The setting at Michael Hebb’s One Pot dinner after Sonic YouthLike a lot of people, my experience at the 2008 Capitol Hill Block Party was less than desirable. On the first night, I tried to catch Das Llamas’ final show in the bowels of the Cha Cha and found the space so crowded and overwhelmingly filled with ill-tempered drunks that I bounced before their last song, only to get stuck in an anxiety-inducing bottleneck in front of the main stage. The space between Neumo’s and the Cha had become so congested during Girl Talk’s set that I was truly terrified that someone would get hurt. I adore Les Savy Fav, but I didn’t feel safe enough to stick around for their set afterwards. Saturday was more of the same clusterfuck hell, and I was back in Ballard before midnight.

This year’s CHBP couldn’t have been more dramatically different or enjoyable, a sentiment I’m hearing echoed with genuine surprise and happiness around the local music community today. David Meinert, Mike McConnell, Marcus Charles, Jason Lajeunesse, Kerri Harrop and the One Reel team deserve major props for turning around an event that I swore after last year I’d never attend again. This is due to a variety of factors, but primarily because of not just the strength of the programming, but because of their revamp of the festival grounds layout and the wise choice to turn production duties over to the good folks at One Reel. I’ll have much more detailed coverage here on Reverb soon, as well as in this week’s edition of Rocket Queen.