The final week of the 1st round of the Festival finally reared its exhausted head and blew one last breath of fire into the Middle East. It was almost as if the bands got together ahead of time and discussed how professional they were all going to be because they knew how tired the staff was. They were fantastic, and gave us one of the smoothest weeks we have had so far. Wednesday night kicked off with 12 gauge Affinity, Mission Control, and Imbalance. Lucy Grace graced us with a very original mix of tunes, while Debris displayed an obviously large following. Scram got the crowd going with some Pearl Jammish rock songs followed by an extremely impressive, yet under-viewed, set by Outthunk. Keep an eye on those guys. 80 Proof started off Friday night with a bang as they got quite a solid number of hands up in the room. Unfortunately they just missed the 4th place slot by a few votes, but i bet we'll see more of them in the near future. Sundown Seventy, Life's Burning, and the Ginsko Method rocked while Daisy Cutter, Floss, and Lucretia's Daggers finished off the night with room packed full of followers. Look West opened up saturday night for one of the busiest nights we have seen all year. Those guys were followed by the very original folk rock tunes of Papermoon. The dark, melodic rock of Heretics Fork hit the stage soon after. Frequency 7 almost caused the floor of the Middle East to give out due to their large number of fans jumping up and down for 25 mintues straight. Spawning Echoes also had an impressive following as did the P-Funk style band VMF. They both kept the crowd on their feet. Octalien and Moxie also played very impressive sets to a very receptive crowd; it was one of the best crowds we've had all season. Sunday night finally arrived and the last night of the 1st round was about to begin. Melodram kicked it off followed by the acoustic rock jams of both Dann Russo and the Whiskey, and Two Finger Split. The Chaos Junkies played an extremely original set and definitley won over some fans at the Middle East. Make sure you catch their set at the Paradise. Mellophonic took the stage and although they didn't have too many fans in the audience they definitley won over some new fans that night. Be sure to check them out in the future as well. Ript played to an impressive following, followed buy the all instrumental power trio Dreamline. They too won over the crowd as their guitar player ripped every string off his guitar at the end of their set. I've been waiting all year to see that; it finally happened on the last night. A sudden Silence ended the night off on a high note as they just barely missed the cut to play the Paradise. The final week of round 1 was a fantastic experience. The bands were great and all seemed to have a fantastic time regardless of whether or not they moved on. Ahhh, Paradise has arrived. Can't wait to see you all there.