Summerfest 2012

Thursday night Kris and I had a night out by going to Summerfest.  For anyone who doesn't know what that is, go read the wikipedia link.  Back in the day we used to go spend half a day there listening to the music, eating, and drinking beer.  Now, it's strictly the music, and the days of spending an entire day down at Maier Festival Park are long gone.

This year we went to see my favorite band, the Foo Fighters.  I can't tell you how much I wanted to see these guys.  Every time they came around in the last 10 years or so, I had something going on, or I had to work...  something prevented me from seeing them.  this year, I figured, no more, I'm going to see them.

As usual, we got their early so we had a place to park that wasn't to far away and we weren't fighting the crowds to get to the amphitheater.  The opening band was pretty lame and we put up with them for an hour.  They were called the Silversun Pickups, and while they might have been nice for a $5 cover to get into a bar with live music on a weekend, I wouldn't have paid much more to actually go see them alone.

The Foo Fighters were spectacular.  They played for two and a half hours, and the music was non stop.  There were very few breaks in between songs, they just played.  It was really pretty awesome.  If I had to say, it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to if not THE best.

Our seats were pretty decent, though I had quite a time getting them.  The day they went on sale, I got online to get them and ended up in Section 8, Row T, and that was maybe 90 seconds after they went on sale.  If you get any farther back than section 8 you may as well skip it.  That's just my opinion though.  I figured I should be happy I even got the tickets.  The Monday before the show the director of Summerfest was on the radio saying good seats were still available, that sometimes extra tickets are released the week of the show when they know the exact configuration of the stage, or seats that the band may have been holding back for one reason or another are released for sale to the general public.  So I checked every day to see if I could get better seats.  Every now and then a couple seats popped up in a better section a few rows closer, but they weren't a drastic improvement.  Then the day of the show, Thursday morning, I checked and there were a couple of seats in a better section (more toward the middle of the stage) and they were in the first row (no, not in front of the stage but in the first row of the next grouping of seats - the yellow section if you know the Marcus layout).

So now I had two sets of seats.  I knew a couple of people who wanted to go, but didn't have seats and didn't want to sit up on the grass, so I figured I would be able to get rid of the original tickets easily, even if it was short notice.  Well I was wrong.  Everyone I asked said they couldn't go for one reason or another.  Kris and I asked everyone we knew.  I even went next door and asked our new neighbor if he wanted them (at a discounted price) or if he had any friends who might be interested, but we had no takers.  We took them along in the event we saw someone outside the park who was looking for tickets.  But no luck.

We got into the amphitheater and were walking to our seats and I said something to Kris about them as we were walking in.  We were looking up at the lawn section and Kris said we should just go give them to someone up on the grass so they wouldn't go to waste.  And I thought, yeah, why not.  Kris said something about how cool it would have been when she was 22 or 23 and someone would have just walked up to her and given her tickets down in the reserved section for a concert she really wanted to see, so I thought, sure, I'll do it.  As we were walking in we saw a couple sitting up on the grass right against the railing.  They looked hot and tired, like they had been there all day.  I know that in order to get in free you used to have to get there right when the park opened.  I don't know if that is still the case, but I do know the GA seats go very fast (I think they give out wristbands now)  so it is a good bet they had been walking around for a few hours at least.

So I grabbed the tickets from Kris and walked up the stairs to the grass, and said, "excuse me, how would you guys like to go sit up in the reserved sections?"  The looked at me like I was crazy.  I said, I had an extra set of tickets down in Section 8 and I couldn't find anyone to use them, and I didn't want them to go to waste so if they wanted them they could have them.  They said sort od skeptically, "OK, what's the catch".  I said, "No catch, here you go.  Enjoy the show", and handed them the tickets.  They took them, looked at the tickets and said "Oh my god, thank you so much."  Then Kris and I went down to our seats to wait for the opening band.

All in all it was a pretty good night.  We felt good for doing something nice for someone, and saw one of the best concerts I will ever see in my life.  So I guess it'll be a show I won't forget anytime soon and I hope for that couple we gave the tickets to that it was a memorable show too.

So anyway...  we had a pretty good view of the stage from our new seats, right down the aisle.  I smuggled Sarah's camera in and it doesn't have a great zoom on it so the flash doesn't help, and in order to get a good shot in the dark you have to hold it VERY steady.  Luckily I did manage to get a couple of good shots.

Note the guitar that Dave Grohl is using in the last couple of shots.  It is the checkered guitar of one Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick (who is playing Summerfest next Saturday).  He explained that Rick Nielsen was letting him use it , and told a story about how Cheap Trick was one of the reasons he wanted to become a musician.  They even played a refrain of Surrender.  It as just one of the many memorable moments from the show.

Night Out

Kris and I finally had a night out to ourselves. Sarah stayed home babysitting Alison and We drove downtown to see Rick Springfield. I don't know if it is a regular thing for him or not, but the last few years it sure seems like he does a week's worth of shows at the Potawotami Northern Lights Theater.

We had seem him at a free concert eleven years ago when Sarah was a baby. I remember the day well because Sarah threw up in the car and it was almost 100 degrees outside. This time was much different. The Northern Lights Theater was a very intimate setting, very different from where I am accustomed to seeing a concert. It had the feel of a VH1 Storytellers show.

The show was very good. He started with a couple of his hits from the 80s and then played his last album (or rather CD) in its entirety, Venus in Overdrive. He actually wrote several of the songs in a hotel in Milwaukee (Room 804 of the Pfister). If you didn't know it, you would have never guessed the guy is 62 years old. He sounds the same as he did 25 - 30 years ago.

One other thing about Rick Springfield, apparently, no two shows are alike (at least when he does the 5 nights in a row). Kris thinks we should go see him every time he comes back now just because he does different things every time. The night before we had heard was a ½ electric - ½ acoustic show and he was actually taking requests.

The audience was also 95% women. It was funny to just watch all these women swooning over Rick Springfield. At one point, he had removed his shirt and went into the crowd. I was expecting someone to actually faint.

But all in all it was a good night. Something we need to do much more often.

Bieber Review

We left for Summerfest around 5:00 Sunday night. We weren't sure where we were going to park since the O'Donnell Park parking structure was shut down. I didn't know what the traffic would be like as well, so I tried to give myself enough time to drive around. The last time Kris and I went to Summerfest we spent an hour trying to get out of one of the lots and I had no desire to repeat that. I told Kris that I would pay extra to be able to get out easily. I was thinking that after this show I would need to relax.

Luckily we only drove around for about 15 minutes and then settled on parking in a lot by an apartment building for $25. It was a little more that most of the other lots, but thought that it would be worth it to get out with ease when the show was over.

This was the view of the stage from our seats:


I had looked up how long this concert was supposed to last and other people who had seen it commented that is was about a two and a half hour show. So when things started at 7:00 I was hopeful we would be out by 9:30. The first group out was some all girl group called the Stunners; sort of like a man band, but with girls. I would compare them to the Spice Girls. Average at best.

Next was someone by the name of Jessica Jarrell. She did about 4 or 5 songs and then came back out later for a duet with Bieber. Again, she wasn't too bad, but not my cup of tea.

The next performer was Sean Kingston. Ali loves him and she told me that she actually liked him the best of all for the night. And actually I didn't mind his set. his music had a bit of a reggae sound to it, but a little more upbeat.




Finally, Justin Bieber came on, and the crowd went nuts. While I am not a big fan, I will say that he put on a pretty energetic show. Though I still don't quite know what the dancers were doing on stage. They really weren't needed and if anything they were a distraction.



The girls liked the Justin Bieber show, Kris and I just tolerated it. It is sad when you go to a concert and your ears are ringing afterward, not from the music, but from the 30,000 tween and teenage girls screaming.

Jo Bros

I forgot, on the 7th we took Sarah and Alison to the movies to see the new Jonas Brothers movie in 3D. It was actually an event for Sarah’s whole girl scout troop, but obviously Ali wanted to come along as well. Since it was an event for Sarah’s troop, I had to “take” Ali separately. More on the 3D movie experience later...

Early the next week, we found out that the Jonas Brothers are going to be coming to Milwaukee this summer so Kris and I decided we would take the girls for their birthdays. We ended up registering Sarah and Alison for the Jonas Brothers fan club so we got access to the “special” fan club pre-sale as well as all the fan club swag and discounts on merchandise.

I found out about (2) days before that there were LOTS of shows all having the fan club pre-sale starting at the same time. I got home from work (I took off for about an hour and a half) and logged in (10) minutes before the sale started. I have NEVER seen such heavy traffic on a website. It took about 25 minutes just to log in to get tickets. I was actually worried we weren’t going to get any, and I refuse to pay $300 a ticket to sit in the nose bleed seats to see a kid’s band. Luckily, everyone else in the Milwaukee area was having the same problem. We ended up getting seats about 11 rows off the floor, which should be pretty good sight lines since the stage is going to be in the center of the arena.