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Aftermath: Buzzfest at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

By Meredith Baker in Live Shots

Monday, May. 11 2009 @ 11:31AM

Photos by Meredith Baker

The misting area was almost as popular as the beer kiosks Sunday.

In spite of the killer heat, Sunday's Buzzfest at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion delivered restitution for the 2008 edition that had been canceled due to Hurricane Ike damage. The beer was flowing, the bikinis were out, the beach ball was crowd-surfing and the bands were rocking.

Aranda's "Punishment" was an early highlight.

Fans of all ages - teens who came for Anberlin and Framing Hanley, Baby Boomers who came to jam out to the Toadies, diehard Korn fans - started packing in the pavilion as early as noon. The well-organized festival made it possible for fans to watch a brief, but satisfying, 30-minute set of one band on the side stage, pass through the mist station to cool off, then head over to watch the next band perform on the main stage.

Toadies hits like "I Come From the Water" satisfied the older fans on hand Sunday.

Although heavy rock isn't usually my genre of choice, I thoroughly enjoyed many of the performances. The music quality was good and the energy level was high. Aranda kicked off the festival with mountains of energy, and even people who had never heard of them before were bouncing to the music by head-thrasher "Punishment" at the end of the set. (I made a note to download the song to my iPod.)

Anberlin's set was hardly a "Feel Good Drag" for these fans.

Many of the high-school and college kids were there for Framing Hanley, and worked up quite a sweat bouncing through the entire set. Personally, I had never much cared for a cover of a song over the original, but the band's rocked-out "Lollipop" at Buzzfest changed my mind.

As the day progressed, the crowd became thicker with shirtless men and girls in bikinis. Everyone was too lost in the buzz of the beer and energetic music to notice all the sweat that was being shared. The energy really picked up and surged through the many brave crowd-surfers during Anberlin's set. "Feel Good Drag" riled the crowd into a frenzy and was just as good live, if not better, than the Florida band's radio hit.

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Ramon "LP4" Medina says:

OK I don't want to be too mean but this smells like a first draft. I mean the redundancy in the writing is brutal (if admittedly a bit fascinating) and the generic descriptions are so non-commital enough to almost make it sound like they weren't there very long but yet they still had to write something to complete the assignment. I mean consider these sentences in need of a Thesaurus:

"energy level was high."
"energetic music to notice all"
"The energy really picked up"

"bands were rocking"
"but the band's rocked-out"

And consider this openign paragraph and the closing paragraph:

"beer was flowing, the bikinis were out"
"with shirtless men and girls in bikinis. Everyone was too lost in the buzz of the beer.”

I'm kind of stunned. I hope this is a rush job and not a sign of Baker's skills as a writer.

Posted On: Tuesday, May. 12 2009 @ 3:22PM