Piece Out

Hippie hippie shake: Bravo, bravo, Jason! Sounds like you understand what is taking place with the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence (Wayward Son, by Jason Harper, June 9). As a seasoned veteran of the festival scene, I can tell you Wakarusa ranks up with the best, and you captured that feel in your article.

I also want to tell you how refreshing your articles are since the departure of Nathan Dinsdale. His articles (and pardon my French) sucked! Reading about Puddle of Mudd and Tech N9ne time after time really got boring. That was the scene in Kansas City two years ago, and Nathan never understood the underground music scene that is attracting people in Kansas City in this day and age.

MKG

KZPL 97.3

Summer camp: Dear Mr. Harper, I’m curious as to whether you attended Wakarusa last year. If you did, I am amazed you could have written it off. I came last year BECAUSE of the awesome lineup. My friends and I drove eight hours to enjoy this beautiful festival in a beautiful setting. We’re going back this year because of the lineup, the positive vibe, the small size of the fest (30,000 is the max) and the fact that the promoters have listened to us, the festivalgoers. Your stereotypical rendering of the festival and its attendees is shameful. I am 49 years old and have been gainfully employed as a teacher the last 29 years. Plus, my three friends I travel with and the large majority of people I met at Waka also work at regular jobs and love live music, all at the same time.

Name Withheld by Request

Harper’s bizarre: After reading Jason Harper’s Wayward Son column about the second annual Wakarusa Music & Camping Festival, I was dumbfounded at the recklessly naïve stereotyping and amateurish pot shots Mr. Harper resorted to in order to make up for his journalistic laziness. It almost seems like he just went to the Wakarusa Web site, clicked on the band descriptions, picked out the artists he thought sounded the most “jammy” and put them in the article. For such a snobbish and stuffy writer, he seemed woefully uninformed about the vast diversity of not only the music but the audience as well. It was almost embarrassing to see how shocked he was to find out that Wilco, Son Volt, and Neko Case would be performing this year. Did he not realize alternative acts like Guided By Voices and Spoon graced the stage at the inaugural event and that artists like the Mars Volta and My Morning Jacket will perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, a similar event held in Manchester, Tennessee? The most endearing quality these festivals have is the genre inclusiveness and their uncanny ability to appeal to audiences with wide-ranging musical interests.

And don’t worry, Mr. Harper, we won’t bother you with a 3 a.m. mandolin jam session; hopefully you’ll be camped elsewhere.

Vince Meserko

Overland Park

Jam up: Unlike many people who will be responding to your article, I believe that you genuinely were attempting to put a positive spin on the entire festival. However, I truly believe that it is writers who perpetuate the stereotype of the dirty hippie who makes the whole scene unbearable for many people. I have attended the past three Bonnaroos, and I will be attending Wakarusa this year. Unlike your fun little quote about not contributing anything back, I have a master’s degree in social work and I work with hospitalized patients with HIV/AIDS in New York City. I’m no saint, but I think I’m doing some good in the world. And unlike the greedy bastards in the corporate world who are busy destroying our Earth and everything good in the world, at least the hippies I have met (even at a festival with 100,000 people) are promoting values of peace, are Earth-friendly and are some of the most nonjudgmental people I have ever encountered. Now, I don’t enjoy every type of music, and I don’t particularly love “jamming.” But I don’t hold it against anyone who does, especially not people who I have always seen treat others with respect and love. How can you hate that? I just wish that writers would focus a little more on the festival itself and less on denigrating the people who choose to go.

Monique Judy

via Internet

Teach your children well: Are you kidding me? You actually let an uninformed, stereotyping, ignorant person like Jason Harper write for you? That article was some of the biggest BS I have read in a long time. (A) Harper appears to know nothing about the scene or music he writes about and (B) he is very insulting toward people who are different than himself. He calls the people who attend these festivals the “kind of people who are unable to contribute to civilization’s progress.” Does he not realize that Deadheads and other hippies are some of the people who make your laws, write your books, teach your children? Come on, man, know what you’re talking about before you decide to bash hundreds of thousands of people.

Matt Newman

via Internet