Labor day of love

Play it: Bumbershoot '05 Monday Recap

For the past couple years at Bumbershoot, I'd been looking around at all the aging hipsters with their new accessory of choice, baby in sling, and wondered what it would be like. Well this year we got to experience it, and it was challenging, but fun. Now, obviously we think of Eli as more then a hip new accessory.... he's also a great conversation piece. Oh, yeah, and he's also our life-blood, focus-of-our-current-existence, center-of-known-universe, blah-blah-blah.

So Los Amigos Invisibles kicked off our day and got us dancing hot and sweaty-like. Eli got a little too much sun, but he also got to dance in the bjorn, so it was a good trade-off. The Venezualan disco-funk machine was in full force, and I ran into our first "haven't seen you since this lil' guy was born" old friend, which became the dominant theme of the day.

Next we were off to look at art. First was Flat Stock, an annual exhibit of rock posters, and luckily we didn't dress Eli in one of the artists' pieces (he's got a few, I have to admit.) I don't feel like it's stealing, though, to use someone's art on a iron-on onesie. It's not financially viable to create the product to sell, and it only last a couple months before it gets all tattered anyway. If anything, being a designer myself, I'd think it was flattering. Anyway, there were a lot of great posters there, but it was too crowded to get in and pick one out to purchase. Also naturally ran into another old friend who was surprised to see a baby.

The NW Rooms house the bulk of visual art and ran into another friend (you've got a baby?) lying on a 10x10' turf on the ground, a piece called Grrrass! (or alternatively, Sod Off.) It growled and vibrated. Eli seemed to like it, so we found ourselves 'on grass' as well. We then saw an exhibit called In Resonance, which featured noise/composer artists like Thurston Moore, Eyvind Kang, and Stephen Vitiello. Grooving outside the exhibits was J Boogie's Dubtronic Science.

Next up came Austin's it band Okkervil River, where as they tuned and level-checked the temperature on the sunny and 78 degree day dropped nearly 30 degrees as the sun disappeared behind the Pacific Science Center. It started out cold, but OkkRiv really warmed the place up with their emotive and punkish energy, and by the end Will Sheff had worked himself out so much, he shed down to a t-shirt in the 45 degree chill of the evening. Yet Eli slept through it, and my wife sat on the ground ambivilant to the performance.

After OkkRiv's set ended, sweety-pie wife unit ran to get some hot beverages and benets. Meanwhile, teenage Pat Benatar lookalikes all rushed in around us for the Tegan and Sara show. Pretty soon Eli's stroller was surrounded and we were stuck in a sea of bangs and bottom lip-piercings. After the coffee and benets showed up with wife in hand, we parted the sea carrying the stroller up and over the masses and further back to avoid the girlish screams waking up the sleeping royalty. Tegan and Sara started the show, and as usual, their stage banter was both funny w/ wit and self-deprecating humor... with stuff like This next song is about when you get your heart broken and you try your best to glue it back together and you wake up one morning and you're so happy because you realize 'Oh my god, the tape's holding'. They played a Springsteen cover ("Dancing in the Dark") and kept all the teenage Benatars satisfied with their performance. We left early, but could hear the sisters' banter as we strolled Eli back to the car... satisfied with our first child-adorned Bumbershoot experience.

Previously:
Bumbershoot Day 1
Bumbershoot Day 2
Bumbershoot Day 3
Bumbershoot Day 4
Loving Labor Day

tags: playlist, music, bumbershoot, okkervil river, tegan and sara