• In the Oughties, the Nineties made a comeback. THEESatisfaction photographed by Maceo Paisley.

Man, have I been procrastinating or what? I've been passionately resisting making any kind of Top 10 of 2009, and especially putting off any Top 10 of the Decade. What's up with that? Maybe I'm just refractory. Maybe I have a deep Catholic guilt complex about naming a "top" anything when I haven't heard every album released this year, haven't compared every possible single all in one sitting based on uniform criteria...

Ah well. I'll work with what I've got. Here's a last-minute list of my favorite Seattle shows of 2009, in somewhat preferential order. No, it's not comprehensive, because I can only be so many places at once. Plus, I didn't even see half the shows I intended to see this year, and I didn't count any of the shows at which I performed, even if I loved the headlining act. So yes, I'm probably leaving some things out. But this was some pretty good shit. Did you catch it?

1. Mirah @ Bumbershoot
Mirah added sharp punch to her trademark sweetness and gifted us with the most dynamic stage show I've seen from her yet. I love it when a musician I've been following for years manages to surprise me. It was romance in the sunshine for the packed-out crowd.

2. Thee Satisfaction & Canary Sing @ the Rendezvous
The performers and the audience combined were like a Who's Who of Seattle's female hip hop community, and for good reason. The amount of talent and potential I saw from both duos bodes well for 2010 and beyond.

3. Dirty Projectors @ Neumos
You know your band is good if half the audience is regretting not pursuing a master's in music.

4. Seattle Opera's Ring Cycle @ McCaw Hall
The Star Trek Convention of opera only happens once every four years, and to great effect. Sopranos on trapezes! A stage set that ACTUALLY looks like a slice of Pacific Northwest forest! Multiple audience members dressed up as Brunhilde! Fire! A molten, glowing underworld! A dragon! Zzzz... Oh sorry, I can't actually sit through almost 20 hours of opera spread over four days. But I have a newfound respect for those who can!

5. Team Dresch & Erase Errata @ Vera Project
My review of the show described the audience as "dogpiling with tears in their eyes" but by "their" I probably should have said "our," because I am a big, gay geek, with a soft spot for the music that made me that way.

6. Simian Mobile Disco @ Neumos
I believe I described the show on my personal blog thusly: "...two boys making a bonfire of electronic equipment in the center of the stage, with the most blinding lights in the world surrounding them." My solar plexus still hurts. (Incidentally, the friend who treated me to this show abruptly stopped speaking to me for no apparent reason shortly thereafter. Why, in the name of all that is irrelevant and tangential, why?)

7. Big Gay Field Day @ Cal Andersen Park
Okay, it doesn't really count as a show, but how rad was it? The brainchild of the same queer rabble-rousers who brought you Fairies on Ferries, Big Gay Field Day took over the park with three-legged races and all that other shit you hated as an ostracized nine year old. The best part was when the hula hoop contest miraculously expanded to include the large group of Burners gathered to celebrate Eeyore's birthday. Oh and a certain six foot tall, blonde roller derby champ known as The Swede was dressed as a tampon.

8. Peaches @ The Showbox
Peaches came twice this year (heh) and I'm gonna vote for the June show over the November one, based solely on the amount of energy and the lack of technical difficulties. (It bears mentioning, though, that Amanda Blank opened the November show, and she is going to blow up so big if she can find the right song to break her.) In other news, rumor has it the Peach has an alter ego who kills it at karaoke.

9. The Michael Jackson Sing Along @ Central Cinema
Um, Seattle? Sometimes I love you so much it's like I can't pick my jaw up off the floor. Michael Jackson flash mobs? Beyonce dance-offs? And this crazy tribute to a fallen icon, complete with confetti falling from the ceiling?

10. U.S.E. @ The Crocodile
This band invented fun. And if you like fun, you can see the same band at the same place tonight.

Oh and in lieu of a Best of the Decade list, I offer you the following quote from folk singer Utah Phillips:

"That 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975-- what's that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that."

Happy New Year, lovers!