Next Time I’ll Bring More Rope: Behind the Scenes (and Before the Crowds) at Big Dub Festival
–Written by Michael Hogan
On Wednesday, July 30, people were beginning to show up to Big Dub in droves, sitting outside the front gate at some ungodly hour of the morning. I was most certainly still asleep, though I couldn’t stay asleep for long, I had work to finish, and unfortunately I had to finish it before gates opened at two to let all those people in. That was the 5th day of my Big Dub adventure.
Of course, people started pouring in much earlier than two, and I was greeted by every single one of them as my team and I worked tirelessly to finish up our last major deco installation, which was blocking the main road down to the bottom camp (much to the disdain of Four Quarters management). Nearly every person that waited patiently as we cleared the road in periodic increments to let campers by made sure to shout from their car windows at us to let us know how good everything looked, and what a good job we were doing. This was quite brave of them; I was hot, sweaty, and had gone far too many days without a shower. I couldn’t have looked like anybody worth a kind word.
But everyone appreciated all our work regardless, and that felt really good. That made all the setbacks and frustration worth it. Not only seeing our finished product in the air and working, but having everyone else see it, and actively appreciate it; that made it worth the trouble.
I couldn’t help but recognize that all of those people were only seeing the closing stages of the process; they were only witnessing the proverbial tip of the inflatable iceberg. They knew it looked cool, and I’m sure they knew it must have been some work to get it all up there, but that effort was not a tangible, identifiable action. It was a concept, a theoretical portion of time that had passed, and remained in their mind for only a fleeting moment as they first passed underneath the almost complete structure.
They had no idea we had a potentially disastrous light bulb oversight, or a massive calamity with the rope, or how we had to improvise with just about every makeshift ‘tool’ that we used. And that’s okay. They didn’t need to know about all of that. They were there to enjoy the show, and only processed the decorations as an object requiring effort when they could see the effort being put in.
And it’s that forgotten side of things that I’m here to talk about, because most of us rarely take the time to note all the hard work that actually goes into making these festivals look presentable. So here’s a timeline of my set up experience from start to finish.
It’s important to note that this is only a small piece of the pie; countless staff members put in countless hours of hard work to make this happen. But it should provide some relative perspective, and hopefully an interesting look at a side of the festival experience that you have never seen before.
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Review: The Gaslight Album Bottles Instant Nostalgia On “Get Hurt”
–Written by Michael Hogan
Late in the summer of 2008, I was settling into my new apartment in Boston. I had just moved there, and I didn’t know many people yet, so most of my time was spent either walking around the city trying to get my bearings or sitting on my computer listening to music. One day, not long after I had moved in, my good friend from New Jersey messaged me on AIM with an album that I needed to check out immediately. This was something he’d do from time to time – and in fact still does – but this album was different than all the others; this album spoke to me immediately.
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Weekend Wind-Down No. 2: Piano-Driven Tracks
-Words and list by Michael Hogan
Musically, I’m a sucker for two things: songs in 6/8 – widely agreed upon as the most epic time signature ever – and a good piano-driven track. Pianos add a certain degree of weight to a song, transforming the latent emotion contained within and allowing it to resonate in sparse, clear, reverby notes. A good piano part can work wonders on a song; give it a swing, drive it forward, or provide the perfect amount of melancholy as each note rings away into nothingness.
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Mix Review: Dieselboy Ups The Ante, Revs The Tempo With ” The Destroyer”
–Written by Michael Hogan
Does anyone remember the brostep dance? One hand on your crotch, the other in the air, waving up and down more or less to the beat as you lunged your whole upper body along with it? Yeah, I’m glad that didn’t really stick. 2010 was an interesting year for EDM though – things were really starting to pick up steam in America, with crowds growing from hundreds to thousands seemingly overnight. And as the crowds got bigger and more unmanageable, so did the music; bigger, louder, and often incomprehensible.
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Weekend Warm-Up No. 2: 30 Minutes Or Less
–Words and list by Michael Hogan
Like the inverse of the pizza delivery guys, prepare yourselves for an aural blitzkrieg this week. We crammed an hour’s worth of tunes into less than 30 minutes with a barrage of punk and pop-punk; from The Story So Far back to Alkaline Trio. For good measure we threw in one of the most frantic songs hardcore legends Converge have ever written, just in case the other nine songs weren’t quite fast-paced enough. So get up, jump around, break some shit, and enjoy your weekend.
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In Case You Missed It: Tor’s Way-Chill “Drum Therapy”
–Written by Kevin Madert
It’s been a long time since I’ve come across an album as appropriately titled as Tor’s 2012 debut Drum Therapy. If Neil Peart and a few enlightened monks started a side-project, the general thrust would be pretty similar: there’s never a lack of forward-moving percussive elements, but the entire album listens like a slow stroll down a long beach. It’s this tightrope between heavy and light that Tor traverses with deftness befitting a producer albums-deep into a career, and it’s how well he pulls it off that has kept this album on heavy rotation two years down the road.
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