Hopscotch - Day Two

The hotel's internet upload speed (or lack thereof) is preventing me form uploading yesterday's pictures to Flickr, but they will get up there eventually.  Meanwhile, here are a few of the highlights from Day 2 of Hopscotch.

JENKS MILLER & ROSE CROSS NC

An improvisational set of experimental music to kick off (at least for me) the Three-Lobed Recordings day party.

LITTLE BLACK EGG BIG BAND

As you can see, the "Little Black Egg Big Band" is really Yo La Tengo with guest guitarists.  Below is NPR's picture of the event, with your humble narrator in the lower left.

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN

Psychedelic improv from a North Carolina band.   

MV & EE

The first band of the day to feature bona-fide song structure, Vermont's MV & EE still elft a lot of room to jam out on their compositions.

THURSTON MOORE & MARY LATTIMORE

Thurston Moore improvisational guitar noise and feedback, this time accompanied by a harp for some reason.

LONNIE WALKER

On the main stage, a local band got a big break opening for the next two acts.

ST. VINCENT

Basically, the same show that she did at The Tabernacle in Atlanta earlier this year, which is not a bad thing at all.

SPOON

A very different set than their retrospective of past hits at the Shaky Knees Festival last May, since a new album has come out since then, and they played a nice mix of the old and the new.

LOAMLANDS

Truth in advertising:  the festival description said Loamlands feature "crackling, serpentine electric guitaar leads, spiritual and emotional wondering, country twang, folk rollick, and rock volume," and that is exactly what Loamlands delivered.

MARK McGUIRE

Overlooped compositions straddling the boundary between new age and alt rock.

 SUN KIL MOON

Did not want to be photographed, and there was a lot of drama and tension at the beginning of the set which shall be discussed at a later date, but the set ultimately developed into a fine performance of his moving, self-confessional, narrative songs.

Gotta get going - missing sets now even as I type.  More to follow.

Hopscotch - Day One

Drove from Atlanta to Raleigh (the new Portland) yesterday for Day One of the Hopscotch Music Festival.  More details to follow, but here are the bands that I saw and heard:

TOON & THE REAL LAWW

Local, Raleigh hip-hop crew with good lyrical flow and some pretty funny lines, none of which I can remember this morning.

DE LA SOUL

Iconic, hip-hop legends from Long Island performing in Richmond City Plaza.  

SUN CLUB

At the Lincoln Theater, this young, energetic band played party music not dissimilar to Louisiana's Givers.

AMERICAN AQUARIUM

Alt-country from nationally-recognized Raleigh band. 

WHITE LACES

Psychedelic "ambient dream punk" from Richmond, Virginia.  Bonus points for the Boston Celtics t-shirt.

THE WAR ON DRUGS

The pride of Philadelphia played loud and played long, not wrapping up their set until well after 2 am.

Dude, I Was There!

But not in the way you think.  I have been to the Williamsburg park along the East River where La Blogothèque recently shot a video of Tiny Ruins (Hollie Fullbrook).

Happening spot: the day I was there, a DJ had set up a tent at the very place where Tiny Ruins later played.

Tiny Ruins will open for Sharon Van Etten at The Earl on Monday (naturally), October 20, 2014

DakhaBrakha

In retrospective, a lot of the Bumershoot performances were great and it was easily the most enjoyable festival for me yet.  Sure, Pickwick put on the best set I've ever heard from them, and Kishi Bashi was, as always, incredible.  I discovered new bands like Iska Dhaaf and Yuna, and the Latino bands (Mexican Institute of Sound and Bomba Estereo) more than lived up to my expectations. Julianna Barwick was every bit as soothing and relaxing as Negativland were perplexing and disorienting, Jonathan Richman was witty and warm and funny, and Real Estate provided a sweet confection of a dessert to end the festival.

But what really stands out in my mind and what I will probably always remember when I look back at Bumbershoot 2014, my last Bumbershoot festival, is the mind-blowing performance by the Ukraine's DakhaBrakha,  "Lark's Tongues in Aspic as reimagined by Dirty Projectors as a near-eastern folk opera," for those of you who insist on having labels to put on things.  

Duuuude . . . .

Update (9/3/14):  The video's already down, so here's someone's not-bad iPhone video of the first couple of songs from DakhaBrakha's impressive set, and judging from the angle, he must have been standing right next to, or at least very near, me.  Follow the YouTube link for the entire mind-blowing set (recommended).  The closest analogy I can think of to describe their music is this is what it would probably sound like if Dirty Projectors decided to reimagine King Crimson's Larks Tongues in Aspic as a near-eastern folk opera.

Update II (9/3/14): Writing about Poland's OFF Festival and Sub-Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman's interests in Poland, Emily Nokes writes in The Stranger, "the act that blew me away was a band I'd never heard of. And definitely didn't know how to pronounce. And almost didn't even see."

"It was the final day of OFF, and I was in a cab with Megan Jasper, Sub Pop's vice president, and Tony Kiewel . . . when Kiewel received a text message from Poneman that simply said 'omfg.' Apparently that's not the kind of text message anyone is used to receiving from him, and we all laughed thinking it was a really weird thing to send with no follow-up. We headed to the food tent where . . . I kept hearing drums and screaming from the experimental tent and finally decided to see what the fuss was. OMFG indeed. 

They were called DakhaBrakha, and it was three women and one man seated on the stage. The women were wearing what looked to be ornate white wedding dresses and giant furry cone hats. The man was dressed in traditional Turkish formal wear. The women sang haunting folk songs, their voices twisting in harmonies that almost didn't sound human. As the music amped up, two of the women beat drums with a percussive force usually reserved for the heavy-metal genre. Someone played a stringed instrument that sounded like icebergs moving. The crowd was both wound up and mesmerized, packed in and screaming and yelling. 

'DakhaBrakha were so thrilling, so spellbinding, and so utterly moving, it was an event unto itself,' Poneman said later. There was OFF, and then there was DakhaBrakha. They were enchanting and unlike anything that I've ever seen before. He called it 'the performance of the festival' and bemoaned that DakhaBrakha was 'not on the Sub Pop roster... yet.'

DakhaBrakha played Bumbershoot last weekend, too. Even though they were scheduled on the hottest day of the festival, they played with the same mesmerizing energy (and woolly cone hats!) as before." 

_________________________________

Well, if you have 12 hours to spare and nothing else to do, you can watch this entire video, apparently the raw feed for the video screen at the Fisher Green Stage at Bumbershoot yesterday (Monday), including the long, uneventful passages between sets.

But if you do have a life, here are the Cliff notes: Morocco's Hoba Hoba Spirit start at the 2:23:02 mark; Ukraine's DahkaBrakha begin at the 3:51:08 mark; the Mexican Institute of Sound kick off at the 5:42:30 mark; and Columbia's Bomba Estereo at the 7:25:12 mark.  After that are Neon Trees and Aer, but you're on your own for that.  

I'm posting this whole thing because I strongly recommend the DahkaBrakha segment - words cannot describe, so I'll let them speak for themselves.

I'd like to say that I'm not narcissistic enough to watch through the whole thing for shots of myself in the audience, but I did spot the back of my head beneath a black ball cap at a few points in the DahkaBrakha set, and you can see me dancing like an idiot to the Mexican Institute of Sound in a few places.

I'm not sure how long this video will stay active.  The Fisher Green feed from Saturday has been muted because of a copyright claim, and the feed from Sunday, which included Kishi Bashi's and Pickwick's sets, has been blocked altogether.  So my advice is if you're even mildly curious, watch now before this one disappears, too.

Bumbershoot, Day Three

The last day of my last Bumbershoot, and I have to admit it: this was my most enjoyable Bumbershoot yet.  Here's a late-night recap of the bands we saw today:

GOLD & YOUTH

Gold & Youth came on early, taking the stage at 12:30 and only being allotted a 30-minute set, but kicked off the day nicely with their moody anthems.  Highlights included, naturally, their closer Time To Kill.

LA LUZ

La Luz took the stage at the same early hour as Gold & Youth, but were allotted a more luxuriant 45 minutes to play, so I was able to catch the last few songs of their set after Gold & Youth were finished.

HOBA HOBA SPIRIT

Going through the schedule, I did not plan on seeing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit" or have any interest in hearing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit," but as I had some free time after La Luz, I wandered over to the Fisher Green Stage and to my surprise found myself enjoying the funky set of Moroccan punk ("Moroccan roll" as the band put it) by Casablanca's Hoba Hoba Spirit.  Even though one of the singers wore a Clash Sandanista t-shirt, sadly, they still had to sing a song called I Am Not a Terrorist to dispel any Western suspicions about them.  Later in the day, Jonathan Richman would say that the most promising thing he saw during a recent tour of the Middle East, the only promising thing in fact, were joint Israeli and Palistinian punk-rock bands. After they got the audience up and dancing, no small achievement in Seattle, Hoba Hoba Spirit even got them singing along in Arabic, an even greater achievement in these polarized times.

CAMPFIRE OK THE WEATHER

I saw Campfire OK in 2011 at my first Bumbershoot, so I noticed that they had a new and different lineup when they took the stage today.  However, I was still surprised when their front man, Mychal Cohen, announced that this was their very last set as "Campfire OK," and from now on they will be called "The Weather."  Anyway, still a fun set from an up and coming band.

DAKHA BRAKHA

This was the real surprise of the day.  Just like with Hoba Hoba Spirit earlier in the day, I did not plan on hearing any band named "Dakha Brakha" today as I was going through the schedule.  But as it turned out, this three-women and one-man band played native music from "the free Ukraine," and featured otherworldly harmonies, interesting rhythms, and exotic-sounding instruments, reminding us how far east the Ukraine really is.  It's not rock, but fans of bands like Dirty Projectors and Bjork should find them interesting.  I was mesmerized.  

ROSE WINDOWS

Psychedelic blues rock from a band that sounded like they could have opened for Janis Joplin or Grace Slick at the Fillmore West back in the 1960s.  Some people might mistake that remark for a criticism, but I mean it as the highest compliment.

MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND

Funky electronic hip-hop-influenced dance music straight from the heart of Mexico City.  The infectious beats had your humble narrator up and dancing, despite his sore feet from two-and-a-half days of Bumbershoot.

JULIANNA BARWICK

Wisely, the organizers set Julianna Barwick up in an indoor venue, so her quiet, ambient soundscapes wouldn't have to compete with the backbeats and noise from the other stages.  Still, it was quite a transition from the dance-oriented sound of the Mexican Institute to Barwick, but the sheer artistry and brilliance of her playing rewarded the effort, and the audience hung in there in total silence through her spell-binding set.

BOMBA ESTEREO

Back to the dance.  It was only 100 yards but it felt like a whole different universe coming from Julianna Barwick's ambient set to the latin-infused hip-hop dance music of Columbia's Bomba Estereo, but in this case, it was the desination and not the journey that mattered.  A great set and a whole lot of fun.

NADA SURF



Finely crafted indie-pop by 20-year veterans of the scene.  

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Not unlike with Julianna Barwick earlier, I wondered how Jonathan Richman's music would fare in a festival setting.  As it turns out, his improvisational and spontaneous approach is the perfect tool for keeping a large audience's attention, and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand through his hour-long set, which seemed to fly by far too quickly.

REAL ESTATE

Real Estate are one of my favorite bands, and a perfect nightcap to end my last Bumbershoot.  At one point, bassist Alex Bleeker asked the audience if anyone had been lucky enough to catch Jonathan Richman earlier and asked what he had played, and when someone offered Egyptian Reggae, guitarist Martin Courtney spontaneously launched into a note-by-note, perfect cover of the song's main riff.  Just from that episode alone, you can tell how much these guys love their rock, and wouldn't it be so much fun to just hang out with these guys, talking music and going through their record collections?  In any event, they played a wonderful set of their layered, jangley music, and it was all so lovely that at times I even forgot where I was, or that the festival was ending, or how much my feet hurt from standing on them for three days. 

So that's it.  Best Bumbershoot ever.  At least for me.

And now it's over.

Bumbershoot, Day Two

Today, Sunday, was supposed to be the slow day for me at Bumbershoot, the day I just had to exercise a little patience and endurance to get from Saturday to Monday, although I kept wondering how a day that featured both Kishi Bashi and Pickwick could ever be considered "dull."  But as it turns out, the weather held up (mostly sunny, no rain), and the music, after a slow start, was terrific. Here's a recap:

MANATEE COMMUNE

To be honest, I never really gave this guy much of a chance, just stuck my head in the Pavillion Stage for a minute or two, and then wandered off to go see Hobosexual.

HOBOSEXUAL

A drum-and-guitar duo, the unfortunately named Hobosexual played loud, crunching rock with long hair flying and metal influences clearly displayed, but it was hard to figure how seriously they were taking themselves, and how seriously we needed to take them.

GOLDEN GARDENS

Far better than the first two bands of the day, Golden Gardens trafficked in ethereal, slightly gothic, electronic soundscapes, with spacey vocals floating over the wash of sound.  They kept asking us to dance, but we didn't. Welcome to Seattle, folks.

SANDRIDER

Loud.  Metal. Ignorable.

KISHI BASHI

Kishi Bashi didn't start until 3:00, and at one point this morning I thought about staying away from the festival until then, but I'm glad I got there early enough to catch those initial bands and to get a good position one row off the rail for Kishi Bashi.  The people around me didn't seem to know him or what he does, and it was fun watching them discover as he unpacked his bag of tricks.

CRAFT SPELLS

After a slow start, the festival schedulers put me through the paces for the next several hours.  After K. Ishibashi's set ended at 4:00, I had to rush over to the Endzone Stage in Memorial Coliseum to catch Craft Spells, who started promptly at 4:00.  I missed their first song (After The Moment?) or two, and got there as they were already playing, but I stayed for the rest of their short, 30-minute set.

DREAM SYNDICATE

80s faves The Dream Syndicate started at 4:30 just as Craft Spells finished, so I had to hustle from the Endzone Stage in Memorial Coliseum to the Starbucks Stage by the mural for their set.  Bonus points for an extended John Coltrane Stereo Blues full of squealing guitar dissonance, and for getting to see Mike Mills Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey watching the set from backstage.

NEGATIVLAND

Negativland's set overlapped with The Dream Syndicate's, so when it sounded like the latter was wrapping it up, I bolted over to the Pavilion Stage to catch Negativland's set in progress. Much to my surprise, there was a long line to get in (I apparently underestimated Negativland's popularity with the Seattle audience), but once inside, I was treated to their caustic wit, righteous indignation, and bizarre mix of sampled sounds, highjacked video, and electronic music.

PICKWICK

Things slowed down after the Negativland set, and I was finally able to get some dinner, and I met Tomo Nakayama walking through the crowd with his new puppy (he was kind enough to gracefully acknowledge my recognition).  After eating, I had to choose between watching the band Pickwick (the best band you never heard of), hear an all-star, Big Star tribute, or catch San Fermin, all scheduled to play at the same time (why couldn't the organizers put any of these bands on before 3:00, when I would have appreciated their presence?).  I eventually moseyed over to the Fisher Green Stage where Pickwick was scheduled to start in about 45 minutes, and surprisingly was able to get a spot right on the rail at center stage, a rare feat for a crowded, evening set.  I almost didn't recognize lead singer Galen Disston due to his new haircut (the former, Dylanesque look is gone), but Pickwick was on fire and played unquestionably the best set I've heard from them yet, and they even trotted a six-man horn section out onto the stage to accompany them on their final three or four songs.  A special night by the band, and I knew that I had made the right choice.

BOOTSY COLLINS

My original plan had been to leave after Pickwick, but since I got the center stage rail, I realized that all I had to do was stay right where I was to get the same spot to see funk legend Bootsy Collins from a once-in-a-lifetime vantage point at the front of the stage, a nearly impossible feat for a Bumbershoot headliner (and I can honestly say I don't expect to ever see Bootsy from that spot again).  Bootsy is a natural entertainer and showman, and his set was fun, exhilarating, thoroughly entertaining, and, well, funky.  I'm glad that I stayed.

So that was the "slow" day. I didn't expect to be rushing around so much from one stage to the next on the "slow" day, nor to have heard so much terrific music.  A slow start to be sure, but once it going, wow.  And Monday looks to be every bit as special.