Virgin Festival in Baltimore Sept 23, 2006
Posted by Carl King - 25/09/06 at 06:09 pmMy daughter and I went, mostly to see The Who, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The day was long since the Who and the Peppers were the last to play, but we spent the day amusing ourselves with the other people who were attending. Yes, I said the other attendees. Come on now, you know how entertaining that can be. People in fucia colored, spiked hair, strange attire and body piercings of plenty.
The bands were good for the most part. We arrived while Wolfmother was opening their set, so we quickly took our place on the lawn in front of the main stage.
The audience was really tough. If the band wasn’t really good with working the audience, they didn’t get much noise out of them until they played one of their most popular songs. Gnarls Barkley was even taken aback by it. He asked the audience at one point if they were ready to go home. It had an effect on Brandon Flowers too. He had a really perturbed look while playing the keyboard at one point.
Between the bands we wanted to see, we spent our time viewing the attractions, which there were plenty of. The Virgin festival was really a bit of a circus atmosphere. Booths were populated by a lot of “tree hugging” organizations, freak shows, circus performers, and even a rock and roll museum display. By the time The Who came on, people were plenty drunk, and with the sun setting they were getting really disoriented and even lost!
Even the guy standing beside me had a few too many beers. At one point he fell over, on top of a young girl. He rolled off of her and never got back up after that. He just passed out on the lawn, in the dark. I guess the race track was spinning. I spent the next hour trying to make sure passers by didn’t trip over him.
T-shirts and other event memorabilia was insanely priced. T-shirts were $30, posters were $20 and the tube to put your poster in was $5! Even the food was ridiculous. $5 for french fries, and $6 for a cheeseburger with sliced process cheese! Beer as expected was $6. I don’t think the price kept people other than me from drinking. I not about to pay $6 for a beer when I can brew my own for 25 cents a beer.
The Who was smokin! I’ve always wanted to see The Who but was never playing near a city that I could go to without making a trip to mecca. Roger Daultry is starting to show his age when it comes to belting out those old tunes they were doing when he was 30. You gotta give it to him though. Anyone that can use their lungs in their 60’s like he does deserves to have 40,000 people watching. Pete Townsend was great as well. His windmill guitar attacks are a classic.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers were on fire. The bass player “The Flea” is insane. He plays more like a guitar player who plays bass. The band as a whole plays together so fast and so tight, it’s hard to imagine anyone else getting near them in comparison. The physical energy they put out on stage is greater than the most painful aerobics class you have ever attended. And they do this at every performance!
We didn’t waste any time getting out of there. We left at the start of the last song. In fact we managed to make it to our truck right around the end of Californication. We didn’t want to be on the backside of that exudus. It would have taken us 2-3 hours to get home.
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