Sego Festival 2008
Provo, Utah

Let’s get one thing straight before start: Sego is pronounced with a hard “e” (as in “Seego”). I know your hip, indie friend from Park City calls it “Saygo Fest,” but a vowel between two consonants is almost always hard. Plus, if you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find that the Sego Lilly, from which the subject of today’s post gets its name, is pronounced with the hard “e.”

I’m McKay by the way. I’ll be blogging here occasionally.

Anyway, in another wonderful, nervous shuffle toward the big wide world of art and culture, Provo hosted its third annual Sego Arts Festival this last weekend. According to the Sego website, the festival includes, “50+ bands and musicians performing on 6 separate stages, projected video art and film from local artists and filmmakers, and giant murals painted by local artists- all in synthesis and collaboration- ultimately forming a community and aesthetic experience which reaches beyond limitations inherent in each individual artistic media.”
Basically, think Woodstock, only with less free love and more free Emo band pins.

Admittedly, I was only able to attend the festival for a couple hours, but I must say, I was generally impressed by the quality of music I heard. Overall, the musicianship was passable and the songs were creative and catchy. And there were even a few standouts (shout out to electro rockers Hot Parents and their soon-to-be-infamous chorus, “Stop! Don’t touch me there! This is my no, no spot!”) (As long as I’m shouting out, I better do so in The Yaks’ general direction. Look for more on them in coming posts.) I’m beginning to understand why it’s so hard to break into the music scene. There’s a whole lot competition!

At one point during the festival, I began to experiment with replacing the word “indie” with the word “Sego.”

Examples:

“His style is totally Sego.”

“I heard they just got signed to a Sego label.”

“I swear, if I see one more Myspace band that lists ‘Sego’ as one of their genres, I’m going to cut my ears off in protest and mail them to Tom Anderson.”

You get the idea.

To me, Sego represents a fairly abrupt swing of the pop culture pendulum. Eight years ago, TRL was dominated by boy bands and hot teenage girls with mediocre voices. We wore t-shirts with ridiculous brand names plastered across them. We watched teen comedies. We quoted our favorites. We were all-American.

But we have entered a new era. TRL has been slain by YouTube, and now you’re more likely to find M. Ward on our iPods than N ‘Sync. In many ways, the “indie pop movement” is reminiscent of the late 60’s and early 70’s, when Bob Dylan was singing “finger pointing songs” and when nonconformity, ironically enough, unified a generation of youth. I’m not exactly sure how much further the pendulum will swing in this, the new millennium, but it will be interesting to watch.

Times they are a chagin’, indeed.

5 comments:

hun*ter said...

McKay Coppins? The guy who wrote McKay Recycled that is available for purchase on Amazon and bookstores across Holliston? It's an honor!

My favorite part of Sego Fest was before Elizabethian Report played, a guy called Provo 'Dry Hump City'.

vicm said...

Maybe so they don't confuse everyone they should name it after the state bird instead of state flower: Seagull Fest. That's what half the people there thought it was anyway.

At least, the people who aren't sego enough to know what it's really called.

Mike Tree said...

i originally thought i was going for the birds, but soon realized that the only flapping going on was the girl in front of me flayling her arms. sego fest begged for free love (dry hump style), and was, in a word, groovy.

christopher, there is said...

thanks for the shout out man.
-chris and jer from hp

vicm said...

Wow, you guys are getting famous! People who aren't even your friends on facebook are making comments now! You should keep giving people who don't have songs on the Billboard Hot 100 shout outs.

Viva La 17 Tracks!

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