For the second year in a row Kim and I went to the Gorge to see a few days of bands at the Sasquatch Music Festival. It was only two days instead of three this year, and nobody went with us this time whereas Travis came last year.
The highlight of the weekend for me was definitely seeing Manu Chao play. I found his music while living in Spain thanks to my roommates. He played third to last on Saturday night, and played longer than most other bands. He played a few songs I haven’t heard before, but played a lot of the songs from his Clandestino album that I wanted to hear. Of course, nothing he played live sounded quite like the songs from the album. His band, the Radio Bemba Sound System, was very energetic and had the crowd jumping up and down and waving their hands pretty much the whole time. He wove a small bit of Bob Marley’s song “War” into his mix too. The rest of Saturday was fun, and the weather was gorgeous. I really don’t care that much about Bjork’s music, but she was interesting to see live.
Sunday was frickin windy and cold. Early in the day I mostly just tried to deal with the wind and rest. When it became apparent that our primo hillside seats were way too cold to sit in we started moving around to the other stages and had more fun. Smoosh was definitely one of the most novel bands I saw. It’s two barely teenaged girls who put on a pretty good music show, far beyond what you’d expect from girls their age. If I had a daughter I definitely would want her to see these girls rocking out as an example of what young girls can achieve. After their show the wind really picked up and they shut down the main stage for most of the afternoon. This had the side of effect of forcing the Beastie Boys and Spearhead to play at the same time on different stages. We decided to see Spearhead and were not disappointed. They played the longest of any band at the festival and included an awesome cover of Sublime’s “What I Got”. We tried to run over and catch the Beastie Boys before they finished, but their set was very short. We only caught the last little bit of Sabotage, which apparently was the encore.
I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to see some music at the Gorge the last few years as it’s an amazing music venue, even if the unpredictable weather can be a little overwhelming.