There was a moment early Sunday when I found the crucial tableau, the event-in-miniature that would define Tibet '98. The main force of spectators was just pulling into the parking lot when some jokermobile started blasting "Jumpin' Jack Flash" at stun volume. A couple of horns went off, and kids leaned out of their car windows, laughing and flashing peace signs. "Woo!" the tableau would've been inscribed. "It's a gas, gas, gas!"
I laughed, despite a twinge of pique at the nerve of it all -- 'cause Saturday was not a gas, nor, for that matter, was it much like the canned rock 'n' roll tragedy that appeared on the news. The facts as reported, in case you haven't already heard, are like this: A storm swept through the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday afternoon, uprooting trees and knocking down power lines. At the third annual Tibetan Freedom Concert in RFK Stadium, during a set by Herbie Hancock, lightning struck the crowd, throwing a spectator 20 feet in the air and injuring a total of 11 concertgoers -- four critically. The concert was then canceled and the audience removed from the arena, with no word as to whether the next day's tickets would be honored.
So after all that, it was great to see high spirits reigning once again on Sunday, which came off beautifully, with ace performances by a huge spread of bands. Most of the canceled sets from Saturday were shoehorned in somehow, and the organizational side of things went even more smoothly than before. Let God try to kill Herbie Hancock some other day. We'll have a blast all on our own!
But we're getting ahead of the story. Day One: Big trouble in Little Tibet.
The day started off with a likable set of alt-rock by Money Mark and a stageburner by Mutabaruka. 'Baruka has a Kingston Prophet/Dub poet thing going, with his Ethiopian cape and ankh-shaped microphone. The band absolutely killed, with stop-on-a-dime style vamps and a ceaseless procession of showoff maneuvers, like the old play-with-your-teeth trick. It's amazing how tight and polychromatic any good reggae unit will be, compared with even the best rock bands.
Take Live, for instance. After 'Baruka basically blew up the stage behind him, they came out in a great, tidal whoosh of guitars and bluster. It sounded like pavement -- not the band; I mean the flat, hard grayish stuff -- and the crowd made a perceptible start, like, "What's this terrible noise?" By the second song, "I Alone Love You," Live had found their footing, and the crowd was with them. But they're on the cusp of becoming a nostalgia act: The excitement they generated was of the reverent sort, not the gee-whiz variety that Mutabaruka managed to whip up.
Chaksam-Pa, a trad-Tibetan act, came out after them. The audience here was gamer than last year. Then a crowd-scan would've yielded about a thousand dudes mocking the singer or aping the masked dancers, but this time there was peace in the arena -- and even a good bit of applause. Still, Chaksam-Pa -- or any unfamiliar, and therefore demanding, sort of music -- can be testy arena fare. The sound system this weekend was blurry and honky throughout much of the stadium, to the point where it was often difficult to know what you were hearing unless you could anticipate the changes (Sonic Youth's set would suffer because of that as well). It was great, once again, to see Chaksam-Pa sharing a bill with big-time rock acts, but you generally couldn't tell what they were up to. It must've just come off as a bunch of weird, nonsensical foreign mummery to the white ball-cap crowd, replete with shrill tonalities and voodoo dancing. Which is precisely the reason they should hear authentic music in the first place -- to get them to understand that it's real and interesting, and not just a multi-culti spectacle of the Other.
Dave Matthews performed his spectacle of the familiar, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It's not that Dave isn't good at what he does: He's got a great, tight band and a sort of blankish, glowering charisma that lends him considerable appeal. But why is he such a god-popular live act? I asked the guy standing next to me, and he said, "Dave's just ... The best sort of thing of the kind of thing he is, right now. Since Jerry's gone, I mean." Which I guess would mean that he's .38 Special in a world starved for Skynyrd. Fair 'nuff. They ended with the traditional closer, "All Along the Watchtower," and the gingery-looking guitarist reeled off a smoldering solo. Seemed like it would've been great in a small club.
I forgot KRS-One, who came between Dave and Chaksam-Pa. He blew up the stage as well, with his old-school Bronx hip-hop revue. Hard beats, crazed break dancing and KRS-the-peacemaker presiding over the whole head-spinning carnival. It was the kind of performance that just leaves you gaping. "Hell, yeah," I thought. "I forgot: Hip-hop rules!" KRS reeled off a long quote from the Dalai Lama and boomed at the crowd, "Peace and Respect -- that's all hip-hop has to say to you today. Everything else is just that street shit." Behind him, a guy in a jumpsuit was spinning like a dervish with another guy splayed out on top of his head. For chrissakes, what are people doing buying Puff Daddy CDs while this giant walks the earth?
After KRS and Dave, word had filtered out that Patti Smith had canceled. At that point I decided to skip Herbie Hancock and go check out the tent bazaar outside.
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About 20 minutes later, winds and showers started whipping across the grounds, and a thunderous crash came from somewhere high in the stadium. "Uh-oh, lightning," I thought. "And Herbie is next to all the electrical equipment." But the video monitors outside showed him still playing away. A while later, I nudged back into the media area. The festival staff was dashing around with walkie-talkies, and a mild, tentative sort of chaos had taken hold of the compound. "Everybody out! The press has to move!" A woman ordered. "We don't want to be held responsible if this tent goes!" Goes? What? "If anybody's hurt, we don't want to be responsible!" she explained. "Everybody must go to Gate B!"
There I got the story from an MTV producer. "A guy was struck by lightning up in the stands," he said. "A girl freaked out, and the whole crowd turned around and watched while Hancock kept playing. They brought an ambulance in through the crowd. It was weird: Some of the people took advantage and pushed their way up front -- like all right!" Then he asked me how he could upgrade his shitty media credentials. "Do you know where I could score a photo pass or something?"
"Try dating a publicist."
After scurrying around for a while, I ended up backstage. It was panic back there. A phalanx of policemen was ejecting VIPs from the stage, and a gang of security guards came bursting out of the loading area. One shouted, "They're robbing the till!" I tailed the guards back up to the VIP compound and watched as they hauled off a mob of spectators who'd crashed the gate and were looting the catering trucks.
Nevertheless, Milarepa issued a press release the next day saying the concert had been evacuated smoothly and that no incidents had occurred. Not so. But if anybody out there really did rip off money from the concert, that lightning bolt was rightfully yours -- and I hope another one gets you soon. If you just ripped off food from the VIP area, remember what they say about times of crisis: When order fails, as it did on Saturday, and people are faced with that crucial existential moment of choice between dignity and swinishness, it becomes plain how things really stand and who falls on which side of the divide.
Sunday, again, came off beautifully. Buffalo Daughter and Sean Lennon opened, each putting in pretty good, though unspectacular, sets. Pulp upped the ante a bit, with Jarvis Cocker poncing around like the last of the playboys. And Blues Traveler, the Wallflowers, the Beasties and on and on.
Radiohead is in serious ascendancy. Where last year they were a scrappy Britpop band for the import crowd, this time they're nearly fledged rock gods. Tight, tight set, as usual. The "OK Computer" cuts got huge roars, and Michael Stipe came on to sing "The Bends," just to drive home the point a little more. They ended with "Creep," which is sort of a concession to American tastes. But it was obvious, as it wasn't last time, that they don't need to ride on the song in America anymore.
R.E.M.'s set showed Stipe coming on in an attractive sweater-and-skirt ensemble, with Johnny Ray earpiece still in effect. They opened with a bells-and-beatbox piece, tore through some hits ... and there's Radiohead's Thom Yorke, taking on some of Stipe's vocals. He does a good Stipe, in fact. The set ended with "Man on the Moon," which can seem insipid on record, but is somehow ungodly rousing in concert.
So, strangely, was Pearl Jam, who are riding their second wind farther than anybody would've thought even a few months ago. They opened with "Corduroy" and worked into the newer material, with the crowd exploding for each new song. But there were dissenters. The priceless Eddie Vedder moment of the evening came when he admonished a couple of water-bottle throwers with the old "You know who you are" rap. "But," he said, "the rest of y'all have been really good." Then WHOP! He gets it right in the face with a projectile. An audible "Oof!" came thundering from the speakers, and Pearl Jam had once again earned their place at the forefront of rock. Priceless Vedder Quote: Called President Clinton a cunt. Nice language, Ed.
But the best part of the festival came after Pearl Jam, the headliners, had wrapped it up and said goodnight. Their equipment was still humming on the stage and the field was emptying when the Red Hot Chili Peppers bounded on and tore into "Give It Away." The crowd, caught totally off-guard, came storming back and went mad to a three-song mini-set. The Peppers had borrowed stage time (and equipment) from Pearl Jam -- it was a great surprise gift for the audience, who'd had to deal with a lot on the previous day. For those of you who sank to the occasion, like Eddie said, you know who you are. For everyone else, I've kept off politics so far, but here's a link to the Milarepa Fund's Web site. Please go there and check it out right now. See what the news is.
