Dude! I Was There!

Only one more shopping day until Deep Sea Diver returns to The Earl.

Meanwhile, here's a video of a performance we caught by them during MFNW (RIP) in 2012.

Black Mountain

Black Mountain at The Earl, Nov. 12, 2010

Here's Black Mountain, the world's rock greatest band (North American Division), playing Space To Bakersfield, a long, leisurely psych-rock masterpiece and the closer of their new album, IV, at KEXP in Seattle.

Black Mountain will perform at Terminal West on June 22, a scant twenty days from today.

We've only seen Black Mountain twice before, so we're really looking forward to their upcoming set. However, one of those shows that we did see, at the Doug Fir in Portland during MFNW (RIP) 2012, was also caught on video by KEXP (dude, I was there!).

Festival Forecast

First, I'll say this - the lineup for this year's Bumbershoot Festival is better than last year's (last year was the first time in five years that I didn't go), but still not good enough to get me to fly cross country.  While there's a few good headliners (Tame Impala, Father John Misty, etc.), there's way too much EDM and hip-hop for my tastes, and many of the better bands left on the bill (Explosions In The Sky, Andrew Bird, Hinds, Lemolo, etc.) either have or will be passing through Atlanta.  It looks like that once again I'll be sitting this one out.

Meanwhile, though, look how far MFNW has fallen.  Those years that I went to Bumbershoot, I was really in Seattle just as a prelude to the following week's MusicFest NW in Portland. However, starting in 2014, MFNW went from a multi-venue, SXSW/CMJ-type format to just another weekend with some stages out in the sun, and the number of bands fell from close to 100 to less than a dozen. Now, it looks like the once mighty MFNW is just a vehicle for the traveling Project Pabst revue, which is coming to Atlanta in early October anyway.  There are so few bands on this bill worth seeing that you could count them on one hand and still have a finger left over to flip the producers the bird (that's four bands - Coathangers, UMO, Parquet Courts, and Tame Impala - for those of you not good at math or currently on drugs), and even if the exact Portland lineup plays here in town, I might not go for having to endure the rest. 

Really kind of makes you proud of our home town and appreciate next month's Shaky Knees lineup, arguably the best lineup of any festival so far this year:

Music Is Dead, Part IV

Another day, it seems, another festival announcement, this time for Washington State's Sasquatch Festival.  It was Sasquatch 2011, or more specifically, NPR's coverage of Sasquatch 2011, that gave me what I described as a case of "Sasquatch Fever" and had me soon thereafter travelling out to Seattle for Bumbershoot and Portland for MFNW (RIP), and when those wells finally ran dry, to Raleigh for Hopscotch and to Shaky Knees right here in Atlanta.  

So,anyway, this isn't a bad lineup at all, in fact it's very similar to Shaky Knees, but with a little bit of EDM and hip-hop thrown in to fill the additional stages. So if I had to rank the major festivals announced so far this year, I'd say Shaky Knees > Sasquatch > Governor's Ball > Coachella. 

Maybe music isn't really dead after all.  Maybe I'm just being a drama queen. 

Meanwhile, am I reading that poster right?  Digable Planets are back together?

Chuck Ragan

One night back in 2011, I was leaving the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon after attending Blind Pilot's album-release party for We Are The Tide during MFNW (Alela Diane and Avi Buffalo opened), when someone outside the venue handed me a free, give-away CD single of a song called Meet You In The Middle by someone named Chuck Ragan.  I had never heard of Chuck Ragan but I took the CD anyway (hey, it was free) and later, when I got back home, I popped it into the CD player.

I liked it and some four years later it's still somewhere there in the player today (it holds 51 disks).

The song, Meet You In the Middle, features The Gaslight Anthem's Brian Fallon on backing vocals, and Fallon's side project, The Horrible Crowes, perform the other song on the free CD, the B side single Behold The Hurricane.  However, I keep forgetting who both artists are whenever either song comes around on the rotation on my CD player and my Sound Hound app can never identify either song, causing me to scramble through the 51 disks each time to find who the musicians are. 

Anyway, the reason I bring all of this up is because I see that Chuck Ragan's now on a nationwide tour, which of course doesn't come anywhere near the American South, which actually should be pretty much his target audience based on his roots/Americana sound.

In totally unrelated news, Speedy Ortiz is playing The Drunken Unicorn tonight but I'm not going for uncomplicated but mundane reasons too trivial to get into here.  In any event, the cool concert poster for tonight's show is at the top of this post.

How To Dance Good

!!! showing off their dance moves at The Doug Fir during MFNW (RIP) 2013.  Dude, I was there!

Eyelids

Eyelids at The Doug Fir, MFNW (RIP), 2013

If the members of Portland band Eyelids look familiar to you, it's because the band consists of current and former members of The Decemberists/Black Prairie (John Moen) and Guided By Voices (Chris Slusarenko), and their collaborators Jonathan Drews, Jim Talstra and Paul Pulvirenti.  We saw them one night in 2013 during MFNW (RIP) at The Doug Fir before skipping across town to see Chvrches at the Roseland Ballroom and, later, Murder By Death at Dante's.  That was a fun night.

We may have forgotten Eyelids in all of the frenzy of that club-hopping evening but they've been chugging along, releasing their debut album, 854, last October and a new EP earlier this year.  Here's a video playlist of their songs by way of OPB.

Love As Laughter

Love As Laughter at MFNW (RIP) 2013

Brooklyn's Love As Laughter, who we last saw at MFNW (RIP) 2013, have released a new single, Lazy Soldier, and  play Atlanta's Drunken Unicorn on Saturday, July 11, with North Carolina's KDH opening.

Haerts at Shaky Knees, Atlanta, May 8, 2015

Photo by Shaky Knees

Haerts is an American indie pop band from Brooklyn, New York fronted by vocalist Nini Fabi. Members of the band were born in Germany, England, and the U.S., and met while they were students at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.  Three of the band members, including Nini Fabi, graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and eventually moved to Brooklyn, signing with Columbia Records.  Their 2012 debut single, Wings, received substantial airplay and was featured as a KEXP Song of the Day.  The group has toured with bands such as the Shout Out Louds, Atlas Genius,Washed Out, and St. Lucia.

We've seen Haerts once before, in 2013 at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square during MFNW (RIP) on the day after we saw Surfer Blood at the totally awesome Marmoset day party.  At the time, we had never heard of Haerts, but were intrigued as they were opening for Dan Deacon and Animal Collective and, based on the headliners, were expecting them to be a psychedelic rock band.

Reviewing that performance, I wrote:

They weren't bad at all but somehow never quite clicked with me.  I couldn't quite figure out what they were doing, or where their music was supposed to be taking us.  I subsequently came to realize that part of the reason for my lack of involvement was that I was watching the show from a comfortable but distant position on the steps way toward the back of the Square, back by the food and beer vendors and the more talkative element of the audience.  My sight line was unimpeded, but that distance tends to let one be easily distracted from the music, and without a familiar song or sound to hook me in and hold my attention, it wandered and I became disaffected.  So what I'm trying to say here, Haerts, is that it wasn't you, it was me.

As noted above, in 2013 we hadn't yet heard of Haerts, and to be honest, I haven't heard much about them since.  However, during last weekend's Shaky Knees Festival, I walked away from the Peachtree Stage where Surfer Blood had been playing and went to the Piedmont Stage where Haerts were about to perform and met two young women there who were carrying a "We [Heart] Haerts" sign and told me Haerts was their sole and entire reason for coming to Shaky Knees.  So, obviously, they've developed a fan base.

They weren't bad at all but somehow never quite clicked with me.  I couldn't quite figure out what they were doing, or where their music was supposed to be taking us.  They were definitely more pop than rock and while not at all unpleasant, the songs weren't familiar enough to click with me (the veridical system) or compelling enough to draw me in (the sequential system). Still, if you like intelligent, well crafted pop rock, you're probably already into Haerts, even if it isn't quite my thing. Sorry Haerts, it isn't you, it's me.

Okay, so two days' posts and I've covered only the first two sets of a three-day festival, or 1 hour, 15 minutes of a 30-plus hour event.  I either have to figure out a more efficient way of covering things, or resign myself to posting about one band per day over the next several weeks (or until I get bored and move on to something else).

Surfer Blood at Shaky Knees, May 8, 2015

The most obvious thing about Shaky Knees 2015 is that, unlike the previous two years, it didn't rain. During the inaugural 2013 event, it rained almost non-stop on the first day, and although Day Two started out sunny, the rain eventually came and stayed, turning the Old Fourth Ward Historic Park into a sea of mud.  Things were a little bit better in Year Two (2014) when the festival moved to Atlantic Station and expanded to three days, and heavy rains fell "only" during the first two evenings. But the third day of the second year was hot and sunny, and baked the audience on the shadeless Atlantic Station parking lot as if they were on a frying pan.     

But this year the weather held out.  Sure it was hot and sunny again, but this time the festival moved yet a third time, now to Central Park behind the Civic Center.  By adding the Civic Center's parking lot to the grounds, the festival finally provided enough space for five full stages (even one with a tent to provide some shelter from the sun), allowed the audience to spread out a little bit, and even had room for some people to just chill out in the shade.

I took MARTA to the new Shaky Knees grounds this year, and was a little surprised at how far a walk it was from the North Avenue Station to the festival entrance,  Okay, it was only a little over a half mile, but it was a hilly half mile and it seemed even further on the way back, as the return walk was mostly all uphill. 

There were no lines when I arrived at the festival grounds, and it was not a hassle to exchange my ticket for the festival wristband.  I breezed through the entrance and security and found myself on the open field of Central Park before most of the crowd had arrived.

Bonus points for great views of Midtown Atlanta's skyscrapers throughout the festivities.

It was about that time that Florida's Surfer Blood started their set on the Peachtree Stage (like at previous Shaky Knees, the stages were all named for Atlanta streets - Peachtree, Piedmont, Boulevard, Ponce de Leon, and Buford Highway).

The band has seen its share of controversy and tragedy, including singer John Paul Pitt's arrest record (charges were eventually dropped) and most recently guitarist Tom Fekete's disclosure that an abdominal sarcoma had spread to his lungs and spine.  The band has already played several benefits for Fekete, and a GoFundMe page for his medical expenses has raised over $82,000 against a goal of $120,000.  Surfer Blood's latest album, 1,000 Palms, was released today, but Fekete will be unable to join the band on tour in support of the new album as he battles the cancer.  

Fekete obviously wasn't at Shaky Knees with the rest of the band, but Pitts and company seemed in good spirits and managed to maintain the party-ready Surfer Blood sound in his absence.

Speaking of parties, we've seen Surfer Blood before, at the totally awesome Marmoset day party during the 2013 MFNW (RIP).  Pitts jumped into the audience during the rowdy set and posed for selfies with the crowd as he continued with his song. 

At Shaky Knees, Surfer Blood opened their set with the song Floating Vibes before kicking into Weird Shapes (above).  After that, I get a bit confused, but do recall hearing Swim somewhere in their set (I don't recall whether they played Twin Peaks or not, though).

Fun, familiar tunes on a sunny afternoon - a great way to start off a day, but at this point, I've managed to cover only the first 30 minutes of a three-day festival.  Geographically, I haven't yet ventured further than 100 yards from the North Avenue entrance to the main Peachtree Stage where Surfer Blood was playing.  I'm either going to have to pick up the pace here, or this is going to be a very long retrospective.  

Gazelles In Flight

Suuns at Branx during MFNW (RIP) 2011

We've seen Montreal's Suuns only once, in September 2011, back when MFNW (RIP) was still a real thing (not the faint echo of its current incarnation).  They played a set in the dark and sweaty Branx, a club in Portland's industrial zone, opening for Portland's own Talkdemonic and Vancouver's Handsome Furs.  

A year later, Suuns and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem In My Heart spent a week in a Montreal studio fusing their two distinct sounds into one set of fluid and trippy recordings for a collaborative record.  The songs were not performed live until 2013 at Pop Montreal, which jump-started both sides’ efforts to finish the record.

The final self-titled collaborative album from Suuns and Jerusalem In My Heart was released on April 14, 2015 by Secretly Canadian. 

No plans yet for either band to perform anywhere near the American South.  

Here's Charles-André Coderre's hypnotic video for the trance-inducing Gazelles in Flight.

It's Official!

MusicFest NW (MFNW, RIP) is still dead.

Okay, I'll admit there are a few decent bands on the bill.  I'd love to see Beirut again, and I'd still like to catch Modest Mouse (rain and the crowds drove me away from the Shaky Knees festival last year before MM took the stage) and The Tallest Man on Earth (who's playing Buckhead Theater on May 26), but after the headliners, the pickings are pretty thin.  Certainly nothing to fly cross-country for (like I did in 2011, 2012, and 2013), and certainly nothing worth standing in the sun for three days in Waterfront Park, even if one happened to be in Portland at the time, anyway.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!  Compare the 2015 line-up to the 6-day lineup from 2013 (note the "and many more" at the end of the line-up):  

I couldn't even begin to imagine the logistical nightmare involved in booking that many bands, and at approximately a dozen different venues, too, and I almost sympathized with the promoters last year when they downsized the festival to a single weekend at a single venue.  But okay, they've had almost two years to rest now - time to bring back the full enchilada.  

Or so I had hoped.  But even the 2014, scaled-down, two-day version of MFNW had a better line up (below) than this year's three-day version.  We've gone from great, to bad, to worse.

Back in 2011, I had little patience for those people complaining about that year's lineup for Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival.  Now, four years later, I've become one of those persons, in my case, complaining about Portland's MFNW. 

In more positive news, yesterday I drove around the new site (Central Park and vicinity) of this year's Shaky Knees festival, using the map on the new festival app as my guide to where the stages will be, and am happy to report that it looks like there will be a lot more room and a lot more shade than last year's festival in the parking lot for Atlantic Station.   

Lost Lander

Lost Lander at MFNW (RIP), 2012

Oh, look.  Portland's Lost Lander, whom we saw perform at the Doug Fir Lounge during MFNW (RIP) 2011 and 2012, have a new album out, Medallion, and their song Gemini was recently The Current's Song of the Day.  Here's Lost Lander performing a set at Oregon Public Broadcasting. 

They haven't announced any tour dates in the Deep South yet, but they do have a show in Richmond, Virginia in May, with no dates announced at least a month before and after, so who knows?, maybe they'll work in a swing through Georgia and the City of Atlanta either going to or coming from the Richmond gig.

Summer Cannibals

We saw Portland's Summer Cannibals at Dante's during the first night of the 2013 MFNW (RIP), and when Springtime Carnivore emerged late last year, we were curious to see how they'd compare, vis a vis both Carnivore vs Cannibals and Springtime vs Summer.

Springtime Carnivores are a delightful and promising band, but I think Summer Cannibals could eat them for lunch if they so desired.

Motopony and Family Crest at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, October 29, 2014

So where were you last night? Before you answer, take a moment and make sure you have a good alibi, because if you weren't one of the one-and-a-half dozen or so people at The Drunken Unicorn last night, you really missed a couple of terrific bands.

For starters, San Francisco's Family Crest opened.

Family Crest are a mini-orchestra, a septet featuring a cello, two horns, a flautist/keyboardist and the powerful vocals of Liam McCormick.  They're my new Best-Band-You've-Never-Heard-Of, and really, really deserved a larger audience than the handful of people at the Unicorn, all of whom seemed to be having the time of their lives during Family Crest's joyous, dramatic set. 

Almost nobody's heard of them in these parts, and the only reason I had is that I was lucky enough to arrive at the Marmoset Party during MFNW (RIP) 2013 early enough to catch their set, and like most of that audience that day, I was amazed, and like many others there, bought their CD, The Village.

Just about everybody was amazed last night as well, and many of us bought Family Crest's newest CD, Beneath The Brine last night, and as an added bonus, got to meet the band, some of the kindest, friendliest, most intelligent musicians I've had the pleasure of meeting.

Back at that Marmoset Party, I also caught a set by Daniel Blue, the lead singer/frontman for the band Motopony.  Blue played acoustic guitar and sang some quiet sings, backed by a guest guitarist and three lovely young ladies.

I barely recognized him from Motopony.  I saw Motopony at Bumbershoot in Seattle back in 2011, and was exhilarated by Blue's rock-star persona and swagger, and if I hadn't been told that the flannel-clad singer-songwriter at the Marmoset Party was the same person as the rocker at Bumbershoot, I never would have guessed. 

It was the rock-star Daniel Blue that showed up at the Drunken Unicorn last night, and despite the pathetic turn out (I counted literally only 18 people in the club, while between Motopony and Family Crest, 13 people had graced the stage).  In addition to Blue, Motopony has two great guitarists and a new album out, and last night they performed songs from the new album, which sound much more rocking live than they do on the album, as well as older favorites like King of Diamonds and Seer for the faithful few present.

The band took the turnout in stride, and rather than berate Atlanta for not coming out, praised those of us who did.  Daniel even dedicated a couple of songs to individuals in the audience whom he had met prior to the show, and maintained a friendly rapport with those of us present.

Here's their new song, Buffalo Medicine, one of the standouts of last night's set. 

It was both bands first time playing in Atlanta, and both should be passing through this way again soon, with Family Crest in particular having plans to come back in the spring of 2015.  Do not miss these folks the next time they come through, you're only depriving yourself.  

Givers at Vinyl, Atlanta, October 22, 2014

We last saw Lafayette, Louisiana's Givers back in 2011 during MFNW (RIP) at a great show at the Doug Fir that also featured Pickwick (the best band you never heard of) and Ages and Ages, as well as Portland's Lost Lander.  Damien Jurado was in the audience for Pickwick (he's a fan) and the whole night was overall as much fun at a live show as you can reasonably expect to have.

And then we heard nothing from Givers for three years.  Nothing. Nada.  Zip.  But they've apparently hit the road again and last night they played Atlanta's Vinyl Lounge in the Center Stage complex. Could they possibly be as fun as they were that magical night three years ago?  Do they still have that special something they displayed that night?

The short answer is an emphatic "yes," but first another Lafayette band, Kind Cousin, opened. 

Kind Cousin is the band of singer Allison Bohl DeHart, whose raspy vocals and eerie harmonies with her backup singer make the band interesting.  It was a good set by a band I hadn't heard before, but one I'd certainly like to hear more from.

DeHart's raspy vocals are a good match for Givers' Tiffany Lamson, who joined them on stage for one song.  

After that, Givers took the stage.  They  were still selling their fine 2011 album In Light at the merch table, and didn't have anything new for sale (I still bought a vinyl copy of In Light last night anyway). Fortunately, during their terrific set last night, they announced that they would be playing a bunch of new songs, "songs even our friends back in Lafayette haven't head yet," and that they would be working on a new album soon.  So there's that. 

The audience clearly knew the band and their music, and also clearly adored the band, and there was a great give and take of energy all night between the band and the audience.  There's something about Givers that causes listeners, at least this listener and apparently several others at Vinyl last night as well, to form some sort of deep emotional bond with the band, and the affection and the mutual admiration were apparent.  Singer Taylor Guarisco mentioned it several times, but everyone in the audience felt it whether he mentioned it or not.

The set ended with an encore performance of Up Up Up, after the regular set ended with In My Eyes.

Givers are a great band and put on fun shows.  It would be a shame if I have to wait three years to hear them again.

A Question

Motopony at Bumbershoot, 2011

Here's a question: where to go on Wednesday, October 29 - to the Drunken Unicorn to see Motopony (above) and The Family Crest (below)? 

Family Crest at MFNW, 2013

Wampire at 529, 2013

Or to 529 to see Wampire (above) and TOPS (below)?

TOPS at Farm255, Athens, 2012

Every Night His Teeth Were Falling Out

His renewed concert-going not only continued in 2011, but picked up considerable steam.  On Memorial Day weekend, he was watching live webcasts of Washington State's Sasquatch Music Festival as a surrogate experience for being at the event, and he quickly came down with a case of what he described as "Sasquatch Envy." If only he had been able to move to the Pacific Northwest back when he received the job offer in 2007 and not been another victim of the collapse of the housing market (he couldn't sell his house and had to turn down the offer), he would have been there, he reasoned, among all that great scenery, enjoying all that great music, a part of that happy crowd.  If he could only have been there, he thought, then everything would be perfect. If only . . .

Of course, the lesson learned from having previously moved from Atlanta to Albany to Pittsburgh and back to Atlanta again was that if he had sold the house, taken the job, and moved to Portland, chances are things would have been no more or no less perfect than they were right then.  Everywhere you go, there you are - you can't run away from yourself.  He probably wouldn't even have gone to Sasquatch had he moved.  After all, he's never gone to Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival, which is just a couple of hours away from his unsold home, but he didn't want to be confused with facts - he was practicing self pity.

If he was truthful with himself, he was the only thing holding him back from attending Sasquatch.  It would have been just as easy for him to jump on a plane and fly up to Washington as it would have been to drive from Portland to the remote festival site, and if he didn't want to self-identify as a "victim" of not being able to move, perhaps he should just pack up and travel there at his leisure.

On the other hand, maybe the festival wasn't as great as he'd imagined.  According to one on-line review, the average Sasquatch attendee appeared young enough to have just crawled out of their mother's womb, "clutching glow sticks and with belly rings already attached." The reviewer went on that he'd come to realize that he had no idea how to even communicate with people that young - they might as well be another species. "So to live among somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 of these. . . things. . .  for four days, crammed together in an isolated section of central Washington, is not my idea of a vacation." The reviewer was 26 years old, more than half his age. He also saw an article about Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival that stated:

"When the producers of Seattle's annual Bumbershoot Festival released the lineup for this year's Labor Day weekend run, there was widespread disappointment among many music fans. The biggest complaint - no big names as in years past, like Bob Dylan or the Black Eyed Peas."

 "There's not a single band I want to see, and I haven't heard of most them," sniffed Sharon Esperanza, a 19-year-old Penn State University student.  Another person commented, "When Broken Social Scene is the headliner for a major festival, that spells FAIL."

So let me get this straight, he thought - a three-day music festival guaranteed not to be attended by plaintive 19-year-old college girls or by anonymous commenters who don't like Broken Social Scene, who were one of his favorite bands.  What's more, since it was an in-town festival, he could stay in the comfort of a hotel and not have to camp out among 50,000 "things" for the three days. It sounded perfect, and at $75 for a full, three-day pass, it was a bargain.

As he was booking his tickets for Bumbershoot, he looked around for something else to do up while up in the Pacific Northwest. He checked the schedules for Portland's Dharma Rain Zen Center and the Oregon Zen Center to see if they had any retreats scheduled, but neither one had any offerings that matched up with his travel plans.  But then he saw that Music Fest Northwest (MFNW) in Portland was scheduled to occur the week after Labor Day. That sounded ideal - another in-town festival, and in a town that he knew his way around pretty well.  Once again, he could stay in the comfort of a hotel, take things at his own pace, and not have to camp out among the 50,000 things.  So he bought a full VIP pass for MFNW as well.

His Bumbershoot and MFNW experiences are pretty well documented over at the other site - just do a word search for "Bumbershoot" or "MFNW."  He got to see The Kills twice, once at each festival, caught Blind Pilot's debut album release party in their home town of Portland, was at the front of the stage for Warpaint and for Sharon Van Etten at Bumbershoot, and discovered a host of new northwest bands, including Pickwick, Ages and Ages, and Typhoon.  One of the highlights of the festivals was seeing Brooklyn's The Antlers perform in Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland's Living Room.  The Decemberists' The King Is Dead might have been his pick for 2011's album of the year, but The Antler's Burst Apart, and especially its song Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out, are what he most vividly remembers from 2011.

As a fitting post-script both to this post and to his adventures in the Northwest, on the day he returned from Bumbershoot and MFNW, he got laid off from his job.

MFNW 2014

Okay, to be honest and to get off to a good start by addressing the positive comments first, this isn't the worst festival lineup of 2014 so far, and Sunday in particular is pretty appealing (any single day that one can catch Spoon, tUnE-yArDs, The Antlers, Pink Mountaintops, and EMA can't be bad).  But the only band I'd really want to see on Saturday would be Future Islands, there's no Friday shows, and this MFNW lineup is a far, far cry from last year's.

Yes, the lineup for the stripped down, single-staged, miniaturized MFNW 2014 has finally been announced, and there are no Swans, no St. Vincent, no Courtney Barnett, no Sun Kil Moon.  No riding back and forth across the Burnside Bridge on the No. 20 bus getting from venue to venue.  No KEXP daytime shows at The Doug Fir.  No Mary's.  No reason to travel to Oregon for the festival.

Now, if I happened to live in Portland anyway, and if I had nothing else to do that weekend, then, yes, I probably would go.  But I'm not going to fly cross country to participate, especially when I've got this coming up right in my back yard:

And this later this summer:

But rather than mourn the demise of MFNW, I can console myself that I got to participate in the old format for three years before the plug finally got pulled.