Our second opinion on the matter. Read Jonathan L. Fischer's.

One of the many delightful things about the world of John le Carré’s fiction is that his superspies often resemble the nattering members of some great English department. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, for example, is mainly about a tubby and washed-up former spy who learns a great deal about the secret service by reading old files in a fleabag called the Hotel Islay. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, this approach was a conscious reaction to the fictional offerings of Ian Fleming; John le Carré wouldn’t be caught dead in a trick tuxedo, and neither would George Smiley.

In the new film, Gary Oldman plays Smiley, a lapsed but brilliant spymaster coaxed out of retirement to hunt down a mole at the heart of the British secret service. For his lieutenant, Smiley recruits Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), a loyal and smooth-talking intelligence officer who helps unravel the machinations of Smiley’s Soviet counterpart, a hazy figure named Karla. Along the way, we are treated to flashbacks of Control, the former head of British intelligence (John Hurt, in an inspired bit of casting), and we discover that Smiley’s estranged wife may have been getting busy with his colleague Bill Haydon (Colin Firth). Actually, there’s an awful lot more plot than that, but director Tomas Alfredson clearly appreciates the virtue of elision, so let’s just say that one of Her Majesty’s Finest has committed the ultimate act of betrayal, and that no one emerges from Smiley’s investigation unblemished.

Le Carré, having done a fair bit of intelligence work himself, understands that there are many versions of any given truth, so let’s assume that he’s more or less cool with the fruitful liberties Alfredson has taken with Tinker Tailor. (Le Carré is listed as an executive producer.) After all, even the purists at the BBC had to abridge certain portions of le Carré’s dense narrative—a dead-letter drop here, a Czech-immigrant subplot there—in the iconic six-plus-hour 1979 adaptation. A two-hour film, then, has an even steeper task. Alfredson solves the compression problem in a rather brilliant way: by rendering excised plot as heavy atmosphere. Instead of umpteen internal monologues about Ann Smiley’s libido, Alfredson shows us Bill Haydon’s hand on her ass at the MI-6 Christmas party (a new and very funny scene) and then lets Oldman’s face do the rest of the work. (That Ann, like Karla, remains literally faceless in the film is likewise deft.)

Chief among Smiley’s weapons, as a spy and as a character, is a preternatural English reserve, and it is this sensibility of muted ruthlessness that guides the movie: It is shorter and less full of speech, just as Gary Oldman is slimmer and tidier than Alec Guinness. It's also something of a technical marvel—every shot tells, and the sound direction is eerie. At the same time, Alfredson’s cold-eyed approach mutes the semi-Dickensian richness of the original, as the secondary members of a strong ensemble get less screentime than we might wish; this is especially true of Ciarán Hinds as Roy Bland.

Those quibbles dissipate for the most part in the stellar final sequence, as an upbeat rendition of Charles Trénet’s “La Mer” plays under a montage tying together various loose ends. There’s a bloody moment here, and it’s both poignant and uncomfortably hilarious to watch it happen as Julio Iglesias croons over a blithe sea of organ and horns. It is this blend of the cynical and the romantic that make le Carré’s best books more than thrillers, and Alfredson has captured it in a very stylish manner indeed.

Soon, it will be.

Ehrhardt’s memorable tale of immigration and naturalization formed the basis for her one-woman show, Jamaica Farewell. Fringe Festival audiences in D.C. and New York responded warmly (our critic wrote that “Ehrhardt possesses a rare ability to mesmerize”), and a subsequent run in Los Angeles attracted the attention of producer Rita Wilson, who has optioned Ehrhardt’s story for a film treatment. Wilson attended the L.A. performance with her husband, Tom Hanks; Ehrhardt suspected she had made an impression when the couple led a standing ovation after the curtain. (If you missed the show during its ‘09 Cap Fringe run, you’ll get another shot this Sunday, when the Jamaica Cultural Alliance hosts Ehrhardt for a one-off performance at the Rockville JCC.)

Ehrhardt’s version of the fringe-darling-makes-good story is particularly satisfying to behold because of how it rides and extends the message of her show. Ehrhardt was 18 when she ran cash as a means of reaching America. “I was young and stupid because when you’re 18, you think you’re invincible,” Ehrhardt says. “I was nearly murdered and raped and I was willing to take the chance to get to America.” While Ehrhardt’s show is rich with comedy—an early moment finds her eating goat testicles with an agent from the CIA—we also get a vivid sense of the horrors from which all that humor is an escape. Her father was a “drunk and a gambler,” her hopes of being something other than a maid essentially nil. America did what it does best: it beckoned.

“You have to remember, America is Disneyland, especially if you come from a poor family in a third-world country,” Ehrhardt says. “But even when I graduated theater school in New York many years ago, they told me I would never get a job with my Jamaican accent. My agent said to me, ‘go get speech classes.’ And I don’t have dread locks, so there aren’t roles for a woman who looks like me.”

Ehrhardt laughs. “But ‘never’ is a word that Jamaicans don’t understand. If you say we’re never gonna get to do something, we’re gonna find a way to prove you wrong.”

Students of the feel-good immigration story should note that Ehrhardt found a producer to steer the project who was uniquely suited to it: Wilson’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a mini-budget smash that became the top-grossing romantic comedy ever. There is also talk of bringing on Joel Zwick, who directed Greek Wedding. The production team, in other words, should be more than qualified to deal with any and all goat-related joke material. Ehrhardt, meanwhile, gets first crack at the screenplay.

“If it’s cast well, it will be just as good or even better than the play,” she says.

The Jamaica Cultural Alliance presents Jamaica Farewell at the Rockville JCC Kreeger Theatre at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 20. 1-800-838-3006. 6521 Montrose Road Rockville, MD 20852. $35

The Museum played before acts like Carolina Chocolate Drops (gospel hoe-downs, approximately), Wanda Jackson, and Amos Lee, and a day after Gillian Welch, Earl Scruggs, and the Decemberists, whose presence explains why Newport sold out this weekend for the first time in its 52-year history. Wax's band, including a smart three-piece horn section and a Mexican son jarocho dancer, displayed its usual panache, and made a strong argument for why the festival should still exist.

Newport has something of a dual personality these days, exemplified in the divide between the "dancing section" (yes, there is actually a dancing section) and the lawn-chair section. Concomitantly, we had the nostalgia acts and the Bob Boilen-approved youngbloods; this is an oversimplification, but not as drastic a one as you might think. Heavyweights such as the Decemberists are called in to round out the crowd, but meanwhile the relevance of the proceedings (if we still worry about these things) is, I think, a healthy question.

Folk music as a rule toes the line between calling out the bullshit pieties and preserving the needful ones. Most traces of purism are gone from Newport. After a heavily distorted "Legionnaire's Lament," Colin Meloy could safely joke: "Pete did not brandish an axe for that one." (Seeger was not only present but within axe-swinging distance; for a gloss of Meloy's reference, see here.) That's a good thing: Mavis Staples kills when she has an electric band behind her, and Wanda Jackson offers a warm and witty rockabilly set—though Newport's Gospel deficit remains troubling. Still, we're talking about a festival that came of age fighting the Man (see: "This machine kills fascists"); it's hard to maintain that attitude when you're suddenly onstage at the pleasure of the Man's Prius-driving brother.

The best answer I think is when a festival—however hoary, however sponsored—makes possible the national debut of otherwise marginal or regional acts. On my ballot, this year's emergent big-timers included several fantastic female harmony groups such as The Secret Sisters and Mountain Man, a trio that combines three-part barbershop with more intricate, canticle-like arrangements to glorious effect. It would be delightful to see both groups return next year. David Wax has proven that success at the festival does not go unrewarded, though residents of Mount Pleasant may well mourn to find that he isn't knocking on their doors as often as he used to.

Photograph of David Wax at Newport by Annie Galvin

Steve Carrell

I've seen every episode of The Office multiple times thanks to the convergence of two major cultural developments of the past decade: 1) Netflix Streaming; and 2) quarter-life-onset insomnia. (Not joking. Once I'm in that can't work/can't sleep purgatory, I will watch this shit for hours.) Perhaps more pertinent, I've watched maybe two or three sitcoms since middle school. The Office is one of them. This is not to distinguish my brand of fanhood from yours—sure, I feel a particular connection with the show, but that's the rare thing about The Office: everyone does. I'm not going to say it's my generation's Cheers, or M.A.S.H., or [whatever my parents watched]. But it's something special.

Wyman himself obviously feels a connection of his own, or he wouldn't have written such a subjective and weird article. In it, he draws a number of distinctions between the British original and its American offspring, the most  confusing of which is the idea that Ricky Gervais' Office was "sentimental," while Carrell's is "bleak." Now, no one's calling the U.K. version heartless or anything, but certainly Gervais was trafficking in some harsh realism, where in the U.S. we get something like a sophisticated, and uncomfortable, cartoon. Wyman himself notes that David Brent's peculiar social disorder gets him fired after two seasons' worth of unpleasantness; somehow, Michael Scott's racial missteps, near-vehicular-manslaughters, &c. never merit so much as a lawsuit. Clearly, we're dealing with a different mode here. Gervais' was expressionism; Carrell's is farce.

More to the point, Wyman identifies something hopeless and even "dark" in the principal characters' "dead-end futures." He writes:

The point is that, while Gervais is seen as acerbic, he turned out to be a softie. The American Office, a key part of the golden age of television we're now living in, is visualized from a darker perspective. The characters' personal damage determines their dead-end futures, because they don't have it in them to make it. Ryan will never succeed in business. Pam is not an artist. Jim is not ruthless enough to succeed as a salesman. Dwight's family line will no doubt expire with him and his cousin Mose.

This observation not only forgets a sitcom commonplace, but misses what to me is (was?) the main appeal of the American version. In sitcoms—fine, let's say "U.S." sitcoms, though I watched a fair amount of British TV (back in middle school; see above) and this truth seems to hold overseas as well—isn't the arc always about foiled attempts to escape the current strictures of one's job/relationship(s)/personality defects/what have you? And isn't that where the best sitcoms get their blend of the comforting and the poignant? Did anyone ever expect Gilligan to stumble on a helicopter, or Gob Bluth to become a successful magician illusionist?

Further, I don't think any viewer actually wants Ryan to succeed in business, or Jim to leave Dunder-Mifflin for some kind of upper-management gig that will require him to get (yet) another haircut. And as for Dwight's seed...well, I can't imagine Angela's going to date that (possibly gay) State Senator forever. The show's confessional/documentary framework certainly heightens the delusions on the part of everyone involved (while sublimating those delusions into pretty virtuosic burlesque). Anyway, I'm not sure The Office offers a darker version of the sitcom formula; maybe it just offers one we're uniquely able to care about.

Wyman ends his piece on a vigorously political note that's bound to rile up non-liberal readers. I agree that Michael Scott, as we know him, is impossible without Bush. But it's jarring to end an article titled "Steve Carrell's Achievement" on such a divisive, and distracting, note. In fact, Carrell's influence can arguably be felt in ways quieter but more far-reaching than anything Wyman suggests—call it the Comedy of Middle Management. This isn't a wholly new creation. Jack Lemmon was tapping into a related impulse in the mid-'60s: he portrayed wry, honest boobs who worked hard and played by the rules but kept getting stepped on by the Fred MacMurrays and Walter Mathaus of the world. For the same reason, Will Ferrell's appearance on The Office was pretty much inevitable: Ferrell has created an indelible comic persona based almost exclusively on mediocre men and the Delusions They Carried. (Two questions: would his role in The Other Guys have been possible with Carrell? And: how many amateur sports has he not made a film about?) Surely the middle-American insurance salesmen who populate Cedar Rapids are cut from the same cloth as Michael Scott. Maybe we've all been sitting in ergonomic chairs for too long.

The new script for Imagining Madoff has many of the things that were present the first time Theater J planned its staging. Talmudic excerpts. Meditations on the New York Mets. Lapidary dialogue verging on poetry. And a hauntingly wrought Madoff character, a notorious but little-known villain through whom playwright Deb Margolin delivers a portrait of un-self-conscious greed.

What the new script doesn’t have, of course, is Elie Wiesel, who served in the original play as Madoff’s interlocutor and ethical foil over the course of a Scotch-fueled all-nighter. Theater J drew fire last May for capitulating to Wiesel’s legal strong-arming tactics. (Wiesel wrote a letter calling the play “obscene” and “defamatory” after Margolin sent him a script.) As Washington City Paper reported at the time, a series of fitful negotiations ensued, with Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth urging Margolin to write Wiesel out of the script. Margolin balked when it looked as though Wiesel’s team would have veto power over the new text.

So Imagining Madoff disappeared from Theater J’s 2010-2011 bill, opening instead at Stageworks/Hudson in Hudson, N.Y. That show substituted Solomon Galkin, a distinguished Jewish poet and translator, for the Wiesel character. Galkin, like Wiesel, is a survivor of and lifelong witness to the Holocaust.

Now, Theater J has reached agreement with Margolin to produce a version of the play. Here’s a look at some of the important changes to the text, which still offers a radical close reading of an underexamined villain. (As well as a new ending for which we decline to offer a spoiler.) ­­

BEING SOL GALKIN

When Madoff first explains his relationship with Galkin, Margolin adds some important lines that 1) anticipate Galkin’s avuncular addresses; and 2) establish Galkin as a fictional character in his own right, not a mere cipher for the excised Wiesel.

Old Script:

BERNIE: I met with Wiesel once, just once, for a long discussion. And I thought we were going to talk exclusively about the fund, but he wanted to talk Talmud, or Midrash, or whatever it was, so I listened. He said we’re both teachers, that’s what he said. I was managing his foundation then, but I’d refused to take his personal stuff. That came later. Listening to this man, it’s like having a glass to your ear and putting it against the wall of history! J’you ever do that as a kid, eavesdrop by putting a glass against the wall? Magnifies everything!

New Script:

BERNIE: I met with Galkin once, just once, for a long discussion. It was after a benefit for his synagogue, he was the Treasurer there, a lot of famous people there. A lot of people on that circuit knew him, they were a literary crowd. Books, all the time, the flowery books. Rich people talking about books. He wrote poetry that people actually seemed to read, who the hell has time for poetry? It’s too specific, tiny little details, most of the time it makes no sense.

YEHUDA MAN

Margolin has now included several passages from Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.

SOL: Ah, Bernie! Of course you notice! Amichai writes:

Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.

BACK IN BUSINESS

In keeping with her fuller, freer, fully fictional rendering of Galkin, Margolin has given him a bad back—and a sense of humor about it.

BERNIE: Why are you bent over like that, Solomon? I never noticed that, it looks terrible.

SOL: Bernard, you’re kind, you haven’t mentioned my bad posture up til now! It’s arthritis of the spine. Someone who doesn’t like me recently wrote that my poems are stooped the same way I am! It was funny, it made me laugh!

ABRAHAM AND ISAAC

The play’s climax, as before, comes in the waning hours of the Madoff/Galkin all-nighter. While Madoff tries to work himself up to a confession, he and Galkin discuss the story of Abraham and Isaac. Comparatively minor tweaks conspire to give that story and the Talmudic commentaries on it a still more devastating treatment.

SOL: What did Satan do? He said to Abraham, “This is what I heard from behind the [heavenly] curtain: ‘A lamb will be the burnt offering—Isaac is not to be the burnt offering.’” But such is the punishment of a liar—even when he tells the truth, no one listens. Isn’t that brilliant, Bernard?

[Ed. note: Thanks to the legal team of Elie Wiesel, our critic was unable to attend Imagining Madoff on 16th street as previously planned. Instead, he had to hoof it to Hudson, N.Y.]

Deb Margolin's button-pushing character study of Bernie Madoff never got a chance to open Theater J's 2010-11 season, but a modified version of the play is enjoying a short but well-attended run at Stageworks/Hudson. It's a smaller pond, but the show's making a splash, and the distinctly goyish audience is responding warmly.

Margolin, a Manhattan-based playwright whose work has appeared at Theater J in the past, was forced to reframe her play after Elie Wiesel—Madoff's foil in the original version—threatened legal action. (He called the piece "obscene" and "defamatory," and Theater J didn't see fit to challenge him.) In the new version, Wiesel is replaced by the kind-hearted and occasionally doddering Rabbi* Solomon Galkin, a fictional character who shares certain aspects of Wiesel's resumé (Holocaust survivor; poet; depositor of funds in Madoff's Ponzi scheme). In an interview with City Paper back in May, Stageworks/Artistic Director Laura Margolis expressed the opinion that this compelled substitution "might, in fact, make [the play] stronger."

Welll...hard to say, really, seeing as the original Madoff existed only in two dimensions (a 45-page script; an angry letter from Wiesel; the May 30 edition of this paper). The success of the Hudson production is squarely, at times exclusively, in the hands of Mark Margolis (no relation to Laura), who plays the title role with such loathsome charm and Dickensian detail that you almost wish he had the stage to himself. As Madoff's secretary, Robin Leslie Brown makes a one-sided, subpoenaed appearance before the Securities and Exchange Commission not merely believable (it's an awkward conceit) but also funny.

The current version hews more or less to Margolin's original structure: a series of near-liturgical theme-and-variation monologues—some ribald, some metaphysical, some more coherent than others. Its weaknesses are its length—a loose 90 minutes—and the Galkin character, a diluted rendering of the moral force represented more aggressively, in the first version, by Wiesel. Where in the original script Wiesel was an eloquent symbol, Galkin is something closer to caricature: a near-buffoonish Howard Green who overquotes the Talmud and whose delivery throughout is one sustained shrug. Margolin has also added a kiss-off line, in which Galkin renders the final word on Madoff's immortal soul that tends (I think) to cheapen the more heartfelt moment that precedes it.

But? This play could look a great deal different if and when it comes to D.C. (Ari Roth, Theater J's artistic director, is on record with the following: "This can be an exclusive to the City Paper: I will produce that play in September 2011 and open the season with it. Provided we do not get sued." He's since said a Theater J production is on "indefinite hiatus.") In the meantime (or rather, for the next six days), our many readers in the southern Catskills get to enjoy a three-dimensional Madoff—and a two-dimensional Galkin who bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Nobel laureate.

*An earlier version of this post referred to Solomon Galkin as a rabbi. The character is not a rabbi, but rather a poet and translator and the treasurer of a synagogue.

J. Roddy Walston is from Tennessee, but he and his band, The Business, split time between Baltimore and Richmond. They also split time between tiresome arena bombast and infectious, smirking boogie-woogie. The group's self-titled record—its first on a label; 2007's Hail Mega Boys was a self-release—comes out today and does its best to make peace between these competing impulses.

Recorded on tape at Sound City Studios in L.A.—the way the old-timers used to do it, remember?—the disc features 10 testes-throttling tracks, the first of which is the best and the last of which steals the drum figure from "When the Levee Breaks" under lyrics like "I'm a first-class phony." Walston's allegiance to a rock 'n' roll gold standard, though, doesn't necessarily make him a "phony." The slyness of his vocal delivery—a little Dr. John in the lower register, a little Jack White in the upper—tells you he knows what he's doing and that maybe he'll do it even better on the next record. (That vocal approach also makes his lyrics sound wittier than they are.) "Used to Did" is a very sexy track; "Don't Get Old" has a nice shimmy and makes a good point too many times; "Brave Man's Death," the closest thing to a dark song, has some good Cash-style lyrics. And that first track, the single? It's called "Don't Break the Needle," and threatens to do so.

The songs are relentless in a good way, the record as a whole relentless in a bad way. It's sort of like Speed: someone told Roddy that if he slowed down, the whole thing would fall apart. Eventually the squall of his voice and the above-average riffs can't accommodate the repetition. It's really good beer-pong music, though.

Walston can't play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, but he knows it and doesn't really try to. The appeal of the band inheres in the practically vaudevillian coyness of the piano's solo moments set against hard-edged guitar lines and able drum breaks. (Though I sometimes wonder if the bassist gets bored.) Oh, and the shout-alongs. (I've heard these referred to as "gang-choruses," and man, that term has never been more apt.)

First track below. Don't spill your beer.

I’m going to miss covering baseball-bat crime; waxing pedantic about bad drivers; conducting opaque interviews with Zachary Mason and Van Morrison; reporting on Elie Wiesel's undue influence over Jewish theater in D.C.; remembering racial segregation in northeast; tracing the career arc of a little-known band called Das Mötørbike; offering unsolicited advice to M.I.A.; making futile attempts to resurrect this paper’s opera coverage; writing open letters to outgoing Washington Post columnists; bemoaning Eminem’s newfound sobriety; tracking down lost icons of D.C. soul; scratching my head over the indulgences of Jim Jarmusch; crashing the State of Kentucky Inaugural Ball with Ms. Hess; directing videos on newsroom fisticuffs and the idiosyncracies of one Erik Wemple; riding Darrow's coattails to the AAN award finals; and, perhaps most of all, editing this paper's tireless coverage of the Capital Fringe Festival.

Henceforth, the film and theater pages—and the colorful freelancers associated with each—are in the able hands of J.L. Fischer, and the redoubtable Emily Kaiser will now be running the paper’s online version.

The publisher’s youngest, meanwhile, will have to find someone else to give him piggyback rides around the building.

Lots of love, folks.

Dryads mid-frolic at the All Good Festival; photograph by Annie Galvin

Noodling, n. ~ [noodle, v. int.; nood-ler, n.; var. nüdl] ~ Affectionate if deprecating slang for the solitary gyrations favored by blissed-out attendees at jam-band concerts.

Bag-checks and responsible alcohol regulations have become more and more standard at the major festivals. An innocuous glass dealer at Bonnaroo, earlier this year, had $4,500 worth of pipes and bongs confiscated by security. At the All Good Festival this past weekend, rumors swirled that security had discovered a truck with a false undercarriage that, when removed, was found to contain tank after tank of nitrous oxygen. The driver had been planning to sell for $200/canister—by all accounts the going rate. Upon entering the festival in a responsible-looking Subaru, I was asked by an obviously stoned security official whether I had any weapons in the car. "You know, any glass bottles, sharp objects, firearms, RPGs." I did not.

If there's one place you're guaranteed not to find rocket-propelled grenades, it's the All Good Festival, a sprawling destination for besotted pilgrims—the descendants, at least ethically, of those Otis Redding once termed "the love crowd." The event is characterized more by raggedly goofy goodwill, from the noodlers content to circumscribe themselves for hours within day-glo hula hoops to the pods descending on the drainage pond for a free shower and a séance with the butterflies. Even on Friday, with sporadic downpour and tents blown askew by high-altitude West Virginia winds, the vibe was unflappable.

Here's what I saw.

Old Crow Medicine Show: A typically crisp hour-plus of minstrelsy from these guys got things rolling on Friday evening. Audience members toting illicit flasks of Old Crow Kentucky bourbon were much sought-out in the crowd and could sometimes be persuaded to exchange a slug for something of equivalent potency. Ketch Secor, who apparently has but one Hawaiian shirt, exuded more spunk than usual. Though I think he smiles more when he's performing with Dave Rawlings.

**

Umphrey's McGee: This band, which is liked by a lot of people whom I like, is new to me. On Friday they sounded sort of like Phil Collins, except with Steve Vai getting pedal-happy up front. Mostly the songs just blended together.

**

Furthur: Phil Lesh and Bob Weir had the coveted Friday night spot and played, minus set break, for just under three hours. Jeff Mattson, who apes Jerry Garcia for his day job with the Dark Star Orchestra, shared vocals with Weir and proved an immaculate addition; very few Grateful Dead recordings do as much with harmony as the current lineup. The sound, slightly muffled, was perhaps best absorbed from directly under the stage, where among the scaffolding roadies could be seen smoking solitary joints in makeshift hammocks.

**

Dr. Dog*: This band, with its mission to bring back the middle-eight, has been noted as an outlier at the fest—jammy only in a nominal, breakdown context. Scott McMicken was being diplomatic before the set when he described his view of jam bands as one of "tolerance"; the group he was most voluble about was Furthur, whose live act he called "more implied than performed"—a good encapsulation of the group's loving but staid set. At the same time, these guys are clearly at home on a festival stage, far from what McMicken calls the "museum-like atmosphere of New York venues." (The group is from Philly.) "It's good for bands like us to be here," McMicken told me.

Onstage, the elation implied on their records bounces and spins into anthem-territory without ever feeling ponderous; the double-7-inch that McMicken & co. will record this week is intended to convey that live energy more fully. Still, the group has an unassuming quality, and you almost believe McMicken when he says that success has been merely a "very pleasant accident." All Good is a beneficiary of this accident, and Dr. Dog's live act remains pure fun.

**

Railroad Earth: "October in the Railroad Earth" was a Kerouac prose-poem about serving as a brakeman. Railroad Earth is a magnanimous and non-boring jam band from New Jersey. The mid-afternoon crowd was perhaps too sunstruck to get down properly, and the nappers missed a great set: Well-contoured guitar solos over excellent, heartfelt roots.

**

Parliament Funkadelic: George Clinton's wet basslines abide, as does his granddaughter, who still performs with P-Funk and who, according to Clinton, is actually named Sativa.

**

Max Butler and the Everyone Orchestra: I had no idea who these guys were and remain more or less in the dark, but what a set. Flute, electric guitar, and a well-drilled chorus rounded out a chatty performance whose proceeds will buy instruments for students at West Virginia public schools.

**

Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi: The reigning jam-band power couple traded guitar solos and winks as they blew through a methodical set of perhaps the best music of the festival. Having heard Trucks and Tedeschi individually, I hoped the pairing would sound like the Allman Brothers fronted by a soul sister. That's close but not quite right, and digressions into "Trenchtown Rock" and a collaboration with the lead guitarist from Widespread broadened the palette a bit. There are guitarists at All Good who played more notes than Trucks, but no one who played them better. A highlight.

**

Widespread Panic: Some people find these metallic slow-jams revelatory. I found them sort of lugubrious.

**

Yonder Mountain String Band: Yonder Mountain took the stage for the second of two Saturday "late-night" sets. The hills, surprisingly, were still more or less filled with people; the mandolins rang 'til about 3 a.m. That's dedication on both sides of the proscenium, folks.

**

Moonshine Breakfast with Keller & the Keels: Goofy finger-picking and a nice Tom Petty medley. (I haven't used that phrase before.)

**

The Travelin' McCourys; The Lee Boys: The Lee Boys sound a hell of a lot like Robert Randolph and Family, in a good way. Pair that with non-stodgy bluegrass (and bluegrass with a pedigree!), and you've got a nice mix. The Lee Boys call it "Sacred Grass," a combo between sacred steel and bluegrass; Meetin' in the Middle, a six-song EP based on the collaboration, would be on my Torrent list if I knew how to use Torrent.

**

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: I saw Grace Potter once before, at the Rte. 29 Review last August. There, she was dressed more or less demurely in a floor-length gold dress, and I was impressed by her voice. Here, she wore a negligé-like thing and seemed a little too ready to bank on her own sex appeal. Her pipes were still there, but she came off a bit like Bonnie Raitt in heat. I left before the end of the set

**

A four-day festival on this scale is an exercise in stamina for everyone involved. Five days would have been difficult; six days a bummer. I get the impression, though, that attendees have a leveler approach to the festival than you might think. Where at Woodstock you'd expect to find cabals of dropouts, or maybe aspiring farmers, at All Good you found a plethora of CamelBaks worn by people who probably spend other weekends involved in wholesome pursuits like hiking. Except for the frequent offers of Molly/Mali (an umbrella term for MDMA, some of it this weekend cut with innocuous sassafrass) and an apparent abundance of opium, things were pretty much on the up-and-up. The psychedelic casualty who soiled himself in the performance area, and a girl who forgot her name—and who we had to escort to the EMT tent while dubbing her, for the purposes of the moment, Caroline—were outliers. People were here to get down with the music, and with each other.

None of which captures the festival's goofy beauty as does the following exchange, faithfully recorded by my companion:

ATTENDEE #1: [Hugs big fat redhead hippie passionately.] Thanks, dude. All I've wanted to do was get here, find the biggest fat redheaded hippie, and give him a hug.

ATTENDEE #2: [Earnestly.] No problem, man. It's all good.

Pit photographs by Annie Galvin

*An explanation for what some have called an unappealing band name: Twelve years ago, McMicken had a sketchpad with the word DRAWING inscribed across the front. Blocking out the A from the DRAWING label made it DR WING. Toby Leaman suggested substituting "dog" for "wing." This in part was a nod to their white huskie/German shepherd mix named Hunter S. Dog, whom McMicken describes as "a little fighter, a sprightly little guy, a glorious dog." The three black dots on the animal's face lend the group its current logo.