After REM, i wandered back to my tent. Despite the rain, it was pleasantly dry. The campground, which is normally quite active late at night was understandably mellow and so i got right to sleep. of course, i was woken up at 5:30am by the high school seniors that had set up about 35 feet away from us. They were happily plastered, and telling everyone at the top of their lungs. They ran out of steam after about 30 minutes, so i was able to get a couple more hours of sleepytime before getting up.
We hit the festival promptly at 12 so i could catch the first show of the day, Seattle natives Awesome!. My friend Kirk knows a couple of them, and he’s been bugging me to catch them live. They completely lived up to their name - watch for a very high place on my Top Ten list next post.
After them, it was a quick trip to catch The Morning Benders, then 2 songs of 65 Days of Static, part of What Made Milwaukee Famous, The Heavenly States, and then the COLD WAR KIDS!!! i’ve been a huge fan of them and made sure to be down in front for that show, which was GREAT. Sound on the Sound picked them as the #1 “got to see” and they lived up to the hype for sure. Nathan is a scary good vocalist, and the other boys were great. They invited The Delta Spirit on stage to close out their set with a raukus version of I Radio Heaven fave “Saint John.”
After that, it was back to the Wookie Stage for White Rabbits, then back for Tegan and Sara, then Rogue Wave and Mates of State. I wanted to see The Kooks, but decided to get into the crowd of Michael Franti and Spearhead at the Main Stage so that i could establish my place in the front for The Cure. This turned out to be the best decision i made all weekend, as Spearhead was the definite surprise of the fest. I hadn’t heard anything by them before, but i was very impressed with his showmanship and performance.
Death Cab was next. I was pretty excited about this show since i really like the direction the new album took. The crowd was insane, as you might imagine. it was a wall-to-wall mash of tweeners and The Cure fans that were there to suffer through DCFC to keep their up-front spot. DCFC was good, but not great. i was hoping the new songs would have more depth to them live, but they really just sort of slid right into their set without calling attention to themselves. Ben Gibbard is obviously getting more and more comfortable on stage; i think this is the most interactive i’ve seen him (except for his solo show). They had a cherry timeslot, too. There are some fantastic pics of them as the sun is setting behind them. I have some links to a few of them, but i’ll throw mine up for now.
Next: The Cure!!!
