Bumbershooting

Today I went to Bumbershoot for the first of three days. Usually the crowds are too much to just go to Bumbershoot for Bumbershoot's sake, but some of the acts this year were too good to miss. Over all it was a great day. All three acts were entertaining and met my criteria for a good show. That criteria is a) keep the set under 90 minutes including encores, b) only one brief encore, and C) at least one cover song preferably one that hasn't bee recorded for an album.

Merychippus and I arrived at around 8PM. After a little Vietnamese, we headed over to McCaw Hall to see Nancy Sinatra. Neither of us are big fans, although I do have some admiration for her work with Lee Hazelwood in the 60s. Were already going to see Robyn Hitchcock later in the evening so we figured why not? The crowd was a mix of older people with white hair, middle-aged gay men, and young stylish hipsters. The show got off to a good start with "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" from Kill Bill Vol. 1. Then there were a bunch of songs that I had no clue about but sounded ok. During the song "Drummer Man" Nancy introduced here drummer who to my shock and surprise turned out to be Pete Thomas of Elvis Costello and the Attractions fame! Go Pete. During another song there was reel of clips from her movies including scenes with Frank and Elvis. She also sang are really awful song about her dad that apparently was written by Bono and The Edge. Nancy also covered Art Garfunkel's "99 Miles from L.A." and Morrissey's "Let Me Kiss You". During the goofy LSD song "Sugar Town", she came down into the crowd and started shaking hands with her fans and letting people sing verses it was all very Vegasy. She closed with "These Boots Were Made For Walking". While she didn't play "Some Velvet Morning" I have to say it was really strange and fun show, the kind I would never pay to see on my own and can only see at Bumbershoot.

On our way out of the Sinatra performance, I spotted Robyn Hitchcock with a guitar on his back walking against crowd looking very tall and wearing a polka dot shirt and some extremely bright purple pants. Who wears purple pants? I guess Robyn Hitchcock. After grabbing some dinner we walked around for a bit AND and chuckled at the long line to see Nickelback in Memorial Stadium. Later, I spotted SNL's Fred Armisen also with a guitar on his back.

Eventually, we ended up near the Space needle and I realized I hadn't been up in the Space Needle in like 20 years not since before I moved to Washington State in 1988. Since our Bumbershoot tickets got us half price admission to the observation deck we decided to go check it out. I'm sort of embarrassed to say this but it was pretty cool being up there and seeing all the different parts of Seattle from that vantage point. Most surprising was the fact that as expensive as the coffee was up at the top of the Space Needle it was cheaper than coffee at Bumbershoot, also the uniforms they make the elevator operators wear are a crime against humanity.

Then it was back to McCaw Hall for Pedro the Lion. I know Pedro has been around Seattle for a good while but somehow had escaped ever actually hearing their music. I was expecting some sort of drudgy mopey emo sludge but I was pleasantly surprised at how poppy they sounded. I may have to further investigate their music! Lead singer David Bazan sounds freakishly like Ron Sexsmith, if Ron had decided to become an indie rocker. They fulfilled my cover quota with a really nice cover of Randy Newman's "Social Science".

After Pedro finished their set a lot of the younger hipper looking people left and we were able to move up the second row. Robyn started out the show with an excellent cover of the Beatles' "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and proceeded to put on one of the best acoustic shows I've seen him do and I've seen him like 9 or 10 times. About half way through his set Robyn moved to the piano and shocked my playing a great version of "Queen Elvis". I think he did that song on guitar the first 6 times I saw him and each performance of the song bored me to tears, but on the piano it was really special. Later Robyn brought out Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5 and Sean Nelson of the Long winters and Harvey Danger to sing and play with him. Overall an excellent show that left me really wanting more.

One bizarre sidenote about the Robyn show. About halfway through the show a tall skinny nerd sat down in front in the middle of the aisle. Quickly the Opera House security guards, who wore dark blue suits, informed him that he couldn't sit there. He started arguing with them and started to whine when one of the guards put his hand on his shoulder. Eventually he moved to a front row seat to the left of us and through the rest of the performance he proceeded to hoot loud loud guttural sounds at the stage. At the end of the show before Robyn came back for an encore, I looked over and the man had taken off his t-shirt and was hooting louder than ever and waving the shirt over his head. I think this may be the first time ever I have seen a shirtless man at an in door concert. Thank you weird shirtless man for making this experience even more memorable.