July 19, 2008 9:00 PM

Mile High Music Festival - Tom Petty rocks the joint

At 9:06 p.m., Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hit the first notes of You Wreck Me and tens of thousands of fans let out simultaneous screams.

More on that as it unfolds, but here are some odd-and-ends from the first day of the first Mile High Music Festival:

While it's pandemonium out front at times, backstage is serene and quiet. Artists and their families have a couple of catering tents to go to, serving freshly prepared food and a full bar all day long. An hour before they took the stage members of the Heartbreakers ate a serene dinner with friends and family - about the farthest scene from rock 'n' roll madness that you can imagine.

Adams County sheriff's deputies on the scene said today's festival was amazingly quiet - very few incidents, trouble-wise or traffic-wise. A few drunk-and-disorderly arrests were made early in the day, but generally the crowd paced itself and saw very few bad scenes - amazing in a gathering this size.

Finally, David Accomazzo on the first big act of the day:
One of the first acts to really create a buzz was Newton Faulkner, the British solo guitar act whose wry humor and unusual guitar technique made for an entertaining show.
The 23-year-old used the guitar as his backing band: he would hit the sides, the front, and the top of the guitar to create percussive tones while using a series of foot pedals to create deep, synthetic bass tones.
Faulkner brought out a child-sized nylon-stringed guitar to play a song he said he wrote with his brother about riding the trains while "looking weird." The song's lyrics described a woman's reaction once they saw the dreadlocked musician: "She had time, but she didn't wanna give it to me."

Posted by Mark Brown at 9:00 PM | Comments (1)