It's taken me a while to get around to this retrospective and at that, I've only completed the first day. I've been busy, I tell 'ya, and I don't know when I'm going to get around to posting Day Two, or for that matter, posting a retrospective of Hopscotch. But here's a start.
It rained for the first hour or so on the first day of Bumbershoot, quite literally the first time I've experienced rain in Seattle in four years of coming here for the festival. It did not make much of a difference, as most of the bands I wanted to see were performing indoors that day anyway (the festivals grounds are Seattle Center, a campus of indoor and outdoor theaters and stages). But the first act on that day, kicking off the entire festival, was Seattle's Fly Moon Royalty.
Michael Upchurch wrote in
The Seattle Times, "Fly Moon Royalty, one of the first acts of the day, offered a standard-issue combo of canned electronic beats, soulful singing by Adra Boo and white-dude rap by Action J." In Seattle's alternative weekly,
The Stranger, Kelly O wrote, "Adra Boo looked glamorous and dry onstage, playing to a soggy-wet crowd at one of Bumbershoot’s very first sets of the day at 11:45 am (and playing a revved up cover of Madonna’s song Physical Attraction.) 'Are you guys up? It’s so early!' she told the crowd. 'We went to the Black Weirdo party last night, and we’re feeling a little rough.'”
Black Weirdo might need a little explanation. According to the official Bumbershoot Program, hip-hop duo THEESatisfaction "started Black Weirdo as a blog - a tribute to their favorite musicians, visual artists, photographers, dancers, and writers of the African diaspora. The name was branded to t-shirts and buttons, and eventually came to life as a movable party that showcases DJs and artists that are willing to step out of genre boundaries and provides a dance haven for the black queer community and allies." There was a Black Weirdo panel discussion later that day but at the same time as Iska Dhaaf so I didn't go, but meanwhile I was standing outside in the rain so I headed indoors to the Pavilion Stage to see Modern Kin.
Portland's Modern Kin, according to the Program, "evolved from the folk-rock ashes of Drew Grow and the Pastors' Wives, emerging with a leaner and more urgent sound." We've seen Drew Grow before, but there were a bunch of Seattle teenagers by the Pavilion Stage before the performance who obviously never had, and were trying to get themselves worked up for the performance. "Modern Kin!," they kept exclaiming over and over. "It'll be like, like . . . I dunno." One young man, looking me over, leaned in and asked me if I was a long-time fan of Modern Kin.
"Well, I'm not sure Modern Kin's been around as a band long enough to have long-time fans," I replied, "But I've seen Drew Grow before, including when he toured the country with the Pastors' Wives along with The Head and the Heart. And before that, I used to hang around the Athens, Georgia music scene a little when Drew was playing with The Vigilantes of Love. How about you?" That shut him up. Also, let it be known that Modern Kin played a great, energetic set that day, a good start to the festival.
It was still drizzling outside after Modern Kins' set, more like misting really, and while I could handle the weather, I nonetheless hung out at the indoor Pavilion Stage to see Dude York. I caught Dude York a couple of Bumbershoots ago and was impressed with their mix of punk ferocity and pop songcraft, and looked forward to hearing them again. But because I'm feeling fundamentally lazy today and have fallen so far behind in posting this retrospective, instead of describing their set, I'll again quote others, this time Robin Edwards of The Stranger: "Dude York woke up an at-capacity stage with delightfully goofy banter and optimistic singalong ragers about boats at the bottom of Lake Washington that sound like unearthed Blue Album b-sides." According to Edwards, when singer/guitarist Peter Richards announced that "the next song didn't have a title yet, an elderly gentleman (not me, honestly, I swear) being jostled by a mob of moshing teens" (probably my friends from the Modern Kins audience) suggested the title Working Man,"
Since I'm clipping quotes from other's reviews, I might as well clip some pics, too - the photo above is much better than anything that I took. After Dude York, I went over to the Bagley Theater for a change-of-pace comedy show/panel discussion led by Bill Nye the Science Guy. The comedy sets are a big part of Bumbershoot, the only part for a lot of people, and I was lucky to even get in, but when I did I still got a pretty good seat. The panel included comedians Eugene Mirman and Paul F. Thompkins (left), two university astrophysics professors (center) and Nye (right). It was pretty funny and a lot of fun, and when I got out an hour later, the rain had left for the rest of the weekend, so that's cool.
Still, the act I wanted to see most at that hour was back at the Pavilion Stage, so even though the rain had stopped, I headed back indoors for Tomo Nakayama. I saw Tomo perform with his band Grand Hallway at my first Bumbershoot back in 2011, and again singing with the band Gold Leaves at Bumbershoot 2012, and I didn't want to miss his first Bumbershoot performance under his own name. "Nakayama's acclaimed intricate chamber-folk compositions have been featured on NPR and KEXP," according to the Program notes. "A 2014 Artist In Residence at Town Hall, he has toured and performed at festivals throughout the US and Japan, both solo and with his band Grand Hallway. Nakayama made his acting debut in Lyn Shelton's Sundance feature Touchy Feely and sang an original song (Horses) which the New York Times called the film's 'most compelling moment.'"
The set was as warm and wonderful as one could have hoped, and during the set Tomo announced that he had just gotten a new puppy and that his wife was somewhere outside taking care of it. We applauded for puppies, for Tomo, and for rainless Seattle afternoons.
Next up, and again at the Pavilion Stage, was my first discovery of the weekend, Seattle's Iska Dhaaf. I had no idea what an Iska Dhaaf was - apparently the name is from the Somali phrase for "let it go." According to the Program, "Inspired by Sufi poetry, limitation, and an obsessive preoccupation with writing, (guitarist/vocalist Nathan) Quiroga and (drummer keyboardist Benjamin) Verdoes have fused their seemingly disparate musical and personal backgrounds into something searching and honest. The result is a heated, psychedelic, and entirely fresh brand of rock music." I liked it, a lot.
Next, I finally made it to the outdoor Fountain Lawn Stage, getting a front-row, rail position to see Poliça. Dave Segal of The Stranger wrote, "Minneapolis' Poliça have two drummers, but they couldn't sound more different from the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers. Rather, they're led by the vocalist Channy Leaneagh, whose 21st-century Rickie Lee Jones-esque timbre overshadows the coffee-shop dub pop and midtempo techno lite the band modestly generates from laptop, bass, and the aforementioned competent sticksmen." We've seen Poliça before, and in the interval between Bumbershoot and the posting of this retrospective saw them again, but it was still good to catch up with them at Bumbershoot, if for no other reason than Channy Leaneagh's ultra-cool stockings.
The Both are Ted Leo of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Aimee Mann of, well, Aimee Mann (and, I guess, going back to 'Til Tuesday). After the two-drummer attack of Poliça, The Both's brand of indie-folk sounded a little too laid-back and mellow in a Starbucks soundtrack kind of way, although the snarky stage banter between Mann and Leo had its amusing moments. I'm told they closed their set with 'Til Tuesday's Voices Carry, but I wouldn't know because I had left to go hear my second discovery of the day, Yuna, at the, and I'm not unaware of the irony here, Starbucks Stage.
Yuna is a Malaysian artist who plays a variety of genres, from indie-pop to neo-soul. According to the Bumbershoot Program, "In a remarkably short period of time, Malaysian pop vocalist Yuna has risen from regional D.I.Y. notoriety to full-on international stardom. She’s performed high-profile sets at major festivals, and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Yuna’s music was also featured in several films, including her stellar cover of The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun in Oliver Stone’s Savages and her collaboration with Owl City on Shine Your Way for the hit animated feature The Croods." In addition to singing, she played some guitar and ukulele, and I was totally enchanted by the power of her pitch-perfect voice. I would say that much of her oeuvre is in pop genres not particularly of my choice, but she pulls it off so well that it's still a joy to hear.
The evening's headliners were Wu-Tang Clan on the main stage, set up in Seattle's Memorial football stadium. By the time I got in the stadium after Yuna's set, there had already been fans present there for hours waiting for their heroes to appear and I got nowhere near the stage, instead taking a seat in the bleachers across from the opposing bleachers where the stage had been set up. This is what the stage looked like from my perspective:
Of course, I was able to zoom in a little when the band finally took the stage some 25 minutes late:
Here's a better shot, this one by a pro working the alley in front of the stage.
The Stranger's Emily Nokes wrote, "The Wu-Tang's relentless set at Memorial Stadium—their group stage presence on the outdoor stage felt tight and looked impressive—pleased everyone, even the teens who seemed way too young to know what they were witnessing. Noteworthy: Raekwon wearing an Alive and Well sweatshirt and a Seahawks hat, RZA showing off DJ Mathematics's 'old-school DJ skills with no computers' in a scratch-off, GZA's head tilt, Method Man not being present."
The Seattle Times' Mike Ramos described it this way - "legendary Staten Island, N.Y. rap crew Wu-Tang Clan closed down the mainstage Saturday night with eight members — less the late, great Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and with no Method Man to be found either, but longtime “10th member” Cappadonna filling his absence. A majority of the crowd present looked like they hadn’t even been born when the group’s debut
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came out in 1993, and the audience participation (especially during classic shout-alongs like
Clan In Da Front) sure didn’t match the amount of Wu-shirts present. But as
de facto frontman/main producer RZA noted, the group fed off of any enthusiasm the crowd had to give. Though the set list stuck to the basics, it was still crazy fulfilling to see almost all of
36 Chambers, plus solo hits like
Liquid Swords, Ice Cream, 4th Chamber and second-album smashes
Reunited and
Triumph performed live."
To be honest, like many of those seated around me, I left before the set was over. The row of seats I was in was full to capacity at the beginning of Wu Tang's set, but by the time I left, I was the only one in the entire row of seats. Blame it more on the reverberating echoes of the stadium acoustics than on the band themselves, but without the intimacy of being able to make out individual faces, it was hard to relate to what was happening on the stage.
Emily Nokes also noted, "There are more kinds of Wu-Tang shirts than any other kind of band T-shirt in the history of band T-shirts, and this includes Ramones Ts." This was my favorite, taken from an interview with the RZA about the Heart Sutra:
