Neptune Grand Opening: Acoustic Night

I went to the free Neptune Grand Opening Acoustic Show and saw Bobby Long, Grant Olsen and Mads Jacobsen put on an excellent show.

First up was Mads Jacobsen, a young looking singer/acoustic guitarist. All 3 acts on acoustic night are singer/acoustic guitarists, it's a theme!

I only got a tiny bit of video from the last bit of his last song, unfortunately we were a little late getting to the show.

We heard a bit more as we got into the venue and got settled, he was entertaining and sounded great, but I didn't really get enough material to do his set justice.

Next up: Grant Olsen of Arthur & Yu

Olsen's set was packed full of simple beautiful songs that took full advantage of his voice. Around 4:00 into this one he uses the acoustics of the Neptune to his advantage, getting his vocals soaring and resonating, awesome performance!

On this one he dials it down a bit, which gives the disappointed sad lyrics more bite, wonderful song in a powerfully sad way:

Bobby Long took the stage for the headlining set. Long is a big shambling dude who was rocking the flannel - as a big shambling dude who rocks the flannel on occasion I can appreciate that!

I'm messing around with photo sizes a bit, seeing how much detail I can get into a 640 pixel wide image, he's not that much bigger than everyone else, just shown in more detail.

Bobby Long seems like a Seattle natural with the flannel and the self deprecating sense of humor, and the interesting song topics, although the British accent sets him a little apart. Here he performs "My Sweet Mary Jane" and this one is in 1080p so you can watch the really high def version if you have fat enough internet pipes.

Long's guitar style is a little different, tending more to runs and counter-rhythms, less to chords with fixed plucking patterns. It gives his songs a more varied sound, it seems to me.

The Acoustic Night show really did a great job highlighting how nice the acoustics are in the Neptune. It's not dead sonically, it's mildly bright - things echo and ring some, and you want at least a little to give you that wider space live feeling. The impressive part is the clarity - the rounded shape of the auditorium keeps the echos somewhat diffuse/spread out which makes them almost inaudible, yet used wisely like Grant Olsen did they can add a huge amount to the timbre and resonance of the performance.

The Neptune Theater is an amazingly nice sounding venue that can put on mildly large sized shows - when I worked there as a teen it held a little over 800, I suspect the capacity is down a bit with the bar and all, but still probably well over 500. I didn't notice a posted capacity, but I wasn't looking particularly hard. All 3 STG venues (the Neptune joins the Moore and the Paramount, I believe) are gems visually and acoustically. They don't build them like this any more, which is too bad. The odd unique details (Neptune's heads and old school over-sized women's lounge at the Neptune, underground bar and little mini-balconies on the sides at the Moore, odd upper floor areas with great internal views and men's and women's rooms with really old school lounges and cool chandeliers) enhance the experience, making each space unique, yet they also share the old school approach in many ways.

P.S. With the Salsa band Sonora La Rebellion the previous night on the September 28 at the Neptune and performances on September 29 that gets me to 345 performances, 289 for the first time. All 4 were new to me, and all were excellent. The Salsa Band was awesome, I wish I had some video. Too bad!

Summer Review

Summer just ended and I haven't reviewed my progress in a while so it's time to look back a bit.

When I did my Summer Update on August 22 I'd seen 230 bands/performances, 203 for the first time. Sasquatch! and the Capitol Hill Block Party were in the books.

I got an occasional Vera show in like the Braille, Theory Hazit, Knowmads and Friends show

and the Olivia Tremor Control/the Music Tapes/Megabog show, the Quixote Radio Veracity set

and the Finn Riggins, Atomic Mama, Neighbors and Chung Antique show

Add all of the Vera shows and the running totals up and we get to 244 bands, 215 for the first time.
Bumbershoot figures prominently, of course! All kinds of great bands on Saturday, I've been a fan of Brite Futures doing songs about hair (Hot damn! It's everywhere!) since they were Natalie Portman's Shaved Head at the EMP Sound Off a few years back

Kris Orloski did some awesome stuff, and Champagne Champagne ruled like always:
Presidents of the USA are climbing up the "most seen bands" list, this is at least the sixth time I've seen them, and my son Ben's first trip to Bumbershoot with the girls and I. Ben saw the Presidents twice already (sneaking into the private Microsoft show and early this year at the Showbox) and the girls have seen them 3 or 4 times, I think.

Yuni in Taxco, Vasen, Valient Thorr, PS I Love You, Shabazz Palaces, Pentagram and Vetiveer, Little Dragon and on and on. I ended up tiring out and missing the last few bands (sigh) but it was still a wonderful set of performances. We went home tired and happy!
Sunday was similar if not better with Sol, the Gail Pettis Quarter, Kasey Anderson, Kore Ionz, Davilla 666, Whalebone

and on and on: Lonely Forest, Mad Rad - Party Mountain is one of the most reliable live songs ever!
and yet "You Only Live Once" totally gives it a run for it's money with the air keyboards. Mad Rad are one of the most consistent live hip hop outfits I've seen this year. It's probably mostly that I'm a total geek for cellos.
Massey Ferguson, No Means No, Broken Social Scene, Thee Oh See, so many good bands, it's making me tired just looking down the blog at the videos!
Das Racist was in fine obnoxious form, Warpaint and Butthole Surfers and I finally got to see Macklemore at the Key Arena, the crowd loved him and he totally fed off of the enemy. He has a susprising well of charisma and kept the key buzzing and entertained for his whole set and totally pulled off the "and we danced" bit with the wig and everything. One of the more memorable Bumbershoot shows I've seen, but poor time management left us way up in the nosebleed seats far away so the visual was disappointing and the crowd engagement wasn't as good. It was still an excellent show, one of the better Bumbershoot shows - we ended up sitting up in the seats at Memeorial Statement at a fair share of mainstage shows in prior years too, it happens, and if the show is good enough it doesn't matter much.

and we caught the Kills and Carbon Leaf on the way out.
Monday we saw yet more wonderful music: the Horde and the Harem, Motopony

Legendary Oaks, Fly Moon Royalty, Curtains for You, Quadron and Ravenna Woods, Head Like a Kite, Yacht, Dom, Dennis Coffe, Ian Moore and the Lossy Coils, Lake

Greensky Blugrass, Sharon Van Etten, Vendetta Red, Urge Overkill, Fitz and the Tantrums, Over the Rhine, Phantogram and the Reverend Horton Heat to close us out

We saw so many great bands it was ridiculous: 80 performances, 62 for the first time. Add that to the total so far and we're at 324 bands/performances, 277 for the first time.
I also managed to get to the free Globes show at Nectar

and saw 15 bands (7 for the first time) do the EMP Nevermind 20th Anniversary Benefit for Susie Tennant, bringing the final tally to 341 bands/performances, 285 for the first time.

That leaves me a bit over 3 months to try to get another 24 bands/performances in, should be achievable. I plan on going to Reverb which should get me 10 to 12 bands, and I've got 3 Veracity shows and 2 or 3 regular shows to steer, that gets 15 or 18 further bands which should just get me to 365 even on the low side of the range, and perhaps get me up into the 375+ range, especially considering I'll probably catch a bit of Christmas music and an additional Vera show or two, most likely.

Finn Riggins, Atomic Mama, Neighbors and Chung Antique at the Vera Project

Tom called me on Saturday and said "I have you signed up to steer today, how's it going?"

Oops. I'd managed to sign up for a few steering opportunities then lose the paper I wrote the dates on. I hate when that happens! At least Tom called me early enough so that I could recover. "I'll be there in 45 minutes, depending on traffic" I said.

I had just promised my wife I'd take her to get a nice Thai dinner, a huge family favorite, and now I had to go cancel on her. Sigh, I wish I wasn't such an idiot some times.

So I headed down to the Vera Project where I had 2 volunteers, Julia and Ben. Julia has been great recently, volunteering for open mikes and driving groups and showing up to help out, and I was glad to see Ben - a different Ben, not my son, I've volunteered with him quite a few times but hadn't seen him recently.

Chung Antique pretty much killed it without any vocals.

Chung Antique plays complicated instrumental rock, sounding like a larger band by using changing distortion patterns and rhythms; the guitarist changes several times between highly distorted and clean sections and the transitions and complex rhythms are all very tight with all of the instruments reflecting them. Some of the more extreme dynamics towards the end are impressive, well written and even better performed. I enjoyed Chung Antique, apparently they're local so I'll have to keep an eye out for them. They don't even have microphones set up, they're purely instrumental.

Next up was Neighbors, another talented apparently local band that I was unaware of.

Nice set, this is only a couple of songs but it gives you a nice idea of their sound. They get some good licks going around 4:00 in, great performance. Pretty dang good for the first two acts on a bill of four.

Next up was Atomic Mama

Here's a short bit of Atomic Mama doing some psychedelic stuff:

I got several good songs recorded, you can see more of them on my youtube channel. It takes 75 or so seconds to get started after some chatter and prep, I like the dynamics and vocals in this one:

Full powerful sound, impressive from a duo.
If I have the details correct, Atomic Mama is from Idaho, and so are the headliners Finn Riggins.
We're up to a trio now, with a keyboard player featured prominently along with a guitarist and a drummer. The keyboards and drummer are scruffy brown haired dudes with varying amounts of facial hair but no full on beards (Atomic Mama had some definite beardage) and a woman playing guitar. All 3 had mic stands and vocal mics ready, kind of the opposite of Chung Antique.

I love the way they put their sound together, the keyboards and guitars grinding and bouncing along, the rhythm nailing it all together. Different sound, but only mildly different. I don't quite know what I'd call it, mid tempo rock music I suppose, who cares really, just some kick ass musicians with a slightly different take working out their muse and taking us along for the ride. The dedicated keyboard player and prominent mixing gives them an interesting sound but they keep it pretty smoothly mixed so it's still fairly guitar oriented rock music. Familiar elements with some cool haunting interplay between the vocals and instruments, nice emotional impact. I got more than one song on the first bit of video, nice stuff!

Great sound, tight band cruising along and making it's own kind of music:

A couple of hot bands from Boise and a couple of cool local bands, nice show to kick off the fall. Consistently different set of approaches - not folky, not just old school guitar rock, something a little new yet not too unfamiliar, each different in it's own way. Finn Riggins put on a great set, it'll be interesting to see if they can build a growing regional and national following, they deserve one!