Rock The Garden: 6/21/08

Special thanks to Dr Kyle for sending us pics and a review of last Saturday's Rock The Garden.

If you like your rock and roll full of excess and anarchy, a concert that promises to start promptly at 4:30 p.m. and produce no trash might not sound like the event of the summer. Rock the Garden, a concert in celebration of the Walker Art Garden’s 20^th anniversary and sponsored by local public radio station The Current, was touted by local media just as that.

Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s Bon Iver was the first act. I wasn’t sure his atmospheric folk would translate well to a large outdoor stage. The band got to rock out some in between vocal sections and the set slowly developed towards more up-tempo songs. I heard a few people singing along to “Skinny Love,” a song that has been getting heavy rotation at The Current. Bon Iver would be more suited to a dark, small club but the band admirably pulled off a very good show by understanding the venue and letting loose.

Local band Cloud Cult was next. The band is known for its ecological sensitivity that fit in well with the concept of a zero-waste event. The band usually puts on a tight, emotional show and this was no exception. On-stage artists were painting while songs from the last two albums were mixed in. “Take Your Medicine” continues to sound even better live than it does recorded.

By the time The New Pornographers started the sun had moved behind them --making it difficult to look towards the stage. The sound was muddy at first but did clear up through the set. The band didn’t play particularly well but when a band doesn’t know which members will show up for any particular show you don’t expect a well rehearsed gig. They played favorites from older albums as well as a few songs from their last disk.

Within two minutes of being onstage, Andrew Bird had bowed and plucked the violin, sang, whistled, and played guitar. He used a sampler heavily throughout the concert and with this played his first song solo. A drummer and guitarist joined him on stage for the second song. With the small band some memorable melodies from his recorded work were absent. The frequent sampling made many of the songs sound cold, and technical difficulties ensued later in his set. A new song sounded like Graceland-era Paul Simon with loops. The crowd cheered the song then voiced their displeasure at having the music stopped.

After this slow start, the remainder of the show went very well. Andrew Bird is an amazing whistler and multi-instrumentalist and he was able to overcome the previous problems to connect with the audience. He had one encore and closed the day with violin and whistling to ease people into the summer the night. The concert ended promptly at 10 pm.

For an outdoor concert the sound was quite good and I was amazed that each act started and ended on time. Though the music delivered, the venue didn’t offer the perfect Minnesota summer night.

Other then walking through the Walker or the Sculpture Garden the location could have been any street in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Had they placed the stage at the other end of the street people wouldn’t have been staring into the sun and the background would have been the Basilica and the sky-line instead of condos.

The lines for the bathrooms were about 30 minutes by the time The New Pornographers started and the wait for any food was 45 minutes. People waited two hours for Chipotle burritos. It was easy to spend entire sets waiting in lines. Luckily, there were no lines for beer so many people just kept drinking their Summit on empty stomachs. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people loot the burrito tent and urinate on sculptures, but nothing that rock-n-roll overtook the masses.

Cloud Cult @ Rock The Garden: