Later Fourth of July - after I went to Locust Grove and Vincent and Alex played Laser tag - I took the two of them to a party at the Original Highlands home of Vincent's prom date, Jessi, and her family (where the three of us had watched the Derby triumph and tragedy) - where they were to go on to watch the fireworks or watch them from the house. Vincent and Alex ended up spending more time there because of what happened next. Eventually, Stephanie and I joined our friend Sarah at the Waterfront Park (where Vincent and I had watched K.C. and the Sunshine Band and then the fireworks three years ago) (and Stephanie and I had twice watched the fireworks from the roof of my parking garage slightly down river). Nearly 100,000 people were there to brave the rain and see three as many as three bands and the fireworks.
It was quite a scene - a very racially and class integrated crowd (Sarah quipped that she was unlikely to run into very many people from her predominantly older Anglo and Asian American congregation there). But when I think of the featured band: the band in the past alternatively known as Parliament and Funkadelic and leader George Clinton, I think of 1970s funk and an old George Clinton - and I think over long, somewhat sloppy jam sessions. When Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic finally got started, it poured soon and then the jams began. Interlaced were three songs I recognized (as well as other songs): "Atomic Dog," the classic "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker "We Want the Funk)," and "Flashlight." When I took summer P.E. at Buchholz High School a month before we moved from Gainesville to Tallahassee, at the time of the bicentennial, on heavy rotation at the four-square court was a bizarre-looking black music album with UFOs and aliens on the cover (what turned out to be a Parliament album). "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (We Want the Funk)" was the lead song.
Sarah was impressed that handful of people the concert were clearly long-standing Parliament/Funkadelic fans, including "We Want the Funk" T-shirts. Many Parliament fans were African-American, but - standing in front of us for a while - were four lower-middle-class white young men, with rural roots, who sported some hip hop style and smoked marijuana in front of us - while they danced and swayed energetically to music they seemed to recognize. Sarah even made a game of imagining how she could incorporate different song lyrics into a sermon. When Clinton's granddaughter started a particularly lewd rap, this got even more difficult.
The scene got more and more surreal through the rain when the fireworks across the river in Clarksville, Jeffersonville, and Utica (IN) ended (Stephanie and I reminisced about seeing fireworks from five different times on the way home from the beach in Florida some eight years ago - from St. George Island, Eastpoint, and Carrabelle) and Clinton and the band kept playing - past 11 p.m. The second the band finished its regular set, the organizers started the fireworks. The following sequence was bizarre - the organizers played patriotic music, then Parliament took over the sound sytem to start an encore, then the organizers took back over the music (but Clinton and Parliament kept playing - with no microphones turned on). Then the organizers even more bizarrely turned off all of the floodlights in Waterfront Park - just before the final few minutes of fireworks- where they probably spend half the money (rendering this flurry of fireworks less impressive, with all of the lights on). These fireworks are never as good as the Kentucky Derby Festival Thunder Over Louisville. But I wasn't sure if the rain and the bizarre late start and weird light and sound of the fireworks had ruined the interesting scene, solid concert, and fireworks.
Back in the Highlands, things weren't going great at the party/neighborhood. We ended a late night eventually at home.
It was quite a scene - a very racially and class integrated crowd (Sarah quipped that she was unlikely to run into very many people from her predominantly older Anglo and Asian American congregation there). But when I think of the featured band: the band in the past alternatively known as Parliament and Funkadelic and leader George Clinton, I think of 1970s funk and an old George Clinton - and I think over long, somewhat sloppy jam sessions. When Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic finally got started, it poured soon and then the jams began. Interlaced were three songs I recognized (as well as other songs): "Atomic Dog," the classic "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker "We Want the Funk)," and "Flashlight." When I took summer P.E. at Buchholz High School a month before we moved from Gainesville to Tallahassee, at the time of the bicentennial, on heavy rotation at the four-square court was a bizarre-looking black music album with UFOs and aliens on the cover (what turned out to be a Parliament album). "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (We Want the Funk)" was the lead song.
Sarah was impressed that handful of people the concert were clearly long-standing Parliament/Funkadelic fans, including "We Want the Funk" T-shirts. Many Parliament fans were African-American, but - standing in front of us for a while - were four lower-middle-class white young men, with rural roots, who sported some hip hop style and smoked marijuana in front of us - while they danced and swayed energetically to music they seemed to recognize. Sarah even made a game of imagining how she could incorporate different song lyrics into a sermon. When Clinton's granddaughter started a particularly lewd rap, this got even more difficult.
The scene got more and more surreal through the rain when the fireworks across the river in Clarksville, Jeffersonville, and Utica (IN) ended (Stephanie and I reminisced about seeing fireworks from five different times on the way home from the beach in Florida some eight years ago - from St. George Island, Eastpoint, and Carrabelle) and Clinton and the band kept playing - past 11 p.m. The second the band finished its regular set, the organizers started the fireworks. The following sequence was bizarre - the organizers played patriotic music, then Parliament took over the sound sytem to start an encore, then the organizers took back over the music (but Clinton and Parliament kept playing - with no microphones turned on). Then the organizers even more bizarrely turned off all of the floodlights in Waterfront Park - just before the final few minutes of fireworks- where they probably spend half the money (rendering this flurry of fireworks less impressive, with all of the lights on). These fireworks are never as good as the Kentucky Derby Festival Thunder Over Louisville. But I wasn't sure if the rain and the bizarre late start and weird light and sound of the fireworks had ruined the interesting scene, solid concert, and fireworks.
Back in the Highlands, things weren't going great at the party/neighborhood. We ended a late night eventually at home.
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