The Eagles, Steve Irwin and I'm Out
So hey, we're done, right? A few final thoughts:
1. One more thing on the Paisley show. When they played "When I Get Where I Am Going," a song about heaven, the video screen showed photos of different famous people, most of them musicians, who had died, most of the recently. A couple of the anomalies were the mugs of Reagan and JFK. I was surprised that JFK, at least from where I was sitting, seemed to get more cheers. Though to be fair, neither drew as loud a reaction as Steve Irwin aka The Crocodile Hunter.
2. I wish they'd vary the lengths of the playing times much more at WE Fest. Did Billy Ray Cyrus and Brad Paisley really both deserve 90 minutes? Sure, I liked Cyrus more than I figured I would his tight band and willingness to lean heavy on his best-selling album saved his so-so voice and lack of crowd-pleasers but I'd much preferred to hear Billy Ray for an hour and Brad for two.
3. The second 2009 artist was announced Saturday. It's The Eagles. Though stage emcee Tom Katt made the booking sound tentative, I can't imagine organizers would tease it if it weren't a pretty sure bet. Given the popularity of modern country acts who owe a big debt to soft-rock from the 1970s and The Eagles in particular, I'm looking at you Sugarland, they'd no doubt go over huge.
Posted by: droep on 8/10/2008 at 1:40 AM | Comments (3) | Permalink
This Is Why He Went Last
So Brad Paisley just finished up a 90-minute set, closing down the main stage with the best performance that graced it this weekend.
Paisley's got a pure, easy baritone and a boatload of songs that are plain-spoken, clued-in to the culture of the 20 to 40 demographic and funny, like "Better Than This," "Online" and "Celebrity," all of which were played Saturday. He did fidelity songs for the ladies without being trite ("Wrapped Around") and served up machismo to the guys without coming off as a lunkhead ("Im Still a Guy").
His stage show was the most interactive, with elaborate video pieces for most songs, including a long animated sequence Paisley himself created. When they played "Alcohol," it was set to shots of booze and beer bottles blowing up. The set-closer, a cover of "Let the Good Times Roll," came with footage of B.B. King supposedly (no, not really) playing and singing along live via satellite from Las Vegas. There were lots of neat little persnickety details, like the occasionally fuzzy transmission built-in to the King video to make it seem authentic and the accurate re-creation of the video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band (with Dierks Bentley, who performed earlier, on video singing into the microphone controller on the latter).
And Paisley backed it all up with a stupendous band lead by his own vaunted versatility on guitar. Whatever the occasion tender acoustic ballad, rambling honky-tonk, bluesy stomp, a brief surf-rock excursion, hot solos he was spot on. The solos were especially good, extravagant but not bloated. It wasn't hair-rock shredding like Keith Urban. Think more tightly-controlled coils of roadhouse romping. It's not the sort of super-slinging that makes you think, "So this is country, huh?"
It would have been tough for anybody to have to follow Paisley, even 24 hours later.
Posted by: droep on 8/10/2008 at 1:30 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Staying Not-So-Classy
After Chesney was done playing Friday night, I took a stroll out to the camping area that's farthest away from the concert bowl: Hilltop, a 30-minute walk to the east gate at a gait that would be impossible in a tight pre-headliner crowd. Man, I wouldn't come in for any day shows either if it meant an hour of walking round trip.
Hilltop and Eagle are the campgrounds recommended for younger, party-all-night types. Instead of rows of RVs, it's hundreds of tents bunched up in little temporary tribes. Round about 1 a.m., the parties were going strong, but it's not nearly as organized as it is in closer-to-the-concerts camprounds with noise curfews like Northwoods and Lake Sallie. Really, it's not much to see. The most action I saw was small groups of youngsters clustered around ping-pong tables playing drinking games, other than the small dance party outfitted with a bubble machine that was bopping heads to Eminem's "Superman."
But these eavesdropping was fun. Here are my four favorite out-of-context comments I heard:
* One of the chaplain staff, who are really more like party first-responders than spiritual advisers, asked a man slumped down on the side of the road to Eagle if she could help him with something. He responded: "Yeah, I'm trying to get to South America.'
*An EMT explaining to a young man that indeed he did have to come with his lady friend who was being hauled away in a first-aid van. "But I don't want to leave!" he proclaimed like a 4-year-old who wants to stay at the birthday party.
*After a bottle of expensive Grey Goose vodka two guys were walking down the road with was taken by security guards (glass is techincally a no-no here, though it seems to be a loosely enforced regulation), a female friend asked them if they had lost her other, also-female friends: "Screw the (girls), we lost the Goose!" one of the dudes shouted.
*At pretty much the most remote point of Hilltop, a woman about my age passed in front of my path carrying a cooler out of her vehicle. She said, "Hey baby," to which I responded, "Uh, hey." Then she broke into a fit of hysterical laughing.
But really, I didn't witness anything particularly scandalous. The nastiest WE Fest behavior I personally saw all weekend happened to me, actually. I stopped to take a leak in a oh-so-nasty portable toilet before the Chesney show on Friday. I locked the door because earlier in the day, somebody had opened it while I was taking care of business. While I'm in the midst, a guy pulled on the door handle and asked if anybody was in there. I yelled out in the affirmative. Then the dang thing starting rocking back and forth. This guy, it might have been two of them, was trying to tip the toilet! For about two seconds, I was like, "Surely they're joking." Then the intensity quickly picked up and the john tipped back way, way, way too far for comfort. I kicked opened the door and came out cussing up a storm just in time to see a guy scurry away behind the pottie.
To the mysterious toilet-tipper: I'm just guessing dude, but I bet you're a huge Will Ferrell fan, so I'll paraphrase something familar. Stay classy, you despicable jerk.
Not that I'm still bitter.
Posted by: droep on 8/9/2008 at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
License-Plate Pride
WE Fest has been around since 1983, which casts some doubt on the text-message shown on the big video-screen Saturday afternoon alleging that the sender was conceived at the festival in 1982.
But anywho, you'd think given its longevity and the seemingly lock-step agreement amongst its attendees that it's awesome, someone would have snapped up the North Dakota vanity license plate reading WEFESTR sometime in the 1990s at the latest.
Not so. Edward and Loretta Movchan of Mandan, N.D., got the plate six years ago and have felt like minor celebrities at WE Fests since. People amble up all the time to get a picture taken by the plate, which is attached to the married couple's black Dodge 4x4 pickup.
"It's been unrealy just watching them," Loretta says of the lookie-loos. "They're like, 'Look at that, look at that.'"
Which is fine with the Movchans. Like so many campers I talk to, Edward says they keep coming back for the people as much as the music.
"We share recipes, we share Bloody Marys, we share food," he says. "It's old-home week," his wife jokes.
Posted by: droep on 8/9/2008 at 9:24 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Froggy v. Bob
The competition between country-radio ratings rivals in Fargo, Froggy 99.9 FM and Bob 95.1 FM, carried over to WE Fest again this year. Froggy is an official sponsor of the festival, while Bob does its best to get its foot in the door without stepping on any toes.
There are plenty of neon Bob 95 shirts out here some were being handed out Friday night from the Gateway Chevrolet tent directly behind Froggy's prime location in the VIP campground, which seems like just the sort of snarky little coup for which Bob is aiming ﾭ ﾭand in the campgrounds the number of station banners were essentially even.
But there's just no beating Froggy's built-in advantage. Froggy DJs get to interview main-stage artists and get in on the between-show banter. The station's logo is placed right above one of the stage-flanking jumbo video-screen, which is pretty much the most prominent advertising placement as you can get at WE Fest.
Hey, you get what you pay for.
Posted by: droep on 8/9/2008 at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink