IfIHadAHiFi @ the Cascio Stage

A note from your editor: yes, Tony’s reviewing my band. This was his specific request when i was doling out assignments for Summerfest coverage. At Fan-Belt, we believe in a few basic tenets that we feel the Milwaukee music scene should adhere to: 1) it’s a small town–seeming “conflicts of interest” happen as a consequence of everyone knowing everyone, so everyone should get over it. 2) Milwaukee bands should be subjected to honest, constructive criticism if Milwaukee expects to be more than a nice, comfy place where bands are well known in their hometown, but not well-known elsewhere. “Yay, everyone! We’re doing something creative! Let’s hold hands!” doesn’t cut it here.  5) If #2 is adhered to, #1 shouldn’t be a problem. With that said, let’s watch Tony put his editor under the microscope. –DJ

Fuck yeah. Heh heh, Summerfest. Hello, Summerfest. Good day, Summerfest. Do I tip my cap to you? I haven’t been to you in two years since I saw Weird Al Yankovic. And before that, never before. Well, not much has changed. Kids running around all willy-nilly, parents far, far away, a buncha douchebags with their shirts off showing terrible tattoos, and fat chicks with rolls upon rolls for the eye to drown in. Everyone thinks they’re a fucking star, too. Screaming at the top of their lungs and shit. The power-hungry fucker taking tickets had his best asshat on and gave me a bunch of shit for the pass I showed him. He was making up stories saying that the pass only got me backstage. WELL THEN IDIOT, I GUESS I CAN’T GO IN THEN, HUH? Seeing as I have a high priority pass here?!? Fucking tool. I write for ThirdCoast Digest, not the Milwaukee Urinal. Walking about, it took me three times of asking the trash hauling shitworkers where the Cascio stage was to actually get there. When I walked up to it it was much smaller than I thought it would be. Cool. That’s a good thing for you keeping notes.

IFIHADAHIFI started their set with “Success! Success! Success!” after introducing guest vocalist Dixie Jacobs, and the sound was god awful where I was. I was all the way up front. I immediately turned around and headed to the back of the seating area where I was greeted with much better sound. They slashed and blazed through a couple of songs using their teenage dungeons and dragons-esqe (Read: Nerdy) stage banter to their advantage in between songs. Sometimes their banter is miss, sometimes it’s hit. I think that sums up IFIHADAHIFI to me, actually: A bunch of miss and a bunch of hit. For every cheesy call and response, they have a killer noise part or for every terrible “oh-oh, oh-oh” verse chant and predictable bridge, they will come back with a crushing ending to a song or a surprisingly subtle or sweet melody. I’m always on the fence when I see them, but this performance was mostly good for them. The newer songs were a toss up as well.  The song about an homage to a forgotten wrestler was as no nonsense as they get with Gomps (Yale Delay – Guitar) taking the mic and making the song his own as The Fucking Wizard (MrAlarm – Bass) laid down a driving bass line. There was also a song that took a departure from the HIFI norm with slow brooding drums and more of a building intensity – “Spy in the House of Fuck.” I love this song title and I hope they go down this road more often. I want them to mix it up cuz they’re my buddies. Yes, there was a song I didn’t like in the new bunch, but I won’t dwell on that. What I will dwell on briefly is the crowd. There were young and old here. Some young kids started a mini-pit off to the side, and some older d-bags were doing air guitar and air drums to a couple of songs. People were really getting into them, and I was pleased.

When they got to the song about the famous Mars Cheese Castle and announced that “This song is about the Mars Cheese Castle” it was like an atomic bomb hit the Summerfest grounds. The ENTIRE place got silent, including other stages and even the bands at the other stages. You could hear a Sprint pin drop throughout the entire place as time stood still and breathing was prohibited. Then suddenly, one hoot escaped the fiddle player of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Second, the Division BMX stunt team did one supersilent and quick trick together. Finally Sean Emery – Comic Juggler rode by juggling on a unicycle. That was the dam-buster. The whole grounds, as if on cue, exploded into a seven minute standing ovation with screaming and hollering devoted to Mars Cheese Castle – to top it off everyone joined hands and sang the merits of their total appreciation for the cheese retailer. Fireworks exploded in the sky that when spread out exclaimed, ‘We love you Mars Cheese Castle!’ and ‘Mars Cheese Castle – Are you really going to buy cheese from Pick N’ Save? …COMON!’ Then, a trampoline was wheeled out with topless girls and bottomless men jumping on it. None of them got hurt at all while giving out cheese samples and throwing pure gold coins that only children of age nine could see and collect.

It was okay, I guess.

The song itself was really good, by the way.