Renee McMahonKing Khan And The Shrines played Bumbershoot on Saturday, September 1.The first day of any music festival is always a little weird. The excitement and anticipation of seeing old favorites and making new discoveries are bubbling over, but those things fight with your desire to find a good “go with the flow” pace that leaves you more invigorated than drained by the end of it. Bumbershoot is all about finding a pace; finding the right time to make a break for something, finding the right pathways that aren’t human clusterfucks, and somehow finding time in between all of the music/comedy/art to sit down and try to enjoy it. This year, I decided that my pace would be a leisurely one. I stayed in Friday, got a good night’s sleep and pulled a “fashionably late” arrival at 2:45. Strictly for the “is this going to be a shitshow?” factor, I made my way toward the main stage for the Gotye set. When I realized that every resident of the state of Washington (seriously, I counted all 6,724,540 of you) were waiting in line to hear THAT ONE DAMN SONG, I aborted Mission: Gotye and headed for the Armory.The Armory has undergone some serious changes since the last Bumbershoot. Gone are the cruddy pizza and pretzels and (sniff) Orange Julius, and in their place are local representatives from Mod Pizza, Skillet burgers, and Plum (amongst others). It’s a fantastic change for a city that has a lot of great local flavors that should be represented in any food court that isn’t lazily planned. My wife and I walked around Flatstock and took in the insane sensory overload that is Flatstock’s collection of concert posters. If you enjoy the intersection of graphic design and music, I can’t encourage you enough to take a half an hour (and 50 bucks or more) and go meet some of the most creative designers in the country (and buy their wares).After being thoroughly inspired and overwhelmed by the Flatstock work, I popped over to the TuneIn stage for King Khan and the Shrines’ set. The Shrines are a quintessential backing garage band, all matching black on black uniforms and animal tooth necklaces. King Khan is the focal character of the show, coming out in a flamboyant feathered headdress and goofy gold mumu. While Khan’s appearance is pretty comedic and some of his songs aren’t exactly built on the most serious of platforms (“I Wanna Be A Girl” coming to mind), the songs shine most in a live setting. Even though the soundman somehow couldn’t figure out how to get the drums in the mix whatsoever (seriously, I’ve never heard quieter drums in a rock set), Khan’s voice was given room to shine; on record, it all seems way too new/flat/schtick-y, but live, you hear Khan’s ability to bridge the gap between soulful croon and raspy, snotty howl. Little kids twirled around on their parents shoulders, and various Shrines jumped onto the crowds shoulders playing tamborine. It was pretty great.There was a bit of a lull after Khan’s set that I wasn’t particularly excited to try to find entertainment during (there are only so many times you can walk past Thai food carts and hemp jewelry carts before you just want to avoid humanity for a while), but Portland’s Lovebomb Go-Go hijacked the crowd with an Elvis-y tribute unlike any I’d ever seen. Comprised of 18 or so members in various states of Elvis-y attire, Lovebomb Go-Go put on a really solid set of marching band-style Elvis Presley covers in the middle of a major walking pathway. A man in an Elvis jumpsuit and wig on a 5+-foot-tall unicycle wheeled back and forth, dancing/juggling/pointing at the audience and thanking them VERY much. It was one of those goofy things that can only happen at Bumbershoot. One of those things that, on paper, sounds SO ridiculously dumb and like what you hate about hippie-dippie Seattle culture. Yet, somehow, you stumble upon it unexpectedly, and it’s the best thing to happen to you all day. If you see a unicycling Elvis around Seattle Center, stick close with him. Marching band madness is probably just around the bend.Darting over to catch a comedy show, I caught the first three songs of Unnatural Helpers late afternoon set in the Toyota Free Your Radio tent. This tent is one of the better kept secrets around the grounds, as you get to see smaller/more intimate sets by some local (and not-so-local) bands. As long as you don’t mind a bunch of Toyota marketing around (seriously, I’m not going to buy a Toyota because you put a tent at Bumbershoot) and can handle a really awkward interview segment mid-set, it’s a great deal. Unnatural Helpers sounded jittery, thrashy and confident through the tent’s smaller PA, and getting to catch them was a pleasant surprise after missing their full set earlier in the day.

Comedy shows are always a nice break/breather in the middle of the day, and provide a shaded place to sit for a while and be entertained. Paul F. Tompkins’ hilarious comedy set was a really great variety show, but most of Tompkins’ time on stage was spent dealing with a drunken heckler who threw two pairs of sunglasses on stage that Tompkins giddily stomped into pieces. The heckler then demanded that Tompkins pay him back for the “expensive” sunglasses (Tompkins did him a favor by smashing these terrible wraparound circa:’92 Oakleys) by giving him the shoes off of his feet. It didn’t happen. I didn’t see a single guitar get smashed (or anything even resembling instrument terrorizing) over the course of the day, so Tompkins gets the award for punkest thing of the day, as well as best heckler handling. Hunger caught up with me, but not before I caught a few songs of Oberhofer’s set. As the lone band of the day that I had merely heard about but heard nothing by, I was incredibly impressed with what the Tacoma-rooted/NYC-based band had to offer. Sure, they look like they came straight out of Pitchfork’s “Build-A-Band” Workshop, but their songs all had legs. They wrote the sort of driving, solid pop that balances hummable melodies with some wiry, awkward moments and a frontman (Brad Oberhofer) that plays the “not crazy but not quite right in the head” card perfectly, and absolutely tore through their set like their lives depended on it. I walked into the Helio Sequence set in the sort of blissful state that only a Skillet burger and poutine can cause. I don’t think anything could’ve sounded terrible to my ears in the throes of a local burger high, but Helio Sequence’s layered pop sounded particularly perfect for the given situation. The sun had set, the moon was full, the Space Needle was doing its best to actually touch space, and Helio Sequence was delivering a humbly confident set of sweeping anthems and moody churners that never dragged. I’m firmly against most bands existing as duos, but Helio Sequence’s energy never suffers from the lack of a third member, and drummer Benjamin Weikel makes the absolute best drum faces ever. Seriously, the guy looks like he’s being tickled the ENTIRE time, which is strange and hilarious. I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing Jane’s Addiction. At all. I didn’t have time to get all of the vaccinations necessary to be in the same room as Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, so I was worried I might get hives or malaria or something worse. Given what these guys have put into their bodies (I’m not sure if heroin or Carmen Electra is the greater offense), they should’ve been handing out hand sanitizer at the door.After the most ridiculously long introduction ever (10 minutes of mellow music followed by Pink Floyd’s “Machine” in its entirety: 15 minute intro of flashing lights and mellow, moody music), Jane’s Addiction came on stage awkwardly, fumbling around with their takeoff more than a band at that level should before going into “Underground”. Women in long white dresses were hoisted on either side of Stephen Perkins’ drum kit, kicking their legs and fluffing their showy dresses while a guy in a spiky crow suit flew around, singing background vocals and making vague attempts to harass the women. While these weird B-rate Cirque du Soleil theatrics were going on, the band sounded absolutely fantastic. Perry Farrell is in great shape for his 53 years (!), and still does the supple/slippery snake thing better than anyone half his age. While his voice has never been a great one, he certainly hasn’t lost anything in his years, aside from maybe a bit of the shriller/more nasal parts of his register. Dave Navarro is still an incredible guitar player who happens to look like he walked out of a terrible goth-y comic book. For those of you keeping track at home, both Farrell and Navarro started the show wearing vests with nothing underneath. Navarro’s vest lasted four songs before he was shirtless, “it’s like the 90’s never stopped” nipple rings hanging out proudly. Farrell’s lasted five songs. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was choreographed every night.

“Mountain Song” sounded as big as Mount Rainier on a clear Seattle day, washing the entirety of Key Arena in a massive wall of sound. “Ain’t No Right” and “Stop” both sounded as twitchy and frantic as Farrell probably was when he wrote them, and Farrell tweaked out to the songs like the past 20 years hadn’t ever happened. Actually, a lot of the band’s material has held up surprisingly well. I’ve never been a gigantic fan of the band, and wasn’t particularly looking forward to the show; now I realize that’s more to blame on dated production and image than the songs themselves. While the band’s image certainly has stayed stuck in the 90’s, their music still seems as moody, weird, and dangerous as it did two decades ago. The worst moments of the set were those forced attempts at making the set into a production. “3 Days” was the centerpiece of the set, and felt bigger and more ethereal than anything I saw at Bumbershoot all day; it was genuinely strung out, massive and desperate. Following that up with some really cheap theatrics (a guy making decoupage on his face, a guy tossing baby dolls around and hanging them from the rafters, a couple girls in lingerie dancing around with canes?) and it deflated the tension in that balloon and made parts of the show feel like terrible afterthoughts that never should’ve made it past a white board brainstorming session.Watching the presentation, the band’s dynamic, and the crowd’s reaction, I’d say that Jane’s Addiction are the yin to u2’s yang; u2 embrace all things hopeful and light, while Jane’s Addiction seems to focus a lot more on the darker side of suffering. Both bands have charismatic frontmen, distinguished guitarists, and normal-guy rhythm sections that form together to create massive anthems of human experience. Here’s hoping that Jane’s Addiction make the conscious decision to focus more on that experience and letting the songs tell their own stories (and less on ham-fisted glitzy gimmicks) to preserve the legacy of what they’ve done.