RFTT ROCKS!!!!

[plumcrazy]

I'm sitting here at the Rock For The Troops Concert in Downtown Altoona's Heritage Plaza and all I can say is "WOW"

The bands that have played have all kicked some serious ass. If your not here..... GET HERE.

There are still a number of bands to play. Come out and support the troops

This has been a truly awesome day.

[generationgap]

All I can say is yo u still got time to come out to Heritage Plaza......Homers Army is up now with alot of good bands to come....

[grimmbass]

Thanks to Kevin and Bill for giving the Lies, Inc. crew and I the chance to share the stage with such a great bunch of bands for a VERY worthy cause! A good time was had by all...and we'd love to do it again! Thanks also to the awesome sound reinforcement and stage help getting bands on and off the stage!

Rock on,

Kent

[bfoust]

Everyone did a wonderful job setting up, changing bands, and taking down. Kudos to all who helped.

Everything seemed to go smoothly (from a pure spectator's point of view)

Nice meeting some of you again, mjb & Rob, and TRG and Ed for the first time

I'll have a site up soon with pictures Ed.


Thanks for everything guys, today was a great day for live music!

=)

[jangel]

The Rock Brothers want to thank Bill and his entire crew for organizing and executing a great event, and allowing us to participate in this worthwhile cause. We had a great time playing and meeting so many of the local musicians both participants and working staff and those that were in attendance.

Rock & Roll Forever

[Griff]

thanks for having us (Homers Army) we had a great time and were glad to be part of the concert. it was nice to meet and hear some other bands as well as run into old friends.

[RobTheDrummer]

Hell yea! Every band kicked ass, the sound kicked ass, the people kicked ass. What a great day for music and support for our troops!

[DirtySanchez]

Great Job yesterday Everyone.
It was cool to meet some more rockpagers. Always great people.
Sorry if I just disappeared, I was running on 2 and a half hours sleep.
I went home and crashed.

[Hawk]

I have so much to say but I can't find the right words. I have so many people to thank, and I met and worked with so many wonderful people.

Perhaps the words will come later.

Not that I'm a holy person, but (even if you don't believe) please accept this from me , as th greatest thing I can say to you.

God bless you !

[Skate Toad]

Silver Sunday had a blast! Thanks for letting us be a part of all this. And a big hand to the men behind the curtain. You guys did the best job! Sean's system was amazing and his crew was easy to work with, big thanks to him and his gang as well. All the bands i did get see were TOP NOTCH, plus no "tudes" what so ever which made it even more pleasant.
Todd and Silver Sunday

[bassgirl]

Kitty Whip would like to thank everyone involved with RFTT! Thank you for allowing us to take part in this awesome event for a wonderful cause.

It was an honor for us to share the same stage with such accomplished musicians.

[ToonaRockGuy]

Gotta do the "Official" Thank you post here...

From Hawk, mjb, and myself...

-Thanks to all the bands for graciously volunteering your time and acting so professionally. You guys and gals were all helping each other out, and if I had a nickel for every time someone from a band asked me "What can I do to help?", I'd have been able to donate a million bucks to RFTT. People shared tips, muscle, and equipment, and we pulled off a major show with minor hassle. Well done.

-The fans who showed up. Your presence made it a great show for the musicians, and raised everyone up to a new level of performance. Thank you.

The organizations/people who helped us out on this long journey:
-Donna (YankeeRose). She's our fourth musketeer, so to speak, and we couldn't have done it without you.
-Ron Nearhoof and the entire Rockpage community. Without Rockpage, there would be no RFTT.
-Greg Stager for providing the stage.
-Shawn Hocherl and his crew from Showtime Sound for the PA and show.
-Always A Party Rentals for the tents.
-Jim Price and the staff of Q94 and WRTA.
-Neil Rudel and everyone at The Altoona Mirror.
-Carolyn Donaldson, Kristina Rohall, and everyone at WTAJ TV-10.
-Tommy Edwards and the staffs at WRKY, WALY, WFBG, WFGY, and WVAM.
-Linda and Jack Faust.
-Amy Charlton and all at Roaring Spring Copy Rite
-The City Of Altoona and Altoona PD Officer Pat Himes.
-Dan's Famous Hardwood Bar-B-Que for the delicious food.
-Altoona Community Action Agency
-Ed and Cathy of Get Closer To The Music
-Shirley's Shoes
-Larry's Dairy
-Tabitha Piper for the wonderful poetry reading.
-Kayla Kennedy for the great job with the National Anthem and God Bless America

And last but not least...

ALL THE ROCKPAGE VOLUNTEERS. You guys made our lives a WHOLE lot easier with all your help, special shout-outs to Dirty Sanchez, BFoust, and BassFinger for all the effort.

People, you don't know how well this thing ran. We started only 30 min. behind schedule, and we ended 30 min. late, so we were (for all intensive purposes) completely ON TIME. 13 bands...all day...15 minute changovers, and YOU DID IT!!!

Rockpage, a job well done. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, thank you, thank you. You truly showed love and passion for our troops, and love and passion for our music scene, and you let Altoona know that we are here and we are for real.

Thank you, and God Bless.

[bfoust]

I must say, when you guys (musicians) put your mind on something, it gets done, and it gets done good.

[nakedtwister]

I must say, when you guys (musicians) put your mind on something, it gets done, and it gets done good.

Over the past few years I have participated or been to different events and I have to say none were headed up more more professionally than this. Great big thanks to Bill, Mike , Kevin, Donna, the entire sound crew, all of the bands, the people of Altoona, RP volunteers. Everyone. Even the the APD officer ran to the Sheetz to get Griff ( Homers Army ) some snuff because he was Jonesin' for his long cut. Great day in all. I thought that poem was awesome and wouldn't mind getting a copy if possible. Also people were running amuck to find equipt. for Tony Mollick Project to use because their ride broke down. Hope they got to play. Had to crash for work. I'm sure they made it happen. Thanks again for a wonderful day!!!!!

[Jim Price]

Echoing all the sentiments above, GREAT JOB EVERYONE!

Every element of this show came together well, from the great sound from Shawn and co., to everything running close to schedule throughout the day, to the bands showing up early and all being willing to help out to make it an overall great show. And everybody brought their 'A' game and made their sets count; all the bands and performers represented the area music scene well! Hats off to Kitty Whip, who sounded very good for just their second gig! I wished I could have stuck around to see Slacker Theory's debut and the Hurricanes, but "Backyard Rocker" duty called...

But again, to Bill, Kevin, Mike, Donna, Shawn and his crew, the bands and performers, and everybody else who helped put this show together - congratulations for an excellent day that served notice to the community that we have a talented music scene that cares!

By the way, I hope to have a few pictures from the day and a video from Kitty Whip's set posted in the next few days...

[webmiztris]

cool! looking forward to seeing the video, JP. Kitty Whip had a blast performing yesterday! big thanks for kevin for contacting us about this show...

[mjb]

man, what can i say. i wanted to reflect a while on the events that actually led up to yesterdays event. inbetween changing diapers fixing meals and playing baby-dolls with michaela and now she is down for a well deserved NAP. PENNSTATE game sat. and RFTT on sunday. big weekend for a little girl. anyway, i am just blown away from yesterday, i mean look at the list of help we had (kevs post). i honestly really don't know what to say. there are no words to describe all that was going through my mind this morning when i was thinking about the last 9 months of this. i've met some of the greatest people ever through being involved as an "organizer" all the bands who graciously invited us to come to their gigs and set up our rftt table and always treated us with the greatest hospitality. the friends i have made along the way are priceless to me. one in particular, and i'm not going to name names but we got off to a rough start (twice) both times, my fault. but i think we might have finally got it right, at least i hope so. its bothered me all this time because of the admiration i have for him and his talent. and yesterday he acted like nothing ever happened and we've been buddys forever. you know who you are and THANKYOU. i would like to thank peopleand name names but i'm afraid to forget somebody(due to short term memory loss due to you know what) hawk, it has been my pleasure to get to know you and hang out through all of this and a friendship that i feel will last a lifetime. kevin, your little announcement in front of my family yesterday made me feel like the man and that was cool. your a good dude and also a friendship that will last a life time. yesterday came off beautifully cuz of YOU, the musicians. no ego crap at all everybody helping eachother, letting eachother use and share gear, kittywhip stepping up to an earlier slot and making that all happen even though you might not have been mentally prepared to. thers all kinds of stuff like that that people did to keep it running smooth. you should all be very very proud of how it went.
cuz it went that way cuz of you.

i am going to thank a couple people for yesterday mainly our earlybirds

dirty sanchez, cool meeting ya man! thankyou. you were there and then you weren't

bottoms up, dude, you were there before me and stayed all day and all night helped set it all up and tear it all down helprd setup between bands,what can i say, that was above and beyond the call. thanks a bunch

bfoust and your dad- been helping all along, put in one hell of a long day and was there till the end. thanks brother!

a guy named chris(i'm not sure if he's a rockpager or what his user name is) but was there early came back to watch the show, and helped clean up. thanks bud.

yankeerose- kind of our unsung hero through the whole thing and we owe alot to ya for all your help. thankyou donna for all your hardwork.

getclosertothemusic, ed, your just a great guy all around, you and cathy had all that stuff that was set up for the kids, that was awesome. thankyou.

theres alot of people to thank. i apologize if i left people out but, thankyou everybody.

right now our goal is to have this wrapped up and out to the troops for christmas, if thers anybody out there that can take on some editing and has those skills let us know.

thanks again everybody.

mike

[metalchurch]

Glad to hear that it went great and everything flowed nicely. Hopefully it made a good impression on the public eye and put to rest any stereotypes and rumours.

Hawk, was this the last one that's being done?

[songsmith]

Kudos to everyone, my other gig ran far longer than thought yesterday, so I couldn't come back as planned, but I was there at least until my impromptu harmonica thing went sour... that sucked, but everything else was awesome. Very well done. At one point, I sat sort of alone, and did a slow scan of everything, and as I looked over it all, I got that warm fuzzy feeling, proud that my friends were doing something so cool for people they don't even know. I'm lucky to even see that, let alone partake in it. You guys rock.---------->JMS

[HurricaneBob]

Thanks for including us, we had a blast. Everyone sounded awesome thanks to Shawns exceptional PA.

This is one of the best organized bene's in a long time.
Hawk, Kev and Mike, you guys rock!

[BassFinger]

Gotta do the "Official" Thank you post here...

From Hawk, mjb, and myself...

ALL THE ROCKPAGE VOLUNTEERS. You guys made our lives a WHOLE lot easier with all your help, special shout-outs to Dirty Sanchez, BFoust, and BassFinger for all the effort.

I (aka Bottoms_Up) enjoyed doing what I could. I got to meet many great people and heard some awesome bands that I've never had the chance to hear.

Cheers

[generationgap]

Bill, Kevin, Mike , Donna,

Take a bow.....

You put on 1st class show....

Anytime, Anytime you need us to do this benefit again consider us in now...
Even if there is someone that can't make it that day, don't be concerned
I'll find somebody to fill in.....
When I got there and seen Shawn's sound, the stage, how everything was going so smooth.
Wow....
Super jobs guys... someone made the comment that the band changing
times was just like professional.

Thank Guys

[rreihart]

Most of the time when we have played big multi-band events like this, we have walked away a little bit disgusted about lack of planning or poor sound dudes with even worse attitudes. NO SUCH THING ON THIS DAY!

We had such a good experience at RFTT and would be happy to do something like this anytime. Except for the song that we had 3 instruments playing in 3 different keys, we had blast.

Thanks to all from the red letter band

[YankeeRose]

To all of the wonderful Bands/Musicians/Performers, everyone involved, those who donated anything and especially those who were there, I can't say anything more than has already been said, but one thing deserves repeating: THANK YOU! You ALL totally R O C K! Bill, Mike and Kevin, a special THANK YOU to you men for your inspiration and all of your truly hard work from day one. Cathy (Mrs. Hawk), all the times you joined me were a lot of fun, including Sunday. THANK YOU to my fellow Toop Supporter, and HAPPY 39th BIRTHDAY tomorrow! Also, a THANK YOU needs to go out to the face painting Lady, she was way cool! (Actually, I believe I owe her some paints after all of the paintings my son received. ) A final personal thank you goes out to my children. THANK YOU to my daughter for running all the way to Heritage Plaza to give me Tony's message and her cell to use, so he could arrange for some equipment and Kitty Whip's time to be moved up. (That was only Kitty Whip's second public performance, and Slacker Theory's first? BRAVO!!!) To my son, THANK YOU for being so well-behaved all day and night...you did me proud! (He is 10 and was actually there longer than I was, 12 hours or so...while my daughter was with him, I left and came back twice. He said he enjoyed all of the GREAT Music he heard. Heh, he also said he REALLY likes Kitty Whip, and asked if I heard them play "I Wanna Be Sedated"...I missed that, but got to hear/see them play enough Tunes that I was indeed impressed!) How 'bout them STEELERS!?! 34 to 7, WHOO HOO!!! (Sorry about the antenna. I didn't think starting my day like that would bode well, and as the day wore on...whew...but thankfully, the extra caffeine kicked in toward the end of the day...or maybe a friend sent me some Positive Energy/Good Vibes...she's good like that!) Hope those who were exhausted and had sore feet are feeling better! (You all know who you are. ) Btw, someone should have posted that I was WRONG Re: the directions...usually y'all are just waiting for such an opportunity to pounce on anyone!
Although, the first time I took 12th Ave. and the second right I found the parking lot no problem, but every time I turned onto 11th Ave., I took the first right and had to turn around, DUH me!
It was an extremely fulfulling day, as at the end, we had 2 banners full of messages! Heaven Willing, I'd definitely do it all again.

[mjb]

anybody have any pictures to put up coughcoughbfoustcoughcough