Day Six/Seven
More Cheese Blintzes and hash browns for breakfast. Good times.
Serene went off to visit her Grandpa on Friday, and Joey needed to get some work done for his latest web client, so Emily and I went out to the University district to do some browsing and shopping. I finally found a new CD store (you’d think it would be easier here), and an all-used CD store, and picked up the new Sleater-Kinney (limited edition with DVD), Daedelus’ Exquisite Corpse, and Jawbox’s Jawbox and For Your Own Special Sweetheart. Also went over to the University District branch of Zanadu comics and snagged a copy of Penny Century #6 and a bunch of Palookaville comics.
University Street in Seattle is packed with little boutique clothing stores, and I could easily go broke shopping at them. Well, if I was the type to spend $62 on pants and $112 on a sweater. But it seems like there’s tons of outlets for small-run designer t-shirts in a variety of styles. One shop we stopped at even had a few Tokidoki shirts in stock. There are also some pretty cool used/vintage stores in the area, and I snagged a Duck Hunt T-shirt at the Buffalo Exchange.
Later in the evening, it was back to Blue C Sushi for another excellent meal. There was a bit of a wait for a table tonight, so we went upstairs for some cocktails first. I had a Kappatini, which is essentially a cucumber martini. Soooooo refreshing. And we chowed down on the seemingly endless supply of sushi and tempura and noodles and puff pastries, and more cocktails (of course) before picking up a couple bottles of champagne and heading back home.
Saturday was the Sasquatch festival in George, Washington, at the Gorge Ampitheatre. Basically, the Gorge is a large stage set against the backdrop of the Columbia River gorge, and incredible view of dropped into the middle of some flat, ugly badlands in central Washington. It’s a pretty amazing place to see a show. We ended up arriving at about 2 or 3, after the first few bands had started, but we got there in time to catch the Arcade Fire’s set. They were pretty cool. I hadn’t heard them before, and they’re probably not something I’d listen to on my own, but they were inventive and energetic (especially the guy running around banging a crash cymbal wildly). Wilco came on shortly after, and played a long set with lots of songs ending in prolonged washes of noise and feedback. It was weird to see them in such huge venue, but it worked pretty well.
There was a bit of a break between bands we wanted to see, but the next act was Joanna Newsom at 7:00. I was excited to see her, but I was afraid this venue wouldn’t do her justice at all. Fortunately, she was on one of the smaller side stages, where we could get up pretty close and the sound was nice and clear. She opened her set by walking to the front of the stage, past all the mics and monitors, and singing as loud as she could into the audience, making eye contact with a lot of the crowd and getting everybody to clap along for her. Then she sat at her harp and played “Bridges & Balloons,” to overwhelming response. She proceeded through most of her album, as well as a B-side (from the “Sprout & the Bean” single) and an amazing new song that seemed to go on forever. The crowd was great, and everytime she asked what we wanted to hear, there were all sorts of enthusiastic shouts from the crowd.
The final stretch of the evening was Modest Mouse and the Pixies. I missed about half of Modest Mouse’s set due to being stuck in a food line for about an hour, but I could still hear them from where I was standing. I was surprised to them as a 6-piece band when I finally got back to the green with my cheeseburger. Whatever happened the good ol’ power trio days? Although the added cello and 2nd drummer were kind of cool…
Amazingly enough, there was a bit of a mass exodus after Modest Mouse’s set. Philistines. The setup for the Pixies took forever, and I’m convinced the front-of-house engineer was just showing off by directing the mixing over the PA (”OK check….check…Uhhhhhhhh….We can take down 250 a bit in channel 9….and boost about 2db at 1200 on Kim’s monitor….”). It was worth it when they finally took the stage though, sprinting through a tight set with hardly any full stops between songs. The setlist was a Pixies fan’s wet dream, with all the big hits you would expect, and a few great oddball songs. Nothing too out there though.
The 2-hour drive back to Seattle at midnight was a little daunting, but we pulled it off, mostly with Serene behind the wheel. We staggered back home exhausted, dehydrated, and totally spent and collapsed on the floor.
Not sure what’s in store for today. Serene & I apparently slept in until 2, and Joey and Emily had taken off somewhere. Not sure what they’re up to, or when they’ll be back, but we’ll see what the day brings, I guess. Might go see John’s friend Kyle do a broadcast for KEXP sometime later. We shall see….
More later….
