Is Belinda Jensen excited about Twin Cities Summer Jam 2020? #TCSummerJam

I've gotta say, I'm somewhat impressed.

I didn't expect Chris Hawkey's "damn festival," also known as Twin Cities Summer Jam, to return with an ambitious lineup, if at all, but it seems like the money behind the outdoor music debacle is willing to double down on the initial investment. Despite the shit show the 2019 Jam was, there must have been a modest return on the investment, which is ironic given the festival didn't sell enough of those VIP ticket packages that were crucial to paying the talent. 

It was announced not so long ago that 2020 tickets would go on sale in December, which made me laugh. Then it was announced that the Zac Brown Band, which is a big draw somehow, would be on the bill next summer. All I know is that the band sings some dopey song called "Chicken Fried," and the lowest common denominator goes nuts for that song at Target Field. But hey, Zac Brown seems to be a big deal, so that's a solid booking for the Jam.  

Now we know how the damn festival is going to play out, for the most part, after several additional acts were announced. 

Carrie Underwood seems to be able to fill an arena every couple of years, and she's the final night's headliner, so that seems like another solid booking. 

I'm a bit puzzled as to why Pitbull is coming back, and drawing top billing on Thursday, the opening night of the late July festival. I get it, Thursday isn't likely to be as strong of a draw, regardless of the headliner, but it still seems goofy to make him the focal point of the first night. Perhaps he converted 10,000 new fans who saw him open for Tim McGraw in July, and now those fans can't get enough Pitbull, so they'll race back to Canterbury Park next summer to see him do it all again. If you say so, Hawkey.

The pairings from night to night seem to be a bit more sensible. If that's better or worse, I don't know.

Whatever the reason, Nelly seems to maintain interest in his career 20 years after his big splash. I don't get how a guy with a few pop/rap hits in the early 2000s has sustained his career when so many rappers seem to be quickly forgotten, but if you're going to book Nelly, it makes more sense for him to open for Pitbull than Underwood. 

I don't know what Blanco Brown is, but somehow he is a country artist that has produced for Pitbull, and he goes on first Thursday night. If you're going to mash up genres, this trio on Thursday seems about as logical as you can expect. Take a look at a picture of Blanco. When you see him, you're not going to expect him to croon "The Gambler."

Friday and Saturday are banking on country music to put asses on the lawn with Zac Brown Band and Underwood as the headliners. 

There's a nod to rock both nights, I think. I have no idea what kind of rock the local band Fabulous Armadillos plays, but it doesn't matter. They appear to be the first band out of the gate on Friday, when the crowd will be tepid, at best. Later that night Third Eye Blind opens for Zac Brown. Once again, that's one of those things you'll never see anywhere else. Third Eye Blind had a few hits, but they go back 20 years or so, like Nelly. They're not a legendary rock band, and I doubt they'd draw a big crowd on their own in Minneapolis. Their inclusion as the opener for Brown's chicken buffet seems like little more than a time killer by a wimpy alt-rock band. 

Saturday's schedule has slots to fill, so that will be interesting to see how it rounds out. But naturally Hawkey needs to dazzle the masses, so he'll go on before Underwood. Arguably he's rock, unless he feels like selling country that night. Either way, I'm sure the crowd will hang on his every lyric.  

Other than the headliners on Friday and Saturday, there's only one country act booked so far for Friday or Saturday, depending upon how you want to classify Hawkey.

As it stands, the festival is attempting to live up to its reputation of uniting pop, rock and country, yet seems to be a little less eclectic in going about how it slots its acts. I'm not sure if that sells more single-day tickets or if it hurts three-day pass purchases. Perhaps it won't matter at the end of the damn festival. 

So at this point I'm impressed that there's a major financial commitment behind a second year of the festival, and it seems like the festival is trying to find synergy among the artists it is booking for each day. Not too shabby for the shit show that was the first damn festival this past summer. 

Not everyone is dazzled by the lineup, although that's to be expected.

The early comments I read on Twitter announcing Pitbull and Underwood are joining Brown as headliners questioned why there's not a major rock act. Last year Aerosmith was a headliner, and we learned that Steve Tyler is an asshole, at least according to Hawkey. I'm not sure what major rock acts might have been available next summer, but when your two big weekend nights have major country acts, you're not trying real hard to entice the rock and roll crowd. Country sells, so I can't blame Hawkey and his fellow hucksters from banking on the farm crowd to pay the freight next summer.

For the rockers, however, there's zero incentive to attend one night of the festival unless you really love hearing Underwood sing about a guy who will hop in the sack with more than one woman. Perhaps fans of Third Eye Blind's "Jumper" really groove to that "Chicken Fried" song. What do I know?

Again, boot scootin' boogie music sells in Minnesota, so it might be a wise marketing strategy on the part of the damn festival to emphasize it in 2020. Whether coincidental or by design, there's no We Fest in northern Minnesota this year. The big country festival in the northwoods is taking a year off. I doubt that crowd is going to migrate to Shakopee to get their fix, but the lack of a major annual country music festival at the same time of the year can only help the Summer Jam.

More accidental brilliance by the Hawkey brain trust: His damn festival isn't on the same weekend as Moondance Jam, or Rock Fest in Wisconsin. If they think the rock crowd wants to rock out to Underwood, you might as well host your festival on a weekend when you don't have competition from festivals three hours away.

So it looks like Summer Jam made smart decisions for 2020, doesn't it? Time will tell. Given the countless ways they botched their inaugural festival this past summer, they can't afford to make as many boneheaded decisions again, I'd argue.

Nonetheless, I've got to believe that they'll screw it up again somehow in 2020.

How? Glad you asked.

Once again they're selling a variety of VIP tickets and upgrades. There's a portion of the market that will pay for that, and you have to know that the brain trust that botched the VIP area so thoroughly last year will takes steps to ensure they don't screw the folks who are willing to trust Hawkey and company with their money in 2020. Plenty of morons will pay VIP prices to sniff Underwood's underwear from 20 feet away, I'm sure, and probably have no clue that the 2019 VIPs were shat upon.

But given how clueless and fraudulent Hawkey and company were in 2019, I expect they'll find a way to bungle VIP ticket access in 2020.

These geniuses did figure out that they're overpricing their crappy general admission access. Not hard to figure that out after the 2019 shit show. So the one-day, crappy access tickets are just $79! (Plus fees, I'm sure.) I think that's a little cheaper than the cut-rate tickets they were trying to hustle during the final week of the 2019 festival.

But now they're going to charge people $20 to park at the damn festival.

I get it, parking fees encourage car pooling. But Summer Jam isn't in downtown Minneapolis. It's at a facility with tons of parking, just like every suburban shopping mall. People aren't going to boycott the damn festival over a parking fee, and you can argue that the fee is offset by the reduced one-day ticket price, but it still looks shitty to charge it, and charge more than $20 for "VIP" parking access. Just shitty.

And you just have to know that charging a fee for parking is going to turn into a debacle. The horse track parking lot isn't designed for paid parking. When you have to collect admission to a parking lot, you'd better be able to handle a lot of cars at once. There's more than one access point to the lot, and you can sell parking passes online to expedite entry, but I've got to believe that parking access is going to be a daily fiasco.

I'm sure they've figured out a plan, but how do you accommodate for the free parking poker players will require during the damn festival? There's a 24-hour poker room at the race track, as well as off-track betting. Live horse racing may take a weekend off, but the other revenue generators won't.

This parking fee is going to bite the festival in the ass somehow, I'm certain.

I'm speculating, of course, but given how poorly the 2019 Summer Jam was set up and run, from start to finish, you're a fool if you think the 2020 festival will be flawless.

The funniest, and most insulting, thing about the 2020 Jam is that they're selling tickets now. It has become a common practice in the live entertainment industry to book acts as far in advance as possible, bank as much money as possible, many months in advance of the event. There are a variety of summer concerts and events that are selling tickets now, and in recent years the Minnesota State Fair has jumped on that bandwagon, selling as many grandstand concerts as possible prior to Christmas. Perfect for gift giving!

Given how poorly run the 2019 Jam was, and the fact I have yet to read one report of any sort of refund given to the 2019 VIP ticket holders they screwed over royally, asking people to commit hundreds of dollars to an event that has such a bad reputation eight months in advance is laughable. And highly insulting, given there's no indication that any effort has been made to rectify the shitty treatment VIP ticket holders were subjected to this past summer.

But I'm sure a few fools will hand their money over in time for the holidays. Hawkey is a modern day P.T. Barnum.

Will Hawkey be making excuses for his damn festival again in 2020?

Will local shills like Belinda Jensen embarrass themselves by proclaiming the damn festival to be a rousing success again in 2020?

Will Jon Bream lob backhanded insults at the damn festival again in 2020?

If the answers are yes, I'll be back next summer. 

Was Twin Cities Summer Jam a cash cow? #TCSummerJam

I don't know three things about running a music festival, but I know that Twin Cities Summer Jam was a major production, and not cheap.

I've pointed it out before, Aerosmith makes huge money performing live after all these decades, and they didn't come to Minnesota as an act of charity. Pretty boy Chris Hawkey said as much when he noted that "the damn festival," which he is an owner of, had to sell VIP tickets/access just to afford Aerosmith. Clearly they didn't sell enough of those VIP tickets... that's well documented.

So if VIP ticket sales were vital to the damn festival, we have to assume that Steve Tyler and the added cost of Buckcherry on Friday night didn't leave a lot of profit for Hawkey and the other owners. Sure, Canterbury Downs/Park made money off its beer sales, but it couldn't have been a profitable night for the festival's ownership, unless they sold a lot of those shitty T-shirts and other trinkets. The price of those T-shirts, hats and other bullshit, by the way, was reduced before the end of the festival on Saturday. People are idiots, but even the idiots weren't buying that crap, it seems.

It's a general rule of business, you don't expect to make big money in your first year. You may do huge business, but you have a lot of startup costs. Aerosmith sells itself, but I have to believe that all the costs associated with running the Summer Jam didn't leave a lot of room for profit, and we know that the ticket sales didn't surpass expectations.... otherwise the damn festival's brain trust wouldn't have slashed tickets in the final days, when hype should have been through the roof.

The question is, did the brain trust make a dime off of its efforts. Did it come up short? You can't tell me that Pitbull/Armando and Tim McGraw came cheap on Saturday night.

Was the brain trust prepared to weather a financial loss in its first year in order to build something that the masses would flock to, and drop hundreds of dollars on VIP tickets, annually? Time will tell.

Strib music critic Jon Bream doesn't run music festivals, either. But after decades of covering the industry and reviewing concerts, you've gotta think he knows a thing or 10 about the economics of the concerts and tours that take place in the Twin Cities.

His festival review/wrap up included a telling paragraph. The damn festival "merited solid grades in just about every aspect except ticket pricing (too high) and efficiency (computer and box office glitches). Here’s hoping the fest promoters can come up with the capital to bring TC Summer Jam back in 2020."

Gee, why did Bream throw that last comment in his review? Do you think he's just speculating? Do you think he's clueless about what the damn festival cost, and what the crowd size meant in terms of covering the costs of the performers, security, marketing and general labor associated with running a multi-day festival?

I don't know if there's a future for Summer Jam, and clearly neither does Bream. But I have no reason to believe he's shitting on the future of the damn festival simply to be an asshole.

Can Hawkey and company afford another ego stroke next summer? If they decide yes, it will be interesting to see what the damn festival looks like in 2020.

If the brain trust tries this stunt again, here's a nickel's worth of free advice: Don't buy the VIP tickets, no matter how hard P.T. Barnum tries to sell them to you.

Winners and losers at Twin Cities Summer Jam #TCSummerJam

Like any event old or new, there's room for review and scrutiny. Were there winners or losers during the first Twin Cities Summer Jam? Let's find out.

I knew of the event, and didn't think much of it. It wasn't clear to me how or why it was happening, and I had no interest in attending. I have no doubt the performers put on a good show. Jon Bream, the weathered music critic from the Star Tribune, gave a thumbs up to most performances. Some of those were more enthusiastic than others. The only one he didn't appreciate was Buckcherry. No big deal, there's always a dud in every festival lineup.

Bream made mention of issues in his festival review, but let Summer Jam off easy. He noted the tickets were priced too high, and that the festival's technology was inefficient. A previous article he wrote about the festival noted there were a few other flaws, such as the configuration of the sections and video screens, but he really didn't flesh out details of any of the Jam's issues.

In the last day or two I reviewed a Summer Jam article that seemed slightly more critical of the event and its flaws. I'm not sure when Bream wrote it, but it continued to downplay the flaws.

Bream's reporting didn't seem to provide fodder for the prosecution or the defense.

As I said, I wasn't particularly interested in the festival. Aerosmith would have been interesting to see, but I had no interest in seeing any other act performing during the weekend, unless you paid me to be there and treated me like Belinda Jensen. (She raved about the Jam via Facebook, and I'm going to guess she neither paid for a ticket nor had to watch the show while rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses. If so, her raves are hollow.)

I find it odd to invite Pitbull to open for Tim McGraw on the final night of your festival, but if it works, go for it. Opening acts usually draw tepid interest from the audience, but I suppose it's different at a festival where people want, and expect, to stand around for hours. So I'm sure Pitbull had a nice crowd. And if you're the kind of guy or gal that likes boot scootin', why wouldn't you want to watch Armando rap his way through a bunch of dance tunes, or watch his dancing babes shake their money makers? No, I don't get it either. That was probably the first and last time Pitbull opens for McGraw.

The mash up of artists seemed to work, as best I can tell. Score one for Summer Jam.

So who comes out of Summer Jam a winner? Lots of people who paid for crappy general admission access, and then found out they could flood the VIP section, for reasons we'll probably never definitively know.

If you paid for general admission tickets, you got pretty crappy views of the action due to the distance and limited view of the stage, as well as the lackluster video screen technology, by many accounts. Double win for those who waited until the final days to buy their admission ticket, and paid less than those who bought early. Pre-sales are typically crucial to events, but those who were on the fence were rewarded for being lukewarm to the festival. That's one hell of a slap in the face for committing  your dollars weeks or months in advance, eh? But I said it before and I'll say it again, it works both ways, and you make a value judgment when you buy your ticket when you do.

Clearly the biggest losers were those who paid hundreds of dollars per head for VIP access, and then were treated like sardines when the cheapskates were rewarded with a comparable experience at a fraction of the price. That's disgusting. I'm not convinced we know who is to blame, but more on that in a moment.

Neither winners nor losers: All the sponsors. There seemed to be plenty of sponsors, from the big casino just down the road to the Clear Channel radio stations, some of which were pimping and promoting the festival via free tickets and upgrades.

Nobody seems to be angry at the sponsors, and understandably so. They may have supported a poorly executed festival, but I suppose they're victims, too. They paid something to get their name in front of the masses. So even if it was a debacle, the show did go on. Even if it was a total disaster, they would be considered victims, too.

And nobody seems to be pointing a finger at Canterbury for hosting the Jam. I have to believe that beyond getting paid for use of their space and infrastructure, they were going to get a cut of concession sales to the captive audience. This wasn't free money, but they had a vested interest in the success of the festival, regardless of how little, if any, participation they had in its execution.

Sometimes you're an innocent bystander. But you should receive some of the blame when you allow a group to come in and miss the mark so spectacularly on their ticket allocation for premium access, especially when  your property has hosted similar events over the years. You don't rent your hotel convention space to hate groups, unless you want public backlash. You shouldn't turn over your seasonal pony track to a group that doesn't have the deep pockets to do it right, especially an untested entity like the Summer Jam brain trust.

Yet nobody seems to be upset with Canterbury. So they're not losers in this deal, but they should be.

Probable losers: Those in the horse industry. The Jam didn't happen overnight. Those who come to Canterbury for live racing each season -- jockeys, owners, shit shovelers -- know up front what they're getting and for how long. I have no idea how an off weekend effects their income or schedule at tracks elsewhere around the country. Perhaps there's always an off weekend during the summer. I really have no clue. But I'm guessing a lot of those season people who are vital to Canterbury's success found themselves with an unwelcome unpaid vacation. Or perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it was "spring break" week for the horsemen of Canterbury. Seems like shutting down their livelihood during a summer weekend is not doing them any favors.

It's not always clear who owns an event or attraction. Sometimes it's a faceless corporation. Sometimes it's a small, anonymous group. It was only as Summer Jam went off the rails that I got an inkling as to who has some stake in it.

It turns out potential loser Chris Hawkey, the morning radio/evening patriot who loves his country, owns "the damn festival," according to a comment he tweeted to one of his critics. Hawkey took the time to engage the critic, first off, and that's a boneheaded move. Don't be Brian Oake, Chris. That's not a good look for anybody.

I'm not a fan of Hawkey, but it does me no good to root against him. The dude hustles, and people like the music he churns out. I don't find him funny, which is one of many reasons I don't listen to his KFAN morning show, but they don't need me. I've only heard select samples of his music, and it fails to dazzle me. But it doesn't have to. I can easily turn it off, and life goes on.

Hawkey has a long history of busting his ass, and has a couple of pretty good gigs, it seems. I'm not sure how much investment he could possibly have in a major event that had a ton of expenses, but he owns the damn festival, he made that clear. And by owning it, he gets to stroke his ego by booking his love of God/country music jamboree into slots on both Friday and Saturday night. It's good to be Chris Hawkey.

Hawkey has been the mouthpiece for the festival, given his prominence in the music industry and local entertainment market. Depending upon what you read, he has suggested refunds are coming to the VIP ticket buyers who were shat upon at the festival. I've seen it suggested a couple of different ways, including in an article from the bastion of journalism excellence, Bring Me The News. So it must be true.

Will Hawkey end up being a loser in this deal? If those who were royally screwed by the festival don't get a refund, everyone associated with the debacle should be force fed a shit sandwich, with a steaming pile of shit. Piled high. And Hawkey should be served the first and last sandwich, since he owns "the damn festival."

But given the VIPs are a small percentage of the ticket buyers, it's unlikely his blue collar persona is going to take much of a hit, big picture. He can still sing about how America is great again, and the $99 Summer Jam ticket buyers will eat it up. I'm fighting the temptation to make a shit sandwich joke right now.

I doubt he'll end up a loser in this deal, but the biggest asshole, by far, is Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, if you believe Hawkey. Tyler "demanded" that the general admission crowd fill in the vast open space in the VIP area near the stage, and threatened to default upon his contract to perform if that didn't happen, Hawkey is quoted as saying.

It seems hard to believe, but that's the story Hawkey is selling.

So Tyler told the festival that if they didn't screw over his fans who paid hundreds of dollars for premium access, he was going to default on a major payday and screw over every fan at the festival by not performing? Really hard to believe, honestly, but that's what we've been told by Hawkey.

So we'll assume that's exactly what went down. If so, then Tyler is definitely an asshole. And if I paid for VIP access to his show, it would be the last time I gave a dime to the asshole.

And yet, if Hawkey's claims are true, nobody is really going to hold it against Tyler or Aerosmith, because most rubes don't care, as long as they're not the ones getting jail raped by Tyler.

So we know who the winners and losers are, or should be, eh?

While Tyler isn't likely to come out of this a loser, according to Hawkey's story, we can only conclude Tyler is an asshole. If so, this shouldn't surprise us.

After nearly five decades of being catered to, he's making as much as ever doing shows whenever he is in the mood. Not everybody gets rich quick as a live performer, but the value placed on the live performance has increased exponentially during the past 25 years or so, and Aerosmith seems to have no problem drawing huge crowds year after year as the value placed upon live shows continues to grow. Aerosmith ain't worried about hit records any more, they keep banking money off of their live performances, and are clearly a viable draw, as they now have a recurring gig in Vegas, where the big names now set up shop in a major casino and let their fans come to them, rather than the other way around. Worked very well for Celine Dion. After nearly 50 years, and millions of dollars having been showered upon Aerosmith, it'd be hard not to have an ego, and become an asshole. Or perhaps he was born that way.

The internet may be littered with stories about what an asshole Tyler is off stage. I don't know, I'm not looking for them, and I don't care. And perhaps I'd be none the wiser if it wasn't for the arrogance and stupidity of the Summer Jam brain trust.

Hawkey was quoted as saying that in order for his damn festival to be able to book an act as big as Aerosmith in its first year, it would take a lot of cash. A lot. I don't know how much, but Aerosmith isn't on tour. Aerosmith has been playing gigs in Vegas, and came to Minnesota specifically for this gig, according to their 2019 performance schedule. Aerosmith didn't roll into Minnesota for a pair of gigs at Canterbury and Moondance Jam. Tyler and company were here solely for Hawkey's damn festival.

In order to gross that huge stack of greenbacks, Hawkey had to sell VIP tickets, and bunches of them, to pay Aerosmith's fee. He is quoted as saying "we paid an exorbitant amount of money for Aerosmith to be at this festival, we had to sell some VIP seating in order to make enough money to have a festival."

Seems a bit ambitious and foolish for a first-time festival, doesn't it? Seems dangerous and foolish to gamble big on your first go at it, doesn't it? You could afford to gamble if you're a concert production company like Live Nation looking to establish a new annual event. Could Summer Jam's brain trust really afford to gamble big on its damn festival?

It did. And because of that, we know that Tyler is an asshole. But that's not why we know.

The only reason we know is that the Summer Jam brain trust clearly doesn't know how to count. And that's hilarious!

I'll make up numbers for the purpose of the illustration. I have no idea what the actual numbers should be. Let's assume Summer Jam wanted to sell 500 VIP tickets for each night of the show, and dedicated space for those VIP ticket holders in front of the stage. You assume they allocated enough space to allow the VIPs to mill about comfortably in front of the stage, without being packed into their section like sardines.

A reasonable plan, and some people were willing to spend hundreds for, presumably, that sort of privilege.

So what do you do when it's Friday morning, and your computer program (You've got to have some sort of accounting software, don't you?) tells you that you've sold 100 VIP tickets? The easy thing to do is hope 400 people pay big bucks at the gate that day and fill in the space that night. But c'mon, we know that's not going to happen.

Yet it seems like that's exactly what Summer Jam hoped for. Then asshole Tyler comes along and threatens to walk away if 95 percent of the crowd is 500 feet away from the stage during his performance. Suddenly Tyler's VIP fans are being shat upon.

So what's the solution? The obvious solution is that you look at your VIP ticket allowance, look at how many you've sold by Friday morning, decide how many you're going to give away to get people excited about your $99 general admission tickets and then adjust the VIP section accordingly. If you have sold 100 VIP tickets, are going to upgrade 100 people somehow that day and think you'll sell 50 VIP tickets that day, you reconfigure your VIP area to allow the general admission slobs to be closer to the stage. And if you're lucky, you'll sell 60 VIP tickets that day, and therefore you'll have slightly less breathing room for everyone, without packing them in like sardines. Then Tyler never has to be the asshole that screws his wealthiest fans.

And don't tell me that the VIP area couldn't have been reduced, while maintaining its integrity, that morning. The concert wasn't being moved to a Somerset, Wisconsin, campground. It doesn't take a Mayo Clinic specialist to reconfigure the VIP seating. It can't be that hard to reduce the VIP area of your damn festival that morning. If just can't.

And, of course, after screwing Aerosmith VIPs on Friday night, that same thing happened on Saturday, I guess. According to Bring Me The News, "with the precedent set on Friday by Aerosmith, the VIP section was opened up to GA for Pitbull and Tim McGraw on Saturday." So those who paid huge money for McGraw on Saturday were shat upon, too?

Precedent? What a bunch of horseshit. Which is appropriate given the venue for Summer Jam.

Tyler was an asshole and VIPs were screwed, all because the Summer Jam brain trust overestimated how many expensive tickets they could sell, and couldn't figure out how to configure their VIP area in front of the stage based upon the number of VIP tickets that they had sold? How embarrassing. Talk about amateur hour.

No, I've never run a damn festival. Of course it's far more complicated than that.

As George Costanza once said, "It's not a lie if you believe it."

Twin Cities Summer Jam may prove, yet again, that we don't like music festivals

You know I have to be intrigued if I dust off my retired blog to write about something happening in the Twin Cities this weekend at our giant horse track, Canterbury Park.

While this blog has been reserved for commentary on the broadcasting geniuses of the Twin Cities market, I'm going to deviate, sort of. More on that another day, I think.

For the record, I have nothing to gain by the success, or failure, of Twin Cities Summer Jam, the latest effort to create a music festival in a major metro area that can't seem to support one.

We've had varied success over the years with festivals. Ozzfest seems to have drawn well in the past when it toured here, but it was a one-day tour. Specialty festivals of one or two days do fine. I don't know how to describe Cities 97 when it comes to its playlist, but their niche seems to draw well for two nights every July at the Basilica Block Party. Some hip hop gig does OK as a one-day festival at our treasured state fairgrounds early each summer. I don't know how successful, but nobody gets shot at it, as best I know, so I'd call that a success.

In the past Canterbury Downs/Park has hosted a variety of concerts. We're reminded occasionally that Lilith Fair came through two centuries ago and dazzled the masses. And our local Clear Channel stations (I'm old school, I still shop at Dayton's) use to do one-day radio station events at Canterbury in the fall for a few years, after the horses went to the glue factory at the end of the racing season. Canterbury has hosted a variety of other musical conclaves over the years, as best I recall, so there's some track record of success, it seems. Lord knows they have plenty of room for it all.

But shutting down their horse racing for a weekend in order to host a summer festival spanning three nights, and multiple genres, seemed like a bold move, at minimum.

This market seems to struggle with multi-day music festivals, and I'm not sure why. Years ago the geniuses behind Live Nation, the concert production company, tried to turn Harriet Island in St. Paul into the scene of a music festival. That lasted one year. Prior to that the geniuses running the Taste of Minnesota essentially killed the event by trying to turn a lame food festival into a nightly music destination. I might have the details of those two items slightly incorrect, but I'm old, my memory isn't the best. And I'm lazy. I don't feel like Googling old Pioneer Press stories.

The Twin Cities just doesn't have the desire for a major music festival. I don't know why, but look at what a major production Milwaukee's Summerfest is each year around the Fourth of July. It features about 10 days built around music, from noon until close. We're better than that here in Minnesota, evidently.

So trying to craft any sort of music festival is a bold move, if not outright foolish.

But let's say it's a safe bet. Did it make sense to host it this weekend?

This very same weekend was also host to a well-established festival in northern Minnesota, Moondance Jam. And there's a major rock festival going on this same weekend a couple of hours east in Wisconsin, Rockfest.

I wouldn't argue that those events are killing Summer Jam, or are competing for Summer Jam's audience. The rock festival in Wisconsin is high-octane hard rock. Summer Jam has relatively safe, geriatric rock, such as Aerosmith and REO Speedwagon. Sure, they booked local alt-rock darlings Soul Asylum and a harder rocking band of a 20-year vintage....yes, 20 years... Buckcherry, but the Summer Jam lineup won't be confused with Wisconsin's Rockfest.

Moondance Jam seems more akin to the market Summer Jam is aiming for. But Moondance is a little more streamlined. There's no major country headliner at Moondance Jam, and nothing that resembles Pitbull, as best I can tell. And Moondance seems to be an event that is based upon camping and making a long weekend out of it. Loud nights, lots of drinking, little sleep. I don't get the appeal, but plenty do, and Moondance is a huge annual success.

So is Summer Jam's weekend of choice brilliant, or brutal? Summer Jam thinks that fans of Buckcherry are fans of Aerosmith, Pitbull, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw and REO Speedwagon. Some people probably are. But it seems like a gamble to try to convince people that they want to spend more than one night at your festival when you get Aerosmith, Pitbull and Rascal Flatts during that three-day extravaganza.

And I get it, you can't simply book any band for any weekend  you want. You have to pick a weekend and book whomever is touring in your area and is willing to come to Minnesota if your price is right.

Wisconsin's Rockfest is happening the same weekend as another hard rock fest in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson and others are playing both fests this weekend. Makes total sense. I have no idea how similar or different the fests are, but they're far enough apart that they can co-exist, evidently, and can take advantage of each other when it comes to getting bookings for this weekend.

Did Summer Jam benefit from any sort of synergy with other festivals happening 3-5 hours away? No. Inexplicably, the one hard rock band on the Summer Jam bill, Buckcherry, is not at either Wisconsin rock festival this weekend.

As for Moondance Jam, how many of its performers is Summer Jam booking? None.

Again, Summer Jam isn't necessarily competing for the same audience, but having major festivals elsewhere this weekend doesn't help. If you think your Pitbull fans love Rascall Flatts, then you have to assume some of your Aerosmith fans are going to choose Rob Zombie at Rockfest or Lynyrd Skynyrd at Moondance.

So Summer Jam chose a weekend when there's major competition, and isn't benefiting from the bands that are coming to the midwest for those festivals. Perhaps this is the only weekend Canterbury was willing to shut down for this festival. (UPDATE: It turns out Tim McGraw was at a festival south of Milwaukee on Friday night, so Summer Jam did find a little synergy to exploit.)

It seems that the brain trust behind Summer Jam would have wanted to pick another weekend. Could they have? I won't know, but the weekend they've chose doesn't seem to be advantageous. At all.

Ultimately Summer Jam isn't likely to be a victim of competition, but having other festivals the same weekend can't possibly be helping draw people to Canterbury Park. I'll give Summer Jam a pass when it comes to choosing a poor weekend, but the organizers didn't take advantage of the regional activity taking place. At all.

So as curious as Summer Jam is, the execution of it has been flawed, to say the least. I'll apologize now, I'm enjoying the angst and vitriol. That sounds wrong, of course, but at least I'll admit it. We accept that NASCAR fans love the unavoidable crashes, so long as nobody is killed, and NHL diehards insist that fighting is a part of the game that shouldn't be eliminated. I'm no worse than those people for enjoying the rants of the Summer Jam disgruntled.

It's well documented on Twitter and Facebook, and you can find a few news articles starting to air Summer Jam's dirty panties. They set the price points too high and/or expected far too many to pay the premium prices for the best seats. As a result they cut prices on tickets days before the festival, claiming new sponsorship money made it possible.

Really? The only reason they lowered prices is because a sponsor kicked in money to have their name associated with the festival in its final days? If it smells like bullshit....

So those who wanted great seats for the festival were penalized for buying early. I have no sympathy for you.

Had you bought those tickets and it turned out that the venue sold out, and the secondary market was selling the tickets at 150% of face value, you'd feel like a genius, and happily sell them for a profit when your Aunt Marilyn died days before the show and you had to skip the festival in order to travel to Michigan for her funeral.

Best analogy I read about the pricing: It's like airline tickets. You book two months in advance, and the price could drop the next day, or rise the next day, and it could go up or down many times in the weeks prior to departure.

I think that's a good comparison.

The difference, of course, is that airline passengers don't usually talk to each other about what they paid, and when, for their tickets...all you can know is how much less, or more, you might have paid had you booked earlier, or waited longer, if you want to track those sorts of things. With Summer Jam, you can't know what the guy in the beer line paid for his ticket, unless you ask, but you know they were trying to get asses through the gates in the final days, at a discount, and that could have been you had you not been so eager to spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of tickets to see Aerosmith on a disgustingly humid night in Minnesota.

Moral of the story: You deemed the tickets were worth the price you agreed to weeks ago, and then they had a sale days before the show. You can't count on that, so you make a value judgment at the price you agreed to pay, and that's the way it goes. If the market value goes up or down, it doesn't matter, as you have already made your choice. End of story.

Except it's not the end of the story, of course. Even with price breaks in the final days, there weren't nearly enough premium ticket buyers to justify the premium seating allocation at the festival, by many accounts. So for the past two nights the people who paid for those premium seats, at whatever price days or weeks ago, found themselves rubbing elbows with tons of people who decided a general admission ticket at the back of the grounds was all they could justify.

This is where I have a lot of sympathy for those who paid for VIP access, at any price. I've read plenty of comments on  Summer Jam's Facebook page about people finding themselves suddenly surrounded by the unwashed masses because the organizers didn't want a pathetic looking festival with tons of empty space in front of a mob of general admission rubes, and therefore opened the VIP floodgates to fill that open space ahead of the rubes.

That's downright shitty. And people have expressed that on Facebook, wondering where there refund is for paying premium dollars and then being disrespected.

They have to be smart enough to know that Summer Jam won't be refunding them any money. You paid your cash, you got screwed and they won't care enough to make it right. Based upon how desperate they were to move tickets in the final days prior to the festival, they'll be lucky if they have enough money to cover all the expenses, even with sponsors.

I have no idea if the festival will be deemed a success of failure financially, only time will tell, and it still won't tell us the whole story. But given what a debacle this has been on multiple levels, I would bet against another Summer Jam next year.

Yeah, I get it, you need to learn from experience and make improvements. But let's be realistic. They didn't invent the wheel. They shouldn't have had to learn so many hard lessons in 2019.

They couldn't figure out how to set up video screens that worked properly during at least some of the performances, or how to configure their grounds so that a huge area of general admission access didn't have an obstructed view of the stage. They couldn't figure out how to price and allocate their sections so that they'd draw a crowd and sell enough tickets without having a fire sale in the final week. They picked a weekend when they gained almost nothing by having other regional festivals going on. What makes anyone think that they'll make any money when this is all over?

If I was to bet $5, I'd bet there's no Summer Jam next year. Yes, it could be improved 1000% and draw a nice crowd, and this weekend hasn't been a total failure, but with all its shortcomings, it's hard to believe that this will become a new tradition in midwest music festivals.