JE CONCERT (KEVIN SEIBERT)
The Purple Door festival had been going on for a couple hours by this point
and it was a little bit before noon. Jeff Cloud was up on stage helping set
up for the Joy Electric show which was the next band on the schedule of
performances. Most of the morning had been ruled by punk bands (not a bad
thing since I like punk a lot) and people were finally starting to actually
wake up. The tear down from the Morella's Forest show finished up and
synthesizers and other various machines were carried onto the stage. The
announcer at 7-ball stage introduced the crowd to Joy Electric. Ronnie
Martin and Cloud (with a guest musician: Sean from Morella's Forest filling
in for Caleb Mannan) kicked the show off with Lift Up Your Hearts. The
crowd was apparently pretty into the show, but the "mosh pit" area was
totally still. I guess this kind of bugged Ronnie so after the first song
he said, "Come on, you guys wouldn't be just standing there if we were…" He
paused for a moment and then said, "… P.O.D. or anything. There, that's my
band name drop for the day." The next song was Disco For a Ride. At first
the pit was completely still, but then slowly at first, a few people near
the front of the stage started jumping around during the chorus and soon the
whole pit was doing it. Not much of a mosh pit, but it was still better
than nothing. Next came Monosynth and everyone started to get more and more
into the show. People would scream "with my monosynth" while jumping up and
down and it got to the point where Ronnie just pointed the mike out into the
mosh pit for the choruses while singing along. Joy Electric played a couple
more songs and then Ronnie decided to stop the music for a little bit to
give a short sort of sermon to the crowd. The general idea was to rise
above the mediocrity and to get totally into prayer and getting closer to
God. The next song on the playlist was Sugar Rush. That's when the
unbelievable happened. Had there been no sound I would've sworn I was at a
punk show because people actually started moshing for real! I started at
the back of the crowd and somehow got knocked around to the point where I
was practically right against the stage. Getting into the pit probably
wasn't the brightest thing I've ever done since I'm just a li'l guy and I
ended up spending half the song being smashed in between some fat guy and
some fat chick I didn't know (I obviously didn't learn my lesson because
less than 3 hours later I got in on the Ghoti Hook mosh pit). By this time
everyone was into the show and I'm OK, You're OK was played. Joy Electric
only had a half hour time slot so there was only room for a few more songs.
Children of the Lord was next on the list. People moshed even harder to
this song than Sugar Rush; there were a couple of times I thought for sure I
was going down, if not from being pushed, then from being kicked, or just
passing out from the unbelievable heat… it was, afterall, almost 12:00 and
since I'm not all that tall, the only possible way I could get a breath of
fresh air was to jump up in the air to get one, but everyone else was
jumping too, so I just hoped that I wouldn't pass out. Children of the Lord
came to an end and suddenly everyone started screaming "DRUM MACHINE JOY!"
as loud as they could. Well, the not-so-subtle hint was apparently very
effective because we got our wish: The House In the Woods mix of Drum
Machine Joy. The moshing wasn't quite as heavy for this song since the
beats don't really lend themselves to moshing, but I guess that could be
said of any and all Joy Electric songs. Still, people made the attempt.
After the final singing of the chorus Ronnie invited anyone who so desired
to come talk to him and Cloud at the Joy Electric stand. And so ended the
Joy Electric show at Purple Door Fest '99.-Kevin Seibert
