Another weekend, another Tobacco Road-centered music festival sponsored by the tireless Oski Gonzalez and Queen of the Scene. No, seriously, these two are among the most unfailingly positive movers and shakers on the local scene. And if they put on so many multi-stage, million-band festivals, it's because they really care. The Colossal Music Fest lacks a genre theme — as many of their events do — and instead focuses on being very, very large and very, very local. The main departure is that this edition doesn't take place solely at Tobacco Road; its second day, Saturday, moves uptown to Churchill's.
Friday at Tobacco Road features three stages: in the club's parking lot, on the outdoor patio, and in the upstairs "cabaret." That second-floor space is home to most of the heavier acts of the evening, including, among others, a set by Madsic, a quintet that deserves a medal for being possibly the only industrial metal band from Boca. On the patio, highlights include the Coffee House Gypsies, a feel-good, folk-rock kind of act with a particularly rabid Internet fan base. Saturday squeezes three stages out of Churchill's too. Inside, we endorse a scheduled set by local blues rocker Uncle Scotchy, who usually plays at Bougainvillea's in South Miami. Outside, check out the hip-hop/Latin/rock fusion of Miami's the Cornerstoners or, at another end of the musical spectrum, the high-energy hardcore/punk Fort Lauderdale quartet We Fight Back.
