Sasquatch: Flaming Lips, Beck, Hail, Cow Crap

(no idea who those people are)

The music was great. There was hail and cow crap too. A couple of friends and I went out to George, WA last weekend for Sasquatch. The concert was seriously cool. I saw so many bands I’ve been wanting to see forever. In order of awesomeness:

1. Flaming Lips: Wayne Coyne got inside a big inflated sphere and crowd-surfed. It ruled. They played lots of stuff from the amazing Yoshimi and Transmissions, a few from the new album.
2. Beck: the stage had a miniature stage inside of it with puppets of all the band members (the “Puppetron”). Some puppeteer dudes moved them in sync with the band. Even their mouths. Cool. There was even a puppet sitcom where the Beck puppet asked the Death Cab dude, “Can I have a ride in your death jet?” I laughed my ass off at that. I’ve revived some Beck stuff that has been laying dormant on my iPod since the show.
3. Shins: everything was rocked out and tempoed up from the album recordings. Crazy cool!
4. Tragically Hip: I’ve seen these guys way too many times, but they played an *awesome* set. So much energy. I suppose they don’t play “New Orleans Is Sinking” anymore though (ya know, because it really did sink), which is a shame. It was a good song.
5. Decemberists: I don’t know this music that well, but their set rocked.
6. Arctic Monkies: These little guys act much too pretentious for their age, but they’re cool. The lead singer has that irrestable blue collar roots charm.

Sadly, just as Neko Case was starting her set, the skies opened up and it hailed like crazy for about 20 minutes. I was soaked, cold, and pretty much a bitch by the end of that. I stuck around though. Neko did not. No worries, however. I have a ticket to her show in Seattle on Canada Day.

I must warn you, my bloggies: the next few paragraphs are rather grotesque. Not for the faint of heart, most definitely.

We bought a camping pass in the event ‘camping ground’, not realizing that the ‘camping ground’ was really just a field full of cow shit. I’m pretty sure the owner of the field herded the cattle out the day before we arrived because some of those cow pies were pretty fresh smelling. Such a lovely place to lay down a sleeping bag.

Oh yeah, and I think the event planners drastically under-planned the amount of human excrement that would be deposited in the porta-potties. To see a porta-potty piled high up to the seat with shit is a horrible, life-changing thing. I had to take a moment. As a side note, the septic company that came around with trucks to suck up the crap was called “Honey Bucket”. I take that as a cruel, horrible joke directed toward porta-potty users everywhere.

The other thing I had to take a moment about was the freaky ‘trough urinal style’ porta-potty. The line-ups for the real porta-potties were much too long, so I decided to check it out. So I shuffled into the trough area and saw the most urine I’ve ever seen standing in one place ever. Seriously, these troughs could have filled a VW Golf. I even had to shuffle down the trough mid-stream while people left and those waiting tried to shove in for a spot.

Anyway, from a music perspective, it was great. It was worth it. But I’m so glad I don’t have to go through that again for another year.