About

The Pleasant Revolution Bicycle Music Festival Tour: Europe 2010

More than a bike tour or music festival, this is a new movement for an evolving culture of transportation cycling, renewable power, and greener music/community events. The bicycle music festival (BMF) merges a 1200 Watt pedal-powered P/A system, zero use of cars and trucks, and an eclectic crew of world class musicians and volunteers. The entire experience is all human powered by setting up our bikes on stage, connecting them to generators, and having audience members pedal to power the system.

Our tour will pass through the UK, Holland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, France, Spain, Portugal, and and everywhere in between. We are on a mission to lighten up the view of a sustainable lifestyle – from one of sacrifice and restriction to one of abundant health, happiness, and a deeper sense of connectedness: thus, it is the Pleasant Revolution.

The Idea

Our way of life threatens our way of life. “Bigger, faster, more” has run its course, leaving a mountain of environmental and social woes and a void of meaning. Into that void rides the Pleasant Revolution, a transformational way of working and living that restores environmental and cultural vitality and returns deep meaning to ordinary human experience.

These days, everyone is talking about global warming, about how bad things are going to get if we don’t change; and yet hardly anyone straight talks about what the necessary changes are, preferring vague generalities or cutesy “simple things you can do.”

In our explorations of bicycle lifestyle we’ve stumbled upon what we think will be a truth of the coming age: Yes we must change, in some areas drastically so—we must consume less, drive less, throw away less, hate less, fear less. And yet, while superficially this may look like sacrifice, the pursuit of these changes can actually lead to a life that’s more local, rich, humane, fulfilling and happy.

The Pleasant Revolution is a set of evolving ideas, a loose set of principles designed to help answer the question, “What next? How do I live fully and restore the planet in the process?”
Some principles of the Pleasant Revolution:

• slow is beautiful, local is profound
• sustainable living is richer
• we can free ourselves from the culture of fear that drives our consumerism and apathy
• fundamental change is necessary and possible
• to change the world, we must change our own consciousness and lifestyle
• humanity now, perhaps more than in any previous time, has an opportunity to create a new, saner, more loving world
• the bicycle liberates

The California/Mexico/Guatemala Tour – 2007
A 5000 mile musical road show, by bicycle.

On Halloween 2007, The Ginger Ninjas, and guest SHAKE YOUR PEACE!, launched the epic “Pleasant Revolution Bicycle Music Tour” from N. San Juan, California, heading 5000 miles down to the southern end of Mexico. There are no sag-wagons nor buses hauling our gear. Everything, including the 1000 Watt human-powered PA System, is hauled entirely on bicycle. The tour comes in the wake of the excitement at the first ever Bicycle Music Festival, Aug. 11, 2007, which announced the emerging bicycle-music movement to the world like a piano dropped from a 24th floor window announces itself to a San Francisco sidewalk: with life-altering momentum, filled with melodies, and destroying the oft-trod roads of old.
Music and bicycles—universal symbols of humility, openness and connection, elements of our common humanity, and paragons of low-tech sustainability—become vehicles for seeing the world at human speed.

From the Sierra Nevada through the suburban wastelands and urban decay of southern California, over the world’s busiest border crossing, across the wilderness and austere beauty of Baja, into the heart of megapolitan Mexico City, and down to the land of mystic pyramids, the team will play shows, record music with local musicians, and advocate for a leapfrog-style transition to sustainable transportation.

The team comes with the message that bikes are an essential and beautiful part of a sustainable transportation system and that Mexico still has the opportunity to skip US-style development and our suburbanized cult of the car.

Current Tour – Europe June-October 2010

A 5000 mile musical road show, by bicycle.