Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Summer Serenade


Babes in Toyland, 1995

For a brief period in the nineties August brought those of us living in the Minneapolis area a street party known as CedarFest. Held in what was long considered a 'bohemian' area of town—The West Bank—this free event had dozens of bands which were picked for their potential, not their achievements. Mike Doughty and Soul Coughing, G. Love, Jonny Lang when he was still a kid, Frank Black and many more musical hipsters. The sun was hot, the crowds were cool. If you weren’t of age, this was a great chance to see bands that usually only played in clubs. If you were, you could even get a beer or two...

Which was the end of it. Someone OD'ed on alcohol, and the event’s organizers were sued for allowing him to be “over-served.” A lawsuit that, even if you were successful in defending yourself, would bankrupt all but the richest pockets. There are still a few free festivals, but they are smaller in scale and usually pretty tame.

Soul Coughing, August 20, 1995

Summer re-run, first published in FITK August 29, 2008

By Professor Batty


3 Comments:

Anonymous Nicole said...

Babes in Toyland was my favorite in the 90's... I totally remember going to see them at Cedar Fest, dragging poor Kip with me... He was definitely less enthused about them ;)


Blogger jono said...

That's what I get for bailing out in the early 80s.


Blogger Professor Batty said...

That is definitely not me crowd surfing.

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