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We got the car all locked up, and then I walked over to a booth and bought a soda. On a whim I decided to try Vanilla Coke, which really was not all it was cracked up to be. In fact it was kind of gross. But maybe any soda would have tasted awful in that environment. I had once heard a girl in a store say that Vanilla Coke tasted like a mixed drink without the alcohol. I think she meant that it tasted like rum and coke, which made sense because she kind of looked like she had had plenty of rum and cokes. To me it tasted like a bad cream soda.

Georg had actually read the Artscape information brochure (so nice to have someone around who actually pays attention to these things), and had noticed that Karsh Kale was performing that afternoon. Georg and I both love Asian Massive, of which genre Karsh Kale is apparently the leading performer in the US. And while we hadn't heard Kale's album, we had heard a couple of tracks from it on the fabulous Asian Travels 2 compilation. In fact, I had coincidentally almost bought his CD for the trip (I ended up getting Suba's "Sao Paulo Confessions" instead). So we were both excited about getting the chance to see him live. Alix was also interested because she teaches belly dancing and she's always looking for new music for her classes.

We looked at the schedule and realized that he was performing clear on the other side of the festival, so we started over pretty much right away. On the way we stopped at the port-a-sans, which were not nearly as horrible as Georg had led us to believe. We also saw more art cars, some which I hadn't even seen before the parade! I guess they must have been late-comers. I chatted with a young woman who had helped her mother do her car, and now had started putting a beautiful glass mosaic on her own car. They were both at the parade together. Isn't that cool?

Along the way we saw the craziest billboard. It had a picture of Jesus Christ holding a bottle of Budweiser, and said "The King of Jews for the King of Beers." I guess it was social commentary on the cynical and exploitative nature of advertising. Still, I thought it was pretty amazing that they could get away with such an edgy statement right out in the open. You could never post a billboard like that in public in North Carolina!

Near the stage we stopped at a booth and I got an orangeade. Much more refreshing than that awful soda. Alix got a soft pretzel and offered us some, but if I recall correctly I didn't want to eat any because I had just been in the port-a-san. Maybe that sounds prissy but I just don't want to use an outdoor toilet and then touch food with my bare hands. I mean, ick.

Anyway. The stage was set up in front of some kind of commuter train station. I guess the place where they put the stage was where people would normally stand to wait for the train. There was a small level area in front of the stage, and then a steep grassy slope up to the festival. We walked about half-way down and found a spot on the grass to sit down. It was still pretty hot but luckily the sky had gotten hazy, so the sun wasn't blaring at us anymore.

While we waited for the concert I watched the people sitting around us. I wanted to take some photos but it felt rude to take someone's picture without their permission. I was concerned that someone would see me and take offense. So I didn't photograph any of the other spectators.

I did, however, take a picture of another photographer who was walking around taking pictures of the crowd. I caught a glimpse of her press badge and I think she worked for the Baltimore Sun. She looked like she was really enjoying herself, really happy about her photos. So I couldn't resist snapping one shot.

When I put down the camera, she was looking right at me. Eek! I smiled at her, but she didnt really respond, just kept staring at me. I really thought she had seen me take her picture and was going to come up and say something to me. I looked away and resolutely avoided looking at her again. But she never did approach me. Now I'm thinking that she must have just photographed someone near me, and was trying to find them in the crowd so she could get their name for the paper.

They were playing dance music while we waited, and there werre a bunch of kids playing and dancing in front of the stage. I took a few photos of them but none turned out very well, so I didn't post any.

I must say, I'm pretty amazed with this camera. We were pretty far away from the stage, but I got nice crisp close-ups without a tripod or a telephoto lens. That tip I read about, to rest the camera against your face, arms at your sides, exhale and then hold your breath while pressing the button, worked really well.

The only disappointment in the camera is the delay. It's a problem with all digital cameras: the camera has to process all sorts of information, so there's a lengthy delay (I think it's a full second with mine) between pressing the button and getting the shot. So the camera is really not good at action photography. You see a great moment, press the button, and get something totally different.

Since then I've learned that you can press the button half-way to lock in the settings, and then press it the rest of the way when you're ready to take the shot. This not only speeds up the process, but when the button is already halfway depressed it causes less movement in the camera. But at that time I didn't know about this so I missed a lot of neat images, and ended up with a lot of photos of people standing there looking like they had just finished doing something interesting.

Finally Karsh Kale and his band came out. They were introduced by a guy from the local public radio station. The program explained how to pronounce his name -- "Kersh Kah-lay" -- and the announcer had just met him, but he still got it wrong. I bet that happens to him all the time.

The music was fantastic. Really wonderful. Like much electronic music, Kale has a vibrancy & energy live that isn't quite duplicated on the album. There were five people in the band: Kale playing drums (we thought he'd use tablas, but he had a Western drum set), a guy on guitar, a guy on keyboard, and a male and female singer. Kale also sang one song, but most of the male vocals were done by the other man.

As soon as the music started a woman got up and began this sort of interpretive jazz dance. Lots of twirling and high kicks and such. The style was a bit silly paired with the music but she was good so it was pleasant to watch. Another woman stood up and started doing a sort of salsa dancing, and then Alix went down and added a belly dance groove. So it was a cool multi-culti sort of thing going down on the dance floor. There was also a woman with a baby standing up by the stage, taking lots of photos. We found out later that was Karsh Kale's wife and baby.

I took a ton of photos of Alix but only got a couple of interesting shots, due to that delay thing I mentioned above. I hope she doesn't mind that I posted her photo on the Internet. I thought she looked really good, not to mention the fact that her dance style was better suited to the music than the others.

It was a long performance and I was pretty tired from all the excitement, so after a while I lay down, closed my eyes and just listened to the music. That was great. Nice to stretch out and relax. I was careful to tuck my camera bag under my arm and wrap the strap around my hand before I closed my eyes though. I had left my purse at home and was using the camera bag as a purse too. Which was much more convenient than carrying two bags, but it meant I had all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

After the concert Alix and I both went down and bought CDs. Good thing I hadn't picked it up before the trip! Buying it direct from him means that I get a signed copy, plus he gets more of the money. It looked like he did well; there was a crowd of people buying CDs.

When he signed mine, I asked him if there was any chance he'd ever perform in North Carolina. To my surprise, he said maybe so, because they're going on a big tour in the fall when college starts again. Which gave me a perfect opening to mention that I was a DJ at the Duke college station and how much I would love for him to come to the station. And he said yes!

(After we got back we found out that Kale is part of a big Asian Massive tour, including DJ Cheb i Sabbah and a lot of other people, that's touring the country this fall. They haven't posted their full schedule yet so we are anxiously waiting and hoping that they do come to the Triangle.)

By this point we were all pretty tired and hot so we decided to call it an afternoon. On the way back to the car we stopped at a sort of food court and got free red bead necklaces with lobsters on them, from the Red Lobster booth. The guy warned us that the red dye would come off on our clothes if it got wet. Not to be gross, but my whole shirt was a bit damp from the heat, and it was a white shirt at that. So I stuck the necklace into my bag. I'm planning to put it on my car somewhere, but I haven't figured out where.

Getting the car out of there was a bit tricky. The road in front of the car was a main walkway, so there were crowds of people streaming by. In fact the people were walking so close to the car that I didn't feel safe moving forward at all. I honked my horn a couple of times, which created just enough of a gap in the crowd that I could pull out a few feet. After that we inched forward bit by bit, people slowly moving out of our way, until we finally got to that side street and were able to get out of the festival.

And now I see that I have come to another good stopping point. Although I haven't really finished writing up the weekend, at least I've got the parade covered. So I will quit for now and cover Saturday night in another post.