Rock and Roll! Whoo!

Before I start: I'm going to JournalCon again this year. And I'm a panelist! Oh boy!

Over Labor Day, I saw some rock & roll at the big rock & roll festival in Seattle: Bumbershoot. It's four days of extremely crowded hemp-clothing booths, deep-fried twinkie booths, and, oh yes, music. It's not really just "rock & roll"; there's also blues, folk, techno, and impromptu drum circles all over. But I was mostly in it for the rock. In fact, on Friday (the first of the only two days we went), we went straight to the Main Stage to see The Donnas, the New York Dolls, and Garbage.

This is the main stage. Look how "main" it is. It's huge! It's massively immense! Here's what it looked like from the side:

Okay, this is pretty much the same picture, but a bit off to the side. It's taken from the area where Rhias and I were hanging around before the show. It's pretty much the place we saw the Sex Pistols a few years ago, and it's also where we met up on Sunday evening right before Iggy Pop. I realize this anecdote isn't very interesting, but what do you want for a picture of an empty stage?

Before the show started, people were milling around smartly. Clearly if you're planning on being close to the band, this is the time to start working your way forward.

If you look the other way from the stage, you'll see souvenir stands and food booths. This is where it looks more like a music festival. Also the people on that end of the stadium are milling about too, but not quite as smartly as the people at the stage.

It's the Donnas! They rock!

The little girl on someone's shoulders (to the left) was really into the Donnas. She's rocking out a little bit right here, but earlier she had the devil horns up and everything. One great thing about Bumbershoot is that it's all-ages, which sometimes means small children in Ramones T-shirts.

I realize this picture of the Donnas is blurry, but I think that helps the impression of rock and roll.

The Donnas bassist is obscured by her hair here, but to be fair, it was like that for most of the set, too. I like bassists that don't move around a lot.

And after the Donnas: The New York Dolls! Oh boy! Punk pioneers! Prepunk pioneers! And glam pioneers, too! This is David Johansen, who you might know better as "Buster Poindexter" or "the cabbie in Scrooged." He was great!

And this, too, is David Johansen. The problem I had with these pictures is that there's something wrong with my digital camera, and it insists on using the flash at all times. That's not so great for dark pictures from a long way away. Especially since lead singers have taken to standing so far forward that the only light on them is backlighting. Luckily, I was close to the Dolls.

Garbage, I was not so close to. This is mainly because, although I like them, I don't know their songs very well. Plus, I'd been in like the second row for the whole New York Dolls set, and I was very interested in sitting down. So this is the best picture I got, and you have only my word for it that the colorful streak in the middle is Shirley Manson.

Now, we skip ahead three days to Monday. The first show we went to was "Buttrock Suites", which is an extremely entertaining combination of modern choreography and hair metal. It frequently felt like the best late-seventies talent show ever; it would fit perfectly in a movie about high school misfits. You know that "Time After Time" dance in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion? Like that, except with AC/DC and Lita Ford. And great big wigs and spandex.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of Buttrock Suites, because it was in an actual theater, not a big outdoor stage. That did mean I got to sit down, though.

After that, we wandered around and looked at merchandise booths. And I found my favorite food booth: roasted corn on the cob. Yum!

I shall lightly skip over the two-and-a-half-hour line for Flogging Molly. Let's just say I technically had to get in line for the previous band. And there were many, many people drinking.

This is the Flogging Molly audience. In the upper right, you can see the sign that says "No Moshing", because Seattle Center (the area around the Space Needle, where Bumbershoot is held) has a no-moshing policy. It didn't work very well; as soon as the band started, the entire room erupted.

Erupted, I tell you! I backed way up, so I was a good twenty feet from the crowd-surfing, and I still got bumped when the whole crowd surged around. It was incredibly high energy, and only a little scary.

Also, it was very dark, so this is the best I could do. As you can see, Flogging Molly has an accordion and a violin. This is because they combine traditional Irish music with modern instrumentation. Digression!

When I first read Life on the Border (a Terri Windling-edited collection of Bordertown stories), I loved the music that was described in there. There was a list of "Bordertown Bands" in the back, and I haunted music stores trying to find them. Aside from Boiled in Lead, they weren't very easy to find. The kids today are lucky, because being in that Flogging Molly show was exactly what I imagine being at a Bordertown concert would be like.

Once the Flogging Molly show was over, I went very quickly to the Main Stage and made it just in time for the Iggy and the Stooges show. Again, the picture is terrible because of the lighting and because I didn't want to get down front. Not because I'm afraid of the crowd (in fact, both the New York Dolls and Iggy and the Stooges had great crowds, with a really wide variety of people) but because I'm afraid of Iggy. In fact, he flung a microphone stand into the crowd, which looked pretty dangerous. Anyway, this picture was taken from the edge of the crowd, before I retreated to the bleachers and watched the show with field glasses.

Iggy's show was great. He's old and has lived very hard, but he keeps getting it done. The only thing that disappointed me was that they were doing almost strictly Stooges songs, and really my favorite Iggy stuff is his solo material. Still, I'm glad I went, because when else do you get to see a legendary band like that?