I'm Not Going

I left her house in the shaggy hills of Eugene, Oregon, and flew on my bike downtown, sated by opium, hashish, and sex, but I vaguely recalled I had a meet set up--

And then I was in the W.O.W. Hall, watching Les Claypool for the “gee, I think I’ll throw it in the street” sum of $5. In retrospect, the reason it was $5 was probably because Les wasn’t playing bass. The box office guys sure didn’t let on, and I’m assuming they knew. Indeed, unless you already knew Claypool was making a movie spoofing the post-Dead/Phish jam-band scene, you were pissed off like me ‘cause Les wasn’t even apparently on stage. You know, the skinny, big-hat weird-beard bastard thumping away on the Thunderbroom in the look most known from his animated rendition in the opening credits to South Park.

Naw, I learned later instead he was there, in a convincing fat suit and overalls, with long hippie hair, gold-rim glasses, a Trey-on-heroin beard and playing drums for chrissakes. It was a little different from what I expected, but these expectations were formed mostly slamming about a deep-mud mosh-pit as Primus headlined Lollapalooza, maybe 1992, at Riverport in a driving rain-

But I think of Les today, partly because I feel he still owes me a fin (okay, $10--I had a date) but mostly, because as part of his ripping on the whole jam band scene, he sang a little tune entitled Are You Goin’ to Burning Man?

As the fat drummer sang on, I caught him smirking at the three generations of hippie-freakers-by-the-speakers, whirling away with no apparent sense of irony. But I stood stock still, like Entwistle amidst the chaos of The Who, and finally understood the whole show was a put-on.

Burning Man, to me—and apparently, to Claypool—had become a joke.

Next: Why.