Life in the X Fest lane
Special to the Pioneer Press

Ask Flipp bassist Freaky Useless what he remembers most about playing in the annual outdoor musical festival now known as 93X Fest, and he doesn't hesitate to come up with an answer.

"I think it was our second year there," Freaky says of the festival, which runs today through Sunday at Float-Rite Park in nearby Somerset, Wis., and features dozens of bands including Audioslave, Stone Sour and Sum 41 along with Flipp. "We played, like, a three-song set, and it was raining, so [Flipp singer] Brynn Arens took his pants down and mooned the crowd. Then it turned into this huge mudfest like Woodstock or something. People were just pummeling us with mud."

Arens' antics just happened to be caught on camera by MTV, which was covering the festival, and the mud-flinging footage aired — complete with Arens' derrière digitally blurred out — for a week straight on "MTV News."

Flipp, which has since signed to Artemis Records and become a national act, loves taking its over-the-top, colorful brand of rock back to Float-Rite Park every May, playing in the festival almost every year since it started in the mid-1990s as "Edgefest," an outdoor concert put on by a Twin Cities alternative radio station.

Since local hard-rock station 93X took over things a few years back, heavier acts like Audioslave and Saliva are the order of the day. Flipp, which at past festivals has sent an *NSYNC look-alike group onstage in its place and dumped a half-ton of its "Flipp" brand cereal via helicopter onto concertgoers, loves playing regardless of who else shows up.

"It's really good for us because we're the hometown boys," said Freaky, who declined to share his real name. "We get to come back home, and the crowd here is really our family. Regardless of what our national status is now or where we're at with things, this is our old stomping ground, our people."

More than 30,000 people attended last year's 93X Fest, according to the event's Web site.

And thousands more are expected to spend Memorial Day weekend camping out at Float-Rite Park on the Apple River, kicking off the outdoor concert season in Minnesota.

"It's a pretty solid idea," Freaky said. "You come in Friday, lock yourself in and come out sometime on Sunday night, Monday morning, whatever."

While past festivals at Float-Rite have caused problems with overenthusiastic concertgoers — 93X has a list of "things to remember" on its Web site, including not drinking in your car while waiting in gridlock along the Stillwater Bridge — Freaky said 93X Fest will "never die."

"I've heard people say every year, 'Oh, it's not as good as it was last year,' " he said. "Let me tell you, it's as good as it always was, and it always will be good. People are always going to want a place to go, pitch a tent, get drunk and rock 'n' roll all weekend."