Bumbershoot: Day One

Ever since I learned about Bumbershoot, I begged and begged my parents to take me. Most years, though, school had already begun and a vacation was out of the question. I finally went in 2005, the year I moved here, and saw Elvis Costello for a mere 15 bucks. Five years passed before I felt compelled by the lineup again. My experience went a little something like this:

We skipped Saturday because the headliner was Bob Dylan, and I'm not a fan. To steal Bobby's line, dude sounds like he's singing into a shoe. Bobby, Tara, and I arrived in Seattle about an hour behind schedule on Sunday, and checked into our hotel. While we were at the front desk, we spotted a young skinny guy carrying a guitar out to the parking lot. The concierge told us he was indeed in a band, and one that would be performing later in the day. We dropped off our stuff, grabbed some lunch at a nearby Salvadorean restaurant, and caught the bus to the Seattle Center. On the agenda for Sunday: Chris Hardwick (standup), the Bouncing Souls, Hole, and Weezer.



We went to the theater where Chris Hardwick was performing, and they would not let us in. The festival organizers did not bother to clarify that we would need special passes to attend comedy events. These passes were free, but they had to be obtained an hour before the performance. Needless to say, I was pretty hacked off about this, and stomped around mumbling, "well what the hell did I pay 40 dollars for, then?" Surrounded by obnoxious teenagers and feeling crabby, I updated my FB status to read "nothing reinforces misanthropy like an all-ages music festival." This was before we discovered the beer garden, though. Once I arrived at the bottom of a glass of wine, everything was hunky-dory again.



We had a good view of the Bouncing Souls from the beer garden, so we hung around for quite a while. Alas, they did not play Kate is Great, which is the only song of theirs I know.



Clearly, though, we had a good time in the beer garden anyway:



After watching the Bouncing Souls for a while, we decided to track down some food. Bobby and I grabbed Mediterranean samplers, Tara got food from a stand nearby, and the three of us sat at the fountain to enjoy our dinner and watch people dodge the water jets.



Finally, it was time to be herded into the stadium for the mainstage events. Hole was up first,



and I was REALLY excited!



Hole is actually just Courtney Love and some session musicians at this point. Not even Eric Erlandson is in the band anymore. They took the stage (with the guitarist from the hotel!), and I started recording. Forgive the terrible video quality. My camera is about five years old. Fortunately the sound quality is great! After greeting us, Courtney Love started to play a song. She sang, "Slut kiss girl, won't you promise her smack, is she pretty on the inside? Is she pretty from the back!" Right after she finishes this verse, you can hear me going BERSERK and see the camera jumping up and down with me before I have to shut it off and sing along. "Pretty on the Inside" is one of my favorite Hole songs, and they definitely didn't play it when I saw them in 1999.



They played a good mix of old songs from each of their albums, including singles like "Violet," "Miss World," and "Doll Parts" from Live Through This; "Celebrity Skin" and "Malibu" from Celebrity Skin; and "Skinny Little Bitch," "Honey," and "Pacific Coast Highway" from their new album, Nobody's Daughter. The newer stuff is actually pretty decent. I especially enjoyed "Pacific Coast Highway." Then again, I love any thinly-veiled reference to Kurt Cobain.



They also played "Asking for It," as well as a cover of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy." A completely horrible cover of Jeremy, I might add. You can see for yourself in this video. They launched into it after PCH, and did warn us that it was going to be bad.



I grabbed a few more videos, which I'll link to at the end. Please ignore the fact that you can hear me singing along. They played astonishingly well, and Courtney was not her usual trainwreck self. During the breaks between songs, some girl behind me kept yelling, "Kurt killer!" which was wholly unnecessary. Yes, that's the general consensus among Nirvana fans, but $40 is a pretty big chunk of change just to heckle somebody. Hecklers and bad Pearl Jam covers aside, their set ended much too quickly for me.



Once Hole left the stage, people began to pack the stadium, and things got crowded. Tara and I must be magnets for really tall dudes, because some really tall dudes decided to come stand in front of us and act like jerks, severely limiting our view. Finally, Mr. Cuomo and company took the stage.



A couple of songs in, the people around us became pushy, rude, and generally unbearable. Thanks to years of roller derby training, I decided I'd be the hero and get us out of there as fast as humanly possible. I grabbed onto Bobby and Tara's hands, and hip-checked our way to the more spacious area at the back of the floor. Many people were annoyed by this, and expressed their annoyance quite colorfully, but we didn't exactly care. Things were much more pleasant at the back of the crowd. Over the course of their set, they played the three main singles from the Blue Album, plus "My Name is Jonas" (yay).



The band certainly has a ton of energy after performing for all these years. Mr. Cuomo was climbing on the scaffolding, and then somehow got on top of some nearby port-a-potties to sing a few songs. The crowd went wild for this. Rivers Cuomo is even adorable when he's standing on the roof of a toilet, apparently.



They left the stage for a few minutes as some sort of fake encore thing, and returned to play "El Scorcho." Bobby swears he heard me say, "Ugh, finally!" when that happened. I believe him.



The rest of their set was full of their new post-Pinkerton top-40 crap that is universally panned by fans and adored by frat boys. The aforementioned frat boys also seem to enjoy making the =w= symbol with their hands, which is stupid and view-obstructing but makes for some fun pictures.



Near the end of the night, Mr. Cuomo appeared from behind the drum kit wearing a blond wig, and sang a mash-up of MGMT's "Kids" and Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," or, as Bobby called them, the two most overplayed songs of the year. It was still fun though.



They ended their performance with all of the members playing on the drum kit, and we fought our way out of the stadium to go back to our hotel. We caught the tail-end of the Dandy Warhols playing "Bohemian Like You" as we made our way to the bus stop.



After waiting for the bus with 50 other people, we decided to hail a cab back to the hotel instead. The driver was the talkative and slightly crazy type who obviously dropped acid one too many times back in his heyday, but he got us to the hotel quickly. Once there, we met up with Bobby's and my new friend Conor, who is temporarily living at the hotel while on a work assignment. We had some much-needed drinks and quiet time in the hotel bar, and told Conor all about the day's adventures. He decided to join us for day two, so you'll see him turn up in that post and the corresponding photos tomorrow. Additional Hole videos available here and here.