Alright, here's what I took away from Sasquatch 2009:

Saturday:
Passion pit was pretty good. It seemed though like the vocals were a little restrained, like he wanted to hit those high notes but in order to hit them he had to sing a little softer than he wanted to. Oh well, it was fun and other than that I can't complain.

Animal Collective was LOUD. Maybe it's because I was down on the floor, but they were loud and also very good.

Bon Iver was one of the highlights of Saturday for me. Everything just seemed to fall into place for that set; The fading sunlight, the quietness of the crowd as Justin Vernon wailed through a lovely set, and the lighting from the stage all seemed just right. It was almost goosebump inducing to be in the crowd as everyone sang "what might have been lost..." over and over getting louder and louder finally erupting in huge release of everyone screaming.

I can't talk about Saturday without bringing up the people having sex up on the rocks to the left of the main stage during the Decemberists set. Did anyone else see this?! I mean they were full on trying to get caught! I don't think you could see it from the grass, but at least half of the people on the floor were watching this as it was going on. By the end the Decemberists started noticing and Colin Meloy waved at them as security took them away.

Also, the comedy/dance tent was more wide open this year and easily accessible-no waiting in lines!! Yay! much better.

Sunday:
St. Vincent was a very pleasant surprise for me on Sunday. I only know a few of her songs, but her set was wonderful.

TV on the Radio was excellent as usual. It was kind of fun to watch comedian/actor Aziz Ansari off to the side of the stage rocking out to their set, then getting pulled on stage for a song to shake a tambourine.

M83 had a lot of people there for his set. Maybe the most I saw for an act not on the main stage.

Of Montreal was probably the most entertaining performance of the day. I hadn't seen them before, but I kind of new what to expect (nudity, maybe a horse) and while neither of those things happened, the theatrics and big screen animated clips were damn fun to watch.

Monday:

Deerhoof= really cool. Loved the tiger head, also loved how intimate it felt for the main stage since it was still early and people were still slowly arriving.

Grizzly Bear sounded fantastic. The harmonies were great, and they played pretty much all the good songs I wanted to hear considering the amount of time they had.

I was up on the grass for Fleet Foxes and Silversun Pickups and from where I was the sound was terrible. It might have just been the one big speaker I was sitting by, but it kept cutting in and out so it sounded like going from surround sound back to just small speaker sound, then back again. Silversun Pickups was good except the lead singer's guitar had problems right in the middle of Lazy Eye.

Girl talk was one huge dance party as usual. It was good to hear him change up some of the familiar mash-ups too. He did some of the same cuts from "Feed the Animals" but also took some of those songs and mixed in different songs on top which was a pleasant surprise. Aside from the one mistake where it sounded like he had the beats all off and everyone was looking around at each other with a "this doesn't sound right" look on their face, it was pretty fun.

I'd heard a lot of hype about how great Explosions in the Sky are, and how they make people cry and they will blow your mind, etc....well it was just alright for me. Part of it was probably just too much hype to live up to. Part of it was that about 3/4 of the songs sounded a lot alike. It was easy to zone out and start thinking about something else and then 5 minutes later realize you're still watching a band and listening to the same song. When they went harder and faster and heavier, it was pretty good and easy to get into, but then they'd bliss out for about 20 minutes and it's easy to lose interest.

So that's my experience from Sasquatch 2009. There were a number of bands I kept hearing buzz about that I missed when I was at other shows (King Kahn and the Shrines, Monotonix, builders and the butchers) anyone see any of those shows?

John -- you're hired. :)

haha, yeah thanks. Sorry, I got a little carried away. Once I started I couldn't stop.