[Our fearless team, Nicci Boots and Ian McNeil spent three days listening to an obscene amount of fantastic music above the stunning Columbia River Gorge in George, Washington. Check out all our coverage here, over 30 sets from a who's who list of indie music.]
I’m absolutely heartbroken over the length of this review. Public Enemy was a Sasquatch! act that I was excited to see more than almost anyone else, but due to lame speaker malfunction, I only got to hear about two songs of theirs before I gave up and went to catch Massive Attack’s opening. But in that little bit I did get to experience, I was overwhelmed by how tight the group still sounds, and the relevance Public Enemy holds as a hip-hop group. Flava Flav, swinging his legendary neck clock, opened the show with, “Yeeeeaaaahhh, boooooy!” and the crowd went ballistic. Chuck D gave some powerful commentary, then proceeded to bring the most colossal of noise with the group, prompting the crowd to forget about the rain that was starting to pour down.
Then the main speakers went out for a couple of minutes, infuriating everyone that wasn’t directly in front of the stage, and this process repeated itself four times. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I split, but word is the rest of the show was terrific, and their music is still as significant today as ever.
