Image by Brian Salgado
Does Woodstock repeat itself in Chillicothe, Illinois?
Summer Camp Music Fest 2008 presents many similarities to the iconic fest
By Genevieve Diesing
Published: May 28th, 2008 | 11:00am
“This is totally the kind of place where people do a lot of drugs, yet at the same time, it’s the kind of place where you shouldn’t have to do drugs,” insisted Janelle Cooper, a 24-year-old concertgoer at the 2008 Summer Camp Music Festival in Chillicothe, Illinois. Cooper was speaking of the notorious narcotic culture at the yearly camping festival, a pattern that has warranted undercover police action in recent years. Anyone who has ever smelled reefer can attest that this year was no exception, but Cooper has a point: With so much going on, who needs to get high?
This year’s festival featured 45 bands, as well as late-night DJs, collaborative art projects, and even “social consciousness” panels.
Many campers were decked out in full “hippie” regalia, including billowing skirts, dreadlocks, hemp and sandals, some wearing the occasional costume. Thousands of tents were crammed into the park, throughout woods and next to stages. Food, beer, and merchandise vendors flanked the mile-long pathways throughout the grounds.
Amnesty International had a booth nestled near an enormous Trojan condoms van, which featured an IMAX movie stressing the importance of sexual health awareness. Tractors pulled wagons throughout the park for rides and campers roasted marshmallows around a communal fire pit after dark. For those who wanted a break from the music, the Conscious Experience tent offered late-night Captain Planet cartoons.
The tent also hosted yoga instruction in the mornings, as well as public Q & A sessions with bands such as Hot Buttered Rum, who answered inquiries about their choice to power their tour bus with B20 biodiesel. The non-petroleum-based diesel, which is made from soybean oil, also powered the festival’s generators, stages, and electricity.
“Where else do they bring so many people together and give them the opportunity to connect with one another in this way?” Cooper asked.
In case you haven’t already drawn comparisons to a certain farm-based music fest known for similar excess and landmark musical performances — otherwise known as Woodstock — there is another significant similarity between Summer Camp and the 1969 event: political turbulence. The political undercurrents in many of Summer Camp’s performances (such as war-protest songs performed by the Flaming Lips and the Roots) mirrored musical statements artists such as Bob Dylan had made at the iconic fest in New York almost 40 years ago.
Of course, despite their surface similarities, the “free love” atmosphere at Woodstock represented genuine counterculture, while the individuals at Summer Camp eventually packed up their tents and headed home. And, perhaps it is thanks to that very counterculture that Summer Camp was able to have such a politically open setting.
Both Woodstock and Summer Camp seem to offer the same resounding lesson: In political turmoil, people often turn to music to bridge the gap. Perhaps the Rev. Josh Peyton of the Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band put it best: “[Overseas], people love American culture [and] they love American music,” he said. “Instead of dropping bombs, we should drop records.”
Issue #35
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