L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Fiddle & Spew

May 26, 2007 on 7:24 pm | In Backstage Pass, General Musing, Music |

We did our annual Folklife hadj today. It’s a four-day folk mash-up held every Memorial Day weekend at the Seattle Center. Fiddlers fiddle, jammers jam, banjos banj and djembes djemb from the crack of noon to the wee smalls; you can hardly blink an eyelash without brushing glitter off the cheek of a hurdy gurdy player. The first time you go it’s a wild, crazy, vibrant assault on the senses - Seattle’s most colorful oddballs crawl out of their winter cocoons and don their brightest fairy wings to alight on the grass - or light the grass - to, um, express themselves. But after a few years you realize it’s really the same cross-dressing, purple-mohawked pierceaholics and grizzle-bearded, tie-dye-overalled squeezeboxers every damn time.

Highlights this year:

• Us, of course
• A nine-year-old who balanced all day on a large ball twirling a hoola hoop while playing violin
• Lukkuul chicken from the Horn of Africa food booth. mmmmm
• An amazing solo drummer busking on the sidewalk with nothing but buckets and junk
• Cheap beers in the performers’ area
• Little kids gettin’ crazy in the fountain. The fountain is irresistable. It’s water porn for children.

Lowlights:

• Guerrilla Morris Dancing
• The sight of grown people who should know better stuffing greasy, Hummer-sized bricks of curly fries into their faces
• Djembes, djembes and more djembes
• Trying to move music gear through a solid, heaving wall of tattoed flesh and strollers
• Djembes

But getting back to fountains, here’s a collection of truly bizarre fountains. Hey, big boy, is that a nozzle in your pants… ?

See more like that one:

• If a Song Falls in the Forest
• Art or Crap?
• The Sunday Six: Weird This Week
• Bad-ass Bikers vs. Bad-ass Knitters
• The whole show in 3.5