Not on the Guest List

Bumbershoot Day 1

In the weeks leading up to the fest we tried as hard as we could to get my mom in for free - even applying for credentials for her under Not on the Guest List.  The request was unsurprisingly denied, especially given that I submitted it past the deadline...  After waiting in line behind Smoosh for my ticket we discovered that I'd received two tickets for all three days!  Score!  We promptly sold her ticket she'd bought for Saturday and booked it in.  We got to Bumbershoot on Saturday as the Shins were taking the stage.  We ran over to Menomena for a brief candid photo shoot, who even with phone calls to Justin and Brent, were nowhere to be found, so we high-tailed it over to mainstage to catch what was remaining of the Shins' set as I was supposed to shoot their last few songs side of the stage as arranged prior.  Only no media escort could be found and they finished early, so that didn't happen.  They did their Pink Floyd cover again - like they did at the Crystal Ballroom in February!
I have wanted to take candid photos of the Shins forever!  Specifically eating strawberry poptarts as an ode to my favorite movie Can't Hardly Wait (Preston: "...the very same breakfast pastry I was consuming at that very moment.  What was I to do?  How was I to proceed?")  And I finally did!

Uber blurry Marty (it was my first shot with my new polaroid and I'm used to my old one's focus abilities):

So yeah - it actually worked to my benefit I didn't get to shoot side of the stage and their exit to their dressing room as now I was able to shoot them chillaxing and beyond.

I am socially incompetent.  Dave went to shake my hand and I screamed: "I love your wife!"  Because I do, but I didn't need to literally scream it at him and a "hi" would've been sufficient.  I spent their entire show at the Crystal talking to her - they live in Capitol Hill kinda by my mom in Seattle and previously lived in San Francisco, so we had chatted at length about that.
Jesse who self-admittedly mumbles and Marty were on the couch and GREAT company!  We went on and on and on exclaiming the virtues of Alberta.  I love when bands are unguarded, which based on the emails I traded with their publicist about their management days before, I wasn't assuming they'd be, but they were.  In two minutes they had each told me unprompted, their addresses and where I can find them when not at home -- NE Portland-ers - think Alberta and think chicken wings, and no - Popeyes is on MLK.
We hung out for a bit with me snapping away then they got in a golf cart to go sign some autographs. 

I thought we'd be disbanding, but their fangirl worthy tour manager Dave expected me to jump on and come along for the ride, so I did.  They taped a segment for Fye TV.  If you're familiar with the Shins' brand of humor, you can only imagine the fun they had with playing off of "fye."

I met my mom over at Bert Jansch's acoustic show in the Music Lounge where I gave him a copy of Jonathan Byerley's CD that I had ordered multiple copies of a couple days before through CD Baby.  My mom thinks they sound similar, so I used the opportunity to pass it along and to take a photo to pass along to Jonathan, which I finally got around to doing a day ago. 

I'm kind of in love with Jonathan Byerley's music.  I want to marry it.

And speaking of "Marry Me," I cut some clothing silhouettes out of colored paper and booked it over to shoot some candids of St. Vincent.  I had a very specific vision for the photos, so much so that I brought along clothing pins and a clothing line.

As we - my mom, her, and me - hung everything up we talked about Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste, Sasquatch, the fact that she really has eight other siblings which she attributed to her parents being uber Catholic, and Glasgow, where she'd be playing next.  I kept skipping from topic to topic and back again.  She is entirely too cute!  I just love how fragile and delicate she looks.

'Paris Is Burning' St. Vincent MP3

Now it was time for Menomena to hit the stage.  They had a choir!  With brown burlap-esque robes!

Their publicist Ever told me the next day when I asked where the choir came from that is was comprised of Portland-ers.  I had thought some looked familiar!  Alicia J. Rose was one of them, and he started telling me about her before I cut him off with: "The booker for Doug Fir!  And she did their publicity shots!  And she plays accordion too!"  He seemed somewhere between amused and maybe scared that I enthusiastically knew all this info at the drop of a hat.

Later we caught an acoustic Gogol Bordello performance at the Music Lounge.  I wondered how the set would be seeing as it'd be taking place in a seated theatre.  How would they dance on drums on top of the audience?  They didn't, but that didn't take anything away from their set.  They are like authentic! 

I mean I knew they were of foreign origin, collected into a troupe in the US, but I thought all their soviet gypsy ties had faded away, alive on in their music and image.  Not so.  When speaking to each other, they don't speak English which I was happy to overhear them doing while waiting for them to start, I sat on my knees in front of the stage adjusting my camera.

Gogol's Eugene:

If I ever get married - you know - to Jonathan Byerley's music and all, I want Gogol Bordello to play the reception!

Gogol Bordello myspazz

I don't and have never listened to Denver's Devotchka, but they're number 1 in Jonathan Byerley's Top 8 and they share a manager, so I arranged to do candid photos with them in the hopes that we'd be able to gush about an assumed mutual love of him.  It was kind of uncomfortable taking photos of them, which I very very rarely encounter.  And our brief sentences about Jonathan Byerley didn't yield the results I wanted, such as the lead passing along a message: "There's a girl in Seattle who actually lives in Portland who is OBSESSED with you," ie judging by his demeanor he didn't seem like he'd be down for that so I kept myself in check.

Devotchka live:

"Let's get these teen hearts beating faster, faster..."

When people asked who I was most excited to see, I replied Panic! at the Disco.  When people heard this, they assumed I was joking.  Ummm... if you see me on the street on any given day, I often am wearing a Fall Out Boy T-shirt.  I'm kind of in love with Fueled by Ramen.  It was my third time seeing the Las Vegas quartet.  My boyfriend Ryan Rossy Dust didn't wear any makeup, but was rocking a headband like he did a few days prior at Pete Wentz's bar when he turned 21.  There were no dancing girls.  And seriously - I LOVE them - I sing along with their songs at full volume, but their new songs did not solicit the same excitement from me.  Is Brendan Urie writing the lyrics?  I REFUSE to believe they're Ryan's!  I went on about this on Monday to Barsuk's Ever.  Where was the trademark wit?  The ahead of their time hit-the-nail-on-the-head observations?
"Your eyes are as wide as the moon when it's nine in the afternoon."
Come now... really?
And the sound of them too - they were less cabaret - more barely-practiced-in-a-garage type sounding.  They sounded like the songs you'd assume a band would release on their debut and the songs from their first album sounded like the songs they'd progress to on their second disc.  Panic! notoriously suffer from bad sound live, but this was inexcusable.
My head hurts in fear for them.

Oh and I saw quite a few other bands I haven't bothered to mention in this post, but here's a pic of Gym Class Heroes who I last saw open for Fall Out Boy in January 2006 in Glasgow:

The Thermals Do High School

For me, the Thermals and Menomena benefit show at Cleveland High School was as much about the people as it was the bands. For my "review" review, click onto Pitchfork here. When I arrived, there was already a band on. I assumed it was the Bustling Townships, but after a few minutes spent playing phone tag with the Thermals' Hutch, I found out it was Menomena who I mistakenly had thought would be playing last on the bill. So I braved my way through the throng of teenagers in front of the stage to shoot a couple songs of their set, before shooting the final song side of stage. They kept making comments to the audience and asking them "Are you ready to get naked with the Thermals?" (?!)

I also mistakenly thought that it would be in the gym. Having it in the auditorium gave it much more of a 'real concert' sound/setting/feel. I was really looking forward to it being in the gym too! I ran into Mr. Joey Sato who taught (and still teaches) at Lincoln when I went there. He instantly recognized me and pointed out that I was "the one who was always in Curry's on the internet on eBay." hahaha I was totally addicted to eBay back then - I sold magazine cut-outs of celebrities (specializing in Orlando Bloom and the Olsen Twins) and as surprising as it may sound, that generated a fair share of income.
Before the Thermals got their set started I chatted with Jason Simms of Willamette Week about the most recent house party of his that Peter and the Wolf turned up to play - one that I unfortunately had to miss when it happened due to work. Jason sent me a lovely postcard a few weeks ago from Missoula when he was in Montana researching the book he is writing with former WWeek music editor Mark Baumgarten.
The Thermals played their set like the last time I saw them - full of energy, super tight, and to the point. Other than an announcement of "Good Evening Cleveland!" there wasn't much conversation to speak of between the band and audience, because there were very few and far between breaks between songs in which to talk - they just played song after song, only stopping to tune a guitar, count into a song, or to readjust pedals after a girl jumped from the stage and took the cords with her. Their set list was spread across two taped together pages. I stood side of the stage with the other photog of the night who turned out to be Willamette Week's Justin Kent (who inadvertently snapped me at the Gossip concert last month). We made comments about the mosh pit and crowd-surfing situation (someone would launch themselves and immediately drop straight to the floor :) and he offered me use of his rental lens that had a wonderfully wide aperture. After the show the Thermals looted some of Menomena's merch. It was funny. The crowd dissipated and the people that were left were primarily the ones involved in the organization of the event. Here is Dash, Lincoln High School senior and man of the hour: It is he who just straight up emailed the Thermals asking if they'd play. After he finished an interview, I took a couple photos of him and talked to him about ticket sales. Some 600 were sold! That's when Arya came over. Apparently we've been at the exact same concerts for the past week without knowing (he'd only find out via my reviews on Pfork) - Arctic Monkeys, YACHT on a yacht, and then Thermals. It was enjoyable making his acquaintance. He's doing some uber cool things within the PDX music scene with his radio show on KPSU . Earlier that week he had the Thermals in for an acoustic in-studio. On June first he has Eskimo & Sons.

So that introduction actually led to perhaps the highlight of my night - speaking to David Abravanel, a friend who I haven't seen for four years, even though we've been mutually stalking each other over the internets for the past couple months. It was so fun! We totally took music geekery to nu (and yes that's a Klaxons reference) levels - with me perhaps going overboard, but I couldn't help it - it was David! When I brought back So Solid Crew vinyl from London in 2002, he was the only other person in school who had heard of them. When I mentioned my speaking to him to my mom, she briefly couldn't remember him until I was like "The one you had to ask repeatedly for your copy of Q magazine back in like 2001," and all their and our collective music conversations came back to her.

We also reminisced over the club I started called Dorks Anonymous (the most popular club in Lincoln High School history in terms of attendance - what, what!). I got Pepsi and Pizza Hut to sponsor our meetings and Albertson's donated about twenty cakes each time. At the first meeting we all just ate and watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was awesome. I met up with someone at a party in December who said they and a friend still wear their Dorks Anonymous hooded sweatshirts on campus at Oregon State. Here is Tom Vek wearing mine (I had a custom "Hello My Name is" badge screen-printed on each one):

He's been branded haha

David mentioned that I mentioned Yo Majesty on this blog. Apparently the person who runs It's the Money Shot goes to Wesleyan with him and David was actually going to enter the Yo Majesty remix contest that site had a bit back. I was aware of that contest because Tyler Fedchuk mentioned entering it on his site. So David's is half done and when he sends it over, I intend to put it up here.

'Club Action' Yo Majesty Tyler Fedchuk mix MP3 (which came in 2nd in the comp)

(Another great 'Club Action' remix by CSS can be heard here: www.myspace.com/cssremixxx)

The night was SO much fun! I think it's also worth noting that the Thermal's label didn't even know about the show. There was such a great vibe to the night - like everyone was there to support and enjoy good Portland music. I think I have a bit of a crizz-ush on the Thermals' drummer Lorin :) He's so meek chic with a lot of (silent :) personality and smiles

'A Pillar of Salt' Thermals MP3

Willamette Week/LocalCut review of the show