Chicken John and the Mad Wriggles

So, the other night, I went to the city to perform a gig with the Mad Wriggles. I left work early to speed directly to the place. A bit of background: we four sing madrigals together. A while back, we were hired to sing by a fellow named Chicken John. CJ owns a bar in the Mission and is very ecclectic. His bar is called The Odeon and is all you would expect from a Mission bar...Our set at the Odeon bar went over well with the artsy yet generally drunk crowd.

CJ liked it too, he reecently hired us to sing again a a big soiree he had. Here's how he desribed it to us "You'll be singig in the caves underneath a castle at Hunter's Point" Knowing CJ was one of the founders of Burning Man, I knew we were in for an experience. I was right.

The castle turned out to be aptly named. The steep steps up to garden were very Scooby-Doo-like. The low light mixed with the costumed party-goers was overwhelming as we were shuffled into the performance space. There was no audience yet...they were still all upstairs listening to the string players.

CJ took us into the cave. Yep, a cave. With water and everything. We were a bit late so CJ hastily explained the way it was to work,

CJ "Watch your head...You'll come in here and sing after the poem"

Me "How do we see our music?"

CJ "What do you mean?"

"We cant see our music."

"I'll hold a flash light"

You music understand the level of dark in this cave. Zero, zip, nada. No light. And over a hundred people starting to file in and sit in the rose petal strewn church pews set deep in the earth.

"We'll do our best"

We sang the most bizzare combintation of sounds I've ever heard. We couldn't see our music so in the middle of the set we had to crowd around one music folder which was glowing lukewarmly under the weak batteried flashlight held by Chicken John. We grapled for notes and words but they were not easily found. As if the light wasn't difficult enough, there was not enough oxygen in the cave. With so many people in there sucking wind, after three songs everyone agreed it was in our best interest, as alive creatures, to lead the whole party back out of the cave.
So we watched as top hat clad space creatures crawled out of the hole in the earth. We were well recieved, even though we didn't make a strong showing. On the plus side...no one knew what we looked like at this point. Only our music folders set us apart from the Burning Man crowd.

We continued to explore the house and found another cave with a huge pool ao water lit by a couple of small light bulbs. We sang our whole set there because the acoustics were much better. There were fewer people in that cave. But Chicken came in and we got to sing a small set for him and his buddies.

In researching Chicken John, I've found he is a good friend of Larry Harvey and together they made Burning Man a reality. I wonder what CJ has in mind next. What comes after Burning Man? And can I come?