Memphis crowds are notoriously stiff, even in the face of obvious awesomeness, but there were a few die-hard Chancho en Piedra fans in the crowd who were feeling the funk and getting down. And The CA’s own Kerry Crawford gets in on the action a little too.

Click here for the video, which for some reason isn’t embedding.

For serious, y’all, if you missed Chancho en Piedra’s set today, try to check them out tomorrow on the Cellular South Stage at 3:50.

— Lindsey

Chancho en Piedra is a witty, fun-loving rock/funk group from Chile that rattled the BSMF Saturday afternoon. They’re riding high, having earned the cover of May’s Rolling Stone Latino edition and are celebrating their 15th year together. Here’s a video with them just before they went onto the Cellular South Stage, and they talk about barbecue, pigs, what their name means, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

–Jon W. Sparks

The eloquent and colorful stylings of the singular Muck Sticky brought a decent crowd to the aptly named “Bud” tent this afternoon to start off a soggy festival. Here’s a video of Muck discoursing a few minutes before going on stage where he had his fans in full thrall.

–Jon W. Sparks

As always, we are ever-vigilant for interesting-looking people at the Beale Street Music Festival, and this person who shall remain nameless, suddenly appeared in the camera sight.

When a man walks around shirtless with a large patch on his belly, we have to wonder what is that patch for? Perhaps a recent surgery? We wish him a speedy recovery. We ALL wish him a speedy recovery. And we remind him to use SPF 80 or else that patch is going to leave a very strange tan line.

–Christopher Blank

The Beale Street Music Festival seems a little more cramped this year with the construction on the north end of Tom Lee Park. The Blues Tent is now the first to greet people walking up from the Beale Street entrance.

As usual, there were the festival characters, and beer vendor Johnie Whorton is one of them. His sales pitch for beer went something like this: “How ’bout an ice-cold beer? Get it while it’s hot! Nature’s own Viagra! You got two hands? You need two beers!” Undoubtedly, he will be the top sales person this year and was doing his part to get people to the proper level of drunk long before the music started.

The only “Thunder Cloud” to appear early in the evening was this one, a Native American singer who kicked off the Medeski, Martin & Wood set with a “Friendship Song.”

Bonnie Bramlett, the first white “Ikette” for Ike and Tina Turner, opened the festival in the Blues Tent, sending out a love song to Dickey Betts, with whom she toured with the Allman Brothers.

It didn’t take long before some lucky fans were treated to extreme crowd surfing in front of the Sam’s Town Stage when the punk band Rise Against opened the festivities.

The important thing about this next picture is in the foreground. Hint: it’s green.

We’re talking about the grass. And generally at Memphis in May it doesn’t last long. Early arrivals got to walk around bare footed and sit on the warm, dry ground to watch Matt Nathanson open on the Cellular South Stage.

Rain did come Friday evening, a short-lived rinse that did its part to see that there would be no more sitting on the ground without getting a muddy backside. Of course, after last night’s deluge, today is going to be just like old times.

–Christopher Blank

The All American Rejects closed down the Cellular South Stage Friday night with a well-attended performance.

Those in the neighborhood, however, might have thought we were at the end of the month instead of the beginning as the band took the stage to the full recording of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”

As locals know, it’s also the traditional closing theme of the Sunset Symphony. The only fireworks were on stage, however, as lead singer Tyson Ritter strutted and fretted his way into the hearts of the ladies.

Elsewhere, Ben Harper & the Relentless 7 kicked off their set with Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times.”

–Christopher Blank

Eyewitness Weather 24 forecaster Henry Rothenberg delivers the verdict: The cold front pretty much turned stationary on top of us and we can expect showers and thunderstorms today and tomorrow — maybe even worse tomorrow.

Winds are calm at the moment and the rain is cooling things. “Temperatures will struggle to hit 70 or 71,” he says, so taking your panchos and a light jacket or windbreaker is advisable.

Tomorrow especially, the rain won’t be as scattered and it’s pretty widespread around the area. There’s potential even for some flash flooding.

Are you gonna let the weather get in the way of Al Green? The Roots? Elvis Costello? Korn?

–Jon W. Sparks

The major rain held off until after festival hours Friday, but it came a crazy flood not too terribly long after midnight (complete with explosive lightning here in Midtown!) and hasn’t let up all that much, which means today (Saturday) is going to be mucky. (And, yes, Muck Sticky*.)

I managed to catch at least a glimpse of nearly every act on Friday’s bill. Matt Nathanson started out cussing and won me over when he started hootin’ and hollerin’ about the Tigers, only to immediately admit that he knew nothing about the Tigers but that people had told him to mention them if he wanted the crowd to love him. I was pleasantly surprised that The Cult (I keep wanting to write The Cure, but I can’t get everything I want, now can I?) brought the rock as hard as they did. Super Chikan picked and grinned. Ben Harper wailed his heart out. Lurrie Bell (at left) tore that guitar up. Rise Against let their fans nearly kill me. G Love & Special Sauce, uh, did things I’m not familiar with that could probably be described as moderately funky. Tommy Castro and his suggestively dancing bass player laid it down right. Katy Perry wanted all the girls who weren’t prom queen in high school to sing along at the top of their lungs. All American Rejects were painfully attractive and energetic and threw T-shirts and picks into the crowd after the show.

I don’t know how much weather has to do with the turnout, but the crowd size seemed pretty big to me. Clearly the recession and the swine flu and the impending robot takeover and the giant radioactive satellites hurtling toward Earth aren’t keeping people inside this year. That’s excellent. I always feel really bad for a band that has to get up and play in front of a sparse festival crowd.

One more thing: I am kind of digging the altered layout this year. Sure, it means that I have to haul serious haunch to get to the Blues Tent, which I’m used to seeing in the middle of the park, but the trek doesn’t seem as tedious. I may have spoken too soon, of course. We’ve yet to start day two.

— Lindsey

* He plays the Budweiser stage at 2:25 p.m. to kick off the afternoon. I just got done watching the “Head Change” episode of $5 Cover, which is really my first more-than-a-few-seconds-long exposure to Muck. Aaaaand I still don’t get it. But, whatever, he’s got plenty of fans. I can’t imagine he’d care about another snooty art rock fan shrugging her shoulders at his schtick.

I was hunting for my lost shoe among the Sam’s Town Stage waste late Friday when I saw two stumbly young men eyeing the trash and picking up boxes of cigarettes like bits of gold from a disgusting beer can-strewn stream. They were nice enough to offer me a cigarette, which I declined. And then they hit the randomness jackpot when they found a shotgun shell. They happily posed for a photo with the shell, and then the guy in the Phish shirt (who’s from Kansas City) proceeded to try to talk film photography with me like I’m an actual photographer. Poor dude. He was drunk and I am clueless.

Seriously, though, a shotgun shell?

— Lindsey

I remember when I was in ninth grade and we were deep into the reign of alternative music and the concept of moshing seemed really cool. That was also back when the thought of actually touching a boy was so titillating that I was willing to risk life and limb just to brush up against a real, live one, even if he was a disgusting, sweaty, hormone-fueled mess in a Tool shirt. That was also back before I had any real concept of not being invincible.

Except, as I soon learned once I started going to concerts, moshing is nothing to get mixed up in. I am not a delicate flower by any means, but life is too freaking short to find yourself getting elbowed in the nose while you’re innocently trying to bob your head to your favorite song — no matter how fast-paced it is. So at shows, if there is even any hint of a shoving match, you’ll find me creeping away from the teeming mass and finding a space along the wall, laughing the the ‘roidheads and maternally wishing they’d chill out because, really, what is there to get all riled up about?

So I guess my absence from the moshing scene is how I completely missed out on learning what a Wall of Death is.

Rise Against, who were doing an already bang-up job of getting their crowd worked up when I walked up mid-set, suggested that everyone get ready to form a Wall of Death.

I was walking away when I heard this Wall of Death proposal go out over the PA, and turned right around. “Wall of Death?” I thought in my special in-my-mind-only accent. “That sounds quaint! Why don’t I stick around?”

Tim McIlrath, Rise Against’s front man, was asking people to form a big empty space down the middle of the crowd, all the way up to the stage. “Awesome,” my useless, completely irrational brain said. “This is a great photo opportunity.”

You can see where this is going.

Laugh, chumps. Laugh. Go ahead.

(more…)