Sego Festival 2008Provo, UtahLet’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.
From humble beginnings, Alpine based band the Yaks have risen to become one of the most important groups in Utah valley. This collection of young high school misfits overcame the odds to win the Muse music battle of the bands, beating out the best college bands Provo had to offer. They also recently opened for Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, not many people can say that, right? Their "Missle To The Sun" and cover of "Hey Ya!" have delighted fans but their sophomore effort, Young Blood promises to take the group to a whole new level.
