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08/12/2011 Sponge (Rochester, NY @ East End Music Festival)
By Eric | August 14, 2011 8:11 am
We’ve been coming to the annual East End Fest for about 4 years now, and this was one of the few times a band of national import was playing. It’s usually the best and brightest of Rochester (and Buffalo) spread out over the 5 or 6 stages. On this night, however, the organizers landed Sponge for the “main stage”, they of mid-90’s radio fame. It was kind of funny at first, since Sponge played at 7:30, there was the usual milling about from most of the crowd as they opened with Wax Ecstatic. By the time they got into Molly (16 Candles) with the next song, the crowd filled in with the requisite “Hey I know this song!”. While the band, save for lead singer Vinny Dombrowski, has completely turned over since the Rotting Pinata days, they sounded great on the old and the new songs, of which they played a few. Glue was a rocker and a half, and then the crowd-participation enhanced Party Till You Drop sounded like it would be at home on a Buckcherry disc. Have You Seen Mary slowed it down a touch, but then the fun side took over, as one of the better cuts off of the Saturday Morning Cartoons compilation got dusted off: Go Speedracer Go! Bringing it back to 1994, with Vinny commenting that he knew they played Water Street back then, but couldn’t remember anyone for sure because he was bombed out of his mind, Rotting Pinata and Plowed were next, and predictably got the biggest response of the night. The time honored tradition of bringing the ladies up on stage was upheld for the closer, Planet Girls, before we Partied Till We Dropped one more time to end the set. A fun bit of nostalgia for everyone who probably couldn’t escape these songs on the radio back in the day!
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Setlist:
Wax Ecstatic
Molly
Glue
Party Till We Drop
Have You Seen Mary
Go Speedracer Go
Rotting Piñata
Plowed
Planet Girls
Party Till We Drop (Reprise)
Topics: Concerts | Tags: 2011, East End Music Festival, rochester, Sponge | Comments Off on 08/12/2011 Sponge (Rochester, NY @ East End Music Festival)
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