I just read this on Hey Mercedes' Blog. Found it pretty entertaining.

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Summerfest 2004

Ah, Milwaukee’s Summerfest. Ten days of eatin’, drinkin’, and rockin’ courtesy of about 8 stages of rock, pop, soul, rap, country... Who do you want to see? Your choices were endless. Ask me who plays Summerfest and I can only answer everybody. According to their website, it is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest music festival. It’s something you plan to go to months in advance. It’s something you can’t miss. It’s something you keep in mind when you’re routing a big reunion tour... Yessir, smack dab in the middle of the Braid tour, during our one week of rest, was a Hey Mercedes appearance on the Briggs & Stratton stage at Summerfest right between The Used and The Response.

After years of seeing friends’ bands play, it was finally our turn to get up there on the big stage and attempt to entertain 100 fans interspersed among 1000+ drunk rowdies and even after a quick 3 hour practice, we were more than ready. Oddly enough, they make all of the openers play 90 minute sets, so we made sure to take advantage of the spaces in between songs to chat with the throng and fill up on free beer. Things were going spectacular. In fact, up until last Saturday, i’d even say it was the best HM show ever. Woohoo! The last song was “Let’s Go Blue” and we decided to extend the bass break ad nauseam to take up some of that precious 90 minutes. I was in the middle of trying to negotiate a hot solo in D when I remembered something Damon told me moments before we walked on stage. I’ll paraphrase: This is going to be a huge crowd so don’t be afraid to do something crazy. Let’s make this a memorable performance!

And that’s when i noticed some food on the stage. Some joker had thrown his nachos up here. He obviously was not liking our jam session in 7/8. ...no, Bob, don’t do it... Too late. I told everybody to throw stuff onstage. I don’t recall if i said “stuff” or “trash” or “money” or what-have-you... All I know is that within milliseconds, Summerfest was known for it’s flying beer and pizza. We wanted something memorable and this was it. I was loving it. Bottles of water, coins, food, it was insanity! The crowd was loving it, too. Hell, if I was in the crowd, i would have chucked a hot pretzel. We busted into the last part of the song and ended our set to a huge rousing ovation. This would be a Summerfest performance to remember, my friends.

But it didn’t end there. And this is where details get a little fuzzy since it was all happening so fast. When we left the stage, there were 2 or 3 thugs standing by our dressing room door with garbage bags. They basically said, “clean up the stage or you don’t get paid and The Used doesn’t play.” Fair enough. The 4 of us and friends walked across the stage like highway convicts picking up all of the disgusting trash that had caked into the stage and some of our amps. No biggie... So once the stage was pretty much clean, i walked over to stage right, opposite our locked dressing room, and there was a confrontation in progress between Todd and the stage manager, who was flanked by thugs. All of our bags were in our room, not to mention our friends’ coats, purses, etc. and they were not budging even though the stage was clean! Todd said something like “this is bullshit” and the stage manager ordered the thugs to “kick his ass out of here!” And that’s when our tour manager, Dave, stepped in to try and calm everyone down. In the meantime, The Used were trying to figure out a way to kick our door open for us. It was chaotic to say the least.


They finally gave us 2 minutes to clear out the dressing room and then they banned us from backstage. No worry, since i was eyein’ up the Ferris Wheel. Apparently Dave got an earful when he eventually got paid and I don’t think Hey Mercedes will be playing any future Summerfests. Again, no worry... It was completely memorable and I wholeheartedly pass all of the blame here to Damon, the little devil on my shoulder.

Todd / Mike / Damon - if you have anything to add, subtract, contradict, please do! I'm sure i forgot something.