Saturday at Bumbershoot

I've been looking forward to Bumbershoot all year, it's the first festival I budget for: buy the Bumbershoot tickets, then think about what (if anything) else I want to see and can afford. I've been going since I was a teenager in the seventies and it was free for 4 days. I especially loved it because I got to see all of the bands that normally only played bars and were thus usually unavailable. I take my kids as much as they can stand it, and they're good sports so the girsl go all 3 days with me. Ben just hit 13 (teenager!) so he went one day with us this year too.

Logistics always have to be dealt with. Get your supplies, sun block (if you're lucky and the weather calls for it) or rain gear as needed, some food and water, and make sure all of the cameras are charged and cleared of old pictures or videos. I always try to get there at 11AM so I can check out the arts and so on, but always run late so I'm lucky if I get there at 12 when the bands start.

Once again we arranged to pick up my daughter early and get to Bumbershoot as it opened so we could check out the visual arts for an hour before the bands start - always the optimists! I ran late enough getting out of the house that we were down to 30 minutes before the bands if things went well. Things did not go well.

As we got my daughter we noticed that I failed to get all of the correct tickets for the festival (I inadvertently swapped a Sunday ticket in for a Saturday. Doh!) We headed back towards home, losing more time, only to find that my car wasn't going to be able to complete the trip. We had to get a ride back to my daughters after picking up the correct ticket so that we could have her drive us, losing even more time. Sigh. Ended up missing the first few bands. Rats.

On the other hand, the weather was gorgeous and there were lots of bands! We made it to the Key Arena to see Brite Futures, kicking off this years Bumbershoot with fun dancy party music, nice way to start!

The girls and I saw Brite Futures perform as Natalie Portman's Shaved Head four and a half years ago at the EMP Sound Off and I've seen them several times since and each time is a bigger party. Hair is a recurring Brite Futures subject:


We stopped in and listened to a bit of the Great Mundane, the Sky Church is an excellent venue for any kind of music.


We didn't stay to dance much since there were more bands to see like Kris Orlofski and the Passenger String Quartet:

The strings and rich deep multipart vocals give the music an almost orchestral feeling, much more layered than typical rock or pop, very nice:


Back outside for an excellent Champagne Champagne set

Champagne Champagne puts on reliably fun shows, they're getting to be one of my favorite local hip hop groups.

Wagon put on a fun set of guitar oriented classic rock to western influenced sounding numbers that had a good chunk of the early crowd dancing, the song "Keep It On the Down Low" builds to a nice climax that had the audience moving and applauding:


Next it was back to the Key Arena for a family favorite: The Presidents of the USA!
We've all seen the Presidents multiple times at Bumbershoot, Presidents Day shows, even a secret Microsoft show and they always deliver. Speaking of delivering, here's a mailman themed song in honor (sort of) of my dad:

So many Presidents songs are silly and insane and just fun as hell to rock out to. Spiders driving dune buggies gets me very time:

Spiders fat ass abdomen stuck in the bucket seat - who else but the PUSA could've written that?
The Presidents also have an excellent sense of movement and their rocking out transitions kick ass. A song about peaches that gets us all jumping then singing along, then moving to the harder guitar in the verse repeatedly, classic Presidents and really nobody else does anything quite like this:

I got several other good songs by the Presidents like Love Everybody, Old Man On the Back Porch, I Will Survive and Kick Out The Jams/Shout was killer, you can track those down on my youtube channel.
They ended like they usually do with "Video Killed the Radio Star" and nailed it:


It's always interesting coming out of a dim indoor venue to the bright sunlight, somehow it feels like coming back to reality; maybe I'm just flashing back to the seventies concert experience. I was able to catch Yuni In Taxco even though I had missed their set earlier, since they did a YR Radio tent interview and performance I was able to catch - kind of a make-up, which was cool!


I only managed to catch a bit of The Nortec Collective: Bostich and Fussible on video:

The sun washes it out, and it's too short to do them justice. Describing them doesn't really do them justice either but I'll try. They had a tuba player and an accordian player playing against some sequenced tracks, quite different but quick and uptempo, talented musicians having a good time, definitely fun.

We also caught Vasen, they use an instrument I'm unfamiliar with, it's a string instrument played with a bow and it has keys that change the pitch of the string, quite different. Fascinating classical sound to my ear with the way the melodies, themes, and timing intertwine.


Valient Thorr in the Exhibition Hall with lasers! Fun show, amusing band name and the facial hair seemed to follow Brite Future's theme of the day.


P.S. I Love You put on a great set on the Fountain Stage, I saw P.S. I Love You earlier this year at the Vera with Diamond Rings and they get a very full sound for just 2 people. The drummer plays a loud thrashy fast style and the guitarist plays a bass pedal and sings with the result being surprisingly musical and full sounding, not what i would've anticipated, but they put on consistently excellent shows with fun fast songs every time.


I only managed to catch a bit of Shabazz Palaces, I've heard they've played some shows with Thee Satisfaction lately but there was no sign of Thee Satisfaction in the bit I saw:


We caught the MarchFourth Marching Band, not a great angle visually but the music is amazing for a marching band. The dudes dancing on stilts were fun too!


Pentagram put on a hard powerful set in the Exhibition Hall, I caught the laser effect spelling the band name at the beginning of this bit:

As a technical geek I love the laser effects. I got a more complete song by Pentagram too, the sound isn't great (too much volume overwhelms my Flip) but it started out pretty distorted so it isn't changed that much:


Vetiver was quite a contrast, lighter and calmer, well constructed songs, very nice:


I had never heard of Little Dragon (not that unusual, perhaps 1/3 of the acts were unfamiliar to me) but they quickly won me over with their upbeat catchy pop tunes.


Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue had a nice horn oriented groove, very fun to listen to:


We caught a little of the Lawnchair Generals, as usual the lights/visual effects in the EMP Sky Church were great:


STRFKR put on a good set too. When I saw them at the Vera Project they were kind of crowded together and some musicians were facing each other rather than the audience. Perhaps the Fountain Stage is larger or maybe they just decided to face the audience, but I aplaud the choice. Facing the audience makes the performance more immediate and engaging.


I saw one song by Craft Spells but I didn't get it recorded.

I'm sad to say that I wimped out by 9PM and ended up missing Minus the Bear and Ray LaMontagne and Mavis Staples, too sore and tired. Dang. I did catch a street musician on the way back to the car,

but that was the end of the evening as far as music went.

One day of Bumbershoot complete, 22 performances watched, 2 more days to go.

One Night Only

When I video tape and blog about the bands I see I usually friend the band and post links to the content on their wall. As a result I see interesting posts from my "friends" on occasion. Monday night, for example.

Both Brite Futures and Champagne Champagne posted about doing a free show that night at the Crocodile. I've never seen a show at the Crocodile and I love both bands and had no plans for the evening, so I wandered across Belltown, ate dinner, then staked out a nice table in the back room by the stage.

Brite Futures started setting up on the small stage and I wasn't sure they'd fit. It turned out to be a subset, with 3 members of Brite Futures - according to the Stranger's lineout blog we saw Claire England, Mark "Gajamagic" Gajadhar, and David Price. Pearl Dragon was there early, I saw news that he was in a house fire but didn't get the details.

Dana came and joined me at the table shortly after 8 and we had a nice vegetarian pizza and some drinks. Pearl Dragon checked in to tell us that they'd go on at 9. I got up to get Dana a drink and when I got back to the table Dana had invited a nice lady to sit at our table and introduced her to me, it turns out she's Pearl Dragon's mom. She was very nice and she and Dana bonded over kid gossip and parenting and had a great time. We learned many of the details around the show from her.

It's amusing, I got to literally hundreds of shows and I never meet any friends or relatives of the bands - I'm sure I've been right next to them, I'm just to quiet to ever introduce myself. Dana comes with me to one show and we're friends of Pearl Dragon's family. My wife has always been better at networking and making friends, I blame my weaknesses on my nerdiness: too much of my nervous system is wired around math and tech, not leaving enough for the social interaction. Either that or I'm just too bashful.

I only got a little video and a couple of pictures but the show was fun. It was about the best case for a talented group that had rehearsed once 3 hours earlier, raw and fascinating, surprisingly powerful short and fast pieces.



There was some amusing candid patter like "Don't worry about how we botched the song here, we'll redo it and edit it back together."


They also brought Tyler Wilman of Green Apple Quick Step up for an effective vocal, once again short, sweet and powerful. I didn't manage to get Tyler on video, I only got a couple of bits with Pearl Dragin singing and the drum/guitar/keys or drum/keys/keys played by Brite Futures.

I don't know if the pilot will ever see the light of day but I hope it does, and I'd enjoy the heck out of seeing more shows like this. I hope Pearl recovers completely and comfortably, I hope Brite Futures has a good show at the Crocodile on Thursday at their SXSW kick-off, and I'd love to see Pearl Dragon work with live bands and given a little more time to get additional parts and material mastered, but the raw immediate take with no time for polish and complexity made for an intense and urgent show. Cool idea, what bands would we mash up? We could continue the hip hop + rock/pop band trend, go to the singer songwriter + band mash-ups and so on.
Tom fr/Knowmads + the Globes, THEESatisfaction + Finn Riggins, SOL + Craft Spells, I have no idea which would work well, I'm just randomly picking bands and hip hop performers I like. Would it be compelling TV, or at least interesting? I don't know, but I enjoyed being in the back bar at the Crocodile while they filmed it so I hope they do more, I'd love to see them.

Local Bands in 2011

2011 was a banner year for local bands.
Some pretty big bands like the Presidents are local, that's why I get to see them so often. I took the kids to this one.



I consider Portland local.

Dustin's band My Parade got to open for The Ex (I saw them twice):

I saw around 30 bands at Veracity shows and got some good video:

Classic Vera shows like STRFKR, Champagne Champagne and Land of Pines were all local if we include Portland.






I aleady included a bunch of local acts like Lisa Dank, Spaceneedles, Mad Rad, Head Like A Kite, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Kris Orlowski, PUSA, the Globes and so on in my earlier 2011 review too. All that, and I haven't even gotten to the local music festival: Reverb Fest had another 20 local bands in one day.









This doesn't do justice to all of the local shows I saw this year - I saw several hundred - but it's a nice selection. There is an amazing pile of talent in the area playing a wonderful variety of music, we're lucky to have so much available.

STRFKR, Champagne Champagne and Land of Pines at the Vera Project 4-23-11

Saw a great Saturday night show at the Vera Project with an interesting variety of local (or nearly local, STRFKR is from Portland) musical approaches and a sell out crowd.

STRFKR has been around for a few years now and went through some attempts to re-name themselves before ending up back roughly where they started, except they removed the vowels from the name. They have been getting a progressively louder buzz with a recent SXSW show and plenty of write ups in the local weeklies.

Their popularity locally is through the roof; the venue could've sold out on pre-sales alone, but they cut off sales in order to leave a few tickets for cash customers. Enough cash customers showed up before 6:30 to sell it out completely; the crowd was early and excited.

I wasn't signed up to volunteer but I ended up helping out a bit as they got the large happy crowd into the venue in time for the first act - Land of Pines.

Land of Pines competed in this years Sound Off at the EMP (I missed it, though) and had an interesting approach with male and female lead vocals swapping off from song to song and some nice backing vocals. Two guitars, keyboards, bass and drums - gave them a reasonably nice full sound, in this video the instruments tend to back off a bit during the vocals which makes it easier to hear - nice dynamic, unfortunately the flickr video cuts off too soon.

Good rock guitar oriented rock approach, well structured songs, I enjoyed Land of Pines and hope to get chances to see them again.

Next up was Champagne Champagne, a hip hop outfit with two vocalists and a multi-instrumentalist providing accompaniment on keyboards and on guitar.

They had an interesting sound with some good hooks. I like the repeated bit in this video "Drop down..."

Good crowd participation in the clapping rhythm too. The dude with the longer fro pogo-ing in this video definitely got the crowd going too:

Champagne Champagne had good catchy tunes and knew how to keep a capacity audience bouncing, yelling and sweating - fun set!

Next STRFKR took the stage for the headlining set.

They took a bit to setup their gear and get the monitor levels set, so they were running about 15 minutes behind schedule. While that's not usually a big deal, I had to catch the last bus home so I ended up only seeing three songs before I had to head out. Too bad, what I saw was fun and had the audience dancing and surging all over the place.

They had a dance oriented groove with audio playing between the songs that they sped up and slowed down, giving things a little bit of a DJ in a dance club feel, and the audience totally ate it up. Lots of vertical motion in the crowd and side to side surges, haven't seen that kind of action in a small club much recently, I associate it more with festival shows at bigger auditoriums.

Fun set for the part I got to see, I wish I could've seen how it progressed and what they chose as their finale or encore. I'm sure they'll be back, but not as sure that they'll play the Vera, they seem to be blowing up big time and easily sell out a smaller club like the Vera. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see them again either at the Vera or at one of the Summer festivals.