Collective Soul
June 9th, 2006
Celebrate Fairfax Festival
Fairfax, Virginia
Celebrate Fairfax is an annual three-day festival that takes place in the heart of Fairfax, Virginia, and features carnival rides, petting zoos, great food and drink, local business exhibits, and plenty of great rock and roll. This year we hit the musical jackpot as Collective Soul headlined the opening night of the festival, and rocked the main stage for about 70 minutes, before the scheduled fireworks show forced them to quite.
My wife and I arrived at the festival at around 7:00 PM, and we almost felt guilty paying the meager ten dollar admission price, when you consider that a Collective Soul concert is thrown in. The gates did not open until 6:00 PM on this opening night of the festival, and Collective Soul was scheduled to take the "Bud Light" main stage at 8:00 PM. As we made our way back to the main stage area, we passed a few other smaller stages where various local bands would soon be jamming. For fans of good live music, this was a great place to hang out and sample all of the bands, beer, and barbeque. After Collective Soul, that is.
We decided to find us some seats about 30 minutes before show time, since the seating area was beginning to fill up fast. We scored a couple of great seats about 20 rows back, dead-center. Located just behind the seating area, off to the left, was one of the smaller stages where a local rock band was belting out some recent cover songs, and unwittingly serving as Collective Soul's opening act.
There were scattered thunderstorms expected in the area during the early evening, and sure enough, the sky let loose about ten minutes after we took our seats. It didn't seem to bother most people too much because the downpour was reasonably light, there was no lightning, and the temperature was still in the mid-70s. Most importantly, we could see clear skies on the horizon moving in our direction. A few people had the foresight to bring umbrellas, but most of us just stuck plastic bags or the festival brochure on our heads.
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