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I wrote this for some people on this last year list who were headed to Cornerstone for the first time. Since the subject came up, and there are new first-timers, I thought it might be appropriate to include it here as well.
1. Lodging. You have two choices: Camping on the grounds for free, or paying for a hotel. Unless you prefer the benefits of camping in what essentially becomes a land-fill, over the course of the four-five day festival, it's well-worth the money to book a room in Macomb at Western Illinois University's conference center a mere twenty minutes away. Sure, the drive home after the encore stages at 3 a.m. each night is near hallucinatory. But if you camp, when it's hot, you sleep in sweat and dust. when it rains, you sleep sleep in puddles and mud. The bathrooms are port-o-sans. The showers are communal experiences in the back of flat bed trucks... and they turn off the hot water at 10 p.m. At the university, you sleep in a bed in air conditioning. Semi-private bathrooms are near (though my annual roomie and I have a tendency to be booked on the opposite end of the hall from the men's room, leading to a daily, mile-long walk of shame) and the drive in each day is brief and !
gives
ample opportunity for you to:
2. Stop at walmart for the things you need. Like bottled water (cannot emphasize this item enough), ear plugs (next to water, the second most essential item you can have), sun screen (should be third on your list), clean socks (or better yet, rugged, comfortable, and ultimately, disposable sandals), micatin, batteries, condoms, blank minidiscs, rain ponchos, backpacks, garbage bags, folding chairs, vitamins, analgesics, and fruit roll-ups. 3. Get a decent meal on the way in. There are only so many dust covered subway sandwiches, pizza hut mini pizzas, ostrich burgers, or turkey legs a person can healthfully consume. I hear you can actually buy a vegetable or two on the festival grounds now, but do you really want vegetarian fare prepared by the same people who are making your lemon shakes and funnel cakes? Both Macomb and Bushnell offer a decent, small-town variety of places to eat. There's fast food, a few buffet / salad bar places, a couple of good sit! down restaurants, and (my favorite) grocery store deli's where you can stock up on good cheap sandwiches, fresh fruit and veggies, water, sodas, juice, etc. 4. Taping shows: usually the sound quality at most cornerstone is very suspect. It's staffed by people who run sound professionally for a living, but with something on the order of 200 shows in four-five days, even a Phil Spector would lose the capacity to make sure every band sounds as good as they should. So mixes are often over-compressed, poorly arranged, and (when all else fails) turned up too loud. But, the sound guy is running the board. So, the whole affair is mixed to sound the best where HE is standing. So, if you are recording off a microphone, it's going to sound best back there. and, many times, you can get a line off the board if you ask nicely and were smart enough to bring your own patch cables (go to radio shack on the way in too... get a couple of good cables and connectors / adapters for ! RCA, quarter-inch stereo and mono plugs, and xlr connections. after 100 concerts in four days, however, ear fatigue is so severe, you can't determine a good mix from a bad one anyway. Being a short person, I usually find that the middle to the rear of the hall also offers me a better vantage point to actually *see* what's going on on-stage as well. But if you're down front, catching the stage vibe (also known as sweat from the performer) is balanced by hearing the sound primarly from stage amps and monitors and only having a clear view of what's right in front of you, like the pro-basketball team, who all decided to come to the show together and stand side by side, until they decide to mosh. And you become a small, human hackey sack. if you still want that spot down front, if it's a popular artist, get there early, like an hour ahead of time. Especially for gallery or smaller venue shows. Those fill up quickly. For encore shows, it's easier to get there shortly before the band starts. 5. Talk to strangers. I've met some of the nearest and dearest people at CStone. Most are quite uncontrary. Lots of love. In fact, I imagine heaven is a lot l! ike cornerstone. Except everything in the "Mall O' Love" is free, the food is better, and your ears don't hurt as much. |