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Huntington
Goes Loco at Locobazooka
by Brandon Woolum
In September of 1992 Dan Hartwell decided to help local rock bands in his home town of Worcestor, Massachusetts succeed. He built up a festival called "Localpalooza", which was a all-day local rock show. This show drew about 1,000 rock music fans to mosh to the locals.
The annual festival continued to grow and grow each year. In 1998, Hartwell was forced to change the name of his festival, due to music fans getting it confused with the "Lollapalooza" music festival. Hartwells choice for the festivals new name was "Locobazooka".
This year, for it's 10th anniversary Hartwell wanted to take it on the
road. He got some big name bands together and they are now traveling the
east-coast playing small citys.
The "Locobazooka 2002 United We Rock" tour stopped at Huntington's Harris River Front Park yesterday for a full day of hard hitting rock.
Local bands, who were chosen by a talent search at "The zoo", got the show started at 11:30 a.m.. The local bands who participated on the RockStar 2K stage were: Sister Kill Cycle, Lure 609, Aaron Miler Band, and Bobaflex.
The first national act, Dragpipe, hit the stage at 12:30p.m.. The small crowd didn't let the heat stop them from jumping up and down to the hard tunes.
Dry Cell, Audiovent, and Nonpoint also performed wild 30-minute sets.
At 4:15 Earshot, who rocked the Huntington Civic Arena for X 106.3's "5th Anniversary Party" in April, took to the stage. After seeing how good this band is live in April, many Huntingtonians were glad to see the guys come back. Gravity Kills and Revielle, who also played the "5th Anniversary Party", were scheduled for Locobazooka but injuries prevented them from doing so. (Gravity Kills: Keyboard player injured, Revielle: Lead Singer has mono)
After Earshot got off stage, the crowd shifted to the larger stage for the first of the two headliners, Filter. The crowd was in to their entire set as theu circled around the small mosh pit formed at center stage. Filter thanked Huntington for helping make "Airplane" there number one hit ever, before they performed an incredible version of it.
Next on Deck was the band many had called in sick for work to see, Sevendust. The crowd was pumped even before the Atlanta natives took the stage. As the crew was doing a sound check the crowd began to chant Sevendust!,Sevendust!, Sevendust! Once the band came out on stage it was non-stop craziness, as the crowd moshed, crowd surfed, and sung along with the guys. The wild crowd did slow down a little, when frontman Lajon Witherspoon sat down on the stage before he performed his tribute to late Snot singer, Lynn Strait, "Angel's Son". He was forced to hold back from tears, as he said that the song keeps getting harder and harder to sing. Once "Angel's Son' was over the crowd continued to jump up and down letting Sevendust know that Huntington loves their music.
"It means a lot to us what the fans think about this stuff" said guitar player Clint Lowery. "We wouldn't be doing it if it was any other way."
Sevendust concluded the show promising the Huntington rock fans that
they would be back to rock Huntington again in the future.
