Capitol Hill Block Party In Review

This last weekend Seattleites gathered together in the eclectic Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle for the 14th annual Capitol Hill Block Party. The Block Party this year was the biggest and best one yet --I gave a preview of it here-- with the expansion of a third day for the first time this year and selling out the first two days of the festival in advance. See below for a more in-depth review, but the quickest review I can offer is: Great music, but it was way oversold and over capacity.

Crowds of all ages turned out to the festival in the masses, with 10,000 people somehow squeezing into the small fenced off area of Capitol Hill each day. The crowds were bearable until later in the evening where nearly the entire stretch of the fenced in area was a packed sea of people and making maneuvering anywhere a prolonged and tiring effort (luckily the festival offers an easy re-entry option to quickly leave the block party grounds to grab food or anything else from anywhere nearby). Unfortunately, two of the stages (although only one with any notable bands) was located inside a bar and was limited to a 21+ audience which left younger fans (sigh, myself still included for another 5 months) limited to the two outside stages.

Friday was the first day to sell out of tickets and sported arguably the strongest line up. I stuck to the main stage this day and saw all acts that performed on the stage, in order from Macklemore, Bear in Heaven, Shabazz Palaces, Yeasayer, Holy F***, and MGMT. I learned that Bear in Heaven are possibly the awkwardest band members I've ever seen and it really didn't help that they were sandwiched between two hip-hop acts which led to 80% of the crowd near the front of the stage merely waiting through their set rather than watching Bear in Heaven by choice. Yeasayer really got the crowd moving and I was quite surprised how well lead singer Chris Keating's voice matched up live with how it sounds on the album. I left the main stage to go grab some food and rest my legs, but from catching the last couple songs of Holy F*** I could tell that the dance party started by Yeasayer was continued on with Holy F***, who's long instrumental jams kept the pulse of the crowd high. Lastly was MGMT who despite being loved worldwide for the singles from their first album, are also known for their underwhelming performances. I saw them in May at Sasquatch! Music Festival and enjoyed it more than I expected to and this time around it grew on me even more. In fact, it could have been in part because of the perfect buzz I had going on at the moment, but MGMT's set was one of my favorite live sets I've experienced. That being said, I'm one of the few that really enjoy MGMT's sophomore album Congratulations and was in a small minority of the crowd that was swaying along to their songs from the new album which I enjoyed equally as much as their old album songs which did succeed in energizing the full crowd. Additionally, I actually did believe that MGMT stepped up their performance skills a bit from when I saw them in May, Andrew & Ben were actually dancing for part of it and they performed a more upbeat remixed version of one of the Congratulation songs.

Saturday was a much more underwhelming daytime lineup than Friday, and after walking between stages early on the day and not being overly impressed by the performances from The Redwood Plan, Cold Lake, and Avi Buffalo, things finally picked up with Blitzen Trapper on the main stage at 7:30pm (scheduled for 6pm, but Blonde Redhead at 9pm had to cancel due to illness and so all the main stage bands before them performed one set time later). !!! (pronounced "Chk Chk Chk") performed after Blitzen Trapper and I was pleasantly surprised with how much more I enjoyed !!! live than my only mediocre enjoyment of their album material. Headliner this night was indie rap giant Atmosphere who I've wanted to see for quite a while now and was as strong of a performance as I could have hoped for from the legendary Slug & Ant.

Sunday was the day I really wished I was 21 for, the outside stages only went until 9pm but the music continued inside with Hey Champ among others performing in the more dance floor friendly bar stage. I unfortunately missed garage punk band Harlem opening the main stage up at 2pm, but caught most of the Maldives who performed a strong albeit mellow set afterward. Seattle hipster-pop-rap group Mad Rad performed next and even though I've already seen them live before this proved to be one of my favorite experiences of the weekend and provided probably the best dance experience outside from MGMT. From then on was psychedelic pop band Real Estate who I only caught part of and was unimpressed, and then the big time Seattle rap duo Blue Scholars which was a good performance but they've never been quite my thing although everyone in attendance loved it. Jack White (The White Stripes, The Racounteurs) and his super-group The Dead Weather were the main stage headliners this night and although agreed by many to have been the most professional and excellent show of the weekend, I was not feeling it at all and found myself counting the minutes until it ended when everyone else was trying to make time stand more still. Their set did serve to be amusing in producing the first legitimate "mosh pit" I've ever where a large portion of the crowd near the stage sort of opened up and a bunch of crazy overly testy guys raged back and forth as bodies and punches were thrown in all directions... I didn't even know you had it in you, Seattle.

All in all, The Capitol Hill Block Party has without a doubt grown into more than just the small local event it started out as in 1997. After having the biggest line-up yet and 3 full days this year, I can only imagine that it will continue to grow from here (although they really need to work on increasing the size of the area they fence off for the block party or don't oversell so many extra tickets) and blossom into a premiere west coast music festival.