Daily Updates!!!

Sunday July 1, Day 4

While finishing up the Daily Updates, which means emailing all the stuff to the Webmeister, I noticed that the temperatures were considerably lower than yesterday. I mean, bone chilling cold, below 60. That did not sound good for the later excursion to the Summerfest grounds! Damn! One thing that I can’t stand is cold weather. That’s’, I guess, the way it wants to be in the ol’ state of WI, huh? Every time it gets nice and warm, the thunderstorms roll in. So, what we saw blowing the rain away on Saturday, brought the miserable cold shit with it.

Well, quit wining and get to the ‘Fest while there is still some sunshine to warm a little bit. All right, got there as usual and dug into the Rock stage area for a Point. The band playing there at the moment was Capstone and what they were playing was this mixture of metal and rap. What’s with that? What would you expect to get when mixing something good (metal) with something very bad (Crap). Something redundant, I would say.

So what’s there to eat tonight. Passed through Ethic Village. OK, tried that. OK, had that. Don’t want that. Finally, fell in love with the German Sample Platter from Mader’s. Found a spot right by the Sprecher stage, where interesting music was coming from. Great, get a Bavarian, listen to music and enjoy the German food. Sounded good to me! Tonight the beer fits the meal perfectly. The band on stage was ekoostik hooka, and that about what the music sounded like. Pretty good, though!

Wandered through the stages to get a view of what was going on everywhere on this freezing night. Greg Koch was warming up on the Harley stage. Not bad. That might be a place to return to later. Started steering towards the Water Street Brew Pavilion, wanted to go upstairs and sit for a while and enjoy a Weiss with lemon. In their usual spot there was this Steel Drum band from San Fran that I can never remember the name of. I have mentioned them before.

Finally got to the Pavilion and got upstairs. There was nobody there! I know that the crowd seemed thin walking through the area, but not a soul at WSB. Unbelievable! Normally, Sunday isn’t that bad. Of course, it must be the arctic temperature!

Standing there with my Weiss, looking at the Marcus, I remembered that is was Glam Slam Metal night there! Go for it! Nah, maybe not. Before I could finish the beer, I got tired of the Jazz that was pouring out from the Big Backyard. Headed for the Harley stage to assume my regular position in front of the tower. Ended up sitting down. Ended up staying for the entire show, in fact stayed there for the rest of the night!

Greg Koch is a fantastic guitar player, did a lot of Hendrix and Led Zep and other good blues stuff, even had Jon Paris join in for a number on harmonica. There was a pretty good crowd there and it only grew bigger in anticipation of Jonny Lang, who was going on at 10.

Yeah, Jonny Lang, no mistake, the boy can play and he can sing pretty well too. He was able to set the masses in movement, a task that would seem impossible on this glacial night!

On a trip to the boys room, I heard the tunes from the Miller area, where a band named Oleander was on. Didn’t sound too shabby, that might be worth checking out later. As I found out, don’t make it too late! What do you mean, it’s barely past 11 and I still missed them.

Well, everything else was closing down, so what else was there to do but the old Hot Dog routine and go home!

End of a very frigid day! See ya tomorrow, where the temperature is going to be about the same. Crap!

Did I mention that I hate cold weather, it makes me miserable! Especially at Summerfest.