Exit: Music: Concert Reviews: Cornerstone 2002-Part 1

Pre-fest

This is a combination festival review/journal of my experience at Cornerstone 2002.

One word of warning is in order, though. If you don't like my review of a particular band, keep in mind that I often did not get to see each band's complete show. Because of scheduling conflicts, I wasn't able to attend the entire performance of quite a few of the bands I reviewed. Also, I mostly listen to Hippie and Americana music. I listen to other genres and enjoy them sometimes, but my knowledge of them is limited.

As to my numerical ratings, they range from 5.0 (magical--I'll never forget the night) to 3 (an acceptable performance by a competent band) to 0 (even their mothers hated the band's show).

Thanks go to the Cornerstone staff and to all the Jesus People for blessing us all with a glorious week together!

If you want to cut to the music reviews, skip to Day Zero

The Journey to Bushnell

Sunday afternoon, my friends and I met in Oklahoma City to depart for C-stone. My companions for the week would be Fabricio Brandao (a.k.a. "Fa, the Brazilian Chick Magnet") and Martin Lansdale (a.k.a. "The worm crusher").

Before departing, we stopped at Galileo's in the Paseo Arts District to see our friend Tim Burger's opening night for his showing of B/W photorealistic oil paintings of metallic objects. As a fan of Tim's work, I was psyched to get to see so many of his paintings at one time.

After chilling for awhile with Tim over pizza we hit the road North leaving Oklahoma as the sun set over the prairie.

From Kansas City, I slept as Martin drove on, awaking only for a moment as we drove from Hanibal, Missouri (the birth place of Mark Twain) across the Mississippi River into Illinois.

We finally reached Bushnell about the time the old people showed up at the local Hardee's for breakfast.

Arrival

Check-in was quick and efficient, but finding a campsite was more difficult. However, our travails were soon rewarded as we found a killer campsite just downhill from the Dance Club (a.k.a. the Flickerings theater by day) near the shore of Lake Wildwood. Besides the great location, the advantage of this campsite was that it was shaded enough so that we could actually sleep in without roasting alive.

After setting up camp, we attempted to sleep for a bit, but we gave up after a couple of hours, so Martin and I decided to head out for a quick trip to Chicago. (Fa decided to stay behind at camp and rest.)

Chicago

Martin was wore out from the drive to Illinois, so I drove to Chicago. The drive was scenic but longer than expected (which was regrettable since we ended up being too late to visit the Art Museum). We passed through Peoria (a city of Industrial character) and into the lake country North of it, before cutting East to find the interstate highway to Chicago.

Arriving into Downtown Chicago was like arriving in another world. The interstate runs smack into Lake Shore Drive (which runs alongside the shore of Lake Michigan). After some perilous moments in traffic we found the public parking garage under Michigan Avenue and our adventure began.

Both of us were starving so we walked a few blocks Northwest to the Potbelly Sandwich shop for one of their famous hot hoagie-style sandwiches. (If you're ever there, I recommend "A Wreck." It is one serious sandwich.) After that we jumped on the L-train for a quick ride around The Loop (the main downtown area) and then jumped off to head east to the Lake shore.

We hoped to catch one of the river taxis to the Sears Tower, so we walked what ended up being 2 miles to the pickup point to discover that they had quit running for the evening. This meant we had to walk another couple of miles to hit the nearest El-train station, getting lost a few times along the way.

After getting off the train, we headed to the Sears Tower, the tallest building in Chicago and the tallest building in the world if measured from street level to the top floor.

The elevator ride to the 103rd floor observation deck was expensive ($9) but the view was worth every penny. I love the view from the Empire State Building in NYC, but the Sears Tower is different in that you can not only see the city but also the immensity of the country-side from its vantage point.

Martin and I both were running out of energy so we walked across the street from the Sears Tower to a local Pizzeria. At first, I was unhappy with the slow service but once they served that pizza, my oh my! That was the absolute best pizza I have had in my life. It was 2-1/2 inches tall and had the world's best crust. That meal alone was worth the drive to Chicago.

Finally, after filling our guts to capacity we took the L-train back to Michigan Avenue. We got lost again (which was a good thing since we got to talk to a couple of homeless folks and heard some great street musicians) before finding our car.

The drive back was uneventful (thankfully we didn't crash due to our sleepiness) and we arrived at C-stone around 2 a.m.

Go to Day 0