The boys of summer

It’s 4:45 p.m. on Friday, July 25, when I first meet “the Manatee,” a huge, lumbering red and white Ford Club Wagon, packed to the brim with gear, and the official transport of Prizzy Prizzy Please.

Since 2005, Prizzy has unleashed a high-energy fusion of punk and ska on the Bloomington music scene (with more than a dash of humor). They’ve won the Bluebird Nightclub’s 2007 Battle of the Bands Competition, braved the Austin, Texas, South by Southwest Festival and opened for Spoon.

Now, I’m to follow them down to Louisville, Ky., for the Forecastle Festival – a three-day celebration of “Music, Art and Activism” (so sayeth the Web site). The objective is twofold: to find out what it’s like to play a big music festival, and to find out what the members of Prizzy are like offstage.

At a house in the woods between Bloomington and Ellettsville, I’ve been waiting for lead singer/saxophonist Mark Pallman and bassist Bob Allen to return with a new tire for the Manatee. In the meantime, I meet drummer Scott McNiece, head of Lets Pretend Records (Prizzy’s label) Pete Shaw and friends of Prizzy – Sarah Coleman, Sarah Ellsworth and Graham McKeen.

There are too many of us for the van, so I follow it in my car with Allen, McKeen and Ellsworth. The entire way down to Louisville, I watch the Manatee and wait for something to fall off. Later, Allen tells me that on tour he spent thousands of miles thinking the same thing.

At around 7:15 p.m., we arrive at the motel where we’ll be spending the weekend. It’s clean enough, but with a clientele prone to screaming and getting dragged out of their rooms by the cops.

After a quick dinner – at which I learn that Prizzy has been approached by Coca-Cola about possibly using their tune “Shorgasm” in a commercial – we walk down to Forecastle.

The festival is being held in a grass-and-brick park bordered by hotels to the south and the Ohio River to the north. It’s done up like a castaway settlement with weathered sticks holding up signs and netting. Along with “Music, Art and Activism,” booths flog everything from independent-label albums and original art, to Toyota Hybrids and scuba lessons.

At Forecastle’s large western stage, we’re joined by Prizzy keyboardist Ted Wells, his girlfriend Brittany Loewen, Pallman’s girlfriend Sam Miller and Sam’s brother Max. It’s warm but pleasant, populated but not overcrowded. Hippies amble across the grassy lawn, and the local roller derby team is selling beers.

Forecastle headliners Del tha Funkee Homosapien and GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan turn out to be disappointing, and cleaners chain shut the public restrooms (throughout a speech by festival organizer JK McKnight, McNiece shouts “Where do we pee?”), but it’s impossible to ruin an evening like this.

I notice how Pallman spontaneously breaks out into song or lets loose a few notes of nonsense syllables. Later, Allen tells me that this is part of how he writes songs – Pallman will sit down at the piano and go over the same eight notes over and over again, improvising lyrics to find ones he likes.

A creative tension at Prizzy’s core shapes the group’s music. Pallman likes pop and R&B, but Wells is a classically minded former composition major, while McNiece and Allen favor punk and heavy metal. The resulting songs are loud and fast, but tight and melodic, with disarmingly silly, sing-along choruses.

Back at the hotel, there are 12 people and one room (although Prizzy has faced far more crowded conditions, Allen tells me). Also there’s talk of hitting the bars. But after some discussion, everyone decides to … watch television.

The room’s population even shrinks to seven as people make other sleeping arrangements. When I end up with half a bed, watching Bear Grylls from “Man vs. Wild” squeeze moisture from elephant dung, things seem positively serene.

Throughout the trip, Prizzy’s partying turns out to be surprisingly moderate. Yes, there is drinking; yes, members of Prizzy and their entourage smoke pot; but, I’ve seen worse from journalists.

And it’s hard to underestimate the sheer depth of Prizzy’s geekiness. One of Allen’s jobs is a professional dungeon master running role-playing games for Bloomington game store Game Preserve.

Saturday night, he and McNiece get in an argument over who loves “Star Wars” most. At one point, while helping with the gear, I watch Wells pull out a book on symbolic logic – he confesses that the subject has compelled him ever since he wrote a senior thesis on it.

In the Manatee, the nerdiness continues with the members conversing about a marching-band tradition of applying Gold Bond powder to one’s testicles. If bands are supposed to put on a front of studied, pretentious cool, no one has told Prizzy Prizzy Please.

On Saturday, Prizzy is due to play Forecastle’s eastern stage at 4:30 p.m. This stage is a large tent, with four poles and a thin floor, surrounded by a climbing wall, a hula-hoop vendor and ramps for jumping mountain bikes. And it’s on a brick patio in 90-something-degree heat.

Perhaps it’s the heat, but Forecastle is a ghost town. Word from the band is that the organizers were expecting 15,000 to 20,000 people – there’s no way they’re making that. Prizzy has never played anything like Forecastle before, and Pallman tells me they’ve taken extra effort to prepare.

Returning to the eastern stage, we learn that Prizzy will have 20 minutes to set up and soundcheck, while the tight 30-minute performance slot means they’ll have to shorten their setlist. When veteran instrumental band Unwed Sailor finishes by 4:05 p.m., Prizzy rushes in.

The band’s entourage has staked claim to the very front of the stage. I ask Ellsworth if she’s planning to dance, and she says it’s “simply impossible” not to at one of Prizzy’s shows. Although there’s a delay with the soundcheck (Pallman later says, “I hate when sound guys tell you to turn the amps down”), the sound of Prizzy warming up starts to draw a crowd.

At 4:35 p.m., the band kicks into their tribute to goofy ’70s sci-fi shows, “Thought Command.” Despite the heat, they’re a flurry of energy.

Pallman follows an initial volley of pounding keyboard, bass and drums with a wail of saxophone, then a burst of rapid-fire lyrics. In a red shirt, yellow shorts and green socks, he’s a twitching, howling traffic light.

McNiece hammers the drums, bouncing off the stool to dive on them like a professional wrestler. At the front, there is indeed dancing.

The crowd grows – I estimate more than 50 people by the time they’re singing about “Captain Bob” fighting off “disaster monkeys.” Next to a speaker, a large man with a “Deadheads for Obama” T-shirt dances drunkenly. Mountain bikers spring off of their ramps in the background. Two kids dressed as Batman join the crowd. In the set, Prizzy blazes through nine songs. It sounds like a hit with the audience.

The soundman calls it one of the bet sets he’s seen. Shaw sells $65 worth of Prizzy CDs and T-shirts. Later, I watch as bands at the eastern stage struggle to get half of Prizzy’s crowd. Afterward, the band looks like they’ve been drenched by a fire hose.

For this performance, the festival has rewarded them with a check for $50, five VIP passes, an organic snack bar, beer vouchers and four certificates for free pairs of shoes from one of the sponsors: Merrell.

The band has essentially been paid $400 in shoes.