Festgrounds. Music! And Hot Dogs?

That’s right my friends, this past weekend was the 3rd Annual Weinerfest festival down at the Southside Oktoberfest grounds.  If you’ve never heard of it, which was me 3 weeks ago, it’s kind of described as a one day Oktoberfest.  It’s basically one big party with music and drinks, but you can only eat hot dogs.  I suggest they put something else on the menu like hot pretzels or something, hot dogs just don’t last as long as you’d think.  Anyways, I’m here to talk about music, not hot dogs, so I’ll get on with it.

The day started off with Mr. Pat McCurdy, who apparently hasn’t left La Crosse since the last time he played here.  He either is getting sick of La Crosse or just bought a summer home here.  Pat had a pretty strong crowd, considering the time of day (3:30 p.m.)  Always a good show because of his crowd participation.  He does an awesome job trying to put together lyrics on the fly.  He picked 3 or 4 people out of the crowd, asked for their name and hometown, and then sang a verse to rhyme it all together.  I don’t think I’d ever yell out my name to be a part of that, but still fun to watch.  He cracked me up at the end of one of his songs when he said he would do the American Idol ending.  He did all kind of vocal shifts and whatnot to sound like he was on the show, and all I could think of was my last post when I talked about Adam Lambert and his overindulgence of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” [read here]

The next band that came on were The Freezers.  They were a popular music cover band that played all the classics.  They were a talented group in my opinion, and the fans next to the stage seemed to have a great time with the show.  I do think that the sound system they were playing on was mixed poorly.  However, I was standing towards the middle to back of the tent during their whole show, so the sound could have blended on its way back.  But with the amount of volume they were putting out, I should have been able to hear some of the guitar solos, but it sounded pretty muffled at points.  Probably not the band’s fault, but it kind of hampered on their show.  The vocalist was pretty good, but included a lot of unnecessary screaming in some songs.  He had like 3 notes that he could scream, so it felt really pushed.  But whatever, he’s attempting and probably will get better.

It took about an hour to set the stage for the next band, but you could have swore you went back in time to the 80’s, for Brat Pack Radio that is.  Popular 80’s cover band Brat Pack Radio attracts a crowd of all ages, at least the one from the 1980’s on.  Dressed up in their 80’s attire and sporting the Darth Vader helmet on the front of the keyboard, Brat Pack started off so hot that they popped a speaker in the first 5 seconds of their show.  Once that deal got figured out, they started up again and played through a great show.  If you haven’t seen these guys, I highly recommend going next time they come to the area.  Their sound can get eerily similar to the authentic 80’s music.  At some points, the keyboard sound even took me back to Vince DiCola and the soundtrack for Transformers: The Movie, the 1986 version.  Great soundtrack!  I believe the next time they’re back in La Crosse will be Oktoberfest!  It will be the same awesome show, except with brats and not hot dogs.

ONE DAY AWAY!!  I will have another concert review this week for the Music as a Weapon tour that’s coming to the La Crosse Center tomorrow.  That concert features 4 opening bands on a second stage to set up Chimaira, Lacuna Coil, Killswitch Engage and Disturbed on the main stage.  I’ve been listening to Disturbed for like a month.  Added a little Killswitch in the mix.  Put on Lacuna Coil within the last week, I can’t wait to see them! If you see me around, give me a couple of these \m/ and I’ll send them back, I’ll be wearing my Kamelot tour shirt from this past year.

Rock, BC