Live Music Seattle: 2013

Monday, November 25, 2013

Venue Guide

An on-the-street walking tour of Seattle for out of town bands-- where to play, what to expect, where to park the band van, where to get a drink and a bite to eat. You know: the nuts and bolts of any band's life when they roll into a strange town and need to figure out what to do and where to be.

Friday, November 15, 2013

7 Year Old Blind Girl

The Kraken

10/05/13

Who:

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A little while back, talking with a recent immigrant to Seattle outside the Kraken, he asked me about punk bands in town-- I immediately told him to check out 7 Year Old Blind Girl, and a random person walking by jumped in: "That's the best band in Seattle, right there." You might be able to find their discs on eBay, but Blind Girl doesn't have an online store, you can't download their music on Bandcamp, and they're not heralded by the local music press... 7 Year Old Blind Girl are amazing, but you've got to go see them find that out. My camera is a poor, poor substitute-- you need to go to a show.

7 Year Old Blind Girl on Facebook

Monday, September 30, 2013

Lungs

The Highline

08/11/2013

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The last show we played before the break with with Minneapolis' Lungs, who play massive, ever-evolving metal compositions that progress from oppressive doom to harmonized guitar melodies to gossamer atmosphere. It was fantastic to join them for the Seattle stop on their tour at The Highline, with Christdriver and Coughin' Nails, and they played an amazing set.

Lungs on Bandcamp

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Odds n Ends

Aside

Last one before heading out to the desert, so this one's pretty low-impact. Just a few basic survival tips and tricks for bands and musicians on stage: basic (and easily corrected) mistakes we never needed to make, if we just had this information before we started out.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Tea Cozies

The Rendezvous

08/02/2013

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Finally-- finally!-- I caught up to the Tea Cozies and got to write them a show review. I was able to see them at The Rendezvous with Gang Cult and Charms with a Feldman-themed show for the birthday celebration for one of the Cozies (happy birthday, Brady!). Plenty of my metal or punk friends might not quite get this one, but I've been a huge Tea Cozies fan for many years, and I'm thrilled I got to write this one. Next time I see them, I won't be holding a camera.

Tea Cozies Official Site

Friday, August 2, 2013

Pay to Play

Aside

Raising awareness of the ticket-sales schemes that try to lure young bands into raising hundreds of dollars for lousy shows. Though they all say they are not Pay-to-Play, Afton Music, Gorilla Productions, and the like, want you to turn in ticket money to them before the show starts... paying the company before you play your show. For a comprehensive breakdown, visit NeverPayToPlay.com.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Triple Sixes

Triple Sixes

The Comet

07/07/2013

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Caught The Triple Sixes at the Mia Zapata tribute show (and about half the other bands the played that night) at The Comet, adding some stomping, blasting, out of control punk rock to the mix. They closed out the night, and ended the tribute on a loud, fast, high note.

The Triple Sixes at Facebook

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Recorded, Live

Aside

Get thee to the show! A good album is a good album, no question, but a live album isn't a show. Videos of live albums aren't shows. Live music happening in real time at the full, uncompressed, unprocessed frequency rate and bit depth of real life can't be captured or reproduced... it needs to be seen, heard, experienced.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Thac0

The Kraken

05/31/2013

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Swords, dice, death metal, and To Hit Armor Class Zero... Thac0 headlined a night with Balsa, Greenriver Thrillers, and Medulla Pinata at The Kraken. Thac0 brings the epically heavy with brains and a genuine love of legacy.

Thaco at Bandcamp

Friday, June 21, 2013

Beginnings

Aside

Just the basics...

I remember how we first got on stage, and everyone has to start somewhere. If you don't want to click play: you can find someone to add you to a show (no matter how small) without accepting pay-to-play scams, treat the people who put you on stage well, don't break their stuff, and never, ever cancel.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Sex With Strangers

The Lo Fi

05/24/2013

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Sex With Strangers survived fallen bridges and Seattle bartenders to voyage from Vancouver, B.C. to play the Lo-Fi with Yevtushenko, and deliver some moody, post-punk influenced, vocoder tinged danceable rock.

Sex With Strangers Official Site

Thursday, June 6, 2013

The Mission

Aside

Episode 2... and I'm still figuring my way around this video thing...

Sussing out the mission statement, positive reviews versus negative reviews, and offering a little light to the underexposed.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Burning of I

The Kraken

04/21/2013

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A new review of Burning of I at The Kraken.

Burning of I on Facebook

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Hail Santa on DVD

While I have a SinDios write-up half done (I don't want to finish writing it until I see them again... I write this stuff much better when I still have the show ringing in my ears) and I am contemplating a format change (stay tuned), we do have news from the Seattle metal underground-- this year's Hail Santa is coming out on DVD.

That is a large amount of awesome to fit on one disc. ubik.s on the disc-- we played that show-- and we were in touch with the disc creator about song choices and running times. Turns out, they're putting out the whole thing. The complete sets from Skelator, Phalgeron, ubik., Sarcalogos, The Godbeast, Inebriator, and V.D. are going to be on there.

I can hardly wait.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Never give up

I'm usually thrilled when I see the curtain come down and a band is just genuinely what it is. Those are amazing moments-- usually, it's when everything has gone wrong, and a band is just keeping “the show must go on” with no worry of what's expected of them. I know the band on stage is in an awkward position-- I get that, and I'd hate to be in that spot-- but, as an audience member, I'm always energized by the band whose regular show was shaken up.

That's the kind of show that takes real guts. It's exhilarating.

We played a show once where we were supposed to follow a band that fed sequenced music from a laptop into the PA. They spent 45 minutes trying to get sound out of that laptop... there was almost an hour of dead air between bands... and we offered to go on, because people were walking out of the club. When they finally got the laptop sound sorted, it turned out to be some accents and a double of the lead vocal.

Just an aside: This is the same controversy that's hanging over the Beyonce performance at the inauguration: singing over/along with a previously recorded version of yourself.

That band's singer would not step on stage if pre-recorded vocal tracks weren't being fed through the PA. The rest of the band, for the record, was game-- they would just plug in and play-- but the singer wasn't going to go on without backing tracks.

Anyway, that singer wouldn't do it. And so we went on.

Compare this with the Buckbye show I just saw: they went on minus one member, without amplifiers, and killed it. They went on stage to play a badass show against impossible odds and pulled it off.

Their bassist, Dan (from 7 Year Old Blind Girl), wasn't there-- a missing member is rough for any band to deal with. Beyond that, their van broke down, so the guitar gear wasn't there. Karly played through a Boss distortion pedal, straight into the mains... and had to borrow the cable to get from point A to point B. Buckbye played like nothing was wrong.

Buckbye
(the whole band...
I didn't have a camera at The Kraken
with missing members and equipment)

Because nothing was wrong. They were there, and they were playing a show. Not a word of complaint was uttered because complaining wouldn't benefit anyone: they were there to beat the living hell out of a punk rock show, and, against all odds, that's exactly what they did. They didn't have bass, they didn't even have a guitar amp, and they just pushed as hard as they could to play the best show possible.

For me, that puts things into perspective: anyone would want to curl up and hide in that kind of situation, but I'd like to think I would see it through. Just like Buckbye. The show must go on.

I can't imagine Karly refusing to go on because her per-recorded backing tracks weren't ready, and that's already science fiction: she'd never pre-record her vocals. But still: nearly everything that could impede Buckbye, did. And they played, regardless.

By my measure, all the the oddities within a show going wrong (or possibly going wrong, or kinda sorta going wrong) are part of the human element that make shows exciting, unexpected variables that make the show you expected into something unexpected. The kind of show you brag about having seen...

Compare that to a band who won't go on because there's a weird hum in the guitar amp, cancels, and everyone goes home early.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Wait... what?

The Mars Bar

So this is breaking news... but The Mars Bar is closing its doors tonight, and not opening them again. It's a bit of a shock to everyone (especially the people that work there), and even more remarkable because the weekends of RadGoat Fridays and DaswasupGig's Saturdays have been remarkably successful. Shows well attended, bar doing good business, bands getting paid...

While the details are slow to reveal themselves, keep an eye to the RadGoat page, which is working to keep all of the shows booked throughout January and February alive. The shows aren't going to be cancelled, just relocated
.