Friday, March 27, 2009

Because Eric Can't....

Posted by Terry Miller on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 5:24 PM

I will:

n83140875147_2933.jpg

Yes. 5 years.

I still remember the first as if it was yesterday. Marcus, Colby, Eric and, shit, his name escapes me..., started the first transgressive queer-disco dance-a-thon thingy, five years ago this month.

Good times for me included:

Going out in a fake moustache (pre-the whole "hipster moustache thang" natch), dressing up like a giant bunny rabbit and feeling up guys, arm wrestling some little asian toughy with the caveat "loser bottoms", sweating super hard on the dance floor and feeling like my heart was going to explode from one too many Red Bull and Vodkas, buying the first pink t-shirt and wearing it out to Optimo in Glasgow and giving an extra to Ms. Savage, wearing my first wrestling singlet out for Halloween, my first 9 o'clock dj set (to nobody), taking a picture of a girls nipple tattoo, then seeing that same girl at my sons school (a teacher's assistant no less!)..... the list goes on and on.

Thank you Comeback crew for 5 brilliant years.

504e/1238201175-dsc01414.jpg

Marcus!

e0e6/1238201207-dsc01422.jpg

Colby

df83/1238201227-dsc01417.jpg
Eric!

02e0/1238201254-dsc01510.jpg

Moustache!

Also Tonight in Music: Lace Up, Fag Out

Posted by Eric Grandy on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:42 PM

Also tonight in music, My Philosophy directs you to Lo_Fi for a night of sneakers and hiphop:

Shouts to all the places 206 heads cop 'em, from Sneaker City to Champs (ha) to all the fly boutiques like Goods, Rock Paper Scissors, Winner's Circle, and my folks over at Triple Crown, formerly known as Laced Up. TC is throwing a shindig at the Lo-Fi on March 27 called Shoe Shine, featuring a custom shoe installation from Emmanuel Labor and sets from DJs Fever One and blesOne, plus They Live! and TC fam B-Awake. B-Awake just dropped his debut album, Classic Material, a promising collection of the young MC's sober ruminations on self-elevation, greed, and poverty.

...and to the Rendezvous for the Corner:

That same night (March 27), starting late (it's a party, y'all), is the first-anniversary edition of The Corner at the Rendezvous, featuring Corner founder Candidt, JFK of Grayskul, Silent Lambs Project with Felicia Loud (the killer combo known as Black Stax), Rudy and the Rhetoric, and Mr. Hill.

Also, there's some gay thing up at Chop Suey.

More events here and here.

Dern It: Diminished Men Set the Stage for Blue Velvet

Posted by Dave Segal on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:08 PM

This is what you call intelligent synergy: Seattle quartet Diminished Men will play a set of their haunting surf-noir instrumentals before a screening of David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet. Sound and vision happens tonight at Central Cinema (1411 21st Ave., 9:30 pm, free).

Diminished Men's new Randall Dunn-produced album comes out in April on Web of Mimicry.


Britney Spears Thinks It's December

Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:55 PM

No one knows why, but at her concert the other night in Washington, D.C., Britney Spears yelled out "Merry Christmas" mid-song. And even weirder is that everyone in the crowd cheered—except a couple girls you can hear in the video who noted "That was weird." It's clear as day at the 50 second mark:

Perhaps those of you seeing her at the Tacoma Dome in a couple weeks will hear Happy New Year?

Last Night in Book Parties

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 12:34 PM

3097/1238182372-drink_ace.jpgLast night, Bailey/Coy was packed with people celebrating Stacey Levine's new book, The Girl With Brown Fur. It was nice to have a bunch of Seattle's literary talent in one room. Especially since there was free booze.

Levine looked lovely and little bit fluttery and nervous. Several people, she said, asked her why she didn't read aloud from her work. She said that Bailey/Coy owner Michael Wells hated book readings. He confirmed that he didn't want to host a reading, but would rather have a party. "This is better than a reading, isn't it?" he said, "People getting together and talking?" I kind of had to agree. Rebecca Brown was trying to convince a few authors to do more work. A cluster of poets talked about poetry, money, and, I'm pretty sure, sex. Lori Goldston, who will probably always be most famous to me for playing the cello in the Nirvana Unplugged TV special, performed for an hour and a half.

Greg Stump told me that he'd finally finished a long-form graphic novel and would be publishing it soon. A weird man with very long hair wandered around the party, occasionally laughing at nothing at all. Some people thought he was a poet. Others thought he was on psychedelic drugs. Others thought he was schizophrenic. No one bothered to ask him what he was thinking.

Several people entered Bailey/Coy's contest to name their top ten desert island books. The winner, drawn at random from the entries, will win a fifty dollar gift certificate. The difference between desert island books and desert island CDs, someone suggested, was that you'd want to bring music you love to a desert island, but most people would be inclined to bring big giant books they haven't read to the same island. Nobody could really explain why that was true, but it felt true. The contest is ongoing.

It was really pleasant, having people walking around and talking and getting a little bit drunk at a bookstore at night: Someone who owns a bookstore should float the idea of a monthly mixer on a Thursday night, with live music and drinks. It felt like good, semi-civilized fun, and it was a wonderful thing, watching tipsy people wander out into the evening with brand-new books tucked under their arms.

Your U.S.E. Haikus

Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 12:32 PM

The tickets for tomorrow night's U.S.E. show are gone—the winner has been notified. But, that doesn't mean the fun is over! A lot of you sent in a cute haiku with your entry, so I thought I'd share a few of them:

Emerald City
Vocoder madness oh yeah
Umbrella of love

Crocodile Club
U.S.E. is lotsa fun
Together once again

Japanese Student
moved to tears climes
to stage dance

U.S.E. isn't
an acronym; U.S.E.
lives down in the bone

U.S.E. is great
Like hallucinogenic
Drugs sans hangover

music reaching me
beats seeking without a break
dancing to me now

USE for me?
Nothing better possibly!
Maybe a handjob

If you didn't win the tickets to Saturday's show (I'm sorry, I only had one pair!), you can still buy 'em for $12.

Today's Music News

Posted by Brian Cook on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:42 AM

Coming soon to a Volkswagen ad near you: Details on the forthcoming Wilco album

Nazi punks fuck off: Manic Street Preachers issue cease and desist to British National Party

I hate the future: Rock Band nets one billion dollars, sells 40 million downloads

Too high to die: Meat Puppets announce new album, tour

Don't Space; Spectrum to Play Neumos May 2

Posted by Dave Segal on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:31 AM

Former Spacemen 3 co-leader Peter Kember (aka Spectrum) returns to Seattle May 2 with a show at Neumos. He's been honing a serious strain of minimalist-drone/space-rock/electro-pop/abstract electronic music under this moniker for two decades and likely will include some Spacemen 3 material. Let's hope that Kember brings his awesome arsenal of analog synths.

Below Spectrum covers Kraftwerk's "The Hall of Mirrors" and the Red Krayola's "Transparent Radiation."



Rapper T.I. Is Going to Prison

Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:31 AM

Says AJC.com:

A federal judge approved a plea deal Friday that will likely put Atlanta rapper T.I. in prison for a little less than 10 months for trying to buy machine guns and ammo from undercover agents in 2007.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pannell sentenced T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., to one year and one day under a negotiated plea. But the deal qualifies T.I. for credits likely to cut the sentence to about 298 days.

[...]

T.I. has requested assignment to a federal facility near Atlanta, and he will not have to report before May 19.

Upon release, he must be in home confinement for 60 days, he will have to perform another 470 hours of community service and he will serve three years on probation.

In Tha Beginning

Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:20 AM

In the current feature, I wrote that my cousin, Tendai, is a civil engineer "who worked on the bus tunnel that [was] featured on the first video by Hammerbox, 'Size of the World.'" My interest in making movies in Seattle has Hammerbox's marvelous video as its point of origin. Directed by a member of the band or someone closely associated with them at the time, 1990, it was the first piece of filmmaking that showed me the cinematic potential of the city. And the moment the music stops before the race to the cacophonous finish, that silent but tense moment in the bus tunnel, gripped my imagination forever.


I owe everything to that moment.


Also important to my development as a local filmmaker are two short films by Serge Gregory, "Flow" and "Foster Island."

New U.S.E. - "All The World"

Posted by Eric Grandy on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:43 AM

&showicons897b/1238171466-neumos2.jpg

United State of Electronica perform at the new Crocodile tomorrow night. Here's what I wrote about the show for the Stranger Suggests:

The revamped Crocodile has been open for over a week, but tonight may as well be its official grand reopening party. You couldn't hope for a Seattle band to christen your new club with more positive vibes and body-moving sounds than electro-rock crew United State of Electronica. The band has a new album in the works, and an early sneak peak reveals it to be (duh) another happy helping of big, blissed-out, vocoder-led dance jams. With Velella Velella. (Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave, www.thecrocodile.com. 8 pm, $12, 21+.)

Speaking of that new album, it's going to be called LOVEWORLD, and though the band isn't yet sure about a label or a release date, it is going to be out soon. In the meantime, here's a new track to whet your appetite—the song is called "All the World," and it's as outsized and all-inclusive as the name suggests (and as cultishly, cartoonishly happy as ever):

U.S.E. - "All The World"

It's not exactly a huge leap forward for the band, but if you're a fan, there's a lot to love. The band will also be selling a new EP featuring the song at tomorrow night's show:

All The World EP Tracklisting:
1. All The World (NEW)
2. What we Fitin' 4 (NEW)
3. All the World (Ron Kurti Remix)

(Also, you may still have time to win free tickets to tomorrow night's show—details here.)

U.S.E. photo by Trent Moorman

Tonight in Music: Black Mountain, Roxy Epoxy and the Rebound, Pigeon John, Dearboy

Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:00 AM

&snBlack Mountain play Neumos tonight. Dave Segal sums up the band thusly in the first sentence of his interview with bassist Matt Camirand this week's paper: "Like hundreds of bands worldwide, Black Mountain make earthy rock and roll that flies semifreaky flags for the psychedelic, hard-rock, and folk stylings that flourished during the Nixon years."


Black Mountain - "Tyrants" (live)

Here's what Casey Catherwood had to say in this week's Underage column about Dearboy, who play the Vera Project tonight with An Horse and Wintersleep:

38e4/1238022842-dearboygroup.jpgThey might not have won EMP's Sound Off! Competition, but Seattle youngsters Dearboy definitely made an impression on me. The all-female quartet incorporate plinking mandolin, piano harmonies, and stand-up bass to conjure a romantic sound that dances daintily with flamenco and jazz. Throw in a backbone of disco drumming and a healthy dose of teenage 'tude, and you've got four young ladies who sound like DeVotchKa with a chip on their shoulder. On Friday, March 27, Dearboy open for Australian duo An Horse and Nova Scotian band Wintersleep at the Vera Project. Where Dearboy incorporate interesting time signatures and weird melodies, An Horse use plain old guitar and drums to make dark but approachable songs about being sad, young, and growing into one's skin.


Pigeon John - "Money Back Guarantee"

Pigeon John, Rootbeer, Who Cares
(Nectar) Without the domination of gangsta rap, L.A. would not have one of the most fertile underground-hiphop scenes in America. Everything that defined gangsta rap (gun violence, unremitting misogyny, bling-bling) was rejected by the underground, which was loyal to hiphop's origins, staunchly opposed to black-on-black violence, obsessed with capturing the most ordinary details of life, and rarely (if ever) used the word "bitch." Pigeon John is a product of that reaction to gangsta rap. Since the early '90s, he's built a solid career on the stuff of daily, working-class life. If gangsta rap is all about the spectacle of the drive-by shooting, then Pigeon John is all about the humor of sweeping the street in front of a grocery. But the biggest difference between Pigeon John and the gangsta rapper is that John doesn't take himself so seriously. CHARLES MUDEDE


Roxy Epoxy and the Rebound Tour Diary

Roxy Epoxy and the Rebound, the Action Design, Veritas, Feverclub, Goodbye Gadget
(El Corazón) Portland's Roxy Epoxy made her name as the heavily eyelinered frontwoman of the now-defunct punk/new-wave outfit the Epoxies. The Epoxies' shows were always a flurry of smoke, lasers, and lights, and their songs would've been appropriate as the soundtrack to an "aliens landing at a house party" scene in a 1980s sci-fi flick. But despite the Epoxies' onslaught of sensory overload, Epoxy still managed to captivate the crowd with her unique low, dark voice and outfits made of zippers and electrical tape. She's doing much of the same now, without the Epoxies. In fact, she's bounced back from that breakup and found a new place with the appropriately named Roxy Epoxy and the Rebound, who released their debut, Bandaids on Bullet Holes, earlier this year. MEGAN SELING

Also tonight: Black Whales at Piecora's, New Faces and Deer City at the EMP Sky Church, the Builders and the Butchers and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground at the Crocodile, Coconut Coolouts and Loving Thunder at the Greenhouse, and holy shit, I can't name everything, just see everything for yourself in our online calendar.

@SEAshows

The Stranger's Twitter Feed of Seattle Shows
  • Loading Tweets
    loading

Follow @SEAshows
 

All contents © Index Newspapers, LLC
1535 11th Ave (Third Floor), Seattle, WA 98122
Contact Info | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use