Wulapalooza at Willamette University

Wulapalooza is the day I look forward to the most all year. Wula brings Willamette students, Salem inhabitants, and music/​art/​earth/​fun enthusiasts from surrounding areas together under the glorious umbrella of everybody having a damn good time for free. You’d be a fool to miss it.

From the website: «Wulapalooza is an annual urban earth, art and music festival that takes place on the campus of Willamette University. Local schools, performance groups, and professional bands perform for over a thousand students and community members annually with local businesses and student groups fundraising for various charitable organizations. We are an Earth Day and community festival that yearly brings in thousands of community members and students.»
Thee Emergency is one of my favorite bands, but since they usually stick around Seattle, I knew I had to make the trek to Wulapalooza to see them play. I did miss the entire first part of the festival with the student and community booths and whatnot, so my commentary pertains solely to the evening program. However, Wulapalooza remains one of the strangest events I have ever been to, and it’s not just because of the name.
We arrived when the band was setting up to a crowd of a hundred or so students milling around a field. I had to keep reminding myself that it was a community festival, because it always seemed like we were the only non-​students there. So Thee Emergency came out and rocked hard, as they are wont to do, but Willamette U. students must not be the rocking-​est, because they were dancing around as if it were some hippie drum circle or something. Now, I love me some hippie drum circles, but there is a time and a place, and it’s not when this bluesy, punk-​y, soulful throwback to 70’s-style rock ‘n’ roll is playing out live ten feet away, the guitar player throwing out sweet licks from behind his head and everything. Maybe it was the dearth of shoes. Maybe a body requires footwear to rock out.
Anyway, we couldn’t take any more of that for a while, so we went to get some dinner before Mirah was set to take stage. When we got back, the beer garden seemed irresistible, but we saw the door person checking off names. Now, I went to a huge state school, and it seemed entirely impossible that a university could have a full list of its 21-​and-​over students contained entirely on printed pages in a small-​ish binder. How quaint. The beer garden really was only for students, but we were somehow convincing as alums. Beer was 3 for $ 10, which mathematically doesn’t make sense and is also silly for two people to split, but whatever. Also, they had all kinds of free food up there that we abstained from due to the fact that we weren’t really meant to eat it. The fact that the school was providing an entire free party for its students was starting to set in, holy crap.
Next was Mirah, who was unfortunately playing in a gymnasium due to some noise ordinance shenanigans. When a very serene sort of performer like Mirah is playing, you have to really pay attention, especially when she is playing in the middle of a gymnasium and you are sitting cross-​legged in front of her. However, dozens of side conversations almost drowned out the music, and then some students decided to get as close as possible to the bassist in order to flick their Bics, and someone’s kids were allowed to walk all over near the performers and grab their hand percussion instruments, and the people dancing majestically still couldn’t get the beat right. We stayed as long as we could bear, but the magic was gone. On the way out, a big truck was backing up to the stage, shining its lights on some students on the field wrapped up in the provided blankets.
Moral: private school is strange.