Gold Hill’s Bonny Butler was 13 when she attended her first 106.5-FM-The End Weenie
Roast.She missed the first
one in 1994, but not once since then. And Sunday was no different.
“It’s a ritual with me
and my sister,” said Butler, now 17. “We always have a fabulous time.”
Many shared Butler’s
enthusiasm for the radio station’s annual musical event. Blockbuster Pavilion in
north Charlotte was packed.
Out of the bands at the show,
which included Econoline Crush, Bush, Cake and others, Butler found herself liking the
band Joy Drop the most.
“Joy Drop rocked!” she
exclaimed. “The mosh was great. Everybody was having a great time, and nobody got
hurt.”
The mosh is the area in the
“pit,” the area closest to the stage, where fans crowd together and bounce off
each other like human bumper cars.
Salisbury resident Emily Yost, 16,
enjoyed the same performance with some crowd surfing.
Originally out on the lawn, Yost
and her friends Michael Wetter, 14, and Cassie Safrit, 17, got lucky and scored some box
seats by the time the night’s main event, Bush, came on stage.
“My friends gave them to
us,” Wetter explained. “They left, so we said, ‘We’ll go!’”
And in their private booth, right
at the front of the Pavilion’s Section 7, the trio got to see Bush singer Gavin
Rossdale race by.
When Gavin jumped from the stage
and made his way through the crowd of fans, it turned up the heat on an already exciting
show.
“Everybody was chasing after
him,” Yost exclaimed. “That was crazy!”
And crazy is the perfect word to
describe how the crowd acted during Bush’s performance.
When the lights first came up on
the band, the members filed out singly, sending the audience screaming louder and louder
with each new player.
And when they started their set
with “Machinehead,” the screams hardly stopped again. Even attendants who were
not big fans of the band had to admit the act was good.
An enthusiastic Bonny Butler
exclaimed, “I’m not a big Bush fan, but they rocked!”
At one point, the band stopped the
performance, sending the crowd into an uproar — one continuous, five-minute scream
accompanied by thousands of hands drumming on their seats, the resulting noise nearing the
intensity of a small earthquake.
Reminiscent of some tribal war
cry, the uproar brought Gavin and the rest of Bush back on stage.
And in appreciation, every fan
with a lighter held it high, producing the effect of a candlelight vigil for the band.
Besides Bush and Joy Drop, Sponge
and Luscious Jackson performed early and then took time after their acts to hang out in
the autograph tent.
Sixteen-year-old Kendra Belik, of
Kannapolis, even got a photo with Sponge, after her boyfriend helped her onto the counter.
“I was real happy,” she
said.
In the tent, Brons Austin, 16, of
Concord got a signature, even if he really didn’t have anything for them to sign.
“I got it on a dollar bill. I
didn’t get one of the programs, and I didn’t want to give a $5 dollar bill
because I might want to spend it,” he joked.
This was Austin’s second
Weenie Roast. He came to see Marvelous 3, Cake and Bush.
It was a long day, beginning with
Econoline Crush at 3:45 p.m. and ending around 11:30 p.m.
From the first set, Chris Rozak,
one of 106.5’s DJs, already knew it was going to be a good show.
On stage, Rozak exclaimed,
“First band at WR5 and stuff’s getting crazy already!”
Once off stage, the radio
announcer was just as enthusiastic about the show. “It’s equally exciting as the
past four I’ve been to because of the people and the atmosphere,” Rozak said.
Bands such as Verve Pipe have made
Weenie Roast a tradition, enabling people like Rozak to establish friendships. Rozak is
not the only one to find friends at the shows.
Frances Canup, 15, of Concord, met
up with Kati Robertson, 17, of Lancaster, at the show.
The two met at another 106.5
event, Concert for Kosovo, while talking about Dovetail Joint.
“I got her e-mail, and
we’ve been talking ever since,” Kati Robertson explained.
Robertson spotted her e-mail buddy
Sunday. “She saw my big mouse hair,” Canup laughed.
When the show was over, China
Grove’s Kenny Caberton, 18, had nothing but praise for the event. “It’s
wonderful seeing all the great bands here,” he said.
Some Rowan County fans are already
committed to buying their tickets early for next year’s show. |
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