George, Washington’s Gorge - 2008.05.24-26
So this Memorial Day weekend, i smashed (with five other friends) into Jon’s dad’s Jeep Cherokee to the Columbia River Gorge in George Washington. Three full 12 hour days of music, surrounded by camping, friends, chron, dancing and booze. I forgot what awesome guitars were like! I’ve been listening to so much electro and Jay-Z (unrelated) recently that I had completely forgotten the answers to basic questions like “How awesome is Built to Spill?” and “Why do I listen to this electronic bullshit?” When I remembered to use my camera, I took pictures from wherever I was standing in the crowd (or in between smashing little girls feet if they were wearing sandals) So here’s my rundown of the weekend, and I know I need to do this post now while its still fresh before I forget all the awesome bands!
SATURDAY, 2008/05/24
Might as well start with a) a picture of the mainstage, and b) a picture of the folks I spent the weekend with.
Beirut was the first band we checked out that day, mainstage.
Not sure who those creeps are on the far right, or that mexican dude inbetween thani and cullen, but lets see here, clockwise from left: Jon, Mari, Thani, Cullen, Erin, you’s truly, gRob, TankTodd, Britt, and Eric - ZincOxide clad.
SO. We drove in Saturday morning (meeting the couples gRob+Erin, Cullen+TankTodd), hurriedly set up camp (as we knew we needed to start drinking well before noon), and hit the festival grounds as Beirut was just starting up around 2PM. The day’s music got off to a slow start, but there were two positive stand outs for the day that made it a pretty damn good time, but I’ll do this thing in order.
Beirut seemed a little underpowered for the mainstage (I always imagined seeing them unamplified, sitting crisscrossapplesauce in a field of grass) but that may have just been the fifth of whiskey eric smuggled in to the concertgrounds (hidden ingeniously within the water bladder of a camelpack surrounded by water in his backpack) hitting me a little bit ill-timed. Ozomatli took the mainstage next, doing some latin funk that seemed to really kick things off for me when I saw them around the same time last year’s sasquatch, but this year didn’t seem particularly interesting.
At this time, we dove in to the mainstage pit to get good positioning for The National’s scheduled set around 4ish. This is Jon’s favorite band so this was a big deal to him, and his face was beaming in anticipation. Sasquatch usually gets some kind of celebrityish person to introduce the mainstage acts..surprise! as Rainn Wilson Dwight Schrute walks out on stage. He kinda dicked around, and even gave a “fuck shorecrest” shout out. (we went to the same highschool), before letting us know that the National’s tour bus broke down and that they’d play way later, if at all. And so instead, Fleet Foxes took the stage for an encore set. Jon started cussing his brains out and actually pissing some of the crowd off. I was pretty miffed too, even though I have both of the fleet foxes cds in my car, but come on, I know all their songs sound the same and I WAS really psyched to finally see the National. So yea, I was pissed too. Pissed enough that we left the stage early to go see Destroyer on the Wookie stage. And they weren’t even bad either. Their harmonies were great. But when I realized that I had thought they had played my “favorite” song of theirs’ three different times (due to all the songs sounding basically the same) I knew it was time to move on.
Arghs.
Dan Bejar must have JUST made it in time from Destroyer on the other side of the concertgrounds to the mainstage for New Porn..we left destroyer and by the time we were on the left side of the stage for new porn, he was already on stage!
After dicking around for a bit, checking out Destroyer and Dan Bejar’s other band, the reliably good New Pornographers (including Neko Case!), we began to get in a position to get in to the mainstage pit for MIA, coming at around 7ish. Guys, if you want to be in the good parts of the pits, you have to want it. Which includes being an asshole if you have to. I am always OK with this idea, and gladly will cut off little girls and obvious nonfans who stand in the way of me and getting as close to the bands I love as possible in live settings. Anyway, MIA was f’ing awesome. One of the definite highlights of the day. Her DJ was awesomely good, and the two back up dancers, both the red-raggedy-ann-wig-wearing-chick, and that awesome dude doing crump dancing with red fitted, got everyone in the crowd doing two fingered guns into the air in time with the machine-gun sound effects that bridged the gaps between songs. MIA comes out in this sweet getup (this is the most in focus picture I was able to get off)
Yea, look at her hat! Ahhhahha, she had a matching jacket too. Anyway, she went through all the bangers, and the bass? It was AWESOME. You dont get bass this good at clubs in Seattle, possibly due to sound code? I like feeling the basslines in my heart, and the crowd was bouncing to it, and singing all the hooks. Eventually, maybe around “Pull Up the People” (which was probably my favorite song of the set), she invited folks on to stage to dance with her. Shit I was trying so hard to fight through the sea of people to get up there, but you could feel this press from the back as the entire crowd tried to do the same. By the time stage was at capacity, with maybe 100 folks on stage, I was about 5 bodies away from the front rail where I could pull myself up there! Grabbed this:
So close! But yea, by now, all the girls within this close area of the bar (short, and in flip-flops guuduhhh) were freaking the F out with claustraphobia, and many were literally crying. MIA just kept going through the jams, and I really just wanted to bounce to these awesome beats, but instead me and every guy nearby started the responsible rescue operation of all the women in the area freaking out, basically clearing room and trying to lift them out of the pit into the arms of the security gaurds as they frantically tried to kick us in our faces for our help. Whatever. Three songs like this, and the on-stage dancers left, so the crowd calmed enough that I could just groove through the rest of MIA’s set. It was still really really awesome. She was AWESOME. shit.
Alright, now it was scrounge dinner time, check out Okkervil River, and then to the small Yeti stage, the smallest stage at Sasquatch. It was about 745ish, and The National had made it to the Gorge, and were going to play their set at this smaller stage, laregely opposite Modest Mouse’s scheduled playing on the mainstage. Blessing in disguise, this ended up being Saturday’s other highlight to me, and probably made me more happy even than MIA did.
I definitely went in with low expectations. Though I listen to all their albums fairly often (enough to realize mid-set that I knew most of the words to their songs), I always assumed that this band wouldn’t translate very well to live, or be that interesting in that setting. I underestimated both them, and the power of the rescheduled-band-to-the-yeti-stage performance factor. I have told this story to everyone I know because it is among the happiest moments in my life, but at Sasquatch 2007, a freak wind-storm caused a Galloping Gerdy on the mainstage, forcing my favorite band at the time, The Polyphonic Spree, to reschedule its set to 1AM on the small Yeti Stage, as the very last thing I would see at Sasquatch that year. A given with huge festivals like this is how so many people end up grazing around to check out bands they dont really know much about. Band’s with some sort of following are usually scheduled for the mainstage, possibly at bad times given the nature of that given band. The “secret” Spree show of 07 allowed a special confluence of factors to produce one of the most magical live music experiences I feel I will ever experience. The people in the audience were all actual FANS, who knew all the words, and had come just to see the Spree. They wanted to see them so badly that they saught out the smaller stage at 1AM after the entire festival had officially ended (and everyone by this time was so exhausted from the weekend that they just want to DROP). And so the Spree, all 23 of them, packed on to this little stage that looks like a log cabin, with the warm breeze from the columbia river canyon coming through the stage, and played an extended intimate set with 300 of their dearest fans singing every word along with them. Later, when I met Tim Delaughter at a Spree show in Vancouver BC, I asked him about that “secret” show, and he still remembered how wonderful it had been.
This is a very long-winded way at explaining the awesomeness that a rescheduled set on the Yeti stage can be for a band. The National, while nowhere as meaningful to me as the Spree, still played a wonderful extended and intimate set to some of their best fans, who sang along to all their words, and threw in a great encore as well. The band was nowhere as subdued live as I thought they would be considering their recordings, and though it took some time to build, really built some of their songs later in the set up to be pretty rockin. PRETTY is definitely the word here. Matt Berninger’s voice is bassy in a way that reverberates through the rest of the bands’ sound, and contrary to Dwight Schrute’s sarcastic introduction, his lyrics really are great. The brass added alot to. Their sound is just really refined, and just hit the perfect spot for the closing of my first evening at this year’s Squatch. Sharing this with Erin was really great also. I wish I got to see Jon crying, but we couldn’t find him in the crowd. PolyphonicSpree:Me :: TheNational:Jon?
Anyway, headed back to the mainstage, dazed and happy, to see the end of Modest Mouse. As R.E.M. was setting up, it started raining, and it only took me a couple songs to realize I’d much rather be sleeping and getting ready for Sunday’s big day than watching the rest of their set. So I headed back to camp with some folks.
I think gRob+Erin are rather pooped.
SUNDAY, 2008/05/25
Before I get to the day’s bands, I’ll post some pictures of the friends I camped with. This was the only time I broke out my camera at camp, so enjoy.
t&m
buxton
campsite
Robert Muilenburg
friends
jon
ALRIGHT. Now on to Sunday’s music. We headed in at Noon to see our local favorites, The Maldives. They’re this completely awesome durnken country rock band. Three guitars, slide guitar, banjo, fiddle, drums, and Tomo - the gay asian design major. After seeing them twice, I already feel like I have all their songs memorized, and they just completely rule. Seriously, go to their myspace page, and watch the “synclive.com” video in the Sounds Like section.. (they dont really have their songs recorded professionally yet) it’s their entire set from the Tractor Tavern show I saw them at, it’s really f’ing good. I wasn’t sure if it would rule seeing them in the sun at noon instead of drinking in a dark bar late at night, but the thing is, whisky is whisky no matter the time of day, and sunday it was noon, and the Maldives were great. And then it started raining, and it got even better on that little Yeti stage, with a medium sized crowd in there, loving every second of it.
Where’d his beard go? We missed “Time is Right Now”, which sucks, but the rest of their set was just great.
I mean, look at this guy.. Hurry up and record an album, Maldives.
tank-len
So that set us in a really good mood, right off the bat. For the 1PM slot, we stuck the Yeti stage to check out the awesome-name-having Truckasaurus per JonTodd’s suggestion to see how the name lived up to their reality. Look at these guys:
Don’t look like much right? Kind of white trash, with some weird people standing around on stage.. But if there’s something Sasquatch is actually kind of short on is just pure dance music. And when kids take drugs and drink booze they sometimes want to dance, so when they get the chance… Truckasaurus was just techno electro hip hop dance music. Unabashed, kind of dorky, and they admit to never performing in the light of day EVER, only dark clubs and basements. Let’s see..Seattle locals, that fat dude in the orange shirt is their HYPE MAN??? AND they killed a giant bottle of Maker’s Mark onstage. + That guy with the antique seattle seahawks t-shirt is controlling midi with a modded GAMEBOY. So yea, it was surprisingly fun. Big ForgettingSarahMarshall dude with the Mic even asked to see some titties and actually got to! Then rotund orange shirt (his younger brother) got the crowd jumping by bouncing his hand up and down with the other hand to his ear. Haaha really fun stuff.
Back to the mainstage for the end of Blue Scholars set. Last time I saw them, they were opening for Kanye West, and the crowd this time was no smaller. Surprising amount of stage presence, though listening to Jigga so much means that I will always be jaded looking at Geologic’s lyrics. Still, with so many UW folks in the audience, I think “The Ave” went over pretty great with the crowd. I could hear the hook (campus parkway up to 41st, 42nd..etc) coming from everyone’s mouth around me, including my own. But all this really did was make me imagine how awesome it would be to see Jay-Z in concert..not sure if that was Geologic’s intent.
Over to the Wookie Stage for White Rabits, who ended up being another very pleasant surprise. It was just some really dancy indie rock, the surprise being that it’s Piano driven. I went based on Rob’s suggestion, even though we ended up being seperated at the particular time they were playing Sunday. Back to the mainstage for the end of Tegan & Sara. I took this time for lunch. I’m not sure what the big deal is about these two. Is their popularity based on the fact that they may or may not be lesbians/sisters? It sounded like pretty generic girl rock, which I usually can’t listen to much of unless its Plumtree. Anyway, they finished, and I headed to Yeti Stage for another Rob reccomended The Blakes. Another fun band on the smaller stages. Three local Seattlites pulling off phony british accents for straight-ahead dirty DIRTY british old school punk I guess? Don’t really know how to describe it, but I danced a little bit and was entertained by how stained their deep v-neck tshirts were. It was now around 6ish, and time to start getting in place to make a move in to the mainstage pit for Franti. But first, The Presidents were playing as we came back over the hill. I think it was Jon that laughed saying “they’re just a bunch of soccer dad’s!” I guess it was a nice touch to have them play, since I doubt they’d get this kind of time slot on the mainstage at any non-Pacific Northwest festival stage these days. “Peaches” of course was fun for everyone.
Here’s the scenery:
and to the right..
Michael Franti & Spearhead is a personal live favorite of mine, this being the fourth time I’ve seen him/them (all thanks to Eric’s sweet hookup for backstage passes all the time). Franti is anti-scene, playing anti-war message songs with regae/dancehall/funk/hip-hop/world vibes all in one. Normally this kind of band I would hate with a loathing unconditional, but I dont know…Franti not only works for me, I absolutely love his concerts. I hate throwing peace signs in to the air when a musician asks the crowd to, but for Franti I will. He actually goes to Iraq on tours to share his music with folks. He’s walked the earth the last six or seven years or something completely bare foot. He’s a jumping spider with yard-long dreads with so much charisma that when he asks the thousands of people sitting in the giant bowl that is the gorge mainstage arena stand up and jump to the music, I turn around and realize that everyone I can see on that massive hill behind me is actually doing it. This music is uplifting, and yes it takes some buying in to to get you there, but I dont respect anyone who can’t bring themselves to get there, it’s too much fun!
The other times I’ve seen Spearhead, they’ve been in the position to play long extended sets around two hours long once you count the long encores, that take you through a range of experiences, from just gleefully jumping to Carl’s loudy baseline, to listening to Michael do a few acoustic songs about Iraq and his son sitting on a stool, to putting your arms around your friends, thankfully giving your legs a rest, at the end of the show for one of the final encore songs. Having Franti on the mainstage before the day’s headliners Death Cab and The Cure, meant an abridged set around an hour instead. So while the motions were still went through (from the wild jumping to the arms around your friends), the long build up and full range that his two hour plus show puts you through wasn’t there to make you really really feel completely affirmed in these things. So while it was definitely the thing that got the festival the most jumping and dancing of all of Sunday, I have experienced much more impacting Franti shows in the past. Even last year’s Squatch, when he was bumped to the Wookie due again to Galloping Gerdy, and forced to play opposite Bestie Boys, Spearhead got to do the full 2 hour gauntlet in the warm and breezy outdoors that they were meant to perform in. That’s the proper way to see Michael Franti & Spearhead.
One of their last songs, Franti’s son in yellow. Franti invited Geologic from Blue Scholars up with his son in blue for impromptu freestyle. By impromptu, I mean that blue scholar dude didn’t realize that that’s what Michael wanted until it was too late, so he kind of stammered in to a very short free, before bowing out for Spearhead to finish the set.
Rob, Jon, James, & Bux
Groupshot at Sunset
And there’s that sunset.
So Death Cab For Cutie was on next, but a couple songs was really all I wanted to hear of them, before hitting up the Wookie stage for Stephen Malkmus. When we got there though, some band called The Kooks was playing their final songs that were actually really dancy and invigorating. I found a really really fun mosh pit, one where there was enough room to actually get running momentum, so boys and girls were just flying in and out of this thing until the Kooks finished up.
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks was something I was looking forward to as a Pavement fan. His band kicked ass! Seriously, something missing at the festival so far were bands that just kicked ass at guitar. The Jicks provided Stephen with classic rock-y jam band-y chord progressions to just go nuts on, and the Wookie Stage’s sound setup is my favorite at the Gorge. Really, these speakers are LOUD, and Bassy, no matter where you stand, and Malkmus had his guitars up LOUD. So finally, something was kicking my ass, and the crowd was loving it too. He’s just this unasuming lanky guy in a red sweater, soft voice, twenty years in the biz, but he was kicking ass! Really really hated to leave at 10 in order to go see The Cure start up. But I placed a bookmark with this band to definitely see them next time they come to town.
The Jicks, out of focus. Girl drums (she was super good), and girl bass.
Finally, the headliners of the night at 10PM (long ass day, tell you what), The Cure. Watched this with everyone from the grass looking down, so I was too far away to get a good picture. The first hour was really dreamy. From where we were sitting, blue light came out from the stage in waves, and the music was super reverby in a way that made even all those new songs I hadn’t heard before pretty interesting. “Pictures of You” and “Lovesong” and “Just Like Heaven” are some of the only songs I really recognized though. I’m not even sure if they played Close to Me or Friday Im in Love, my mind was bogged down by the 35-40 songs. We were becoming very very tired as the Cure neared constant playing for two hours. We had to leave. Had to. Really the Cure would never stop playing. We heard them starting up Boys Dont Cry half an hour later, nearly all the way back at the tents. And I just looked it up online, their setlist is three hours and fifteen minutes long. So yea, I guess they played for a while after that, long after the entire Gorge had emptied to go to sleep and get ready for the next day of music.
MONDAY, 2008/05/26
Another noon day today, in order to see Yeasayer take the mainstage. And, Vik showed up in the early morning, fresh off of some Craigslist ride share so we had some fresh blood. Also, security was majorly cracking down Monday, and confiscated an entire fifth of rum! Anyhoo, Yeasayer’s set was way to short. They played half their LP and then had to leave stage. The lead singer had a super spazzy style where he’d point his index finger in the non-mic-holding hand like some weird scientist. I can’t wait for them to write more material and watch a longer show of theirs some time. Outdoors was pretty appropriate though.
Oh. Forgot to mention, see that giant bug-eyed thing with the lights on top of the stage? That magically appeared on the mainstage overnight, signalling the coming Flaming Lips UFO show?
The Wookie Stage was next, for Thao With the Get Down Stay Down. These were some obviously talented musicians, especially Ms. Thao Nguyen in a really great looking dress plus weird acoustic-electric hybrid guitar, singing with her hair blowing in her face from the breeze. I didn’t have my camera with me for her or Built to Spill, which I regret, because both acts were highlights. I think her recorded stuff is a little over produced, but live, her voice was more raspy and weirdly freeflowing over the rhythyms of the band, and both of the male back-up musicians were understated but perfectly solid enough. If you listen to her albums, you’ll see what I mean, a little too overproduced and busy, while live she really was very nice on the grass and in the hot hot sun.
In trying to lock down a good position for Built to Spill, playing at 330, we went down to the mainstage pit edge at what we thought was The Hives middle point. I really hadn’t ever tried listening them, always making the mental distinction that they were some Mtv thing, but I found them incredibly entertaining for about three songs. The problem was that they played 15 more after that, while we were stuck in a crowd of people at the edge of being let in to the pit for BTS. The whole Hives schtick is this ironical rock star thing, matching white and black suits, and a flamboyant mick jagger channeling lead singer, and their from sweeden. The between song banter was mildly entertaining, the music was not. But there were hundreds of little kids who knew every word and were going nuts. I didn’t understand, and by the last twenty minutes the HIVes could not get off the stage fast enough.
Built to Spill on the other kicked super ass, in a somewhat similar way to Stephan Malkmus & the Jicks the night before. Just really awesome guitars, playing songs I’ve liked since I first started listening to good music mid way through high school. Those four dudes didn’t need any gimicks beyond just standing there and just playing to still be one of my favorite acts of the festival. When I saw them at Capitol Hill Block Party two years ago, they seemed to noodle a bit more with their more generous set time alotment. Here, they focused on finely crafted songs, opening up for the full musical interludes of “Carry the Zero” and “Big Dipper”. Doug Martsch seemed really shy, muttering a barely audible squeek of a thank you between each song, and his voice was as wavery as it is on the recordings, but his guitars were just really really awesome. Not even three really (and I mean fucking really really) annoying girls near us could taint Built to Spill’s awesomeness for long. God this was a good set.
While eating dinner, Rodrigo y Gabriella were hitting up the mainstage. I heard enough to realize they were insanely good at flamenco guitar, but flamenco guitar just aint my thing, so I headed to the Wookie Stage to get ready for Battles.
So I dont know if you’ve watched this video yet or not, but it gives you kind of an idea of what these guys are up to, but not really a clue as to how intense their live show is. The beats build very very quickly, from a single looping guitar line recorded live, to interweaving looping and live parts played by all the musicians, some digitally manipulated, and constantly evolving, all backed with manic drums. The drummer never stopped pumping and smashing that 10 foot high symbol above his head. This sounded like music from the future, created by robots. When I think about the amount of practice it must take for them to build these songs and know where each other are going, and how one mess up with a loop creation out of tempo or tune could throw the whole groove of the thing…my mind boggles. They played a number of songs that were all climax. Then they played “Atlas”, which I guess is kind of a single, but its vocal line, octaved up a few times into incomprehensible robot ranges is catchy enough, and the drums were kind of a call to stop localized head bobs and heel stomps and just start jumping. The front rows dissolved into mosh/jumping pits instantly through the rest of that awesome song.
During Battles’ next and final song, unfortunately, we had to leave. The priority of the day was to get prime positioning for The Flaming Lips, which meant 7:00, time to go back to mainstage and get ready to weave in. Ended up catching the very end of Flight of the Conchords, playing that boom boom song, and then something regarding angels in heaven having sex and then the rain comes down on us. I don’t know, it was pretty funny. I can’t believe how huge this has gotten so fast! HBO torrents?
While waiting for the Mars Volta to set up, I shot some pictures.
The Muilenburgs
This is such a sharp focus of Jon its ridiculous.
Ted, Rob, Vik, Jake, Eric, Me, Jon, Erin..prettydamn sunburnt at this point.
The Mars Volta were the most talented musicians at Sasquatch this year. The main dude, Omar on guitar, is amazing, his fingers never stopped moving at breakneck speed for the entire set. Keyboards dude (ben foder) with the weird frozen open mouth and saxaphone dude were both really excellent at soloing. Bass dude somehow knew how to stay in beat with the super complex time signatures throughout all the long extended freak jazz solo sessions. And the drummer never played a simple or typical beat throughout the show, seemingly to play completely at random yet perfectly in time. That doesn’t mean I necessarily enjoyed their set. I ran in to the same problem I have trying to listen to them recorded; there’s so much information going on at the same time that it gets overwhelming and then boring. It’s TOO interesting.. and live you dont have anywhere to even bob your head to, the weird time signitures prevent you from really grooving that well to the majority of their music, so much that when a regular hard rock jam section comes out, everyone freaks out with relief from the tension of trying to figure out what to do in the other sections. They’re just personally not for me.
BUT, the first five minutes of their set were so awesome and crazy I can’t even describe it. Right out of the gates, they’re abrasive loud and fast as hell. The singer is just going apeshit as they do this musical thing. He runs over to the drumset, grabs a ride cymbol and its large steel stand with tripod base at the end, runs to the edge of the stage a hucks it in to the crowd. This must have hurt a few people really badly, there’s no way it couldn’t have. He then runs up and climbs six feet up on to an amp, humps it for a while as support people try to make sure he and it dont fall. He runs back to the edge of the stage, grabs a fan that’s spinning, and hucks IT in to the crowd, the fan cover dislodging midflight so that there’s just this spinning propeller of death flying at that same unlicky section of audience. He runs over to one of the camera’s filming for the jumbotron, and grabs on to it, tugging, about to grab it to certainly destroy it. Naturally the cameraman holds on for dear life, so Omar guitarist runs over to kick him in the face for messing with the singer, all the while playing guitar insanely fast. That was a really weird sequence to witness. Dethklok in action. Mars Volta singer is crazy?
FINALLY. It was time for THE FLAMING LIPS U.F.O. SHOW, and the close of this year’s Sasquatch Music Festival. Couldn’t come at a better time, my feet and knees were literally throbbing with pain, my voice was shot, sunburned from head to toe, and soo sooo tired. Just one stretch left to go, something that I’ve been hearing wonders about forever, and that of course was the spectacle that is the Flaming Lips live.
For starters, all weekend, I had been seeing these dudes walking around in yellow construction uniforms as seen in the above picture. Turns out these are the Flaming Lips sound crew, stage hands, and confetti cannon technicians. Awesome! They arranged the lips gear, all of which was colorcoordinated with those construction colors of orange and neon yellow. That semicircular ring with the grid is actually a display, that suddenly came to life for soundcheck, panning from left channel to right channel saying in a robotic voice “This is coming from the left, from the right, from the left” etc as sound waves danced in that grid. The sun had almost set, and excitement of everyone was building. Oh, also, we had absolutely perfect positioning in the mainstage pit. Center, 20-25 bodies off of the front bar.
Folks look up with anticipation, I’m just exhausted, and burnt.
I think the best way to explain this is to discuss what must be the Flaming Lips and Wayne Coyne’s vision in creating a show like this (that is much more show than a typical concert). I think their intention is to overwhelm the audience with wave after wave of spectacle, instigating waves of happiness, until in the climatic moments, the audience is reduced to a point of childlike joy. This was certainly my experience: there are periods of the set that I can’t remember clearly as far as what song was playing or really what was going on besides the overwhelming memory of warm and untainted joy. I think I remember in those times just kind of gurgling with giddy squeels, a very wide smile stretching the skin of my face. I’ll explain.
By the time its dark, soundcheck is done, the stage is set, and there are twenty to thirty teletubbies on each side of the stage, waiting with flashflights (I found out on the internet today looking this up that they have costumed dancers like this at all the big shows, and that these costumes are filled with lucky fans who happen to be invited by some intern who works for the lips that day at the concert venue! God I wish I had been that lucky). Oh god this is going to be awesome. As smoke fills the stage, huge spaceship sounds come through the speakers, pulsating, as the lights on that huge mirrored disc that’s been hanging over the mainstage all day start going wild. The UFO is lowering to stage level!
Sitting in the cockpit of the ship is Wayne Coyne, in a suit that looks like spaceman safari, and the plastic bubble around him begins to inflate as the rest of the band run on to the stage while everyone cheers their fucking brains out, and go immediately in to the opening instrumental parts of “Race For the Prize”. The teletubbies run to the edge of the stage and start dancing, and the stage lights along with the UFO lights continue flashing and flying around.
Once the bubbles inflated, some construction workers bridge the gap between the bubble and the audience’s outstretched hands, and we take Wayne as “Race For the Prize” continues, and pass him around the crowd.
And he’s back on stage and out of the ball in time to start the words to the song at the perfect time!
What you need to understand, is that every damn chorus in this show was a time for absolute jubilation. The crowd sang every word, every hand in the audience was in the air, and to punctuate the rival of the choruses, the confetti cannon would blanket the audience in an explosion of orange and yellow snow. I was always way too happy when this happened to think to take out my camera, so I stole the following picture from someone on flickr named “joshc”.
God, this man is willy wanka.
I believe the next song was “Free Radicals”, and the crowd would scream “Fanatical, FUCK” in the breaks of music. It was really awesome. Never seen massive crowd by-in like this, and by the second song. This was followed by a Led Zeppelin cover of “The Song Remains the Same”, where Wayne talked about how he always imagined everyone listening to this song being naked and how he had OKd it with Sasquatch management for everyone to get naked to this song, as long as they put their clothes back on after it was done. I don’t know if anyone in the audience really did it, but halfway through the song these girls run out:
And they dance unabashed for the rest of the song. Surprise cameo by double-neck guitar also.
Somewhere along the line, the teletubbies are joined by giant walking monsters, huge astronauts, the sun, and some giant aliens.
For “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots”, the audience really really sings along, especially after Wayne introduces the song by saying he only realized the real meaning of it, being there for your friends, after he heard an audience singing it to him some concert ago. “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” is played somewhere in the setlist somewhere too. They do this cool thing with the military funeral song Taps, with this electric bugle playing over minor chords as Wayne gives a little political banter, before launching in to “The W.A.N.D.” Again, choruses punctuated with confetti cannons, Wayne shooting pressurized streamers into the audience with some crazy little gun, giant balloons filled with confetti in glitter that bounce slowly over the crowd, and pop eventually, showering the audience members beneath with even more magic stuff that all those wonderful lights will illuminate in magical ways along with the chords from the Lips and the singing of the audience.
I know that the last song was “Do You Realize?”, and by this point, the happiness in the audience was really climaxing. My mind seriously gets fuzzier as this set goes on due to just feeling happy more than any other thing, including the will to record the happenings of the evening to memory. I know I was screaming with all my might to the lyrics of the song, throwing my arms around the shoulders of anyone around me, who joyously embraced me back the same way, I was definitely hugging the friends that I came with, and the keenest visual memory I have is that of looking up over the heads of the crowd and taking in a full 360 degree view of where I was. At this point in the song, the Lips just had the confetti cannons going in a constant stream, so that orange and yellow seemed to absolutely snow from the sky. I took in the view, spinning in a circle and found it was like being inside a snow globe. Those few spins in a circle, looking at the world the Flaming Lips had created for us to play in for that hour and a half as they played, was my moment reduced to the childlike joy I spoke of earlier. It really was a magical set of moments.
I’ve looked online for someone to post a picture of what this snow globe looked like, surely I was not the only one who saw it, and there must have been someone thinking enough to try and capture it on film. Looking through flickr for sasquatch 2008 flaming lips pictures, these two are the closest thing I could find. Photographer cited below each picture.
Photo by theRIAA.
Photo by ChrisB.
And then, like that, the Flaming Lips were done, no encore necessary, and Wayne Coyne got back in to his UFO and flew away. Fucking perfection.
When the lights came up, smiles were permanently plastered across everyone’s faces. Nabbed a couple group shots, here’s two tries:
one
two, this one includes the extended Muilenburg family.
And so, The Flaming Lips. Perfect conclusion to a really wonderful weekend of music. Personal Top 5 Highlights: The Flaming Lips, Built to Spill, The National, The Maldives, M.I.A.
Thanks for reading this 50 page report.
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