All Good 05

So I’m at All Good in 2005. A half-dozen of us or so are camped next to a swamp. Its Friday night and I think Les Claypool and the Flaming Lips were headlining with some sort of shitty Particle late-night show. Anyway we dose ourselves proper and have a blast, getting back to the campsite around 5am we obviously crack a beer and watch it slowly get lighter out. We’re still absolutely FACED sitting around giggling, etc.

Its maybe 5:45 am, slightly light out but still kinda dark. Its just light enough to see something moving in the swamp; we see reeds shifting around so it looks like some animal is moving its way through the swamp; actually looked really freaky for the 5 of us still faced on ‘cid in a totally unfamiliar part of the country (WV). We’re all kinda frozen with anticipation seeing this thing move toward the edge of the swamp which was just a little downhill from our site when suddenly a human figure crawls out of the swamp onto “dry-land.” This guy takes about a full minute to finally gain a standing position and about 20-25 feet away from us and stares at us. We’re all laughing and shit ‘cuz we had been watching for 10 minutes now.

After 5 more minutes the mood became a little awkward as “swamp-thing” was standing pin-straight staring at us from 20 feet away as it got lighter outside. We’re almost too high to stop laughing but finally we start the out-reach process: “Hey pal, what’s good?” “Good morning sunshine how ya feelin” etc. ABSOLUTELY no response for a good 15 minutes. We start testing his reaction capabilities by throwing a few empty beer cans at him which all hit him without him even blinking; couldn’t even tell what was happening.

Now its just awkward even though we’re still laughing. Finally we all start to slowly realize that he’s actually staring right at my friend Russell, a big burly dude with a bearded face; always beat red from laughing. He’s been staring at him the whole time!

Finally “swamp-thing” speaks, his voice all calm and trippy: “Hey you. Yeah you. You with the face [pronounced ‘foice’]. That that’s right I’m talking to you. You with that foice…” which is ABSOLUTELY not what you want someone staring at you and saying to you when you’re all twisted.

All of us kinda back off like ‘ok, he’s talking about Russell not us’

Russell himself goes from laughing to obviously feeling really uncomfortable. His laughter calms down and slows to almost a halt. All of us are almost speechless.

“yea that’s right. You with the foice…. That’s quite a foice…”

Swamp thing slowly takes 1 step back stares a Russell for a final 1 minutes, and slowly wades back into the swamp not to be seen again.

I swear Russell didn’t act the same for the rest of the summer after that. We call it the Curse of the Swamp thing.