adrian is rad

Last weekend whilst in Seattle, I went to Bumbershoot (Day 2) with Paul.

Here’s who we saw:

Spoon Spoon’s one of those stalward indie bands that’s been around for a chunk of years and they have their fan base, but they’ll probably not break into the mainstream. I was curious to see them live. They put on a pleasant set but it wasn’t incredible. Good enough.

Jeremy Enigk Jeremy Enigk (ee-nik) was the front man of the proto-emo-pop band Sunny Day Real Estate. Here he was doing a set under his own name and I was a bit curious to see what his current music sounds like. He put on a nice set of songs mostly on acoustic guitar, some accompanied by a band. His vocals have this sort of strange high-pitched strain to them. It was a nice set.

[Paul lent me his digicam for the day.]

Mates of State The Mates of State are so great live. This is at least my 8th time I’ve seen them and they always put on a very entertaining show live. Paul (unlike all the rest of the shows) did not seem to be completely bored. I can honestly recommend their live show without quals. Even if they’re not amazing, they’re still really good. They did a fun medly of “Like U Crazy” with Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy.” They did a mix of new songs and older songs—in fact I was pretty pleased with the number of their “classics” they did.

Jose Gonzalez The hands-down worst scheduling of the day was having the Mates of State overlap with Jose Gonzalez. I thought I’d still be able to make some of his set after the Mates of State, but a 32 minute set (likely because he needed to go play with Zero 7 as well) meant I only saw one song by him. I’ll have to go see him at Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Kanye West (with Lupe ) Kanye was day 2’s headliner. I’ve liked his music recently and his two albums are the two hip hop albums I own. He had a full string section and a harpist on stage with him. He put on a pretty good set—well he did the songs I like and then there was the normal hip hop fair of misogyny and marijuana—but the sound was pretty bad (vocals too low, percussion too high). The chunks of the set I liked, I liked and the parts I didn’t, I was sort of bored.

[space needle]

I was in Sealth (or Seattle, as you may call it) for the labor day weekend. It was a good time. I saw some of them old tEppers (including ppham) and saw some of the sites and some music.

Paul made us take this picture:

Recap:

• Tour of UW.
• Good dinner in Ballard
• Boeing wide-body plant tour: this turned out to be really cool. The building is the largest, by volume, in the world. It’s pretty incredible. I bought a model 747-400, the sexiest plane ever made.
• Drinks (and more drinks) with Squid
• Easy Street Records. The haul included: the new Jason Molina, the new Eric Bachmann, the new Mono, Elliott Smith’s Roman Candles, the KEXP live comp, Unwed Sailor’s Circles, an oldies comp, a soul comp and a 2-CD doo wop comp. I liked Easy Street a lot: cheap, great selection and a helpful staff.
• Bumbershoot (Day 2) [separate post later]
• Seattle Underground Tour: entertaining and informative. If you have any tolerance for puns, I think you’d enjoy it. I’d recommend it.

(I also ate a mufaletta.)

That was the weekend in short. The biggest lose of the weekend was that the Boeing Surplus Store wasn’t open on Monday. I was really hoping to go; it looks like a mech e geek’s dream.