Read the remaining entries from Roofless Records, Bleeding Palm, and Crossfade's road trip diary.
Voice of the Valley Noise Rally Report #5
Pentress, WV/Springfield, VA/Miami, FL
8/28/2011
After we said our farewell to the strange and epic Indian Meadows, we headed to Springfield, Virginia, (Thank you, Patrick and Karen!) to shower, blog, and sleep.
Every time we closed our eyes, we dreamt of the Valley in phantasmagoric bursts of double-mirrored, flickering .gifs.
Early in our drive to Florida, we stopped at South of the Border, a famously racist tourist trap off I-95, and gazed, empty-headed with exhaustion at the rows of SOTB snowglobes and ash trays.
After this brief, surreal pit stop, we headed straight for the Sunshine State on a marathon haul that pushed us to the very limits of exhaustion. It was as though we finally had to pay the price for all of the fun we had been having. And it cost 18 fucking hours in a car.
Ronnie from Bleeding Palm did most of the driving, and for that he is Crossfade's Unofficial Best Driver of 2011. What an honor.
Voice of the Valley was an experience unlike any other. All of the music was great and the performances were engaging and varied. The physical features of the locale endowed the weekend with a whimsical, otherworldly vacation quality, and the isolation fostered an intensely immersive experience. Despite it's deep connection to a genre many call "noise" -- and in high contrast to the legions of corporately-sponsored, expensive, tacky summer festivals loaded up with has-beens, washouts, and flash-in-the-pan trends -- Voice of the Valley Noise Rally is about music.
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