Berkshire Mountain Music Festival, Aug. 13-15, 1999

by Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., Aug. 16, 1999) - While the second attempt to stage a weekend-long, outdoor festival of jam-rock in the Berkshires, like the first, collided head-on with adverse weather conditions, the steady rain that fell throughout this past weekend on revelers at Butternut Basin hardly dampened their spirits.

Nor did it get in the way of the music, which served to keep the crowd moving, grooving, and dancing through Sunday night, when Soul Coughing's set of post-modern rap-rock brought the curtain down on this year's version of the Berkshire Mountain Music Festival.

A visit to Butternut late Sunday afternoon found a steady stream of newcomers arriving on the site greeted by a healthy crowd, many of whom had been camping on the grounds since the gates opened early Friday.

It also found a lively, welcoming atmosphere with a plethora of music spread throughout the grounds in four different locations in two outdoor and two indoor locations, the latter which reportedly served as refuges during the weekend's several serious downpours. The overall vibe was more Woodstock '69 than Woodstock '99 - peace, love, glassy-eyed stares and tie-dye were de rigueur, even through the energetic, hip-hop inflected sets by Soul Coughing and Spookie Daly Pride.

Upon arrival, Deep Banana Blackout was finishing up its set on the main stage, while the jazzy jams of the Boston-based trio The Slip were still going strong in the lower lodge, where dancers and onlookers were packed in like sweaty sardines.

Over on the showcase stage, the Miracle Orchestra, a four-piece band also out of Boston, kicked off its set with some muscular tenor saxophone riffs by Jared Sims, running pyrotechnic bebop-inflected lines over free-form a foundation of rock-rhythm grooves.

In the upper lodge, Professor Shuman, backed by DJ Moussaka, was finishing up a set of his free-style raps, with masterful rhymes flowing like bebop improvisations, while Spookie Daly Pride, a new band from Boston, was warming up on the main stage.

Spookie Daly, apparently new to most festivalgoers, easily won over the crowd, including this new fan, with its engaging stagecraft and melodic, catchy grab-bag of post-rock. Veterans of Boston-based groups including Groovasaurus and Laurie Sargent, the six-piece outfit ranged from neo-jump blues sure to catch on big with the swing set to a good-natured brand of white-boy rap on a tune called "Happy, Happy." A listener was not surprised to learn that the group's guitarist is the brother of Soul Coughing's bassist - while they are much more of a pop band, they share the New York rockers' depth of groove.

As for Soul Coughing, that quartet displayed why it is one of the smartest, most adventurous bands of the decade. Lead singer/rapper M. Doughty intoned his obscure, epigrammatic lyrics ("A man flies a plane into the Chrysler building….Is Chicago? Is not Chicago") over minimalist but powerful rhythms supplied by drummer Yuval Gabay and bassist Sebastian Steinberg. Steinberg's big, fat bottom was rendered mostly on a stand-up acoustic instrument, and Gabay defied the laws of physics, gravity and aesthetics by replicating state-of-the-art electronic drum beats on an old-fashioned but inventively bedecked acoustic trap set.

The group's sound genius, Mark deGli Antoni, provided sonic textures, sound effects, found sounds and assorted bits of aural wallpaper courtesy of his keyboard sampler. The sum effect, however, was of some surprisingly organic funk music, full of huge empty spaces and silences, atop which Doughty spit out his neo-Beat lyrics in a patented, deadpan nasal drawl on songs including "Rolling" and "Unmarked Helicopters," the latter a sendup of conspiratorial paranoia from TV's "The X-Files."

The only thing missing was a row of real live helicopters approaching over the tree-line from behind the stage at this picture-perfect setting for a music festival.

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