Lately, we've been making a big night of it on Fridays. This is unusual for us. Normally, we're settled in the house by about 8 p.m. on Friday evenings. I think I like this new wild lifestyle!!
So, after that late night on Friday, Saturday dawned a gorgeous day. The temps had moderated back into the mid 80s (We came close to 100 degrees on Friday!) and the humidity was low (a rarity around here). The sun was shining and there was just the slightest breeze blowing. It was just too beautiful to stay home all day. Of course, we both had a bit of trouble waking up and getting moving in the morning!! (That'll teach us to "trip the light fantastic" on Friday night!)After a bit of discussion, we decided to head to Spring Grove, PA for a day of music at the first annual Roosterpalooza. The event was a fund raiser for breast cancer awareness and was headlined by two bands we were familiar with - Tom Larsen, known for his hard rocking blues, and Kashmir, a Led Zepplin tribute band. We were not familiar with any of the other groups listed on the flier. Altogether there were 18 or 19 bands involved.
The band that was playing when we arrived was Headshot and did some great covers of some good solid rock. They sounded good and we were quite pleased.The park was a fantastic venue with a nice pavilion with a solid concrete stage and wiring which made set-up easy for the bands. There were plenty of picnic tables, both in the pavilion and spread around the lawns which were well shaded by some humongous oak trees.
The bands changed every hour. We had missed the first two completely as we did get a slow start. The next band came on and was the epitome of an 80's hair band. They call themselves Grind (not THE Grind, but they did pattern themselves after them.) While not our choice in music, they performed it well with lots of loud screaming and a truly choreographed stage performance. They were extremely high energy and made quite a few leaps from the stage. They then proceeded to traipse around the table tops between our food and drinks.
The lead singer liked pouring a bottle of water over his head and then flopping his hair at folks as he trotted among the crowd. (This I could have done without. We had several things on our table we'd have preferred to keep dry.)
Well, my tolerance for this sort of performance runs to an hour or two (at most). The Big Guy can appreciate it for about four songs or so. We were glad to see their time run out.
Or so we thought.
Turns out the next four bands were all trying to be wild hair bands from the 80s. Most did their thing fairly well but screamed lyrics quickly became screeched lyrics. We moved a little further from the stage area. We eventually discovered the acoustic stage and did enjoy some of the music there for a while.
Turns out the bands we actually knew and wanted to see, were the last two to play. We had a long trip home and ended up leaving before Tom took the stage at all.
On the up side, it was a beautiful day with fantastic scenery. We met and chatted with quite a few really nice folks. The food vendors were excellent and very reasonably priced. While we found out coolers were allowed into the event, we never bothered walking back to the car to get ours. Beverages were cheap enough. There were REAL bathrooms, well stocked with paper goods and soap and with running water (always a plus in my book!)
There were a few crafters present but I don't think any sold very much. I know one sold absolutely nothing. She had a variety of items for sale, ranging from fabric dolls and animals with colorful yarn hair, potholders, aprons and fabric purses as well as quite a bit of crocheted merchandise.I felt bad for her as her work was great and reasonably priced but it just wasn't that kind of crowd. She did close early and packed it in.
I did see a jeweler sell a number of inexpensive earrings and pendants. I was not close enough to the others to see how their sales were going but I did not see folks carrying any of the merchandise around. The tattoo artist (real tats, not airbrushed) and body piercing stand did do fairly well.
Oh well, I can't pick a winning experience EVERY time out!! (No offense to you readers who do enjoy this style of music, please. It just wasn't our style. My age must be showing.)
I figured I'd have trouble selling The Big Guy on another "new event" today, so we simply went to breakfast and then came home to watch the football game. At least the Ravens won!
Hope y'all had a good one.
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