Sasquatch Festival closing remarks

I would like to thank everyone who contacted me after reading about my experience at the Beastie Boys closing set at the Sasquatch Festival and wished me get well. I appreciate all the kind thoughts. My skeleton has mostly healed.

Some of you asked if the experience soured me on the idea of going to any more Beastie Boys shows this year. Hell, no! I'm slightly more leary about going to festivals now (I've never been a fan of festivals), but I'm not giving up shows because I got banged up. I always get back up on the horse.

I'm going to pretend my Sunday at the Sasquatch Festival ended with the wonderful and peaceful set by Bad Brains. [View my photoset of Bad Brains at the Sasquatch Festival at Flickr.] My getting hurt during the Beastie Boys set will be completely forgotten if my face ends up in the new Bad Brains video, which was filmed at the festival. I'll be very pleased if I can brag to my friends that I'm in a Bad Brains video. They will hate me for it, and I love that.

As I stated in my previous post, I wrote off my negative experience at the Beastie Boys closing set at the Sasquatch Festival because I had such a great time at the two Gala Event shows I saw. Reflecting on all the shows, I feel it was a mistake for the band to stage a semi-Gala Event show on the Sasquatch main stage. It seemed to me that the general audience did not enjoy or appreciate the instrumental or hardcore songs. The Beastie Boys' hardcore songs didn't really carry off very well in such a big setting, which is odd because Bad Brains did so well with their hardcore songs on the same stage. (The audience was the variable.) In general, both instrumentals and hardcore music are better-suited to a smaller setting.

Even before I knew what the Gala Event was going to be, I had expectations that it would be an intimate type of show, not a grandscale production. On the big main stage at the Sasquatch Festival, with a bazillion people watching, the Gala Event lost its specialness. There was no intimacy. It was a Beastie Boys greatest hits show with some songs the general audience found boring or awkward. If I'm not mistaken, Beastie Boys have staged something like that before. They called it the Pageant Tour.

Beastie Boys should give the people what they want. The band have two groups of fans: one that listens to them once yearly and one that listens to them once daily. Beastie Boys should give the general fans the greatest hits show they want and leave out the instrumentals; they should give the discerning music fans and Beastie geeks the creative set with the hardcore and instrumental songs.

I would love to see the Gala Event evolve into a surprise show where the band performed anything they wanted. For example, on one night, it's an all-hardcore show. On another night, it's a performance of The Mix-Up from start to finish (like what Sonic Youth are doing with Daydream Nation this summer). My friend Jenny and I have longed talked about our dream to see a Country Mike show someday. I would like to see the band be creative and have fun with the Gala Event. I hope they figure out what exactly they want the Gala Event to be before the European tour begins.


Beastie Boys on the Wookie Stage on Saturday

VERSUS


Beastie Boys on the Main Stage on Sunday (The audience extended about a half a mile beyond what is photographed here.)

I have a few items from the band's closing set at the Sasquatch Festival to share. Because I was in the crazy pit, I took very few photos. After I escaped the pit, I shot one video of Mix Master Mike's interlude because it was new to my ears. Here's Mix Master Mike doing what we like to hear him do:



I expect an audience recording of the closing set at the Sasquatch Festival to surface soon. In the meantime, I can offer the following mp3s, courtesy of Bryan at Herohill.com. He recorded a few songs with the voice recorder on his camera and gave me permission to share them with the fan community.

Ch-Check It Out

Do It

Sure Shot

If you looked at the videos of the Beastie Boys Wookie Stage set that I referred you to at Youtube.com, you might have noticed that the person also has video clips of the band's main stage set.

I'd like to wrap up my look at the Beastie Boys at the Sasquatch Festival with some photos from both days that I discovered at Flickr. There are TONS of photos from the festival posted at Flickr. The ones below, however, best capture the band and the feeling of the festival in my opinion. [Click on the photos to go to the photoset.]

KEXP (Day 1 and Day 2 photosets include photos of Mix Master Mike's and Money Mark's sets, as well as photos of Alfredo Ortiz performing with Blackilicious.)


Blythe D and Craighill


Hecklewood and Nilina

Below are my four favorite photos from the Sasquatch Festival by Flickr members: