Results tagged “bumbershoot”

From Everest first taking the stage, through the various moments of audio and comedic bliss throughout the long weekend, to the last chords strummed by Metric's James Shaw, we were incredibly thankful for all that Bumbershoot--this city's oldest music festival--has to offer. As we recollect, we invite you to spend some time clicking through this photo gallery made up of shots from the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

Bumbershoot: Cement (and lament?) the fact that summer is over with the last day of Bumbershoot 09. Drown your sorrows in music, art, and funnel cake. Make it a Metric Monday.

OK, so the Huskies match against the Tigers didn’t exactly give us the outcome we were hoping for, but at least the heartfelt performances by all in purple and gold made the city proud. While that game has come and gone, there is still one main event that is in full force. Of course, we speak of Bumbershoot, our city’s own music festival that was born as a city-funded event in 1971.

Despite what some may lead you to believe, music in Seattle is incredibly rich in its diversity. Sure, we go through obsessive periods honed in on specific genres-- last year it was all about harmony-rich folk, this year it seems to be more about straight-ahead rock—but there is certainly something here that should please every music fan.

GAMES (AND THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE/PLAY THEM): If you're a gamer, then you've already planned to spend your entire weekend around the convention center for the Penny Arcade Expo. What better way to spend the last days of summer than indoors playing the latest and upcoming games, talking to developers and hearing gamer-friendly music? It's officially sold out, but it never hurts to try. If that doesn't work, there's always PAX East in March. Convention Center, Friday-Sunday.

While passing around the final Bumbershoot artists list at last night's Seattlest meetup, we devised a little game--see how far down the list you get before you get to a band you've never heard of.

Yes, another Bumbershoot artist announcement, but this time around it's for the festival's literary program. This year's lineup is really all over the place, with everyone from director Melvin Van Peebles to The Outsiders author S.E. Hinton to David Cross (and his girlfriend) debuting his first book to the guy behind Stuff White People Like. But we're probably most excited for a panel involving three of the writers for Lost (no J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, or Smoke Monster, sorry) and a hopefully not-too-cringeworthy Q&A. Full lineup after the jump.

Just when we thought the lineup was as final as it was going to get until the announcement of all acts come July, a couple more names trickle out from One Reel. Now added: The Black Eyed Peas (currently starring in this nightmare of a video), Metric (who just played a sold-out show at the Showbox last night), and Soulsavers featuring Mark Lanegan. With the last round of acts, it was announced that Lanegan was off the lineup with Isobel Campbell, but now he's back with Soulsavers. Whatevs, we'll take it. A few of the $25 single-day tickets remain. Check out the acts by day; full current lineup after the jump.

Another big chunk of Bumbershoot acts were announced last night. Apparently, we'll have the full festival line-up by mid-July, but for now we'll have to make due with the list of newest additions:

The Bumbershoot 2009 lineup is trickling out drop by drop, and today brings a few more names to the schedule: Franz Ferdinand, Os Mutantes, Keller Williams, and Janelle Monae. Today also marks the first comedian on the lineup, Eugene Mirman. And one name off the schedule: The Ting Tings have cancelled their Bumbershoot appearance, probably because they're going to be touring with Pink.

One Reel just announced The All-American Rejects, The Ting Tings (who we saw just a few days ago), Brett Dennen, and U.S.E will be on the bill for Bumbershoot 2009. That makes the lineup thus far: "Sheryl Crow / Modest Mouse / The All-American Rejects / Katy Perry / Michael Franti & Spearhead / Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan / De La Soul / Raphael Saadiq / The Ting Tings / Brett Dennen / The Long Winters / Sly & Robbie & the Taxi Gang / World Party / MSTRKRFT / Roy Ayers / Common Market / UH HUH HER / Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women / Eric Hutchinson / No Age / Matt & Kim / Dead Confederate / The Cave Singers / Swollen Members / Vieux Farka Touré / Lenka / Gang Gang Dance / Todd Snider / Holy F**k / DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid / Iglu & Hartly / Low vs Diamond / Sera Cahoone / Eleni Mandell / U.S.E. / Carrie Rodriguez / The Honey Brothers / Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head / Extra Golden / Cordero / Forgive Durden / Hey Marseilles / Adrian Xavier, and many more to be announced." Three-day passes to the festival are still available for $80.

Here's your first sneak peek at the Bumbershoot lineup this year, and so far it's a YAWN: "Sheryl Crow / Modest Mouse / Katy Perry / Michael Franti & Spearhead / De La Soul / Raphael Saadiq / Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan / The Long Winters / Sly & Robbie and the Taxi Gang / World Party / MSTRKRFT / Roy Ayers / Common Market / UH HUH HER and many more…" UPDATE: A few more bands: "Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women / Eric Hutchinson / No Age / Matt & Kim / Dead Confederate / The Cave Singers / Swollen Members / Vieux Farka Touré / Lenka / Gang Gang Dance / Todd Snider / Holy F**k / DJ Spooky / Iglu & Hartly / Low vs Diamond / Sera Cahoone / Eleni Mandell / Carrie Rodriguez / The Honey Brothers / Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head / Extra Golden / Cordero / Forgive Durden / Hey Marseilles / Adrian Xavier, and much, much more to be announced."

While supplies last, a three-day pass to next year's Bumbershoot is just $60. The only catch is that you gotta be a BumberFan, but that process is relatively simple. Meanwhile, SIFF has passes and ticket packages for next year's film festival on sale now through January 15th. And if you're looking for a fest a little further afield, specially-priced tickets to next year's Bonnaroo just went on pre-sale today.

Tonight, drink pricey beers at the WaMu Theater (hey, they need the money!) before The Kills and The Raconteurs. You best get there early; believe us, it takes a lotta beers to make Jack White look pretty, but no drinks at all to make him sound good.

One Reel announced yesterday that last year's Bumbershoot won the 2008 Grand Pinnacle Award, whatever that is. Okay, so it's actually the big prize handed out by the International Festivals & Events Association to honor the most bestest festival or event, beating out the Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500 Festival, and the Tournament of Roses. You lose again, sports.

Vince Mira's on the rise. We took note of him first because of his disconcertingly good Johnny Cash covers, but the dark-eyed teen is writing and performing his own songs now. He's played full-length sets at all kinds of festivals this year, from Sasquatch to Bumbershoot to the Seattle Tattoo Expo, and the singer/songwriter performs fairly regularly at spots around town.

The Seattle-PI asks in the headline of a couple-hundred-word story a question we could answer in one word and a single photo.

According to an email we got from the Washington State Democrats today, the state's Attorney General, Rob McKenna, laid out a plan for Dino Rossi to beat Christine Gregoire in November for state delegates at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. In short, according to McKenna, McCain-Palin needs to carry Washington by 10-12 points. "If he fails to carry it by ten or twelve points, Dino doesn't win." Maybe it's scary thoughts like that which convinced the state's Republican party to put out only a "vaguely worded press release" when their booth got trashed at Bumbershoot this weekend.

If we were feeling snarky, we'd say it serves them right: after all, the vandalism of the booth is a mini-version of what the GOP leadership has done to the United States' image overseas in the past eight years, right? Poetic justice! But something about setting things on fire in the middle of a notoriously crowded festival strikes us as...well...inexcusably dangerous and short-sighted, even if what you're setting on fire symbolizes foreign and domestic policy of which you are very, very tired after eight years.

Seattlest Jeremy already reviewed Next Stage's Nexus Project--"A dozen original plays by some of our most talented writers is definitely worth your time, and your money"--but we caught a 3-play sampler down at Bumbershoot and had to chime in. Theater at the festival can be hit-or-miss but this year Next Stage and the Unicycle Collective nailed it (both featuring the terrific Marya Sea Kaminski) with 10-minute bits that fit the setting perfectly. The Nexus Project wraps up September 4-7, so make tracks. Or buy tickets.

As previously mentioned, Monday at Bumbershoot was heavily skewed towards the alt-country side of things. We're not sure if that's good programming or bad programming. On the one hand, if you're way into alt-country, just attend that one day of the festival and you're all set; on the other hand, you've got some tough choices to make among Blitzen Trapper, Langhorne Slim, Two Gallants, the Maldives, and Old 97s. We managed to catch some of all of the above, which ranged from alt-country to straight-up country to country-twinged blues rock. The diversity of sound was overwhelming.

On Monday Bumbershoot was a smoldering guyville. And we have the photos to prove it. Who knows why the festival was so testosterone heavy, but if boys were your thing, you had a grab bag to choose from.

Apologies for the lack of a Roundup yesterday. There was this little obscure music and arts festival going on in town this weekend. Plus, it was Labor Day--so we abstained from work to show solidarity with the proletariat. Now for your regularly scheduled neighborhood news.

Blitzen Trapper had a fantastic set early this afternoon, and even though we didn't know how good the stuff from the album they're releasing later this month was going to be, we expected to have a blast at their show. We did have a blast, and apparently Blitzen Trapper is releasing a classic rock album on the 23rd that we're going to buy immediately.

Our Sunday began with deja vu from Saturday, as Shim ended their set at the Sky Church a full twenty minutes early. We don't know about you, but if we were a little band with a big captive festival crowd, we'd take advantage of our hour-long slot by any means necessary. If we didn't have enough original content, we'd fill our set with covers (or "covers"), songs we'd never played for an audience before, spoken word, and/or a straight-up soapbox delineation of our hopes and dreams. But we definitely would not end our set early.

"There's more people here than live in Chambersburg," marveled The Shackeltons' lead singer Mark Redding, who seemed to be hungry for the crown of the hardest working man in show business. He rolled on the floor, tripped over monitors, swung from speaker-support chains, waved branches, threw flowers, dumped a pot of water on his head, jumped into the Bumbershoot crowd, ran offstage to hug someone, stood on a suitcase, fell off it, answered a prop phone, blew kisses, walked into the audience, and kept up a surreal stream-of-consciousness commentary in which the people of Seattle figured largely as fish killers. The Shackeltons marry punk rock with heart-on-sleeve protestations of love's power to make us all feel alive. If Redding is an exemplar, there's no arguing the point.

• DCist reported live from the Democratic National Convention.
• Bostonist tasted the best heirloom tomatoes in the city.
• Torontoist featured some of their favorite photos of an extraordinary summer for the city's weather, with huge storm clouds, apocalyptic sunsets, double rainbows, and stunning lightning strikes the norm rather than the exception.

In terms of music, Saturday was definitely our biggest day at Bumbershoot. We spent most of the time running from one partial set to another. Along the way we caught Thao Nguyen and her backing band, the Get Down Stay Down. Thao's breathy voice is much bigger than the tiny girl it comes out of, and with her solid, clap-happy set, she managed to be energetic (for a singer-songwriter) without verging into crazy territory (even if she did almost perform one song twice).

Antologia Polski (2:00 p.m.) brings you 50 years of Polish animation, and if you're honest with yourself, this is really the one time in your life you will have the chance to peek inside at SIFF Cinema (north side of McCaw Hall) and see a lot of Seattle's Polish population.