The Big Green House

Monday, September 01, 2003

 

Bumbershoot me

Here I am, celebrating another glorious Labor Day. How, you ask? By Laboring, of course. It always annoys me somewhat, being at work while virtually everyone else in the country is taking the day off. It�s as if everybody else is at a party to which I was not invited. (For the purposes of this complaint I am ignoring the fact that I generally dislike parties of any sort and avoid them whenever possible. It�s the principle of the thing.)

Hmmm. Rather than waste everyone�s time by bitching about things that cannot be changed at this point, perhaps it would be more constructive to recount my Bumbershoot experience with Science Girl.

The day got off on the wrong foot; due to my apparent inability to keep more than one thought in my head at a time, we missed all but the last ten minutes of Solomon Burke�s show. This made me sad, but at least we got to hear him sing �Everybody Needs Somebody to Love� and �Don�t Give Up On Me�. He was in fine voice, and the audience seemed pretty appreciative. He invited folks to get up on stage and dance during that last couple of numbers; I hope the family of the cute little girl he brought down front so she could dance in front of his throne were able to get some pictures.

Since we had to scramble to get down to Seattle Center on time, we hadn�t been able to get much in the way of breakfast before we left. We took advantage of the changeover time between shows to grab a couple of Polish sausages from one of the many food booths inside Memorial Stadium. This was a mistake on my part. While Science Girl was able to eat hers unscathed (aside from a little extra mustard on her fingers), I was very nearly blinded by the jet of scalding hot grease that came shooting out of my weenie when I bit into it. (Don�t read anything into that sentence, please. This is my fifth pass at it, and I just can�t escape the rather unfortunate imagery.) Thankfully I was wearing my sunglasses so I got off relatively lightly, with only a burnt upper lip. No permanent harm done. I figure this was the Universe telling me that I really shouldn�t be eating meat. Or, in this case, meat by-products.

Next up was Macy Gray. Neither Science Girl nor myself are huge fans, but we both kinda like her. She�d probably be OK in a club, but her show wasn�t really working for us in the large outdoor stadium. (She needs to ditch the wanky guitar player though, and pronto.) We bailed after a couple of songs to go see Ian McLagan. I liked him, SG didn�t really, but we both agreed he�d be better in a club as well. Oh well. Off we went, to check out Minus the Bear. I�d heard all kinds of good stuff about them, so I was naturally curious to actually hear them for myself. Eh. Kinda generic punk/emo, as SG put it, but not bad. We stayed to the end of their set, which by this time had only three or so songs left. So you should probably take that into account.

Since we had almost an hour to kill before the next band we wanted to see, we decided to go have a look at Flatstock, the show of concert poster art. Very cool indeed, although we were somehow able to resist the temptation to buy � mostly because there was so much to choose from.

The Catheters were pretty good � loud, obnoxious punk, just like Mom used to hate. The singer definitely had an Iggy thing goin� on, what with the jumping and the sweating and the stage diving and what not. Fast and punchy. Also, let�s not forget that the copious amount of lungers he was hocking up and spitting onto the stage was pretty amazing, if somewhat nauseating. Kudos to the rest of the band for not slipping in all the snot.

Ewww. I just read that back. I�d delete it right now, if it weren�t true.

On to more pleasant things. Neither of us had heard Kinski before, although I�ve seen all sorts of wonderful things written about them. It was a very nice surprise indeed to find that they live up to the hype. Ordinarily the phrase �post-punk art rock� is enough to strike terror deep in my soul, since it usually means screeching atonal feedback histrionics or noodling ambient pap. Kinski has the feedback and the ambient stuff, but they�re also capable of some enormous psychedelic/garage-type riffs, too. Hypnotic yet scrappy, artsy yet still able to hold a groove. We both dug them a lot, although I suspect that the same magic we experienced Saturday most likely wouldn�t transfer to CD very well. Doesn�t mean I won�t keep an eye out for the new disc, though. And bonus points were awarded for having a bass player named Lucy.

After Kinski�s set finished, we decided to take a little dinner break. I had a vegetarian burrito, which made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to maim or injure me; SG went with the blackened salmon, which apparently put up no fight either.

We were both interested in seeing the Dusty 45�s, but their show was pretty lackluster for rockabilly. Again, it may have been due to playing outdoors. I know from performing Shakespeare in the park, way back when, that playing outside is very different indeed from playing inside. I�d assume that that�s doubly so for musicians used to going onstage in smokey clubs late at night.

Anyway, we bailed about five songs into their set & looked through some of the literary booths. The �Zine Archive was of great interest us both. All sorts of �zines from back in the day, placed in their historical context. We may have to go down and have a look through the archive itself.

Back to the music: The Donettes opened for and backed Wanda Jackson. The Donettes on their own were OK, if somewhat timid. I think they may have been a little nervous about backing the legendary Ms. Jackson. She�s still got The Voice, kids, even if it does betray her every now and again on the slower numbers if it does. As she mentioned during the show, she�s been doing this for something like 50 years (!), so an occasional stray note here and there can easily be overlooked, especially when the rest of the notes are so damn right. It was fun to hear �Fujiyama Mama� live, I can tell you that much.

We were pretty pooped by the end of her set. We�d been listening to music and walking around the Seattle Center grounds for about nine hours at that point, so we called it a night.

All in all, a fun day out.

Aside from Kinski, I think the best thing we saw all day was during the Catheters show. SG spotted him first � a normal-looking ten year old boy at the side of the stage, rocking out in a supreme fashion, very obviously enjoying himself. What appeared to be his mother and sister were with him, very obviously not enjoying themselves. They left after a couple of songs; it took him several more tunes to notice that they�d left. He kinda shrugged to himself and turned back to the stage, rapt, transported from such mundane concerns as the whereabouts of his family by the power of loud-ass rock & roll. (Don�t worry, they came back for him later.) I don�t know that it was his first show, but I like to think that it was, that we were there for the creation of One Of Us.

I can only hope that the kid wasn�t put off by the scary space dancer directly behind him. There were space dancers all over the grounds, flapping and flailing and spreading their patchouli reek. Shouldn�t they be following Bob Weir down to the grocery store or something?

bmarkey 9/01/2003 08:26:00 PM