Tonight I had half of my 10 out of town picks and I only got to see two of them. That bit of failure aside, I started out with Anton Mink at Ink Tank. All I could think about with this band is that they come across as an Indie version of No Doubt, with the lead singer even dressed in early Gwen Stefani chic. She played a cowbell for one song. No, I’m not going to say it, but I really, really want to say it.
Stereophile was at the Cue and had a bass heavy sound that needs some refinement or just a better sound mixer. Sound mixing at MidPoint is always an issue with bands having little time for a sound check.
The most theatrical band of the festival before they ever took the stage was Ferdinand Fox. All of the members were dressed in what can best be described as Peter Townsend’s Woodstock jump suit. If you ever seen the Woodstock movie, you’d know of the outfit. They drummed up a big audience, one filling Cue for a 10 PM show, by walking up and down main clapping in unison like they were rallying the troops for a charge on the enemy. In fact they do a version of the Empire March from Star Wars. Yes, they are geeks and not afraid to show it.
I broke away from their performance to catch the end of the Ag Silver show at the Know. I was glad I did. I caught my favorite song of the fest “All that to say.” Have a listen to it on their MySpace page.
I briefly caught the Church of the Red Museum back over at Ink Tank. I liked the band’s line up of instruments. The one trend I saw at Midpoint this year was the inclusion of keyboards for many Indie bands. Church of Red Museum pulled in keyboards into their music as a focus and it worked.
In the end I saw 23 bands. As a rule, I tried to see at least 2 bands an hour, and almost made over the three days. Getting a taste for each band is good, but it still makes it difficult to pick the bands. I’ll be exploring other’s takes on the bands they saw and how they made their choices.
I believe overall the Festival clearly improved over last year, and the weather helped out. I’ll be coming up with an over all recap of the positives and negatives of this year’s fest. I look forward to next year’s event!