WOW!!!! It was finally time for Cornerstone again, and this would be the first time I was going as an official press person. I had to get up at 4 a.m. Thursday morning after having gone to bed at midnight. Our goal was to leave no later than 6. We left at about 7. This year the crew consisted of myself, Tony Link, Mike Almada, and James Hahn. On the way to the fest we stopped only a few times, but every time we spent way too much time stopped. We finally arrived at our motel about 1:30 p.m. I gotta tell ya, the place was a dump. It looked terrible from the outside, and we were kind of afraid to see the inside. It wasn't that bad, in fact it even had a little refrigerator. However, the place had some really stupid rules, so it kind of sucked. So we unpacked our stuff and headed off to the festival, getting there at about 2:30, just in time to be missing the first show of the day--Starflyer 59. I think Tony Link may have made it to the last part of the show, but I really didn't care to go, so I hung out with the other Kansas City people at their campsite for a while. 
I caught my first show of the day at 6:00. It was Crux, one of Tooth and Nail Records' newest artists. I kind of found them boring, so I left and went milling around the exhibition hall for a while. It had been sprinkling a little bit for a while, but as soon as I stepped into the exhibition tent, the rain started coming down like crazy. How fortunate.   When the rain calmed down, I went back to the "Underground Stage" to catch Blenderhead's show. I had been looking forward to seeing Blenderhead play for quite a while. I don't think anyone can imagine my disappointment when I got there and the sound was horrible. I'm sure Blenderhead was doing great, but whoever was running the soundboard must have been a moron. Anyway, That's how my festival experience started. Rainy, muddy, and with horrible sound quality. Needless to say, I started out with an enormously bad attitude. Thankfully, the rest of the festival was dry and had some interesting moments.

CIRCLE OF DUST, ARGYLE PARK, AND Special Guests STAVESACRE.
MIDNIGHT, THURSDAY, JUNE 29.

I was pumped up for this first good show of Cornerstone. I had been eager to see Argyle Park perform. Well, after various technical difficulties, we were presented with a surprise. Ex-Crucified members Jeff Bellew and Marc Saloman had formed a new band called Stavesacre. They got up and performed

three songs of music that was nothing like their old band, The Crucified. It was kind of interesting. After that, Argyle Park took the stage only to totally embarrass themselves. Founding member Buka got up and announced that this would be Argyle Park's one and only show because they had broken up. I felt sorry for the guy. He had to put together a band for the show in a short time, so the project that he had worked so hard to put together and that he had poured his heart into ended up looking bad. I have no doubt that if the band was still together, they would have put on an incredible show, but instead poor Buka got shorted out of his one shining moment of glory. And the cool thing was that he was so graceful about it. God bless him.
Next, Circle of Dust took the stage and put on an incredible show. They were in fine form. I kept waiting for them to play the new songs from the re-recording of their first album, but they made us wait until the last part of the show before they played them. Not much more I can say. They put on a great show. Now if they can only put out an album of all new songs instead of just regurgitating old songs.

FRIDAY, JUNE 30
SHOWS I CAUGHT:  GOSPEL GANGSTAS, UNASHAMED WITH STRONGARM, AND FINALLY, THE CRUCIFIED.

Friday was quite the interesting day. We were awakened  at about 10 a.m. by the motel maid wanting to clean the room. We told her we wouldn't be leaving until the afternoon, so she might as well not bother to come back until then. So we went back to sleep. She came back two more times before we ended up leaving for the festival. The same thing happened every morning. When we finally got to the festival, I went over to the Indoor Stage (don't let the name fool you. It's a freakin' tent, buddy) to catch some of the Gospel Gangstas set. Well, I can't really say I was disappointed. The Gospel Gangstas were in fine form with their modern hip-hop stuff. I think they were doing their stuff faster than on their cd. It seemed that way, at least. Rhymes flow off of these guys' lips like they were born doing it. I was kind of annoyed at the amount of time they spent preaching. I appreciated the guy's heartfelt account of his life and how he came to know Christ, but I found his theology

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