Spring Fest Digest

Published April 22, 2008

By Peter Casasa-Blouin

Spring Fest this year was fortunately on the nicest possible day we could ask for. But this also gave people incentive to stay off the top of the hill. I however wanted to see Talib Kweli for a second time on university grounds. The ten dollar cover charge made me bitter, especially after hearing that some “editor” botched Talib’s name on the ticket.

Having paid for someone else’s mistake I passed from one side of a nearly invisible orange fence to the inside of that very perimeter. I was in spring fest. The first sound that introduced the new season to me was the bassist of P. Funk. The crowd was smaller than years passed but somehow the vibe was adequately dispersed so as to feel like a festival.

People were sitting outside of the fence, or hopping it. Others were permeating in and out recultivating their buzz on a day that seemed to demand a party, or a purging. But I was sent to review Talib and am guilty in both liking the opener more than the headline and forgetting the bassist’s name.

When Talib came to UVM my freshman year, it was fall, there was whiskey, and looking back now I pretty much held that night above all others in recollection. So when I saw him in broad daylight (not in a crowded sweaty gym) I was shocked to see that he hadn’t actually brought spring with him.

He wore a zipped up hoody and my topplesness was in stark contrast. Also in stark contrast was the color of our skin, which I was painfully aware of in the afternoon sun; that which had at least been veiled by the grind session and the darkness of a gym. When he spoke his line from get by about selling crack to our own out the back of our home I realized he wasn’t talking about me if he was even talking to me. But that is deeply discouraging, and I am only compelled to introduce the idea because it is obvious that UVM is basically the whitest university.

I was encouraged away from any racial detachment by how energetic he was. He incorporated classic Marley and some sweet dreams . . . but would always come back hard, stopping occasionally to “feel the love.” People, full grown men as Talib observed, were crowd surfing and it seemed like there were a wide variety of toxins having a wide variety of reactions to many of my fellow spring-festers.

But despite Talib’s enthusiasm and artistry, rap probably wasn’t the best choice for the scenario. Crowd surfing isn’t dancing and it was clear that people responded more to the bass from those nameless fingers. And after Talib left without a word or glance, he came back out for what was to me, too many songs. By then I was dying, being that the garden hose I put up to my face made me feel desperate.

Once it was said and done, people seemed to have missed the whole thing, already planning the next spot. I was going to write this piece but was equally disoriented. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best Spring Fest ever.

After being assaulted by the sun and feeling nothing in particular about the show, I’ll have to put the Talib show of hot sweaty yesteryear and put it in the spank bank, replacing it with less romantic but more honest picture — which unfortunately reflects why I couldn’t sing along with most of his performance.

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