06/16:  Song of the Day.  Temple of the Dog–Hunger Strike

It’s the last week of Spring with Summer officially beginning on Friday.  As we begin to turn the page on yet another season I’m going to head back in time to some of the songs from summer’s past that still to this day remind me of swimming holes, barbecues, and the heat of dog day afternoons.  And since I’ve got music festivals on the brain…here’s a song from my very first music festival.

Mid-August 1992.  Grunge was exploding.  Nirvana was at the top of the heap, but bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains weren’t that far behind.  Following up on the success of the first Lollapalooza in 1991, Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell put together Lollapalooza 2 for another multi-city summer tour. My best friend, my brother, and I had tickets for the show at Lake Fairfax in Reston, Virginia.  This was to be my very first concert…ever. »Read More

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Right now someone in Manchester, Tennessee is desperately searching for their car keys.  Or their friends.  Or their favorite pair of sunglasses.  Or their minds.  It’s amazing the things one can lose over a four-day period on a 700-acre farm jam packed with close to 80,000 people and over 100 bands scheduled to perform.  That was the scene at Bonnaroo 2008 as tens of thousands of music fans descended on central Tennessee for what has become America’s biggest music festival as well as one of the biggest money-making music festivals in the world.

Now I don’t know how many C’ville folks made it down to Bonnaroo ‘08, but if you did go, braving the crowds, the weather, and the late nights, we’ll be asking you for your first hand accounts in just a few moments.  As you may have guessed I did not attend.  I won’t say that I’ve personally given up on the mega-music festival (I attended San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival last October which drew an estimated 500,000 festival goers) but in recent years I’ve been drawn to the smaller, lesser known, and more intimate music gatherings.  Ultimately I have yet to attend Bonnaroo and unless the Fates set me up with backstage passes and a paid assignment to cover the precedings, I can’t really imagine ever seeing the festival first hand.

In preparation for writing this post, I’ve scanned the inter-web for reports from the blogosphere and media outlets and I’ve gathered some of the highlights after the jump.  But before all that… »Read More

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