My good buddy Steven Friederich took a bunch of photos while at Bumbershoot (for some reason I didn’t even think to ask for a photo pass).
Below is a gallery of some of the bands he shot, including: Death Cab, Flobots, Ingrid Michaelson, Jakob Dylan, The Offspring, The Maldives, Superchunk, Sweetwater, Thao, and The Hands. You can see more of his pictures here.
The second day of the Capitol Hill Block Party ended up being a much different experience for me than what I experienced Friday. Friday I more or less spent the day band hopping, catching 15 to 25 minutes of a band and then jumping to the next band. I did this for two reasons: 1) There weren’t any bands that captured my attention enough to make me want to watch a full 45-minute set when I knew there was more music out there to see, and 2) I wanted to experience as much music as possible. This allowed me to see 15 bands in about eight hours, which was rewarding since I came across a couple of new favorites (The Pharmacy, Airborne Toxic Event), but boy was it tiring.
Saturday I took a bit of a different approach and I watched complete sets by three bands while managing to see 11 bands total. Here are my thoughts on what I saw:
3:00 The beer-soaked blues-rock of The Hands was the perfect way to kick off my Saturday. These Olympia rockers opened their set with a 20-minute suite of songs that included a stunning rendition of “The Knife,” arguably the best track on their self-titled debut. The guitarmanship (is that a word?) was definitely the most rocking of the weekend. The band’s song-carrying soaring riffs and fist-pumping, sing along hooks give Southern rock some dank and grungy Northwest flavor.
3:40 The Cave Singers, featuring Derek Fudesco, formerly of Pretty Girls Make Graves, were a great appetizer for Fleet Foxes, which took the stage a couple of hours after The Cave Singers’ set came to a close. Unfortunately, their acoustic sound was swallowed by the vastness of the outdoors. Don’t get me wrong, the band sounded good, but it’s always a bad sign when you can hear the crowd talking over the band while the band is playing. A recommendation to CHBP organizers for next year: Either turn up the amplifiers for the quieter bands on the main stage of have them play in a club and put a louder band on the main stage instead.
4:00 My friend and I made our only stop into King Cobra Saturday to see The Whore Moans and it was well worth waiting in line for a few minutes to see this band’s dual guitar, tri-vocal assault. The screaming, singing and shouting of songs was a nice mishmash of styles that make The Whore Moans come across as a ball of pure rock ‘n’ roll that blends hardcore, punk and metal all into one deliciously tasty musical morsel.
