C-leb and A-bro this past halloween party weekend

It was Saturday night and my friends and I were bar hopping in fremont dressed up in our halloween finest. Did I mention is was my birthday too??  I wasn’t really planning on checking out any music but when we hit up the hi-dive my ears perked up to something I really liked! It was a very surreal moment … spiderman, edward fork & whisk-hands, green wigged aliens and many more characters dancing to the electronica/house sounds of C-leb and A-bro looking very maqueradesque in their shiny shirts, black vests and black eye masks. Their sound fit the moment: edgy and energetic with a touch of dark to it. Perfect for the halloween bash and getting me and my friends out on the dance floor. They’ll be playing this upcoming weekend November, 3 2007 at Necropolis Arthaven Day of the Dead event where I’m sure there will be more good music (and art too), costumes and ghoulish-ness to be had.

De La Soul this Thursday at Neumo’s

De La for ten bucks? At Neumo’s? Dang. Even if it is co-sponsored by Red Bull, and they aren’t supporting a new album, it’s ten bucks and local. 

Kinski @ COMET Friday Nov 23rd

KINSKI, THE HACKS, SEX VID play the teeny tiny Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill. This is a show not to be missed. Kinski is gunna blow the fuckin windows out of the place!

CD Review and CD Release: Half Acre Day (Nov 1st @ Nectar)

The CD! Local Seattle Band, Half Acre Day, releasing Fourteen Trips Around the Sun avail Nov 13th

Right off the bat, Anemone, the first cut off Fourteen Trips Around the Sun, digs its nails into you like a wildcat. It reminded me of an epic Weezer ballad. Slowly sneaking through it’s first couple light and poppy measures and them BAM it’s all over you and you’re hooked into looping it over and over on repeat. The rest of the album follows this first song up with concise, well written pop songs. Some psych-pop, some indie, and it becomes obvious that this band’s members not only play along, but all have a hand in creating and forming each piece. Fourteen Trips Around the Sun is a disc that can be listened all the way through from first to last. A rarity in CDs today.

Free Storm Mind Clearance (Everything Must Go!)

Neil Young once sang “Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars/But I hate them worse then lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars” and Waylon Jennings spins out psych-country-soul jams with force’n'acoustic guitars and pedal steels wrap around like some sort of musical maypole sitting along drunk reminiscing on “Memories of You and I.” Tibet does see why Caeser is burning — maybe then thus the secrecy and solitude and mystery and insistince on plethora. Weighing over it all, if anything ever gets you down go to the Grateful Dead and listen “Bertha don’t you come around here no more!”

NWMB Singles of the Week™ Yeasayer, Cribs

Stuff I’ve been digging:

Yeasayer’s 2080 [free Flash hi-qual stream]

Crib’s Men’s Needs [free Flash hi-qual stream]

DISCS TO DIG: Neil Young, Climax Golden Twins, Parliament

NEIL YOUNG ::: Chrome Dreams II (Reprise)

After spending the 21st century hopping through various bull-headed experiments and genre exercises, Neil comes up with his first album that sounds like a classic Neil Young album. Forget the hype around it’s relation to Chrome Dreams, the aborted album from 1977, and think about it as Freedom II — a return to the style of Freedom, his 1989 “comeback” after a similar decade of inscrutable musical endeavors. Despite it’s similarities to Freedom and the eclectic hodgepodge of bonafide winners (After the Gold Rush, American Stars’n'Bars, Rust Never Sleeps), Chrome Dreams II isn’t much of a record. “Beautiful Bluebird” could have appeared on 2000’s Silver and Gold (but with a bit more bite). “Boxcar” is a banjo-driven affair with some crazy old man lyrics (“I’m like a black man/I’m like a white man/Maybe a red man/I don’t know” — really?). It then veers into the 18 minute plus leftover from 1988’s This Note’s For You (his final ’80s genre exercise — that time around to big band R&B). No wonder it didn’t make it on because it bears no similarity to the dark menace of the albums quieter tracks or the failed pomp of the bigger numbers.

X-Ray Eyes CD Release at Croc Nov 17th

Local rockers, X-Ray Eyes are releasing their sophomore album Social Splash on Hercules Records, and celebrating with a CD release party at The Crocodile Cafe, on Saturday, Nov 17th.

You can check out some tracks, both the new and old on their site here

LIVE MUSIC IN SEATTLE THIS WEEK

Folks, this is a big one…

Monday, 10/22
Tost (Fremont)
513 N 36th

Micheal Shrieve +guests ::: $5 ::: cheesy one but if you’ve heard his 10 minute drum solo on Santana’s 1974 Japanese only live album “Lotus” it makes it worth it. I’m pretty sure the trumpet player is from Downtown Apostles who I saw last weekend and he’s a psyched super jazz trumpeter dude.

Wednesday, 10/24
608 Club (Ballard)
608 NW 65th
(E-Sphere’s pad)

Post Harbor and Born Anchors @ Comet Fri 10/20

This ain’t no sea shanty show.

The Comet Tavern on Capitol hill is quickly becoming my favorite spot to catch local music. Just the other night when I was immersed in the audio ocean that is JUSTICE, I stepped outside for a breath and found myself wandering over from Neumos to the Comet just to have a listen to the band playing in there. It’s a small, seedy, cash-only venue with decades of signatures and graffiti carved into the tables and honestly the PERFECT place to see some local rock.

If you haven’t been, this Sat night Oct 20th could be a good one to bust your cherry. Local bands Post Harbor and Born Anchors play with Soft Lights and You May Die in the Desert.

Post Harbor is generally referred to as having a sound akin to Sunny Day Real Estate. There has been a lot of positive press about their album and their recent touring. From what what I’ve heard, I’d have to agree on all counts.

http://www.myspace.com/postharbor

Born Anchors formed in March this year and have already had the cohesive vision put out an EP. Their sound is heavy and tight and bound to make thewalls of the Comet ring. Check them out.

http://www.myspace.com/bornanchors

QOTSA Return to Portland and Seattle

The Duluth/Era Vulgaris tour keeps rocking along:
17 December at the Roseland Theater down there in the 503.
18 December (Tuesday’s alright for rock n’ roll) at the Paramount

Pre-sale begins today at 10AM.

Let me nip this in the bud: Dean Ween was affiliated with the band for the album Songs for the Deaf.

Check Out My Shiny New WEEEN!!!!

Hey There Fancy Pants!

Lots of you know that Ween is releasing a new album on the 23rd of Oct. titled La Cucaracha. For those of you who got the sneak peak with the Friends EP, you know that La Cucaracha will not disappoint. It’s Awesome Sound is unclassifiable, unorthodoxed, unapologetic, and unbelievable. If’n you haven’t heard the Friends EP, I’ll do you one better and be your Johnny on the Spot. A Little Birdy told me that you can preview the ENTIRE La Cucaracha on Ween’s MySpace Page

So all you Pretty Girls and Fat Boys get to listening so you can sing along through your Mutilated Lips at the Paramount on Nov 13 when Gene and Dean come to town.

If you don’t love the Ween, well you can just Piss up a rope.

VIVA Boognish!!!

Death Cab Member Chris Walla: Music Terrorist

I just heard about this on KEXP, and it sent me scurrying for Google to find out, well, WTF?!

From Chris Walla’s blog:

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. Mostly it’s because I keep forgetting how to log in. My solo record is coming along nicely, despite the fact that the master drive was confiscated by US Homeland Security at the border (much of the record was recorded between Vancouver and Victoria, BC). I’m told it’s at ‘computer forensics in Quantico’ but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what that means in any real way; you see, there’s exactly no customer service element to our federal government.

My bolds. Note to US government: please drop the fucking paranoia. Please.

It’s not a Kafka novel, and I’m not a prisoner at Guantanamo. My life isn’t so bad. But still, this situation is a concrete and real reminder of what fuels the world we live in: It’s fear and mistrust and suspicion. And oil.

As this country is slowly drained of talent, both technical and artistic, we’re left with nothing save the lonely blue glow of television at night.

Justice is Served!

With 18 Marshall Stacks, 2 powermacs, a friggen PILE of electronic noisemakers and enough french cigarertte smoke to mask the fog machine,  Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay of JUSTICE served it up huge at Neumos Fiday night. Universally compared to Daft Punk, tho I thought it much heavier – Justice transformed the floor of Neumos into a seething, pulsing maching with relentless beats and the beconing icon from their new album “cross”. I’ve never seen the place so packed, nor have i seen people so glad to have it that full. The crown that usually peters out about 3/4 back at a show was solid straight to the sound board in the back

Props to the band for their energy, and props to the Seattle crowd for responding by dancin their asses.

Check out Justice on their MySpace Page HERE

Or visit http://www.myspace.com/etjusticepourtous

Live Music in Seattle – a week back and tonight…

Read any national publication, our local press, or tap into the non-existent “collective (un)conscious” and you quickly learn that Seattle is apparantely a live music mecca. I wouldn’t deny this, but for the most part the music supported by these claims doesn’t quite appeal to me, so I end up seeing a bunch of great live shows (many in the last week) which constitute almost no press…or some…or something…

Last Friday @ the Blue Moon

(Author’s note — I booked this gig and my band, Wah Wah Exit Wound, played it…full disclosure and such) What’s great about shows at the Blue Moon? They’re free, folks are friendly, sounds good, and there’s often sweet bands. Fortress of Victory opened the set with some killer crust-Sabbath heavy duo noodlings. Some folks were baffled by the band due, what I can only assume are musical prejudices toward “heavier” elements, but one look at the joy in the faces of show attendees and the metalheads jovially attacking each other next to the water cooler verify that Fortress of Victory were fucking awesome.

“The second guitar was a damn fine idea as this was not only loud, but some most excellent balls to the wall, kick you in the ass, beat you down, and make you gasp in awe rock music.”

www.inrainbows.com

This morning I heard about the new Radiohead record being available for download at a you-name-it price.
Immediately, I pointed my browser to radiohead.com but it took me some time to learn that inrainbows.com was the URL where the album could be retrieved, as long as you aren’t running Safari. Ugh.
I am 0:38 into “Videotape”, the final track. A(nother) great record from Jonny, Thom and company. Well worth the five quid I offered.

Nevermind the record industry. So if you are an artist and you have significant notoriety, it seems your reliance upon the traditional structure of the business has been compromised in your favor.
Go Directly to the Internet. Collect $200.

It’s likely that Trent Reznor is next to release an online record now that he has been released from Interscope. Pearl Jam is one album into an independent career; perhaps they could pull it off. Certainly the success of their live shows being available for download mere hours after show (sans artwork and liner notes) is evidence that the demand is there. Nowadays, being a music consumer requires a personal computer as much as money and headphones, so it’s about time that method of dissemination is utilized more fully.

Blakes @ LoFi Photos

The Blakes played Seattle’s LoFi on Thursday to kick off their tour to support their new self-titled album. They rocked, and I think they’re going to go big, soon. More on the Blakes later this week!

>>> Blakes photos <<<

FRIDAY 10/5 (TONIGHT!) @ the Blue Moon

WAH WAH EXIT WOUND — psych-prog for massive consumption

CURIOUS MYSTERY — autoharp, songs, chanteuse, banjo, prepared guitar, drums, bass

FORTRESS OF VICTORY — super destructo duo

This show is free and qualifies for all the idioms Seattleites tend to seek out in music and it is quite varied.  Something for everyone.  Except hip-hop.  Somehow we left that out.  Also, it’s free.

COme drink away the fact that political lying is held up by the Supreme Court in our state!