THEESatisfaction ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

Plebian Paradise is back.

Everyone’s least favorite music festival is back and possibly better than ever! Keeping with a tradition that dates back hundreds of centuries to exactly this time last summer, the preview for Capitol Hill Block Party will be written in the style of everyone’s favorite book series. In reality, there exists an almost incalculable amount of possibilities that could happen once you enter the festival gates on Friday afternoon (get off of work early). However, I am from the future. I have already seen your festival going experience unfold days in advance and now I am going to share it with the entire world six other people. Read about it now in blog form and perhaps you can alter your fate (maybe you don’t want to do that because my writing is stellar and you want my words to be your life). Enjoy? (all complaints can be sent to phil@soundonthesound.com)

You leave work early on Friday afternoon even though your dictator of a boss gave you an eyebrow raise that indicated you might want to reconsider your decision. “In the future you’ll pay for this in blood,” you hear your boss mutter under their breath as you walk out the door. As the sunlight hits your eyes upon your escape, you finally realize that freedom is not free after all (How many ounces of blood will your bloodsucking boss take from your veins? Time will tell).

You arrive at the festival gates at a quarter-til-five, leaving you only a few minutes to make a decision on how to start your weekend. Your options are BOAT at the Vera Stage and….well, that’s it. Festival planners have given the native Seattle band the ultimate monopoly on everyone’s favorite drinking start time. You missed BOAT’S Daytrotter Session and haven’t seen the band since their album release show at the Tractor. Your inner nerd is screaming with glee because you’re about to be reunited with a band who truly understands you.

Read the rest of your Friday Block Party adventure

As BOAT rings out the final notes on “Double Take,” your inner dweeb is hit with unforeseen sadness. You can’t stop crying on the inside. What is the most efficient way to numb the feelings that lurk inside you, getting a drink at a bar nearby or going to see a couple of songs performed by Wheelies?

You choose the bar because hearing songs that remind you of Japanther are only going to make the rebellious bookworm inside you ache that much more. While at this unknown bar (currently I am not caffeinated enough to give any specific vendor a free advertisement) you sit in a dark corner and comb over old texts messages because nobody texts you anymore. Suddenly you that realize you are falling into a void of self-centeredness (and a festival no less, where there are thousands of idiots people around you). You scurry off to see a band that you don’t really like and totally forgot was from Seattle…

So what if you never liked Skarp, you could do a lot worse. You could be spending the next hour with Thurston Moore…Oh wait, Thurston Moore is at fucking Block Party?!?! Are you serious?! Your inner nerd triumphs once again even though the imaginary entity is in serious need of a thrashing. Your Chucks (what else would you wear?) leave the Vera Stage as quickly as they came. Skarp is creating pleasant chaos (fake moshing + semi-circle pit = fun for real) in your wake but you pay no attention. You have to go stare adoringly at your idol in person for the 530th time.

You get to the god fucking awful, can you just kill me already? Block Party Main Stage ready to see a pale mop play a Fender guitar you would pay to have sex with (seriously, if you had a higher paying job..), preach the power of white noise and dischord to his sea of clones. You can’t wait to be a follower. Ten minutes into Mr. Moore’s set you realize that he isn’t doing anything crazy Thurston Moore-like. “All these songs are mellow,” you curse under your breath. “Goddamnit, I hate Bob Dylan…”

Thank god nobody can hear your thoughts. Your dead carcass would be hanging from a telephone wire. Look up at the sky, you’re in folk country.

So what do you do? Do you stick around for more of Thurston Moore not being Thurston Moore (plus Kim Gordon plus Lee Ronaldo plus Steve Shelley)? Or do you go see a band that you’ve heard nice things about but have never seen before (Yawn Owl)?

You make like the protagonist in every first-person-shooter video game you’ve ever played and backaway slowly while transforming both of your hands into the shape of a gun. The people who witness this think you are insane but continue staring at Thurston Moore nonetheless. Who care about these people, they don’t know what it’s like to live inside your head You play “secret agent man” and make your way thru yards of teeming flesh. Different shades of skin clothed by bright colors. The Cha Cha Lounge is your destination even though you’re not sure you want it to be. Remember, you are leaving Thurston Moore and millions of untold possibilities behind.

You make your way down the dark stairwell, into hipster caveman hell where something unexpected awaits you. Yarn Owl sounds like a band that doesn’t belong in such an evil place a small setting. Yawn Owl is sometimes jangly rock and roll and sometimes “We’re a soft-hearted band that was recorded in a barn in Idaho.” As cruel luck would have it, this band actually did record Montana Y Caballo in a barn. You forgive the band for its unbelivably pretentious album name and real artistic recording studio setting. “Seashell Wind Chime” makes you wish you were at your favorite place on Earth with all your favorite people that you’ve never met.

Yarn Owl finishes their set to an enthusiastic applause. Your unforced smile says you’re semi-impressed and possibly a new fan of the band. Block Party isn’t completely horrible as of right now. You have some time to kill before Elephant Rider destroys the Cha Cha (you hope in the literal sense). Do you want to continue to hang out in this godless cavern and wait for doomsday to come in the form of Elephant Rider? Or do you go watch the complete opposite of Elephant Rider (Craft Spells) perform at the Vera Stage?

You’re really sick of hanging out the Vera Stage, but you’ve had such a good time so far today, why ignore that? Besides Craft Spells is bringing you back to the days of your youth. When you pretended that you were alive when Joy Division was just some band that nobody had ever heard. Those long nights, dancing in bars with one-word names, DJ’s spinning in your town because they couldn’t cut in the “big city.” The year was 2006, you were so naive then. Look how little things have changed far you have come as a person.

Craft Spells plays a wonderful set that wished would never end. They sound like summer. Now that’s just a word you can’t read or say. It’s as someone took three months of your life and turned every moment into FarsiSpanishFrenchLatinGermanDutchPigeonCrowSilverbackGorillaAmericanSignLanguage speak. “From The Morning Heat” and “Party Talk” make you want to move to California and stalk the band. The more you dance and think about it, moving to California to stalk a band you’ve never met is not such a bad idea….

Do you leave Block Party immediately, pack up your things and move to California the following morning? Or do you go back tothe internment camp for scenesters the Cha Cha and watch Elephant Rider transform your vintage dance party into a sludgefest?

With your metaphorical tail between your legs you limp back to the Cha Cha. However, on your way there something happens that renews your faith in the universe. You are suddenly stopped outside the doors of Bimbo’s/Cha Cha because there has been an altercation downstairs. You use your eavesdropping ability to find out that maybe, possibly, the lead singer for Kings of Leroy Leon got punched in the mouth by a seemingly jealous buffoon. You don’t normally encourage violence envious behavior but you’ve been wanting to do the same thing for more than a decade now.

Is the guy from Kings of Leon a big Elephant Rider fan, what is he doing at Block Party? Do you stand around and wait for the smoke to settle outside of the Cha Cha? Do you ask other bystanders who the assailant is (that way you can go congratulate him/her)?  Or do you go back to the Vera Stage for the hundredth time to see local hip-hop artist Sol?

You decide that you’re tired of hanging out with children for the time being, so you won’t be going to Vera. Instead you play detective and try and figure out who your new favorite person on Earth is. Kings of Leon haven’t gotten under your skin in quite a while but that does not subtract from a certain strangers “good deed.”  Don’t you realize the number of strangers swarming around you? What do you think your chances are of finding a superhero that is dressed in a mild-mannered fashion. Gotham is still mostly unaware that “Batman” is really Bruce Wayne….

You end up wandering in circles for a long time before you end up returning to the scene of the crime. Feeling unsuccessful, you enter the now welcoming Cha Cha, walk down the dark stairwell and are greeted by the last few songs of Constant Lovers. Thank god that you did, this band fucking rules. All this time you’ve heard people say “I’m all about me some Constant Lovers,” during the many hours you spend in strange bars. All this time you thought people were talking about a speakeasy that’s really a sex club, a hot couple that was into orgies not a band that was from Portland. Now that you realize this unique band is one of your peers, your heart is set alight. Another local band to cherish and hold, now and forever…or at least until they break-up.

After Constant Lovers are done rocking your world. You think of stopping by the Main Stage to see the most divisive band in the history of music, The Head and The Heart. There’s way too many people in front of the stage, so the possibility of you getting close to the stage is one in a trillion. Upon closer examination, you realize all the people that are “watching” this band are not actually engaged in the fine art of being a spectator. Everyone who is surrounding the stage is arguing about the band and whether or not they are being sincere by playing Capitol Hill Block Party. Only in complete dipshitsville Seattle….

Turned off by people who need to get a life but are congregating en masse, you go to Neumos to see the last half of Fucked Up. You’ve heard David Comes To Life is the best album that you haven’t heard this year. Whoever told you this (music thinktanks on the internet) was almost right. Fucked Up might be the best set you see all weekend. You immediately order the album online using your smartphone while the band is still playing. After Block Party is over for the evening, you plan on using what little hearing that you have left to listen to the album.

Fucked Up was so good. Do you end the night on a high note and go home? Do you hang around Neumos and wait for for Yuck to take the stage? Or do you had back to the Vera Stage, again, and go see THEESatisfaction?

You decide to head back to the Vera Stage one last time for some hip-hop action. Noticeably absent from your Capitol Hill Block Party experience, were some head-nodding, block-rocking beats. The ladies of THEE wow and amaze you for the sixth or seventh time. Each time their performances have grown less awkward and most swagilicious. Just like Earth, Wind and Fire predicted many moons ago, these ladies are shining stars…..

THEE finishes their set to hoots and hollers from the peanut gallery. You leave the confines of Block Party wishing you were a hip-hop alien. Even though the first day of Block Party is finished, you have two more days to find out the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity….

WHO MAYBE, POSSIBLY PUNCHED THE LEAD SINGER FROM KINGS OF LEROY LEON!?!?!