performances – Page 5

Bumbershoot ’01: Monday, Sep. 3rd

December 10, 2019September 3, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Just something amusing — just got back from getting breakfast and batteries for my camera. Turns out the drugtstore has to store Lithium batteries behind the counter because they can be broken open and used in the production of crystal meth. Bizarre.

On my way into the Center, I stopped off at the blues stage for a moment. The Northwest Connection Community Choir was performing — good gospel music. Got one picture, but then they went from uptempo, soulful, hand-clapping gospel to a slower devotional tune, and I wandered off again.

Now I’m sitting in the balcony at the opera house. There’s a comedy/revue performance that looked interesting — the Madcap Cabaret, with Kevin Kent (drag queen and MC for the show), Bill Dana (comedian), Kiki & Herb (drag cabaret and musical comedy), and the Tiger Lillies (Gothic folk trio — whatever that is). Should be starting soon — it’s about 15 minutes past showtime, and the natives are getting restless.

Kiki & Herb are in their encore now. I can’t really say that I’m impressed, though from the sound of the crowd on the main floor, I may be in the minority. Loud and obnoxious, for the most part, and not much of the humor has really been that funny, though there is an occasional laugh. Not something I’d ever pay to see again, though.

Kevin Kent’s MC’ing isn’t bad, if it weren’t for the ultra-annoying falsetto voice he uses for his “Cookie” persona. He’s back on now — Kiki & Herb finally finished up.

At least the opening act was good. Bill Dana’s a comedian who is most famous for his Jose Jiminez character. His section started with an ‘interview’ between Jose and Cookie — quite amusing.

“This says you were a doctor.”

“Yes, I was a Geneologist.”

“Oh, my notes say you were a Gynecologist — a Geneologist is someone who looks up people’s backgrounds.”

[Pause…] “Wasn’t my way of saying it nicer?”

He went on for a bit, then Cookie introduced Kiki & Herb.

Right now we’re waiting for the Tiger Lillies — apparently there’s some sort of sound problem with the accordion. Cookie had spent the stage change time wandering through the audience and thoroughly embarassing a young man named Adam. He took it pretty well, though. When they were given the okay the Tiger Lillies came onstage — and discovered the accordion glitch. Hopefully this won’t take too long. It’s already 3pm, and this show is scheduled to end at 3:30pm. If it takes too much longer I may take off — Taj Mahal starts in the stadium at 4pm.

I gave up waiting for the Tiger Lillies to get started — aside from an announcemnt over the intercom apologizing, no apparent action had taken place by the time I left. Grabbed some pizza on my way to the stadium, then found myself an open spot on the field just as Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band was coming on stage. Just a couple minutes later, I realized that Casey, Jen, Tim, and someone else were sitting just about 20 feet in front of me, so I moved up and am sitting with them.

The sun finally came out while I was in the opera house, too. What started out looking like a grey, drizzly day has turned into another gorgeous late summer day. I just know I’m going to get a bit sunburned again after this weekend.

More pot smoke drifting through the air. Pity I don’t like being stoned, since I’ve always liked that smell.

Well, I’m a little dumb (maybe it was that pot smoke?), but it’s not all bad. I forgot which stage I was aiming for and ended up at the rhythm stage, where WOFA is doing traditional African drumming. Got a picture of them and of the finished Bob Marley painting, but now I want to head over to the blues stage for the Zydeco band I was actually aiming for.

Good, good Zydeco. C. J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band — thought about picking up a CD, but I’ve spent way too much this weekend as it is, so I’ll look into it later. I’d also like to pick up one of the Bumbershoot shirts — will check their website soon to see what they’re not sold out of.

Back at my usual spot in the bowl of the fountain again. Some momo just dropped his pipe — a nice glass one, too. It didn’t break, but he did lose his bowl as it bounced down the slope. He didn’t seem to thrilled.

I’ve got roughly an hour to kill before Nikol Collars, the last artist I’ve got marked as a possibility for today. I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and head home after her. Since i’ve been here all weekend long I haven’t had a chance to do laundry yet, which would be a good idea before the work week kicks in.

This has been a hell of a weekend, though. Managed to hit most of the shows I wanted to see, and enjoyed everything except that Kiki & Herb cabaret this afternoon. One sub-par show over four days isn’t bad at all, though. Definitely need to thank Kevin again for the ticket when I get a chance.

Just ran into Ogre (the doorman for local goth/industrial club The Vogue, who Chad and Dez introduced me to when I first got to town), his wife Mickey, and a couple friends of theirs, Adam (?) and…well, a lady whose name I can’t remember. Chatted with them for a few minutes, then headed over to the northwest court stage for Nikol Collars.

Unfortunately, Nikol has apparently cancelled. Nina Hynes is playing instead, which is fine — I’d had one of her shows marked as a possibility earlier in the weekend and hadn’t made it. Guess I get a second chance.

I’m sitting at the bus stop to go home now. Nina was good, and very pretty — pretty girl, pretty voice, and pretty songs — but a bit more mellow than I was really hoping for. Watched about half an hour or so, then wandered off. Swung by the fountain to sit and check my schedule to make sure there wasn’t anything else that I really wanted to catch, and since there wasn’t, I figured it was a good time to head out.

So that was my Labor Day/Bumbershoot weekend. Not bad, not bad at all. This journal (and eventual post on my webpage) can’t even come close to capturing everything that went on, or even everything I saw and heard, but I tried to get as much as I could down. Very cool — going back into the workaday week tomorrow is going to seem almost depressingly mundane, I think.

Interesting — there’s a guy on the opposite corner of the intersection with a boombox, just jamming out to whatever’s on the radio — and he just switched it from buttrock to madrigals. Interesting combination, that’s for sure. As long as he’s happy, I guess.

Bumbershoot ’01 – Sunday, Sep. 2nd

December 10, 2019September 2, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Just hopped on the #2, heading back out to the Seattle Center. According to my schedule, the DJ (group?) in the Electrodeck before the Black Crows was just called BPM. Well, whatever, it was fun to dance to.

There’s a few acts I’ve got marked out that I’d like to catch, but as is inevitable at a festival this size, some of the performances overlap. I’ll see who I end up catching eventually.

Anyway, possibilities I’ve got marked out for the day are David Lee Roth tonight in the stadium, Maria Muldaur on the blues stage, the Reverend Horton Heat at Key Arena, 5 Fingers of Funk and Critters Buggin’ at the rhythm stage, the Red Elvises (again), and Joe Matt & Sol Calderone and DJ Logic in the Electrodeck. The earlier shows don’t overlap too much, but the evening’s going to be kind of tricky. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Writing on the bus is getting to be a pain in the butt, though, so it’s time to stop.

I’ve got some time to kill before the first acts I’ve got marked, so I’m sitting in the bowl of the fountain again. There’s a giant puppet parade that goes through a couple times a day that I grabbed a few pictures of. And I do mean giant puppets — the dragon takes five operators from the looks of it. The smaller puppets only take one person — but they’re about 15 feet tall.

This looks like it’s going to be an absolutely gorgeous day. It’s about 12:30pm now, and we’ve got nearly cloudless skies with the sun beating down. Feels great, and it’s making for some cool rainbow effects in the fountain.

Sitting on the lawn at Maria Muldaur now. Not much better for a sunny Sunday morning than the blues! Where I’m sitting, I can get an occasional glimpse of her between the people standing up in front of me — I’ll stand up and try to get a pic or two in a minute.

On the way from the fountain, I stopped off to watch a kid doing a juggling act. Had a very impressive finale that I got a picture of: balancing a spinning plate on a stick in his mouth and juggling three machetes while standing on a contraption of boards and blocks balanced on a rolling tube. Crazy, but he pulled it off — a far, far braver man than I.

Back at the fountain again. Hit the Electrodeck after Maria Muldaur and caught the end of Joe Matt & Sol Calderone and the beginning of DJ Logic. Stopping off here on the way over to check out 5 Fingers of Funk. Took a panoramic series of the bowl of the fountain — with the weather so nice, there’s a lot more people both at the festival in general, and playing in the water here. Gave me a chance to get a shot of it during a busier time than my first set of shots. Now, time to wander off again.

Nice — 5 Fingers of Funk put on a nice, sweet set. Once they were done I jumped offsite to get something to eat, and have been hanging out at the fountain for a bit now. I’m not hot enough to take a run through, but a breeze has come up that keeps blowing mist across everyone — a nice complement to the strength of the setting sun. I figure there’s only an hour or so of real daylight left, so I’m enjoying it while I can.

I’ve got a little over an hour before the next show I want to hit, so will probably kill that either sitting here or wandering around and peoplewatching.

Okay. Wandered around for a while, basically just people watching and following the flow of the crowd. Found a good spot for the Critters Buggin’ show, I think — as long as I don’t get too much of a contact high from the clouds of pot smoke that keep drifting by me. Can’t really say I’m surprised — most of the festival is kept pretty free of that, but the area around the rhythm stage has been given an “island” atmosphere in decor. Between that and the fact that the majority of the acts on this stage focus on funk, reggae, and similar stuff — it’s a haven for much of the crowd (hippie, rasta, etc.) that’s more likely to be getting a nice pot buzz when they can. Not a big deal, really — just hope I don’t get hit for a random drug test at work anytime soon. I don’t know if they do that beyond the initial screening or not — and a contact high probably wouldn’t be enough to show, anyway — but hey.

Caught another of the random street performers on the way over. He’d laid three kids down side by side on the ground, and proceeded to make three attempts at doing a skateboard jump with a 360 degree twist in the air over them. While he made it over the kids each time, he never quite managed to land without falling down — but the last time he at least kept his feet on the board and got back up, which was good enough for the crowd (and probably for the parents of the kids, too). I did manage to get some good shots of him in the air over the kids, too.

Critters Buggin’ got off to a late start. They were supposed to start at 7pm, but didn’t really get going until close to 8pm. Apparently there was some sort of problem with the sound system — which, unfortunately, continued during their show. Every so often all the speakers would go dead for a few moments, then kick in again. Was kind of a bummer for the crowd, but the band either didn’t notice — or (my guess) didn’t care, as they just kept right on playing and let the sound guys fight with it.

Other than that, it was really good — and, typically for Critters Buggin’, bizarre. A couple of brothers from Morocco opened the show with a set of about five traditional Moroccon pieces. It was good, but after an hours wait to get started, one guy on a Moroccan pipe and his brother on a drum wasn’t quite enough for some of the crowd, who took off. Fine with me — it let me work my way forward through the crowd.

When Critters got on, it was great. They’re a pretty powerful band anyway — two drummers, a bass player, and Skerrik (sax, electric sax, keyboards, lots of distortion, and a lot of noise). Then they bring on a host of additional people to keep the stage interesting.

First off, a little girl (maybe Skerrik’s daughter?) ran onstage and helped Skerrik with the keyboard for a bit, until her mom (I’m guessing) came to take her back off to the side of the stage.

Next the Cheeze Family came on — four drag queens with grossly exaggerated anatomies built into their outfits. After they left, Skerrik brought out the “Farther” (kind of like a Catholic Father, just different) to cleanse and bless the audience with what appeared to be a pair of rubber handcuffs.

For a while after that, there was some sort of mimed business between Pan and a woman in a Hironymous Bosch-style mask and a wedding dress, both of which she eventually stripped off (she was wearing a white bodysuit under the dress).

I’ll have to finish this on the bus — the police are kicking us out.

Back at home now. Next to join Critters was a figure wearing a red cape and a Charlie Brown mask, until he ripped off the mask to reveal — well, another mask, this one somewhat satanic. I’m not entirely sure who he was supposed to be, except that he was trying to shut Critters Buggin’ down. Of course, this didn’t work, as he was shouted offstage by the audience chanting, “No more smooth jazz!” while Skerrik assaulted him with blasts of noise from his sax. All very entertaining.

Not too long after that, I decided to head to the stadium. Because of the late start to the Critters Buggin’ show, I didn’t get to see the Reverend Horton Heat, which was a bummer, but I did want to check out the last part of the big show for the night — Dimond Dave himself, David Lee Roth.

Rather than staying twards the back as I had for the Crows, I decided to see if I could find a way toward the front — the better to immerse myself in a sea of true buttrockers, and the best Dimond Dave experience possible. I cut off to the right hand side of the stadium and worked my way up along the side, then when I got close to the front I started working my way in. I ended up a bit off to the side of the stage, but only about three “rows” back (though “rows” is a fairly loose term at an arena-rock show such as this). In any case, I had a pretty good view, and was buried far enough in the crowd to go ahead and break the no cameras rule and snap a couple shots off. I figured that even if security noticed it would be hard to track me down — and even if they did, they can’t exactly confiscate the film from a digital camera. No need to worry, though.

Anyway, whether or not you’re a fan, I gotta say that Dave is one hell of a showman. Lime green suit, white suspenders, no shirt, long blonde hair flying all over the place, and all the screams, jumps, and high kicks you’d ever want. Was actually a really good show, and he finished it off with a couple old Van Halen tunes that even I knew — the last song of the actual set was “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love,” and his encore song was “Jump!” I tell you, the opening synth cords of “Jump!” brought me right back to high school. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

After Dave was done, I started working my way to the exit to catch the bus back home. As I passed the fountain there was still a big drum circle going on down in the bowl, so I stopped off there to sit, listen to the drums, and write things down — that’s where I was when I wrote that the police were kicking us out.

There had been a drum circle going on at the fountain all day long. It had started with just five guys and had been picking up more and more drummers as they day progressed. By the time I sat and was writing until the police came by and started herding people out, there were probably at least a good hundred people down in the bowl — a good half of them drumming, and the other half dancing or just hanging out.

After being told it was time to go home, I wandered out to the bus stop. Ended up getting into a conversation with a guy named Paul, who was there from one of the smaller papers in the area (I’m afraid I forget which one), and was covering some of the shows. We chatted during the bus ride, mostly about various kinds of music, pros and cons of the festival, and such.

As I got off the bus, a girl got off who I see most mornings on the same bus on the way to work. We joked that things were backwards, as we were getting off the bus at night, rather than getting on it in the morning. Turns out she lives in the same apartment building I do, up in 405. One of these days I should probably figure out what her name is.

So that’s it for Sunday. The batteries in my camera finally died during David Lee Roth (not bad, considering I bought the camera in late May), so I’m not sure if I’ll be taking any pictures tomorrow. I’ll look into how much batteries cost tomorrow morning, hopefully they won’t be too expensive — but since I need Lithium AA’s instead of standard Alkalines, I’m not sure.

Bumbershoot ’01 – Saturday, Sep. 1st

December 10, 2019September 1, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

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!

Pie, ghosties, scots, and naked girls (kinda)

December 10, 2019August 19, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Sunday rolls around, and another week has done and gone. Been a good week, though.

The work week was pretty uneventful, for the most part. It seems that the opinion is that I’m catching on to things rather quickly there, however. John (the person I’m replacing) has decided that this week he’ll only be working half-days, and will make this Friday his last day…then I’ll have the shop to myself. Pretty cool. I also talked with Shelley (my boss within Xerox), and the impression I got is that while I’m not using my DocuTech training at this position, there are good possibilities for that in the future. This was great to hear, as it makes it sound even more possible that I will be getting hired on by Xerox on a permanent basis at some point in the future. It may be a while before that happens — as I understand it, they’re currently in the midst of a hiring freeze right now — but with any luck, I might be officially part of Xerox sometime after the first of the year.

Earlier this week I went out to see American Pie 2. I’m not entirely sure why that ended up being my choice, as I am no great fan of the first one, but that was where I ended up. Pleasantly enough, it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t label it a classic by any stretch, nor will it be a ‘keeper’ for me when it comes out on DVD, however it was surprisingly funny in spots, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I did the first installment. Much of it was a rehash of the original, but it felt to me like it held together better this time around…more of a real story connecting the characters, rather than merely placing a bunch of misfits in screwball (and often disgusting) circumstances one after the other. And, I gotta say, Alyson Hannigan (as Michelle, the ‘band geek girl’), was great — stealing the film, in my eyes, at least. So, all in all, not as bad a film as I thought it might be.

I also went out Friday night for the midnight show of Poltergeist. Very cool…it had been years since I’d seen this film, and along with many other horror films that were beat to death with sequels, it’s always pleasant to revisit the original and see just how good it actually is. Probably very much due to the production (and uncredited co-direction) of Steven Spielberg, the film is much more along the lines of what I like to see in a horror film — a slow build that allows you to make some connection with the characters before things start getting freaky, followed by truly innovative ideas as these unexeplained events start affecting the family. Quite nice.

I’ll try and get around to at least moving these mini-reviews into the Movies section of my messageboard soon…kind of tired now, as I’ll explain in the moment, so didn’t do that part yet.

Saturday, I headed out with a full crew of people (Casey, Dez, Chad, Don, Karl, Tim, Jenny, and Wendy) to go see the Barenaked Ladies in concert out at the Gorge (a gorgeous [no pun intended] outdoor amphitheater by George, Washington). Casey had bought me the ticket before I had even made it down to Seattle as a ‘welcome to Washington’ present, which I thought was all sorts of cool. We all loaded into three cars Saturday afternoon, and undertook the roughly 3-hour drive to the Gorge. We eventually made it out to the campsite at Potholes State Park — apparently, it was the closest one available, even though it took us another 45 minutes or so after passing the Gorge to get to it — and set up camp there. Admittedly, it was a very pretty little campground.

After getting everything set up at the campsite, we packed ourselves into two cars, and headed down a quicker route back to the Gorge for the show. The way there was fascinating — currently, huge amounts of the state of Washington are on fire, and there were amazing clouds of smoke from the fires just 40 miles away or so in the sky. The smoke turned an otherwise clear night to a completely opaque murk. Just fascinating to see — and the smell of burning pine in the air was an added reminder that all this stuff wasn’t that far away.

We got to the Gorge during the first opening act (who, unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of), found a spot and got settled during her last couple songs. The second opening spot was The Proclaimers! All sorts of cool…though I’ve only ever picked up one of their albums (Sunshine on Leith), I’ve enjoyed their music since I first heard “1000 Miles” in the movie Benny & Joon. They played a short (or so it seemed to me) but very clean set, with a nice mix of songs, some that I recognized, and some that I didn’t. After a short break while the stage was slightly rearranged, BNL came on.

This show was great. While I’ve never known much of BNL before this (most of my exposure has been their radio tracks — ‘If I Had A Million Dollars’, ‘One Week’, and ‘Pinch Me’, all of which I’ve liked), so didn’t know many of the songs, these guys put on an incredible show. They obviously have a lot of fun with their music and their concerts, and spent a good amount of time between songs joking around and generally having a lot of fun (from the lead singer while relating a story: “We were celebrating Christmas. Sure, I’m Jewish, but we’re big fans of presents…we’re not big fans of a kind, benevolent God. We like the Old Testaments wrathful, vengeful God. So now we celebrate Easter, too.”) Bouncing back and forth between their songs, with frequent jaunts into random snippets of other music, plus three encores, the show was an absolute blast.

After the show ended at about 11:30pm, we all went back to the campsite, and ended up sitting up and talking until sometime after 2 in the morning. We started out just sitting and talking, still pretty jazzed from the show, then Karl, Casey, Tim and I got into a discussion covering everything from Economics to Politics to whether or not the human race is breeding itself into extinction, and didn’t realize how long we talked until someone actually thought to look at a watch. The night was absolutely beautiful, too — I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Milky Way as visible as it was last night.

This morning we all got up, slowly got ourselves ready to go, packed up, and headed back into town. Now I’m back at Casey’s just long enough to put this post up, then it’ll be time for me to head back to my apartment and crash out before it’s time for me to work tomorrow morning. Very good weekend, though…was a whole lot of fun, and a nice change from kicking around my apartment. So, this is it for now…until later….

Parallax1

December 10, 2019November 25, 2000 by Michael Hanscom

Went out to catch Parallax1‘s show tonight. Very cool, they’re a great bunch, and keep doing very interesting stuff with their music.

Not much other than that…stayed up to late chatting at VI again. Ah, well — one more day of work at Suncoast, and then I’m officially on vacation for the next three weeks. It’s about time!