Two major summer festivals around the Midwest are in the books. Summerfest wrapped up with a pop-country bang thanks to Sugarland, and Dave Matthews Band brought its brand-spanking-new Caravan tour to Chicago for the second of four stops.

Both festivals had a lot to offer and both were great successes. There can be only one winner, however, in the festival smackdown to end all festival smackdowns, Summerfest vs. Caravan. The festivals are judged on 10 equally weighted criteria: food, beer, parking, restrooms, security, music, venue, location, people-watching and value. Any draws will be counted as a win for both festivals.

Food
Summerfest continually offers new vendors, and almost all of the vendors serve up at least a couple options that could be considered great. Caravan, on the other hand, had more limited options but everything looked really great. The mustard-fried catfish was particularly exceptional and Connie's deep-dish pizza was better than I expected from festival pizza.

Summerfest brought way more options to the table, though, and variety is the spice of life. Assuming quality and price are draws – which they are – variety is what sets Summerfest apart.

Winner: Summerfest

Beer
Every DMB concert I've been to serves Anheuser-Busch products. Summerfest serves MillerCoors-distributed products including Leinenkugel. Caravan tries to make a comeback in the beer category by offering Dos Equis, but this is one of the easiest categories to judge.

Winner: Summerfest

Parking
Summerfest has a multitude of parking options around the grounds, from street parking to public parking garages and the infamous "Lot P." Those options can be expensive, and in the case of street parking, difficult to find. Caravan provided secure parking for 30,000 cars in a rough, unpaved field, and while tailgating was officially prohibited, the DMB faithful were undeterred and parking officials were gracious enough to allow it anyways. Oh yeah, and Caravan parking was free.

Winner: Caravan

Value
This is almost the opposite of the parking situation. Summerfest is $15 to get in, maximum. If you're paying attention, you can get in for free (or at a steep discount) almost every day. Summerfest admission only gets out of hand if you're looking to see a headliner at the Marcus Amphitheater. Even then, Summerfest general admission is included. Caravan was $85 for a one-day pass and $195 (plus a laundry list of fees) for a three-day pass. Sure, Caravan includes the headliner and free parking, which makes up some of the difference, but it's just not enough.

Caravan offered free filtered water stations for those that brought their own bottle, but the stations were too limited and lines could take over an hour to get through. What Caravan gives in parking and water, it takes back in upfront costs.

Winner: Summerfest

Restrooms
An undoubtedly important subject considering how long people are at these festivals at a given time, Caravan had only Porta-Johns, but they had enough of them that the lines were never outrageous. While the lines at Summerfest can get lengthy, they're rarely unreasonable, and they have permanent fixtures. That's a big plus.

Winner: Summerfest

Security
Summerfest has a security team that is effective but inflexible. Many of them are part-time, or college students looking for a few extra bucks. They do their best, but have been known to enjoy their position of power, so to speak. Conversely, Caravan organized security through the surrounding neighborhood and parking fields with the Chicago Transit Authority and hired a full-time security team to police the festival grounds. 3S Security, as a group, was a great security team. Understanding the atmosphere of the venue, they were firm but fair and would make frequent water runs for those camping out at the front of the main South Works stage all day.

Winner: Caravan

Music
Obviously music is the most subjective category to judge. Summerfest truly offers something for everyone while Caravan focuses much more on one specific audience, the jam-band fan.

Milwaukee resident and UWM student Rob Schroder summed up the Caravan-goer's music choices best.

"Summerfest obviously has more variety," said Schroder. "That's awesome if you're into that, which I'm obviously not."

Caravan definitely has a niche, and they played to it better than any festival I can remember. The Flaming Lips did an amazing rendition of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" that included lead singer Wayne Coyne crowd-surfing in an inflatable bubble. While The Flaming Lips also played at Summerfest, their "Dark Side" tribute must be seen in person.

Admittedly, I'm a major Dave Matthews Band fan, but I hold their performances to a different standard than any other band I see. Friday's set was strong, particularly when the band played "Joyride" for the first time since the summer of 2006, but I felt like I had heard that show many times before. It was solid but unremarkable for a band I consider the epitome of the live performance.

Saturday night was a performance for couples with a lot of love songs and jazzy jams. It was understandable considering the oppressive heat and a number of the band members having played multiple shows that day. Lead guitarist Tim Reynolds was on his third show of the day, having played with his trio, TR3, to open the festival for the day and also performed a fantastic acoustic set with Dave Matthews in the afternoon.

Sunday, however, was the best concert I've ever been to. The band, as a whole, hasn't rocked harder in the eight shows I've seen and they reached into the "way-back" machine to please the diehards in attendance. The show ended with a rip-roaring cover of Sly and The Family Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and included the strongest, funkiest jam of the entire festival. Thanks to YouTube user rtponder for sharing the video below with us. The video contains the final verse of the song and the final jam. Fast forward to 3:00 for the jam, but I strongly recommend watching the entirety of the video. Disclaimer: There's a moment of strong language near the 3:55 mark.

Winner: Caravan, thanks to Sunday's DMB performance.

Venue
Caravan was the first event held at the Lakeside location since the U.S. Steel plant that used to occupy the area closed in 1992. The site remained a vacant eyesore for the better part of 20 years and when Jam Productions teamed up with Live Nation and Dave Matthews Band to select a site, they chose to renovate and recycle the U.S. Steel site. Being the first event held at the site, there were some growing pains for Caravan. Parking was about a 20-minute walk from the festival gate, I counted three picnic tables throughout the entire festival grounds, and shade was at a premium on the oppressively hot weekend.

Summerfest, on the other hand, has a 43-year head start on Caravan and a permanent fixture on Milwaukee's lakeshore. There's nothing else like it, and they keep making it better every year. Summerfest takes this round definitively, but rest assured that if Caravan continues after this year, ground will be made up.

Winner: Summerfest

Location
Summerfest: picturesque views of Milwaukee almost any direction you look. A spot so close to Lake Michigan that it's almost never "too hot." The biggest perk of Summerfest's location is the easy highway access that makes coming and going a breeze.

Caravan: A newly renovated vacant lot with no easy way to get there and a drive through a sketchy neighborhood from any direction you're coming. The grounds themselves ended up in a dust storm thanks to the foot traffic from the thousands of attendees.

Winner: Summerfest

People-watching
Another tough category to judge. The two festivals cater to vastly different groups, for the most part. Both festivals have some of the best people watching you could ask for, though. This one is too close to call.

Winner: Draw

Verdict
With a score of 7-4, Summerfest takes the victory in the inaugural Summer Music Festival Smackdown. Objectively, Summerfest is almost impossible to beat. Its effective permanence in the Milwaukee landscape gives it an advantage over almost any festival.

Subjectively, however, with performances like the ones Caravan offered up, from The Flaming Lips, Ben Folds and four shows (including the Dave and Tim acoustic set) from Dave Matthews, you'll find me at Caravan every time. Given a few years to work the kinks out, I expect future Smackdowns to be considerably closer competitions.

Thankfully, there's room in the summer to enjoy both festivals.