no age at marymoor park. A few photos of questionable quality from day 2 at subpop’s 20th birthday (next year they’ll be legal!) can be found here [flickr]. If you have any great shots or videos, drop them in our group pool [#].

A few highlights from day two of Sub Pop’s wonderful birthday party in Redmond:

• programming innovation: the side-by-side stages. For most of the day, there was hardly a gap between performances to be found. Crowds could migrate a few feet back and forth to catch the next act, people on blankets at the periphery (the majority) could turn their heads a few inches to watch the next set. Everything ran almost on time.
• relaxed crowds: most people seemed to be in it for a comfortable day in the sun, making it embarrassingly easy to wander up to the very front (which was usually shady and cool) to watch the bands up close.
• likely Rock Band champions: Grand Archives. Although they may have been joking about their sponsored mention, many of their sounds sounded more guitar powery than usual. If the bands had faced off backstage, my money would have been on these guys.
• winners: If I had to pick a best act of the day it would be Foals, whose self-deprecating humor was both unnecessary and hilarious. If this was them with breaking gear (”the curse of Mount Reindeer”), bad teeth (”we spit blood, girls love it”), and fuck-ups (”we’ll play Cassius because we’re sucking and want to play something you’ll like”), then them without impediment would be devastatingly great.
• most exhausting for categorizers: Blitzen Trapper. While others try to span or bend genre, they just flip through them faster than you with a remote control on a slow television day. Are they Dylan-inspired grifters? Southern rock campfire? Hillbilly junkyard jamboree? Robot apocalypse? Radio-friendly pop? Spaz glam? Yes, to all of the above and more. I can’t imagine what they’d turn out to be if forced into a single groove and hope that we don’t have to find out.
• if it hadn’t been so hot we would have been dancing: Really, No Age’s show — loud, but kind of pretty underneath it all — merited a crowd smashing into each other just a little bit, but it was hot outside and we’re all delicate flowers. Let’s just go home and watch that “eraser” video again and call it good, ok? [mtv]
• even though I was too lazy to walk over, still pretty decent from a distance: Kinski and Red Red Meat.
• have you climbed a tree to the moons of Saturn? maybe, now that you’ve seen Comets on Fire.
• band name that most closely describes band sound: Beachwood Sparks.
• biggest crowd: Green River. Yep, for real.
• boldest move: Wolf Parade, in the headlining spot, played almost all of their new album instead of relying on beloved hits to keep people from getting a head start for the detoured route back to Seattle. For the most part, I think it worked pretty well. A sizeable crowd stuck around the stage eating up the expansive new songs and convinced them to come back for an encore of “Sons & Daughters of Hungry Ghosts”.
• best onstage beverage consumption: Hadji Bakara [flickr]
• surprise top secret headliner: no one. I didn’t even realize this was a rumor until I got home and saw it online [tig] who were also liveblogging [#] the whole thing for those who (1) weren’t at SP20 and (2) refused to enjoy the weather.
• great lineup! still, wish you’d been here: Sleater-Kinney reunion, miracle Nirvana reunion, unlikely Soundgarden reunion, C.S.S., the Go! Team, Fruit Bats, Band of Horses, the Shins, the Thermals, Postal Service.

What did you like? Other fake awards to present? Suggestions for the 21 or 40 year reunion lineup?