Primus Sucks In Seattle (Part Three)
"PrimusPrimusPrimusPrimusPrimusPrimusPrimusPrimus."
Thus went the continuing mantra in my head. It was especially prominent now that I actually had ordered tickets to the Primus show. I should have been relieved to know that we'd be going, but in some ways, I became almost paranoid.
I had no idea of what kind of venue a place named the Seahawks Exhibition Center would be. Because the Seahawks Stadium to which it is connected to is fairly new, I wondered if they'd built a theater-style performance space into what I assumed was a convention center. But my intuition told me that it was going to be held on the convention center's floor itself and since it was a general admission show, we'd have to get there early so we could get a good spot. I doubted there'd be seats and with Mary standing at 5'3", I'd need to be sure she could see the stage and not the back of a mullet all night. How ironic it would be for her to be at a show she may not even like and not be able to at least see it?
I went online and looked around for info on the Exhibition Center again. This time I found some photos, but they weren't of much help. Some showed what looked like a banquet hall, a few that seemed to be shots of some kind of trade show, and one of a wedding. But these shots were fairly close up to the event and gave me no real idea what kind or how big of a place this was. As it was, the week before leaving on vacation got a little crazy and I didn't have time to further pursue my answers aside from verifying addresses and printing out some maps, so we'd be going in cold.
In the early evening of June 1st, the night before the Primus show, we walked to Safeco Field from a cool little bar where our hotel shuttle dropped us off. This would give us a little on-site recon as we would walk right by the Exhibition Center. It was pretty nondescript from the outside and had no marquee or even posters indicating that there would be a show the next night. Uh-oh. Now I was getting a little nervous. If there was a cancellation, that would be out of our control and we'd find something else to do. But, if there was a venue change, it may have happened weeks ago and local media would have alerted ticket holders by now. How would we know where to go? I'd have to make some phone calls tomorrow. That's it, get up early and call the Seahawks people. If no answer, I'd call Ticketbastard. No, they're morons. Wait, I could call local radio stations. But what stations? Oh, dear.
You see now how much of an old woman I can be sometimes. I didn't let on to Mary except to mention in passing that I didn't notice any signs or posters for Primus. Then we passed a ticket window and she pointed out a small events calendar. I tried to act casual and breeze on over to see if the show was still on for the next night, but I felt like sprinting through the gameday crowd, knocking people over like some action-film cop; I could hold my ticket up like a badge while yelling, "Out of the way! Primus! Look out! Priiimusss!!"
Right there in white plastic letters stuck into black fabric under the glass was, "Bill Graham Presents: PRIMUS". My body shuddered in relief just a little and I turned to Mary, who hadn't bothered to follow me, and waved my hand ever so nonchalantly. "Ah, yeah. It's on. I knew it would be." After that, I was able to settle down and enjoy the game at Safeco.
The next day, we spent most of our time over at the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, both at the Seattle Center. The Space Needle provided an awesome 360 degree view of the city and it was a gorgeous day to be up there. The Experience Music Project museum was a blast. The exhibits were first class, showcasing memorabilia and providing hands-on interactive displays. Much of it was focused on the Northwest's contribution to popular music (Hendrix, Heart, Nirvana and the rest of the grunge scene bands, etc.), but there were plenty of national and international artists represented as well. I was impressed by the whole layout of the place. The Hendrix exhibit hall itself blew my mind. It contained many of his guitars, including the one he used at Woodstock and pieces of the one he destroyed at Monterey Pop. For an armchair music historian like myself, looking at those articles, even through glass, is like stepping back in time onto the muddy field in upstate New York on that Monday morning in '69.
We could have stayed at the EMP all day and into the night, but we had the concert hanging over our heads. So we walked back to the hotel to change and catch the shuttle down to Pioneer Square and hit another bar or two before the show. The hotel provided that shuttle free to guests going to Mariners games. We'd used it the night before and figured that we could get dropped of at the same place and still be close to the Exhibition Center. (We were in Seattle for 3 days and 2 nights and never took the car out of the hotel's parking garage.) On the walk back to the room, I picked up a Seattle free rag called The Seattle Weekly and leafed through it to find any more info on that night's show.
Mary and I washed up and hopped on the shuttle. We had the same driver from the night before. He'd given us some great advice on where to eat and drink then and pointed us to some cool new joints on this night. We ended up at a place called Sluggers and split a burger and fries. We had a couple of beers, too, but I wasn't splittin' those. I also had wondered if the Exhibition Center sold alcohol, so we got our load on early. It was about 6:50pm and we had to get over to the show.
With a little buzz on (Tony's Plan in action), we traipsed on down the alleyway along with the Mariners fans, they heading to Safeco and us heading into the unknown. We veered left onto the court in front of the doors to the Seahawks Exhibition Center and noticed that 3 or 4 radio stations were taking down their remote broadcast tents and packing up their vans. The doors had opened early! Shit!
There was no line as we rushed up to the turnstiles. The patdown was virtually non-existent and that saved us a little time. An old man tore our tickets and we burst into the place. All I saw was 165,370 square feet of concrete and a temporary stage set up off in the distance. We had walked about the same distance from the bar as it would take to get to the stage.
For a 360 degree virtual tour of the Seahawks Exhibition Center's West Hall, go HERE. You'll see what I mean.
Without saying a word to each other, we both instinctively scanned the entire floor for something. I had no luck and I looked over at Mary and she pursed her lips and said, "I don't see one".
No beer stand.
I did see a concession stand over yonder on the back forty, so we trudged across the concrete expanse in search of yet another cool libation or in Mary's case, necessary fuel for the evening's event. As we got closer, we both squinted to see if any familiar neon beer signs caught our attention. We also realized we were walking along a huge black curtain. I hadn't paid much attention to it, figuring that it just provided a barrier so that idiot concert goers weren't having the run of the entire place. We approached the end of the curtain's length and a 20-something ahead of us smiled, pointed and said to his buddy, "I'll be damned, they've got a beer garden".
I smiled at Mary, put my arm around her shoulder, steered her around the end of the curtain and chuckled, "I'll be damned, they've got a beer garden."
Next up: Primus Sucks In Seattle (Part 4)
Thus went the continuing mantra in my head. It was especially prominent now that I actually had ordered tickets to the Primus show. I should have been relieved to know that we'd be going, but in some ways, I became almost paranoid.
I had no idea of what kind of venue a place named the Seahawks Exhibition Center would be. Because the Seahawks Stadium to which it is connected to is fairly new, I wondered if they'd built a theater-style performance space into what I assumed was a convention center. But my intuition told me that it was going to be held on the convention center's floor itself and since it was a general admission show, we'd have to get there early so we could get a good spot. I doubted there'd be seats and with Mary standing at 5'3", I'd need to be sure she could see the stage and not the back of a mullet all night. How ironic it would be for her to be at a show she may not even like and not be able to at least see it?
I went online and looked around for info on the Exhibition Center again. This time I found some photos, but they weren't of much help. Some showed what looked like a banquet hall, a few that seemed to be shots of some kind of trade show, and one of a wedding. But these shots were fairly close up to the event and gave me no real idea what kind or how big of a place this was. As it was, the week before leaving on vacation got a little crazy and I didn't have time to further pursue my answers aside from verifying addresses and printing out some maps, so we'd be going in cold.
In the early evening of June 1st, the night before the Primus show, we walked to Safeco Field from a cool little bar where our hotel shuttle dropped us off. This would give us a little on-site recon as we would walk right by the Exhibition Center. It was pretty nondescript from the outside and had no marquee or even posters indicating that there would be a show the next night. Uh-oh. Now I was getting a little nervous. If there was a cancellation, that would be out of our control and we'd find something else to do. But, if there was a venue change, it may have happened weeks ago and local media would have alerted ticket holders by now. How would we know where to go? I'd have to make some phone calls tomorrow. That's it, get up early and call the Seahawks people. If no answer, I'd call Ticketbastard. No, they're morons. Wait, I could call local radio stations. But what stations? Oh, dear.
You see now how much of an old woman I can be sometimes. I didn't let on to Mary except to mention in passing that I didn't notice any signs or posters for Primus. Then we passed a ticket window and she pointed out a small events calendar. I tried to act casual and breeze on over to see if the show was still on for the next night, but I felt like sprinting through the gameday crowd, knocking people over like some action-film cop; I could hold my ticket up like a badge while yelling, "Out of the way! Primus! Look out! Priiimusss!!"
Right there in white plastic letters stuck into black fabric under the glass was, "Bill Graham Presents: PRIMUS". My body shuddered in relief just a little and I turned to Mary, who hadn't bothered to follow me, and waved my hand ever so nonchalantly. "Ah, yeah. It's on. I knew it would be." After that, I was able to settle down and enjoy the game at Safeco.
The next day, we spent most of our time over at the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, both at the Seattle Center. The Space Needle provided an awesome 360 degree view of the city and it was a gorgeous day to be up there. The Experience Music Project museum was a blast. The exhibits were first class, showcasing memorabilia and providing hands-on interactive displays. Much of it was focused on the Northwest's contribution to popular music (Hendrix, Heart, Nirvana and the rest of the grunge scene bands, etc.), but there were plenty of national and international artists represented as well. I was impressed by the whole layout of the place. The Hendrix exhibit hall itself blew my mind. It contained many of his guitars, including the one he used at Woodstock and pieces of the one he destroyed at Monterey Pop. For an armchair music historian like myself, looking at those articles, even through glass, is like stepping back in time onto the muddy field in upstate New York on that Monday morning in '69.
We could have stayed at the EMP all day and into the night, but we had the concert hanging over our heads. So we walked back to the hotel to change and catch the shuttle down to Pioneer Square and hit another bar or two before the show. The hotel provided that shuttle free to guests going to Mariners games. We'd used it the night before and figured that we could get dropped of at the same place and still be close to the Exhibition Center. (We were in Seattle for 3 days and 2 nights and never took the car out of the hotel's parking garage.) On the walk back to the room, I picked up a Seattle free rag called The Seattle Weekly and leafed through it to find any more info on that night's show.
Mary and I washed up and hopped on the shuttle. We had the same driver from the night before. He'd given us some great advice on where to eat and drink then and pointed us to some cool new joints on this night. We ended up at a place called Sluggers and split a burger and fries. We had a couple of beers, too, but I wasn't splittin' those. I also had wondered if the Exhibition Center sold alcohol, so we got our load on early. It was about 6:50pm and we had to get over to the show.
With a little buzz on (Tony's Plan in action), we traipsed on down the alleyway along with the Mariners fans, they heading to Safeco and us heading into the unknown. We veered left onto the court in front of the doors to the Seahawks Exhibition Center and noticed that 3 or 4 radio stations were taking down their remote broadcast tents and packing up their vans. The doors had opened early! Shit!
There was no line as we rushed up to the turnstiles. The patdown was virtually non-existent and that saved us a little time. An old man tore our tickets and we burst into the place. All I saw was 165,370 square feet of concrete and a temporary stage set up off in the distance. We had walked about the same distance from the bar as it would take to get to the stage.
For a 360 degree virtual tour of the Seahawks Exhibition Center's West Hall, go HERE. You'll see what I mean.
Without saying a word to each other, we both instinctively scanned the entire floor for something. I had no luck and I looked over at Mary and she pursed her lips and said, "I don't see one".
No beer stand.
I did see a concession stand over yonder on the back forty, so we trudged across the concrete expanse in search of yet another cool libation or in Mary's case, necessary fuel for the evening's event. As we got closer, we both squinted to see if any familiar neon beer signs caught our attention. We also realized we were walking along a huge black curtain. I hadn't paid much attention to it, figuring that it just provided a barrier so that idiot concert goers weren't having the run of the entire place. We approached the end of the curtain's length and a 20-something ahead of us smiled, pointed and said to his buddy, "I'll be damned, they've got a beer garden".
I smiled at Mary, put my arm around her shoulder, steered her around the end of the curtain and chuckled, "I'll be damned, they've got a beer garden."
Next up: Primus Sucks In Seattle (Part 4)
posted by Tony at 6:19 PM
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