Labor Day weekend yet again brought the Bumbershoot Music Festival to Seattle. I blogged about this last year and I was fortunate again to go this year. Almost completely by accident, I wound up attending my first ever "heavy metal" set. I knew it was going to be loud, but I didn't expect it to be entertaingly cliche. Don't get me wrong, the musicians were very very talented. But I've watched enough movies to know that heavy musicians are pretty angry:



It did surprise me to see a guy so pissed off while wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Doesn't that sound a little dichotomous? There was also a lot of head banging and very intense guitar playing - i believe even at one point the guitarist "prayed" to the amplifier. Taking pictures of this crew was entirely too entertaining.




But after shooting stills, I realized that to really get the full affect, you really need to have video. After watching this video, it occurred to me who the drummer reminded me of... remember the Muppets? Animal? Their resident drummer?




I also had a chance to observe some serious crowd surfing. I had my first exposure last year at Bumbershoot. This year I remembered to video it. I am completely fascinated by this phenomenon. I still can't figure out how somebody gets lifted up initially. I assume it is by choice, but with such a crowd, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't...