Moving by sound waves in the City of Roses

The sounds of Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" overtook much of downtown Cape Girardeau around 7:30 p.m. Friday as the band Ninth Life played the "power" stage during the first night of the City of Roses Music Festival.

Around the same time, the Bruce Zimmerman Band was setting up for its performance on the "American heartland" stage and a group of teens was moving en masse away from the "extreme" stage where Fists of Phoenix had just finished playing its set.

Two and a half hours into the first night of the festival, Water Street was not packed with people but far from deserted.

It was full of constant activity as people continually moved from one end of Water Street to the other to get to the different stages, to stop by the beer concession stand, go to downtown clubs to hear bands or one of the few commercial vendors set up along the way.

"I see a lot of go-betweens, people shifting between different stages," said festival-goer Brandon May.

May is performing at the festival tonight with his own band, Driven to her Death, which takes to the "metalfest" stage at 7 p.m.

Driven to her Death is only one of many local and regional bands who will be performing Saturday from noon to 11 p.m.

This year's three stage setup and local band lineup was attractive to May, who also attended last year's festival. He said this year's festival brought out a lot of younger music fans between the ages of 13 to 16 as well as a lot of new local bands.

"There's a lot of energy coming from the younger kids, and the bands feed off of that," May said.

The extreme stage -- which will turn to the metalfest stage today -- certainly had the most energy of any of the stages, complete with a mini mosh pit of slam-dancing fans that formed on occasion.

While your ears were assaulted with the crunching guitars, pounding drums and screaming vocals of bands like Knotted Fear at the extreme stage, a walk down Water Street to the power stage brought more melodious and somewhat catchy indie rock sounds of Otto Modest. And at Broadway, there was the infectious groves and jams of Tungsten Groove.

As the night wore on, more people started to show up as the downtown came alive for Friday night. There were at least 1,000 festival-goers assembled along Water Street before 10 p.m. The performances were scheduled to continue until at least 11 p.m.

"I'm pleasantly surprised that there's this many people this early," said festival co-director Don Greenwood.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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