Capitol Hill Block Party is one of the Pacific Northwest’s biggest, most anticipated music festivals of the year. Located within one of the most culture-rich neighborhoods in the city, CHBP takes over the street level of the Pike Street corridor from Broadway to 12th Avenue, providing great music entertainment all weekend, and some of the best eateries, bars, coffee and venues in town. Knowing this, I was super stoked to cover the fest, and ditched my day job a little early to head up to the Hill. Catching a bus seemed harder than normal as most were packed with attendees heading to downtown Seattle, where parking is sparse and not cheap. Public transit was the way to go if you lived outside of the
city limits and everyone else had that in mind too.
Arriving at 2 pm, I was informed that the press list hadn’t been released yet (no surprise there), although general Will Call had been open since 11am. Hipsters were already lined up en masse to gain entrance with their tickets and security already looked bored, so I wandered down to the nearest grocery store to grab lunch and a few bottles of water before heading back. By 2:45, the press list had been released and myself and a handful of other fellow rocktographers were allowed in before gates to mingle and get our bearings. I pulled out my schedule and my camera, cleaned my lenses and geared up for what I knew would be a great start to the weekend.
First and foremost, I wandered over to the Vera stage. Naomi Punk kicked off a fabulous first day of both CHBP and their fall tour. The Seattle natives had a decent sized crowd, despite the lack of people actually being admitted into the festival yet. The great indie rock quartet came out and played a mellow yet almost bluesy set of mellow yet loud vocals floating along with the gritty guitar riffs. They kept it generally low key, vaguely reminiscent of the Moonhearts and creating a wonderful juxtaposition between the vocals and the guitar. To me, they needed a little more drumming, and a little more of their keyboardist (who was completely adorable when sitting there during songs he wasn’t playing).
After that, I decided to walk through the festival for the first time and head towards the main stage. You could tell that they were still letting fans in as the view down Pike was almost desolate. I grabbed a cup of coffee from Vita and wandered around the beer garden, checking out the Dickie’s 847 stage and shaking my head as the few hipsters that 
milled around went crazy at the mention of free pants. After enough lolly-gagging, I wiggled my way past the security guards and waved my credentialed wrist in the air, entering what was sure to be my favorite photo pit of the weekend.
Bear in Heaven took the stage at approximately 5 pm to a chorus of clapping and cheering from the now decently filled out pit behind me. I grabbed my camera and smiled, grabbing a few choice shots of Jon Philpot, both founder and vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist as the band started rockin’. With their eclectic, electro-rock feel, you can definitely tell that their latest release Beast Rest Forth Mouth, was meant for outdoor summer shows like this. They filled the corridor with favorites such as “Lovesick Teenagers” and “Wholehearted Mess” and made the crowd dance and sway accordingly. Very atmospheric rock filled every nook and cranny that it could inducing an almost psychedelic feel in the crowd. Every rocktographer in the photo pit was dancing or at least bobbing their head along with the beat and as I exited the photo pit after my three song allotment, I saw numerous people dancing along. I headed to the Vera stage, dug out a bottle of water and sprayed on some Bullfrog.
While waiting for Fra
ncis and The Lights, I heard more than a few people talking about the sound quality and a few of the sound engineers could be spotted running around fixing things. Unfortunately when Francis came out on stage, his mic didn’t work, so he swiped one from guitarist and proceeded to dance around the stage with a pair of purplish-blue butterfly shaped sunglasses on. Not only does he sound scarily like Phil Collins, but The Lights is a decent enough backing band that they have a lot of potential to be a great band, if they can tighten down their sound a little more. 
The were a little jazzy with enough indie rock still in them to be fun and dance worthy. However, a lot of people had already started on heading over to the Main stage to catch Yeasayer. I followed their lead and headed over just in time.
I have to say – Yeasayer was my first FUN band of the day. So far they were the only band of the day that had been actually fun to shoot and a lot of the day shift crowd was starting to pour in, making them the first band of the day for many folks. Definitely bringing out the more pop influences than the past work, they still have their own shiny brand of experimental music. Honestly, they sound even better live then they do recorded; and while I am sorta biased towards bands that sound as such, they have quickly found an empty place in my heart and claimed it as their own. Rocking out to the sultry sound of frontman Chris Keating, he almost reminded me of Switchfoot (a la Hello Hurricane) thrown in a blender with some Local Natives for style and mixed with a dash of Animal Collective. If you have a chance to catch them live, do it. Seriously. Your brain will thank you for it.
After Yeasayer, fellow rocktographers and I had one hell of a time climbing through the now PACKED pit to get out. Security was nice enough to let us start entering and exiting from behind the main stage due to the mass of people that had almost instantaneously shown up out of nowhere. The group of us hung around, the crowd starting to anticipate the next band. During their sound check, I all of a sudden felt a familar beat in the ground. Out of the blue, Titanium Sporkestra, Seattle-based heavy metal marching band had shown up and began playing for the already excited crowd. A few of their horn players managed to get up onto the balcony of a north side Pike Street condo and provided entertainment while the main stage was almost silent. When Holy Fuck‘s drummer sound checked his kit, it was to their rendition of “War Pigs” and the band geeks kept it up with twenty three minutes of Slayer and Black Sabbath covers with a typical Sousa band twist. For a band nerd like myself, seeing them stream through the crowd was insanely awesome and provided a great segue way betwe
en the standard indie music of the fest.
When Holy Fuck came onstage, you could feel the crowd visibly surge forward. The Canadian quartet brings a totally new spin on electronica, using such non-insturments as a 35 mm film synthesizer and toy phaser guns to make sounds that would otherwise be made with programming and laptops. Not only are the vaguely 
reminiscent of innerpartysystem, they are wonderful live and are incredibly unique. The crowd was right at home with their sound and danced along while bringing a new sound to the table for the festival. This definitely geared the crowd up for MGMT.
Here’s my take on MGMT: in the past two years, they have stagnated horribly. Granted, they are still decent live, but in all honesty, a lot of fans were disappointed by Friday night’s performance. They were fun in a way, the photo pit was packed, and the crowd did show some interest. However, they killed the mood for main stage for the night. I grabbed my gear and caught a bus, heading back to a friend’s house for some tabletop gaming and a few hours of sleep on a couch.
I’ll be back with more recaps for Saturday and Sunday here soon! Keep your eye out for them, and in the meantime, catch the rest of the pictures from Friday here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49888788@N04/sets/72157624605257072/
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