Final Ichthus Thoughts

I know Ichthus has been over for a few days, but I figured I'd give some final closing thoughts.

I spend my first two posts lamenting the poor audio quality but I do have to admit that the third day of the festival showed major improvement. The main stage was vastly better than the previous days. Not only was the audio tolerable and not painful, but it was actually quite good. I have a few different preferences when it comes to mixing, but all in all it wasn't painfully bad.

The 3rd stage was also much better. The second day of the festival I threw in some ear plugs at this stage because one or two of the frequencies were pretty painful, but they seemed to have worked out all of the problems and it sounded as good as a small stage with that kind of gear can be expected to sound.

The one exception to vast improvement to the audio quality was the 2nd stage. While this stage wasn't too bad the first two days it had some pretty serious feedback issues on the last day of the festival. After they fixed the feedback issues they still had issues with the mix being poor, but luckily most of the final bands were hard rock/punk rock bands and you can get a way with a bad mix if you crank the volume. One very noticeable problem on this stage was the drum kit for the MxPx show. Either the sounds guys weren't good or they just didn't have a lot of time to EQ it, but either way the kit sounded like a Fisher-Price drum set. It was horrible!! That show in particular was mixed pretty poorly, which made me sad, but served as a good catalyst to leave and see the Psalters at the #3 stage.

All in all the best concert from the entire weekend was the final act of the festival - the Psalters. They are amazing. As I said in the last post they are totally hippy-free-thinkers, but their music is both seemingly chaotic and cohesive. There were 7 or 8 of them playing instruments as varying as: the banjo, finger cymbals, various ethnic drums (djembe, congas, etc), bagpipes, an oboe, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, accordion, and much more. It's hard to describe their music other than saying it is eclectic, cultural, and theologically insightful. It was an amazing show full of energy, theology, and beautiful music. You can download some of their songs via their website. I recommend "Hosanna" and hopefully they will put up "Trisagion" soon. Both of these songs are taken from the Divine Liturgy (Hosanna quoting from the Psalms) and are thus full of theology. They may not be verbatim, but the content is close enough that it makes me like the Psalters even more.

To quickly address the other shows to which I was looking forward:
Delorean Grey: See last post
MxPx: The sound was crappy but it was fun for nostalgic purposes.
Code of Ethics: They are not near as cool as I remember them being when I was in 8th grade. Poor stage presence and average music
Family Force 5: Great show! High energy, good music (though occasionally cheesy lyrics) and great stage presence. You can tell they enjoy what they're doing.
Psalters: Best of the festival!


In the future I hope Ichthus improves their artist line-up as it seemed void of some of the biggest names out there and improves their audio quality or else I fear they will slowly see decreased attendance as people opt out for the larger festivals that seem to be run better (Creation, Kingdom Bound, Cornerstone).

Hopefully I'll get some more motivation and read the rest of Canonical Theism soon so I can write a short review. The book is great. I really like the approach though I'm hesitant to jump on a trend like I did the emergent thing in college (which proved to be largely heretical), but this one at its most basic level seems to be an effort to remain protestant while seeking to have a more Orthodox or Catholic (but especially Orthodox) approach to theology.

Blessings,

- Ben