The Budos Band
Bumbershoot 2010, Day One….
First stop for the day was the KEXP in-studio session with The Budos Band, playing a number of tracks from their new Budos Band III album. The band is self-described as Afro-soul, and pretty much every song the band plays makes you feel like you’re Indiana Jones running from the enormous rolling boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seriously. If that’s not enough to get you to take a listen then nothing else I say could do the trick. Thanks to KEXP’s website, you can hear the entire session at http://kexp.org/streamarchive/streamarchive.asp. Enter “Saturday, September 4th” for the date, and “2:29 PM” for the time, and you can stream the entire 30-minute performance in a number of formats.
Next we headed over to catch Wheedle’s Groove, a collection of Seattle funk and soul musicians from the 60’s and 70’s who got together in 2004. They were welcomed onto the stage by Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, who proclaimed September 4th, 2010 as “Wheedle’s Groove Day” in the city of Seattle. They had about 20+ different musicians on the stage over the course of their set and played songs from a huge range of Seattle artists, and even threw in a soulful cover of “Hey Jude” for a crowd singalong.
Wheedle’s Groove
Wheedle’s Groove
Wheedle’s Groove
We killed some time at Flatstock, the annual poster and screenprinting show before heading back to the Fisher Green Stage for a second helping of The Budos Band, who were too good the first time for us to pass up another set.
Flatstock Poster Show
The Budos Band
The Budos Band
The Budos Band
The Budos Band
The Stranger Weekly’s Guide To Bumbershoot – Dispensed by a Monster
We left The Budos Band and made our way towards Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, however we got caught up at Bob Schneider on the way. The “Bumberguide” program for the weekend mysteriously described him as a blend of “funk, pop, bluegrass, jazz, soul, blues, and hip-hop,” which was sufficiently generic enough for us to have no idea what to expect. True to its word, however, the Bumberguide was correct; Bob Schneider is a very diverse artist and him and his band played through a number of distinctly different styles of song.
Bob Schneider
Guitarist for Bob Schneider
Accordianist for Bob Schneider
We eventually attempted to head over to Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, however the crowd was so enormous that we weren’t even able to get around the turn where the stage area was. The shot below was the closest we got to seeing the band (and the sound from that far away was about as good). We waited until about 25 minutes after the show was supposed to start and the band still wasn’t on stage, so we headed out and grabbed a beer.
Our view at Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
After the beer we headed down to the main stage for Bob Dylan’s set. While I was highly anticipating the show, I have to say (and tweeted) that seeing Bob Dylan in a football stadium is kind of like trying to watch a movie at a kegger; it’s pointless. The sound was bad, even for a football stadium (in their defense I heard they were having sound issues prior to the set). I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics due to how muddled the sound came out, and unfortunately it kept me from enjoying the show. Eventually we headed closer to the stage where the sound was a little better. “Thunder On The Mountain” is a favorite of mine and was nice to hear, and “Like A Rolling Stone” closed the set before the band hopped on the bus and departed. It’s been a musical goal of mine to see Bob Dylan while he’s still alive and touring, but frankly I don’t think I can check that off my list quite yet.
To close the day out, here’s a few video highlights that have made it on YouTube from Saturday:
Hey Marseilles – “Cannonballs”
Bob Dylan – “Like A Rolling Stone”
The Decemberists – “Yellow Bonnet”
