Riverfest

Riverfest

Friday night went out and saw Daughtry, it was pretty crowded so we sat pretty far away. The opening of the first song failed to impress as did the rest of the concert. He must have been on tour for awhile because his voice was already shot. It was easy to hear that he was struggling and at one point he went off stage for about 20 seconds so I'm not sure if he took anything or got a shot of something to help him keep singing. We left after 7 songs and then we went to see Mitch play at WT Bubbas. He was able to get us in free, I wasn't sure what to expect since Riverfest was gong on, but there was a nice crowd. The band was very good and they had an excellent guitar player. They played for about 4 hours with only a 3 minute break. Mitch knew the fiddle player in Darius Rucker's band who were playing at Riverfest, and he brought the whole band, even Darius, who sang a couple of songs. When he hit the stage there was a throng of people with their phones out taking pictures. They had a steel guitar player who was from Australia and he was awesome and fun to watch. We stayed till around 2am and had to walk across the bridge, I did get a $5 hot dog from a stand outside the Rumba room, and met a women who had never had sauerkraut

On Saturday we were trying to decide if we wanted to go see Sugar Ray or not, I didn't have any desire so I Iooked up who else was playing around that time and saw Kingsdown. I watched a couple of their YouTube videos and was impressed so we went and saw them. They had an interesting opening, there was a single standing drum in front of the stage and 3 women came out with metal hula hoops who were twirlling them around there body while the drummer was pounding on the drum to some recorded music. This lasted for about a minute then the drummer went to the main drums while the lead singer took over then they stared the first song. The sound man was awful and it took about 2 songs before you could actually hear the singer. Once that was solved the band sounded great and they played about 10 songs. The lead singer mentioned they had opened for Poison at that very stage about 5 years ago then I remembered that I had seen the group before because I was at that show. The ending was probably the best ending I've seen at a show, but it's too hard to explain so you will have to go see them for that explanation.

We then had to walk back to see Black Stone Cherry. I wanted to get close to the stage because really if you go to a concert you need to be in the first couple of rows because that is where all the excitement is, if you've never been on the front rows then you are missing out on a true concert experience. I worked my way up to about the 7th row and had a decent time, since it was at Riverfest, the crowd was not as exuberant so it wasn't as exciting as it usually is. The band hadn't played live in a while since they were recording a new album, but they sounded great. They played all of their hits and saved Lonely Train for last. Next was Bush time and I wasn't excited about them. They sounded like grunge to me and I don't like that music, the singer sounded similar to Eddie Vedder who I can't stand so we left after about 5 songs. The people behind me made a comment that BSC was better than Bush, I agree. The problem I have with gunge is that the music to me is depressing, they use depressing chord progressions, and the biggest flaw no guitar solos.

I almost went and saw Tyrannosaurus Chicken on Sunday, but I was too tired. I did get to go eat lunch with Mark and his wife at Santo Coyote, and had some great guacamole. That night I did watch the fireworks from a field that overlooked downtown which lasted about 20 minutes. I've never been impressed by the fireworks in Little Rock, the best I've seen was at Oaklawn a long time ago when I was working at Magic Springs and we had to work in the infield selling light sticks. It could be that I had a hot girlfriend, Christina, at that time who was with me, and I was seeing other types of fireworks but that is not a story to tell.

New Releases - PC games this week, E3 is coming up so not many console releases.

PC:

• 99 Spirits
• GRID 2 - Pre-loaded on steam and will be playing around 11PM.
• Ku: Shroud of the Morrigan
• The Night of the Rabbit - Adventure game.
• Wargame Airland Battle

Xbox 360

• Fuse - Insomniac's first non-exclusive PS3 game. A co-operative shooter that looks interesting.

PS3:

• Fuse

PSV:

• LEGO Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey - Not exactly sure what this is.

3DS:

• LEGO Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey