eat light:

so i ended up going to bumbershoot yesterday after all. glaucon decided he wanted me to be there, and offered to gift me a ticket for the day. i accepted--and i'm really glad i did. some highlights (not all-inclusive):

the cops: rocked, though i only got to hear a couple of songs. i wish i had gotten to hear more.

magnolia electric company: they were a little "smooth" and neil-young-ish for my taste. i could tell they were really good musicians and stuff, i just wasn't in the right mood, i guess.

the shins: did better than expected in the stadium venue. it was fun bopping along to all of their hits--i know more of their songs than i realized. and they covered pink floyd's "breathe." yes, that's right. it wasn't a typo. they were doing a stadium show, so they covered...pink floyd. why not? if you had asked me to guess what band and what song the shins would cover during their show, i would not have guessed it. but it was a spot-on cover. they pwned it.

the avett brothers: screamy bluegrass, very cool; interesting song structures. glaucon didn't like their lyrics, but i did. 2 of the band's 4 members are actual avett brothers. one of them plays guitar, the other one plays banjo. i lost count of the number of banjo strings he broke during their set. he ended up tapping some rhythm on it, and then just ditched it altogether. their other two players are an upright bass player, and a cellist. the cellist pretty much always used a bow, and the bassist bow-ed it a few times too.

the aggrolites: ska. they were ok. they covered the beatles' "don't let me down," which was interesting--never imagined it with a reggae beat before. i'm not the world's biggest reggae/ska fan, so i'm not the best judge of this one.

bert jansch: i passed up the gourds for this one. about 4 years ago a friend whose taste in music i trust told me i should really check out the gourds, and i never have. i looked at their website once. anyway, so i was reluctant to miss this chance to see them live, but when i read the description of bert jansch in the stranger's bumbershoot guide (pasted below), i decided that i really needed to go see him. i'm very glad i did. i stood in the beer garden (with glaucon and our friend tim--just assume that those two are with me in all of these descriptions, because they were) at the northwest court stage and was mesmerized by this guy's quietly masterful acoustic guitar playing. even just tooling around on it while telling a story...he was amazing. here's what the stranger had to say about him:

At every festival, there are moments when you must choose between performers. But if one of them is reclusive Scottish-born folk legend Bert Jansch, just go. Since the mid-’60s, Jansch has ranked among most influential guitar players in any genre, and his gravelly vocals and well-crafted originals are nothing to dismiss, either, as evidenced by his recent The Black Swan. With disciples including Jimmy Page, Neil Young, and Beth Orton, he is a bona fide living legend, and the odds of getting to enjoy him again in Seattle are slim at best.

rodrigo y gabriela: we tried really hard to watch this show. we made it through a couple of songs. don't get me wrong, they were fabulous--both of them amazing acoustic guitarists--but we couldn't get anywhere near the actual venue (by which i mean the space set aside for viewers to occupy at this stage). we stood on a little mound under a cedar tree, craning our necks to see through the tree branches, over the beer garden fence, and around other viewers' bigfatheads. it really was the best viewing position available to us. so we left.

gogol bordello: i'm glad we left RyG, because these guys were seriously ON. i don't know what else to say about it. there wasn't much room to dance, but we bounced along to the beat. they desribe their own music really well: gypsy punk. every now and then they would break into a reggae beat, which was interesting, but for the most part they pounded us with fast-driving gypsy punk/dance songs. the lead singer is apparently a chernobyl survivor. he's lean and mean, hyper and charismatic. also he can play the guitar like a demon. (ha--someone told me recently that demons are always funny, so i decided to throw that in.) i wanted to try my hand at some russian folk dancing, but the crowd was super tight, so i contented myself with bouncing up and down a lot. my calves will be nice and firm. i got punched in the head a few times by a drunk girl, and body slammed by a kid who looked about 12 (he and his friends had started up a pseudo-mosh pit right behind us...at the back of the crowd...so this marks the second occasion on which i have seen a mosh pit form at the back of a crowd, the first being at an electric six show at neumo's). no permanent injuries. just a bruised brain that can't get the electric violin/accordian trills and swirls out of my head now. (tim said the same thing.) it's incredibly infectious. i don't know if i dare to own a CD from this band.

so yeah, i had a super fun day. i'm so glad i got to go--i've only ever been once before because it happens at a time of year when grad students at my institution are typically living on the fumes of cash, the remembrance of cash past, trying to survive until their first fall quarter paycheck hits on october 10th. i won't be able to go to any more of it this year--both because i can't afford it and because i have a shit ton of work to do before i leave for GR tuesday night. well, i got some serious enjoyment out of my day there, and i'm having a laaaaaazy morning today by way of recovery. i will need coffee soon.... thank you again, glaucon. really a lot.

das ist alles. guten tag.