–Jon W. Sparks

John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers closed the Blues Tent and did so with tributes to Sonny Boy Williamson and Albert King, among others. Here’s a video of Mayall and some couldn’t-be-restrained boogiers.  I got more than a few inquiries from people who had no idea who he was. Why they thought I’d know anything, I’ll never know. Did I have an expression of great knowledge? Or just the hair as gray as Mayall’s.

–Jon W. Sparks

Heh: Snoop Dogg made sure to keep his Yankees jacket dry with one of those cheap $5 ponchos.

— Lindsey

Those who have seen George Clinton & P Funk know that the band is more than just a band. It’s a surreal pageant of weirdness. The guy in the underwear. The guy in the wedding dress. The list goes on.

Fronting the band is the unclassifiable George Clinton. Backstage, onlookers played a game of figuring out what Clinton was going for in his couture. To put in another way: from what vault of stoner/cultural iconography has the man assembled his wardrobe?

Note that when Clinton took off his hoodie (pictured), he was wearing a red, military style shirt. Boy Scout or Buffalo Soldier? Is the flourescent hairpiece a homage to a kind of psychedelic rooster, or perhaps the sacred plume of a witch doctor?

The school of study devoted to Clintonian ontology, or “Parliamentary Funkology” as it is listed in the course schedule, meets off-campus, daily, at 4:20, or  whenever. Bring something to munch on, and a hackey sack. Please call Funk University’s enhanced learning program for more information.

–Christopher Blank

So, I’m trying to upload videos and photos and get a post up on this here blog, and Shinedown is mere yards away from me, hootin’ and hollerin’ and screaming and driving their bass beats so hard that the walls of this trailer are shaking. It’s all giving me a sense of urgency that I’m not terribly accustomed to feeling. Or I could be jittery because I just drank a Coke and ate two snack-size bags of Cheetos and THERE IS NO BLOOD IN ME ANY MORE, JUST SUGAR.

Anyway, there has been a ton of good stuff to see today, and there’s still more to come. (I’m trying to log this entry and then hoof it to see the Reverend.)

I came up to the last song of the Bar-Kays’ set and they were absolutely rocking out. I mean, “rocking out” makes it sound so lame and square, right? They were doing the opposite of whatever is lame and square, complete with complicated guitar choreography. Los Lobos kept a straight face as they unleashed their roots rock on a drenched crowd. Shinedown got the kids bouncing (they’re still out there; have I mentioned how difficult it is to write with them playing right outside?) Robert “Wolfman” Belfour has been out in that Blues Shack off and on all dang day, moaning and wailing in a way that I wish I could take with me and have with me always when life is just a little too tough to handle without bluesy accompaniment.

But so far, topping my list (even though I didn’t get to see their whole set) are The Roots. They strutted onto the stage like the world’s tiniest and most bad-ass marching band. The front row was insatiable and kept chanting for the lead vocals to be upped. But, you know, it’s hard to compete with the amazingness that is a tuba. And listen, I don’t know if I can say this with enough force or clarity, but I demand more tuba in everything from now on. Everything!

Video of The Roots is here.

It’s been a full day. And it’s been great fun watching yesterday’s firm ground get tilled by feet into the viscous sludge that it is now. These pants will never be the same again, sadly.

I’ll do my dangdest to check back in before the night’s over. I’m waiting on a video of The Roots to upload and I’ll plunk it down into this post once it’s done.

— Lindsey

Many of you will go home tonight and look over the crowd photos you took with your cell phones. If you look close enough, you will probably see Elvis Costello in the picture. Not sure what he looks like?

This was from my first Elvis Costello sighting this afternoon in the blues tent, when he jumped up onstage for one tune with the great blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin (on the right). Great tune. Crowd went crazy.

We noticed that Elvis’ right hand was covered in what looked like Sanskrit writing. He reluctantly allowed us to take a photo of the said hand.

“You won’t be able to read it,” he informed us. Then after a few minutes he came back over to add: “I’ve only had to write down the lyrics twice — here, and Live Aid.”

Really, we just wanted to see the bling bling.

Seriously, though, a shotgun shell?

— Lindsey

I remember when I was in ninth grade and we were deep into the reign of alternative music and the concept of moshing seemed really cool. That was also back when the thought of actually touching a boy was so titillating that I was willing to risk life and limb just to brush up against a real, live one, even if he was a disgusting, sweaty, hormone-fueled mess in a Tool shirt. That was also back before I had any real concept of not being invincible.

Except, as I soon learned once I started going to concerts, moshing is nothing to get mixed up in. I am not a delicate flower by any means, but life is too freaking short to find yourself getting elbowed in the nose while you’re innocently trying to bob your head to your favorite song — no matter how fast-paced it is. So at shows, if there is even any hint of a shoving match, you’ll find me creeping away from the teeming mass and finding a space along the wall, laughing the the ‘roidheads and maternally wishing they’d chill out because, really, what is there to get all riled up about?

So I guess my absence from the moshing scene is how I completely missed out on learning what a Wall of Death is.

Rise Against, who were doing an already bang-up job of getting their crowd worked up when I walked up mid-set, suggested that everyone get ready to form a Wall of Death.

I was walking away when I heard this Wall of Death proposal go out over the PA, and turned right around. “Wall of Death?” I thought in my special in-my-mind-only accent. “That sounds quaint! Why don’t I stick around?”

Tim McIlrath, Rise Against’s front man, was asking people to form a big empty space down the middle of the crowd, all the way up to the stage. “Awesome,” my useless, completely irrational brain said. “This is a great photo opportunity.”

You can see where this is going.

Laugh, chumps. Laugh. Go ahead.

I spotted Commercial Appeal photog Mark Weber and we were both shrugging our shoulders about this so-called Wall of Death. It looked harmless enough to us. I kind of halfway hoped it meant people would be taking turns dancing down the big clearing toward the stage, like they do in those teen movies that are never anything like real life.

So I made my way down the clearing and snapped exactly two pictures before I realized that I had, essentially, signed my own death warrant. McIlrath gave his crowd the go sign and the two sides of the clearing ran at each other with the kind of fury usually reserved for brief scenes in trailers of movies about medieval battles. It didn’t take long for me to hit the ground, and all sorts of strange and depressing and frantic things started running through my mind (in my normal accent). My first instinct was to cover the very expensive lens I’m renting from LensRentals. My second thought was OH MY GOD, THIS IS HOW PEOPLE DIE AND GET ON THE NEWS.

From then on out, it was just me stunned, on the ground, people stomping all over me. I’m pretty sure I flashed some onlookers (stupid miniskirt). And I’m also pretty sure Mark got some sweet pics of my ongoing crisis and near death, that, had I died, might have been used to comfort my parents because it would have lessened the loss knowing you lost a child so stupid as to get herself caught up in that mess. I look forward to seeing those.

Some helpful fellow helped me to my feet (I was total dead weight; sorry about that, dude) and I realized I’d lost both my flip-flops (SEE?! GALOSHES ARE IMPERATIVE). I begged and pleaded and ducked my way out of the madness and into the calmer fringes. My camera and my lens were safe, a plug had been taken out of my knee, I was bleeding down my leg, and people were looking at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet. And for that five minutes, I’m pretty sure I was the dumbest person on the planet.

I was able to recover one flip-flop, and then sat by the fence to wait for the crowd to thin out so I could go hunt for the other. Sadly, it is lost to the whims of time and very angry punk-rock fans.

I limped back, busted and bruised and feeling generally sheepish, back to the media trailer to show off my battle wounds. Diane, the BSMF director, very kindly dispatched someone to get flip-flops from a vendor on site so that I may continue my journey to observe and report. That was very, very cool of her and has saved my feet from certain rot.

But I’m steering clear of the crowds.

— Lindsey

–Jon W. Sparks