I certainly had a good time at the Newton County Wildlife Association's Forest Fest. About the time I showed up, the first musicians started playing--the song was "Dreams", the Fleetwood Mac song that has only recently gained a new meaning to me. Not long afterward, I was grabbing a bite to eat and talking to a friend (talking to this friend was the main reason I went despite the cloudy skies and intermittent rain) when she got up and said she had to get back to work. I said, "Are you short- handed?" and one of the guys serving food said, "Here. Wash these," and handed me a short stack of dishes. Four hours later, the food was gone. Five hours later, so were the dirty dishes. (Slight exaggeration--not much though.) I was disappointed that it took over two hours before someone walked by, a younger guy, and said that washing dishes was women's work. I gave him my best quizzical look and prepared to deliver my pre-planned laugh line when he beat me to it by saying, "I'm kidding." I went ahead and gave him the line, "Well, I volunteered to give birth, but they said I wasn't qualified." Ah well. The last two bands (I didn't really get to see much else) had signs of the times in them. The Flicks, a six-member band, had two women who didn't sing. Instead, they played keyboards (both of them) and wind instruments (sax for one, flute for the other). One sang limited backing vocals, but they were primarily instrumentalists. Here's a big change-- women playing with the boys' toys instead of being relegated to the traditional girl singer role. Not quite as positive as riot grrls, but on the right track. The next band, Funkle Sam, had a female lead singer (nothing wrong with it, unless it's your only option) and did, well, funk music. The hippie- type back-to-the-land people and the old-timers found one common ground in acoustic music (most of the afternoon stuff was acoustic, though not the old-time type which I would prefer), the hippie-types and the children of the old-timers (these groups are about the same age) finding their common ground in rock/boogie/blues type stuff. So it was nice to see hippie-types and their children (and the younger people from out of county, including the first non-white people I recall at a Forest Fest, though I haven't gone to many) dancing together to funk. (The other lead singer, a black guy, couldn't make the gig--again, a postive sign that the band was booked with a black frontman.) I never did get to have that talk with my friend, and I didn't get to eat a pawpaw. Other than that, it was a very good time. John Adams
