Scotland's the Jesus & Mary Chain had been going on for fifteen years when they broke up in 1999. It's difficult to nail down just how influential the band really were. It's hard to describe how much their tactic of chucking apocalyptic noise into a pool of '50s rock & roll myth, post-punk genre-tourism, and cool pop hooks made everything at the time sound better.

They got back together last year, and while no one's quite sure why, they're here now, in front of everyone, and for many of us, for the very first time.

It's simple. They just showed up. No intro music. No backdrop. Like it hasn't been a decade since they were here. There's the first song. Done. Second song. Done. Nothing in-between. The band, standing stock-still, surrounded in smoke and squalls, come off as a kind of unified, laconic force, a sort of seamless and charismatic wall of anti-performance, and you remember how hard it is to pull it off.

But the Jesus & Mary Chain have always had some contempt for their fans. They've played whole shows with their backs to the audience, sparked off historic riots, and even continued to release essentially the same record over their whole career. After one song, crowd roaring, frontman Jim Reid shrugs and says, "Cheers."

There's "Head On" and "Sidewalking" and "Cracking Up." There's a nervous "Some Candy Talking" and a brutish "Blues From A Gun." There's "Far Gone & Out," which they fumble, and "Just Like Honey," which, as Jim Reid looks out with a single light in his eye, hits hard enough for you to forget how much you've heard it.

Besides Jim and William Reid, the new line-up has members of Ride and Lush, including Not Bobby Gillespie on drums. They look well and calm. Jim Reid's come out of a life of alcohol and chaos looking somehow like a young John Simm, while William Reid looms like a round Robert Smith. It almost seems too easy until things start to go wrong. "It's not our fault," one of them says, as songs are restarted. "This is a fucking nightmare."

It's not, as it turns out. It's a good night for the memories. If they don't play Honey's Dead front-to-back, they cover their catalogue with broad strokes, and wrap up an encore with "Reverence," one of the band's most vicious pieces of music, which is a dense and blistering and brilliant reminder of when bands used to crush their most important influences together instead of only mimic them.

After everything is over, after every song, you hear echoes of a hundred bands that wouldn't exist without the Jesus & Mary Chain.

Like most reunions, you're not watching the band -- these brothers of Scotland -- you're watching what they must have been like when they were still alive and together, producing music and part of the culture. It's a live-action re-enactment. And your mileage may vary. But at least for tonight, while nothing proves that any of this is necessary, it's obvious it was once necessary, full-stop, and their reputation and their sound survives, which is almost good enough.

Since we're being nostalgic, please forgive me while I indulge myself. Marymoor Park was just down the road through all of middle school and high school for me. The site for the Sub Pop 20th Anniversary shows is the very same place I used to play frisbee. I went on more than one long walk with a girl I was convinced I loved there. My friend Paul was caught fucking his girlfriend in the parking lot at Marymoor, by a cop; they were let go. Paul and me actually rode our bikes from Bellevue to Seattle to drop off a demo tape at the Sub Pop office in 1993 or '94. (They wouldn't even accept it from us–I wonder why?) In later years I went to a friends' family reunion at Marymoor, and snuck off to smoke a bowl in the dog run next to the Sammammish Slough. It's been since my late 20's that I've wandered around in the fields, and it certainly was the last place I'd expect to find Sub Pop celebrating 20ish years. Walking right back into the same spot for this show was weird.

GRAND ARCHIVES

1:30pm We missed the Ruby Suns, and arrive in time to catch the tail-end of Grand Archives' set. Walking in past the scalpers, hearing the Byrds-like harmonies lilting through the air, I am immediately reminded of countless hippie music festivals. It's not the last time today that I will find myself musing on how bands that have a soft, easy-breezy vibe sound even more retro than they already are in this, an outdoor setting.

1:35pm There aren't a ton of people here yet. I notice Nabil Ayers of the Long Winters strolling around.

1:45pm I bump into my friend Bryan from my college radio days, who is now a high school history teacher, with his seven week old son Asher. He explains that there are lot of kids here, and even more were scurrying around yesterday.

BLITZEN TRAPPER

2:10pm These dudes sound like the Grateful Dead, fronted by Bob Dylan. Bryan says Pavement, and remarks on how funny it is to see a band full of tall duders fronted by a short duder. Hm. Maybe Wilco? It's good music played by good musicians, just not terribly original.

2:25pm There are no syringes littering the VIP area, which is further proof that the times have changed.

2:35pm Blitzen Trapper's energetic, dissonant set-closer proves this isn't solely a retread of the olden days. "Good night, er, goodbye," says lead singer Eric Earley.

^Kinski

KINSKI

2:40pm Now this is rock. I find myself making the rock face: pursed lips, half-scowl. This band always delivers. Chris Martin remarks, "I don't know if any of y'all were here yesterday, but I was hammered, so if I said something stupid…..I'm talkin' to you, Phil Ek!" Is Phil Ek running monitors? One song later Matthew Reid Schwartz adds "Yesterday I was here too–I wasn't drunk, but I am gonna apologize for anything I said to anybody." These guys are awfully chatty for a mostly-instrumental band.

FOALS

3:20pm "Hello Seattle. I mean, RED-MUND. Thanks fer leavin' church early." The Oxford dance-rock band is the Rapture that got away from Sub Pop, fronted by a Robert Smith soundalike.

3:30pm Their drums sound great–super-tight and tuned to perfection. Every time he hits that snare it CRACKS across the fields. If only they had drum beats that accented something other than two and four.

3:35pm They are having some trouble with their equipment, and the comment is made that they always have trouble with their gear whey they play here. Blame is placed on "the curse of Mt. Reindeer."

3:45pm Bruce Pavitt is right there in the front part of the audience. When swarthy lead singer Yannis Philippakis switches from guitar to smacking a floor tom (drums really are the focus) for the final song, Pavitt pushes up through the crowd to snap a pic. I admire his true-fan nature.

3:55pm I'm pretty sure Pavitt is wearing flippity-flops. There's lots of room in the space in front of the stage. No moshing, and everyone has their own lil' bubble. So polite.

^{Les Thugs}

LES THUGS

4:05pm Breakneck punk rock and zero banter. Finally some real power! They have a film crew, complete with fuzzy boom mic. There are also people playing hackey-sack toward the back. 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4.

Click the jump to read about No Age, Red Red Meat, Comets on Fire, Green River, Wolf Parade, and more!

Sure, Blitzen Trapper and Kinski are high energy, they are raw, but they can’t beat the Foals. The band from Oxford is straight up destruction and mayhem, musically and physically. Foal’s front man Yannis Philippakis is pure destruction. Before the first song was over he had already broken a microphone. He swung the mic down by the chord onto a floor tom and broke it. But it wasn’t until the second song that he really got into it. In the middle of the song he violently swung the neck of his guitar (which was made out of metal) into his amp and tore a big gash in it. As the roadies rushed to fix the amp Yannis told the audience, “Everytime we come to Seattle shit breaks…that’s why we like it.” He was right because as they continued to play, more shit broke. In the next song during a brutal drum fill the snare drum broke. Even with all of the broken equipment the songs still remained tight. The percussive jolts created by the Foals thudded into your body and remained there.

(The Foals)

After the Foals, No Age came on. And No Age lacked many things, one being talent. When a band has you asking questions like, “Are they supposed to sound this bad?” There is something wrong. Instead of waiting around in the filth of their sound for the answer I left and waited for a good band to come on. Was I missing something?

Comets on Fire was next and after listening to their endless jam I staked out my spot close to the stage and listened to the distant melodies of Beachwood Sparks on the small stage and awaited the arrival of mosh-pit inducing Green River. I was very excited to see them.

(Comets on Fire)

Green River fans were packed tight to the stage and ready. Green River delivered. After the first few earsplitting notes from lead singer, Mark Arm, the crowd exploded with excitement. Heads began to bang and hair began to fly. After most of their set the drummer decided to join in with the crowd and leaped into their awaiting arms. He drifted my way and I threw up a hand to guide him along. Once he was returned to the stage they finished their set and walked off to deafening applause. It was a Green River revival.

It was 1994 all over again—I was surrounded by a bunch of dudes with badly bleached, messy hair, button-up work shirts, and homemade “Screaming Life” jackets. The digital cameras and text messaging while moshing were the only hints that we were of a new generation. Seaweed’s songs, though many of them are over a decade old, have a classic and relevant sound. It’s pure and sheer rock with anthemic choruses and huge guitars and booming, quick drumming. I can’t make any old or fat jokes. They have kids now, law degrees and wedding rings, but as yesterday’s performance proved, the guys are still more than capable of mesmerizing a crowd of both old and new fans. They haven’t changed a bit either (save for the addition of new drummer Jesse Fox of Polecat/Leuko/To the Waves fame).

Before their last song, Stauffer gave a shout out to the Helio Sequence, who were going to play next. Apparently his young daughter was obsessed with that Feist song, “1234.” She wanted to listen to it constantly. That was until she heard “Blood Bleeds” by the Helio Sequence—“The Helio Sequence trumps Feist in my house,” he said. “So thanks for that, guys.”

They played a couple more songs while a bunch of stoked boys moshed in the sun and I thought it was one of the best, most energetic performances of the afternoon (no, they didn’t shove towels down their pants or hock loogies on the crowd like Pissed Jeans, but dudes still fuckin’ rocked it).

The Helio Sequence took things down a notch--a dreamy, spacey, mellow notch. There's a lot of noise coming from just two guys, and it's all pretty and poppy and exactly what I want to hear when I'm standing in the shade of some Evergreens on a cloudless, 80+-degree summer day.

Like many of the bands over the course of the afternoon, Helio Sequence also talked about how honored they are to be on such a legendary label as Sub Pop. “I wanted to be Kurt Cobain. I always wanted to be on Sub Pop,” singer Brandon Summers admitted.

About 20 minutes later, after showcasing material from their new album Keep Your Eyes Ahead he also mentioned the cute e-mail he received from Stauffer, about how much his daughter likes their song. He said even though they haven’t played “Blood Bleeds” for about two years, they practiced it over the last few days and wanted to play the lullaby for Aaron’s daughter. Awe!

Another note about the Helio Sequence, which I hadn’t realized before since I had never seen them live until yesterday: The drummer is probably the most animated drummer in the world of music. With herky-jerky moves, he keeps a perfect beat. His face contorts into various scrunched up expressions, his mouth snaps open and shut like he’s biting at a piece of invisible pie. His right arm stays fairly still and in one place, but his left arm flails about high and low and everywhere. He smiles to himself like just heard a joke, he closes his eyes like he’s imagining he’s somewhere else, I wish I could read his mind while he played.

Another band that really benefited from the environment was, of course, the Fleet Foxes, who took the stage just as the breeze picked up and the sun was low enough to shine through the trees, making sunbeams and shadows dance around while they played their sepia-toned campfire sing-a-longs. They sounded just like the Fleet Foxes, which is to say they sounded weirdly perfect, pretty, and unreal (espcially since Pissed Jeans had just finished being all loud and messy and shit).

^{Fleet Foxes}

The highlight of the otherwise familiar set was the drum-off that almost happened. While a drum tech on the nextdoor stage checked the mics for Mudhoney’s set, it interrupted the Fleet Foxes, so the band declared "It's on" and drummer J. Tillman timidly showed off his skills. The drum tech returned his serve, Tillman pounded a little louder but then stopped, laughing, and apologizing since he promised himself that was something he'd never do. You could've taken him, J.

^Mudhoney

I tried to sit still during Mudhoney--I was there while they played the title track off the new album The Lucky Ones and I got to hear "Touch Me I'm Sick" (a song that never gets old). I saw Mark Arm thrash around and be the infamous frontman he has been for over 20 years, and then I decided to wander around while the rest of their set echoed across the field. Mudhoney was Mudhoney and Mark Arm's real time to shine is going to come during today's Green River reunion (and besides, there were some pretty sick back tats just waiting to be photographically archived for-ev-er)...

In a bit of last-minute promotion via Myspace, I was clued-in to a free acoustic pop show at the Fremont Troll on Saturday afternoon at 4pm. The show was supposed to be Cristina Bautista from Connecticut Four (formerly of Paxil Rose), D. Crane of BOAT, and Eric Michener aka Fishboy. The afternoon was beautiful, the price was right, it was very near my nest in Ballard, and the confused tourists would be priceless to observe.

^{Photo by Keenan Dowers}

D. Crane couldn't make it, and instead of being simply a Cristina Bautista solo engagement, it turned out to be an acoustic performance from her new band. Surrounded by a crowd of 30 or so people with the afternoon heat peaking, Ms. Bautista perched under the Troll's nose to play a few songs on the ukulele. In spite of the traffic thumping overhead and the chopper cycles rumbling past, Bautista's voice carried well. She performed a couple of her own songs, a Ted Leo cover ("Hours"), and was then joined by C4's drummer Valerie Brogden (ex-Mechanical Dolls), who… tap danced. Not on the dusty (dusty!) ground, but a board of as-is lumber. It was bizarre, and the first of many utterly charming moments throughout the afternoon. Next C4 guitarist Meghan Kessinger (ex-Racetrack) grabbed her acoustic, Bautista scooted down from the Troll, ditching the ukulele for an acoustic guitar of her own, and suddenly we were witnessing the sorta Seattle debut of Connecticut Four.

^{Photo by Keenan Dowers}

All band members agree that this was not a Connecticut Four show, properly speaking, but nevertheless the trio ran through three unplugged versions of songs from their set list, with foot-stomping in tap shoes to suffice for drumming. They are a power pop group, with catchy melodies and compelling stage (er, earth?) presence. The fact that everyone involved has already been in an accomplished band is evident, even in the dirty space before the Troll. They do not have a show booked yet in Seattle, but are playing the Old Foundry in Bellingham on August 14.

The tourists were daunted by the performance, wondering how to get pictures of their kids in front of the Troll without a band being in it. Eric Michener of Fishboy encouraged them to take their photos throughout his set of twee pop, and so indeed they did. Watching Asians, Europeans, and Texans wander up behind him to pose was amusing and perfectly weird, if that makes any sense. A tourist in his own right from Denton TX, Michener meanwhile confidently stalked the open ground, accompanied by Adam "Sweatpants" Avramescu on trumpet, tambourine, egg shaker, and harmony vocals. Sweatpants clambered up onto the Troll's hands and head, dropping in trumpet solos with remarkable skill, then landing with a thump and a cloud of rolling dust. He also kicked up dust as percussion, and generally complimented Michener's disarming presence.

The entire experience was disarming, a reminder that the best shows have unexpected moments. It's easy to get jaded with show after show in the same old venues. The setting, the tap dancing, the tourists and the traffic made it special, and I am so glad I didn't miss it to see Fleet Foxes in Redmond.

Also getting short shrift in Eric's recap, were Canadian Sub Pop ex-pats Constantines. My favorite Constantines songs sound like the death rattle of urban industry on a borrowed Motown and Fugazi beat. Somehow the beautiful summer weather transformed the disappointed sting of those songs into something much warmer and blended them seamlessly with the sort of campfire romanticism of their recent albums.

There are also hundreds of great pictures of yesterday's action over at the SubPop20 Flickr page. Other than that, I agree that Pissed Jeans ruled.

The first thing I really saw at SP20 TK was Doiron joining the Constantines to sing their cover of the Elevators’ “Why I Didn’t Like Autumn ’93” (“I got a girl problem / I got a drug problem”). I was far away on the lawn, but I made sure to get right up front for Eric’s Trip.

^{Eric's Trip}

Eric’s Trip are a band that I was always vaguely aware of but never really got into. I was a kid when they were active. I remember that Sloan did a cover of their song “Smother” on that DGC Rarities Vol 1 compilation that everyone had (it’s in a used bin near you right now). Recently, though, when interviewing him for a piece on the Microphones, Phil Elverum told me that he got a lot of his ideas from Eric’s Trip, and that they were one of his favorite bands when he was growing up. That, to me, was as good an endorsement as Nirvana covering the Vaselines was for that band. I saw Julie Doiron play a few songs with Mount Eerie when they last played the Vera, and I’ve since been acquainting myself with some old Eric’s Trip and Julie Doiron songs, the latter thanks to a mix cd from a friend (thanks). So I was really looking forward to seeing them for the first time.

First, some sights from the crowd: a trio of high school or junior high kids wearing home-made, sharpied “Hell’s Heaven”/L7 and “Screaming Life” t-shirts; the world’s two biggest jack asses sitting on picnic blanket front and center in the crowd, right where the “pit” would be, laden with a cooler, food, a paperback, and an US Weekly magazine.

Anyway, Eric’s Trip: Genial Canadian longhairs. Doiron hid behind long hair and bangs that covered her eyes, so that all you could really see was her smile, and their first song had a lyric that sounded like something about “hair in my eyes.” The guitarist on the right kept looking at her kind of sideways over his microphone on parts they were both singing, grinning a little. They’d been playing some shows up the West Coast of Canada, they said, so they were in good shape, playing their songs with only one brief false start, but the downside was that Doiron’s voice was going out. “I think I’ve got a polyp,” she said. “My friend had a polyp.”

^{Eric's Trip}

Polyp or no, Doiron’s voice sounded fine, if occasionally strained thin. The main singer/guitarist (Rick White?) sings on most of the songs, too, so that evened things out.

He introduced the one song by saying, “This is a song of Julie’s.”
“Actually, it’s not,” she corrected.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a song I wrote about Julie.” (I think the song was “Happens All the Time.”)

I know they played “Anytime You Want,” “Follow,” “December ’93,” “Smother,” all of which sounded incredible, all fuzzy and poppy and sweet and not a little unlike Superchunk.

^{Pissed Jeans}

Pissed Jeans have to be one of the most exciting active acts on Sub Pop’s roster. They’re kind of perfect for the anniversary festival, too, as their dark, industrial-grade rock somehow both recalls the label’s past while still being sounding totally fresh. Mudhoney would later play a pretty killer set on this same stage, but at the time, it felt like Pissed Jeans probably offered the best approximation of what it might have been like to see that band 20 years ago.

First of all, the gentlemen of Pissed Jeans seem like a bunch of crack-up smart-asses, especially the singer, who kicked off the band’s set by saying, “I’m glad we all agree that the best time for crazy and wild rock’n’roll is the late afternoon.” Some of his other more inspired antics: blowing a “snot rocket” using the mic to plug up his other nostril, sticking a towel in his asscrack (which was frequently visible being squeezed out of his cheap Mondays jeans), later soaking up a beer with that same towel and wringing it into his mouth, and ramming a “drumstick” ice cream cone into his bandmate’s bass, then placing the ice cream atop his mic to have a lick.

^{Pissed Jeans}

It’s nice that the band has a sence of humor, because otherwise their songs would seem brutally misanthropic and mean. Their singer screams and sneers and moans, the rhythm section pounds and wobbles, and their guitarist—a big, ex-hardcore looking guy who makes his guitar look like a kids toy—alternately shreds fast and lets his guitar hang there, ringing out feedback for long stretches. The only song I recognized was the slower, gloomier “I Don’t Need Smoke to Make Myself Disappear,” but even the songs I didn’t know were a blast. Also, Pissed Jeans had the first mosh pit of the late afternoon, first just a couple punks and one meathead, but soon erupting into a couple dozen people. It was cute. No stage diving or crowd surfing, though.

^{The Vaselines}

The Vaselines! I would’ve paid $30 and driven out to Marrymoor just for this band alone. I spent their entire set grinning from ear to ear, pogoing and pivoting as much as the crowd would allow. Eugene Kelly looks like a nice old man, gray haired, black clad, and respectable. Frances McKee looks rather a lot younger than he does. The guys from Belle & Sebastian are adorable as always.

The set up while Mudhoney dragged out their last songs on the neighboring stage, and, as soon as the sound was switchted over to them, launched into “Son of a Gun” without a word. It was a deliriously giddy moment, and the feeling hung on for their whole set.

The band’s “private humor” was a little bit less slapstick/prop-oriented than that of Pissed Jeans, but it was also routinely hilarious. Mckee, after the first song, promised a “smut free show,” to which Kelly deadpanned, “ this is about Frances’ pussy” (or, a friend disputes, “about Frances eating pussy”), before launching into “Monsterpuss.” He introduced “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam” saying, “This song is about this guy called Jesus, he was kind of the David Blaine of his day, he got into some trouble.” Mckee explained that the reason it’s been so long since they’ve played is that she had been sold into white slavery for 20 years; “I just couldn’t pay the rent,” says Kelly, adding, "We don't have shirts for sale, but it's $20 to dry hump Frances after the show.” Later, observing that the crowd looks tired, Mckee wagers it’s dry humping, not heat stroke. Later she complains that the reunion tour is “like being on tour with the Dads”: “The don’t let me drink, they don’t let me get any action.” She later says,” I’m actually a virgin” to huge (weird) cheers, continuing, “A festival virgin. I though there were supposed to be lots of topless women. How about some topless men?” Kelly says, “This next song is an old folk song they play a lot in the schools,” before playing their cover of Divine’s “You Think You’re a Man.” Listening to their records, or just remembering them, it's easy to get swept up in the idea of the Vaselines as twee, sweet indie popper, but they're a lot funnier and raunchier than all that. It's a nice balance.

^{The Vaselines}

Humor aside, the Vaselines sound simply gorgeous. An extra guitarist, bass player, and drummer, at least two of them snagged from B&S, fill out the songs without turning them into showy cover versions. (It occurs to me, during “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam,” that some of the younger kids here might just think these guys were hired to play some Nirvana covers, and the thought makes me kind of happy.) The band brought out a guy to play a squeaky little bike horn for the chorus of the ecstatic “Molly’s Lips.” There was a feedback-soaked harmonica on “Dying For It.” They played “The Day I was a Horse,” “Rory Rides Me Raw,” and Oliver Twisted.” I seriously didn’t stop grinning the entire time. It was just perfect.

Lisa Loeb had an in-store performance at the downtown Barnes & Noble Saturday afternoon. The appearance was in support of her B&N exclusive CD Camp Lisa, for which all proceeds go toward sending underprivileged kids to summer camp. Fittingly, the CD is Lisa's renditions of popular camp songs, and she performed many of the songs (and yes, "Stay") in the kids section of the store before a signing/picture session (where she mentioned multiple times that she liked my glasses, thus making my damn day).

Video of a couple of the songs performed after the jump. The CD seems like a good purchase for those of you with kids out there.

Champagne Champagne doubled up and nudged in with the crowd. Off off the hook hook.

Dyme Def was their usual three-sided ganga beast. Even with massive sound trouble (blown speaker) fun and Dewars were had.

S.E.V. the classic Mariner. He says look for their new mixtape 3 BadBrothaaas out now:

So, blah, blah, blah, Sub Pop is 20 or some such nonsense. And they throw a motherfucker of a birthday party.

Last night things kicked off with a little to-do at the top of the Space Needle, which, as of yesterday was painted to look from above like a 7" record and was flying the Sub Pop flag. That is what world domination looks like. To say nothing of going out of business. Or hanging on the flippety flop.

Everyone was there, walking in circles, ricocheting from one bar to buffet table to another. I saw half of the Shins (the good half), so there's obviously no hard feelings about them releasing their next record on their own label. I saw Spener Moody, so apparently the infamously hard feelings between Murder City and Sub Pop have softened at least for the occasion.

Maybe a half dozen people asked me if we were rotating, even though we were on the observation deck below the rotating restaurant. Someone told me it took them a minute and a half to walk around the outdoor observation ring. After a few drinks, it did kind of feel like we were rotating.

Anyway, it was a hell of a kick-off. Happy birthday, Sub Pop.

by laura musselman

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A couple weeks ago, we gave away a pair of tickets to the Foo Fighters/Supergrass show--Line Out reader Jon e. Rock was the lucky winner. Here's his review of last night's show (all photos by Morgan Keuler):

Although we have never met, it was good to see my close friend and hometown anti-hero Dave Grohl last night. We had a few beers, swapped tour stories, and generally made asses of ourselves; the only thing separating us was eight digits in the bank account, three semis, and four tour buses. Throughout the 3 ½ hour set, Dave would draw the audience close to his heart and take us through his voltaic discography of old and new hits. The only low point of the evening was missing calc rockers Minus the Bear, who were hand-picked by Dave himself to open the night.

Stumbling in half way through Supergrass’ tumultuous set (lead singer Gaz Coombes looking like a young, attractive Dr. Cornelius), I fought my way through a sea of dowdy cargo shorts and Etnies to find my front row VIP seat amongst the rest of the sitting elite. Then the lights turned down, the crowd screamed, and you know the rest…

Or so you may think.

Upon entering, Dave Grohl ran across the stage, and down the long catwalk dividing the floor, axe in hand and gleam in eye. Taylor Hawkins (who’s name should forever be hyperlinked to the pantheon of gods, as so), jumped up on his kit, ready to dominate (as later he would with a mind vomiting DRUM SOLO). He and Nate “I Dance Like I’m About to Fall Over in My High Chair” Mendel would fastidiously hold down the engine room for the next 3 ½ hours, from the opening “Let it Die” to the conclusion of the five song encore. Ex-Germ Pat Smear occasionally wandered on stage with a cellist/violinist/back-up vocalist, and an additional percussionist (Dave Grohl suggested that “if you want to start a famous band that sold lots of T-shirts you would hire this f’-ing triangle player already”).

Half way through their set, lights dimmed again, and a spot lit stage fluttered silently down from the ceiling at the back of the floor. This could only mean it was time for the acoustic set, while boys anticipated spoon moshing with their girls. This was where the true beauty of the songs came through, and Dave would continue to remind those in front of him that they no longer had the shitty seats. A chain-smoking accordion player would accompany the band, giving an eerie, European flavor to the normally screamy, explosive American pop songs. Ending this intimate time with a Grohl-only version of “Everlong,” Dave then lurched back down the catwalk as his band detonated the completion of the power ballad.

The main stage rock power continued with some more songs containing the rock dance formula “nod, nod, shake-your-head, nod, repeat” and a stripper blues cover of the Who’s “Young Man Blues” (where vocal duties were shared between Taylor and Dave).

Never would I have thought that 13 years of dude rock would continue to present itself in a fresh, cohesive fashion. The power and intrigue of the rhythm section, Dave’s ever abundant, child-like humor, and the surprising mix of dynamics and lighting throughout the evening surly left an indefatigable memory in this reviewer’s heart.

Mr. Grohl, welcome back to the Northwest. It’s good to see you again.

Mastodon was the first band to take the main stage. They have been touring constantly for the last couple years and it shows: their chops are damn near perfect. The first half of the set was all Blood Mountain, the second half Leviathan. Even the guy selling sodas couldn’t help involuntarily headbanging to the opening riff of “Aqua Dementia.” Their set was short and excellently on point. I wondered how the troubled masses surrounding me enjoyed it. I heard one guy yell real loud, “Man, Mastodon FUCKING SUCKS!”

I wish my eyes were cameras so I could remember all the awesome tattoos and outfits I saw at this festival. There were a ton of Slipknot tatts, and way more of their shirts. I swear one in every four people was wearing a Slipknot shirt. One guy had a back piece of a giant flaming Chevy logo. As much as I wanted to ask somebody every 30 seconds to take their picture it seemed pretty much guaranteed that doing so would result in a fist to my face. I saw one fat guy wearing a black shirt that said, “Fuck Me I’m Fat,” and another guy wearing one that read, “I’m Fat Fuck Off.” The merch stands sold weed bandanas and leis with pot leaves and hats that incorporated the word “Fuck” in different ways. There was a stand for the “I (heart) Vagina Clothing Co.” It was fun watching a dad try to keep his kid from reading what the shirts said.

It seemed strangely fitting after the indie rock and grassy hills of Sasquatch that all the alternative kids would be watching their thin-sounding generic hardcore bands in a big cement parking lot. Man, they sure did love Underoath. Underoath sure does love Jesus, and they made sure to let everybody know. I'm familiar with little of their music, and after seeing them I have little desire to hear more, but I will concede that their performance and execution were much better than I would have expected. They did lose my attention however when a kid in a Cradle of Filth t-shirt with giant rubber flaps on his legs walked by. Then that kid had my full attention.

Dragonforce take the prize for the band having the most fun on stage, and really, it's damn hard not to have fun watching them. Their intro began with classical music but switched to a voice over calling those kinds of dramatic openings “Gay.” It was replaced with a medley of Donkey Kong noises and the sound of someone crapping. Even if you hate their songs, seeing Dragonforce pull off those guitar solos is pure entertainment. The fact that the band obviously takes their shtick with a grain of salt makes it that much easier to stomach. Their performance was entirely feel-good and an awesome spectacle.

There was a woman in front of me who kept doing that church move where you raise your hands and let the spirit in, but she was doing it to the chorus of a Disturbed song. The people in that stadium FUCKING LOVED Disturbed. Never before had I seen devil horns or fist pumping of that magnitude. Thousands upon thousands of rabid fans, yelling the lyrics as loud as they possibly could. I’m going to be perfectly honest; I got a little freaked out. I have never felt so out of place, so surrounded by people celebrating something I so completely did not understand. They all sang, “Look in my mind, look in my soul.” If these people could have looked in my mind and seen how I felt about Disturbed they would have ripped my arms off. How that animated, growling phallus in a jumpsuit won the affection of so many thousands of people with his bizarre pterodactyl scream is one of life’s great mysteries. He thanked the audience for making their new record debut at #1: Disturbed is only the sixth band to ever have their first three records accomplish that. He then gave love to the troops and asked for the audience to show “a little fucking patriotism,” riling everyone up with a chant of “USA! USA!” Everyone was eating out of the palm of his hand, then: “It appears the entire state of Washington has become infected… WITH THE SICKNESS.” That thumping is the sound of hundreds of people banging along on the seats in front of them.

I have never sat so long through anything I enjoyed so little.

Somewhere deep down I have a soft spot for Slipknot. I spent many afternoons in the spring of my 16th year getting stoned in my bedroom, playing Tony Hawk on N64 and listening to their first record. Their first set in 2 ½ years began with a huge, startling explosion and columns of fire, then the proclamation, “Fuck it all, fuck this world, fuck everything that you stand for. Don't belong, don't exist, don't give a shit, don't ever judge me.” I can see how this band pairs well with Disturbed – one expresses anger though guttural noises, the other through constant immature cussing. But where Disturbed is painfully rigid and theatrical at least Slipknot know how to actually rock out while playing their dumb songs. They may be immature with their silly masks and angry-diary lyrics, but as far as an arena rock show goes they're at least entertaining to watch. One of the DJs (or something) was jumping all over the place and wrecked his ankle trying to do a trick off the drum riser. He had to sit by himself in his booth for the rest of the set, his head-bobs looking all dejected. Poor guy went and hurt himself on the first night of a summer-long tour. Everyone chanted along to their track from Guitar Hero III "Before I Forget,” “The Heretic Anthem” and “People = Shit.” The singer promised to “personally spit in the mouth” of anyone who got a tattoo of their new record “All Hope Is Gone.” They ended their set with “(sic),” with the drums rising and tilting upside-down a la Motley Crue. Everyone was head banging, then there was another huge explosion, and it was over.

Sort of. It took an hour and a half to get from the parking lot to the freeway. White River: You are fucked.

Now I really wish I'd gone to the Extreme Animals show at 2020 Cycle on Sunday night. I skipped the show because I was just too tired from a long weekend of patriotic gluttony, but I'm sure it would have been the perfect counterpoint to last night's Matmos performance at the Triple Door. Both acts are electronic duos. Both are operate on the far experimental fringes of electronic music—no heady house thumps here, just lo-fi MIDI thrash in the case of Extreme Animals and glitchy sample manipulation in the case of Matmos. Both are involved in visual as well as audio art—Extreme Animals share a member with the eye-searing Paper Rad collective; Matmos incorporate a variety of film and video into their live sets. Both are academics—both members of Extreme Animals are currently teaching at universities; while Matmos' Drew Daniel is an assistant professor of English at Johns Hopkins, and partner MC Schmidt has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. So how come Extreme Animals plays at a scrappy bicycle shop in the CD while Matmos performs at a posh dinner theater downtown?

Well, for all they have in common, the two acts have decidedly different aesthetics. Extreme Animals, in the fine Paper Rad tradition, are all about plush neon garbage—8-bit bleeps, pixellated flash graphics; clashing html color codes; hideous stuffed animals and textiles. Their shows are absurd, sweaty basement rave-ups, finding the not-so unlikely middle ground between happy hardcore and the regular punk variety. They're also committed to the particular kind of DIY asceticism that insists on cheap, shitty gear, improvised sound, unusual spaces, and such—DIY that never lets you forget it's DIY.

Matmos, on the other hand, are more staid live performers. Their setups are often elaborate (and probably expensive), and their routines are, if not carefully practiced, then at least painstakingly conceived. (It should be pointed out, for the DIY diehards, that Matmos, you know, do make all their music themselves, even if they cede the distribution and promotional concerns to Matador.) Last night's show began with them wandering through the seated crowd, from the back of the room towards the stage, waving flashlights and laser pointers, the refracted and direct light triggering some optical sensors (possibly theremins, possibly just controllers) onstage—the sound went from a series of geiger-counter clicks to oscillating squeals to low frequency thumps. (Brandon Ivers: "This is some serious Blue Man Group shit.")

When they got onstage, Daniel lit a candle next to his laptops. He made a triangle with his fingers above the candle and peered through it at the audience before picking up a musical triangle and striking it ("ting") in the same spot. (If Extreme Animals lit anything on fire during their set, I'd just be worried.) There was, amidst their slowly growing noise, the sound of glass breaking, and it wasn't entirely clear whether it was a sample triggered or the sound of someone in the venue actually breaking a glass (the black-clad waitstaff continued floating serenely around the darkened venue like shadows). At the end of this first "proper" song, Daniel blew the candle out to a momentary hush and then loud applause.

Matmos, for all the pornographic vhs footage and bursts of feedback or arrhythmia, are kind of like the Wolf Eyes you can bring home to mother without worrying they'll make a mess of the dinner table. They're dapper and polite, funny and smart, and their most abrasive musical moments still feel more academic and playful than genuinely anti-social. Schmidt compliments the Triple Door, saying it's an incredible place to play, and the group (joined by a third man on guitar tonight) launches into a groovier, pulsing number backed by a psychedelic black and white mandala of fine, overlapping radial lines.

Next up was "a song about VHS tape, perhaps some of you older people remember it." Here was the (admittedly softcore) porn—a hung, naked young man with a bleach blond mop of hair hanging out (literally) in some backyard hot tub (the guy kind of looked like Gary from Partman Parthorse, only without underpants). The footage was slowed and slurred, damaged as if by bad tape heads. The music was total faux porn soundtrack, all languid wah wah guitar, the stuff that these guys probably have down pat thanks to their sideline business scoring actual gay porn. It sounded good—you wonder if they take the soundtrack work as seriously as they do Matmos, or if maybe they don't always take Matmos too seriously at all; the show was, at times, fairly goofy. At the song's climax, the wah wah guitar built into a squalling, shredding feedback, matched by Daniel and Schmidt's synth oscillations.

They played an older song, from The West, a record of theirs recently rereleased by Portland's Autofact Records, who was also working Matmos' merch booth. Schmidt: "A whole record label contained within one boy!" Daniel: "You can fit a lot in a boy." (No rimshot.) The song featured Schmidt on acoustic guitar, first picking, then sliding up and down the fretboard, his tones plucked and piled up by Daniel on laptop. Behind them, close up still shots of a map jerked gradually westward from the desert to the Pacific coastline, manifest destiny style, before giving way to a pair of rotating spirals. The song ended with Schmidt repeating the phrase "As if it was" through a delay, separating the audible words from the movement of his mouth until the sound died down enough for him to be heard clearly in the room without a mic.

They introduced the next song by saying that the last time they played it had been in a punk forest party in Bologna, Italy, so it's not all dinner theater all the time for Matmos anyway. The song featured deep, throbbing bass hum that really showed off the THX qualities of the Triple Door's sound system, vibrating your ass without bruising your ears. The song had a kind of giddy, melting quality, aided by the stroboscopic dot-field projected behind them, with tones swelling and ebbing, eventually adding synthy arpeggios, feedback, and vocoder snippets. This one, I think, is off their most recent, the all-analog synth adventure Supreme Balloon. The song ended with Daniel weaving his way out of the room carrying a pair of speakers, playing out the song's final sonar-pinging loop as the room's bass vibration dissipated. They returned for an encore aided by opener Wobbly, an amiable rhythmic jam with the biggest beat of the night, which ended with Schmidt striking a gong.

If I hadn't seen Extreme Animals a couple months ago, I'm sure I would've gone to 2020 Cycle, and I appreciate the DIY and basement shows as much as the next punk, but I have to say, I really enjoyed the kingly drinks-and-dinner-and-entertainment vibe at the Triple Door. Maybe I'm getting old and square, but if that means more shows like last night's Matmos performance, then I'm down.

Don't get me wrong, that dank pit is an appropriate setting for lots of bands, like Akimbo. Any band who asks the audience, "What do you guys think about the new 4th Edition of D&D?" needs to be playing in the dankest hole they can find, otherwise they're being hypocrites. Akimbo unfortunately offered no new songs from their upcoming record Jersey Shores, but smashed through their older tunes with the same raw power they bequeath every crowd that comes their way. This time the crowd at El Corazón was wild for them, shouting particularly stupid shit between songs. Dudes in Pantera shirts were havin' a good time. Here's a video of "Dungeon Bastard" from Navigating the Bronze:

This was the fifth or sixth time I've seen Big Business, and up until now I hadn't quite been sold on them. From the few listens I'd given their newest record Here Comes the Waterworks it was evident the band was moving in a good direction, but it was the news that they had finally acquired a full time guitarist that made me excited to see them live again. The difference is enormous. No matter how many bass amps they piled on stage, no matter how huge or rich Jared's tone was, they are a flat-out more full and interesting band with a guitarist. The one they got, Toshi Kasai, seems to be a perfect fit for them - his riffs intricate and compelling while never taking center stage over the driving bass. They sounded huge, as not demonstrated by the microphone in my digital camera. Here is "Start Your Digging:"

The most impressive thing about Big Business' set was how they took risks and pushed each other as musicians. Most bands know exactly what they are going to play from start to finish; they don't leave opportunities to fall out of a comfort zone. Big Business' slow, improvised starts and feedback riffing transitions made it clear they were often playing outside of rehearsed arrangements, testing each other's reactions. This is no news flash, but it deserves to be repeated: Coady Willis is a hell of a drummer. His parts are often so complicated he makes small mistakes, but it never matters because he is obviously pushing himself to the limit of his talents. Innovation is much more interesting than precision, and if they can't go perfectly hand in hand (Coady is pretty damn close) I'll take the musician who's pushing himself any day of the week.

The set ended with Jared ditching his bass, screaming about how he can't walk down the street because there's "too many creeps" (his car had recently been vandalized outside of his house). He spent several minutes wandering through and falling on top of the crowd while yelling this statement. Towards the end some kid up front got a hold of his bass and held it up in the air, strumming it defiantly until Jared plopped down on top of him like a rock and roll walrus and snatched it back. He gave a mighty exhale as he walked off stage.