"Music is a spiritual expression of what's in your heart. Music as a way of getting rich is a pretty new thing, and I often wonder if the mega-bucks glitzy atmosphere is making the quality of music suffer. You have to work really hard to get around that and remember why you're in it in the first place: because you have to be. It's like an addiction. You can't go a day without picking up your guitar. To me, the only commercial goals that are really valid are, 'Boy, I wish I didn't have to go to work. I wish I could do this all the time." -Trey Anastasio
"Impose rules to make life simpler. Break them to make life more fun." -Jon Fishman
This party was a lot of fun and a big one. Definitely the most people Bongo Juarez and I have had over. My best estimate is that 70 people came through the door. Lots of alcohol and intoxicants consumed. I had a great time, though the house was pretty trashed the morning after. My buddies J Law and Wilco came to clean up yesterday, thank god for them.
The thing that really amazed me about the party was how everyone really seemed to embrace the whole break your resolution idea. We made posters with a chart to keep track of everyone’s resolutions, and how they were going to break them. I made sure to have the I-zone camera out so people could have their picture next to their name…in all, we ran out of film (I bought 60 exposures)…I thought that only a few people would sign the poster, but there were actually people looking for more film later in the party. Amazing. Who knew crafts where such a good time?
Another fun highlight for me was the Super Jam. Bongo and I started out with 2 other buddies that we play music with regularly, and I think that jam sounded pretty good. Then after about 15-20 minutes we put down the instruments and opened up the jam to the other musicians at the party. Lucky for me and everyone else I have a lot of talented friends, and most of the time everything sounded great. But there were a couple of jams that were bad, really really bad. Which was actually kinda funny and entertaining, because telling a happy loud drunk to get off of the drums can really liven up a party.
The last few people finally cleared out about 4am, we had no problems with the neighbors (which continues to amaze me that no one calls the cops when we are playing loud music and 30 people are standing out in my front porch passing pipes around) and I finally got to sleep about 5:30 am Sunday morning but feel fine today. All in all, very good times.
Oh, and did if forget to mention, forget to mention Memphis, home of Elvis, and the ancient Greeks…no I mean, did I forget to mention that there was a lot of girls kissing one another? Oh yeah, I guess that should be mentioned too.
Bill’s pictures are here, and Indigo has some here.