If the genetic code were a keyboard, the epigenome would be the pianist. Different chords become the various cell types, and all the notes have to be played perfectly to produce a healthy human being.

This passage about new discoveries that concern the Broca's area (the part of the brain that is linked to production of language), appeared in Science Daily today:

The first evidence that parts of the brain may correspond to parts of the the mind was the discovery that patients with damage to Broca's area were unable to talk but could still think. In the 150 years since this discovery, progress in understanding what precisely Broca's area contributes to language has been disappointing," said principal investigator Eric Halgren, PhD, professor in the UCSD Department of Radiology. "These [new] results suggest that Broca's area actually consists of several overlapping parts, performing distinct computational steps in a tightly timed choreography, a dance that may simply have been undetectable due to the level of resolution of previous methods.

The body is the music; the mind is the dance. Don't stop the dance:

Yes. $5 (before 11pm), doors at 9pm, Chop Suey, Colby B., F.I.T.S., fags, fags, FAGS...TONIGHT!

Little Boots! Meet America.

America! Little Boots.

It's the final night of an all sold-out U.S. tour, which must be a bit flattering considering she's never done one here before and Hands, her Top Five debut, doesn't yet have a domestic release.

San Francisco's The Independent, formerly the Justice League, is almost the perfect size. Like Neumo's without the balcony. Onstage, there are banks of synthesizers and free-standing lights, with a tenorion attached to a microphone stand, flanking the front, squiggling away like HAL at a gay disco.

It starts with "Meddle," the song that made us a fan. Little Boots, a.k.a. Victoria Hesketh, is already smiling, blond hair tied back, decked out in a gold & silver space-gown and a hand-sized stylophone dangling down from her neck, all glamouflage, and she wiggles to the beat, singing, "She's a mixed-up girl, in a mixed-up world" as she presses gizmos and things that sound like pianos.

"Earthquake". Bang!

"Click". Bang!

"Mathematics," "Remedy," "Love Kills".

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The lights go rainbow and we get to hear nearly everything she's ever done.

Little Boots has never been entirely comfortable with an audience. The way she dances, the way she moves her arms — slow, performance-arts style — she comes across both rough and ready-made, like an adolescent version of herself practicing moves in front of an imagined audience, a bedroom popstar, and it's this innocent, unfinished charisma, upended by the most modern chart album of the year, that's reassuring and ridiculously lovely to watch.

Tonight's stage isn't as elaborate as some of her others. We miss the full-on starship triangles and unicorns. But the live experience of the ecstatic spectacle of, say, single "New In Town" or the long-road Giorgio Moroder electro-mirage of "Stuck On Repeat" make up for it in a pinch.

Well done, Victoria.

Pop's geography is lucky to have you.

Have you met Seattle?

"Earthquake [Yes Giantess Remix]"

Photos by belTRON and Arsie Says.

Tonight is the sad, sweet end of all that, and Fridays at Re-Bar henceforward shall be sadly Rizless. Riz-free. Sans-The Riz. He’s going off to do other things. His new husband maybe. Who knows.

A tragedy!

Come tonight, then, to Re-Bar, and mourn with me. It’s going to be packed. There’s a $7 cover, spinning begins circa 10 PM, apparently right after Garfunkle and Oats. At Re-Bar (1114 Howell).

Also!

Sometimes people like to drink and dance, sometimes they like to drink and cry, sometimes they like to drink and sit on their butts and watch stuff. Hilarious stuff! And if you enjoy some nice sitting down, and drinking, and watching funny stuff, Open Circle Theatre is a very good place to be late, late, LATE tonight too (and/or tomorrow), because there’s a cash bar, and a FUNNY SHOW.

It’s a revue/reworking of Growing Pains, the horrible 80s sitcom that wasn’t funny at all, really, except maybe ironically, and that produced the brain-dead reborn x-tian freak that is Kirk Cameron. A bunch of boys in dresses (and others) will be resurrecting it live, onstage, for your ironic and most drinky-drinky pleasure, and making it actually, you know, funny. (Staring Gary Zinter of Bus Stop fame!) They say it is “not to be missed”, and I’m inclined to agree. Tickets are also $7 at the door, show starts at 11 PM, OCT is at 2222 2nd Ave (quite impossible to forget), tonight and tomorrow. And since we’re both doing Riz’s goodbye thingy tonight, I’ll see you there tomorrow night. Okay? Okay.

Tonight!

First, the endless, grand-scale Manchester acid house moment that is 1988's "Wrote For Luck" by the Happy Mondays.

In the quietest video rip ever.

And then, only a year later, the showbiz anti-religion industrial of "Blood Money" by the also-now-reunited Nitzer Ebb.

Now, besides the quality of the clips and the vast gulf between the vocal styles and musical p.o.v., there's something about the long, loping core foundations of both of these songs that sound remarkably similar, particularly in their original studio versions. We can't explain it. The casual "Wrote For Luck" rhythm, the quintessential baggy beat, shows up in the middle of Nitzer Ebb's 1989 album Belief for no obvious reason at all.

Let's rationalize!

While the Happy Mondays and Nitzer Ebb recorded these songs around the same time, the influence might not be entirely 100% random. Erasure's Vince Clarke, at one point, produced both bands, the two groups each had large, late '80s live followings in their native England where there was sure to be some crossover, other writers have personally linked them in their memories, and clips around the time show that even Nitzer Ebb wasn't immune to at least the generational fashion of the Manchester scene.

Yeah?

It's an interesting connection, in any case, and unlikely to have been intentional, but ta-dah!

We enjoy it and will now file it away like this in our musical flow-chart brain.

On July 31, Kanye stopped by Why Won't You Let Me Be Be Great!!! at PS 122, a performance-art tribute to 808s & Heartbreak by Neal Medlyn and Brendan Kennedy. But superfreak Ann Liv Young apparently stole the show.

Kanye is sitting third row center, wearing a purple jacket and a barfy expression.

(NSFW.)

Originally posted to Slog, but needed to be shared with Line Out in its entirety. Thanks to Slog tipper Lane.

Why is Portland 10 degrees hotter at all times? While Seattle seemed temperate on friday afternoon, I arrived in PDX to what felt like sweltering weather. Maybe it was just the long drive (5 1/2 hours - Thanks Tacoma traffic!) in the sun, but all I wanted to do when I arrived was sleep.

It was getting late, and hungry, with need of a shower, I decided to press on and just have dinner and some caffeine later.

The reason for the trip was the one and only Horse Meat Disco, DJ's Jim Stanton and James Hillard.

The thing that makes Horse Meat Disco so fucking special and amazing is the fact that even though it started out in a small boozy leather bar in London, somehow the kids heard the call! Somehow the people recognized quality over laziness, intelligence over vapidity, hard work over phoning-it-in.

That's what Horse Meat Disco gave Portland. Reading the crowd from early in the night (they played 4 hours), Jim and James took us all on a journey from funky strutting slow-groove disco to Hi-NRG early 90's house, then back to a melange of some of the most creative Disco and Post Disco dance music of the 70's and 80's. There were tracks that had people wondering if they were contemporary or vintage.

The best part?!?! The kids danced. ...And danced. It was if the magic of the legendary glory days of Disco and House were being sent out via the good vibes of the music. At one point the crowd started screaming in unison to one of the songs, and early house track. The room went dark and a giant laser mirror ball effect (I have never seen a light like this in a club before) sent the energy zapping out the front door. People came piling into the bar for a serious fucking workout.

People you assumed would hate disco were dancing and singing and bumping along on Horse Meat's ride. It was totally fucking fun.

When Horse Meat Disco is done with this tour, promoting their new mix CD, they head back to London, to the same small boozy sleazy little gay leather bar, where the disciples will come, some to play (guest at the night have ranged from James Murphy, Prins Thomas, Lady Miss Kier, Idjut Boys to name a few), but most to dance.

More pics (including some dude from Seattle) after the jump.

More tour news!

Thanks, Chris B., for alerting us to what we should've already known for a long time.

Kylie Minogue has announced a short series of U.S. shows. The first ones ever, apparently.

Nice-sized venues, too.

Except, Kylie?

Ms. Working On A Follow-Up To The Best Album Of Your Career.

What's wrong with Seattle?

Wed 09/30/09 Oakland, CA Fox Theater
Thu 10/01/09 Oakland, CA Fox Theater
Sat 10/03/09 Las Vegas, NV Pearl Concert Theater
Sun 10/04/09 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl
Wed 10/07/09 Chicago, IL Congress Theater
Fri 10/09/09 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
Sun 10/11/09 New York, NY Hammerstein Ballroom
Mon 10/12/09 New York, NY Hammerstein Ballroom
Tue 10/13/09 New York, NY Hammerstein Ballroom

Is it our hair?

Everybody's favorite contemporary dance hub, Velocity Dance Center, is a Capitol Hill institution. Currently housed in the Oddfellows building but soon to have new digs at 1621 12th Ave, Velocity is the kind of place where you can: A) watch new work by locally- and nationally- emerging choreographers, B) take a ballet class accompanied by live cello, C) try your hand at breakdancing with internationally known B-boy (and Massive Monkee) Jeromeskee...

... and now D) knock boots at an actual, honest-to-God square dance that will directly benefit Velocity's Capital Campaign. Live music, performances and "country comfort food" will round out the night. No square dance experience is required. Yee haw!

Take that, going-to-split rumor villains!

As a debut to the girls' seventh full-length album, it sounds —zzz! — American.

The group's just signed on to Jay-Z's label and apparently been working in Los Angeles with producers of Beyoncé, Lady GaGa, and Rihanna, so it's not a whole shock.

THX-like intro? Whoosh. Right Said Fred bits? Plop. It doesn't recall a lot like other Sugababes singles, apart from maybe 2002's Richard X-produced "Freak Like Me," a song we hated. And yet "Get Sexy" only offers more ambivalent feelings.

Which isn't particularly a pop ideal.

The more Sugababes try to sound different, really, the more they start to sound like everyone else.

Is it possible to be loud and confident but unconvincing?

It's brought to you by those beautiful queers that brought to you things like Hot Mess and so very much more, and it's a new thing, and you should check it out. DJs LA Kendall and Mathematix will be spinning. Drink specials, of course. $5 at the door.

Go. Have fun for me. I can't muster the emotional strength to leave the house just now...hee, HEE! OW!

The War Room (722 East Pike), doors at 9pm, tonight!

Damn, I'm proud to be a Americun!

TONIGHT!

Confidential to pissed off residents: It was only midnight, lasted for no more than 15 minutes, and was Saturday night during Pride. Get over it.

Confidential to pissed off queers: Cops brutalizing unarmed black men in Oakland is fucked up. Cops killing protesters fighting for a sliver of democracy in the streets of Tehran is fucked up. Cops busting a street dance party is not "SO FUCKED UP!" Get over it.

Tonight! Chop Suey! $5 before 11PM! (Come early—she's gonna fill up fast!)

Where does all the time go? Where will all the FAGS go? I ask you.

When:
Friday, June 19, 2009

Where:
The War Room
722 East pike Street
Seattle
98121

Description:
"Au Revoir!"
Qulture Qreative and Hitgirl-Relaunch say goodbye! The Final HotMess Friday June 19th.

After 3+ years of bringing some of the best queer talent this city has ever seen including; Avenue D, Qboy, Amanda Lepore, Team Gina, Jackie Beat, Cazwell, Lady Tigra, Ger Ber jones, Princess Superstar and Dirty Sanchez (just to name a few) is saying Thank You and Good Night

She was far too young and beautiful to die…

SOON!

More photos after the jump

Little Boots!

We didn't forget.

Here's "New In Town".

The first, proper, video-ready single.

If you cover one eye, it features a fabulous blossoming English popstar patronizing poor people with arch synchronized shopping-cart routines and hip-hop parodies, and who has always sounded effortlessly sophisticated and beautiful, but, until now, never who-gives-a-fuck fun.

If you cover the other, it's a sympathetic and reality-bending look into the mind of a schizophrenic bag-lady who filters her hopeless world of grief and madness through hallucinations of celebrity, magic, and dance-dance-dance.

If you cover both with 3-D glasses, you'll look stupid.

[Free Album Mini-Mix]

(sounds like this)

photos by Matt Hickey, more after the jump