Zoop 2 as seen through the eyes of my girlfriend

This is my ZoopII experience.

I will admit I had never really listened to the Mountain Goats prior to meeting Michael/Juggatard. I had heard of them/him years ago but the few people who had suggested it were desperately trying to be indie and obsessed with bright eyes & similar, being a metalhead I had little interest in primarily acoustic music. Having grown out of my RAWR METAL ONLY phase, Michael's impressive collection of tMG appealed to me and changed my opinion. The month leading up to and the the drive to ZoopII, tMG was all we listened to. Having spent nearly every summer of my life in upstate New York and attended hundreds of shows/events/etc, I believed it would be an average trip. As it were, seemed more like an adventure when it was over.

The ride up was stressful, and our directions lead us there on obscure routes. We arrived later in the day after it had begun to lightly rain, and set up. Upon successfully setting up the ridiculous tent that hadn't been touched since last year's camping trip we began attempting to relax after being cooped up in a car with a smelly, flaky hippie for over 6 hours. We walked around the farm and Michael told me all about his experiences and memories of ZoopI. Forgive me, I'm terrible with names and from this point on, anyone I met will be referred to as I remember them. Which probably isn't their name.
After a trip to the local deliverance-like town store [where they sold beer, tires, old cigarettes and light bulbs] we started drinking and organizing our belongings. Around this time I met Colin and his girl, both of which were super awesome and some other people, including a very serious guy with a porno mustache, a blond dude with a camera who didn't seem to like Michael much and of course, John himself if only for a brief moment. By this point, nearly all of the beer we brought from RI is gone and we're drinking the Pabst we got in hickville. I've made friends with the farm cat.

I don't remember much of Samson's performance, other then noticing Michael was getting hyped and the creepy hippie was trying to hook up with random guys.
Peter Peter Hughes, whom I regret to admit I had not heard of before, preformed an excellent set of music in the same vein as several of my favorite musicians. This when I noticed boy with the awesome hat, who offered me some lovely whiskey. I hadn't noticed he had offered Michael the bottle as well, and would have objected had I known. Michael can drink a good amount of beer, but following it with strong whiskey was probably not the best choice. He of course, was too drunk to realize that. Michael is drunk and the stinky hippie is nowhere to be found.
Not that I minded the last part.
After the awesome Mr Hughes performed, I spoke to John who is far more charismatic and genuine then I could have imagined. He too noticed Michael was drunk, and encouraged him to hold off for a bit. This is probably around the time I starting handing over our Pabst to John, with the intention of running out before "I'm-not-drunk!" Michael could find them.
I loved the set and was thrilled by the performance as a whole, as well as hearing a few songs I really enjoyed. I chose to skip the last song, in favor of some fresh air and sat outside on the deck rail. Not too long after, Michael found his way to me. I had been drinking, so I don't really remember when boy with the hat, camera guy or the strange Russian girl who slept in our tent showed up, but John soon came to join us as well, and I continued to shove beer into his lap.

I believe this is when things went from being typical, to really strange.

I had already been sitting outside at the fire when everyone began to gather around the fire. I was freezing cold and pretty drunk by this point, and content to be in New York amongst other happy/drunk people. When Michael wandered over, Colin had begun to play thus sparking a sing-a-long. Not too soon after John came out to correct Colin and played "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature", a favorite of mine. Having seen the video I didn't know was recorded then, I find it mildly amusing that Michael & I are pretty much the only people visible besides John.

After John retired and the group began to die down, I wandered back to the tent to sleep off the drunk, leaving Michael behind. Upon returning to my tent, I found the random Russian girl sleeping and listening to the nutcracker on repeat. I crawled up in my flimsy sleeping bag and tried to ignore the nutcracker hell and snoring hippie outside. Maybe a half hour or so after I fell asleep, Michael found his way back to the tent and collapsed beside me.
I went back to sleep, and a half hour later awoke to him getting up. Or so I thought. Still drunk and practically sleeping, he tried to stand up and was prevented from doing so by the tent. Completely unaware, he decided his sleeping bag and pillow were as good of a place as any to relieve himself, and began pissing everywhere.
Still in nutcracking bliss, I think the Russian girl was oblivious. I started yelling and trying to find my glasses. Almost immediately after he decides to lay right back down, and despite being nearly blind I grab the wet stuff and throw it outside. Sober, wet and really annoyed I grabbed my backpack, glasses and left him my own sleeping bag then headed back to the hippie's car, wanting desperately to change and sleep. Instead I froze my ass off for 6 hours until the sun rose using a dirty beach towel and the dirty hippie's sweater as blankets. Giving up on even trying to sleep, I fixed my makeup, rested my head against the window and tried to ignore the fact that I had forgotten my cigarettes in the tent and did not want to go outside, no matter how badly I needed nicotine. Not even 15 minutes later Michael arrived, having searched the farm looking for me, with very little memory of the night before after leaving the fire. So with less then an hour of sleep, I began day two of ZoopII.

The flaky hippie tells me it is imperative that we leave after the show, for some ridiculous reason he hadn't disclosed previously. I have to tell strange Russian girl [who won't make eye contact with me anymore, probably was awake] that we can't stay again, like we originally had said we would and should we have to find someone else to crash with. I'm pretty sure at this point, she hates us. She said something in Russian, walked away and I never saw her again.
Hippie is being flaky and complains of a headache all morning. I tell him to sleep all damn day if it means he'll be ready to drive all night. At this point I'm slightly irritable, and the vegan jerky which I consumed pounds of in my drunken haze was tearing my stomach apart. So, I had the breakfast of champions. Warm, flat beer and a cigarette.
We relax near the tent for a bit and clean up, packing up whatever we wouldn't need. Hippie continues to be an annoying drag and I decide not to drink again.
An epic adventure lasting us a few hours resulted from wandering in the woods stoned and following a stream wanting to find a river/lake to swim in. By this point I'm mildly hallucinating from dehydration, exhaustion and lack of sleep/food [& am convinced something in the forest wants to eat me]. By the time we get back to the farm, the hippie has gone from annoying to risking a fist sandwich and we ditch him. Wanting to swim even more, we go into the Watkin's Glenn town with the intention of exploring the local "gorge" with Colin and his girl.
Having been upstate countless times, I had been looking forward to a river, dam, or lake and was highly disappointed to find a man-made hiking trail of stacked stale rocks which resembled a sewer drain more then a swimming area. At some point Colin went off to get a tattoo. I'm further into my exhausted haze and the people working in the tattoo shop make me nervous, having more fingers then teeth, overalls and a thick hick slang [they too may want to eat me]. By this time I'm out of cigarettes and smoking potent pure tobacco, which gives me a head rush every time.
I convince Michael to get ice cream, and we sat in the creepy town while Silent Hill-like alarms went off on seemingly 15 minute intervals, driving into my head like a rusty nail.
At some point we found Colin and headed back to the farm. With the hippie nowhere in sight, we sat in on the Q&A, where I discovered John was a metalhead and gained new admiration for him.

Before John began the request set, the hippie was passed out in his tent with his feet protruding. I then proceeded to dump all my empty cans from the night before into his tent. I'm not sure why, probably because he was "That guy" who wasn't enjoying Zoop and generally being a jackass to us the entire time [partly because I was pretty delusional at this point]. The entire show was excellent, and I loved every second of it. After California Song, Michael and I said our thank yous and good byes to everyone.
An hour or so later we were on the road headed home. Michael had already passed out in the backseat, and I faded in and out in the passenger seat. The stinky, lame hippie was driving.
I'm going to stop here and briefly explain that I had lost my license almost 6 months prior to ZoopII, and hadn't driven since then. It was intended that Michael would trade off with the hippie half way.
45 minutes into the drive, I felt the car drift off the road and vibrate loudly on the grooved embankment. For a brief second I felt the headlight brush the guardrail and immediately woke up and demanded he stop the car. I love Michael dearly, but you couldn't wake him if the car was on fire and upside down. Once he's asleep, he's dead to the world.
So I got behind the wheel and attempted to ignore an oncoming anxiety attack. In order to prevent myself from falling asleep in my extreme state of delusion and exhaustion, I blasted the only cd we had, a 20+ song burn mix of old, rare or live tMGs songs. I had not eaten, slept or drank anything besides beer in two days, and had run out of cigarettes/tobacco before we left. Unable to locate our directions or map, I drove 6 hours in the dark by memory alone, convinced I was driving a spaceship down the Mass turnpike.

All in all, ZoopII was probably the most metal experience of my life.

Located on my blog: a sappy lovestory about me & the Mountain Goats

I sat down to write something about how I'm a sappy useless tool piece of shit who talks shit on the internet & then blogs about musicians who he really loves, but would like to stop having dreams about on a nearly nightly basis.

For serious, I'm sick to death of hearing [in dreams] that I am to be presented a complete recording of both Zoop concerts. For those of you who dont know, Zoop is an event held by John Darnielle & Farm Sanctuary East in Watkins Glen, New York. It's a wonderful two night event in which you get to camp out on a farm sanctuary & take in the scenic NY landscape & learn about the animals on the farm by day & by night be rocking out to the Mountain Goats. John has stated somewhere that he plans on doing Zoop every other year, so that means the next Zoop is in 2011[but heres to hoping.]

Okay, so here's some zoop history.
The first Zoop was held June 16th & 17th of 2007. Zoop II was June 13th & 14th of 2009. There is a recording out there that exists of both nights of Zoop 1, however it has yet to surface. On the internet archive [archive.org] there is a recording of the entire set from the second night & 1/3rd of the set from the first night. Why this is personally sad to me is because well, when I went to Zoop I got drunk the first night & while it made me have a more social & fun time it did make me forget what was played that first night. Thankfully the internet is there with the setlist & it legit makes me cringe to think I forgot about that. But that's that, it's been almost three years now, I feel like I'll never get to hear the songs played on the first night of the first Zoop again, unless I listen to other recordings of them. But I dont want to. I want to listen to them. I want to hear what I personally experienced, I suppose.

On the first night of the first Zoop the lineup was
Perry Owen Wright
Peter Peter Hughes
the Mountain Goats [John Darnielle solo for the most part, Peter Hughes on vocal bass.]

On the first night of the second Zoop the lineup was
John K Samson
Peter Peter Hughes [Note: I'm going to go off about this set later in the entry.]
the Mountain Goats [again, Solo.]

Night two of Zoop has always been a solo all request set. The first year John set up an email address people could mail in their requests to. Basically the idea was you'd pay a certain amount for a certain song era & you'd have that to pick from, the proceeds all going directly to Farm Sanctuary. Since they're letting you stay there, this is most definitely one of the best ways to donate if you're not someone who's all about the cause. The second time around John didnt have time to set up an email address so he brought a large pad of paper out during day 2. basically you wrote down what song you wanted to hear & how much you'd pay for the song. I'm pretty sure golden boy went for something unbelievable, I really would like to know that total, as the initial price on it was something like $100 & people kept just throwing money up there when they heard something they liked. It was really a very excellent experience.

Lets talk about Zoop II night 1 for a second shall we: I was so fucking hammered that I made Zoop look like House Party 2, this was Zoop II & I was belligerent! Excellent. & now, in true Zoop fashion, I'm just going to forget to tell you about this part for a while.


I will tell you that once we finally got there we started drinking & listening to music inside our tent, as the night went on & everyone got ready I was about 12 beers deep & feeling great. Eventually I had a discussion with John that I dont even really remember anything about despite the picture we took together, in which you can tell I am already that drunk. My girlfriend has an excellent story I've been kicking her to write about Zoop II as she came with me this time around. It really was a nightmare to be around me, I suppose. I'm sorry.

Either way, John K played & it hit home for me as the first song he played, "I hate Winnipeg" was a song that was introduced to me by a late friend, who coincidentally died a month after the first Zoop. It kind of went from being one of those nights where all is right with the world to one of those nights where coincidence hits hard & you're hammered. I stayed seated for that one song, mostly because I was drunk & I felt the urge to just keep moving, I guess it was because my mood went from mindbendingly positive & happy to depressing nostalgic mess. I thankfully battled this, I'm actually kind of sure that's when I ended up talking to John, but since I'm just now piecing it together & writing about it it's going to be a little disjointed.

I fought my way out of thoughts that werent meant for Zoop & managed to have a good time, I decided to stop drinking until John went on, at the behest of John & my girlfriend. That plan went well, until the fateful moment in which Drunk Will handed me his bottle of 100 Proof Ol' Grandad because I was one of the only other people dancing during Peter Peter Hughes' set. Now, I'm just going to outright say that while I do long for the complete Zoop bootleg, I would die happy just hearing Peters set again. I mean that, for real. Either way, I drank a lot of that whiskey, because I was drunk to the point of not tasting a damn thing. Which can also account for the mass amount of vegan jerky I ate despite the terrfying aftertaste. Sorry guys, I know vegan food can rule, but keep jerky to the carnivores, pleez.

John played a great set. He always does. He's amazing, the true messiah. Oh, yeah. I was really drunk too so you can imagine I not only missed out on remembering the rarities he played, but managed to consistently try to harmonize [poorly] with the songs while dancing & generally being that guy. Apparently there was an accapella No Children somewhere in there, which definitely sounds awesome in my book. Anyhow, after the set, like always there was a bonfire & John came out to tell Colin Pound he was playing a song of his completely wrong. Theres a youtube video for this moment, it's very dark, but you can still see me & my girlfriend directly on the right of John.

I managed to stay up for a bit longer, singing & dancing & being drunk, then I went to the bathroom a nearly shitpissed myself. I'm pretty sure I missed the toilet, but hey I TRIED TO CLEAN IT UP. I aint no Tucker Max shitting all the way across a hotel lobby & shit. Immediately following this debacle I exit the toilet, having cleaned myself up to an extent I ran into PPH who I ended up talking to in the bathroom, belligerent ass blacked out drunk about how his set was amazing & how my best friend had died the same year as Zoop but since Zoop was so awesome it kept my memories positive & a bunch of dumb drunk asshole bullshit. I then proceeded to pass out in the tent.


I'm leaving the rest of the story to my girlfriend. Let's hope she writes it sometime soon.