The day started on something of a sad note — Dad called to let me know that Grandmother died early in the morning. It’s sad, but hardly tragic — she died peacefully, got quite a few more years of life than we all expected a few years back, and we all got to visit last November. Due to timing and finances, neither Mom, Kevin, nor myself will be able to be at the funeral, but Dad will be in Indiana this week for that.
And with that start to the day, I headed off to Bumbershoot….
Walked in and watched Jason Webley — very cool. Accordion, percussion via coins in a plastic bottle, gravelly voice. I know I’ve heard the style before, but don’t know the name — think Tom Waits. Going to go ahead and spend some money picking up his CD’s.
Jason’s drinking song:
When the glass is full, drink up, drink up
this may be the last time we see this cup
if God wanted us sober
he’d knock the glass over
so while it is full
we drink up, drink up!
Drumming workshops go on all day, every day. Now this is a drum circle!
Took a 3-shot panorama of the fountain and the people around it (I don’t have the panorama stitched together yet, however, so it’s not getting posted up here just yet. I’ll be busy enough tonight just getting all this typed in).
Wandered out for a few minutes for some cheap food.
Back in, sitting at Meshell Ndegéocello in the stadium. Sun’s finally starting to break through the clouds — been grey and cloudy all morning until now.
Lots of eye candy out today.
Can’t get any pictures here — no photography allowed in the stadium. No biggie — lots of other chances to get good pics.
Meshell just ended — time to wander around a bit. Loretta Lynn will be on here in the stadium in an hour and a half, planning on being here for that.
Sitting and watching kids play in the fountain. Darting in to try and touch the base without getting drenched. Doesn’t work very often. The spouts keep turning on and off, getting stronger and weaker. Makes it very hard to predict where the next open spot is going to be. The kids love it. Got one picture of a girl trying to use an umbrella to stay dry — that didn’t work too well either. Umbrellas are good for rain — not streams of gallons of water suddenly dropping onto you.
Nice background noise coming from the drum circle off somewhere behind me.
Sun disappeared again, though. Looks like it might stay cloudy the rest of the day — but with Seattle weather, who can tell?
Just saw a kid — couldn’t have been more than 18 or so — lie on a bed of nails. Then his partner put a cinderblock on his chest, and smashed it with a sledgehammer. The block broke, the kid survived — but he had a look on his face like eve he’d been surprised by the hit. Kind of amusing.
Listening to bagpipes now.
Wandered into the Electrodeck (the area focusing on dj’ing and electronic music) to see what was going on in there. According to the schedule, I hit the end of Brian Lyons’ set. I didn’t have a clue who it was at the time, it was just some decent house music. Since I still had some time to kill before the next performer I wanted to hit, I danced there for a few minutes.
Was a pretty interesting atmosphere. Since it’s in the middle of this huge music festival, even though it had the general ambiance of your standard rave, there was a much wider range of people wandering through than you’d normally see in that kind of environment. It was mostly the kids you’d expect to see gravitating towards it, but you also had everything from “normals,” hippies, even whole families checking it out — mom and dad standing against the wall or sitting in the building’s beer garden while their kids bounced around to the music.
After about 20 minutes or so I wandered out again. Went back across the center to the stadium to catch Loretta Lynn’s show. Sitting here just slightly over halfway back on the stadium field, I can’t really see the stage — it’s a little far away, and there’s a good sized crowd standing between me and the stage — but I can hear it fine, which is good enough for me at this point. If I hadn’t brought my backpack I might have tried to work my way through the crowd, but with the day looking grey when I left the house, I wanted to be sure to have my umbrella and a sweater along in case things got chilly.
I’m glad I did, too — I started off wearing the bowling shirt I got while I was at TimeFrame, and it’s been on and off all day as the sun appears and disappears. Haven’t had to break out the sweater yet, though.
It’s funny. I just brought this little journal along to jot down some quick notes of what I did, who I saw, and what pictures I took to help me get it all posted on the webpage next time I make it over to Casey’s. Friday’s notes are just that — barely over a page of quick sentences jotted down, and only about two-thirds of that even deals with Bumbershoot.
Today started out the same way, but each time I’ve stopped to put something in here, it’s been less and less just notes and more straight prose. Maybe it’s not quite ‘natural’ for me to just keep quick notes like I started to. Probably an outgrowth of my inability to say in less than 50 words what can probably be said in 5 — a tendencey I definitely get from Dad.
Since I dont have daily access to my computer to keep up the weblog there, maybe I’ll just keep carrying this book around. It’ll let me keep better track of what I do each day for when I do get to Casey’s to post on the page. I’ll have to see whether or not I actually keep up with this, but I may actually have started keeping a journal again. Every time I’ve done something like this in the past it’s been on a trip of some sort, and I’ve never kept it up much beyond the length of the the trip, if I even make it all the way through without letting the journal fall by the wayside.
You could probably see starting this one during Bumbershoot weekend as the same basic idea as starting one on my various trips, but maybe the fact that I’m not actually on a trip this time will prompt me to keep scribbling in here. Don’t quite know yet — guess I’ll find out in a few weeks if I’m still going.
Just got done watching the Red Elvises, and am sitting at the fountain again. It’s proving to be my favorite between-show spot to sit, scribble in this, and figure out what I’m doing next.
The Red Elvises put on a great show. Theoretically, they’re from Siberia (though I have no clue whether that’s true or not), and play a kind of rockabilly/surf combo. Very cool, and lots of fun. The three of them are constantly switching off who’s playing which instrument (bass, guitar, and drums), and they’re all equally proficient at each. During “I Wanna See You Bellydance” they brought a line of bellydancers onstage, and at one point a couple songs later, they all grabbed drumsticks and split the drumset in thirds — made for a very cool percussive section.
Anyway, great show — good enough that I hit the Wherehouse music stand afterwards and picked up a 2-CD live album from them.
I’ve got some time to kill now, and am thinking about wandering off to find some food — it’s coming up on 7pm, and the last show I want to hit tonight won’t be over until 11pm or so. Time to wander….
I’ll see how legible this is later. I’m sitting on the field in the stadium waiting for the Black Crows to start, and there’s not a whole lot of light. Hopefully I’ll be able to read this.
Before I went off to find food, I watched some of Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band’s set. It was good, but downtempo raggae is more Kevin’s style than mine, and it was relaxing enough that I was starting to yawn. Decided that would be a good time to get moving again.
The Black Crows just got onstage — better see how quickly I can get through this!
Anyway, wandered off-site for food again (much cheaper than in the festival). Since the stage that Clinton Fearon was on was right on the outside edge of the festival grounds, I got to hear more of their set while I was walking. They picked up the tempo towards the end — good stuff.
Since I still had about 40 minutes before the Crows, it seemed like a good time to check out the Electrodeck again. Like before, I didn’t know who was spinning — and it’s too dark for me to try and look it up now — but the music was good. Better than the first time I stopped in today, actually. Dancing kept me occupied for about another half hour, then I wandered here to the stadium.
I had sat down next to a family in the stadium field, and they’ve been kind enough to let me squat down on part of the blanket they had spread out.
So now — time to quit babbling and watch the show.
Okay — last time I could hardly see what I was writing. Now I’m trying to write on the #2 bus back home. As if my handwriting isn’t bad enough already.
Kinda cool, though –the #2 bus goes from a block away from my apartment to a block away from the Seattle Center. Makes getting back and forth amazingly easy.
The Black Crows put on a great show. They’ve been playing long enough and have enough albums out that filling an hour and a half plus a bit for an encore is easy to do. Since the only album of theirs I’ve ever picked up is their first, those were the only songs I really knew, but even when I don’t know it by heart, straight-up blues-based rock-n-roll makes for a good show. “Hard to Handle” came in about halfway through, and “She Talks to Angels” was the first song of the encore, so I got to hear both of the songs I was hoping they’d play.
After they got done I started heading for the exit that is next to the stop for the bus, but then ran into Jason Webley giving another performance. This guy is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists here, and he’s not even one of the main acts. Just a born entertainer, with great songs and a gift for working his audience. I’m hoping to run into him again tomorrow — he got shut down by the event staff before he had time to finish off with the drinking song, to the great disappointment of his audience.
After Jason stopped, I headed for the bus stop again, and on the way ran into Serafina/Amber, one of Anchorage’s old rave kids. Apparently she came down here about a year ago and is a preschool (or did she say kindergarten?) teacher, and mixing in her spare time. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much time to chat as the police were shuttling everyone off the grounds as fast as they could.
Eventually, I made it to the bus, and am working my way home now. Time to get some sleep and rest up for another full day tomorrow!
