Bring Your Kids! (If they’re not already in the band)

Dog Party

Concerts in the Park
Friday, May 7, 2010 – Cesar Chavez Park – Sacramento
Words & Photos by Vincent Girimonte

Two things to take away from last Friday’s edition of Concerts in the Park: one, Sacramento has some exceedingly hip youth; so hip, in fact, that I felt like a tool toting just one lens with my Nikon. Seriously though, I saw way too many kids with thousands of dollars-worth of camera gear dangling from their thin little necks. And second, make sure to buy a beer ticket before you get into the beer line–just a friendly reminder I wish someone would have given me.

Full disclosure: this was my first CIP, and for all my faux curmudgoenliness (I still get carded, for everything) it was a genuinely unique and jovial Sacramento on display in Cesar Chavez Park. Young professionals rejoiced in public consumption as kids pranced around and people were wearing balloons as hats, which would be ridiculous if it weren’t a Friday signaling the beginning of our glorious summer.

Dotting the park were food carts of all shapes and specialties, reminding Sacramentans of a culture largely prohibited to them and satiating drunks and kids alike with fatty eats such as lumpia, rice bowls, Cajun crawfish and the night’s hot seller, tamales for $1.75. About the crawfish: “They’re back” announced promoter Jerry Perry from the stage, gleefully, but at $10 a basket, I was left to lick shells off the lawn. There was plenty of affordable grub to be had, though, and $4 domestics shouldn’t elicit too much whining from anyone, though it inevitably will.

Simpl3Jack

If you don’t know Dog Party, you’re likely so thoroughly out of it, you probably didn’t even know they’re just a couple of adolescent girls with a penchant for neon. Gwen “Don’t call me Meg” Giles beat drums behind her sister Lucy, who strummed her Fender, playing original tracks off their debut album and then rocking a cover of Tegan and Sara’s “Walking With a Ghost.” Two men wrestled for a T-shirt after Dog Party threw out one of their sweet XL tees–such is the zeal of their following, or perhaps the state of things these days.

Kepi

Part Pauly Shore, part Flea in the vein of Yo Gabba Gabba, Kepi shut things down with tunes about supermodels (gross!), chupacabras (ew, yuck!) and rabid monkeys (whaaa?!). He called on the beer garden for a sing-a-long, and they reciprocated like good sports without a worry on Friday night. “Man,” he said, clearly appreciative. “We got a pretty good town.”