Notes from VirginFest

This year's full-blown rock festival post complete with pictures, band-by-band coverage, etc. won't come until next month, when Maureen and I fly to Texas for Austin City Limits. But here's an abbreviated report from the first day of VirginFest:

As the world becomes ever more inter-connected, there's a certain fear that globalization will ultimately lead to a thin grey soup of culture, into which all the national distinctions we treasure dissolve. You feel it when you walk down a graceful Parisian boulevard in spring and hear dread words like "Ou est le KFC?" Or when you get the feeling that we're headed toward a future where there's an Irish pub on every corner but no actual authentic Irish people left, in Ireland or elsewhere. Call it the tragedy of the cultural commons. 

On the other hand, you've got bands like Gogol Bordello, which essentially answers that age-old question, pondered by philosophers throughout the years: What would happen if Frank Zappa had been born into family of gypsies in the Ukraine in 1972, fled the Chernobyl meltdown, and ended up on the lower east side of Manhattan, where he founded an Eastern European folk/punk band that includes a Russian fiddler, Russian accordion player, Israeli guitar player, Ethiopian bassist, two backup singers of Thai and Chinese heritage dressed in roller derby outfits, and (naturally) an Ecuadorian percussionist / MC? 

Similarly, lets say your whole act consists of a man and woman, both Mexican, sitting on a pair of chairs, each playing an acoustic guitar, with no vocals and an uncategorizable sound that begins with Latin influences and then wanders through rock structures, salsa, flamenco, and the occasional Led Zeppelin cover. How awesome do you have to be to end up on the main stage at VirginFest? Answer: ten kinds of awesome, or Rodrigo Y Gabriela. 

In other words, as with most things, there are plusses and minuses of bringing the world's cultures together. On the whole, I say thumbs up.