Bumbershoot 2006

Bumbershoot 2006 is wrapped up and I'm full-on bumbershot. I think I need another 3-day weekend to recover.

We saw a lot over the weekend. Musical highlights included:

• Alejandro Escovedo kicking ass and taking names. The man is 55 but he's still bringing it. Just an absolute pleasure to see him perform.
• The Thermals playing an in-store at Easy Street in Queen Anne. Rather than standing in line for an hour to hear them play in the crappy, crappy Exhibition Hall we waited til Sunday and watched them with a crowd of 30-40 fellow rock geeks. How is it that the acoustics in Easy Street sound better than most clubs? At any rate the Thermals blew the place away. My ears are still ringing.
• Jose Gonzalez played an excellent but way too short set. I think the blog-o-sphere is wrong about Senor Sufjan, but I get why everyone is bananas about this guy. Good stuff.
• Local roots rockers West Valley Highway playing a fun set featuring some choice covers (including a Townes song and a Haggard tune)

As expected the overall music scene was weaker than previous years. We found a lot of other stuff to occupy our time though including:

• Seeing the Upright Citizens Brigade do their ASSSSCat thang twice. I've mentioned many a time that these guys are personal faves and they did not disappoint. Helping them out were a couple folks from VH1's Best Week Ever.
• John Moe reading at the Starbucks venue. If you don't know about John Moe, you should. He's hilarious. He read some of his pop song correspondences which can be found here. Hard to pick a favorite, but the Bon Jovi one was pretty damned funny. Also found out the great news that he has a book coming out soon!
• Horn of Africa spongy bread...anyone know where I can find that stuff other than Bumbershoot?
• Beer Garden...mmm beer garden

I posted a few pics from the weekend on the Flickr.