Jam For Freedom

The saga gets worse!

This is the text of the message I received from Cambel at J43dom on Saturday, August 3rd. (5 days before our spot)...

"Hi John, hope you're well. We've had to cut costs with our festival next week and we can't host your band unfortunately. Our main stage is getting installed later and we don't have the facilities for these early Thursday gigs. We're a small festival so it's difficult to get it all to work.

Hope to connect soon. Many apologies for any inconvenience x

Yesterday I posted my reply to Cambel here.... . This morning Dave Crow AKA The Vengeful Spirit and Carolyn Ash came for coffee with Carol The Singing Tea Lady and myself. They'd read my post and did a bit of investigative journalism. (you know that old school practice of finding things out rather than acting as state sternographers). They checked out the J43dom line up page and discovered this....

We were due on about 5pm and as Cambel wrote “Our main stage is getting installed later and we don't have the facilities for these early Thursday gigs.” It looks like "costs" weren't "cut" after all, we were replaced by a Panto. Must say I was a tad shocked that we'd been bullshitted in such a findoutable way. A bit of salt to fuel the anger sir? Such a predicament induces speculation and rumination. In an attempt to quieten that, I set about a bit of hands on work snagging the clay plaster wall we've been working on.

But the mind can't help trying to figure out a mystery. Why the lie? He could've said "Sorry John, don't like the band after all." That would be a hard one to say of course. But better than bullshit. Or "Sorry you sound different without that amazing keyboard player I heard on your "Pack of Lies" CD"..... or "Your material is different, it's a bit too dark for 5pm". Thing is he's heard the CD, so there you go.

The Tibetan Buddhists have a series of 59 Lojong slogans. The one that comes to mind is "Don't try to figure people out". So I've sent him the PDF of today’s (Thursday) line up and asked for an explanation. I guess if one comes it will take some time, as the revelling is in full flow as I type.

This little drama undermines the "truthing" aspect of this "freedom" thing, given the unreliability of media, alt media, alt alt media etc. Being as straight as we can with each other is a good start to counter this mindfuckery. Am I now a J43dom truther? This isn't really a joke. The mass bureaucratisation of our society is going to require some solid reliable non compliance. And that won't work if we can't trust each other. Which is exactly what the "ruling class" want. Divide and rule, just like all this street theatre and facebook scolding going on this week.

My old mucker Marshlander responded yesterday espousing the joy of busking and it's freedom from the tyranny of "gatekeepers" and "fly boys". I concur, most of my busking experiences have been touching and earthy, engendering chance encounters of generosity and kinship. But this would be harder work for the band, maybe we should think about it.

This is all very dissapointing as Cambel’s story is a good one and I want to believe he’s OK. Perhaps I’m more of an optimist than you’d guess. Xj