DIRTY BIRD WEST COAST CAMP OUT
This post is coming in late, but to be fair it has taken me a full week to recover from Dirty Bird West Coast Camp out last weekend.
The Camp out took place last week at the Modesto Reservoir Campgrounds in Northern California. Personally, I have been to the last two Dirtybird BBQ’s in Seattle but they stopped doing the events here so I made it a plan months ago that I had to check out the West Coast Camp out this year.
As I was preparing for the Camp out I had so many things I had to get done before I could leave and I was stressing myself out. I also made the mistake of doing too many things the weekend before. All of this lead to me getting sick with some throat pain and a consistent headache.
The night before I tried to rest as much as possible and get my meds. in, and it all worked out for the better. I woke up the next day ready to go and after 3 hours of travel I met up the squad and we got the RV all set up.
This seems lame, but I got a Facebook notification saying I am celebrating an 11 year Facebook Friend Reunion with my Boy Hoss Steele. The timing of it couldn’t have been better because I knew he would be joining the squad later that evening so we had another reason to celebrate. Then I got a text message from a friend reminding me that one of my closest College friends who is no longer on this earth was going to turn 30 on that day. At this point, I was getting extra emo. and I knew the weekend was going to be special, especially if it was going to start this way. (Picture below is from the first day when we found Claude and got a quick pic.)
Our squad pulled up to the festival a day early so we could get a good camp spot. We parked our RV right next to this small shallow lake with the main stage just on the other side of the lake. The spot had all the connections so we had running water, electricity, and full sewage. I will just say, it was the nicest camping experience I have ever had.
As for the music portion of the Camp out, I am not going to into a full description of all the different shows and sets that we saw but rather I will just do a quick top-5 ranking from what I enjoyed (and can remember).
They played a bunch of dope new house music. They didn’t play much of their own music but they had the vibes extra groovy on the dance floor. They dropped this new track from Disclosure that is going to be in a lot of my sets going forward.
I have never seen him before and he has been coming out with a lot of heavy hitting tracks so I knew it was going to be dirty. He did not disappoint.
This was probably a timing thing for me. Saturday was a rough morning for me and I ended up chilling low key till about 3 pm. By the time I actually made it to the main stage it was right when CatznDogs came on. They got my spirits up and prepared me for the rest of the night.
Of course, the originator of all this Dirty Bird hype had to make the list. His sets are always filled with new songs and track ID’s I have never heard. I wish I could just Shazam his whole set.
A legend in the industry whom I have never had the privilege of seeing before. He played more of an old school ‘funkier’ style house set with lots of vocal melodies which is my personal preference when it comes to house music.
What made this Camp Out really special was the vibe and all the activities. This was a 21+ show (which was my first) and that made all the difference. There was literally no security anywhere so you could easily make drinks at your RV and take them to the stage. No lines, no annoying wristband policies, none of that lame shit.
The people there were great. It felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of mature concert/festival goers. You could tell all of these people had camped before, have raged before, and they know how to compose themselves at festivals. I did not see anything too crazy, nobody super drunk or anything like that. It was easy to get around because the crowd was about 15 K including all the dj’s and staff but the only downside was that the two stages were really far apart. I think I logged close to 20 miles on Saturday according to my iPhone app.
What made this a true Camp out were all the additional activities you could participate in throughout the day. I did the .5 k floatie race, did some woodworking, and watched some solid water balloon toss. They had these random games going on all day and it was cool that the Dj’s were the ones hosting the actives. The one activity I am mad that I missed was the Potato Sack race with Gorgon City.
I am just going to end with this picture of this amazing house totem. I saw this totem the first night all light up and I wanted to make sure I could find it at some point the next day. Turns out the guys who made it are from Seattle too and we all might be kicking it soon.
And for those of you that are unfamiliar with Dirtybird you can check out some of there playlists and see if you are a fan. They like to call the genre “Tech Funk”.