Finally have a good reason to go to the Sasquatch music festival this year. The Pavement reunion tour is stopping there. Pavement has been keeping me waiting for their reunion for a while. This should finally clear my band reunion list.
Speaking of reunions, we are off to see Dinosaur Jr. tonight. I need to dig up some earplugs.
Spent another rainy Labor Day at Bumbershoot. The weather kept the crowds away and we were able to catch quite a few bands this year. My favorite had to be The Cave Singers.
Modest Mouse closed the night out on the main stage. I have seen Modest Mouse in concert a number of times, on small and large stages, and their live performance never lives up to their recorded work. The Lo-Fi feel of their early recorded work is lost on stage. They play everything faster and louder so the kids can mosh to it.
Visqueen and Say Hi were both fun. Point Juncture, WA and Akron/Family were good but a bit arty for my taste. As for Franz Ferdinand, I can’t understand the appeal of this kind of noise.
Saw the Fruit Bats play at the new Crocodile Cafe last night. Great show. Every time we see him play a show he has a bigger and better band. The first time I saw him play the Graceland it was just him and a girl on keyboards. Last night he had five people on stage. Even his latest album has a fuller sound.
This was also our first chance to go to the remodeled Crocodile. The new owners completed gutted the place. There is giant new bathrooms, bar, and stage. The old bar has been turned into a fancy pizza place. The only thing that remains from the old Crocodile is the sign.
We hadn’t been to a show there in years when it went out of business last year. I saw last night they are reopening under new managment. Looks like it has something to do with Via Tribunali. Am I going to be able to get a slice of wood fired pizza during a show now?
Stayed up late on Monday night to see the Mountain Goats at the Showbox. Kaki King opened for them. She was recently profiled in a Times piece on female guitarist. She did her fancy guitar picking, which was pretty cool to see.
Saw Built To Spill play a great show last night. As advertised they played their “Perfect From Now On” album in its entirety. I still think “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” is their best album but “Perfect From Now On” plays better in a live setting. It was more jammy live then their recorded work. The two openers pretty much sucked.
Made it to one day of Bumbershoot this year. My highlights this year were Neko Case, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, and David Cross doing standup. Seeing Beck on the main stage was fun (if cold) but my knowledge of Beak post-Odelay is pretty slim. I recommend reading the NPR interview with him from last week, he has an interesting background.
Spent Friday night downtown with dinner and a show. We caught the late show of Luna Dean & Britta at the Triple Door. This was the first chance we have had to catch a show at the Triple Door and both were very impressed. They sat us right at the edge of the stage (Sherry grabbed Britta’s set list at the end). We split a half bottle of Ribera del Duero and the cheese plate and enjoyed the tunes. They played mostly new songs but did toss in a few Luna songs. My only complaint is that the new stuff does not have the guitar wankiness that I love from Luna.
Before the show we caught a quick dinner at Flying Fish. We hadn’t been there in years and sure it seems a bit dated next to newer hipper places these days (the older couple dinning next to us looked like tourists) but everything was still excellent.
Snuck in a few more days of fun before we headed back to work on Wednesday. Sunday we got to see Bill Frisell (with Danny Barns) at the Tractor. Monday and Tuesday we headed up into the mountains for our first cross country skiing of the year. For New Year’s Eve we had a nice four course dinner at Tilth but did not stay up for the glitchy Seattle fireworks.
The Sunday Art and Leisure had a great interview with Neil Young. They talked a bunch about how is preparing for his “Chrome Dreams II” tour. But the best part was the description of his car.
The car is a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, a 19-foot, two-ton behemoth. It was a commercial flop in the year of the massive tail fin, and in its original configuration the car is an ecological disaster, guzzling gas and leaving giant black exhaust spots on the ground as it starts up. That’s the Linc part. Volt is because Mr. Young is converting the car to battery power, with a biodiesel engine for backup, and he plans to drive it to its birthplace in Detroit to demonstrate the viability of electric cars. He’s making a movie about the trip. The film, “is so different from everything that I’ve ever done,” he said. “It’s totally positive.”
The converted Linc-Volt will still barrel along a highway, but silently. It should get up to 100 miles per gallon of fuel, since it runs most of the time on electricity. “The car is really heavy,” Mr. Young said. “It’s got a lot of inertia. So that gives it more power.”
The Times carried a picture in print, but unfortunately I can not find it online. It is quite a sight.