How I Spent My Bumbershoot (Plus a Photo Gallery)

If you know me personally, you know how disappointed I was in this year’s Bumbershoot lineup. Sure, it may be because I had so much fun at Soundfest just a couple of weeks before, but the Bumber-music fell a bit short for me.

However, I do like that a lot more local artists were involved. which is always good to see. And I don’t want it to seem like I didn’t have fun, because I did. It’s just strange to go to Bumbershoot and not be conflicted about which stage to go to because you want to see two things happening at the same time. That didn’t happen to me once this year.

While my music taste is quite a bit outside of the majority, I can still usually find a full day (at least one) of Bumbershoot to enjoy. This year I was lucky to find four artists on Sunday that I was stoked to see. But it isn’t all doom and gloom–I did get a chance to check out a few that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

So how did I spend my Bumbershoot weekend? On Saturday I actually got a chance to contribute for the first time and helped keep all of your grubby hands off of that basketball in the fishbowl at The Magic Show in the Seattle Center Pavilion. It gave me a chance to appreciate how much work goes into providing non-music art to the Bumbercrowd.

Gone are the days of art being in the spacious NW Rooms (because KEXP is starting to move in to that space). Instead, most of the visual art was stuffed into the corner near the skatepark, including an installation in the skatepark complete with signs stating that skating was not allowed. Along with The Magic Show and Skaters Gauntlet, this area also featured the Bumber By Number interactive exhibit and the Orange Man, who was handing out orange balloons all weekend long. Other than Flatstock, I didn’t see much in the way of visual art this year. So, I wrapped up my Saturday with a stop at the Mighty-O Donuts booth for some fresh hot mini donuts and then headed to Belltown for a tattoo consult.

Sunday found me a lot more involved with the music of Bumbershoot. I didn’t plan it this way, but everything I saw was at either the Fisher Green Stage or the Exhibition Hall. I started the day off with Mad Rad (photo at top) which may be the favorite of the day. They had a ton of energy and a very sizable crowd. I then headed over to catch NoMeansNo at (a first for me) the Exhibition Hall. While I prefer their Hanson Brothers band, it was still nice to see at least one old-school punk group.

Next up was a break for more Mighty-O donuts and then back over to Expo Hall for Atari Teenage Riot. The crowd in line quickly adopted referring to them as “Atari Middle-Aged Riot,” but they still created one of the longest lines of the day thus far. Atari Teenage Riot came out like a bomb and kept the electro-antiestablishment-punk energy song after song, along with a healthy amount of lasers. (This created problems for the photography crew, as apparently the fire marshall saw just how packed we were in there and forced the stage manager to send us in only seven at a time. Strange, but I guess we made it work.)

Another break, this time for some water and to check out Das Racist. They had a lot less energy than I was told to expect, and they seemed to love taunting the crowd with “Hey there, Bonnaroo!” over and over. Still, a good-sized crowd of younger people were really into it. And maybe that was the point of this year’s lineup: a new fresh Bumbershoot crowd. (I was quickly put in my place when I mentioned this, and someone asked me why then was Hall and Oates the headliner rather than Macklemore. Touché. From what I heard, Macklemore packed Key Arena, while Hall and Oates struggled to even fill half of it.)

After some Das Racist, I was back at Expo hall to catch Anti-Flag. Those problems I mentioned earlier? At the front door to the hall, we were informed of the same photographer deal: seven in at a time, shoot three songs, then rotate out to let more in. We were all promised we would get a chance to shoot. With that, a lot of us waited for over forty minutes for Anti-Flag to take the stage. (Expo Hall was running late all day.) So I didn’t get many good shots of Anti-Flag, but there were at least three others who didn’t get any shots.

After waiting so long for the late start to that show, I decided to head over and catch the beginning of the Butthole Surfers. Gibby and company plowed through their set in typical Butthole Surfers style and appeared to really enjoy it. I think this was the oldest crowd I had seen at the Fisher Green stage all day, but that could also be because a large portion of the Youngs were in line at the Key at try to see Macklemore. Instead, I stuck around and caught The Kills, which capped off my Bumbershoot weekend.

And now for the photo gallery part of my report…

Mad Rad: