The Current Music Blog: June 21, 2008 Archive

Rock The Garden Rocked!

Posted at 11:01 PM on June 21, 2008 by Barb Abney (29 Comments)

What a great day to see a concert with a few thousand of your closest friends, eh? I wanted to write about the highlight of my day but there were just so many! I think I have been completely cured of my stage-fright. Walking out there and looking out at all those faces of people just like me, who just came to see a killer concert, gave me an overwhelming feeling of belonging. Thank you!

I thought Bon Iver was a great way to get the show started. It seemed like everyone knew every word to every song he sang. I never did find his young relative to find out whether anyone had followed Justin's advice and given the little tyke a "punch in the lip."

My love for Cloud Cult is pretty well know, but I'm sure after watching them today, you can see why. There's just so much going on up on their stage. Craig's animated and jumping all around, there's the painting, the musicians moving from this instrument to that one. And from the second I heard the first notes of "Happy Hippo" I was just the happiest girl in the world!

While waiting in line for the ladies room I heard someone lamenting on how they had heard Neko Case wasn't playing with The New Pornographers tonight and how bummed they were about it. Okay, sure, Neko would have been a welcome addition. But was the performance missing anything? I don't think so. I'd never had the chance to see them play before and thoroughly enjoyed every second. The energy of the crowd during "Don't Bring Me Down" was nothing short of electric! Perhaps so much so, that just as the song was ending the first raindrops fell.

I took this as my cue to take my daughter inside to grab a bite to eat. We waited for Mary to introduce Andrew Bird (and she was right, he was indeed dressed rather sharply.) And we headed upstairs to the VIP area. We probably would have just headed home, but my daughter had her very first VIP pass and she wanted to see what that meant. We hadn't been outside on the terrace long when the wind started to gust. I'm looking around and trying to devise the perfect way to "accidentally" bump into Carl Newman when they had to evacuate the terrace because of the winds. Once we got back downstairs we learned that the show was being halted until the threat of lightning passed. That was the sign to get my lil' one home.

I'm sure that since I didn't get to hang around for Andrew Bird's whole set, there will be more than a few of my coworkers who can fill in that gap and any others I may have missed.

I want to say thanks to each and every one of you for coming out to the show. And a special thanks, as well for those of you who gave my daughter something to talk about for days and days to come. I can't tell you how many times she said to me "Mommy, you play this song at home." Everyone that met her mentioned her dress. She was so proud of that dress and she twirled, danced and skipped around all day thrilled to be meeting so many people who made her feel just like one of them, very special.

We grabbed a cab to come home and she talked to the cabbie about the great time she had at Rock The Garden. I could hear some very low playing music that sounded familiar to me and I asked him what he was listening to and he said "All I ever listen to is The Current."

Perfect.

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