Seattle has long been known as a hot-spot for music. However, grunge died long ago…where does that leave Seattle? The annual Capitol Hill Block Party is the answer. For the past five years, several blocks of one of Seattle hippest neighborhoods is transformed into a multi-stage festival that feels more like an outdoor club and less like the dusty, mosh-laden festivals that take place around the country every summer. Even with the 20,000+ crowds, one gets the sense that this is a party for Seattlites, which is a far cry from overcrowded Bumbershoot.

For this event, we gather all available Mackoids from the office and transform the group from cubicle nerds to professional production crew, working two 15+ hour days to pull off one of the largest shows in the region. You can find tech support members running the Vera Stage. You will see our Business Director running monitors. One of our Product Managers, the Copywriter and our Product Requirements Manager patched the main stage on both days. It is really quite amazing that we are able to pull off such a large show, when our normal routine is full of meetings and spreadsheets. Anyway, enough about us.

The Main Stage was the place to be this year. We used Onyx 4880s at the FOH and monitor positions, and there was no missing the SRM450v2s that were lined up as front fill speakers. Our sister brand, EAW was also well represented, as the main stacks were comprised of a large amount of KF750s and SB1000zs. This awesome system was well fed, dining on the gourmet sounds of several groundbreaking groups over the course of the two-day event.

Here a list of the bands that rocked the main stage:

Friday

• Common Market
• U.S.E.
• Menomena
• Girl Talk
• Les Savy Fav
• Vampire Weekend

• Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground
• The Cave Singers
• Kimya Dawson
• Fleet Foxes
• Chromeo
• The Hold Steady
• DeVotchKa

Mackie also sponsored the Vera Stage, which highlights emerging artists, most of which have never played a venue of this caliber. The Vera Stage was fully decked-out with a TT System32. With the new software update, you can use the DS3232 Digital Snake as a splitter, sending the same signals to TT24s at both FOH and monitors. Check out the FOH/Monitor split situation at the TT System32 page. The main featured a healthy dose of the Mackie Tetrad line (S408/S410s) and was more than enough for the venue. SRM450v2s were used as stage monitors.

Mackie created and ran the VIP area, which featured some free beer and booze for whoever could get in. There were couches for relaxing and even a couple of Xbox360 stations featuring Guitar Hero III. Not bad.

So, get online and check out reviews from the show and give some support to the involved artists. It was a hell of a time and Mackie is super proud to have been involved (yet again) with what is arguably the best block party in the entire free world.