Feeling a bit isolated in the depressed Monticello area and being the victim of an attempted devouring by a swarm of mosquitoes started our trip off on a bit of an undesirable beginning, but the beauty of the Catskill State Park and the ATP Festival ultimately made the vacation quite enjoyable. Dinner in the college town of New Paltz on the Saturday night after our trip to Kaaterskill Falls gave us a small return to civilization, and the drive back to the hotel from there provided some wonderful views from a mountain chain we had to cross.

While the eastern side of the park was filled with many small villages, a nice drive at the Park's western border along the Pepacton Reservoir on Sunday morning revealed a much more isolated area where nature prevailed over fireman's fairs that blocked small yet critical roads for reaching destinations (a small inconvenience not worth otherwise documenting). There is no area in Northern Virginia / suburban DC that I've found that has the same solitude as we found in some areas in NY; even the deepest wooded trail here has an underlying soundtrack of airplanes and traffic that is simply unavoidable. However, we also have a much more obvious recession-proof environment that has far fewer failing businesses and abandoned buildings than we noticed while driving in the north. I suppose everything comes at a cost.

Image swiped from the Wired New York Forum

All Tomorrow's Parties

While you wouldn't know it from the Boredoms music I've been repeatedly playing for two weeks, there were some other neat things about the ATP festival at Kutcher's that are worth mentioning.

Deerhoof: Truth be told, looking up Deerhoof's tour schedule was actually the source of how I found out about ATP, not the Boredoms as I might otherwise lead you to believe. Their set was a bit short, but full of math-rocky goodness in their own goofy way. I missed the band the last time they were in DC, so it was nice to see them even with a time-limited set.

Image swiped from The Village Voice.

Boris: Sometimes I really enjoy loud, droning music, but I forgot that it can strike me as a tad boring live. Really, Boris was just LOUD, so much so that we left the stage area and heard the show quite well sitting on a couch outside conference room where they were playing and enjoyed it just fine.

Bob Mould with No Age: I haven't really listened to Bob Mould in over ten years, but when I did, I was totally addicted to his solo work, Sugar, and especially Husker Du. He actually played his old Husker songs with No Age, alternating tracks with the band as if they were Grant Hart. He screamed, bounced, and hammered the guitar like it was 1986, and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. The only thing missing from the set was his Flying V.

Image swiped from The Village Voice.

The festival: A wonderfully relaxed environment was the real compelling part of ATP (well, the Boredoms, then the relaxed environment). Coming from DC where you can't go anywhere without being treated like you are Bin Laden's right-hand man or park your car without having to study the tow-away signs as if they were gospel at the eve of judgment day, the event in rural NY was just fun. Plus, it was common to see many band members and other celebs simply walking around and watching shows like casual people. Wayne Coyne rode around a golf cart looking at everybody with a gigantic grin, Jim Jarmusch attended a few show that we were at (plus he was in Akron to see Tom Waits when we were there a few years ago, just to plot our paths on the musical map), and the Boredoms and Boris were just everywhere we were, it seemed. Only the poor girl from Deerhoof seemed to be constantly bombarded by geeks trying to meet her, but such is the life of a girl singer at one of these things, I guess.

The Boredoms

On Sunday afternoon, we abandoned nature to attend the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Kutcher's Country Club in Monticello, NY. The bands lined up for Sunday were particularly interesting to me including Deerhoof, Boris, and Bob Mould playing Husker Du songs with the band No Age. But, the real reason we drove six hours for a concert was, without any question, to see the Boredoms.

Image swiped from "Mountmccabe's" Flickr stream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/14669732@N07/3922214558/

Advertised to play Boa Drum 9, the stage setup had a circle of nine drum kits surrounding two structures of guitar necks fused together to look more like a sculpture than an instrument. Eight drummers accompanied Yamantaka Eye to the stage and sat quietly while Eye used a drumstick to carefully pound mesmerizing chords from the various guitar necks towering behind him. The crowd was intent on the growing composition, enjoying the mood but obviously anticipating the mania that was obviously soon to follow.

As Eye began pounding the guitars with more force, a distraction was occurring near the rear of the theater with security quite vocally demanding people move and not enter the center of the audience floor. Combined with screeches from their communication radios, it was growing slightly irritating until Eye conducted the drummers to start slowly entering the composition. Also around this time I started noticing that a ninth drummer wasn't entering the stage; while true, eight drummers is still a lot, it wasn't the nine we were expecting to be there. The drums picked up beat and volume rapidly, with Eye temporarily manning the ninth drum set, and the answer to a few questions was quickly presented.

Image swiped from The Village Voice, http://www.villagevoice.com/slideshow/view/28463544/32

Eye and a few others well positioned from the stage began looking to the rear of the theater where the sound of drums seemed to be emitting from. I began to think something was wrong with the feedback of the room when, being carried like an emperor, we saw the ninth drummer skimming across the crowd, answering beats to his peers on the stage with vicious pounding. Carried through the crowd, the found ninth drummer, floating while being expertly directed by the security crew, led the band into the start of the monstrous set we were about to experience.

Image swiped from The Village Voice, http://www.villagevoice.com/slideshow/view/28463544/35

For nearly 80 minutes, the Boredoms played a wonderfully constructed, nearly non-stop orchestrated piece that weaved in modified versions of songs from their catalog (Acid Police, Super Going, and Seadrum, to name a few I could recognize) with a deliberate compositions obviously written to bring out the power of the massive wall of sound the drum sets could provide. Eye, while chanting and screaming in time with the music, replaced his drumstick with an six foot poll that he used to strike the guitar necks simultaneously, adding to the crashing percussion. Somehow, it was all musically wonderful; hardly as chaotic as what words might make it sound to be yet devastatingly loud with the rhythm shaking my entire body.

Image swiped from Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/features/photos/galleries/736-all-tomorrows-parties-2009/

With each band at ATP having only 60-75 minutes, the Boredoms wore out their welcome with the stressed stage crew who, after fifteen minutes of apparently trying to reason with Eye that it was time to stop, started unplugging equipment and literally taking away parts of drum sets while the drummers continued pounding. Smiling, the band finally succumbed, abruptly ending their set to while applause from the blown away crowd. For hours after, we overheard numerous conversations throughout Kutcher's of how great the show was, and I've found numerous blogs online talking about this being one of the most enjoyable live experiences from any band.

Image swiped from Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/features/photos/galleries/736-all-tomorrows-parties-2009/

For me, it is hard to disagree; a week later the music is still stuck in my head (and my right ear still smarts a bit...like the Bug Off a day earlier, I also forgot to pack ear plugs). With some regret, I had missed the Boa Drum 77 on July 7, 2007 in Brooklyn, so this chance was very hard to pass up. I'm happy to say the trip to NY for this show resulted in no regrets whatsoever.

I didn't take a camera into the event, so I stole all the shots appearing above, giving credit as appropriate.

Kaaterskill Falls

We weaved our way north through the tiny routes that led us to the top of the higher mountains within the Catskills. Starting with a quick zip through Woodstock, where we were downright amused to see the prevailing symbol of hippie dippie peace and love stocked with junk shops exhibiting capitalistic aggression as far as the eye could see, we quickly passed into less populated areas where trees, streams, and lakes consumed our view.

Climbing the mountains was slow going at times, but we eventually found ourselves at a small parking lot about a quarter mile from a path that would lead to the Kaaterskill Falls. The previously mentioned hiking book warned me of the dangers of walking from the parking spot to the trail entrance; there were basically no paths but the two-lane road to follow which us and a few other visitors scaled, hoping oncoming traffic would be sympathetic to our lack of sidewalks. They were; as far as I could tell, nobody important was run over or forced over the edge of the mountain.

With the ground very wet, the hike to the Falls was quite exhausting. While the guidebook called the hike "moderately easy," I was moderately dead on my feet by time I reached the main attraction after climbing uphill over thousands of boulders. But, having survived what few other people apparently tried to walk, I was the only person at the foot of the falls for my entire visit. Had I not been thinking my heart was going to explode from the hike (on top of the other long walks earlier in the day and a, perhaps, unnecessary cup of coffee), I may not have appreciated the Falls as much; but given the slight probability that any breath could have been my last, watching the water fall from such a height was truly remarkable. Kaaterskill is the highest falls in the state of New York and fulfilled my desire to see a natural wonder close-up.

Onteora Lake

I had lucked upon a really nice book laying out reasonable trails and hikes throughout the Catskills, and from the list of 60 suggestions, we selected Onteora Lake to explore first. With a tiny road off Route 28 providing access, we slowly made our way down a gravel path to the start of what appeared to be a quiet, beautiful location.

Nicole spotted a frog, and I found a number of (what I believe are) red efts running around.

Unfortunately, given all the rain the area had received recently, there was a lot of standing water which resulted in a lot of vicious mosquitoes. We were about a half mile into the walk when I realized I had not packed any Bug Off; we retreated, but by time I made it back to the car, my face was red and very, very swollen. It was actually frightening to feel my skin puffing up as I sat in the car and I wondered if it was possible to have an allergic reaction so bad to mosquito bites that I could start having trouble breathing.

But then I realized that, if I were to blow my chance to explore the Catskills just for fear of suffocation, I'd be really mad at myself. So, off we drove to what we hoped would be a less bug-angry place.

Ashokan Reservoir

Marked with only a sign that read "dead end," we entered a road that lead to a beautiful ~2.5 round trip walk on a flat, paved path overlooking a wonderful body of water surrounded by massive mountains. The clouds that had, only a day earlier, threatened so much rain that it could have washed out our trip made for beautiful scenery. The cool breeze soothed my irritated face, and we had an enjoyable stroll where I shuttered off a bunch of pictures.

A few months ago I impulsively bought tickets to see the Boredoms at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Monticello, NY this past weekend. Combining the event with a recent desire to want to see the rural mountains of New York state, Nicole and I took a few days to travel north to fulfill the musical and natural goals. As with many things we do, it was quite an eventful outing, and I had the camera with me for a good deal of the time.

Pittston

A few weeks ago, the travel section of the post listed a couple restaurants in the Pittston area as recommended dining areas. Pittston rests between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton and was right on our way to New York, so we decided to stop in one of the Italian eateries.

Now, having lived in that area for a year while attending grad school, I gained a small amount of knowledge regarding the organized crime legacy the town held. In the lonely drive (only accompanied by dreadfully heavy rain), I joked to Nicole that this Italian restaurant could, in fact, be a mob hangout.

I either have a bad sense of humor or an interesting ability to predict the predictable future.

It is, of course, quite possible that I completely interpreted the events of the meal incorrectly. Gangs of men talking about point spreads and handing envelopes across the table could be purely innocent acts that I blew well out of proportion with my own imagination. But, what good is life without a little imagination (especially when the food was average at best).

Nevertheless, no pictures of Pittston. Use your imagination.

Monticello

For the second year in a row, the ATP festival in New York was held at a country club called Kutcher's near the south-western tip of the Catskills. The area is doubtlessly depressed, and we drove about with little luck finding anything to do beyond eating and playing with a dog at a local new age store. In their decay, the surrounding towns hold a lot of character; with abandoned resorts and many closed businesses, Monticello made me wonder what the term was for a town that wasn't quite a ghost town, but was by all appearances heading in that direction. Sadly, I couldn't think of one.

A friendly dog who welcomed us to town.

Nevertheless, we made the best of the surroundings and prepared the next day to explore the Catskills State Park.