Venue: I always enjoy Summerfest. It happens to be one of the world’s largest music festivals and it’s in of all places Milwaukee, WI. It’s “11 days, 11 stages and over 700 artists” and around floury three years running. You can find almost any verity of music you please their, and even a few that you don’t please. You can also find a very wide verity of talent, ages, and kinds of artists. In addition there are booths full of food from local restaurants, including an Ethnic Garden of foods from around the world. There is also a plethora of vendors who sell everything from clothing, to knick-knacks, to incense. It is very easy to spend all eleven days there. (The most I’ve ever done was nine).
The crowd: (4/6) The overall Summerfest crowd is very laid back and usually not as furious as a normal concert crowd. Many of them have been camping their stage for hours, and even more have been walking around the seventy-five acres of the festival grounds. Sometimes they’re not even there for a specific band. For this particular show, crowd took a little time to get moving but they were very vocal. Above all they were a happy crowd.
Notes on the times: At a music festival, generally the first acts are the local, greener bands and the last acts are usually more well known experienced bands. Often this also indicates quality.
8:00 show: Kids These Days (3/6): I was shocked that this band had the 8:00 slot. Shocked. Last year I saw Sick Puppies at this slot. I usually give band with such young members a lot of slack as they are still growing into their voices as well as their style. Initially, I thought that perhaps Summerfest had been gracious enough to give a local high school band a slot.
I was wrong. They’re from Chicago, how embarrassing.
If each member performed on his or her own, they might have been decent. If it weren’t for the following issues.
The front man that did the singing, not the rapping was pushing his voice to make a very distinctive, specific sound usually found in blues and jazz. His voice however is too young to truly make that sound and you can hear the straining. He does have a good voice, however he will hurt himself if he continues pushing it.
While I am all for mixing genres and throwing pieces of outside genres into the mix, you should have a solid grounding in both genres if you attempt this. This band was still very green (understandable given their ages) and I felt that until they had a more solid foundation in their genre (be it hip-hop or blues) they should perhaps sick to one genre per song.
The coordination: They were trying to emulate the bands that would dance with their horns from the jazz era. A valiant effort however, none of them managed to bow, let alone move in anything resembling synchronicity and coordination. That alone would have improved the band visually quite a lot
Things I did like, however:
The female lead had a very strong sense of her range and could actually make the vocalizations that she was attempting without straining her voice.
The instrumentation: All of the individual players had at least a moderate degree of talent, however they did need some work on a technical level. Which, I think will come in time. They do have some underlying talent.
Overall a very green band with some talent that needs to mature several years and hone their sound before really hitting the music scene. If they do hone it, I do think there is a lot of potential.
The 10:00 show: Third Eye Blind (4/6): It was an odd show, but it was very enjoyable. I did not have very high expectations given that as far as I knew they had peaked in the late 90s. The first about 20 minutes matched that expectation rather well. Fun, but nothing special. They lacked energy and the instrumentation wasn’t spot on. Then they played “slow motion” One of their very controversial songs, which I believe was only officially released as an instrumental due to the drug and violence content of the lyrics. However, the fans know the song inside out and it is one of their most beautiful songs. While they are known for their catchy song, I find Third Eye Blind’s real talent is in what I call stoner ballads. This song was followed up by their second largest hit “Jumper” and it was as though both the band and audience suddenly remembered they were there for a rock show. By the encore, they were rocking and the audience was electric.
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