I almost didn't go to City Stages this year... and I had free tickets courtesy of my employer.
In fact, the main reason I did end up going (besides the free tickets, of course) was an up-and-coming band out of Chapel Hill called Roman Candle. The trio created a four-minute burst of musical heroin titled "Why Modern Radio is A-OK" that has quickly been ratcheting up my iTunes most-played list for the past month.
Of course, once I dragged myself out into the heat and got inside the gate, I had a great time. Roman Candle put on a good show, even if the food vendor serving alligator on a stick seemed to draw a bigger crowd.
Jonny Lang and The Neville Brothers worked the Miller Lite Stage in Linn Park, and I'm not a huge Dierks Bentley fan, but the thousands there who were seemed to really enjoy his set.
Sitting in Linn Park, listening to Aaron Neville belt out his version of "A Change Is Gonna Come," (Sam Cooke's original is one of my all-time favorite songs. Ever.) I felt a wave of nostalgia rush over me as palpable as the heat on a June Saturday in Birmingham.
This festival has meant a lot to me over the years. My parents took me to the earliest editions before I was able to drive myself downtown. I remember dipping my feet in the fountain at the park and my parents yelling at me because the water wasn't clean. I remember sitting with them in the park for acts like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Temptations and The Pointer Sisters. I vividly recall watching a young couple in front of me make out and graduating from the "girls have cooties" phase to being genuinely curious about what the young man was doing, and why he would want to put his hands there.
In the mid- to late-90s, I remember driving my dad's '92 Oldsmobile Cutlass into previously-uncharted territory downtown, and wandering the streets of Birmingham for an hour after the last band finished one year because I had forgotten where I parked.
I remember seeing the hot bands of whatever year it was at the Miller Lite Stage. I saw The Wallflowers, 311, Barenaked Ladies, Soul Asylum, Collective Soul, the Violent Femmes, Spacehog, Matthew Sweet, Sister Hazel and many others. At the homegrown stage, I discovered great local acts like Pain, Verbena, Partial to Mabel, and Virgos Merlot.
I crowd-surfed for a distance of about 8 feet before deciding I was better suited to throw people up into the air than to trust others to support me on their hands. I finally held hands with the girl from my English class I had a crush on all year, before the mosh pit at Pain's show ripped our young love apart. I was legitimately furious when Pain got cut off mid-song so Train could warm up and play their one hit song and a crappy Led Zeppelin cover. I didn't realize this at the time, but when your second-most popular song is a cover, that means you suck as a songwriter, and probably as a musician as well.
I grew up at City Stages, and as many memories as I have from the festival, looking back at previous years' lineups (thanks to bhamwiki.com) it's clear I missed a whole lot more. B.B. King played the festival twice. Bob Dylan played it. So did Ray Charles. Johnny Cash. John Mayer. Damien Rice. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. Willie Nelson. Maroon 5. Peter Frampton. The Black Crowes.
But now, the festival has gone from "can't miss event of the year" to "extremely optional." This year, it was so optional I was tempted when some friends of mine invited me to see "The Hangover" Saturday night in an air-conditioned theater instead of sweating out the June heat. Obviously, the quality of the acts has something to do with that.
All due respect to Styx and REO Speedwagon, but five years ago they opened up for Journey on a Carnival cruise ship. Generally speaking, it's a bad thing if your festival's Friday night headliner was recently the opening act on a cruise ship. Bentley was a solid choice and seemed to draw a large crowd, but which other acts in this year's lineup would you pay to see? The Doobie Brothers? Perhaps, if you're old enough to remember their songs.
Lynyrd Skynyrd? First off, if you're old enough to remember the songs, you know most of the band died in a plane crash in 1977 and there is only one original member of the band in this current incarnation. Maybe a lot of college kids will show up oblivious, hoping to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Freebird."
Where are the acts like, oh, I don't know, Ray LaMontagne, Jason Mraz, Foo Fighters, Counting Crows? Maybe these aren't realistic suggestions (though they've all played Birmingham in the past two years), but can't we get somebody who has had more than one hit song in the past 10 years, please?
I'm not saying the acts scheduled are bad, but they're not selling tickets. They're not making teens and 20-somethings and 30-somethings say "I have to go see this act." I could be wrong but I don't think a single act at this year's festival released a hit song between 1991 and 2005. They all either peaked in the 80s, or are up-and-coming acts who haven't quite hit the big-time yet.
In fact, with Mraz, Snoop Dogg, 311, Everclear, the All-American Rejects, LL Cool J, Katy Perry and more, I daresay the Schaeffer Crawfish Boil mananged a better lineup with just one stage.
Wade Kwon did some digging through City Stages history and his research seems to back up my assertions. In 1999, the acts were better and the festival made more money. It also doesn't help that George McMillan took over as festival director and decided to pay himself twice as much money to do half as much work as former director Kristie McCullough (see Wade's post for details).
It does seem that you have to spend money to make money, and that may be hard to do when you've been in debt for much of the past decade. The deficiencies are also clear in the festival's current strategy -- charging more money for weaker lineups and hoping that the residents or city of Birmingham bail you out.
Let's hope somebody can figure out a way to make the festival a can't-miss event again soon. Otherwise -- with festival PR taking a hit after organizers shook down the city for an extra $250,000 three days before the gates opened -- we might really miss the festival when it's gone.
