yesterday i went to endfest 14 featuring 19 bands on 3 stages. which was a bit weird because i went to endfest 13 last september, you would think they would do them yearly. anyways, it’s good for me.

the first act was kasabian which i wanted to check out because zmp recommended them (and i liked clubfoot. but of course due to: traffic/lines/slow people/murphy’s law/laziness i showed up when they finished. oh well. i ran into a co-worker later who said they weren’t that hot so maybe i didn’t miss much.

we did get there in time to watch the ceasers. i didn’t know anything about this band except that peter said they were featured on an ipod commercial. they were alright and had a couple catchy songs including jerk it out which was used for the ipod commercial. i did find it interesting that all the catchy songs had a synth hook in it. hrmm.

after that set, we caught the end of stereophonics on the main stage. i wasn’t really interested in any of the bands on the main stage except for interpol and would have liked to stay at the “what’s next” stage the whole time, but anyways watching roadies tear down and setup the equipment was kinda boring. so after stereophonics we came back to the “what’s next” stage to catch tegan & sara.

i had wanted to see these canadian gals before when i came down for interviews, however i had arrived too late and the tegan & sara show was sold out. this time i was on time and got a pretty decent spot in the crowd to take pictures from (yay i’m a papparazzi now). their set was pretty tight and they had the whole sarcastic i’m-from-canada thing going in between songs. i think if i liked their style of music, i would really like them a lot, but that being said aside from walking on the ghost i couldn’t really get into their songs. they’re like lillith fair generation 2 or something. after a quick break with hot hot heat on the main stage, we came back to catch the end of ash.

ash is one of those bands that i think have been getting worse with age. they had catchy pop/rock songs back in the day but not have degenerated to metal-ish. fortunately for me, they finished off their set with some oldies: girl from mars, kung fu, and burn baby burn. we stuck around for the next band too, the kaiser chiefs. i’ve listened to their album and while there was a lot of hype around them i didn’t think their album was any special. but they probably were the most exciting and energetic band the whole day. they played their hit single, i predict a riot and people started jumping around. the lead singer started throwing things into the crowd: his drumsticks, his mic, himself and started surfing the moshing fans. it was pretty fun. at the end they started throwing around (fake) equipment and the drummer tried to jump over his drum set. except instead of jumping he kinda fell over it and knocked half of it to the ground. that was a riot.

after that excitement we went over the the seattle stage to watch some local bands before the bravery/interpol. they band on the stage was pretty girls make graves which i had never heard of. so after they were done we split up into two groups; some of us went to get good seats for interpol and the rest of us went to see the bravery. now i wanted to catch the bravery because i wanted to see if they really sucked. they had so much hype but when i listened to their album, i only like an honest mistake. in fact ash dedicated kung fu to the bravery who as they put it, won their fight with the killers. it seemed more like they copied the killers and were trying really really hard to be really really cool. after watching the kaiser chiefs, these guys were a letdown. they suck.

so it was off to interpol. while we were late, we still got some of the best seats in our section (it was GA). i was pretty hyped about interpol but in the end i don’t think they are really suited for large venues. the music was pretty good but you can’t really set a mood without a more intimate environment, and i guess it didn’t help that they had no crowd interaction whatever (not even a “hi we’re interpol”) until the very end when they thanked the crowd.

after some food, it was time for the headliner who was also the second last band? weird i know. i actually don’t know why queens of the stone age were the headliner anyways, and i didn’t care for them cuz i saw what i came to see. since they were cool rock & roll people, they told everyone they could come down from their seats and go into the pit. so everyone went into the pit and it was packed like times square on new years. umm what else can i say? they played for awhile, people go kicked out for crowd surfing and they finished? haha

finally, the last band was united states of electronica. we didn’t really want to stay for them but figured that if we left after queens of the stone age were finished, there would be a lot of traffic. so we stayed for a couple of songs and then left. i guess the highlight of what we saw was when a cameraman mistakenly pointed the camera up the skirt of one of the singers, but by then hopefully all the kids had gone home 😉

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: concerts, seattle