Friday June30th.

This was the day of Greg’s Summerfest party. I had taken the day off of work and got down to the party about 1pm. Greg’s place is about 8 blocks from the summerfest gate which made it a ideal place to park and hang out for while, not to mention Greg’s a great guy and throws awesome parties.

M&I bank had a promotion that day for M&I customers. From 3pm – 4pm the first 500 people who showed their M&I bank cards at the promotional tent would get a free ticket. So, at around three a bunch of us went down, got our ticket, entered Summerfest, got a re-entry wristband and then went back to the party.

Around 6pm Greg announced it was time to go to Summerfest for real, so everyone started heading down. Being part of a large group at Summerfest is a pet peeve of mine. Not that I don’t like people, it’s just that it’s impossible to do anything when you’re part of a large group at Summerfest. You need to poll opinions on who wants to see what, where we should all go right now, and even once a descision has been made getting the group moving to the destination can be like pulling teeth. Inevitably, once the group does get moving, someone in the group will run into someone they know, which means everyone stops. Wash, rinse, repeat. End result, 30 minutes to walk from one end of the grounds to another.

I was supposed to meet a girl there but I was already about 2 hours later to the grounds than I had told her the previous day, but after a few text messages I found she was at JoJo’s Martini Tent. Her friend had an in to a private party at one of the stages but they had to get over there soon. Already being late and with a large group by the time we got to JoJo’s she had to leave for the party. Ah well.

Once at JoJo’s my friend, Gwenn, decided to try a Martini and got a Cosmo (I think). I was no longer in any shape to drink alcohol (having had more than I needed at Greg’s party), so I didn’t try it when she offered everyone a sample. I was actually in danger of dropping out for the day, as the drinking at the party was catching up to me and I was feeling very sluggish. I figured I needed to get walking and start drinking soda, so Gwenn and I left the main group and headed down to the US Cellular stage where Blue October would be playing later that night.

The walk and switching to soda’s did me a world of good and I caught my second wind shortly after we got to the stage. Some band called , ‘As Fast As’ was playing. Odd band, that seemed to favor Beatles’ covers along with some indie-esque rock originals. All in all not bad.

The US Celluar stage had a huge video board on one side of the stage that you could text message. You’d call the number on the board and then your text message would be displayed to the crowd. So Gwenn I both sent a few messages. It was fun watching them, though someone must have been screening them as I never saw anything with swearing or inappropriate content. Considering the quality and size of the video board I was very dissapointed to see it was ONLY used for the text messaging as it would have made for a great video board in conjuction with a camera to show the bands.

Blue October was a band I knew nothing about until after I started researching this year’s headliners. My friend had their latest CD so I borrowed it and was very impressed by them. They’re a hard band to pin down. Definitely alt-rock, but they have a violin/keyboard player which really gives the band a greater range than you would expect from a typical alternative band. Their front man, also has that magical quality called presence, and had it in spades. You simply just could not keep your focus off of him. The violinist would do a little solo, or you’d look at another band member for a second but then you’re focus would always go back to their singer. I remember trying to figure out just what it was, or what it is about certain front men/women that gives them this quality while watching the band. Was it how he was dressed? His voice? demeanor? Probably a combination of all these. Not many people have it. Bono is one I think, Freddy Mercury certainly had it, Mick Jagger to an extent has it. So did the lead singer of Blue October. I probably didn’t hurt that the show was great either.

Bands I saw:

Summary of day 2(star rating out of 5)

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)

Well well well. After nearly 15 years of regret of not having seen Queen before Freddie died, looks like I’ll get a chance to see Queen sans Freddie. March 27th, Queen with Paul Rogers handling the vocals will be coming to Milwaukee.

Sweet.

I’m pretty stoked about this…even though it’s not really Queen…not without Freddie. But, it’s as close as is possible…Brian May and Roger Taylor both will handle some of the vocal chores as well. Should be a fun show. It’s gotten pretty good reviews from the UK Queen fans where they were touring all last summer.

Every year, I make a Christmas mix which I’ll share with friends. Now, there is alot of Christmas music out there, but the kind I want for my mixes is pretty specific. It needs to be rock/alt/punk etc…basically anything that isn’t gimmick (i.e. Bob Rivers), or recorded before I was born. I’ve heard enough Nate King Cole, Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Elvis Christmas songs while growing up with my parents to last a lifetime. So a few years ago I started searching out songs that weren’t what most people would call ‘traditional’ Christmas music. Slowly, I’ve collected quite a few..enough to make mixes each year without too much overlap from year to year.

Here is the 2005 mix. I’ve decided to call this mix: ‘The Grinch strikes back.’ It’s mostly punk/alt songs with a somewhat cynical feel…though not all of them are ‘anti-hollidays’…

1. Your’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch – The Whirling Dervishes
2. December is for Cynics – The Matches
3. Oi to the World – No Doubt
4. Christmas Don’t be Late – Powder
5. Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
6. Feed the World (Do They Know it’s Christmas?) – Chino Moreno & Far
7. I Won’t be Home For Christmas – Blink 182
8. Father Christmas – The Kinks
9. Christmas Night of Zombies – MXPX
10. Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight) – The Ramones
11. X12 Days of XXXMASX – From First to Last
12. Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) – The Darkness
13. Deck The Halls (Instrumental) – Ted Nugent
14. I Shouldn’t Have Got Dad a Gun For Christmas – Wall of Voodoo
15. Ex-Miss – New Found Glory
16. Yule Shoot Your Eye Out – Fall Out Boy
17. Yelling at the Christmas Tree – Billy Idol
18. The First Noel – Eve 6