Day 3 at Summerfest turned out to be less than stellar. I had a feeling going in that the band we wanted to see wasn't going to improve on past performances and I was right. Down at the grounds about 5:30ish and headed over to the Miller Lite stage. There at 6pm was a pop cover band called Your Villain, My Hero. Saw them last year as we waited for The Offspring. The cover pop songs from Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Madonna, the Black Eyed Peas and many other. Very entertaining and probably the best performance of the night. Of course it doesn't hurt that they have two hot women, one singing and one on bass guitar. Very nice!
After their set ended, we headed over to the Rock Stage for Civil Twilight. Saw them last year and enjoyed their set. Another great show last night. Their most popular song is one that was featured in the tv show One Tree Hill. Those of you that watch the show (I don't) may know what I'm talking about. The stage was about half empty and thought it was a bit strange, but looking back on the night it was more likely a foreshadowing.
The headliner for the Rock Stage was The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Now here is a band whose albums are really good, but their live performances have been disappointing to say the least. I saw them twice in 2009, once at The Rave downstairs and once at Summerfest. The downstairs stage at The Rave is small and the acoustics aren't great so at that time I chalked up the lackluster performance to that. At Summerfest 2009, the stage was jam packed. We quickly realized that most of the people were there to see Owl City and Relient K. It was quite obvious that the lead singer had voice problems. They maybe played six songs and were off the stage by 11pm. It was sad. So this year, we decided to give them one more shot. Again, I really like their albums. They take the stage and it didn't take long to realize that this guy is terrible. I'm not going to say the whole band is terrible, but they really need to find a new singer. Makes me wonder how authentic his voice is on the albums. He has no idea how to perform and they had no business being scheduled as a headliner. Civil Twilight should have been the headliner. Way too much talking in between songs. At one point, he mentioned that they had a guest guitarist, some 17 year old kid who loved RJA and wanted to play with them. The kids was pretty good, but that they should have been doing was auditioning for new singers. Probably could have picked someone out of the crowd. As it is, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus have been put into the same category as 12 Stones...really good cd quality bands but absolutely terrible live.
So after being bored through four or five songs, we decided to leave and head over to another stage. Attempting to walk by the Miller Lite stage, we realized why the Rock Stage was empty. Everyone was watching Girl Talk. Even the Harley-Davidson stage was packed for Los Lonely Boys. Third Eye Blind was playing at the new Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard stage, but we were heading over to the M&I Classic Rock stage to check out Styx. That stage was jam packed too. I don't think we could have gotten withing 500 yards of the stage. Caught the last few songs of their set including Miss America and Come Sail Away.
A lackluster night at Summerfest, but always a fun time. People watching is fantastic. Live music is always awesome! Tonight I'm most likely heading back down to Summerfest. This will be Day 4 for me and Summerfest has only been open for four days. My streak of consecutive days at Summerfest goes back to 2009 and stands at 18. My friends are trying to entice me into going to all eleven days again this year. I'm not 100% certain that is going to happen, though I won't rule it out just yet. Options for tonight include Maroon 5 and Hinder. I guess I'll find out when I get there. Rock on!
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