Palais Idéal: A Festival of Adventurous, Strange and Visionary Music
Chico, CA—Oct. 19-22, 2006


Le Palais Idéal: The Ideal Castle

Ferdinand Cheval was a postman from Hauterives, France who, one day
in 1879 while walking his route, tripped on a strange looking stone.
The stone intrigued him so he picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Cheval returned the following day to collect more of the curious
rocks, and he just never stopped. For the next 33 years he collected
small and large stones from along his postal route and used them
with cement and lime to build an ornate and surreal castle that he
had daydreamed about on those long walks delivering the mail. Cheval
had no experience building or sculpting and his neighbors quickly
labeled him insane, yet he stuck to his vision and—working alone for
those 33 years—completed his "fairy-like palace beyond imagination":
Le Palais Idéal.

Another dream: A large collection of musical oddballs and innovators
gather together in the sleepy college town of Chico, Calif. and take
the place over for a few days under the banner of Palais Idéal: A
Festival of Adventurous, Strange and Visionary Music. This isn't
merely an experimental music festival; this is a call for weirdness
of all stripes and for braveness in the name of new ideas. It goes
down all over town Oct. 19-22, and most anything goes: art rock,
experimental music, free jazz, noise, improv, outsider art,
visionary music, sound art, field recordings, electronica, ambient,
broken folk, homemade instruments, lowercase, multi-media,
performance art, visual music, adventurous rock, post rock,
conceptual music, song poems and the rest…

There won't be any monetary guarantees for this first installment of
Palais Idéal. But we will guarantee performers a place to stay (in
the home of one of our volunteers), a pass to all the shows, and if
logistics can be worked out, audio and video recordings of each
performance will be made available to performers after the fest.
After we pay for the posters and the soundpersons we'll split
whatever dough is left evenly between all of the acts.

This festival will be happening in the midst of Artoberfest, which
is an effort by the city and local arts organizations to make the
month of October into a power-packed festival of arts that will
showcase Chico as a desirable arts destination. My hope is to build
a fun and highly visible castle that will function as the
unpredictable irregular heartbeat of the month's festivities. And
maybe, during this time when the city is focused on local arts
programming, this unique event will inspire them to help support
Palais Idéal in the future.

With even the smallest amount of additional backing, sustaining (and
expanding) an annual festival of adventurous, strange and visionary
music becomes a real possibility—which makes this dream not so crazy-
sounding.

If you want to take part, give me a call or send a note. I can't
wait to hear your sounds.

And please, pass this note and my contact info on to anyone else you
think might be interested in performing.

Thanks, Jason Cassidy



Contact:
-Mail: The Party, c/o Jason Cassidy, 1752 Vallombrosa Ave., Chico,
CA, 95926
-Email: palaisideal@...
-Phone: (530) 893-4594
-MySpace: www.myspace.com/palaisideal

Some Links:
www.myspace.com/palaisideal -- Official Palais Idéal site (for now)
www.1078gallery.org – 1078 Gallery: festival home base
www.cruxarts.com – Crux Arts Collective: festival site
www.pageantchico.com – Pageant Theatre: festival site
www.artoberfest.org – Artoberfest home page
www.friendsofbidwellpark.org – Bidwell Park, home of Robin Hood
www.chicolist.com – Underground music calendar for Chico and north
state
www.newsreview.com/chico/Home -- Chico's alt-weekly
www.synthesis.net -- Chico's college student music & entertainment
weekly