The best thing about Capitol Hill Block Party is also the worst
thing about Capitol Hill Block Party: You get to party in the city
streets. Which also means navigating the bottlenecks at the impossibly
crowded intersection of 10th Avenue and Pike Street (hello, corner of
Quinn’s). Still, this year’s lineup—too much to all be recounted
here—made fighting the crowds more worthwhile than ever
before.
All-girl L.A. punk band Mika Miko were a seriously fun,
seriously dancey blast. They have sax like X-Ray Spex, telephone mics
like Japanther, and a Paper Rad shirt like everybody. Everything was
perfect—except for Toughest Guy in the Pit. See, while everyone
else was moshing and dancing and spazzing out, but generally being good
to each other, Toughest Guy in the Pit (wearing a black “wife beater”
to show off his guns, natch) was swigging pec juice from a flask
and throwing elbows and fists at the other kids. So, hats off to you,
Toughest Guy in the Pit, you are tougher than everybody else.
Girl Talk! Damn! After Gregg Gillis’s warm-up and only a
couple minutes of music, a group of kids filed onto the stage from the
side/backstage area and started whooping it up, which is when things
got nuts. When there’s a crowd a couple thousand deep, and there’s
enough room for a couple dozen people onstage, a funny thing
happens—everybody wants to be one of those couple dozen people.
Or at least enough people do that security had its hands more than full
pulling down kids trying to jump and scramble from the crowd barrier to
the stage. Next to me, a girl kept trying to bribe a security
guard to let her onstage—$10, $20, $50?—going so far as
to wave the money in front of his face. He did not let her
onstage, and, frankly, he didn’t look at all like the bribable type.
What was Girl Talk actually doing? Oh, you know, the usual stuff.
Mixing a lot of stuff from both Night Ripper and Feed the
Animals on his trusty beat-the-fuck-up-looking laptop, notably
looping things a time or two longer than they play out on record, so
that, for instance, you got to hear Biggie Smalls’s rap, “Time to get
paid/Blow up like the World Trade” twice instead of once. The only new
moments/samples I caught before the crush of the crowd finally pushed
me back into the beer garden were Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” and Hot Stylz’s
“Lookin Boy,” both of which sounded just fine.
Les Savy Fav‘s Tim Harrington is, if you haven’t heard, a bit
of a performer, and, like a Gallagher concert or SeaWorld, the best
place to watch him do his thing is in the first six rows—where
you will get wet. What’s awesome about Les Savy Fav is that they
not only have the goofy frontman, but they also have several albums’
worth of fucking fantastic disco-touched post-punk ragers. “The Sweat
Descends,” no matter where you’re standing, just slays, even when
Harrington’s vocals get lost in the antics.
Vampire Weekend are undoubtedly a bigger name than either Les
Savy Fav or Girl Talk, but kind of a letdown (or a cool-off, depending
on how you look at it) after those acts. Haters wanna hate, but if you
write this band off because of their aesthetic affectations or cultural
references or class, you’re missing out on a damn fine pop record.
There’s not a song on Vampire Weekend that doesn’t contain some
great piano melody or nervous little groove or terribly catchy chorus.
There were at least a couple really great moments in their set, like
Ezra Koenig and Rostam Batmanglij’s strained harmonizing on the bridge
of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” Also, they played a brand-new song, which they debuted for Seattle because KEXP was the first radio station
to play them. That said, it seemed too damn small up there on that
stage in front of so many people. Some bands’ best moments are shouts,
but Vampire Weekend’s are more often than not sighs, moments
where things falter and faint, and they just don’t play as well in this
setting. Too bad, because I don’t imagine Vampire Weekend will be
playing any smaller gigs anytime soon.
The Hold Steady‘s Craig Finn might be the world’s biggest
spaz, happiest man, and most positive dude of all time. He did a kind
of chubby running man. He shouted to the crowd off-mic. He kept making
that face and throwing his hands out to the side like he was giving the
crowd a gift and saying, “ta da!” I suppose he was giving the crowd a
gift, as the Hold Steady are pretty much the perfect summer festival
band. The last time I saw someone looking that gleefully dorky onstage,
it was Atom and His Package. So, well done, Mr. Finn. The band played
much of their latest album, Stay Positive. Highlights:
“Constructive Summer,” “Sequestered in Memphis,” the title track, and
“Slapped Actress.” They also played “Chips Ahoy!” “Stuck Between
Stations,” “Party Pit,” and “Massive Nights” off Boys and Girls in
America, as well as “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and “Stevie Nix”
off of Separation Sunday. Everything sounded just right,
if never quite loud enough in the busier corners of the beer garden,
where there were still a few scattered “whoa-ohs” singing along. You
couldn’t ask for a better closing night headliner; nevertheless, some
people stuck around for DeVotchKa. 