Human Host at Deal with Pine Trees Festival

Saturday, May 24th, I was out in the county. The morning sun stung all flesh, human, plant and animal, with a hot iron calling. If the sun had a voice it would have screamed like a mother to her late sleeping children, “Rise and do something productive on this beautiful day.”

So to energize my arms and soul, I went into my parents’ basement and hammered out some annoying drumming; however, it sounded really raw, exciting and untaught. Lots of cowbell and paradiddles. I need to write beats for an electro band.

Next I ate half of a meatball sub, grabbed my dad’s video camera and drove over to my friend Mike’s house, deeper in the county, around the reservoir in bucolic Phoenix. Sun-crystal-frozen farm implements, corn and high grass, the heat haze rising in waves!

In the basement of an old country house, Mike and Aaron of Baltimore’s weirdest, most theatrical punk band Human Host calmly ran through some sick keyboard/drum jams at half volume. It was a pleasure to see how dedicated they both were to getting the challenging but fun songs as tight as possible. Mike had several juicy pedals hooked up to his two keyboards, and he maintained the EQ of each song through a small mixer. Aaron’s stripped down kit included a floor tom, cymbal and snare.

They sounded like a garage rock band that had tapped into the magic of some occult underworld full of ogres, gnomes, lizards, devils and wooly mammoths. Their jams had mutated beyond rock into a new music that was both the future and the very primitive genesis of sound as art. Next they tested the pre-recorded iPod beats and, God, the one Aaron wrote blew my mind. Then I helped them pack up the gear, and we hit the road to Westminster. We were all thrilled to be headed to a park in Carroll County for the Deal with Pine Trees Festival.

The Deal with Pine Trees Festival, orchestrated by a nice, amazing guy named Kyle and his friends, is hands down the most vital source of music in Westminster. Rivaling the loyal draw and unbridled fun of Baltimore’s Wham City collective, the Deal with Pine Trees crew get down and dirty with nature while enjoying an eclectic crock pot of ska, pop punk, grindcore, screamo, folk and weird, experimental acts like Human Host.

Notable Westminster bands of the day included Another Reason to Hate Machines, whose rabid, spastic explosions of metal, noise, pig-squeal screamed vocals and flailing theatrics kicked serious ass around the poison ivy-clad tree (the backdrop for all of the bands), and 12 Hour Shower, a really funny young ska band with lyrics about a “slutty” ex-girlfriend.

The park was beautiful but also perplexing. A stream encircled the concert area and could only be traversed by two wooden bridges. Young women in flower dresses dipped their feet in the water. Kids played Frisbee. Further in the field, along the banks of a pond, a flock of geese stamped around and ate some of my popcorn. Big lumps of their white and black shit soiled every stretch of grass so that you had to walk on sun-dried waste. The pristine baseball field, with its huge scoreboard and sparkling bleachers, showed the community’s interest, especially when compared to the tennis court whose burnt, fallen and shredded nets gave the impression that the fenced-in space had suffered a small nuke.

But Human Host took the cake for best performance. Their set was nonstop bestial hilarity and cutting edge sounds. I am going to let the video I captured of them do most of the talking. Keith, of the likeminded electro/visual band Cream Center, joined Aaron and Mike, with a crazy homemade witch hat, hood and some Hawaiian grass skirt used as part of his headdress. He shared the vocal duties and had the crowd laughing really hard. The audience showered the band with unchiseled compliments such as “fucking amazing,” and requested an immediate encore. Human Host answered the call with its lively post-hip hop dance party “Bathtub Blast”.

I hope this will encourage you to spread the love for Human Host.