We went early on Sunday and went to see the School of Rock All-Stars. These kids were pretty amazing. They had some teeny little boy who couldn't have been more than nine on the drums during a rendition of Cheap Trick's Surrender and he killed it. I was so amazed I kept saying, "Do you see how little that kid is?"
We wandered around a bit, looked at the visual arts displays then went off to have lunch. We went home for a while to rest up. When we got back we caught most of Hole's set. That Courtney Love--I'm sure this will surprise no one--is a complete mess. But what an entertaining mess. She performed the most raggedy, awful, stripped down version of Pearl Jam's Jeremy. As she was wrapping up some guy behind us screamed, "You suck! No encore, just get off the stage!" Seattle remains faithful to Kurt Cobain I guess. She also used some pretty salty language. The boys looked so scandalized the first time she cursed. "Don't worry. It won't be the last," I told them. And it wasn't.
My older son really wanted to be on the floor as close to the stage as possible for Weezer. He's only about 5'2". I warned him that he wouldn't be able to see anything. He didn't care. We moved up as close as we could and waited for about 30-40 minutes while the kids next to us smoked pot. My son was, again, scandalized but proclaimed, as soon as he saw the kids smoking, that he must also be stoned with all that pot around him. I assured him that he wasn't. Several groups of people tried to bomb their way through the crowd, just running and shoving. What they didn't take into account is that I'm bigger, heavier and tougher than they are. When they hit me I shoved back and knocked a few people on their asses. Don't mess with a New Yorker. And don't mess with my kid!
Weezer put on an amazing show. We, as I suspected, couldn't see much of anything while Wes and my younger son had moved up and gotten just about the best seats in the house in the stands. Rivers Cuomo at one point passed by them just three rows away. Older son and I could see him sometimes if we stood on our tiptoes and tilted our heads just right.
When I held my phone as high over my head as I could this was the view.
Not so awesome.
The set was only supposed to be an hour and fifteen minutes so they stuck to the hits. But they did play Perfect Situation which is possibly my favorite Weezer song and Surf Wax America which was a little unexpected. Erin used it on the podcast a few episodes ago. But the most unexpected thing they did was play a fairly faithful version of MGMT's Kids which they then mashed up with Lady Gaga's Pokerface. For this Rivers donned a long blonde wig. I caught a snippet of terrible quality video of it.
I jumped up and down. I screamed. I had a really good time.
3 comments:
You're a cool mom! I love that you shoved those rude jerks back.
I always find myself at the edge of the mosh pit. I probably oughta move away.
Er, I think the last Bumbershoot I went to was 15 years ago, back when it was probably a simpler event.
Charlie and I had our first date at Bumbershoot 27 years ago and had a great time. We've gone a couple of times more recently but it was so crowded that we didn't enjoy it much so we haven't gone since.
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