Critiques

The last day of Bumbershoot was the most interesting of the three, primarily because, other than the Black Eyed Peas, I had never seen most of the featured artists.

After BEP, kicked off my day, I tried, and unsuccessfully, to catch Aziz Ansari one last time. However, I did notice someone who looked very familiar, but didn't want to awkwardly stare for too long. Luckily, he spotted me and said "WHATTUP!" first. It was the homie Mr. Lif, who just moved to Seattle over the weekend. Check the pics from the last time I ran into him and how he's livin' now and you'll understand why I didn't recognize him right off the bat:

Before:

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After:

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After 14 years, he finally decided to let go of the dreads. Lif's a great dude and a real dope emcee. My biggest surprise of the trip by far.

After catching up with Lif, I stumbled upon a dope funk band out of England called The New Mastersounds. …

I figured I'd give the Black Eyed Peas their own Bumbershoot journal entry solely based on the magnitude of their popularity today. I remember back in 1998 like it was yesterday when a homie of mine at Interscope sent me an advance cassette (don't laugh) of their first album Behind The Front and needed some help finding a venue for them to perform their first ever show in San Francisco. They freestyled on the college show I was dj'ing for and packed the venue of my weekly party with cuts like "Joints & Jam" and "Fallin' Up." I was an immediate fan.

Fast forward to 2009 and a lot has changed with this group since 1998. They've since added a fourth member, Fergie, and instead of filling up 300 capacity venues, they're now selling out arenas around the world. I'm not mad personally, because at the end of the day, it's business. They could have kept it "real" and struggled to sell albums and deal with the possibility of getting dropped, or tweak their sound a bit to sell more records. …

After partaking in the incredible festivities Saturday at Bumbershoot, Sunday's acts had to follow up big, and disappointed I was not. It's possible I could be a bit biased because I got a chance to check out one of my favorite artists, Raphael Saadiq, not once, but twice in one day, but more on him later.

Back in my college radio days at KZSU Stanford, one group I had in heavy rotation was the Swollen Members. I figured I'd peep their show since it's been a minute since I've seen them and I bugged out to see the line for their show, which was inside one of the indoor venues, was wrapped around the building! It dawned on me that they were from nearby Vancouver, but regardless, much props to them for drawing huge crowd.

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I had high expectations for Bumbershoot, with the vast array of talent and all of the positive things I've heard from friends, and I'll be the first to tell you that if you're going to go to one music festival in any given year, Bumbershoot should be that festival.

First of all, the organization was on point! The press lobby was great, stocked with food and drinks, wi-fi, comfy couches and best of all, because the lobby was indoors, NO portable toilets! Actually, I don't think I saw a single "porta-potty" at the festival, but I'll stop there.

But back to the festival. I missed Katy Perry because she was the only artists from the main stage not to allow pictures. But did I really miss out? I think not. Instead, I went to support Stones Throw's latest artist Mayer Hawthorne, a throwback to 60's soul and he absolutely set it off. Not only was the crowd feelin' the tracks he performed off his album, but Mayer and his band, The County…

Last.fm interviewed America's most adorable and friendliest power-pop duo known as Matt & Kim at Bumbershoot in Seattle. In this video the duo chatted about District 9, Matt's theory about Steve Jobs' ending the human species with the iPhone, rap music, and getting naked in the infamous music video for "Lessons Learned."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjXfKEJ4Jbc

My third day of Bumbershoot-ing was made up of discovering new bands, taking random pics of arts, food, festivalgoers and most importantly getting myself to the airport before 7PM on Labor Day. I wish I could’ve stayed longer to check out Sunday’s headliners; Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand, but to tell you the truth, there were absolutely no flights out of Seattle to Oakland available on Monday—bummer, right? Did anyone see them? How was it? Please share your stories with us!


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I kick-started my Monday afternoon with some tasty $4 corn smothered with butter, cheese, paprika, salt, pepper and tons of garlic. At first I was hesitant to spend $4, but it looked just so damn good.


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Once I got my corn fix, I headed out to the new mastersounds, a four-piece vintage jazz-funk band from Leeds who had some great energy on stage making folks of all shades of hipster get their funk on!
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The Bumbershoot afternoon lineup for day two didn't look too exciting to me. Instead I spent most of my afternoon indoors producing yesterday's interview with Matt and Kim (stay tune!). Though I have to admit, I am a little bummed I didn't catch any comedy as well as the Cold War Kids and the Vivian Girls. So, if you saw any good comedy or bands we haven't mentioned here, please share your experiences with us--we would love to hear and see what you saw!

I did, however, make it out to the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. I believe this is my fourth time seeing them and if you haven't checked them out by now, I strongly encourage you to do so--seriously! Put these guys on your "Must See Band Before I Die" list.

My favorite pics of the show;

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What exactly is a bumbershoot, you ask? I sure didn't know and according to the Wikipidea the name comes from an old word for umbrella, a clever metaphor describing the variety of music, film, comedy, spoken word, dance, performance, and visual arts the 39th annual festival encompasses. And funny enough, if you were in Seattle this Labor Day weekend, you probably didn’t think of bringing that umbrella to the 74 acres of Bumbershoot. But heck, who said you can’t have fun in the rain?

After my interview with Brooklynites Matt & Kim, I checked out Low Vs Diamond, an indie-rock band fronted by Seattle native Lucas Field. With very little knowledge of the band before I headed out to see them, I couldn’t help but think--carbon-copy of the Killers, Strokes, and maybe even a less melancholy Interpool. Rolling Stone listed the band as an artist to watch out for and I can see why; catchy harmonies, intelligent lyrics , joyful up-tempo beats, intimate and classic; it's music for all seasons, all situations, and all times of day. …