Basic Aid

Hey everyone,

It's been over a month since I wrote in this blog. Anyway, as I recap the last month, you will see why. April, May and June are extremely busy months musically. Lots of festivals and shows. Anyway, I mentioned last time that my friend and bandmate, Paul and I were organizing a little music festival called Basic Aid to benefit an orphanage in India. Well, it's been and gone now. It was a very stressful month leading up to it and by the time Sunday night rolled around, I was the most exhausted I'd ever been. I hardly slept or ate during the whole event. I didn't realize how much work was involved. Anyway, if you asked me before if I'd do it again, I would have said no. If you asked me now, I would say perhaps. It was a success (we didn't lose our shirts and we did raise a fair bit of money), lots of fun and to me, it feels like quite an accomplishment...but I'm glad it's over.

Basic Aid was held at a cool place called Moonshine Hill. It's in the mountains, about an hour north of Taichung. It's a venue surrounded by bamboo trees and the stage (what you see in the bottom half of the picture) was carved out of the side of a mountain. It is a natural rock stage. Also, there is a little cabin with a bar inside.

People camped overnight. Saturday was beautiful. We were lucky. But the rain (that I was worried about and expecting) came on Sunday. Man, it poured.

Early the first day. Just a few people sitting around.

Faye and the Slacks playing in boots. Like Woodstock and all great music festivals, it was a little muddy.

Starting to get dark...

Though I won't put all the bands pictures up, 14 different ones played. It was a great weekend of music.

Here's Militant Hippi.

Militant Hippi again. One of our songs requires female backup singers. That's Lindsay up there with our singer's girlfriend, Alana.

People hanging out at the bar inside the cabin.

Here's me on stage a couple of days after the show.