RoSFest 2008: Nice Nice Very Nice

Rites of Spring Showcase (RoSFest)
Keswick Theater
Glenside (Philadelphia), PA
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Section Left, Row CC, Seat 15
$55

This was the fifth annual RoSFest, the Rites of Spring festival held outside of Philadelphia. Roy and I have never been there before. It's not that we weren't interested, but you can only go to so many festivals per year! RosFest is a prog festival with a specific focus, sort of the more accessible side of prog. All the bands could be categorized as neo-prog, symphonic, or even rock with progressive influences. All are bands with vocals. It's the type of prog I first fell in love with, but I wasn't sure if a whole festival of them would be too same-y.

We found out quite a while ago that Circa would be headlining. Circa is a Yes off-shoot band with Alan White on drums and two former Yes members, Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood, also in the band. Still, we didn't decide to go until a few months before the festival. Roy saw that Starcastle and Crack the Sky would be playing, and that the festival would be held at the Keswick Theater. The Keswick is a nice comfortable place to see a concert. I seem to be going there a lot - this is the third time I've blogged about seeing shows there. With that new information plus the chance to see and hang out with Yes people, we made up our minds quickly and bought tickets.

Not everything with the festival went as planned. Starcastle dropped out, and were replaced by a band called GPS, featuring members of the John Payne-era of Asia. I pulled another trip-within-a-trip, when Steve Winwood announced a headlining show in New York the Sunday of the festival. I am going to miss his show in St Louis, and he's just going to be an opening act anyway then, so I was thrilled to get the chance to see another full length show. I made plans to get together with Angela and Debbie when I got into town. We would hang out until Roy and I had to leave for the Friday night show.

The flight arrived a couple hours late due to bad weather. We got to see Angela and Baxter's new house, and Debbie stopped by briefly. Unfortunately, Debbie couldn't stay for dinner. Her 2 year old son hadn't had a nap that day, so she didn't want to keep him awake longer so she could spend time with us. She is a responsible mom. Angela and Baxter and Roy and I had dinner at a little Italian place near them. I'm glad Angela came out to visit me last fall. It gave us a couple uninterupted days to spend together, instead of trying to fit her in to my concert schedule. I always plan to spend more time in Philly, but then end up going somewhere else to see more shows.

The drive to the Keswick was pretty. I think of Philly as having a similar climate to St Louis', but the dogwood trees were at their peak, and we reached ours earlier. Roy had never seen so many azalea bushes in blossom, and he pointed out all the colors. We got to Glenside in plenty of time and parked on a residential street in back. Linda was the first person we saw. She was getting something at her car.

The Keswick Theater is not too far from where I grew up. I imagined being able to meet friends for brunch or something before the day's shows. In reality, the festival takes up so much of the day, it's hard to fit outsiders into a timeslot. We stayed at one of the official hotels way out in the suburbs. Once the festival started, it could have been anywhere. Still, the festival was located in a nice little town, too pretty and historic to call it a burb. There were lots of small restaurants and shops in the area.

The first band GPS was decent. Their singer John Payne, is the former singer of Asia. His voice has an "operatic metal" quality, not my favorite sound. When he wasn't singing, the band sounded pretty good. Their usual keyboard player is Ryo Okumoto from Spock's Beard. He wasn't able to make it, but his replacement was Erik Norlander of the Rocket Scientists. Roy likes them, and we were both reminded of the time we tried to get RS for ProgDay. Their price was out of our league and possibly more than our entire band budget for the year. Yet here was the main guy of the band, sitting in and probably not getting paid much at all.

The headliner for Friday was Ambrosia. They were the big surprise for me. I had only heard a few of their songs previously, and my general impression was light rock with good harmonies. I was quite off base; well, I was right about the harmonies at least! They were a tight band and did everything from prog-influenced rock to jazz. It really made for a good concert. Their sound never got tiring with the eclectic styles, but it all retained their signature. I wish more bands today would have prominent keyboard parts and solos, rather than using them just for texture. Three of the guys were original members, and two of the others had been with them for years. Roy told me later that they do have more poppy stuff in their catalog, but they did a good job of choosing material for this audience. Ambrosia became one of my favorite bands of the festival. I think they are one of those bands that have something everyone would like about them, even a general audience. To quote their opening song, they were nice, nice, very nice.

The festival had some good production values. The sound was good for both bands, but the video was really unusual for a prog festival. They had a screen on stage showing the band, just like at a regular big budget concert. The cameraman was off to the side, and it only worked well when they did close ups. Otherwise, we were seeing the musicians at the same size as we could see them in real life. It was also run very well. All the bands I saw started within 10 minutes of their published start times. There was none of that "hurry up and wait" feeling that I get from some other festivals, where a band was running late, but could either start in 5 minutes or an hour from now, so we couldn't go anywhere. It was refreshing.

I got to see a few friends at the festival. Linda was the only person from our old festival gang who was there. I saw Krista and Cherry and Fred Herndon and one of Tina's daughters. After the show, we checked into the hotel and bumped into another person I knew. Unfortunately, not everyone at the festivals is a friend, and some people can be downright odd. Anyway, this one person, who I'm sure is well meaning, came up and told me it was so good to see Roy and me still together. Still?! I laughed it off, does she know something that I don't? But it seemed to be a theme of the weekend. I ran into a couple friends who each told me they had separated after 20 some year marriages and kids. It's sad to hear that. With one friend, I've known him and his wife for quite a while, although I haven't seen them much since I relocated. I thought of them as a team and enjoying each other's company. I guess that's not enough. It just amazes me how my parents can be miserable and ill suited for each other and married for over 30 years, when people I both like can't make it together.