Joshua Tree Music Festival

Been curious about Joshua Tree Music Festival for quite some time - Matt's birthday was an exceptional excuse to buy tickets! Tracy, Matthew and I packed up her Monte Carlo and drove five hours to 29 Palms. Since Joshua Tree is a National Park and needs to be preserved for future generations (Yay Teddy Roosevelt!), the festival was actually held at a campground about five miles North of the Park entrance.  It would go against the grain, so to speak, to hold a festival where crazy hippies would be scaling canyon walls, tromping over endangered plants, and trying to fly off boulders - if you know that I mean...

A small get together - Maybe, 4,000 people went?  Perhaps not even that many - Lots of art, families, dogs, and adorable hippie children with hoola hoops - This tiny four year old girl was hooping around Tracy and I... Tracy said something like, "You are so beautiful and talented with that hoop!" And the little girl said, "I know..." And she started doing laps around us, smiling and dancing.... so friggin cute!  I might not like children much, but the little flower kids are special...

Matt, who has never been to a camping music festival before, could not figure out how balance sleep with enjoying the festival..... While Matt does not do drugs and rarely drinks - He DOES dance like a crazy fool - The kid needs a five foot wingspan in order to avoid knocking people out or tripping on his own feet.... All this fantastic dancing, leads to him meeting fantastic people - For example, on this trip, he met a beautiful guy from Kenya who teaches breakdancing and hiphop, who was also the lead singer for Dusu .... we got to check out the tour bus and backstage for awhile - Matt slept a total of, maybe, ten hours the entire weekend - I would wake up to see him crawl into bed just as the sun was coming up, he would sleep three or four hours, and then have to deal with a searing hot tent around 10am...

The festival was a helluva lot of fun! Music was funkalicious - Bonerama came all the way from New Orleans to play (their band is almost all trombones and tubas...) StantonWarriors did a DJ set that had hundreds of people dancing on the dance floor - Evaro, a very talented band from Joshua Tree which consists of mostly family members, did a fantastic job on Sunday... Now that I am thinking about it, I wish I picked up their CD.... they were really really good. Fucking Mexican Institute of Sound put on a killer dance set on Friday night

By Sunday afternoon, everyone who had been partying all weekend and could hardly move - This included Tracy, Matthew, and I... We had spent the entire weekend, from Noon-Midnight dancing in the front row like crazy people - When those two bands took the stage on Sunday, I could not even tell you who they were.... The whole festival was laying down in the shade, half dozing in and out of sleep - Sometimes I would see someone stand up and try to dance and I would think, "What are you trying to prove, buddy...  go back to bed" - Matt, Tracy and I were all curled up, sharing a plate of food that someone had gifted us, completely exhausted .... It was peaceful, comfy, there were two hundred people sleeping beside us, I was convinced that nothing could peel me off the ground... nothing in the world...

Until Delhi 2 Dublin took the stage!!!!!...... Have any of you ever heard of them!?  They are INSANE!  Their music does not allow you to sit quietly - It takes over your body and demands that you Irish jig to their an electric sitar...!  Saturday night, Delhi 2 Dublin played a gig in Vancouver until 2am, jumped a plane at 4am to Joshua Tree, and put on one of the best sets of the entire weekend - high energy, great sound..... great way to end the weekend....