Common Ground Music Festival finished on Sunday with headliners Empire Of The Sun, The Flaming Lips and Man Man. The bands each played rock music with their own creative twist.
Lansing resident Amy Baxer, 29, said this was her second time seeing The Flaming Lips. Baxer said she was deep in the crowd volleying the crowd-surfed beach balls.
Brenton Groehn, a senior at Western Michigan University, watched The Flaming Lips from a row of hammocks that swung on an overcasting hill.
“Hammocks are something special, they’re spacious — the true VIP section for the outsiders,” Groehn said. “There’s fresh air and we can see everything from here.”
Groehn said he was the most excited for Empire Of The Sun.
“They really don’t care, it’s all crazy, Egyptian, they are truly the empire of the sun,” Groehn said.
Motion City Soundtrack, The Spill Canvas and Mike Mains And The Branches played in the GM Pavilion. Mike Mains And The Branches, a band from Texas that has relocated to Detroit, played indie rock and music from their 2014 album “Calm Down, Everything Is Fine.”
“The entire reason I’m here is Motion City,” Corey Bardo, 24-year-old resident of Oneida County said. “It’s just pure nostalgia.”
Lead singer of The Spill Canvas, Nick Thomas, spoke to the crowd and said Motion City Soundtrack and The Spill Canvas will be hitting the road together for the next month.
“I listened to Spill Canvas a lot in high school," Grand Rapids resident Laina Zientek, 27, said. "Very excited to hear “All Hail The Heartbreaker” and “Staple Gun.""
Zientek’s friend Alex Sommer, 25, said she was looking forward to seeing Empire Of The Sun and Motion City Soundtrack.
Sorority Noise, Foxing, MeWithoutYou and the Lansing Unionized Vaudeville Spectacle played on the Sparrow Stage.
Also featured on Sunday was the Ultimate Painting State Finals. The festival guide said the winners from the 2014-2015 Ultimate Painting season throughout the state of Michigan came together to compete for an opportunity to advance to the international finals.
Saturday night headliners were Wale, Snoop Dogg and Tech N9ne. Jr BadInfluence, a rapper from Lansing Mich., also performed on Saturday.
The festival started Tuesday, July 7, and has taken place annually since 2000, according to the Common Ground official website. From 2000-2014, one million guests have attended the festival and it has brought in an economic impact of over $60 million to the Mid-Michigan community, the website states.
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