It's festival season and you're juiced. You're looking forward to good times in the sun with your friends, your family, your beer, your food on a stick. You're ready to dance, and you hope the bands will play your favorite songs.

There are a few songs that you can pretty much count on hearing whenever you enter the festival gates and if you're really into familiar classic rock and oldies, you'll be well pleased. If not, then, well, it's the perfect time to get in line for the Port-A-John.

Here are some of the songs the OnMilwaukee.com editorial staff banks on hearing ad nauseum this summer.

Julie Lawrence
Staff Writer

Oh God, where do we begin?

We probably begin with "Free Bird." This cliche is almost guaranteed at any summer festival, at least once. That, or the drunk shirtless guy is yelling for it. Actually, just about any Lynyrd Skynyrd hit is sure to rear it's nasty head.

Let's move on to "Brown Eyed Girl." It's a total Baby Boomer I'm-getting-old-but-I-still-know-how-to-boggie-after-a-couple-Miller-Lites song. It gets all the wrong people dancing.

Then, depending on whether said cover band wants to "jam out" or "get funky," it's bound to be Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" or "Play That Funky Music White Boy," respectively. People are such suckers for songs they could sing in their sleep.

Drew Olson
Senior Editor

The Church Festival Set List from Hell:
"Good Lovin'"
"American Girl"
"What I Like About You"
"Pretty Woman"
"Proud Mary"
"Louie Louie"

Molly Snyder Edler
Staff Writer

1. "Louie, Louie" (The Kingsmen) -- I love looking around at the crowd when this song is playing. So many people cannot stop themselves from belting it out. Unfortunately, this makes a way overplayed song even more annoying.

2. "Mony, Mony" (Billy Idol version) -- Actually, lots of Billy Idol songs have made it to festival favorite status, like "Dancing with Myself" and "Rebel Yell." I was a huge fan of Billy's, oh, about 25 years ago.

3. "Summer of '69" (Bryan Adams) -- A good tune that brings back a lot of memories for a lot of people, but there is absolutely no reason to ever hear it again.

4. "Jack & Diane" (John Cougar Mellencamp or whatever variation of his name he goes by these days.) -- I actually know a couple named Jack and Diane, and lemme tell ya, they hate hearing this song more than I do.

Bobby Tanzilo
Managing Editor

There are few songs that cover bands play that I want to hear. If it's a song I love, no cover band is likely to do anything to make me love it more. And if it's a song I don't like, I don't want to hear it.

The Beatles were music 101 for me ... fundamental. I also like a fair number of Isleys tunes. But "Twist & Shout" is one I barely want to hear by either of them, much less by the Swill Jockeys or whatever other covers act is currently kissing up to the festival masses.

Ditto Van Morrison and his woefully ubiquitous "Brown Eyed Girl." Good song by a great artist destroyed by overexposure.

It's almost a given, too, that at any festival some band will roll out an utterly embarrassing version of Bob Marley & the Wailers' "Jamming."

If they count off "Free Bird," I'm running for the door. Same goes for that horrible Todd Rundgren song "Bang the Drum All Day."

Andy Tarnoff
Editor

"Brown Eyed Girl" -- Funny how even the blue-eyed girls sing along like they own this one.

"Working for the Weekend" -- Love the Loverboy? Boy, The Love Monkeys love Loverboy, too.

"Mony, Mony" -- The nadir of Billy Idol and noon act at the church festival.

"Sweet Child of Mine" -- Sweet Jesus, please let this song fade into oblivion like Axl Rose's career.

"867-5309" -- I got it, I got it ...