Our most recent Coconut Festival's theme was the British Invasion, featuring a Beatles cover band, “Nowhere Band”, and a Led Zeppelin cover band, “Led Zepagain”. Sounded like a great time to me, and Alyssa came home from school to go with us. The Coconut Festival is always around Alyssa’s birthday so we do like to think of Cocofest as a great big birthday party for her. Ron is not a Beatles fan (I can hear you gasping "NOT POSSIBLE" but it's true!) but he does like Zeppelin, so he was agreeable to going and didn’t have to be dragged along against his will. You can never predict how big or how rowdy the band audience will be at Cocofest. One year we saw Starship and there were mellow people lounging in lawn chairs as well as people wandering around, just enjoying the music. Last year we saw Foghat and it was mobbed with people jostling for prime spots by the stage and we just hoped we wouldn't be crushed. This year we hoped for a fun crowd and brought a blanket to hang out on. It was very eerie – there were no lines at the entrance gate and the crowd by the stage was so small it could scarcely be called a crowd. Lots of lawn chairs and blankets. We claimed a spot not far from the stage and right in front of the video screen. It was hilarious watching people come up during the night and take pictures of the bands on the screen, or have other people take pictures of them standing in front of the screen. I suppose having a picture of yourself in front of a video screen playing footage of a fake band does have some unique appeal.
Nowhere Band opened (as I’d predicted to Alyssa) with 60’s era songs, dressed in collarless suits. After a short break they changed into Sgt Pepper attire for later songs. After one more break, “John” came out in a white suit and sang “Imagine” before the remaining 3 Beatles joined him for the last set. It was fun, it was mellow, it was cute. Their first set was not so great but the second two were pretty good. We’ve seen better Beatles acts, but you get out of it what you put into it, right? They were well worth the $5 charge to get into Cocofest. It was funny to me that Alyssa and I sang along with all the songs and Ron just acted like a clown. The Beatles broke up 20 years before Alyssa was even born, so it’s special to me that she knows and enjoys their music.
Ron shared an "aha!" moment with us. When he was in school, he had a music teacher that made the class listen to and sing Beatles songs every day. At his young age he quickly tired of this class and the endless Beatles tunes, and I guess he never got over that. To think that you can still be surprised to learn something new about someone after 21 years together. Hmmm.
After Nowhere Band, we enjoyed the fireworks display. It was a bit nippy so we were happy to have our blankets and jackets.
Alyssa was not familiar with Led Zeppelin, so we prepped her a bit on their music. Ron said he just hoped the lead singer wasn’t some 50 year old guy without a shirt on trying to dance around the stage like Robert Plant.
Well…………….............................
Umm.........................................
Sorry, Ron, but that’s what we got.
Ok, now I have to throw in a picture of the real Robert Plant just as a reference.
The Led Zepagain singer was a little screechy but we assured Alyssa that the real Led Zeppelin didn’t sound like that. We later played some Zep for her and she heard the difference.
Anyway, the Zeppelin tribute band was not perfect, but they were fun, and again, well worth the $5 to see experience both the Beatles and Led Zeppelin in one evening. Can't wait to see who’s scheduled for next year!
