If you followed the parade into Harvard Sq. for Oktoberfest, you may have noticed their program. The back was covered by corporate logos, which speaks volumes about what Oktoberfest is about. Such commercial branding is one relatively easy way to get some money, and it is clearly the way that the art/music/festival world has gone over the years. (OK – another disclaimer: I don’t believe all corporations are bad, but I do believe in multiple bottom lines, and most corporations don’t.) If you look at the HONK! poster we produced, you will see our best effort to acknowledge all of our wonderful donors and sponsors, from big to small, equally, with no logos or branding, or preferential treatment to bigger donors. We honor them all for giving their assistance at their own level of ability. This may have distressed a few or our supporters initially, but I think they all understood it on some level. We certainly don’t begrudge anyone making money – in fact, we support it in our embracing of Davis Square – but we will not sell our souls to that enterprise.

We have taken a different, more difficult, but principled path to avoiding the commercialism and the consumerism that is part of the culture. We decided early on that we would NEVER become the ‘Bank of America HONK! Festival.’ We simply drew a line in the sand and said, to paraphrase the blog author’s words, we are playing for the sheer joy of playing, not for becoming rich, and because we believe in the old adage of ‘Bread and Roses:’ hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses!

The work WE do, as organizers of the HONK! Fest and as musicians, is to provide sustenance and support and love to all the bands that do similar work. Some are VERY political, some are minimally political; a few are trying to make a living as musicians, but most are doing this only for the love of it. We the organizers dearly love what we have created in the HONK! Festival, and the connections to other bands around the world who are doing similar work, but the HONK! Festival will die from insufficient funding rather than become a corporate event with big money.

I think Tom Lehrer *might* be correct in that art like ours may not change the world, but I think this might be too much to ask of it. Change occurs in small steps, as famously noted by people from Howard Zinn to Margaret Mead, and much of our efforts as HONK! organizers and bands, is to ‘energize the base.’ Our appeal to our audiences is occasionally cerebral, but more often visceral – we want to see dancing!!! A mosh pit is not a symposium on radical politics, but those who subscribe to such beliefs have as much right as anyone to shake their butts and have a good time. (I even saw a couple of typical young Mormon missionaries in the crowd, and maybe even THEY were energized and went out and gave some extra zest to their proseletyzing that afternoon. OK, well I hope not, but the point is that we want to uplift people through music, preaching love, hope, tolerance, etc., rather than their contrary values).

Anyway, these are my bleary-eyed ruminations on your shifting postings. Thanks for thinking about this!

Marco, you’re such a walking crabcake sometimes. Even though I took the long way around and probably spent more time griping than I shoud have, I actually do love this event. In this case, I gripe because I love.

On the politics:
Penn and Teller did a great episode on their show Bullsh*t that made “feel-good” activism like some of that seen at Honkfest! look really stupid. (Their ultimate point was that, if you *really* want to change political views, you need to engage economically. Money talks, wearing funny clothes, while funny, doesn’t really accomplish much.)

On the music:
The other obvious aspect of non-recordability is being literally surrounded by the instruments, or only getting part of what’s going on when you’re there, because half the instruments are pointed the other way. That said, some of the music was really good.

Mark!