IT’S QUITE EASY to bash the Bumbershoot arts festival these days.
There’s the admission ($16 per person per day, if you don’t get advance tix, which are only available at Starbucks, that nonsupporter of alternative voices).
There’s all the corporate logos and sponsorships (radio stations “presenting” musical artists they’ll never play on the air in a million years; the auditoria labeled in all official and unofficial schedules with company names they never hold the other 51.5 weeks a year; and everywhere dot-coms, dot-coms, dot-coms).
There’s the big lines at the food booths where you get to pay $4-$7 for hastily mass-prepared fast food entrees.
There’s the annual whining by the promoters that even with all this revenue, the thing still barely breaks even, because of all the money they spend for big-name stars to attract mass audiences and all the logistics needed to handle these same mass audiences.
There’s those mass audiences themselves (who’s more troublesome: the fundamentalist Christians or the fundamentalist vegans?) and the complications they create (the lines, the difficulty in getting between venues on the Seattle Center grounds, the lines, the lack of seats or sitting room, the lines).
There’s the annoying rules (I missed all but the last 15 minutes of Big Star’s gig because I couldn’t bring my Razor scooter into KeyArena and had noplace to put it).
Then there’s the whole underlying implicit demand that You Better Start Having Fun NOW, Mister.
But there’s still a lot to like about the festival, Seattle’s annual big unofficial-end-of-summer party.
Principally: It’s a big Vegas-style lunch buffet of art. Those high admission prices give you all the culture you can eat. You can sample some “controversial” nude paintings, a slam poet or two, a couple of comedians, some of that electronic DJ music the kids are into these days, an ethnic folk ensemble or two, an hour of short art-films, and (particularly prevalent this year) late-’80s and early-’90s rock singers rechristened in “unplugged” form.
(Indeed, this year’s lineup included a whole lot of acts aimed squarely at aging college-radio listeners such as myself–the aforementioned Big Star, Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, Ben Harper, Pete Krebs, the Posies, Quasi, Kristen Hirsch, etc. etc.
For its first two decades, Bumbershoot was programmed clearly for relics from the ’60s. Now, despite promoters’ claims to be after a youth market, it’s programmed clearly for relics from the ’80s and ’90s. Mind you, I’m not personally complaining about this at all. I like all these above-listed acts quite a bit.)
Some genres don’t work in the buffet-table concept. Classical music’s pretty much been written out of the festival in recent years; as have feature-length films, full-length plays, ballet, cabaret acts, and panel discussions. Performance art, modern dance, literary readings, and avant-improv music are still around, but in reduced quantities as organizers try to stuff as many crowd-pleasers onto the bill as they can afford.
Other genres have been shied away from, especially in the festival’s past, for skewing too young or too nonwhite. (I’m currently at home listening to the streaming webcast of DJ Donald Glaude mixing it up on the festival’s closing night; not many years ago, Bumbershoot would never have booked an African-American male whose act wasn’t aimed at making Big Chill Caucasians feel good about themselves.)
But all in all, the concept works. It’s a great big populist spectacle, a four-day long Ed Sullivan Show, a vaudeville spread out over 74 acres.
There are, of course, things I’d do with it. I’d try to figure a way to charge less money, even if that means booking fewer touring musical stars. I’d try to figure a re-entrance for classical, and bring back the “Wild Stage” program of the more offbeat performance stuff.
But, largely, Bumbershoot has turned 30 by actually gaining vitality, getting younger.
(Or maybe it’s really been 30 all along; changing fashions to keep up with its intended age like Betty and Veronica.)
(P.S.: The Bumbershoot organizers booked Never Mind Nirvana novelist Mark Lindquist at the same time and 500 feet away from the rock band whose singer’s real-life legal troubles are believed to have been roman a clef-ed for Lindquist’s story. But an attendee at the festival insisted to me that, despite what I’d written about the novel, Lindquist insisted he’d thought up his plot over a year before the real-life legal case, which occurred while he was trying to sell his manuscript to a publisher.)
TOMORROW: Riding the Mariners’ playoff roller coaster.
ELSEWHERE:
