Laurabelle’s Blog

Last weekend Jeff was talking about going to Bumbershoot to hang out with a few friends, and he mentioned that R.E.M. was going to be there and that I was welcome to come along. I'm an R.E.M. fan (like who isn't?), and of course $20 (the cost of admission to Bumbershoot, after which all shows are free) is a steal for an R.E.M. concert.

Of course, there's a little catch to getting into the R.E.M. concert. It's free, but you've got to have a pink wristband to get in, and you've got to grab a wristband before they're gone. Wristbands aren't to charge admission, they're to limit attendance, because otherwise the stadium would be absolutely packed.

So Jeff was planning to meet his friends at the Space Needle at 1:30, which he said would be plenty of time to get wristbands. I wasn't sure I wanted to hang around all day, because I tend to crash pretty hard at the end of a few hours of standing and walking about in public places, but I decided it would be worthwhile to go with Jeff, secure a wristband, and then leave. I could go back and meet Jeff somewhere before the concert.

We ended up being about 20 minutes late getting to Seattle Center, but that was okay because Jeff's friends were a little late too. They already had wristbands, and instead of finding some for ourselves right away, we went to a show by a Seattle band called Ms. Led. Once that got out at 3pm, we embarked on the search for wristbands.

We found the wristband stand, but no wristbands. They were completely out.

At this point I got a bit ticked off, because R.E.M. was the reason I'd paid the $20, and at this point the money was completely wasted. I hadn't enjoyed Ms. Led (not their fault, just not really my type), and there was nothing else I wanted to see. I decided to go home and walked in one direction while Jeff walked in the other with the friend who had led us in our wristband search. But I didn't really want to leave, so I called Jeff (I love cell phones sometimes) and got him to come back to where I was sitting on a curb. I was confused and upset and not very helpful, but eventually Jeff suggested that I stick around a little bit, go to the New Pornographers show in a little bit, and find something else to see if I don't like them. I said okay, and we got up and went to find Jeff's friends again.

We didn't ever find them, but Jeff had a brainwave, which was a culmination of several things we saw during the day so far:

1. In front of the Space Needle entrance to Bumbershoot, there was a guy sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign that read NEED $ 4 WEED
2. As we were sitting on the curb next to the wristband stand, a guy with a guitar came up to the stand and was, of course, unsuccessful in his request for a wristband, because they didn't have any. He started strumming his guitar and singing Need a wristband, need a wristband... This tactic had no effect on the guy in the stand, but the wristband musician started walking away and got about 20 feet away before a woman gave him her wristband, on the condition that he finished his song. Got a wristband, got a wristband... (Jeff's thought: Dude! I wish I had my guitar! Oh wait, I can't sing. My thought: That reminds me of Adrian Ogden.)
3. Guy walks by with half a cardboard box as a tray for his food
4. Cardboard... Need wristbands... Sign! I could make a sign!

So Jeff grabbed a box from behind one of the food stands, I gave him my pen, and while we were waiting for his friends (in front of the entrance to the New Pornographers), he drew a sign: WE NEED 2 R.E.M. ARMBANDS in block letters. We never saw his friends, so eventually we gave up and went to the main Bumbershoot exit, figuring that was the place where we would find the most people who didn't need their armbands. When we sat down with our sign, a woman sitting next to us said I've got a Sharpie if you want to make those letters darker. What providence! Before Jeff had even finished darkening the letters, a middle-aged man approached us and offered us his wristband. Two minutes later, we had another (although this girl's mother wanted her to sell it for $1, which Jeff willingly gave). W00t! We left Bumbershoot briefly in order to buy tape and fasten the wristbands more securely and were approached several times for our new wristbands. We didn't give them up, obviously, but we gave away our sign, and I hope it worked for them as well as for us.

The concert was very good, of course (it's R.E.M.!) but not overwhelmingly awesome. I've definitely been to much better concerts (Moxy Früvous, Dar Williams, Garbage). Part of what made those great was their relative size, and this one was just far too big. The crowd was too large to have any fannish cohesion, and I was too short and too far away to see anything but dots or heads bouncing on the stage. (For reviews of R.E.M. and their opening band, Wilco, that are both more detailed and more positive than mine, see R.E.M. at Bumbershoot and Wilco at Bumbershoot.)