West Valley Highway (Marysville) So I wasn’t impressed with these guys. They just seemed like they were trying to hard or something, not with the music, just to be alt country guys or whatever. My main peeve were the vocals though, it just didn’t have the right sound to it for the type of music so far as I was concerned.
Art Exhibits – There wasn’t quite as much to the art exhibits as I was expecting. There was some sort of benches thing sponosred by Starbucks that was ok. In the next area there were alternative crafty stuff. For the most part normal crafts dipicting odd things: two headed animals, odd wooden people, etc. There was a nother room or two of crafty stuff, the one really cool thing was a really large display of crochet work, lots of reds, very intense, warm and fuzzy. The last two exhibits were pretty cool. There was a photography exhibit, the work of 3 photographers hired to record the 35th aniversary bumbershoot (2005.) Some pretty cool pictures in there. Finally there was an exhibit on Second Life and art within the virutal world. At some point during the day there was a talk about Second Life and art which I probably would attended provided I’d seen it in time.
Jim Knapp Orchestra (Things For Now) So nothing too special here, good large group jazz. I only stuck around to see about 15 minutes of it before I headed off to the next thing, but I enjoyed it while I watched.
Rubberbandance Group Awesome. I won’t really be able to do this justice as I haven’t been able to when I’ve told people about it so far. I guess it would be best classified as something between ballet and hip-hop (the dancers you see on stage beside the lip-syncers.) Definetly more artistic than anything you’d see in a music video, story and all. If I ever have a chance to check them out again I definitely will, not that I think I’ll find myself in Monteral any time soon.
Dengue Fever (Escape from Dragon House) Yet another group that I have a song of on my i-pod thanks to KEXP. Wo-pop, a fast paced, (especially live, a bit too fast tho) layered, intricate, and generally entertaining. I don’t think I’ll buy their album, but they’re worth checking out.
Spoon (Gimme Fiction) Score another one for sucky-sound-guy. These guys were decent, I didn’t not like them, just didn’t really enjoy them all that much, oh well. They seem to be rather popular and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard some of their stuff on KEXP, might even have something on my i-pod by them…
Crystal Skulls (Outgoing Behavior) Hadn’t heard of these guys before and didn’t intend on checking them out, but was glad I walked by on the way to lunch and stopped for a bit. Primarily guitar driven, with a popy 70′s REO Speedwagon (or something like that) feel to it.
Matt Costa (Songs We Sing) Something in the vicinity of Jack Johnson, gental rock lead mostly by bass lines and clean guitars. It makes for good background music, but not really something I reach for when listening to music is the activity. Wasn’t a particuarly exciting show, but given the type of music it would of been quite odd if they were. Someone I want to check out a bit more.
Common Market (Common Market) I really liked these guys, a really exciting show, the crowd was really in to them. Good songs, good lyrics, good beats, nothing not to like. DJ was pretty good, complete with scratching solo’s. I’ll probably end up with their album.
Blue Scholars (Blue Scholars) So how could I not like a group that sings a song about the neighborhood I live in (Southside Revival, Beacon Hill.) How cool am I to live in a place with a rap song about it. Oh and I have it on my i-pod, and you guessed it thanks to KEXP.
So I waxed poetical last time about sound guys and I feel the urge to talk about something so here it goes. I am very pleasently surpsied with the variety of stuff going on, both in music and “arts.” I didn’t really expect that going in, figure it would be mostly music stuff and not all that much variety. I kinda tried to spend a decent amount of time today going to non-music stuff and was really glad I did, if nothing else seeing the Rubberband Dance group was worth the trip down for the day, and there was plenty else.