Everybody’s favorite volcanic vomit launcher, Mount St. Helens, is giving us another amazing demonstration of its indigestive fury. For your listening and air-guitar playing pleasure, I suggest you play the Presidents of the United States of America’s classic “Volcano” whilst watching any news coverage of the steam and/or ash spews.

I was editor of the UW Daily at the time of the mountain’s big blast in ’80. In addition to the usual local-angle stories about the UW seismology lab, we had Ike Johnson, a student photographer with a pilot’s license, who risked life and limb to fly toward the eruption. The pics he brought back weren’t the most spectacular of all the shots made that day, but they were our exclusive.

A PLEASANTLY STIMULATING AFTERNOON was had last Sunday by the several hundred attendees of the first Pony Boy Records Jazz Picnic at Magnuson Park. It was no substitute for Northwest Bookfest, now disappeared from the site, but it stirred minds in its own way.

The musicians and volunteers enjoyed a green-room snack table including the balanced diet of apples, carrots, and Hostess Zingers.

Greg Williamson, founder of the local record label, emceed the six-hour concert, and sat in on drums during most of the acts, including his own Big Bad Groove Society (below).

My personal favorite moment of the day: Singer H.B. Radke. He’s sassy, saucy, and satirical, and a totally “on” performer to boot.

Other acts included the Hans Brehmer Trio (above), Carolyn Graye (below),…

Randy Halberstadt (above), and Chris Stover’s Mini Narcissism (below).

…is finally at hand, thankfully. It can be a mighty tiring time, as this gent and his plastic horses would agree.

Seattle’s very own all-you-can-eat culture buffet began in 1970. It was originally a free festival, devised to employ baby-boomer artist types and their favorite bar-blues bands. It was also designed to utilize the whole of the Seattle Center grounds for one big thang, for the first time since the 1962 World’s Fair.

Over the years, its organizers realized the drawing power of current big-name rock bands. These “mainstage” gigs became the metaphoric tail wagging the “dog” of the festival’s local-artists’ exposure.

The fees for major rock stars escalated in the ’80s, and skyrocketed in the ’90s. (The additional income went not to the musicians, but to assorted parasitic middlemen). To pay these higher costs, Bumbershoot started charging admission fees; first modest, then a little less modest.

To draw a Center full of patrons at these prices, organizers had to keep bidding on the top touring bands, driving the costs up further. Ticket prices rose from $0 for all four days to $20 per day.

Eventually this cycle will have to slow down. Already there are signs that the mega-concert industry’s teetering on the fiscal brink, due to the greed of monopolistic promoters pushing prices beyond what the market will bear.

And Bumbershoot learned in the past two years that it can get along just fine with alterna-rock reunion acts—who just might be among the first touring giants to attempt to break off from the likes of Clear Channel.

Fortunately, the original Bumbershoot spirit of mass play has survived, with tens of thousands gathering to share one last summer blast.

Today’s batch starts with the big alterna-comix emphasis at this year’s festival, which culminated in a rather rambling panel discussion among our ol’ pals Harvey Pekar, Peter Bagge, Gary Groth, Jessica Abel, and Gilbert Hernandez.

Back when I was a grunt laborer for Groth, I quickly learned that cartoonists seldom speak in the taut word-balloon language in which they write. They ramble. sometimes they get to their intended point; sometimes (particularly in the case of the beloved Mr. Pekar) they end up somewhere else entirely.

So I wasn’t surprised when the conversation wandered off topic often. Still, the panel made several cogent statements. It concluded that after many years of bitter struggle, “graphic novels” (whatever the heck that term means) have gained a foothold in the mainstream book biz. Of course, that just means there are more of those titles out there, which means a lot more chaff (repackaged superhero crap, comics written to be sold to the movies) as well as a little more wheat.

Artis the Spoonman is now also Artis the Slam Poet, ranting about five centuries of oppression against the true human spirit.

I didn’t get to a lot of the great bands that played over the four days, including Aveo, the Killers, the Girls, and Drive By Truckers. But I did enjoy the thoroughly rockin’ sets by the Witness (above) and the Turn-Ons.

My sometime alterna-journalism colleagues in Harvey Danger have re-formed, and played their first all-ages gig in five years. Sean Nelson, bless him, still looks like a journalist, but his singing voice is stronger than ever.

From the above image, I won’t have to tell you that wristbands for the nighttime stadium rock show were gone within an hour and a half on Monday. Built to Spill singer-songwriter Doug Martsch (below) sounded more Michael Stipe-like than ever.

The reunited Pixies, however, sounded just the same (marvelous) as they ever did. They played all their should-have-been-hits and then some, in a tight hour-and-a-half show. Few singers can make me so happy, singing about such bleak topics, as Mr. Black and Ms. Deal can.

One more set of these pix to come.

WE ONLY GOT TO GO to two days’ worth of Bumbershoot this year, but will stretch our pix of the weekend out to three days, just to extend the joy.

We begin with Mass Productions, who turned the Space Needle into a giant harp last year. This year’s production was somewhat more modest.

Also back this year: Flatstock, the art show and sale by rock poster designers from across North America.

Claudia Mauro, who runs the local indie publisher Whit Press, introduced contributors from her poetry anthology In Praise of Fertile Land.

I love fertile land. I’m just not all that fond of nature poetry, particularly in the ’70s Port Townsend/La Conner style, which Mauro’s book includes much of. All that sanctimonious worship of a selectively-described “nature” in which farms never smell like manure and in which human beings other than the poet are never mentioned.

I used to dislike nature poetry because its sensibility was at odds with my young-adult cantankerousness. Now, I dislike it because it posits a Rousseau-esque romantic longing for a “simpler time” that never was.

In the real world, farmers have always been out to make a buck, have always been pressured by corporate and/or governmental powers, and have always bent and shaped the land to suit their ambitions. Rural life has always been frustrating and/or lonely. Young adults have longed to get the heck outta there since the age of Playboy of the Western World, and likely before.

I won’t even get into the PoMo philosophical construct that “nature,” as nature poets imagine it, doesn’t even exist except as a theoretical opposite to “civilization,” whatever that is.

Liz Phair, as you may have heard, has reinvented her look, from indie-rock bad girl into blonde quasi-waif. As long as she still plays and sings great, I don’t care.

In other apparel topics, fashion shows were held at regular intervals next to the “Fashion Alley” concession booths.

At one such show, we finally learned what’s worn underneath a Utilikilt—another Utilikilt.

The Bumbrella Stage, again this year, held a pair of strange banner-fellows on its sponsor flags. Last year, America’s most widely read lefty magazine shared the stage with Captain Morgan rum. This year, its logo appeared beneath that of Miller Beer, which was recently sold from Philip Morris to South African Breweries.

On the left, James Brown-esque vocalist Bobby Rush. I’ve seen James Brown impersonators on stage before, but they were always white.

…has hewed to the old Holiday Inn slogan, “The best surprise is no surprise.” It’s been a safe, demographically-targeted program thus far.

The only oddities in the spectacle: The relative lack of suburban “country” singers (just about the only celebrity performers at Bush pere‘s conventions), and the prominence of show tunes and disco music at a convention whose official platform endorses homophobia.

The verbal gaffes thus far have been predictable ones. Laura Bush deliberately mistook the Iraqi puppet state for a “democracy.” And Schwarzenneger tried to rehabilitate the spirit and tactics of Richard Nixon.

Meanwhile, the protests in the Manhattan streets may have topped 0.75 million participants, but attract almost no corporate-media attention.

…why there haven’t been more great female rock guitarists, neglecting to mention most of the ones there’ve been. (Among the missing in action: Poison Ivy Rorschach of the Cramps, the first non-singing guitarist in an otherwise all-male band.)

…of the many things we saw and did last weekend.

First, our friends in the band Lushy played the last night of Eastlake’s Bandoleone restaurant. (The building’s coming down; the management has found a new site in Fremont.)

When filming a Ford SUV commercial downtown at night, be sure your camera’s mounted on something rugged and sturdy—like a Mercedes SUV.

Seahawks Stadium hosted a big England-vs.-Scotland soccer exhibition. So, of course, the George and Dragon Pub in Fremont hosted a huge postgame party. The joint was filled with raucous singing, replica team jerseys, and dudes with accents boasting to me about their love of drinking until passing out.

And our ol’ friends Elaine Bonow and Harry Pierce debuted their funky li’l soul band Stupid Boy at the new intimate Blue Button cabaret space.

WE SHOT A LOTTA PIX this past weekend. Today, the Capitol Hill Block Party. Tomorrow, other scenes.

If there was an unofficial theme to this year’s heat-drenched Block Party, it was woman-power, in the retro-burlesque and other interpretations. Between the Rat City Rollergirls, the naughty T-shirts for sale, some righteous lady slam poets, and some slammin’ rock bands, the party offered a cornucopia of saucy, sassy femme-empowerment visions.

The party’s chief expression of masculine energy was the closing set by those 20-year veterans of slow metal, the Melvins. I didn’t get any good pictures of their set, partly because these three young aggressive stoners kept stalking me. (Note to our older readers: “Aggressive stoner” ceased to be an oxymoron several years ago.) They insisted that I’d taken pictures of them, which I hadn’t. They semi-incoherently threatened violence, even after I showed them I had no pictures of them.

…I can truthfully say I admire Linda Ronstadt— she sacrificed a high-paying Vegas gig by praising Fahrenheit 9/11 on stage.

…or at leat I didn’t use to be. But I’m a wee bit perturbed by the Republican partisans’ media leaks of supposed “terror threats” to the Presidential election, which maybe, just maybe, would give the Bushies an excuse to try to cancel or postpone the vote. That would be the end of the World’s Oldest Democracy. Period. Don’t let the GOP even imagine they could get away with it.

…how TV news will survive in a postmodern world; implying that American journalism as we know it has been embedded in an old-style “modern” zeitgeist.

…is a pair of Johns.

The downside: The wannabe-Veep’s another Southern moderate beloved by the Democratic Leadership Council corporate wimps.

The good news: He reads great speeches.

On the weekend of Ladyfest Seattle, Friday’s Wall St. Journal has a cute feature story (available online only to paid subscribers) about “mom bands,” punk groups not only fronted but entirely operated by women who’ve got kids. One of the groups profiled even has a song called “Eat Your Damn Spaghetti,” vaguely reminiscent of the 1983 Seattle stage musical Angry Housewives and its signature song “Eat Your Fucking Cornflakes.”

A conspiracy theorist claims the Olympia riot grrrl bands were all devised by one women’s-studies prof at Evergreen, as an experiment in “estrogen therapy” designed to counter the effects of media/government psy-ops drives “to turn impulsive reactions to sexual stimuli into increased consumption.”