bumbershoot!

so much goes on labor day weekend, finding fun can be work itself.  this was supposed to be seven days of live music.  now that’s what i call vacation!  my hopes for tuesday didn’t hold out, but it still turned into 6 out of 7 days.  not bad at all!

bumbershoot is a supreme professional festival.  everyone pulled their jobs off impecably.  the perfect festival atmosphere in seattle center.   i hope to return!

still, no matter how many times i try to convince people otherwise, sometimes life just isn’t fair.  i am going to complain about getting to go on vacation and the ugly side of exclusive access and being taken care of hand and foot.  seriously though, i am appreciative of any time i can get free and anytime i can get a free ride, but things ain’t always the dream they seem. 

three months ago, i found out my friends band was opening for MDC at slabtown. perfect thing to plan six days of just kicking back in portland, not doing a damn thing except starting each day off with a beer.  then i got confirmation for a bumbershoot photo pass in seattle the day after the MDC concert. ideally, this is a primo deal for what would seem to be several days of consecutive music.  so, i cut short the portland dream for the added bonus in seattle.  in the end, my six days of hanging in portland became about eight hours and then three days in seattle center (which we quite active with “work”) before coming back home. somehow i lost two days of vacation there and sat in la grande wondering what to do with the two days off work?  not to be one of those la grande homers, but i take vacations to leave here not come back early.

the first night before leaving la grande was a perfect night at 10 depot. the concert was advertised as kory quinn but turned out to be more like left coast country featuring kory quinn. it’s always great when you get your news from touring bands. “we would have been earlier, but I-84 was blocked off with a shootout so we had to take a long detour.”  that turned out to the be the case, a cop shot a driver who had shot at him. and then the next morning while getting ready for portland, i get to see left coast country again, this time sleeping in my neighbors yard. just camped out in the grass, sleeping nearly in the sidewalk. looked like they stayed for some kind of party there and then headed up to play terminal gravity and juniper jam on the weekend. those are the kind of things i hate skipping, and almost only do for the chance to do something else similar.

then the blur that was the slabtown show. hadn’t seen the faithless saints in over a year, was barely coherent enough to follow any conversation, just remember being out of it to not be able to take photos after the saints played.  but i was in my mind enough to see MDC blitz through every song i could have hoped to hear.  kind of the perfet level of consciousness. the next thing i know, dj liger and sugarloaf are calling me from outside, ready for the drive north. it was kind of a rushed trip, with a botched attempt to find a western union. labor day weekend and of course traffic is going to be bad. so we leave at the crack of dawn (8:00), earlier than even western union opens. (my mother wired me some money, but while on the run i can’t manage to rendezvous with an access point. and she says it can’t be picked up in washington, only oregon, so i am making a very simple task harder by tying to complete it in a scenario that isn’t about to work.) we did find a useful western union that opened at 9:00, but that was too late. we are finally on the road at 8:45, crossing the border. 

it takes about half the drive out of portland, to finally find a spot we can cruise at 80mph.  about ten minutes later, we on the other half of the drive, the drive into seattle, where we are again slowed down by bumper to bumper for a 45 mph traffic jam. we buzz straight past taylor swift’s 25 eighteen wheeler entourage at the tacoma dome through to city center. boise state fans are also cascading into town since it is saturday, week one of the college football season.  in seattle, that means a rematch of last year’s las vegas bowl in which boise state slipped away with a victory. (this weekend, no chance!) we get through it all effortlessly, and to a quick to find and cheap parking space downtown.  then it is the long walk around the entire event to the proper check-in point. next we stand through a long line to that check in, for our one-day ticket. (repeat this step all three days).  we then have to check in at the press room for our badges.  so, the first band we plan to meet, flavr blue, is already on stage starting the festival and we miss their set.  sugarloaf and liger manage to get an interview with the band, while i am off taking pictures of a vip concert that zz ward was doing a few hours before her regular set.  

and then it’s on.  

a mad rush to get photos of ernie watts, nacho picasso, down north, robert glasper, joey bada$$, zz ward’s second show, and the physics all in less than a four hour period, which is then followed by a short interview with the physics.  catch my breath, sit down for about twenty minutes, then another several stages to run around to get photos of charles bradley, gary numan, sally ford and maceo parker.  we had a bit of time to sneak in a couple songs at jason bonham’s led zeppelin experience and then we left the party for logistical reasons.  it had been a hella busy day and we didn’t think our parking pass was valid past ten, so we skipped seeing parts of heart or crystal castles. and because sugarloaf is probably not old enough to get in and because we are dead tired and have no idea where our hotel is, we don’t go to the highline to see MDC for me to make up for the lack of pictures i took at their show in portland.

but extra concerts, even of long standing legends, can be passed up in seattle on labor day weekend. bumbershoot itself is full of concerts by long standing legends. bumbershoot is a killer, killer event.  having the photo pass is nice access for sure. to get to go to your favorite events for free is too good of a deal to pass up.  but let’s get this part straight.  it’s not the best way to experience this, or any other, event.  buy the ticket and take the ride, to quote hunter s. thompson.  i would have much rather bought the ticket and stood in the front row for the breeders or fidlar.  getting in for free comes with responsibilities, responsibilities that i typically wish i was actually getting paid for.  here is the essence in a nutshell. the breeders come on stage at a perfect, dreamy moment near dusk. one of those moments you wish for the chance to see for 20 years finally comes to life and there i am again, in the front watching kim and kelly and josephine and jim.  they serve up their playful album “last splash” in its entirety and a couple extra songs for good measure. 

wearing my breeders shirt puts more pressure on this kind of event. i don’t have many concert shirts, certainly not many from the 90s. also, unlike most of my other clothes, this breeders shirt gets a lot of compliments. then as now. i wait in the press line to get to the front of the stage, even though i was there early enough to be able to just stand in the front row.  press photo access typically gets us three songs to take however many photos with no flash and no video inside the security barrier. the rules vary from band to band, but that’s the general situation.  cool for a minute, but certainly not all fun and games.  this is ten or twenty minutes spent writhing around like worms with the multitude of other photographers to get whatever kind of shot available.  and when that time is over, so is the access.  after my 30 minutes watching the calm before the storm, i go from stage front, to being out of the arena entirely.  i already had front row access from the crowd.  an extra five feet wouldn’t really change much, yet i get herded inside the barriers for a closer look and the ability to move along the front of the stage.  being an extra row closer and having lateral movement abilities doesn’t really yield all that many better shots, but the biggest loss is that i can’t rock out and just enjoy the music. i trip over a different foot every time i try to take a step in the photo pit.  it’s all business, get the job done and move out of someone’s way.  when the job was done, i had a lane not back to my original front row spot (which i guess i could have figured some way to save), but the lane of photographers are all making a bee-line to the next concert.  in this case, the zombies are on the next stage, and broncho on the stage next to that, and an interview to try to catch up to 10 minutes after that. it’s constant running.  i would rather have sweated in the front row to every song, missed the zombies and everything else.  i “saw” the first “three” breeders songs (one cover song for a sound check and then “new year” the prelude to cannonball) for a total of less than ten minutes.  after the running back and forth, i then made it back to watch the last three songs from the concourse on the hill looking down over the thousands of people watching the breeders.  they ended with “fortunately gone” which i thought was a rather weak choice of a song and then give some quick waves and are gone.  that was it.  there is a strict one hour time limit for most musicians, on and off.  the next band has exactly 30 minutes to get ready. so, no encores or much room for taking requests and that kind of thing. 

this event repeated itself, without the magnitude of the breeders impact. most of the events for three days were like this. walk up to the side of the stage, wait with twenty to thirty other photographers, take pictures, go to the next stage, the cycle continues. i got to be at the front of the stage when eric burdon was singing “don’t let me be misunderstood.”  then i was gone, cycling back at the tail end of the show to climb up just enough the slope to stand on my tiptoes to catch a glimpse of eric burdon’s head through the crowd while he sang, “it’s my life” and “house of the rising sun.”   same thing with the zombies.  took photos while they played a new song and made it back just at the very end to see “time of the season” followed up with a track from the alan parson’s eye in the sky album.   kind of a depressing performance to watch, but always glad to be able to see such moments.

all that said, i did get to see a concert or two all the way through and they were worth it, especially on the second day when things were in full swing.  the second day was so action packed. we saw redwood plan, did a quick interview with grizzled mighty, then off to ramona falls, fidlar, then i was headed to see river giant on the plaza stage, furthest away from all only to find they were replaced by another band, midday veil.  i watched some of them, went back for the photo shots of eric burdon, back to try to see the comettes, but i believe i went to the wrong stage, and then all the other stages and back to the end of the eric burdon set, then bob mould, the grizzled mighty – “stop!  watch the rest of this show!”  i told myself.  the grizzled mighty was too much fun and i needed a “break.”   from what i saw, they were the best band of the festival.  and the only band to decimate their drum kit.  then it was the breeders, the zombies, broncho, the breeders, the zombies, broncho, wait, no i missed some of those and saw more of others, it’s kind of a blur at points. you just don’t really know what is happening and what has happened.  you only know what is getting ready to happen. that could sum up the entire life of a photographer. where was the point that i get to really relax?  

at one point, that moment was sitting on the concourse above the tune-in stage waiting for fidlar.  [edit out the part about the cool european kid.]  then the chase is on again.  this time at least fidlar played my favorite songs all in the beginning of the set.  after my second stretch of running to photos, i arrived back to see beats antique.  but i was too late to get in on the first three song limit and got no access to photograph it.  liger and sugarloaf did get an interview with him earlier.  it was epic.  i shook his hand.  i watched the last half the set from the beer garden where people were complaining about why there had to be a fence to the beer garden, which kept them from getting closer.  it was all good.  death cab for cutie was playing their entire (first?) album in key arena’s mainstage, but we were pummeled.  exhausted.  back to our awesome hotel.  not even a chance to see black bananas at the comet.  second time this year i missed them!  they were in portland at a garage festival at star theatre on the night of the timber’s game in april.

the second vacation point i had was waking up on the couch in the hotel room and drinking the rest of the beer and [editing out out parts of my blog for political reasons], that was about the best thing i could hope to do.  then and there, i had my hour or so of vacation, while we waited to go back and do more work.  but it was monday, the last day of the festival.  things were more ho-hum.  there was a stretch of good bands for sure early in the day, but by and large the best acts were scheduled for day one and two.  people seem to be musiced out after about 20 concerts in a span of 24 hours.  besides that, it’s just a blah experience anyway when you are facing the backside, “oh the fun is almost over and have to go back home” which is always rather anticlimactic.  i want to continue breathing the different air as if i’m a dog on a walk.  i want to have more of the happy moments.  but i am old now, so those don’t happen frequently enough anyway.  so i motivate myself, with the “here we go, let’s get this done so we can go home” routine.  the essence of that entire feeling is quite the paradox, and to show how wrong and backwards i can do things.  why would anyone rush through the last bit of a vacation to get work done so that they can go home where they will start working again soon?  and then to realize that’s precisely what is happening, makes things that ho-hum day and one that i would almost rather just didn’t happen at all.

but it does happen, and there were some great moments.  moments where the maldives apparently asked me to [fill in the blank] in their van and i didn’t even hear the comment.  i had already missed the maldives live set, for having seen hot bodies in motion and red jacket mine back to back, our buddies who we had met back in pendleton.  then red kross, baroness, sol, mark pickerel, superchunk, allen stone, justin townes earle... bumbershoot couldn’t really make a bad lineup even if they picked all the artists at random which i sometimes felt like they did.   beyond that, though, the crowds and the excitement that filled the air was just different on the last day.  while leaving, we saw the same dude with the “i need a fat bitch” sign seemingly less excited.  though he said he had three, “ ne in kirkland, one in kent, one in tukwila.” his sign was smaller and torn up.  there was no purpose trying to cram in some glimpses of joy formidable, deerhunter, trampled by turtles or bassnectar.  the fun sapped out of the weekend.  that moment where i just wanna pass out in the car and wake up at home.  that is what happened exactly. 

i didn’t even feel like drinking beer.  the wrong end of the lollipop is what i was on.  when it all clears up and i can go back and see the pictures, it will have been more worth it. [insert pictures: here is a link to the photo album]  next time i go to such an event, i might prefer to just buy a ticket and don’t try to cram so much in.  do it leisurely, have fun, see an entire set of one band!  maybe that, and skip the last day.  that “oh the long weekend is almost over” feeling has greater magnitude at the end of summer than during weekends like ranchfest when summer is just shifting into drive.  the leftover taste of the leftover season that fills you with the “another one bites the dust” type feeling.  when we went to ranchfest last, we came back complete and satisfied.   that was in the beginning of the season and we were simply tourists having an experience.  this was the end of the season and we were doing work on days that i had already worked hard to be able to get off work. that’s a catch 22.  not quite the best situation, but hey, it was still bumbershoot and i got to go for free. and i saw the breeders up close and personal for a few minutes. it’s hard to complain about that. 

then, it’s time for work (ten straight days of it again), but i have a good job that makes me forget about my volunteer job and the weekend i left behind.  it’s almost like having a double life.  that’s a very good position to be in. nothing to complain about there.