Tuesday marked the first official day of the 2010 Mission Creek Festival, with ten performances spread across three venues.
Despite simultaneous shows occurring at separate locales, having each of these venue positioned within a block of the pedestrian mall makes the festival feel surprisingly consolidated. Travel time is a non-issue, and attendees who find themselves hopping around from show to show seem to see it more as a conversation starter than an inconvenience.
Whenever I spotted a familiar face, “What show did you just come from?” was the common greeting, often followed by the give-and-take of one-sentence show reviews of what the other had missed. Needless to say, as the 2010 Mission Creek Festival came into full swing Tuesday night, there was plenty to talk about.
Although it wasn’t the most happening venue of the evening, I first paid a visit to Public Space One. A little-known group from Brooklyn, NY headlined, yet it may very well have been my most anticipated performance of the festival. To be curt, Dinosaur Feathers would have come and gone without me so much as raising an eyebrow had I not given them a listen in preparation for the festival earlier this month. After that first listen when I’d stumbled upon their Myspace page, however, I was hooked.
There was a lot of well-warranted buzz for this group after they had finished their set, so make sure to check out Matt Steele’s in-depth analysis of the show.
Opening for Dinosaur Feathers were the bands So Much Fun, Happy Chromosomes and Replacing the Robots, a crop of young, yet talented, pop and folk musicians. Unfortunately, the sound system seemed to be having technical difficulties throughout the earlier portions of the show (in one case, So Much Fun’s lead vocalist leaned in to belt out a verse only to find his microphone either silent or malfunctioning), so the corresponding video is, for the most part, instrumental.
The next stop was The Mill, where I managed to slip in just a few minutes before The Cave Singers took the stage as headliners. The venue itself, I noticed, was more crowded than I had seen it in quite some time, with attendees packing in from bar to stage and nearly every nook in between. Check out the video to see why The Cave Singers had music enthusiasts lining up. You can also read more in-depth analysis of The Mill’s Tuesday night lineup here.
The final stop of the night, The Blue Moose Tap House, played host to a night of death metal headlined by Black Cobra. Traveling from The Mill’s folk rock show and into a crowd of rugged headbangers and heavy metal, the sheer scope of the Mission Creek Festival really hits home. Sadly, having arrived near hour four of the night’s festivities, my camera’s memory card finally threw in the towel. Don’t let that stop you from enjoying the clip, albeit a short one, below!
