Ah yes, The first day of Summerfest (June 29th, 2006). This was going to be the first day of my primary summer vacation. I had taken Friday off, and with the 4th of July on a Tuesday, that meant I had a 5-day weekend ahead of me.

Also, Carbon Leaf was playing this day. This was probably the band I was most excited about seeing. I had seen them at Irishfest a few years ago and became an immediate fan. They have changed their sound a bit since then (probably partially due to the fact they were signed to a major label since then) and have since moved abit away from their celtic influences, but they’re still damn fine songwriters and musicians.

So, I’m driving home from work and on the way I flip to the AM news station and find out that the Summerfest grounds were without power due to a primary transformer which fed the grounds having blown up a few hours earlier. I’m not sure how most people who were planning on going down would react to this, but as far as I was concerned this news only made me want to get down there all the sooner. I love watching or being in the midst of surreal or unusual circumstances, and this seemed to fit the bill…A music festival with no power. I had to get there as quickly as I could.

So I went home and changed and headed on down. I parked about 8 blocks away from the grounds (for free) and started to walk down. I was about 3 blocks away when things started to feel surreal. I could see tons of peoples milling about, coming and going, but there was no music, no lights, no sounds. Very odd!

Luckily I had stopped at an ATM on the way home from work and gotten some cash, because as I went up to buy a ticket, they had a sign saying due to the loss of power, no VISA or debit cards would work. So I bought my ticket and went in.

I noticed that no one was on the sky glide, so assumed that there must have been a backup generator or something which allowed them to get the people off it, as it wasn’t running at the moment. I was also thankful that beer does not need power to be tapped. I went and got a beer and then took a slow walk down to the new Miller Stage.

The Miller Stage had been torn down over the winter and rebuilt, doubling its capacity from about 5,000 people to 10,000. It also added a for-rent party area stage-right and above the stage as well as adding a large video projection screen on each side of the stage. It was a huge improvement over the old stage. There was also a marching band (I believe the UW band) near the stage entertaining the crowd. What struck me most was how little complaining, bitching, or anger I saw. Everyone seemed to be taking the lack of power and music in stride. The marching bands (and there were more than one) on the grounds played at several stages, and the people just hung out, danced to ‘On Wisconsin’ and various other 80′s done marching band style hits and drank their beers.

About an hour after I had been there (So about 6pm or so), an announcement came over the PA system (which apparently had backup power) that they expected the power to be fixed shortly. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, all the lights came back on.

Bands I saw:

Carbon Leaf (Miller Stage) – Carbon Leaf rocked. They have yet to put on a bad show. While they played many of their hits and several unknown songs from their upcomming CD, they didn’t play many of the ones I had hoped to hear. Nevertheless it was great to hear them again as it had been over a year since I had last seen them.

Blue Oyster Cult (Rock Stage) – I’m probably in the odd positions of liking many of the lesser known songs of this band (Heavy Metal the Black and Silver, Black Blade, Joan Crawford has Risen from the Grave, Veteran of a Thousand Psychic Wars, etc) while hating their two biggest hits (Don’t fear the Reaper, and Burning for You).

In short I went in as a fan of their older stuff and not as someone who had heard nothing other than Godzillia and the two aforementioned hits. I was really hoping to have a good time there. Unfortunately, I thought the show sucked. There was no life, no energy, no ambience to their sound. It felt like they were just going through the motions….what I like to call ‘musical masterbation’. I left before the show was over. When you look around during a bands best known song and all you see are people with their arms crossed in front of them tapping a foot or sipping their beer, you know it’s not you that’s the problem, it’s the band. Too bad, because as I said, I really like a lot of songs from Blue Oyster Cult…but you won’t get me to see them live again.

Summary of day 1(star rating out of 5)

For those of you not from Milwaukee, we have an annual little music festival here each year called Summerfest. Ok, so it isn’t quite so little, and this year they had probably the best line up for me personally in it’s history.

Yes, much of it was late 70′s or 80′s rock bands, but there seems to be a resurgence on 80′s nostalgia right now so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. Out of the 11 day Summerfest run I went 5 days. I’ll post some small reviews of each day (if I remember details from that day, which is no given thing when Summerfest is involved)