mom tries

Attention: Mom has left the building! The spouse and I had a real day AND night out yesterday as we took in the best rock festival in the US, in the underrated but high-value lakefront festival city we call Milwaukee. (We also visited the fest on Thursday night, taking the suburban bus from Pewaukee. If you drink in Milwaukee, trust me, you will pee in Pewaukee.)

The daytime bands turned out to be far better than the night bands on July 3. Our local Madison band, The Moon Gypsies was terrific as always, despite having to crank their amps to 11 to compete with abutting rock stages. Here is Chris Wagoner, their very cool multi-instrumentalist, getting into the groove in their first set. We also enjoyed Jersey boys Joe D'Urso and Stone Caravan and were VERY impressed with Michelle Shocked, who has 3 albums coming out at once this week. One of them is described as "Disney songs reinvented as Western swing numbers." OK, this I gotta hear. Michelle had no problem competing with neighboring rock stages; she even has a very hard rockin' song off her new rock album (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). If you get a chance to see her, do it.

The evening showings were enormously disappointing, once again proving that Summerfest is all about finding good bands on their way up (or those just happy to be where they are, in Milwaukee, playing to a well-behaved and appreciative if not necessarily overly hushed and awed crowd.)

The spouse attempted to see Peter Himmelman, but it seems Pete was peeved that the neighboring stage was VERY loud and that all the people seemed to be over there. (It was some rocker named Gavin McGraw, which the spouse misnomered Gavin McLeod, you know, the Love Boat captain.) Anyway Pete really sucked.

I went to see Lucinda Williams and was initially quite proud of my superior judgment. She came out 15 minutes late (a big Summerest no-no; since people HAVE options here and will vote with their feet) but rocked through some of her more popular tunes. But 5 songs later, I was on my way to see Peter when the spouse and I nearly collided. He watched her for 30 seconds before concluding, "Um...she is messed up on something. I know that song she's singing and it is NOT that slow. This is just like watching Jerry Garcia when he was taking heroin." So while we were unhappy the performance wasn't better, we are now more concerned about Lucinda's health. Heck, I know Milwaukee IS pretty exciting, but you really don't need to take tranquilizers to keep it under control. If you start getting too worked up, visit the suburbs for a while. Problem solved.

But I digress. Yesterday's gig also involved an actual HOTEL ROOM stay. We all know what that means. I love the Plaza Hotel. Unfortunately, their awesome little restaurant was closed this morning due to it being July 4.

But to get to the point of this post, on the first Fest night, last Thurs., I was rocking out to Deep Purple, of all bands. I thought I would stay for just a little bit, mostly so I could call my sister (who is a huge Purple fun) and hold the cell phone up to "Smoke on the Water" or something...but they were really fun and I so I stayed. But while I was standing (or perhaps dancing very slightly) a big, tall, fat guy carrying a beer walked by me (like hundreds of others before him that hour). He asked me to move, and I did, but apparently not quite far enough. I was wearing sandals and the oaf stepped on my toes. This hurt. He did not apologize or even turn to look at me, but kept slogging (very slowly) by. So my pissed-off, knee-jerk reaction was to elbow him (lightly, mind you) in the ribs. He starts yelling at me, "I asked you to move, you should have moved more!" So of course I yell back, "You stepped on my foot you big oaf! I didn't even really hurt you!"

At this point, my cooler-headed spouse pulls me into a headlock. The goliath grunted and bumbled away muttering under his bad breath.

So my point is this, fest fans: it's like the freeway. The person passing (i.e. in motion, cutting through the crowd) has the responsibility to NOT step on, burn, shove, strangle, crush, or otherwise extinguish those whose feet are planted more of less firmly on the ground. If you step on my feet, I will elbow you just so you know that I know that you did this. I am small so you can and probably will mess me up. I don't care. I'm standing on principle. But not in sandals anymore.