There's still time-a-plenty to get your Friday donewith and head on down to Portland for this year's installment of what's quickly becoming our favorite regional city-wide music festival, MusicFest Northwest. For four sweet nights (well, five technically, if you count the goings-on around town that started Wednesday) some of the best local and national-worthy acts sweep in and take over our hip sister city. There's a little something for everyone, and we can state from direct experience that you will have a hell of a weekend should you make the venture down south! The price is reasonable (although we can't recommend the line-skipping VIP wristband privileges enough), the city is bikeable, driveable and parkable, and there's plenty to do in your late-late off-hours around town to keep things... well, let's just say 'entertaining.'

Sleep in, fill your sunny days with KEXP in-studios at the Doug Fir {full lineup available here}, and get your nightlife on at our recommended {** = MEGA recommended} shows below -- scheduling conflicts included:

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Another beautiful Labor Day weekend has passed, and with it came three days spent at our annual Seattle Center-ed music and arts festival, Bumbershoot. While we didn't catch every single act on our dance cards, we managed to get ourselves in front of the stages of a lot of long-standing and new-style favorites: bands like Lemolo, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, and Pickwick, just to name a few. Between the bands, sunshine, the yummy eats, and KEXP's gorgeous semi-secret music lounge -- it was a weekend to be reckoned with!

Here's a few bright spots from the weekend...

Kasey Anderson & the Honkies:

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As always, us Imaginaries like to remind you that there's a lot more happening at Bumbershoot than just music! If you can pry yourself away from the rock for a few hours, explore some of the Words & Music programs. If I could put together a dream line-up of where to be, it would look like this: 

SATURDAY, Sept 3: 

Words & Ideas Stage
1:45-2:45pm
The 3 Most Beautiful People to Ever Win Stranger Genius Awards (and One Ugly One) - I'm sure the other 3 people are going to be awesome, but the reason I'd be sitting in this audience is to see filmmaker Lynn Shelton talk about her work, the award, etc. etc. etc. And clearly, she's not the ugly one. 

Leo K Theatre
3:30pm-4:30pm 
Christopher Rice, author and son of the infamous vampire goddess Anne Rice, talks about what's it like to be the son of Lestat's creator, and how it affected his family life and inspired his own novels (which I honestly haven't read, but I *am* kind of an Anne Rice nerd, and am FASCINATED to find out what he's gonna say about her!). 

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Labor day weekend can be a sad occasion marking the end of Seattle's sorta summer. For music fans of course it's an all you can eat buffet of live music goodness. If you didn't know Bumbershoot also included a pretty kick ass short film festival as well, you wouldn't be alone. But I'm here to tell you that your Bumbershoot ticket buys any number of chances to enjoy some air conditioned comfort with some high quality bite sized doses of cinema magic. SIFF Cinema will be busy all weekend long with a program curated by the same folks who bring The Seattle International Film Festival to town. Each program is themed so you can choose a subject area that works best for you - whether you're down for Nerds Unite! or Family Funtime there's something for everyone.  I've seen at least twenty of the films so far and based on that can heartily recommend a strong program running from the brilliant to the brilliantly weird (and occasionally twisted). It's enough to justify Bumbershoot tickets even if you don't have a yen for the music. Though there's still plenty of time to catch a few shows after the films.

Below I've included some notes on some of the best of the shorts I've already seen. I tried to call out the standouts in a variety of different programs throughout the weekend.  I'll be staking out some ground over the long weekend in SIFF Cinema to try and catch up on the rest.

Hope to see everyone there...

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OMFG. Seriously, you guys. DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES ARE COMING TO BUMBERSHOOT!!! These two used to be a staple during my quad rollerskating days, so I feel like there's no way I can miss them. I heard on the internets (via Wil Wheaton) that Oates' legendary 'stash is missing, but I don't even care. I want to wedge my way up front and dance my ass off to their synthy-retro guitar rock.

Even if most of y'all are too young to remember "Rich Girl", "Kiss On My List", "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)", "Maneater", and my favorite, "You Make My Dreams" (in the video above), I urge you to swing by the Mainstage on Monday, Sept 5 at 9:15. If you don't start dancing almost immediately, track me down, and I will buy you a beer (ohmy. that's a dangerous bet to make in a city like Seattle!). 

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I've mentioned Tennis before -- and I can't help but mention them again. This adorable husband and wife duo crafted their album Marathon while they were sailing around on a boat, enjoying some q-time together. (can you say awwwwwww?)

Every tune has lovely harmonies, feel-good lyrics, and a bouncy, summertime feeling tinged with retro beats. I can't recommended highly ENOUGH that you head to the Fountain Lawn Stage on Sunday, Sept 4 at 5pm to watch them do their simply beautiful thing.

There's so much to do on top of digging the bands at Bumbershoot -- comedy, performance art, vendors -- and one of our favorite extracurricular activities while we're on-grounds at Seattle Center is to take the time to dig on Flatstock. Posters as far as the eye can see, artists and admirers afoot, with more per-inch graphic creativity and inspiration than practically anywhere else on the planet.

This year, you can get a sneak peek of what's good this year at Inklings: A Flatstock Preview, taking place Saturday, August 20th at 112 PrintWorks out in Fremont. The latest prints from all 75 Flatstock Seattle artists will be featured, a taste of what's to come at Fisher Pavilion during Bumbershoot proper.

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The folks heading up the Athens Popfest just released the first round of band announcements for this year's fest set to run October 11-15, 2011 in my favorite town east of the Mississippi.

Featured headliners include Olivia Tremor Control, Bob Mould, Throwing Muses, The Dead Milkmen, and Man Or Astroman? (with 65 more bands still to be announced!) and they will surely turn heads, but usually it's the lesser known bands that end up making big splashes in Athens. Need I remind you that we heard both Black Kids and Pains of Being Pure at Heart for the first time when they played opening daytime slots at the 2007 fest?

One of those lesser known bands on this year's PopFest schedule is Eureka California, an Athens, GA hometown band who has piqued my attention with their garage-rock-brit-pop songs.  My particular favorite song today is "Baby, I'm Your Garbage Man," recorded live at Slaglefest earlier this year.

{photo from the Eureka California facebook page}

{John Roderick/Long Winters photo by Victoria VanBruinisse}

City Arts announced their over the top City Arts Fest line-up late last week.  If you haven't seen it already, prepare yourself, it's a doozy (and it's cut and pasted after the jump)! It looks like our schedules for October 20-22, 2011 will be filled to the brim with radness!

The core of the fest hones in on the rich medley of bands saturating the Seattle music scene, from royalty like the Fastbacks and the Long Winters to a fine sampling of up and comers like Don't Talk To The Cops and Lovesick Empire. The organizers also secured some of the finest international acts to mix it up (Ryan Adams, Built to Spill). Oh, and then there are the laser dome shows (Grunge and Helio Sequence) and fantastic film sing alongs, including Hedwig and Purple Rain.

I wonder if Bumbershoot is looking over it's shoulder a bit and feeling the heat of such a diverse, jam-packed festival offering?

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{Photo borrowed from Mash Hall Facebook Page}

Sprouting from the THC-soaked cyber-seeds of Seattle entropysploitation rap band Mash Hall/They Live!, Don’t Talk To The Cops is the new electronic-resistance enhanced marriage of rhyming fire and beats taut like wires. I spoke with emzee and emissary Gatsby (Larry Mizell, Jr.) about his further work with his B-Boy collaborator, and what we’ll have no minds capable to wind inside the machine they unleash on Saturday, 6:45 p.m., in the love dungeon of the Cha Cha.

And: Mash Hall is playing again too, and Lar defines below the differences in the natures of both of these collaborations and prior joints. Mash Hall is playing Sunday, 11:30 p.m., on the Neumos Stage. Since that night’s later line up also includes Grynch, Mad Rad, Metal Chocolates, Darwin, and aBeat Connection DJ set, it’s the Closing Party NO ONE should miss.

TIG: Who is in Don't Talk To The Cops and what is your group's mission, sir?

Gatsby: DtttC is BlesOne and Emecks. I am the DJ/hypeman. The mission far as I can tell is to make shit you can dance to. Bles is a lifelong bboy and Emecks is a choreographer/hiphop dancer so they wanted to kinda cater to that. Not that's it's fuckin' rave music or anything.

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