fun. Music is sacred.
