It's Monday morning, Labor Day, I slept like 5 hours, my body feels like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz before he gets the oil can infusion, and I HAVE NO COFFEE IN THE HOUSE.
Nonetheless, I am back to the final day of Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival today to make one last photo sweep of the event. Here's more from Day One for you while I contemplate all the visual deliciousness coming up from the rest of Day One and Day Two, and to be gathered today.
I am going to really make an effort to stop running for a minute and get over to the Indie Market and Flatstock to look and buy. I don't care how damn old I am. I want one of these hats. I was born in the Year of the Tiger, hmm.
And I want to ride a contraption like this.
And I want...nah, not gonna go there.
Bumbershooting 1.1 gave you an idea of the diversity of musical acts found at Bumbershoot, and 1.2 continues on. If you can't find something you like here to listen to, you are a grumpy person who prefers watching a 1991 rerun of COPS on TV from your ratty sofa. Not that there's anything wrong with COPS. Just you. GET UP!
OK, how about some straight-up METAL GLORY? Valient Thorr was next on my to-see list, expecting lots of stage action and hair-whipping and headbanging. I got all of that, AND to my surprise I really had fun. I liked Valient Thorr! They weren't Ponderous Metal, where dudes play five-minute-long guitar solos and stand like Great Statues, and they weren't Death/Speed Metal, where all singers must sound like a rock tumbler put through a Darth Vader mask and all drummers must double-bass at quad-time. They were a bit more on the punk side of metal, and I ended up cheering for them in the pit.
Next, over to the Fisher Green Stage to see local hip-hop buzz-wonders, Shabazz Palaces. They've recently released their first album on Sub Pop, Black Up, which has generated a ton of great press. My best description of their sound is the feel of standing on a busy, dirty, urban street with all the humanity swirling around you, and then looking up to see a bright blue sky, calm and clean, nothing but the tops of buildings and clouds to see. A little out-there, but I think it fits.
Shabazz Palaces had a very interesting fan.
These ladies perhaps agreed.
Trucking over from Fisher Green back to the EMP.
Huge line at EMP to get in to see Pickwick's set there (one of three the soulful locals played at Bumbershoot this year). It was so jammed up that I didn't really get the good photos I had hoped to of them, so I went over to the EMP Sky Church stage to see a few moments of Beat Connection, more locals of the gazey-indie-Wavy-pop bent, good stuff. They look 12 years old to me. Sigh.
And that brings us up to 7PM, Saturday night. MORE TO COME!
(Flickr sets: Valient Thorr, Shabazz Palaces, Beat Connection)
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman