yesterday was endfest 13. seattle has a station called 107.7 the end which is basically their equivalent of 102.1 the edge in toronto. it was held in some remote part of the country near an indian reserve called the white river amphitheatre so it ended up taking more than the half an hour we thought it would take.
the first act was metric, whom i had never heard of. but we missed them anyways so i can’t say anything about them. the next act was muse, whom i wanted to catch because i’ve been hearing from ian that they’re good, except that white river was so damn far away, so we didn’t get there until the next act had started. anyways, we got some seats and watched everyone rock to the psychedelic furs.
i remember the psychedelic furs for their one new wave single from the 80s called heaven, but i guessed these furs were a different band than the one i knew because they were really rocking it, and the crowd was really getting into it. anyways i didn’t know any of their songs so i just kinda listened and wondered what all the fuss was about. so they finished up their set and one of those faceless djs came on stage to tell us muse a big hand. oh.
so i did end up catching muse and well, i still don’t know if they were good or not. after that, we went to get some food because you know, the car ride was so long. of course since the concessions were a monopoly, we got raped. i got a pizza (smaller than mcD’s personals) for $6 and a drink for $4.75. i wouldn’t be so pissed off at the prices, if we weren’t already raped by ticketmaster. the ticket itself was only $17, but there was also a $3.75 facility fee, a $4.10 order processing fee, and a $7.05 convenience charge. the total ended up being $31.90. wtf. anyways, we got back and watched the real psychedelic furs, and they really had a single called heaven which they played.
i was pumped for the next act which were the yeah yeah yeah’s. i had heard a lot of hype about them about how they were awesome live so they had a lot to live up to. this was also the first time that we were sitting around so we could check out the much hyped rotating stage. basically the stage was split into two semi-circles; one for the performing band and one to set up the next band. unfortunately the stage people there were incompetant or something, because we still had to wait 5-10 minutes between sets.
yeah yeah yeah, after a wait the stage rotated and the red leotard wearing crazy lead singer started jumping around on stage. i hadn’t heard their music before (again) so i didn’t know what to expect, but in the end i was disappointed. there was a lot of throwing the mike around, posing, spitting on the crowd, and stagecrew wiping the stage during the set; but NO GOOD MUSIC.
next up were x. i had never heard of them before, but those crazy djs said they were the “best band in the world”. so bigger than u2, radiohead, rolling stones? anyways, they looked like fleetwood mac and i went for a walk haha. they gave out more free stuff than i expected there, i got some aol keychains, verizon bandanas, pins, stickers, etc but not enough to offset the cost of the tickets/food. the sun set by the time x finished their set, which meant that the crazies were about to come out at night.
the next act looked like they pulled out a bunch of geeks from some of the neighbouring tech companies and gave them some musical instruments otherwise known as the violent femmes. now they actually put on a good show no doubt helped by all the crazy 30 something groupies yelling their lungs out around me. but seriously, they style was a little older but they pulled out all the stops including a trumpet, saxophone and even a xylophone. it was awesome especially considering i didn’t know any of their songs and i was patiently waiting for the next act; franz ferdinand (which i blogged in more detail earlier).
franz played a good set, so i was happy. i didn’t care too much about the remaining two acts; echo and the bunnymen and the headliner, presidents of the united states. i didn’t know anything (and i don’t think the people around me did either as they were playing gba sp) about echo, and they seemed to be intent on keeping their identity a mystery by not letting us see their face clearly. apparently they’re from the psychedelic furs age having previously toured with them, but the question remains why they scheduled these guys as the second last act. anyways it was a funny set in that we couldn’t see any of them, the lead singer kept saying that he was the best or this was the best song, or he puts “the virtuo in virtuoso”, he consistently swore and yelled at the sound crew and best of all, we couldn’t understand a word the guy was saying (thankfully my roommate lived in england and was used to the liverpool accent so he could translate). they even got booed in the end after walking off the stage in the middle of a song haha.
finally, the presidents were up. i was a little curious as to why they were the headliner considering most people thought that they had broken up. anyways, i had seen some of their mp3s on the web recently so i guessed that released a new album (indeed they had) and also it turns out that they were from seattle (one of the guys had an orange seattle t-shirt; where do i score one of those?). they started off great, but maybe because echo sucked like the manure smell in the air. the hometown crowd was really into it and they played some of their favourites: lump, peaches, and their cover of video killed the radio star. i noticed that they had a lot of songs about nothing in general, like the ones previously mentioned and there was this one about a meowing cat, and one about an old man sitting on the back porch. anyways, it was great but we left after peaches so we could make it out of the place without sitting in traffic for 2 hours. meanwhile all the other kids were running into the pit to join the fun since they stopped checking. anyways was it mostly fun aside from one thing? yeah yeah yeah!
update: here’s another review of endfest 13
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