It was 2:30 p.m. Keyshia Cole was supposed to go on a half-hour before, and the booing was getting louder. Behind me in the far stands, a couple was talking. He: “She has a new album out Sept. 25.” She: “I have the feeling if I bought it, it wouldn’t start for 20 minutes.”

As if on cue, Cole’s band hit their spots and began to play an ominous groove that, as passing critic Andrew Matson noted, “sounds like it should be in a Michael Bay movie.” But when the singer appears everything improves: the two backing singers are doing light choreography, the grooves bump nicely, and Cole herself is having a hell of a time, despite the seemingly ad hoc nature of the performance. “We can do whatever you like,” she says to her band as they figure out which song to play third. Whatever they were doing for that half-hour, it wasn’t writing a set list.

“How many of you watch the reality show on BET?” Cole asks her faithful; about half the kids (it’s mostly kids) thronging near the stage raise their arms. She then dedicates a verse of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” to her late mother. “Let It Go” ends things well enough (though the backing vocals sound completely canned), if early–a half-hour only, as opposed to the 45 minutes she’s on the schedule for. (Question: does every modern R&B act’s bassist also play a Korg onstage now?) That short set may have had to do with the fact that Cole was, de facto, opening for T.I., whom I skipped, though I did hear one priceless quote after the fact: apparently one of T.I.’s crew came out, looked at the large crowd, and said something to the effect of, “Damn! This is like Woodstock or something.”

I headed next to the Northwest Stage, where local jazz ruled the day. It kind of ruled my day, too. I caught the tail third of Matt Jorgensen + 451, a Seattle troupe named for its drummer, and it sounded terrific–good jazz often does outdoors on a sunny day. The group (Jorgensen, keyboardist Ryan Burns, bassist Phil Sparks, saxophonist Mark Taylor) have recorded several far-from-reverent classic-rock covers as well, and they brought trumpeter Thomas Marriott up to end things with a superb “Tomorrow Never Knows” (you can download the 2002 studio version from eMusic and/or Amazon).

I settled into the very back, top row of the Leo K. Theater for the panel discussion between comics artists Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, and Ivan Brunetti. Brunetti introduced the other two like a nervous fan, which he professed to be, rather charmingly, and Clowes was as deadpan and funny as you’d expect: he and Tomine met, he said, through “an online dating service,” and he’d been surprised to discover that the younger artist “was in high school, stealing my work.” The overall discussion was lively, if a little nuts-and-boltsy.

I took off after a half-hour to see Forro in the Dark, though I didn’t exactly see them: as with Estelle the day before, I placed myself on the lawn behind the stage, where everything sounded better and I didn’t have to watch anyone hippie-dance. I’d heard forro before I latched onto the New York group’s 2006 debut album, and their major elimination–accordion–recasts the sound nicely, giving it a hard low end that nevertheless dances. Afterward, with time to kill, I walked to the nearby Flatstock exhibit. What do you know: one of the exhibitors was Burlesque Design, a Minneapolis firm whose membership got its start by publishing the great Life Sucks Die.

LSD was a late-’90s Twin Cities graffiti ‘zine that in retrospect looks like the prototype for Vice, particularly the “Things You May Have Slept On” reviews section. (On Slum Village: “Hey, you know what? I just realized that Slum Village came out eight years ago, but they were called The Nonce. Except back then, they had something interesting to say, and their beats were fresh. But nobody remembers The Nonce, cuz they didn’t wear vintage leather coats and stylish hats.”) Anyway, the Burlesque table had five back issues of LSD for five bucks each, and I snapped them up. Bumbershoot nostalgia: it’s not just for main stage headliners!

Back to the Northwest Stage for the Tiptons Sax Quartet: Amy Denio, Jessica Lurie, Sue Orfield, and Tina Richerson, accompanied by drummer Chris Stromquist. (The group is named for Billy Tipton, the jazz player–piano, sax–who lived and worked as a man.) The group sang a fair amount, and while it was pleasant enough, it was mere warm-up for the playing, which was constantly rich and robust, especially in unison, which was often. Finally, some friends and I made our way to the Black Keys, in the stadium, opening for Stone Temple Pilots. Pleasant enough, but not compelling enough to stick around for–sorry, Brother Ali.