People looking for a great rock show in Minnesota need not look any further than their own state! There are many talented bands to choose from and Saturday, July 8th brought 3 of those bands to The What’s Up Lounge! Sponsored by 95.7 The Rock Station, Throw The Fight, City of the Weak, and Diskord played a show that Mankato was apparently waiting for! When I arrived, the venue was already pretty full! It was a welcome site to see all the support for live music!
By the time Diskord took the stage, there was people packed in from the stage to the bar and they had energy to give to the band! Zimmy took that energy and gave it right back as did all the band members. There were times that they had everyone jumping so much the floor felt like it could go at any moment and that is a sign of a great show at The What’s Up! Midway through the set, we found out there were two people celebrating birthdays and one bachelorette party going on. It was cool that they chose this show to celebrate! Diskord delivered the high quality show that I have come to expect from them and with the shows they have scheduled in the future, I don’t see their pace slowing any time soon! Check out The What’s Up Lounge website to see future shows from them and other acts!
City of the Weak took the stage next after the chaos of the stage flip. I always love catching their live show. Their energy and crowd interaction are enough to make people want to be there, not to mention the awesome songs they play. Stef certainly knows how to get the crowd going. She got right in the face of multiple people while singing, stepped back to the drum set to do some major headbanging, and was constantly jumping and dancing all over the stage. The other two up front followed suit and even the drummer got into it by interacting with front row. I’ve seen City of the Weak on both the large shows like Northern Invasion and the personal venues such as this show and I can tell you they go all out no matter where they are playing. I admire what these guys do and imagine my surprise when they called on me by name to head up on stage to take a quick picture of them with the crowd! It really was a high point of the night for me! If you are going to be at Rock USA or Rock Fest in the coming week, be sure to check them out opening up the main stage both on Friday at Rock USA and again on Saturday at Rock Fest!
Back in 2013 when I was first starting out with concert photography in a basement bar called The Afterlife in Algona, IA, a band from the Twin Cities came through that made a huge impression. Throw The Fight was that band and they still made that same impression tonight at The What’s Up. I’ve had the opportunity to photograph them a couple of times since then, and each time they put on a wonderful show! Admittedly, it had been a while and a lot of the songs played were a first time seeing them live for me. It was cool to see the crowd singing along to every song, fueling the energy on stage. Throw The Fight hit it hard from the get go and kept it up through the controversial “encore”! They paused every now and then to make jokes among themselves and the crowd, and then went right back into it. Getting to see these guys live again was really cool and brought back memories of why I started this journey as a photographer. They will also be at Rock USA on Saturday, July 15th, so if you are at that show you get to see two of the bands in this review! Throw The Fight will not disappoint and it will be awesome to see them on a larger festival stage!
After the show, all of the bands hung out to talk with people and I heard a lot of people saying how great the show and each of their sets was. It was clear that everyone had a great time.
As always, get out and support live music and I’ll see you out there!
