- mike ramos
- His what?
Sasquatch this year seems way more disorganized than normal. Aside from the fest having to cancel their second weekend and switch the normally Saturday-through-Monday span to Friday-through-Sunday, we missed our exit (shouts to Todd Hamm and his wife Amber for the ride, though), and once we got to the Gorge nobody on the staff present seemed to know where the hell the media camping area was. They used to have staff people carefully wave you into an exact parking spot and camping area, now they just kinda let you figure it out for yourself. George, Washington is overcast but warm, and that Columbia Basin breeze threatened to quickly erase any progress made setting up a tent.
Chance the Rapper’s set at the Bigfoot Stage—the first musical act I saw from the fest this year—was the exact opposite. Backed by a four-piece live band (guitarist, drummer, trumpet guy, large arrangement of keyboards-and-synths guy), he brought his fairly mid-tempo headphone raps to life with added punch and a very genuine enthusiasm that the sizeable crowd sang and bounced along to.
“I know I’m supposed to act like I’ve done this before,” Chance said during his encore (a perfect one-two of “Cocoa Butter Kisses” and the Acid Rap “Interlude (That’s Love)” to follow what appeared to be the set closer “Juice”), “But this is the most people I’ve ever had at a concert before.” Maybe it was the live band, his frenzied showmanship, or the sincerely “positive vibes,” but it seemed oddly reminiscent of Macklemore’s 2011 Sasquatch set at the same stage. Chance, like Mack a couple years ago, has everything it takes to reach some serious heights in the music industry. Also, the guy somehow flipped the theme song from that PBS cartoon Arthur into a song he apparently only performs live, which probably has some generational implications I don’t fully understand.