See website for showtimes
“Visually
Unlike anything you will ever see.”
ADAMS
written and directed by PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
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Superior Technology - Come see the latest upgrades! CINERAMA
MUSIC p. 7
Touch Me, I’m Sub Pop’s Warehouse Manager p. 7 Mudhoney’s Mark Arm Hurt His Left One Fulfilling Record Store Orders by Dave Segal
Ask a Musicologist p. 8
Why Is That Gotye Song So Catchy? by Jen Graves
Brought to You by Jane’s Addiction p. 11
A Brief History of the Band That Is Responsible for Everything by Adrian Ryan
Listening to the Pharmacy After Having Taken a Pharmacy’s Worth of Drugs p. 12 It’s a Little Discursive, But We Get There Eventually by Brendan Kiley
Cosmo Quiz! p. 14
Are You Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino? Take This Quiz and Find Out! by David Schmader
El Diablo in Disguise p. 15
Robert “El Vez” Lopez and His Journey from Punker to Elvis Impersonator by Derek Erdman
I’m More Than Hair p. 16
An Interview with Skrillex’s Haircut by Trent Moorman & Lindy West
Tony Bennett p. 17 Never Heard of ’Em by Anna Minard
The Fall and Fall of a Great Band p. 18
Why Aren’t Fishbone as Big as Red Hot Chili Peppers? by Charles Mudede
Happiness Is All the Rage p. 19
The Promise Ring and I Finally Meet After Several Years Filled with Boys, Breakups, and Misunderstandings by Megan Seling
The Vaselines Are Back Together p. 20 Now Let’s Get Them Back Together by Emily Nokes
KILLER FASHION P. 21
John Waters
Worn Out by Marti Jonjak
STRANGER BUMBERWORD™
MUSIC PUZZLER p. 22
Expert difficulty crossword by Emily Nokes & Derek Erdman
BOOKS p. 23
Mistakes Were Made
A (Probably Partial) List of Corrigenda for How to Be a Person by Bethany Jean Clement
VISUAL ART p. 25
Meet Christopher Martin Hoff He Painted the City Where You Live by Jen Graves
PERFORMING ARTS p. 27
Face Dances
The Head-Bending Pleasures of Cherdonna and Lou by David Schmader
THEATER p. 27
Fast, Loose Radio Theater Opening the Throttle at Sandbox Radio Live! by Brendan Kiley
COMPLETE SCHEDULE p. 31
Festival Map 35
Music Listings 37
Comedy Listings 48
Visual Art Listings 51
Theater Listings 51
Performing Arts Listings 52
Words & Ideas Listings 53
Film Listings 54
Mudhoney’s Mark Arm Hurt His Left One Fulfilling Record Store Orders
BY DAVE SEGAL
Seeing Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm pulling records from shelves in Sub Pop’s warehouse is akin to finding Iggy Pop at the Jiffy Lube. Really? Arm—one of the catalysts of gr*ng*—has to work a day job? He can’t live off the royalties from “Touch Me I’m Sick”? What kind of world is this?
On record and onstage, Arm sounds like one of the most dissatisfied, cantankerous characters ever to expectorate onto a microphone. But gliding around this warehouse and leaning against this table before a Flatron computer (wait, dude doesn’t even have his own chair?!), processing orders from music retailers worldwide, he exudes a calm, comfortable acceptance of his role in the universe. Dressed in a forestgreen T-shirt emblazoned with no band logos or any design whatsoever and wearing black jeans and sneakers, Sub Pop’s warehouse manager looks at least 15 years younger than his actual 50. He has all of his hair, which still hangs lankly, longly, and blondly from his noggin.
Monday morning.
Arm started working at Sub Pop seven years ago. Before that, he worked at Fantagraphics, where he fulfilled mail orders.
Mudhoney Sun, 6:45–7:45 pm, Fountain Lawn
If you get near Arm, you’ll notice he has the most intense eyes; you feel like if you touched his brow, the radiation from his disdain could incinerate you. But he also possesses one of the broadest smiles I’ve ever seen and frequently laughs like a champ.
Arm is a guitar-thrashing, larynx-shredding icon of Seattle music, so people probably have grandiose ideas about what his life is like. Maybe this article is a demystification.
“You’re going to blow it for all of these people…” Arm warns, printing out another invoice from another record shop on a recent
“Mostly picking comic porn and sending it out to people overnight,”
Arm says. “You think Fantagraphics is all cool underground comics stuff, but at the time I was working there, most of the stuff that was selling was really shitty, gross comic porn.”
Ensconced at Sub Pop now, Mudhoney’s wildest member typically arrives at headquarters about 9:30 a.m. and leaves around 5:30 p.m. “First thing I do is check e-mail,” Arm says, chuckling. “If there are orders, like these [points to invoices on his desk], I pick ’em and fulfill ’em and send ’em out.”
To achieve this, Arm wheels a large yellow plastic bin on a gurney and then pulls LPs and CDs from the many shelves in Sub Pop’s vast warehouse. Today, orders are pouring in for the new King Tuff LP, Postal Service’s Give Up (still!), Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues, Nirvana’s Bleach (still!), Band of Horses’ Cease to Begin (huh?), and Mudhoney’s 1988 debut EP , Superfuzz Bigmuff (the most popular Mudhoney release, along with the “Touch Me I’m Sick” 7-inch).
After Arm removes his haul from the bin, he scatters packing peanuts in a box before
As warehouse manager, Arm must keep Sub Pop and subsidiary label Hardly Art’s huge catalog organized. “It’s kind of messy, but there is a method to where everything is placed. I keep stock on hand, or try to, so we always have enough. Some things, when they’re brand-new and hot, we run out of. It’s usually an issue with manufacturing. We’ve run out of the Beach House record [Bloom] for the second time since it’s come out. The jackets are a difficult job—they glow in the dark or something—so it takes a little while for them to get made.”
That Arm wears a Sport Aid bandage indicates that Sub Pop is thriving. Pulling records and taping boxes ain’t no joke. “I’m going to see a physical therapist tomorrow. It’s from repetitive motion—I assume from [warehouse work], since it bugs me more here than it does when I’m playing guitar. It doesn’t bug me at all when I’m playing guitar. We have insurance. Sub Pop takes really good care of its employees.”
This job consumes a lot of time, and it’s been four years since the last Mudhoney album (The Lucky Ones). It takes longer now to create albums because everybody has other responsibilities. Bassist Guy Maddison, for example, is a stat nurse at Harborview, and guitarist Steve Turner lives in Portland, where he deals records, so Mudhoney don’t practice much.
“We just got back from Australia,” Arm says, “so we’re probably not gonna practice till next week. We have a bunch of shit to do, because we have Bumbershoot coming up and then right after that we’re going into the studio for three days. We have a couple of new songs that we haven’t worked on.”
Despite the long gap between releases, Sub Pop hasn’t pressured the band to make another album. “But there’s pressure from us, because it’s been fucking too long,” Arm says, laughing. “We’ve put down tons and tons of riffs over the last two years. The main sticking point is me coming up with lyrics I’m happy with. The other one is getting together to work on our ideas—but that’s kind of the easy part once Steve gets into town.”
placing the merchandise in a box with the care of a mother putting her offspring in a crib. He then tosses more packing peanuts over the merch like a chef sprinkling spices into a pot. His technique is impeccable. Finally, he grabs a tape gun and seals the box with a few noisy flourishes and then applies the UPS address sticker. Another Sub Pop package is ready to ship to another satisfied customer.
“I mostly send stuff to international distributors and to record stores that have direct accounts with us,” Arm says. “Cassidy [Gonzales] over here does mail order. He also fills in for me when I’m gone. He actually knows more about how the warehouse runs than I do because he knows all these different jobs, whereas I only know one.”
It seems like by now, Arm should be relaxing in a mansion, watching rare krautrock videos on a 72-by-48-inch screen. But here he is, schlepping lesser mortals’ records. Maybe I have a misguided idea of Mudhoney’s place in the music business. “We’re kind of outside of the business at this point. It was weird when we were in a situation where we could live off of music. We came from early ’80s American hardcore. The idea that you make money off of this shit was hard to imag-
If you get near Arm, you’ll notice he has the most intense eyes; if you touched his brow, the radiation from his disdain could incinerate you.
So how’s business? We hear so many stories about the music industry being on its deathbed.
“It’s good,” Arm says. “It took a big hit in 2008. There were stores that looked like they might not survive, like Amoeba’s stores in San Francisco and LA. They were huge accounts, and they would always get enormous amounts of stuff. And all of a sudden, they were barely ordering anything. Then they changed their terms on how they paid for things. But they’re back up to their previous standards at this point, so that’s encouraging.
“What’s weird is there are stores like CD Alley that now mostly order vinyl. That’s been a major shift over the last several years.”
ine. You were stoked if you made $100 for a show—if you didn’t lose all the money you’d just sunk into renting the hall.”
Come on, Mark. Do you really have to work a day job? “Oh yeah. I might not have to if we toured more, but that’s an impossibility with people’s families. At this point, I don’t really want to be gone for half a year. I like hanging out with my wife and dogs and going surfing when I can. I’m not a great surfer, so I’m not looking for the killer, insane waves. I’m looking for waves I can ride. I started surfing five or six years ago. Falling while skateboarding hurts too much at my age.”
Huh. Mark Arm surfs. But he still doesn’t have his own chair.
518 East Pike St. thefeedbagonline.com 206 322 5413 Open Mon-Sat: 10am-9pm, Sun: 10am-6pm
BY JEN GRAVES
hat song. It is an auditory virus. A sonic(k) sickness. It keeps playing in the mind even when the mind goes into a soundproof chamber and shoves the mind’s fingers into the
mind’s ears and climbs under the mind’s covers and tries, tries, to replace it with any other melody that ever existed. This year’s viral song is “Somebody That I Used to Know,” written and recorded in 2011 in Australia by Belgian Australian singer-songwriter Gotye* (and featuring New Zealand female vocalist Kimbra) and unleashed upon the United States at the dawn of 2012.
Gotye Sat, 3:15–4:30 pm, KeyArena
no connection between what is aesthetically good or critically good and popular, and I mean that literally: If a song is popular, that does not mean it’s good, and it does not mean it’s bad. I think people who try to make a connection are doing wishful thinking.
JG: So you didn’t fall victim to “Somebody That I Used to Know.” What are songs you do think are insanely catchy?
LS: Yes. The singer sings very much the same all the way through except for it gets louder. Affectless singing is very popular these days, and I don’t know why.
JG: To me it sounds like Sting. He’s kind of throwing his voice but not in a way that’s emotional or that suggests he’s losing control at all; it’s stone-faced. What is that tinkling instrument? Is it just a xylophone?
LS: Yes. Or it has the feeling of a high mallet instrument, like a xylophone. But it could be synthesized.
To get to the bottom of why this song is so damnably catchy, we contacted an expert in 20th-century music and American music: Larry Starr has been teaching musicology at the University of Washington since 1977. We asked him to listen and dissect. We began our conversation by e-mail, then switched to phone.
Larry Starr: Dear Jen, I am going to disappoint you severely, I fear. If there is anything at all noteworthy about this song from a musical point of view, it certainly escapes me. I found it completely predictable from the first few seconds, and not at all memorable. It’s “cute” and “unobjectionable.” The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and formal aspects are all negligible, and not at all original. The singing is impersonal and utterly undistinguished.
Jen Graves: Dear Larry, no, this is great. Maybe what makes it boring is what makes it interesting for our purposes. Why is it predictable to you?
“If there is anything at all noteworthy about this song, it certainly escapes me.”
LS (now by phone): I had a very, very smart student who once said, “If you look at anything long enough, it can become interesting.” [Laughs] But I also do not want to be one of these people who just sets myself up as someone who rejects all pop music. Still… okay. It’s based on a rhythmic ostinato that repeats over and over.
JG: Ostinato [like the word “obstinate” and in fact taken from the Italian word for “stubborn”] being a repeated pattern underpinning a piece of music, as in Ravel’s Bolero LS: Right. This one is a flat 7-1, which is the form of blues-related ostinatos all the way back in the history of blues. So it’s a cliché. It’s the same one as in “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the M.G.s, and the opening of Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say,” but they use it much more interestingly.
JG: The sample is taken from Luiz Bonfá’s 1967 song “Seville” on his record Luiz Bonfá Plays Great Songs. Can you explain what “flat 7-1” means?
LS: It’s a flat seventh scale degree, and 1 is the tonic, or the keynote. So if the piece were in C—and I don’t have perfect pitch, so I don’t know what key it’s in [later research reveals D minor]—the emphasis would be from C to B-flat and back up to C.
It’s really important to note that there is
LS: “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys and “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles are two extraordinarily sophisticated songs that hap-
pen to be catchy. When I heard the first 10 seconds of this [Gotye] song, I essentially knew what was going to happen and there were no surprises. These other songs have surprises, but the songs stick. In “Eleanor Rigby,” it begins in a chord that’s not the tonic: E minor is the central chord of the piece, but it starts on C major. There’s an intro, then the verses/choruses, then the intro comes back. The most amazing thing is that the intro is sung in counterpoint as a concluding gesture, making the end a culmination rather than just a repetition.
JG: It’s true that I can’t remember how that Gotye song ends. I have no memory of its ending. In my mind, it goes on and on in the same way forever. You also said Gotye’s singing was affectless.
JG: What about the lyrics? At first, you think, “This poor guy. He’s so sad. She just left him. She was so cold.” But then when she starts singing, you realize he was a jerk. He was hung up on somebody that he used to know. Whiner!
LS: If you want to hear what somebody else can do with the same material, look at Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
JG: Thanks for enduring this song, Larry.
LS: I listened to it twice!
JG: You are the best.
*The man’s real name is Wouter De Backer. Wikipedia says, “The name ‘Gotye’—goatee-yay (!)—is derived from ‘Gauthier,’ the French equivalent of ‘Walter’ or ‘Wouter.’” All right, then.
WITH THE SEATTLE SYMPHON Y
Wednesday, September 12, at 7:30pm
Grammy Award-winning folk duo Indigo Girls make their first ever Seattle Symphony appearance performing selections from their latest album, Beauty Queen Sister, as well as favorite hits.
Monday, October 1, at 7:30pm
Affectionately referred to by Elton John as “the greatest songwriter on the planet” and praised by The New York Times for his “genuine originality,” Rufus Wainwright has established himself as one of the great male vocalists and songwriters of his generation.
Performance does not include the Seattle Symphony.
Friday, October 26, at 8pm
Hear brand-new symphonic compositions inspired by Alice in Chains, Blue Scholars and Yes. PLUS! Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs and Alan White of Yes perform with the Orchestra.
Sponsored by Cell Therapeutics, Inc. and the National Endowment for the Arts.
WITH THE SEATTLE SYMPHONY
Friday, November 23, at 8pm Saturday, November 24, at 8pm Sunday, November 25, at 8pm
THIRD DATE <<< JUST ADDED
Roots-driven singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile returns to Benaroya Hall to perform her bestloved hits accompanied by the Seattle Symphony, plus solo selections with her band.
BY ADRIAN RYAN
Jane’s Addiction was entirely responsible for the Nirvana era, which was, in turn, entirely responsible for Seattle. Therefore we, being Seattle, are obviously relieved as all hell to host them
as headliners for our annual little “Bumbershoot” thingy this year because without them, we wouldn’t even exist. (And THAT’S why they’re billed even higher than Skrillex!) Let that sink in for a moment.
The band was born long ago in LA, amid the smacked-out prostitutes and Gregg Araki films of the very late and still far too Reagany ’80s. Things were about to get very Bushy. Filled with dark fire, poetry, and unmanageable hair, four suspiciously talented and skinny young musicians who can’t really fucking stand each other to this day were brought together by the hand of fate and two dreams: to rise like an unwashed alternarock sex-tsunami and drown a Cosby-sweatered world in their post-metal, sweaty-balled, leather-panted, jaded suburban garage punk howl, and to make at least two album covers with boobies on them. And so they did, and in so doing, captured the nascent zeitgeist of a time that’s been called, by the Gynecological Association of America and others, “the ’90s”—or at the least they wrestled the zeitgeist to the ground and fluffed its dirty pillows. MTV was a real thing then.
it outside, boys!)
Jane’s Addiction Sat, 9:30–11 pm, KeyArena
Eric Avery, Dave Sitek, a guy from Guns N’ Roses, Flea, the kitchen sink, Marie Antoinette’s drunken poodle’s drunkle—everybody’s been in Jane’s Addiction, off and on, and some still are. Jane’s Addiction is as famous for its revolving door as it is for that one song that goes, “Jane says! Jane says!” over and over, and just how the hell was I supposed to know what Jane says anyway? I was listening to Björk all the time. Jane’s Addiction’s first album’s cover had Siamese booby ladies with fire heads on it. The album itself received wide critical acclaim, except for a devastating two-star review from Da Peace Dogg at Amazon.com, who writes: “I find these tunes kind
I have no intention of bringing up Kurt Cobain, by the way. We’re not talking about Kurt Cobain. I know you’re anticipating it. You can just stop it right now.
Dave Navarro is definitely the most famous member of Jane’s Addiction, except, of course, Jane, who is not really real. But Perry Farrell is also the most famous member of Jane’s Addiction, so I’ll just let the three of them duke it out in private. What it’s important to understand here is that Dave Navarro is not Tommy Lee (or Criss Angel, believe it or not—or even Cher!), and Perry Farrell is definitely not that guy from Oasis (I think…). There’s also an active member of Jane’s Addiction named “Chris Chaney” about whom we know nothing.
Dave Navarro has often been described as “a guitarist.” But he will definitely be forever most renowned as the hero who slapped the guyliner and manscara out of Robert Smith’s big fairy hands and made it totally okay to be all witchy and Nefertiti-like and married to Carmen Electra sometimes for guys who play guitars. Perry Farrell, equally forward-thinking, dared to totally rock a “Burning Man dude who is not at Burning Man just now but probably got back recently and is still a little dizzy” look before Burning Man dudes were even invented. (They’re called “Burnies”! I’m cool! I know things!) Mr. Farrell is also the recipient, along with the rest of the band, of the “Godlike Genius Award for Extraordinary Services to Music,” which didn’t help his great big head one bit, I can tell you. Shoot.
In April of 1989, Jane’s Addiction played the Moore Theater right here in Seattle (it was nice then!), and Perry said, “Who’s gonna be the first to shoot President Bush?
I guess I’ll have to do it.” In September of 1991, he did a live concert nude. So Perry Farrell is clearly the coolest band member (PERIOD!), and my personal favorite. (Take
JANE’S ADDICTION Re-re-re-reunion.
of dull and screechy, due to Jane’s voice.” But that dude’s a total dick, so whatever.
It must also be noted that Jane’s Addiction invented Lilith Fair, several subsequent Woodstock™s, and $7 bottled water by inventing Lollapalooza first. Lollapalooza brought together every whiny, grungy, screamy, alt-rock sex god of the age. It was such a success that Jane’s Addiction immediately broke up forever. Then they got back together. Then they broke up again. Then got back together! Like an unkillable thing reanimated again and again by 107.7 The End, Jane’s Addiction has died and risen on several notable occasions, which usually coincide with Lollapalooza (which will also never die). Frankly, the entire situation strains credulity.
Jane’s Addiction’s new album is called The Great Escape Artist, and if you see them play at the Bumbershoots, you’re going to have to hear allll about it, because we’re crammed right into their big release tour, so blah blah blah. (PLAY “JANE SAYS”! PLAY “JANE SAYS”!)
Courtney Love didn’t have fucking anything to do with fucking anything. As usual.
BY BRENDAN KILEY
You know when you’re 12 years old and you’re wrestling in the living room with a sibling and things are getting out of hand and your ma yells: “DON’T HORSE AROUND IN THE
The Pharmacy Mon, 4:30–5:30 pm, Promenade
LIVING ROOM! YOU’LL BREAK SOMETHING!” She might add, as an afterthought, that you might break yourselves, but she’s obviously more interested in the well-being of the heirlooms than the well-being of the heirs. Her priorities might confuse you at the time—because why the hell is the structural integrity of an old teapot more important than the skulls of her own children? But in later years, when someone clumsily breaks something you hold dear, the size and contours of your sadness, which are roughly the size and contours of the emotions you poured into that object, might teach you something about nostalgia and why your mother felt that way about a teapot.
Anyway. Last weekend, my brother and I were horsing around in the living room—even though we’re way too old for that crap—and I shoved my wrist through a thin, sharp glass object that also broke one of my arteries. An ambulance and stitches were involved. It was embarrassing on a variety of levels.
But as a result, I’m listening to the Pharmacy on a pharmacy’s worth of prescription drugs and thinking about playful familial violence and nostalgia. The Pharmacy’s fuzzy, slightly psychedelic (but always melodic) garage-pop sounds fantastic on these drugs— like the kind of group you’d imagine playing a high-school prom in the mid-1950s, if that high school let everyone smoke pot between classes and had a Percocet vending machine in the lunchroom. (I’m currently listening to “Lazy Bones,” an instrumental on the Bside of their EP Dig Your Grave, which is the slow-dance hit of my dreams.) It’s funny how the West Coast has bred a network of musicians who all know each other, grew up on punk rock, but returned to these older sounds and chord structures—Jail Weddings, Holy Ghost Revival, PUD, the Murder City Devils, and other bands past and present—imported
from their parents’ record collections but passed through the kidneys of their own experience. At heart, they’re all romantics.
The Pharmacy is a threesome: Scottie Yoder (guitar), Brendhan Bowers (drums), and Stefan Rubicz (keys). They all sing. I first met Rubicz when he was a sophomore in high
school and I was just out of college, working in the ticket office at ACT Theater. He used to shuffle in before theater shows, looking just this side of scruffy and barely shoved into his button-up shirt: a “flower punk” before the Black Lips grabbed that term. Then he’d sit down at the piano and delicately play lovely classical and ragtime numbers, while the evening’s audience members—mostly dazed-looking, upper-middle-class white women—wafted over to his tip jar to stuff in tips.
In a recent phone conversation, Rubicz said he’d landed that gig by just showing up (he frequented live theater in those days), seeing the dusty and unused piano in the lobby, and asking if he could play it for tips and free tickets to shows. “They were like, ‘Yeah, sure,’” he said. “I basically wanted to practice playing in public to see what that would be like.” That gig led to other teenage gigs as a piano player at the fancy-schmancy Waterfront Bar and Grill and improvising scores for silent movies—such as Nosferatu—at his hometown Vashon Island theater. “If you were actually a classical pianist listening to it, it would sound hokey,” he said. “But I’d just play some Brahms to cover a scene or improvised themes for characters when they came on the screen.”
Rubicz is one of those people who likes to play in public, and he says he plays better for a crowd than he does when he’s alone. The world is full of the other kind of musician, who
It’s the kind of group you’d imagine playing at a high school that let everyone smoke pot and had a Percocet
vending machine in the lunchroom.
prefers playing in the living room. His brother is one of those. Even though Davin Rubicz works as a professional cello player for the St. Louis Symphony, Stefan says, Davin gets nervous playing for an audience.
Like me, Stefan Rubicz is somewhat injury-prone. He’s broken his wrists three times—alarming for a piano player—in accidents that ranged from horsing around on an arbor to crowd-surfing. One time, his wrist was in a cast for many weeks and was holding up his piano work. At a Seattle house party a week before the cast was supposed to come off, Rubicz and Jean-Paul Garnier (formerly of the Starvations, Holy Ghost Revival, and now doing experimental improv projects in Los Angeles) cut off the cast with a serrated bread knife.
Whenever I’ve seen the Pharmacy play, it’s been a good time—boys who know their instruments but know their passions as well. They tour relentlessly (sometimes eight months out of the year) and have a new record coming out in the US in November called Stoned and Alone. (Some of their members have worked lonely stints on California pot farms.) You can get it on cassette from Burger Records or on vinyl from Old Flame.
SEPTEMBER 26 - 30, 2012 / SEATTLE, WA
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC PERFORMANCE VISUAL ART + NEW MEDIA
A guy who said he’d call you a week ago still hasn’t called. What do you do?
A. Write him off as a flake who doesn’t deserve your lusciousness.
B. Fret for a couple days, and then accept the challenge to flex your independence muscles and move on.
C. Smoke pot until the sobbing stops.
You’re out on an expensive dinner date with a guy who responds to the check by announcing he left his wallet at home. What do you do?
A. Throw your wine in his face while screaming the chorus to “No Scrubs.”
B. Cover the check, and then key his car.
C. Pay for everything, and thank him for letting you, maybe blow him on the ride home; then get stoned and write a self-flagellating song about your poor choices that rhymes “crazy” with “lazy.”
You wake up in the morning and the sky is gray. What do you do?
A. Throw on your snazziest rain jacket and seize the day!
B. Call in sick to work; then feel terrible about lying when there are actual people who are actually sick and experience a miraculous “recovery” that allows you to report to your job after lunch.
C. Smoke pot until the sobbing stops; then check your bank balance and write a song about it that rhymes “crazy” with “lazy.”
ANSWER KEY
Two or more As: You are a sassy selfsufficient sister!
Two or more Bs: Your self-esteem wavers, but you’re determined to learn to love you for you!
Two or more Cs: You are Bethany Cosentino.
BY DEREK ERDMAN
n 1988, Robert Lopez had a vision during an Elvis Presley–inspired folk-art exhibition in Los Angeles. He would become something that the world had never imagined: the first Chicano Elvis impersonator. He combined his talents as a musician and his love for Mexican kitsch to became El Vez (a brilliant pun that also translates to “The Time”).
Lopez got his start while still in high school as a guitar player and founding member of the Zeros during the first wave of Los Angeles punk rock. They released the single “Wimp” backed with “Don’t Push Me Around” on Bomp! Records in 1977. Soon after, Lopez defected and joined the infamously art-damaged Catholic Discipline, led by Slash magazine editor Claude Bessy, until that band’s demise in 1980. Lopez started another group called the Boneheads and reunited with the Zeros during most of the 1980s until deciding to become what People magazine called “Elvis con salsa.”
Lopez isn’t just an impersonator, he’s a socially relevant parody, translating Elvis classics (and a selection of other artists’ classics) into Mexican culture. His version of “Suspicious Minds” is retitled “Immigration Times” and changes the paranoid jealousy theme of the original to the story of a Mexican immigrant attempting to enter the United States: “I’m caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, because my foot’s caught in this border fence. Why can’t you see, Statue of Liberty? I am your homeless, tired, and weary.” These lyrics aren’t only funny, they jab at America’s claims of multiculturalism and its contradicting closed borders.
He’s released dozens of LPs and singles. The Smithsonian owns one of his tear-away gold-lamé suits. He’s played Sasquatch! at the Gorge, and this Monday, he’s playing at Bumbershoot. It’s no surprise that he plays the Seattle area often; he relocated here from Southern California in 2001.
Lopez is also a stage actor, and he decided on Seattle because of its art and theater community. Since his arrival, he’s become involved with Teatro ZinZanni, where his roles include “actor, script writer, music writer, assistant director, costume wearer, and troublemaker.”
He added, “Seattle is part of the northern migration of Latinos.”
El Vez doesn’t tour as much as he used to, but there are still changes to his routine and
While researching this story, I was surprised at how much academic writing had been devoted to El Vez and his popularity. In the book Latina/o Communications Studies, author Bernadette Marie Calafell, PhD, admits that she has a love/hate relationship with Lopez’s place in society. While she considers herself a fan, she’s uncomfortable with Lopez using a symbol like Elvis Presley to gain a platform to speak his mind. Carolina Gonzalez, a writer for Frontera magazine, paraphrased Lopez as saying that he saw himself as an entertainer with subversive intent. Lopez also noted that he’s interested to see what it takes to get people “interested in the revolution” while avoiding the place where revolutionary ideas simply become “guerrilla chic.” I wrote an e-mail to Lopez through a link on the El Vez website and was delighted when he replied at 1:30 a.m. I sent some questions, which he returned at 3:45 a.m.
Since 1988, El Vez has made an impressive mark on the music industry, playing shows all over the world and opening for Morrissey, David Bowie, Carlos Santana, and the B-52s.
Consistently when we think sexy stores we always end up at The Love Zone in Seattle's Ballard/ Crown Hill neighborhood.
Why you ask The Love Zone, well they have everything we want and need plus a couple of things we didn't know we wanted or needed. They aren't uptight or creepy and the place is just plain fun. They actually have everything you need to make good sex - great sex. So here is the list in no particular order that makes Love Zone Seattle's Best of Sexy Store.
We like their wide assortment of
boy toys. A very reasonable assortment of fetish playthings, ok so it's not a dungeon full, but enough to keep most people busy through the night. Did we mention the one thing we like the most is they actually carry lingerie & sexy clothes in our sizes from small to 3X, and styles that work for a real person, not just a lingerie model. Sure, Seattle has plenty of sexy places but of them all we think Love Zone is the Best of Sexy stores in Seattle. I'm sure that if you stopped in today, you would have a sexier night, tonight.
socially relevant bits included in the act when he does. “‘Quetzalcoatl,’ my version of ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ takes on new meaning this year with the coming of the end of the world via the Mayan calendar. Since this is my EL VEZ 4 PREZ show, it stands to reason you should ‘Vote El Vez!’ What do you got to lose?” Lopez still considers himself an Elvis fan but admits that he doesn’t listen to Elvis’s music very often. “It’s all programmed in my head. I guess my ears perk when I hear an alternate version or an outtake.”
At Bumbershoot, Lopez is looking forward to Elvistravaganza, an all-about-Elvis visual arts spectacle curated by Marlow Harris and Jo David, which will include a traveling Elvis museum and Elvis karaoke for festivalgoers. He also admits to loving Mudhoney. When asked what his favorite thing to eat at a music festival is, he responded, “Perhaps a roasted ear of corn.”
As Phil Ochs once said, “If there’s any hope for America, it lies in revolution. If there’s any hope for revolution, it lies in Elvis Presley becoming Che Guevara.” At this point, El Vez seems about as close as we’re going to get.
or one you like, of course they carry plenty of edible fun stuff to make your partner super tasty. We also like that they carry enough DVDs
but it's not a "video store".
I have only bought one game there but it worked out very well (crazy fun), and they have plenty to choose from that should be fun.
Of course they have the mandatory massage oils and Kama Sutra stuff.
Probably the biggest deal is their fantastic toy selection with a bunch of styles of vibrators for solo or couple's play, a great assortment of penis rings from vibrating to fetish, all the sizes of plugs, and beads you could want. Plenty of strap-ons and
QUESTIONS BY TRENT MOORMAN, ANSWERS BY
LINDY WEST
I don’t know. A college a cappella group singing Billy Joel songs, maybe?
That, then. That. That one. Yes. My favorite band is the Testostertones. And Gershwin.
518 East Pike St. thefeedbagonline.com 206.322 5413 Open Mon-Sat: 10am-9pm, Sun: 10am-6pm Big & Small we feed them
krillex may be famous for ruining dubstep, but his haircut is more famous. While the 24-year-old festival DJ from Los Angeles (real name Sonny Moore) has vaulted to superstardom and the limelight, his haircut has grown uncomfortable with the constant attention. The story of Skrillex’s Haircut isn’t so cheery. There has been struggle. On the surface, we see raves and fame and high-school goth girls taking pictures of themselves in the bathroom. Reality, however, is that Skrillex’s Haircut is more quiet and eccentric, leading a tortured life of denial. Being a mega-mega-star has taken its toll. If you have a girlfriend, chances are she has had a Skrillex haircut at some point. Has anyone thought to ask the haircut how it feels about that? Better yet, has anyone thought to ask Lindy West how the haircut feels?
What makes you happy?
Alberto VO5.
What in particular pisses you off?
Symmetry.
THU 9/6 - SUN 9/9
BÉLA FLECK AND THE MARCUS ROBERTS TRIO World-Renowned Banjoist joins with Classic yet Inventive Jazz Trio
THU 9/13 - SUN 9/16
PAT METHENY UNITY BAND
featuring Ben Williams, Chris Potter, & Antonio Sanchez Wolrd Renowned Guitarist/Composer Brings Together a New and Specially Hand-Selected Ensemble featuring Chris Potter on Tenor Saxophone
TUE 9/18 - WED 9/19 DWELE 5x Grammy Nominee, Soulful Hip-Hop, R&B and Urban Jazz Groove Master
TUE 10/2 - WED 10/3
WAYNE KRANTZ GROUP Spontaneous, Exhilarating, Improvisational Jazz Guitarist
THU 10/11 - SUN 10/14
LEELA JAMES Raw and Fiery Neo-Soul Singer
2033 6th Ave. | 206.441.9729 all ages | free parking full schedule at jazzalley.com
What got you into art collecting? The pieces you’ve acquired have garnered some attention. You have The Holy Virgin Mary collage by Chris Ofili, the one with elephant dung. And a peanut-butter-and-jelly Mona Lisa by the avant-garde Brazilian artist Vik Muniz. You also have the blood painting by Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse?
My publicist said this interview was going to be about my upcoming book, I’m More Than Hair. I do like art. But can we talk about my book, like we agreed?
You have a child with Chloë Sevigny? What’s its name? Where did you meet Chloë? Next question.
We can’t talk about Chloë Sevigny?
Alberto VO5 makes me happy.
Skrillex Mon, 9:30–11 pm, KeyArena
Lindy West Sat, 5:15–6:15 pm, 7–8 pm, Leo K. Theater
You’ve grappled with substance abuse. How are you now? What did you grapple with?
Hair-oin. It was just a phase. I’d say I’m halfway grown out of it.
Do you have hobbies?
I hate the word “hobby.” It’s so pedestrian. I prefer to say that I have “passions.” And my passions are fermenting my own kombucha, typography, gum, and Man v. Food. Also fucking.
What does Skrillex think of you having tantric sex? Is it true you banged his mom?
WHAT WE HAD WAS BEAUTIFUL AND FINE, AND YOU WILL NOT BESMIRCH THE GOOD NAME OF JUDY SKRILLEX IN MY PRESENCE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
Are you sick of being copied? Walking down the street and seeing other haircuts just like you?
It can be overwhelming. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes I just want to be me. But then, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I mean, where would I be without the letter P?
I don’t get it. What about the letter P? Look at it. Look at the letter P. I look exactly like the letter P Look at it.
Fucking? I read in Vanity Fair that you’re into “tantric sex.” How did you get into tantric sex?
Are you sad you ended up as Skrillex’s Haircut? Of all the things you could have been? You could have ended up as a tree, or a conch shell, or a page of a Haruki Murakami story. Or a cheetah. What do you wish you could have been?
Miley Cyrus’s haircut. A cheetah would have been nice, too, for, like, a day.
What kind of music do you like?
What’s the exact opposite of ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP NYEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAOOOOOWWWW takatakatakata katakatakatakatakataka SCRONCH?
Dennis [Franz] got me into it when we were both living at the Chateau Marmont in ’84. Did you ever stop to realize that your most powerful sex organ is your mind? Tantra is basically like jacking off with your brain—and that really revolutionized my sex life, seeing as I don’t have hands or genitals. Technically, I don’t have a brain, either, since I’m just a clump of hair, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say. I’m totally doing an orgasm right now! Don’t tell Skrillex.
Wait, you were around in the mid-’80s? Was Skrillex even born yet?
Yeah, I was around. Back then everybody just called me The Freaky Goth Chick.
Like, the shape of the letter? Because of the part that sticks down?
It’s called the STEM. IT IS A TYPOGRAPHY JOKE.
Yeah, I don’t really think it works. Your mother doesn’t work.
Is Skrillex pissed that you get interview requests and he doesn’t?
Not a problem. I used to get a lot more interview requests, but they’ve petered out lately. Apparently journalists complained that our conversations were a little one-sided.
I wanted to ask about your bungalow in Tuscany, where you go to get away from it all. Is that where you met Chloë Sevigny? I’ve heard Barbara Streisand has visited, and that Skrillex has to act like he’s not there. He has to close his eyes and wear earplugs the whole time. One word for you. One magical word: chloroform.
Do you support any charities? I founded my own nonprofit, actually, an offshoot of Locks of Love. It’s called Locks of I Don’t Know… Whatever. We donate wigs to the garbage. I think. Whatever.
What’s your favorite time of day?
Dude, I’m hair. I’m literally made of hair. I can’t tell time.
You can’t tell time, but you can have orgasms and opinions about typography? I’m Skrillex’s Haircut. I contain multitudes. I’m complicated.
No, you’re not. You’re just long on the one side and short on the— This interview is over.
In honor of his Bumbershoot appearance, we assigned Anna Minard (who “knows nothing about music”) to write about Tony Bennett.
TONY BENNETT Sun, 3:15–4:30 pm, KeyArena
Okay, okay: Of course I have “heard of” Tony Bennett! I’m not a complete caveperson. He’s the guy who did… um… he sang that—wait, name a song that Tony Bennett sang. (Insert deafening chorus of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” here.) Right! But other than that. Well, all of the songs, ever. Or maybe just all of the ones that sound like a sexy grandpa. Every jazz standard. Old songs with slightly dirty-sounding titles like “Young and Warm and Wonderful.” I’d thought the most important thing about Tony Bennett was how amazing his hair is. (Quick! Tony Bennett and Skrillex: SWITCH!)
But when I consulted the internet to confirm the picture in my head of Mr. Bennett, which is about six inches of combed-back hair pouf, I found my brain had exaggerated by about four to five inches. However! I did discover that his skin is bright orange, and the hair pouf he does have is snow-white. He is quite the high-contrast fellow.
He sounds, depending on the song, like: Santa after two Viagra, the human form of the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas, the human form of a maroon velvet smoking jacket, an actual fox with actual silver fur, and/or what George Clooney will sound like in 20 years.
That all might sound kind of silly. But you literally have to respect him. Seriously, try it—just try not respecting him. Did one of your limbs just fall off? Well, lesson learned. Don’t fuck with the pros.
Having never really listened to Tony Bennett, other than just existing in the regular human world and so unavoidably having seen/heard him on TV or on some Christmas album, I wandered around the internet watching clips of him and listening to songs, and I discovered a couple of things.
ONE: He is always smiling. That’s one of my favorite characteristics of a musician. Look like you’re having fun! Your job is making music! You win!
TWO: Did you know he has charted in every single decade since the 1950s? (No, charted. Not sharted. Gross, shut up.)
THREE: Guess whose popular song called “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is better? Green Day versus Tony Bennett. Go! Green Day: “I walk a lonely road/The only one that I have ever known/Don’t know where it goes/But it’s home to me, and I walk alone.” Tony Bennett: “I walk along the street of sorrow/The boulevard of broken dreams/ Where gigolo and gigolette/Can take a kiss without regret/So they forget their broken dreams.” And Tony Bennett wins in a landslide for using both “gigolo” and “gigolette”! Obviously!
I give Tony Bennett a big ol’ “better than Green Day” out of 10.
AMANDA COPLIN
The Orchardist (Harper)
Monday, September 10 at 7pm
At once intimate and epic, The Orchardist is historical fiction at its best. In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin mixes tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West.
MICHAEL NATKIN
Herbivoracious: A Flavor Revolution with 150 Vibrant and Original Vegetarian Recipes (Harvard Commons Press)
Thursday, September 13 at 7pm
In Herbivoracious, Natkin offers up 150 exciting recipes notable for their big, bold, bright flavors. This is sophisticated, grown-up meatless cooking, the kind you can serve to company—even when your guests are dedicated meat-eaters.
JOHN EDWARD Fallen Masters (Tor)
Sunday, September 23 at 5pm TICKETS REQUIRED
Tickets are required to attend. Receive your complimentary ticket with the purchase of Fallen Masters at Third Place Books. Books go on sale 9.18.12.
In Fallen Masters, internationally renowned psychic John Edward has written a riveting novel of metaphysical suspense, a final confrontation between good and evil as it unfolds on both the Earthly plane and the Other Side.
17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155 FREE PARKING!
PBY CHARLES MUDEDE
eople who believe their knowledge of American popular music is up to snuff are in the habit of stating, when the opportunity presents itself, that Fishbone should have been bigger than Red Hot Chili Peppers. Both bands were born in Los Angeles around the same time (the early ’80s), regularly toured together, and approached music in roughly the same way—blending genres. Fishbone blended punk and ska; RHCP blended punk and funk. Fishbone was a black band that didn’t make R&B, and RHCP was a white band that didn’t make rock. Almost everyone knows RHCP, and only critics know Fishbone. What the hell happened? Why didn’t Fishbone become huge? Was it a race thing? No, I don’t think this was the case. We know RHCP not because they’re white but because the music they made was far more accessible to the common ear than Fishbone’s. Being good at music is one thing, being popular is another. The two must never be confused as one and the same thing. Fishbone fell apart in the early ’90s. They had been together for a decade, had toured with bands such as Jane’s Addiction and Beastie Boys, received nothing but praise from the press, but, despite being signed to a major label, did not have a big hit attached to their name. Every effort they made to be more commercial and obtain radio appeal failed because they didn’t have it in them to make a tune as bad as “Under the Bridge”—Red Hot Chili Peppers’ biggest hit and a load of crap. The Sony corporation eventually dropped Fishbone. Its members started going nuts and leaving. By the late ’90s, they were completely forgotten. During the ’00s, the remaining members sank into poverty. Yet the band kept going, hoping and dreaming in the face of dwindling audiences in smaller and smaller venues.
SEPTEMBER 1 • 7–8
A hilarious, completely off-the-rails slideshow about America by the authors of How To Be A Person: The Stranger’s Guide to College, Sex, Intoxicants, Tacos, and Life Itself. To be discussed: MOOSE WRANGLING, CLOGGED ARTERIES, TOM HANKS, EARTHQUAKES, GLUE HUFFERS, OPRAH WINFREY’S MOST RECENT MOVEMENTS, RACISM, ALLIGATORS, VAMPIRES, METH, DUDES IN TERRIBLE BANDS, AND MORE
The informative documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone presents several theories for Fishbone’s failure, the best of which is this: They were too democratic. Despite having a recognizable lead singer (the charismatic Angelo Moore), Fishbone never really had a center, a person whose value or worth was greater than the band’s. Everyone was more or less on the same level. Democracy might be great for society, but it’s not so great for a band. People want a star—they want someone in the light and the rest in the shadows. The Wailers had Bob Marley, the Police had Sting, No Doubt had Gwen Stefani, A Tribe Called Quest had Q-Tip. A star always has a solo career. Fishbone never produced a solo career, and though Moore has certainly always thought highly of himself, he never loved himself enough to be a star. Whoever left the band, left music. Fishbone begins and ends with Fishbone.
BY MEGAN SELING
1995:
The Promise Ring Sun, 6:15–7:30 pm, Exhibition Hall
The Promise Ring is founded as a side project by Cap’n Jazz singer Davey von Bohlen, a man who has the best lisp in rock and roll. I celebrate my 15th birthday, have hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars taped to my bedroom ceiling, and listen to MxPx. I don’t give a shit about Cap’n Jazz, the Promise Ring, or von Bohlen’s lisp.
September 9, 1996:
The Promise Ring release their first fulllength record, 30° Everywhere. I listen to it and deem it boring and sappy. I spend the whole winter listening to Weezer’s Pinkerton instead, cursing the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend. The irony is absolutely lost on me.
October 14, 1997:
The Promise Ring release their second fulllength record, Nothing Feels Good, on Jade Tree Records. It’s produced by J. Robbins and lauded as the ultimate (pre–Dashboard Confessional) emo record, earning the band national attention. Without even bothering to hear a single minute of a single song, I refuse to give it any attention, claiming I want nothing to do with that crybaby bullshit.
October 13, 1999:
The Promise Ring play RKCNDY with Burning Airlines and Juno. I am obsessed with the band Juno, so I go to the show, but I do not stay for the Promise Ring (and their boring crybaby bullshit).
2002:
After releasing their last full-length record, Wood/Water, the Promise Ring break up. I do not care.
2002–2003:
While discussing my distaste for the Promise Ring, a boy I have a crush on demands I revisit 30° Everywhere. I oblige, but still dislike it. A few months later, I throw the burned CD he gave me out of my car window after we have a fight because fuck that guy and all the bands he likes.
2003:
Members of the Promise Ring and the Dismemberment Plan form a new band called
Maritime. My love for the D-Plan trumps my hate for the Promise Ring, so I listen to their Adios EP… and LOVE IT. I fall in love with Davey von Bohlen’s lisp but still will not give the Promise Ring a second (third?) chance.
November 1, 2005:
Alternative Press magazine runs “The Oral History of the Promise Ring,” in which von Bohlen says 30° Everywhere “was definitely the most disappointing thing we had ever done.” REDEMPTION!
Summer 2006:
After my car breaks down, a different boy I have a different crush on drives me home from the auto shop. I’m grumpy; I’m broke.
As I get out of his car, he hands me Nothing Feels Good and says, “You need this more than I do right now.” IT IS SO GOOD. It isn’t emo at all. It’s fun and bright and poppy, and I spend the evening listening to it while dancing alone in my apartment.
Fall 2006:
That cute boy becomes my boyfriend, and we make out while listening to the Promise Ring’s 1999 release Very Emergency, specifically the song “Happiness Is All the Rage.”
The Promise Ring is the best band ever!
Spring 2009:
Thanks to the internet, there are unfounded rumors of a greatest hits album, prompting all Promise Ring fans (myself included) to get worked into a tizzy over the possibility of a reunion tour that never happens. Sad face.
November 12, 2011:
I get married! Not to one of the guys who forced me to listen to the Promise Ring.
November 18, 2011:
The Promise Ring tweet “Hello again…” My heart explodes with happiness!
September 2, 2012:
The Promise Ring and I are together at last! Maybe! Will it happen? Find out at Bumbershoot! I’ll be the woman in the front row, singing along and apologizing profusely for never giving them credit when I first had the chance. Sorry about that, dudes.
SHOW IS:
EMILY NOKES
n a time when even Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon have called it quits, I’d like some stability. I adore the Vaselines—their sexed-
up pop songs are simple and true. The pair formed in the mid’80s, released two singles, and then recorded one album that was released after the band had already broken up. Their reason for calling it quits: They were also a couple that had called it quits. By the time I got around to listening to them (much later, and like most of the world, because they had been championed and covered so thoroughly by Nirvana), they’d already split. Like a teen in the wake of her parents’ divorce, I was mad that they had already broken up romantically, and very mad that they had broken up musically. I liked
The Vaselines Mon, 8:30–9:45 pm, Fountain Lawn
their relationship, just like I liked their music! Frances McKee’s timid voice and Eugene Kelly’s grumpy sexiness were just weird enough to capture my heart. There was no denying that they liked to, well, do it—and then write perfect songs about it. Now that the Vaselines are back to getting busy—making music and touring after 20-plus years of dormancy—I think it’s time they got back to getting busy with each other. Since I don’t have enough time to stage a Parent Trap–style surprise dinner and sing “Let’s Get Together” to them until they elope at Bumbershoot, these paper dolls will have to do. Pick up where they left off—dress up the Vaselines in hot ’90s date-wear and get these lovebirds back together!
MARTI JONJAK
BY
John Waters’s films are sleazy and weird, with pileups of horrors and whimpering laughter, and lunatics everywhere, casually befouling things. The costuming is terrific. Characters appear so consistently marred and cheap, these looks represent the condition of their souls. In the early years, John writes in his book Shock Value, stylist Van Smith harvested “clothes found in trash bins outside the Salvation Army,” dressed faces in dirt, and boiled wigs to encourage a dry, matted effect. Van’s “only beauty hints are a lack of sleep, alcoholism, or drug addiction, and he stresses, ‘Most importantly it helps if the actor has embraced misery as a lifestyle.’”
Waters: This Filthy World: Filthier & Dirtier Sat, 8:30 pm, Bagley Wright Theater
with padded guitars on them, or shrunken heads, or my favorite—giant tarantulas,” he writes in another of his books, Role Models, which also contains a full-chapter tribute to Rei Kawakubo, head of the delightfully absurd Comme des Garçons label. In John’s collection of her work: a shirt with “pockets sewn inside, therefore making them impossible to use,” trousers built to “literally unravel without falling apart as you wear them,” a sports jacket made of white shag “that looks so much like a dirty bath mat,” and another jacket seeming “sort of normal from a distance, but up close the blue material looks stained. Some might say with a semen-like pattern.”
Van was also singly responsible for creating Divine’s image, writes John. (Divine worked as a hairdresser before he got famous, and “his specialty was exaggerated, ridiculously complicated bouffant hairdos.”) Costume highlights include Divine’s ferociously pouffed wedding gown in Female Trouble—constructed of see-through lace, it reveals his pubic hair. And during the filming of Multiple Maniacs, Divine took a break to meet John’s mother for the first time: “He was dressed in heels, wig, full makeup, and… a one-piece woman’s bathing suit covered in blood.”
In yet another book, Crackpot, John details his hobby of attending sensational murder trials to gather fashion information. Charles Schmid Jr., for instance, “pompadoured his dyed, jet-black hair and wore a thick coat of pancake over his dirty, unshaven, handsome face.” He also wore “white lipstick, and he designed a quarter-size beauty mark made of putty that resembled a hideous cartoon witch’s mole. His ultimate accessory was the large, filthy bandage he wore on his nose for no apparent reason. Like all models, he wished he were taller, so he stuffed his boots with a three-inch layer of tin cans and rags.”
John Waters made a hobby of attending sensational murder trials to gather fashion information.
The Manson family women were “the most style-conscious defendants I’ve ever seen,” sometimes arriving in court in kicky white ankle socks, bright robes, or even a full nun’s habit. “When Linda Kasabian (the star snitch prosecution witness) testified, all the girls mimicked her by wearing their hair in exactly the same style as she did and changing it whenever she did.”
John’s own style is just as lively. There’s his pencil mustache, of course, ritually enhanced with Maybelline Expert Eyes eyeliner in Velvet Black. Past ensembles involved high-water slacks, wrinkled polyester overcoats the color of meatballs, and “the most hideous cowboy shirts, ones
And there’s John Linley Frazier. Amidst proceedings, he’d shaved bald “the left side of his head, beard, mustache, and eyebrows. The right side of his face was still covered in a luxuriant growth of hair.”
Send fashion information to marti@thestranger.com.
Got some time to kill while your parents are off watching Reignwolf? Looking to try out a new pen? Feigning indifference toward an attractive person? Flex your brain muscle and take a crack at our expert difficulty black diamond music edition word grid! Finish the entire puzzle, and you’re entitled to free issues of The Stranger for the rest of the year.
HOTTEST TIP: Using the music blurbs in the back of this very guide for reference is literally the only way you can win.
2. Not unlike naming one’s bar “Happy Hour” 4. Vendor of used snake oil and kitchen twang (2 words)
5. Male-genitalia-having feminists love to air-hump to this (2 words)
8. Similar to a recipe for cake (3 words)
9. One of the human beings who dragged rockabilly into this world (2 words) 11. Not Auto-Tuned, not Coldplay 12. Sometimes called Dallas Green (3 words)
Does not have a song called “Ice Cream”
May sound like the dreams of a cat asleep on a couch (3 words)
20. Has two Facebook pages (2 words)
21. Will sing about somebody that they used to know 23. Bluesy youth from Salem, Oregon (3 words)
Skunks from Bellingham
1. Possibly has a ball-peen hammer tattoo (3 words) 3. Will take you to a private island of pineapple upside-down cake
6. Obligates you to wade in the doom swamp 7. Mexican American channels the king of rock and roll (2 words)
10. Wears T-shirts with their own band name on them (3 words)
13. Plays in Seattle approximately 325 days a year (2 words)
15. Heshers and lengthy-metal-spike enthusiasts find inspiration
17. Hottie with a penchant for Phil Collins
18. Lupine multiple-instrument-player
19. Started playing guitar at age 12 after his family moved to Algeria
22. For making out on an international flight or keeping your hands in the air
BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
Every fall, the inebriates and reprobates at The Stranger put out an issue of advice for college students on everything from what majors to avoid (cough, sociology) to how to do drugs without freaking out/dying (carefully) to how to come out of the closet (ASAP!). This fall, the best of our collective wisdom has been assembled in attractive book form, along with tons of new material and Dan Savage’s college sexytimes advice. Voilà: How to Be a Person: The Stranger’s Guide to College, Sex, Intoxicants, Tacos, and Life Itself. (The Bumbershoot slide show/discussion entitled The Stranger’s Guide to America—info at right1—is loosely based on chapter 4 by Lindy West, which is extremely hilarious2.)
When even the most brilliant minds3 put together a large volume of words, mistakes will be made. We have identified five errors—so far.4 To wit:
1. The preface of How to Be a Person states that “any errors or omissions are no one’s fault but Dan Savage’s” (page xvii). Of the errors located (so far!), zero are the fault of Dan Savage, including this one.
2. How to Be a Person contains (at least) one typographical error, on p. 136. Try to find it:
Scientists have only classified 15 percent of the world’s fungi, and a lot of known fungi are deadly, to saying nothing of unknown fungi.
Tellingly, this error is in the “Mushrooms” section from Chapter 8: What No One Else Will Tell You About Drugs.
3. The section “The History of Gay People in a Few Paragraphs” (p. 47) states:
Then came AIDS, a word Ronald Reagan refused to say or do anything about, leading to tens of thousands of deaths in the ’80s and ’90s, and nearly wiping out a generation.
Christopher Frizzelle wrote this sentence, and the error here is one of letter, not spirit: Turns out Ronald Reagan did say the word AIDS, finally, near the end of his second term. Still, overall, his presidency represented what the San Francisco Chronicle called a “shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS.” Indeed, Pat Buchanan, who was5 Reagan’s communications director, said AIDS was “nature’s revenge on gay men.” According to the Chronicle, when
Reagan finally said “AIDS,” 20,849 Americans had already died of it. So there’s that.
4. The fourth word of Chapter 7: What No One Else Will Tell You About Drinking (p. 115) is an error of my own.
Since the first velociraptor ate the first fermented prehistoric cherry-things, creatures have taken pleasure in intoxication by way of beautiful, beautiful alcohol…
When I wrote this, I was thinking of how birds will peck at cherries or berries that have fallen and rotted a bit and then get cutely tipsy; when I used “velociraptor,” I thought it was a dino-bird-thing, which despite having the root “raptor,” it is not. I just don’t know that much about dinosaurs. Sorry, everyone.
How to Be a Person contains (at least) one typographical error. Tellingly, this error is in the “Mushrooms” section.
5. And in Chapter 11: What No One Else Will Tell You About Food, I arguably made another error (p. 155), but I THINK NOT:
Julia Child was a very tall woman with a warbling voice who devoted years of her life to making a French cookbook for Americans… watch some of her old cooking shows on YouTube (if you can find the one where she drops a duck on the floor while trying to prepare it, you will learn that being uptight is just not where cooking’s at—she pretty much invented the five-second rule).
Julia definitely once dropped part of a potato pancake onto the stovetop and scooped it back into the pan, saying, ”You can always pick it up, and if you’re alone in the kitchen, whooooo is going to see?” (see “Meryl Streep vs. Julia Child” on YouTube). But according to Snopes.com, the duck-dropping never happened. Further: “Thanks to the power of manufactured memory, fans of the show remain convinced they saw something she directly and repeatedly denied.” BUT I DID SEE THE DUCK-DROPPING EPISODE—I SWEAR IT. I wrote down what she
said after she picked the uncooked duck up off the floor and I stuck it in my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking: “Don’t be afraid of it, just do it—and if you mess it up, nooooobody will really know.”
Snopes.com says that Julia’s producer, Geoffrey Drummond, reviewed every episode of her show (more than 700 total) and said, “I never saw Julia drop a chicken.” A CHICKEN, he said. Nothing about a duck. That is all.6
1. Lindy West will be there, and Dan Savage, and Christopher Frizzelle, and some of our esteemed colleagues, and me.
2. In matters of hilarity, please see also Different Sexual Positions You Need to Try in College, page 32. This section was written by Stranger books editor Paul Constant, and it will make you laugh out loud at least the first nine times you read it, and probably forever. Reap the whirlwind! (You’ll see.)
3. Or, you know, the most pretty smart minds.
4. Though, as you are about to see, one is a joke crafted presciently for exactly this occasion, one is not an error in spirit, and another is disputed by the deluded writer.
5. Horrifyingly!
6. For now.
BY JEN GRAVES
Christopher Martin Hoff Remembered, the exhibition curated by Beth Sellars to honor the late Seattle painter who died suddenly at age 36 this spring, will be a treasure chest of paintings. Paintings of places you recognize: local alleys and intersections and construction cranes and graffiti and warehouses and trees and libraries halfway built. Paintings overlooking the destroyed World Trade Center site in 2003, where the artist got permission to work for a few months. Most of the paintings are majestic and mature. A few are early and unresolved, reaching. Some, sorrowfully, are only halfway finished. After Hoff died, his friends went to the Decorative Metal Arts building on Marginal Way where his uncompleted paintings were waiting for him to come back. The iron workers were devastated that the artist who had become like a coworker, hunched at his own station alongside them, was gone.
Christopher Martin Hoff Remembered
Sat–Mon, 11 am–8 pm, Fisher Pavilion
beautiful sunset, and there was Christopher, sitting on this little tiny fold-up stool that he had, and he was doing a watercolor painting of the river with the bridge crossing over. It was such a neat image, and I had my camera with me, but I thought, ‘No, that’s a real invasion of privacy, I’m not going to take a picture of that’—but I kick myself now for not taking that image.”
Written remembrances, an installation of the easels and palette and brushes he carried in his backpack, and photographs of him out in the urban environment flesh out the Bum-
On the street, he’d stop to talk to anyone who came by.
sometimes even entire cities… According to the painter Hans Hofmann, the first line an artist puts on a surface isn’t really the first, but the fifth. This is because the edges of the canvas are actually the first four. In a sense, the entire linear system of a work is predetermined before one even picks up a pencil or a brush.
There will be 65 paintings in all at Bumbershoot, borrowed from 18 different collectors—the culmination of a massive gathering effort undertaken by Sellars along with the late artist’s many friends and patrons. At all times during the weekend, rotating teams of the artist’s friends will stand guard over the exhibition, protecting his objects and pallbearing his legacy—because this isn’t just any painting exhibition. It’s a memorial.
“I feel it’s really important for people to get to know him and his work, and there are so many people who don’t because he was too young,” Sellars says.
Sellars lost her own husband when he was just 38. She was honored when Chris Weber of Bumbershoot invited her to organize the biggest planned retrospective for Hoff. (Linda Hodges Gallery hosted a show last month; Fountainhead Gallery in Queen Anne, where Hoff first exhibited in Seattle, will feature his early works starting September 6.)
In the summer of 2011, both Sellars and Hoff happened to take the four-day artist-led Long Walk across 40 miles of King County trails. Sellars found herself walking and talking with the friendly artist whose shows she’d attended and liked over the years. Hoff had moved to Seattle from his home state of Georgia in 2000. For a little while, he made his living painting concrete dioramas for the animals at the Woodland Park Zoo, but soon he lived on his painting alone.
bershoot exhibition. On the street, he’d stop to talk to anyone who came by, never complaining about being interrupted or losing the light, even though the conditions he was recording were constantly changing.
His paintings are plein air, realistic, precise, but they’re warm and embodied, too, like they’re speaking.
“It isn’t just replicating what you see,” Sel-
…Buildings, roads, entire cities, though grid-like by design, are in fact fluid networks of overlapping aesthetic forms which redefine themselves as we experience them… The subtle curve of the water’s edge echoed by a highway, the deep crimsons of rusting steel, the vibrations of violet and orange where a crane pierces the blanket of a dense gray sky, moments like these break through the burdensome mandates of utility and function. For me, the discovery of one of these elusive moments is like finding a piece of discarded, crumpled-up paper that when unfolded reveals a poem that concisely articulates what is most elemental about a location.
On a stormy day in 2001, a couple walking through Myrtle Edwards Park saw Hoff, introduced themselves, and struck up a conversation about the granary structures he was painting out across Elliott Bay. They
lars explains. “I can only say it’s edgy—it’s not just ho-hum plein-air painting; we have lots of that. There was just something there that I feel engages you a whole lot more, and I think it’s because he has put so much more of himself into it.”
“On the Long Walk, when we spent the night on the river in Duvall, after everybody had put their tents together, I walked down to the river just to see it,” Sellars says. “There really wasn’t anybody down there, everybody was up on the depot. I looked toward this
In a statement for his last exhibition at Linda Hodges in 2011, Hoff wrote:
When I was younger, I wanted to be an architect. As a boy, I spent hours creating drawings of fictional structures and
returned to visit him a few times until one day he was gone. The weather had gotten better—it turned out he was staying away to wait for another turbulent sky so he could finish the scene. He eventually titled the piece Waiting, and the couple finally bought it. Later, the husband died. Now the wife is lending her dark, moody, beloved Waiting—and her story, of an image that tied her to her city and her family, and of the artist who brought them together—to Christopher Martin Hoff Remembered
2 1/2 HR/ 5 DAY SEA OR WHITEWATER RENTALS
STAND UP PADDLE BOARDS & KAYAKS PADDLE FROM OUR DOCKS
BY DAVID SCHMADER
The first thing you’ll notice about the campy dance duo Cherdonna and Lou is their incredible heads. Cherdonna’s announces itself first, with riotous blasts of blush and lipstick, and the theater of her eyes extending up, Divine-like, past her natural brows to make a glittery show of most of her forehead.
The Cherdonna and Lou Show Sun, 8:30–9:30 pm, Bagley Wright Theater
Above the eyescape sits the classic Cherdonna Shinatra hairdo: a jet of dark hair-sprayed bangs rubbing up against a huge, swooping blond hairpiece. Compared to Cherdonna, Lou looks possibly sedate, even when wedged in an American-flag bodysuit, his pompadour bubbling upward, a thin line of facial hair lining his upper lip and running along his jaw, natural in all respects until you realize it’s made of deep-blue glitter. Cherdonna and Lou burst onto the Seattle dance scene in 2009, when dancers and friends Jody Kuehner and Ricki Mason came together to make a dance to Olivia
The theater of her eyes extends, Divine-like, to make a glittery show of most of her forehead.
Newton-John’s “Xanadu” for a Velocity fundraiser. After the piece’s rapturous reception, Kuehner and Mason made things official with a name. “I knew I wanted to be Lou Henry Hoover, after the first lady,” says Mason. “I told Jody, ‘Pick a name that sounds good with Lou.’”
Before long, Cherdonna and Lou were performing all over, finding homes in both the burlesque and modern-dance scenes. In April, they workshopped their new work out out there (A Whole Night Lost) at Velocity, and now they bring this trippy dreamscape of a dance piece to Bumbershoot. Just like her head, Cherdonna’s performance will dazzle you with its deeply committed outlandishness. (Cherdonna/Kuehner wraps up the show with an old-school lip-synch
that blasts past irony to something old and new and pure.) But the dancing is what makes the whole thing work, most impressively when Lou/Mason takes a solo—this
twentysomething Seattle woman spends several minutes moving in a way that suggests a late-career soft-shoe hoofer in the Catskills. It’s hilarious dance magic.
CHERDONNA AND LOU Will bend over backward for you.
Opening the Throttle at Sandbox Radio Live!
BY BRENDAN KILEY
Live radio-drama revival shows are almost universally dorky. I’ve tried to sit through those California hippies of the Firesign Theater and the Twilight Zone–flavored tales of Imagination Theater on KIXI AM radio (which are so starchy and square, it’s almost adorable), but no dice.
Some Seattle theater-makers, however, have magically figured out how to borrow those dangerously dorky radio-drama techniques—Foley sound effects, actors reading in funny voices from music stands—and make them work. We have playwright Scot Augustson to thank, in part, since his Sgt. Rigsby and His Amazing
Sandbox Radio Live! Mon, 7–8 pm, Center House Theater
Silhouettes project has become a cult favorite over the years for putting shadow puppets, live-radio tropes, and Augustson’s filthy intelligence in a blender and mixing up some of Seattle’s wittiest, dirtiest theater. So it makes perfect sense that Augustson is one of the anchor artists of Sandbox Radio Live!, a quarterly series where quality Seattle theater people put on a live radio show in front of an audience to record for a podcast. (To name-check some favorites: Charles Leggett, Leslie Law, Paul Mullin, Annette Toutonghi, Darragh Kennan, Jose Gonzales, Sarah Harlett, and dozens more.)
Pike Place Market
The crew started performing Sandbox Radio in the summer of 2011 and has assembled a “best of SRL” for this year’s Bumbershoot: a poem by Augustson read by Richard Ziman, the bump and jump of Sandbox music director Jose Gonzales on piano, the comically dark “Notes from the Workplace” written by Vincent Delaney and starring Todd Jefferson Moore, and a taste of “Markheim”—a noirish serial by playwright Paul Mullin, inspired by a Robert Louis Stevenson story, about a worldweary angel-detective who has no love for the devil but isn’t exactly thrilled with God. Listening to the Sandbox Radio podcasts is fun and all, but the real juice is at the live shows, where you get to watch seasoned theater pros open the throttle and have some fun with new material and with each other. It’s a little more polished and put together than the rattletrap-by-design 14/48 festival, but Sandbox still has that loose, raw energy of slipping around on brand-new one-off material. It feels like artists at play.
All indoor venues, including the Mainstage in KeyArena, have limited capacity, and admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. See Gold and Platinum benefits for exceptions. Comedy Passes are recommended to secure a seat in comedy performances. A limited quantity of free Comedy Passes are available each day at the Comedy Pass distribution booth.
ALELA DIANE
(Sat, 7:30 pm, Promenade) This Portland glam-folk singer/songwriter/cat lady (you know the type) was raised in a musical family and taught herself guitar. She has opened for Joanna Newsom (as well as the Decembrists and Iron and Wine). Her tragic, personal songs about love and nature are sung with a sad, clear voice paired with acoustic guitar and sometimes fiddle.
HANNAH WILSON
AM & SHAWN LEE
(Sun, 6 pm, Promenade) Steeped in analog technology and possessed of an innate funkiness, Shawn Lee cuts an album about every other month, and each one varies in approach. He’s big on thematic releases: covering with fanboy zeal the Incredible Bongo Band’s entire Bongo Rock LP, but using tablas instead of the titular instrument, and recording ’00s hits in vastly different arrangements, to name but two. Lee’s 2011 album with smooth LA vocalist AM, Celestial Electric, is a dreamy electronic-pop opus featuring some of Lee’s most conventional melodic flourishes. But nothing Lee does is ordinary, so expect extraordinariness in many forms. DAVE SEGAL
ANA TIJOUX
(Mon, 5:45 pm, Fisher Green) Ana Tijoux is a French Chilean rapper who’s been making multilingual music since the 1990s and whose autobiographical 2010 album 1977 was nominated for a Grammy. Expect quick spitting that’ll probably make you feel like a failure if you’re not also a hot polyglot. ANNA MINARD
AWOLNATION
(Sat, 8 pm, KeyArena) There is light hardness and light thrashing and wall-of-soundness and progressive electronic rock/popness to these songs sung (or urgently shout-growled) by frontman Aaron Bruno, who wears his hair in a dramatic side part, and who formed the band around 2010. Its biggest hit single, from 2011, was “Sail.” It was covered by Macy Gray and used in lots of TV shows, commercials, and a horror movie involving Christian Slater. JEN GRAVES
BARCELONA
(Sun, 2:45 pm, Exhibition Hall) Barcelona are a handsomely scruffy Seattle band. Their light rock and piano-based orchestration makes for simple, slow-paced, lonely songs with pretty man vocals. Their song “Please Don’t Go” was used in a trailer for Water for Elephants. HW
THE BARR BROTHERS
(Sat, 4:30 pm, Promenade) Somebody at Bumbershoot this year likes pretty beardo indie-folk! The Barr Brothers—which include a lady who plays the harp—are from Montreal
and sometimes wear plaid shirts and suspenders. They smell like autumn leaves. They harmonize in soft voices. And they play a nice slow-blues version of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” on slide guitar and piano. BRENDAN KILEY
BEST COAST
(Mon, 1:45 pm, KeyArena) If you like the way Best Coast’s first album, Crazy for You, rhymed the words “crazy” and “lazy” in almost every song (and I know you did—we all did), then hold on loosely, because here comes: “When we get bored we like to sit around, sit around and stare/At the mountains, at the birds, at the ocean, at the trees/We have fun, we have fun, we have fun when we please”— actual lyrics from the title song on recent album The Only Place. The new tunes don’t have as much fuzzy buoyancy as the last set, but the melodies remain charming. EMILY NOKES See preview, page 14.
BIG SEAN
(Sun, 8:15 pm, KeyArena) Big Sean is incredibly hard to dislike. His obsession with triumphantly rapping about finally “making it” is as subtle and endearing as Dwyane Wade jumping on the scorer’s table and screaming. But the word “infectious” has perhaps never suited another flow better; Sean is the kind of rapper you’re almost always glad to have appear on a track. Even when his lines occasionally verge into corny territory, his agility on the mic—and the fun he constantly seems to be having—makes it all worth it. JOSEPH
STATEN
BLACK BREATH
(Sat, 2:45 pm, Exhibition Hall) I often feel like metal bands are just trying too hard without rocking hard enough. Too much makeup, too many generic riffs, not enough awesome. But that’s not a concern with Black Breath. This Seattle band will engulf you with their scorching hard-rock/metal hybrid and bring you to the dark side, even if you’ve resisted the genre in the past. You’ll go willingly, hypnotized into a trance by their long, lustrous hair whipping back and forth. MEGAN
SELING
BLITZEN TRAPPER
(Sun, 8:30 pm, Fountain Lawn) Music that skirts the edge of Southern, psychedelic, and folk rock is Blitzen Trapper’s specialty. Their jangly Americana evinces images of the weathered traveler and the heartbroken hopeful. They take a multi-instrumental approach to telling the impossibly surreal true stories of a life lived on the road. SEAN
JEWELL
BOMBINO
(Mon, 2:15 pm, Fisher Green) Bombino (aka Niger-based guitarist Omara Moctar) started playing guitar at 12 after his family took refuge in Algeria during the violent Tuareg rebellion, and feelings from the subsequent
hardships seeped into his music. He flaunts two main styles: sparse, mantric, acoustic blues licks that radiate an ancient ache and lack, and a lacerating, highly torqued electric attack that recalls drone rockers like Pärson Sound. Bombino’s previous Seattle show was climax-free, instead coasting along a sweet plateau. Rather than end with a flamboyant bang or a dramatic fade-out, songs simply wound down, although they could’ve rolled on forever. This is fantastic trance music, no matter how you slice it. D. SEGAL
BRYAN JOHN APPLEBY
(Mon, 6 pm, Promenade) Picture, if you will, a young Seattle man with a reddish beard, a black wool cap, and a sweetly melancholy voice. Now picture a band around him, playing in that misty NW indie-folk fashion: a violin, a banjo, a lady harmonizing with him, a drummer who isn’t too intrusive—maybe even the occasional doleful musical saw. He sings about combs, holes in the ground, “holy garments,” and the bent beams of wooden buildings. Congratulations! You’ve just conjured Bryan John Appleby. Does he have a tattoo of an old flywheel or a ball-peen hammer under that wool sweater? Probably! BK
CASCADIA ’10
(Mon, 12:45 pm, Fisher Green) The nine musicians in Seattle’s Cascadia ’10—including TRUST percussionist Jayson Powell and Afrocop drummer Andy Sells—have mastered that unmistakable pell-mell shuffle of Afrobeat, as pioneered by Fela Kuti. Bold horn flourishes, chiming guitar punctuation, fluidly funky percussion, and hypnotic bass lines predominate in Cascadia ’10’s epic tracks. A member of Eldridge Gravy & the Court Supreme told me that Cascadia ’10 are fantastic live, and I hear no reason to doubt him. D. SEGAL
(Mon, 11:45 am, Mural Amphitheater) The Cellar Door are a local band (six members) that make very pretty and at times even heartbreaking pop music. The autumn wind, the fall of leaves, the sorrows of a sensitive lover, the dreams of a cat on a couch, the soft sounds on a hardwood floor, the interrupted kiss, the skirt in the sunlight, the tap on a window, the remains in a wine glass—these are some of the many things I see and hear in their music. CHARLES MUDEDE
CITY AND COLOUR
(Sat, 7:45 pm, Fisher Green) You’re probably getting tired of descriptions like “heartfelt indie-folk,” both in this year’s Bumbershoot guide and in the world in general.
(I know I am.) But there’s a lot of sincere, guy-with-guitar-whose-favorite-chorus-goes“ooh-ooo-oo-ay-ooh”-in-a-high-vocal-register bobbing around these days. City and Colour, aka Dallas Green (formerly of Alexisonfire), is one of those. He’s good at it, but he doesn’t particularly distinguish himself from the pack: “I can feel the wind blowing/Sending shivers down my spine/I can feel the wind blowing/Shaking trees and power lines.” BK
(Sun, 4:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) Civil Twilight are a serious-looking, well-coiffed, blazerwearing, South African three-piece. Their rich, sort of early U2 sound blends well with vocalist Steven McKellar’s faintly apocalyptic falsetto narratives. HW
(Sat, 3 pm, Promenade) Cosmetics generate icy synthetic future music that sounds like the soundtrack to an endless escalator fashion ride. On the fashion ride, everything is white and shiny. You will pass emaciated mannequin humans wearing space bikinis making vacant sexy faces at you while an apathetic ghost girl voice drones, “I get a feeling of pleasure/ When I wear black leather.” EN
(Sat, 9 pm, Promenade) Damien Jurado playing a show in Seattle is not an event. Jurado plays in Seattle approximately 325 days out of any given calendar year, and the other 40 days a year, he’ll sweetly serenade you on the sidewalk if you run into him and ask him nicely. But there’s something special about a hometown artist playing to a hometown crowd at the end of a long, beautiful summer, and Jurado’s signature quiet, sad-hearted voice and sleepy, slinky melodies are sure to be electrifying in this dusky show. PAUL CONSTANT
DEBO BAND
(Mon, 1:30 pm, Fountain Lawn) Ethiopian American saxophonist Danny Mekonnen sets traditional Amharic lyrics to the jazzy, hopeful notes of a big brass band. It’s swing-meetsAfrican-groove, and it’s exactly what womyn’s studies professors and dick-having feminists love to air-hump to. CIENNA MADRID
DEEP SEA DIVER
(Sun, 7:30 pm, Promenade) Aside from their ability to hold their collective breath for long periods of time and their side business selling hand-harvested pearls, Deep Sea Diver are a local four-piece fronted by the powerful-voiced Jessica Dobson. Their 2012 album, History Speaks, is a lovely cooking-dinneralone playlist. Dobson can belt, they display a touch of the tambouriney hand-claps thing
that’s currently popular, and there’s a really fun syncopation to the rhythm and an emotional depth to the lyrics that’s worth pausing to enjoy. AM
THE DIRTBOMBS
(Sun, 5:45 pm, Fisher Green) The Dirtbombs are a prolific, Detroit-based garage-rock band that have been making heavy fun-noise music since the mid-’90s. But garage is only the beginning; they will splatter out of any definition you try to give their sound—messy soul, gritty pop, raunchy R&B, fuzzy punk mess dance along? Yes to all of those and more. Oh, and they have two bass players and two drummers, making their live set extra fantastic to watch. EN
EIGHTEEN INDIVIDUAL EYES
(Sun, noon, Promenade)
Vocalist Irene Barber fronts this local group and sets the tone with crystalline-clear crooning and hard-edged ennui. Call it delicate rock or classy angst—it won’t blow your eardrums, it’s more sway-than-dance music, but it does make for some purty listening. C. MADRID
ELDRIDGE GRAVY & THE COURT SUPREME
(Sun, 10:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) Resident DJ for the “hit MTV show America’s Best ,” DJ Mia makes party-ready dance mixes, and let’s face it, you probably want to kiss her on the mouth. Get ready to sweat, and not just in your bathing-suit area.
(Sun, 2:15 pm, Fisher Green) With a lineup usually tallying in the double figures, local ensemble Eldridge Gravy & the Court Supreme hark back to the heyday of big-band funk à la Sly & the Family Stone, ParliamentFunkadelic, and Tower of Power. All of these moving parts—horns, keys, guitars, bass, drums, percussion, male and female powerhouse singers—cohere into upful jams that move your parts. Eldridge Gravy’s most recent album, Party Hard, is a self-fulfilling prophecy—a hot-sweat-inducing conglomeration of soul-fluffing, booty-strutting groove physiology. D. SEGAL
EL VEZ
(Sun, 11:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) DJ Scene is a handsome-looking man. He’s from Seattle but lives in San Francisco when he’s not busy traveling the world to… DJ! He DJs scenes by scratching and mixing together songs that other people have already written. People love to listen to hits, so mixing one hit with another hit sounds like the recipe for a party. A concept the whole world can understand. Speaking of party, DJ Scene also uses a Hotmail account. EN
DON’T TALK TO THE COPS!
(Sat, 1 pm, Fisher Green) Seattle’s slyest noise-pop outfit is an aggregation of the best things about b-boy culture, hiphop, and rock. Their style is simple: smashed together, hyperactive, nostalgic future-pop with three solid rappers in the group and some killer dance moves to boot. Known for their fast-paced, fun live shows and outrageous songs, Don’t Talk to the Cops! are a sonic and visual overload absent of ego and all about the love. SJ
EIGHT AND A HALF
(Sat, 6 pm, Promenade) Featuring the former child stars of Eight Is Enough and the Two and a Half Men, this band… JK, it’s a guy formerly of the Stills and the drummer from Broken Social Scene. They describe their synth-heavy debut album as both claustrophobic and kaleidoscopic, but a kaleidoscope is somewhat claustrophobic itself, isn’t it? BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
(Mon, 2:45 pm, Mural Amphitheater) I can still recall the first time I heard about El Vez. I was thick into my Elvis phase, and the idea of a Mexican Elvis impersonator was funny. But then a funny thing happened: El Vez turned into something way more than a “mere” impersonator. He brought personal, political energy to his songs—transforming a riff on the King into some sort of weird royalty of his own, with a stage act that combines theatricality and pure fucking talent into something unforgettable. PC See preview, page 15.
EYEHATEGOD
(Sat, 6:15 pm, Exhibition Hall) The sludgiest festercore New Orleans has to offer, Eyehategod will drag you through an angry doom swamp of despair. I take that back, after looking at their band photo, I’ve decided they would not drag you, but sort of clutch at you and make you feel obligated to wade in the doom swamp because you’re the only one without pneumonia. EN
(Mon, 6:15 pm, Exhibition Hall) Sisters! Brothers! It is time to dig out those old Fishbone cassettes we bought at the Salvation Army for 69 cents apiece and reexamine that moment in our youth when we decided that Fishbone were uncool. If we were unwilling to forgive an experimental funk band for being experimental and funky, we were really making a judgment call about ourselves and not them, weren’t we? Now, in the band’s 25th
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year on this earth (!?!), let’s all take a moment to appreciate their Prince-like deep-down unwillingness to give a single shit what anybody thinks. PC See preview, page 18.
(Mon, 2:45 pm, Exhibition Hall) The name “Foxy Shazam” seems like it should belong to some ass-kicking 1970s babe, à la an old Russ Meyer or Pam Grier blaxploitation flick. Instead, it’s the moniker of a bunch of dudes from Ohio who really, really like to listen to old Queen records and would probably kill to have Freddie Mercury’s hologram go on tour with them. They have a song called “I Like It” that has a repeated chorus of “That’s the biggest black ass I’ve ever seen, and I like it; I like it a lot.” Surely it’s an ode to all those fat-bottomed girls—those girls who make the rockin’ world go round. KELLY O
(Sun, 5 pm, Fountain Lawn) With five albums released over 10 years, Fruit Bats have a hefty catalog of songs, and so many of them are great. Singer Eric D. Johnson has an almost Muppety voice, bringing some fun to their classic rock meets folk meets indie rock vibes. After all these years, my favorite remains “Dragon Ships” from their debut album, where Johnson sings, “I wish I was a Viking in 1103/I’d fuck up shit on the high cold sea.” You and me both, sir. You and me both. MS
FUJIYA & MIYAGI
(Mon, 8 pm, Exhibition Hall) British quartet Fujiya & Miyagi rank among modern music’s slyest ambassadors for the less-is-more ethos. Vocalist David Best never rises above a whisper while delivering wry, seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics as the music cruises with precise, motorik funkiness. Guitar and keyboards punctiliously chime and swell, respectively, and the bass accentuates the beat with Holger Czukay–like intensity. Everything is perfectly poised, which should make F&M a tidy bore. Instead, they excite with deceptive grooviness and surprising rave-ups. D. SEGAL
GHOSTS I’VE MET
GUY (Sun, 9:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) Once upon a time on an Air France flight to Paris, I was seated next to a guy named Guy. He was young and handsome and French, and we got to talking, and then drank a considerable amount of cognac and French-kissed all through the in-flight movie. This Guy at Bumbershoot is a regular DJ at Trinity and, according to his bio, has “the ability to keep both rookies’ and seasoned clubbers’ hands in the air.” BJC
HARMONICA HOUSE PARTY WITH LEE OSKAR AND MAGIC DICK (Sun, 3:45 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Lee Oskar is a Danish harmonica wizard, partly responsible for the infectious hook in War’s 1975 classic “Low Rider.” He’s teamed up with Magic “Whammer Jammer” Dick (not a clever indie-rock band name) who blew harp for the J. Geils Band. Together they’ve cobbled together a group of elite players to put a spotlight on what they know best: getting wild on the harmonica.
DEREK ERDMAN
HEARTLESS BASTARDS (Sat, 5:45 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Something about the state of Ohio turns out a lot of rockers with the blues—Heartless Bastards, originally from Cincinnati, are often compared to Akron’s the Black Keys. Can the place where you hang your hat affect your sound? Absolutely. The Heartless Bastards newest album, Arrow, was recorded by Spoon drummer Jim Eno after the group relocated to Austin, Texas. Lead singer Erika Wennerstrom sounds less angsty and more sunny on Arrow—more upbeat (like Spoon) with a dash of country twang. I think sometimes you have to move out of America’s heartland—before you can appreciate, or benefit from, its truly melancholy charms. KO
(Mon, noon, Promenade) Two members of GIM used to be in Modest Mouse—spooky! The band describes its indie-folky-bluesy-pop songs as “simultaneously devastating and soothing and… filled with hand-tinted photographic imagery.” The song “Blackwoods” makes me want to lie down and maybe cry a little bit, just for the hell of it. One DJ on KEXP likes GIM, and so might you. BJC
GOLD LEAVES
(Sun, noon, Fountain Lawn) Gold Leaves are not made out of leaves at all, but out of a guitar and drums and the other accouterments of 1970s-style jam rock. We’re supposed to call this indie rock, maybe, but a live set by Gold Leaves sounds and looks like a young Grateful Dead (who were smart, loosey-goosey, and hopelessly cheerful). But sometimes Gold Leaves sound like a calculated, spooky orchestra in a wind tunnel.
DOMINIC HOLDEN
GOTYE
(Sat, 3:15 pm, KeyArena) Look. Don’t be a dick. You know you’re here to hear “Somebody That I Used to Know.” I know you’re here to hear “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Gotye knows you’re here to hear “Somebody That I Used to Know.” But once he finishes singing “Somebody That I Used to Know,” don’t just turn your back on the guy and walk away like he insulted your mother. You have to stay and smile and nod through the whole set, like you’re interested. That’s the contract you sign with a singer like this.
PC See preview, page 8.
(Sat, 6 pm, Fisher Green) English indie soul rockers the Heavy first came together over their love of vintage R&B. They mix soul, rock, funk, hiphop, and blues into old-schoolsounding soul music with jammin’ horns and sultry lyrics. Their song “Sixteen” samples Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You,” which shows they have great musical taste. I have also heard that these guys, especially frontman Kelvin Swaby and his great gravelly voice, have some serious sex appeal. Find out for yourself. GILLIAN
ANDERSON
THE HELIO SEQUENCE
(Sat, 8:45 pm, Fountain Lawn) You must watch the Helio Sequence’s set and you must keep your eyes on the drummer, Benjamin Weikel. He makes the best faces while playing! The duo sounds really good, too, which I realize is more important. So even if you just want to lie back in the grass, close your eyes, and let the cool breeze kiss your skin while HS’s glistening guitar-driven rock songs flow through your brain, that’s cool, too. MS
HEY MARSEILLES
(Mon, 8 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Seattle’s Hey Marseilles haven’t released a full-length record since their 2008 debut, To Travels & Trunks, and they played Bumbershoot in both 2009 and 2010, but I still consider the band to be a highly recommended part of this weekend’s lineup, because their songs— bursting with strings, percussion, horns, and harmonies—have proven to (so far, at least) be everlasting. MS
IAN HUNTER AND THE RANT BAND
(Sun, 7:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Ian Hunter, of Mott the Hoople fame (the funnyname-having ’70s rock legends probably best known for the song “All the Young Dudes”) and maker of 20 (!!!) albums, here fronts a
Kina Grannis Mon, 6:15 pm, Mural Amphitheater
band known for their tendency to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner or to scold vehemently. Exciting! AM
JANE’S ADDICTION
(Sat, 9:30 pm, KeyArena) Jane’s Addiction are an alternative rock band from the late-1980s/’90s. Lead singer and founding member Perry Farrell is famous for inventing the Lollapalooza music festival, being a drug creep, and never wearing a shirt. Original member and current guitarist Dave Navarro is famous for his severe facial hair, marrying and getting divorced from Carmen Electra, and being so alt he suspends himself from the ceiling with meat hooks in his back. EN See preview, page 11.
JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT
(Sat, 7:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) The “400 Unit” is the unofficial name used to refer to a psychiatric ward in Florence, Alabama. It’s a country colloquialism that really speaks to the American realism of Jason Isbell’s songwriting. Born into a musical family, Isbell has no problem crafting imagery of Southern living in a modern world. Soulful and life-affirming as the gospel with an acoustic guitar, and heated and threatening when he goes electric, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s music has firm roots in the fertile soil of the Muscle Shoals sound. SJ
THE JAYHAWKS
(Sat, 9:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Long recognized as the Minneapolis band that had the thankless job of pioneering alternative country, the Jayhawks have persevered two decades, are finally reunited in their (mostly) original lineup, and have been rocking out new albums. Themselves fans of Britpop and prog rock, their harmonies and melodies built the platform that indie rockers stand on today, but their instrumentality has never quite been duplicated. It’s no stretch to say there isn’t a folk-rock or country-rock band in the business today that isn’t inspired in some way by the Jayhawks sound. SJ
JC BROOKS & THE UPTOWN SOUND
(Sat, 2:30 pm, Fisher Green) As every American who remembers Rudy Huxtable lip-synching to Ray Charles on The Cosby Show knows, quality soul music is equal parts sincerity and acting. JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound are theater people by trade—the guitarist directs at Chicago’s Second City, Saturday Night Live’s comedy incubator, and JC Brooks is an acclaimed Chicago actor.
They’re great showmen, but there’s genuine joy in their bluesy, up-tempo grooves. They are fans of and friends with Jeff Tweedy, and they cover Wilco songs as if they were written by Otis Redding: “I! Am trying! To break! Your heart!” (Insert horn fill here.) BK
THE JEZABELS
(Sun, 3:15 pm, Fountain Lawn) A picture of the Jezabels, a much-praised Aussie band that makes indie pop that I admire: A woman with roller skates has just had a bad accident. She is on the ground and her upper body has plunged into a bush. She is wearing a blue dress and red stockings. Beside her is a tuba. Beside the tuba is the Jezabels—two slim women and two slim men. They are looking at us as if we had something to do with this mishap. A bridge is in the distance. The shoes of the lead singer, Hayley McGlone, have the same color as the stockings on the fallen girl. The band’s talented drummer, Nik Kaloper, is wearing black sneakers and standing in the dirt. The rest of the band is on the grass. It’s a great picture. C. MUDEDE
KAREN LOVELY
(Sun, 2 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Karen Lovely has the dusky voice of a lifelong chimney sweep. She sings bluesy songs about sin and rain and such, punctuated with authoritative guitar riffs and jam-band interludes. In a perfect world, Lovely would chew the face off of KIRO chief meteorologist Rebecca Stevenson and narrate all of Seattle’s sins and weather patterns, just for fun. C. MADRID
KATIE HERZIG
(Sun, 5:45 pm, Mural Amphitheater) This American singer was born in California, raised in Colorado, and made her name in Nashville. Her music, which is simple, pretty, and whimsical, has appeared on commercials that promote the products of Frito-Lay and Honda. Herzig’s music has also appeared on several TV programs (for example, “Sweeter Than This”—a poor woman’s “More Than This”—was featured on Grey’s Anatomy). The cover of Herzig’s latest album, The Waking Sleep, makes it clear to the naked eye that she is one of the rare humans who can boast of possessing erotic ankles. C. MUDEDE
KATIE KATE
(Sun, 1:30 pm, Promenade) Katie Kate has been everywhere this year, and rightfully so. The local rapper is bringing something new and much needed to Seattle’s hiphop scene. The beats on her album Flatland come from strange places—it’s a more artificial, clubby
Pasta, Crepes, Panini, Wine, Beer, Urban Kids Play
2 for $20 Dinner 5pm-9pm
Starter salad, 2 dinner entrees & a strawberry cream crepe to share
This is a classic piece of Sailor Jerry flash, unmatched in its attention to detail. Consisting of a schooner ship–usually a memento of a successful trip around Cape Horn– surrounded by two sweetheart-style mermaids and balanced by two flags, this design harkens back to a time when “ships were made of wood and the men were made of iron!” find out more at sailorjerry.com and facebook.com/officialsailorjerry
sound than most of the Northwest artists we’ve been seeing lately. And her dense knowledge of music (I’m required by law as a writer to point out that she graduated from Cornish with a degree in classical piano) provides a layered sound that rewards introspection. Consider this the victory lap to a great year and the kickoff to an exciting new year. PC
KEANE
(Sun, 9:15 pm, Fisher Green) Hailing from East Sussex, UK, this melodic pop band’s newest album is full of sweet piano tunes and longing, pleasantly-not-Auto-Tuned vocals. One might venture to compare Keane to the Brit sensation Coldplay, but in a nice way.
MELODY DATZ
KINA GRANNIS
(Mon, 6:15 pm, Mural Amphitheater) DIY singer-songwriter Kina Grannis has selfreleased all of her own albums, has a huge online fan base, and puts her focus on playing live and touring like crazy. This gifted artist plays guitar and sings sweet songs about love and life. She is fiercely protective of her music, even dropping her major label when it wouldn’t support the songs she wrote. Most importantly, her “In Your Arms” video is made from amazing stop-motion jellybean art, so she’s obviously pretty neat. GA
KING KHAN & THE SHRINES
(Sat, 4:15 pm, Fisher Green) Everybody likes to talk about King Khan’s out-of-control alcohol abuse—and yes, the set that got him banned from KEXP was pretty legendary— but we wouldn’t be talking about King Khan at all without that special King Khan sound, a garagey I-don’t-give-a-shit petulance combined with an unstoppable rhythm. The Shrines are his biggest, proudest band—a huge assemblage of horns and drums and everything else that makes him sound about 50 miles tall and powered by 70 quintillion gallons of Fuck You, That’s Why. PC
(Sun, 3 pm, Promenade) Perfectly palatable 206 hiphop. And despite the name, not too mad. They’ve got lucid rhymes delivered expediently over ethereally slow, classic R&B chord progressions. It’s a little dated, to my ear, but good. DH
LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS
(Sun, 7:30 pm, Fisher Green) Lee Fields has been around a long time, his catalog extends all the way back to 1969, but his music is not a revival of old soul—Lee Fields is soul. On his last two releases, he’s finally found the right combination of sounds to get the attention he deserves with the percussive, rumbling, funk rhythms of his band the Expressions. Get ready to feel good about traipsing through the trials and tribulations of all our worldly troubles with songs that range from woeful blues to sexy energetic soul. SJ
LIGHTS
(Mon, 7:30 pm, Fisher Green) She’s a (superhot) best new artist Juno Award (Canadian Grammys)–winning electro-rocker who likes to experiment. Lights (yeah, that’s her legal name) has collaborated with metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon and rapper Shad, she’s released an acoustic album, and she likes Phil Collins. For the most part, Lights makes slightly dubby electro-pop sounds on retro synthesizers and sings with a pretty girl voice. HW
LIGHTS FROM SPACE
(Sat, 11:45 am, Fisher Green) This is how my mind works: The moment I learned of the band called Lights from Space, I imagined them sounding like Explosions in the Sky— dreamy and ethereal post-rock. But, as the saying goes, never judge a band by its name.
The Seattle trio Lights from Space sound nothing like Austin’s Explosions in the Sky. Their sound is, instead, a raw and stripped rock. LFS can get a little sad sometimes, but they never get carried away, they always keep their feet on the ground. C. MUDEDE
LOW (Mon, 6:45 pm, Fountain Lawn) This Duluth trio’s haunting, minimalist presence sort of flays you open before expertly HumptyDumptying you back together with signature soft melodies and gentle crescendos. It’s grown-up angsty music—simple guitar, bass and drums assembled with skill, honesty, and refreshing originality. MD
LP
(Mon, 4:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) This woman named her act LP, which makes it nearly impossible to research her on the internet, because—as very old people know—“LP” stands for “long play,” which was a full-length record. That is not to be confused with a 7-inch single. Anyhow. The internet remembers LPs, so searching for a band called LP is not unlike searching for a bar called “happy hour.” LP writes her own songs. DH
M83
(Mon, 3:15 pm, KeyArena) One time when I wasn’t drunk, but I wish I were because at least I’d have an excuse for being so stupid, I confused M83 with Battles. I was talking about how I like M83—“They’re explosive and crazy, and they have a song called ‘Ice Cream’!”—and the person I was talking to looked at me and was like, “No, I don’t think that’s them…” And they were right. That is not M83. M83 plays that “Midnight City” song from the Victoria’s Secret commercial. I wish it were Battles playing Bumbershoot. MS
MAC MILLER
(Sun, 9:45 pm, KeyArena) Psychedelic hiphop with themes like fucking, using, bling, blonds, and pretty much all the things you’d expect a dude to rap about. Miller’s got some crafty beats, so at least there’s that. ERIN PIKE
THE MIRACLES CLUB
(Sat, 11 pm, Exhibition Hall) “Performance art” and “house music” almost never intersect, but Portland’s Miracles Club—members Rafael Fauria, Honey Owens, and Ryan Boyle—have been garnering raves by combining those seemingly incompatible disciplines. The Miracles Club’s brand of house is spacious and bursting with loving vibes as they channel late ’80s acid-house euphoria and create soaring synth motifs that slap a perma-grin on your mug (their blog is called “Ecstasy,” for fook’s sake). Expect flamboyant costumes, vogueing, and choons that’ll take you higher… and higher. D. SEGAL
MISSY HIGGINS
(Sat, 1:45 pm, KeyArena) Missy Higgins is an Australian person who sells a lot of records, as many as Olivia Newton-John and Kylie Minogue, according to her bio. One of the songs on her hit record The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle is called “Unashamed Desire,” for which there is a notable video. In this video, Higgins restages (without knowing it and without any resemblance) a seminal 1960s feminist performance piece by Yoko Ono called Cut Piece, in which other people come up to her and take off her clothing. Except Yoko Ono didn’t end up wearing rainbow-colored origami cranes taped over her privates. JG
MUDHONEY
(Sun, 6:45 pm, Fountain Lawn) Why isn’t there a Mudhoney statue at Seattle Center yet? The city’s longest-running gr*ng*-rock unit have aged shockingly well over the last 24 years, earning them the right to be enshrined
in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame they’d probably not piss on if it were ablaze. While most of their peers have split, faded into oblivion, or tarnished their legacy with increasingly lame releases, Mudhoney have remained a vital font of rampaging, garage-punk fury. Their shows still provoke fiftysomething geezers to mosh. Watch them, they’re sick! D. SEGAL See preview, page 7.
M. WARD
(Sat, 9:45 pm, Fisher Green) Monster of Folk member and half of the duo She & Him, M. Ward began crafting his introspective, witty folk numbers right here in the Northwest. With the wispy singing voice of a wise old satyr, Ward wields a guitar to string audiences along, making a journey out of every song. His music ranges from Instagram homages to rockabilly and from doo-wop to reverberating, modern, emotional folk. SJ
title!—one of the featured links is a comedy video called “What Hipsters Say, and What They Really Mean.” Oberhofer have a lo-fi, melodic, and jangly sound (like simpler cousins of Modest Mouse) and occasional epic, soaring choruses (like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes but with fewer members). They claim influences “ranging from Brian Wilson to Descartes.” They just played Lollapalooza. BK
OMAR SOULEYMAN
NIKI & THE DOVE
(Sun, 1:30 pm, Fountain Lawn) The breakout best Swedish band of the last two years, Niki & the Dove take typical pop clichés and break them into a million pieces. Singer Malin Dahlström’s theatrical vocals stay awash in Gustaf Karlöf’s icy cold electronic keys until the sound echoes out like tribal chants set to synthesizer. Concentrating on producing perfect beats rather than familiar pop sounds, Niki & the Dove’s gothic pop shocks audiences awake rather than singing them to sleep.
SJ
NOAH GUNDERSEN
(Mon, 1:30 pm, Promenade) Local singersongwriter Noah Gundersen sings sadly and sweetly over his acoustic guitar playing. He has a beautiful voice, and his folky songs contain strong messages railing against society’s injustices. He lists Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Band, and David Bazan as influences. His newest EP , Family, fittingly is a collaboration with his sister Abby and her violin. GA
NUDE POP
(Sat, noon, Promenade) Spokane’s NUDE POP used to just be called NUDE, but later added POP so that they could have two Facebook pages. Just kidding! I’m sure it was because of the nude googling problem. Anyway, they battled their way to the spotlight by winning the Sound Off! battle of the bands (which is limited to musicians under 21). Their music is sweet psych that sounds like what I believe the kids are calling “dream pop.”
EN
OBERHOFER
(Sat, 7 pm, Fountain Lawn) Brad Oberhofer is from Tacoma, moved to New York, and his band now sounds like the spirit animal of Williamsburg. If you check their song “o0Oo0Oo” on YouTube—what a cutesy ’n’ complicated
(Mon, 4 pm, Fisher Green) Excellent Seattle label Sublime Frequencies—and its Sham Palace subsidiary—has made Syria’s dabke alpha male Omar Souleyman an international star through several releases that capture the vocalist’s dashing, heart-slashing mic skills. Souleyman synthesizes myriad Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish styles into a rough, exhilarating species of folk-dance music. He charismatically exhorts and wails overtures to (potential) lovers in Arabic over marauding up-tempo beats and febrile, melismatic bleats from keyboards and bouzouk (a long-necked lute). It sounds like a Middle Eastern analogue to dancehall, with its hyper-adrenalized aura and stridently emotional vocals whose default setting is primarily “fever pitch.”
D. SEGAL
THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART
(Mon, 5 pm, Fountain Lawn) To call this band bad is wrong. To call it great is also wrong. To call it mediocre is wrong. To call it exciting is wrong. To call it boring is wrong. To call it innovative is wrong. To call it totally unoriginal is wrong. So what is right? The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sound exactly like what they are: an indie band from NYC. C. MUDEDE
PASSION PIT
(Mon, 9:15 pm, Fisher Green) A few years ago, you could not walk anywhere without falling into a passion pit. Squealing songs of glee and sparkly hip abandon were the ultimate weekend warrior hits—rip off your blazer to reveal a neon tube top, because TGIFF and someone at the office brought in Coronas at 4 p.m.!!! Pash Pit’s newest songs are even squealier, like a joyful chipmunk in a blender filled with confetti and uppers. EN
(Sat, 9:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) Dave Pezzner is a Seattle-based electronic music maker and formerly one half of Jacob London (with Bob Hansen). Our own Dave Segal says that, solo, he “plies a slightly more serious brand of techhouse than he does in JL, while maintaining that group’s slyly irresistible wiggle-ability.” Wiggle-ability?!? You can never get too much wiggle-ability. Also, if you bend his head far back enough, rectangular candy spits out of his neck. Try it! AM
THE PHARMACY
(Mon, 4:30 pm, Promenade) Imagine if the Doors didn’t bloat themselves to death with pretentiousness and out-of-control selfregard. That’s kind of what you get from local garage-rockers the Pharmacy, an organflavored band that does the Doors right: They don’t have any songs that go over five minutes, their lyrics aren’t awful teenage blank verse, and there’s no fucking Jim Morrison around to screw everything up. Win-win-win! PC See preview, page 12.
POLECAT
(Sat, 1:30 pm, Promenade) In most of the US, “polecat” is just another word for skunk. These here Polecats are from Bellingham; they wear old-timey Western clothes in their publicity photo and promise to rock (or something) your world with a blend of “bluegrass, country, Celtic, rock, reggae, and world music.” BJC
POSSE
(Mon, 3 pm, Promenade) Posse are a Seattle trio building on the best parts of ’90s indie bands. Comprising two singers/guitarists and a drummer (with no need for a bassist), Posse put on a rad live show—loud post-pop to shake an elephant ear to. Their song “Sarah” is such a jam; also be sure to check out each member’s individual Smog covers. EN
THE PROMISE RING
(Sun, 6:15 pm, Exhibition Hall) In 1997, when the Promise Ring released the exceptional Nothing Feels Good, it was constantly being referred to as an emo record, so being a jaded teenager, I wrote it off as wuss rock. But that was a lie! It’s not an emo record at all! It’s a gloriously bouncy and fun pop record with songs that will hook themselves to the inside of your brain and never let go, and I regret learning the truth after the band had already broken up. Thankfully, they’re back! And playing their first Pacific Northwest show in at least a decade. Dreams do come true. MS See preview, page 19.
PRONG
(Sat, 4:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) Prong is your favorite metal band’s favorite metal band. Churning out albums full of double kick drum and growling vocals topped with molten metal guitar licks since 1986, their grinding, urban hardcore sound has inspired many a hesher (Trent Reznor) to start their own industrial/metal/sludge band. Hitting Bumbershoot near the end of a North American tour in support of their first new release in five years, after playing with classic metal acts like Corrosion of Conformity and Clutch, Prong should be in rare form. SJ
REBIRTH BRASS BAND
(Mon, 9:45 pm, Mural Amphitheater) You’ve gotta know the Rebirth Brass Band, right? New Orleans? Nearly a dozen dudes with
horns? They’ve played every festival from here to your mama, and they deserve to— they’re nothing revolutionary, but they do their NOLA-brass, high-energy thing as well as anyone around. Bumbershoot has wisely listed them as the final act of the festival. (They’re not sleepy, but they won’t inspire some kind of rock ’n’ roll riot.) Whoever’s still stumbling around on Monday night to catch Rebirth will stroll out of Seattle Center with a little extra bump and swagger in their step. BK
REIGNWOLF
(Mon, 1 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Even if Jordan Cook didn’t play the drums and guitar at the same time (which he does), and even if he didn’t eat guitar strings and shred half stacks (which he will), and even if he didn’t crawl around the stage like the mythical wolf his name implies (which he’s wont to do), he’d be a solid songwriter with a firm grasp on blues music. Even if he doesn’t play the guitar behind his back and climb on the drum kit and howl (believe me, he’s gonna), you’ll enjoy this show. SJ
SCOTTY BOY
(Mon, 12:45 am, Exhibition Hall) DJ Scotty Boy has been at it with his self-proclaimed “Las Vegas Mash Up” style for more than 20 years. He’s the resident DJ at Marquee and considered one of Vegas’s, and perhaps one of the country’s, best. Safe to say he likes to make people dance. And he’s damn good at it. HW
SEAPONY
(Mon, noon, Fountain Lawn) Seapony are a sleep-surf band. Or maybe shy-surf is more accurate. Shurf. Their songs are soothing, glistening waves of fuzzy pop music to hold hands to. Imagine making a surfboard out of dandelion fluff and riding those shiny waves all the way to a private island of pineapple upside-down cake and fireflies. That’s where Seapony will be taking you. Make sure you’re standing next to someone whose hand you would not mind holding. EN
SEATTLE REPERTORY JAZZ
ORCHESTRA
(Sat, 12:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) I can honestly say that I would think less of Seattle if it did not have a real-deal jazz orchestra. Any old city can have a symphony or opera. What’s more impressive, and what you can’t argue with, is a city that has the resources to support a company that performs jazz with a big and classical sound. The tradition consolidated by the great American Duke Ellington is preserved by the institution called Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. C. MUDEDE
SERA CAHOONE
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trademark is indie-folksy kitchen twang. But unlike her cohorts, her voice is used-snakeoil-salesman mesmerizing. If you play her self-titled debut album backward, she clearly demands your social security number and the thumbs of your enemies. Perfect for idle worship in your token plaid shirt and straw cowboy hat. C. MADRID
SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS
Slipknot-esque masks!). The average audience member’s coat that evening was either made of faux pink dog fur or buckles. EN
(Sun, 12:15 pm, Fountain Lawn) This is the best band to ever come out of Seattle. Tacocat is made up of really nice people playing the best music you have ever heard in your whole life. EN
(Sun, 1:45 pm, KeyArena) Oh, man. Oh, man. You just don’t get much better than Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. If you like classic soul music, she’s just about the best thing going today. If you don’t like classic soul music, you’re dead to me anyway. She and the Dap Kings are amazing live. PC
SKERIK’S BANDALABRA
(Sat, 2:15 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Skerik is a saxophone virtuoso who has crafted a sound so rare they gave it a name: saxophonics. As a founding member of Critters Buggin and staple in Les Claypool’s Fancy Band, Skerik absolutely shreds the idea of what live saxophone should sound like. The lineup for Skerik’s Bandalabra reads like a roster at the school for the acid-jazz inclined: Drummer D’Vonne Lewis, stand-up bassist Evan Flory-Barnes, and guitarist Andy Coe are set to conjure what Skerik himself says sounds like “Fela Kuti meeting Steve Reich in rock’s backyard.” SJ
SKRILLEX
(Mon, 9:30 pm, KeyArena) EDM’s most popular punching bag is headlining Monday at the main stage, adding to the megamillions he’s pocketing. All that green probably cushions the verbal hate that Skrillex (Grammy Award–winner Sonny John Moore) has had to endure. What is it about his music that people loathe so? It’s dubstep, yeah, but not as Kode9 or Burial know it. Skrillex puffs up his tracks with simpleminded, Richter-scale beats and cartoonishly garish high- and lowfrequency doodads and gewgaws. If it’s not quite as lowbrow as Juggalo rap, it’s pretty close. D. SEGAL See preview, page 16.
THE SOUL REBELS
(Sat, 4 pm, Mural Amphitheater) You know what I like best about the Soul Rebels? In addition to the fact that they rule at New Orleans brass-band jazz and mix it with covers of Outkast and Jay-Z? They wear T-shirts that say their own band name. Yeah. JG
THE SPITTIN’ COBRAS
(Sat, 1 pm, Exhibition Hall) DO NOT TRY TO TAME THE SPITTIN’ COBRA, MOTHERFUCKERS, FOR THE SPITTIN’ COBRA CANNOT BE TAMED. (Cue spittin’, ax shreddin’.) C. MADRID
STAR ANNA AND THE LAUGHING DOGS
(Mon, 7:30 pm, Promenade) Star Anna is a riveting performer. Whether categorized as Americana, alt-country, or soul-filled rock awesomeness, Star Anna’s massively strong vocals are marked with a naked passion that fills a room to bursting. Every time I hear her, I feel a little bit wiser. Backed ably by Justin Davis, Travis Yost, and Keith Ash, Star Anna’s Monday night show is a perfectly memorable way to cap off the weekend. MD
SUPER GEEK LEAGUE
(Mon, 1 pm, Exhibition Hall) Glitter cannons. That is what I most remember about seeing SGL a long time ago, when I was checking the audience’s coats as part of my job requirements as a coat check girl. SGL is weird. That’s what they are going for, and they want to shove every last bit of “weirdo” into their “carazy” show. They define themselves as soul metal and employ a Hot Topic circus for their live shows (Strippers! Pillow fights!
(Sat, 5:15 pm, Fountain Lawn) From beginning to end, THEESatisfaction’s awE naturalE is a requirement for summer listening. I love the sultry songs “Enchantruss” and “Deeper,” but my favorite is “QueenS,” with its feel-good vibe and throwback to cool ’90s R&B. Plus, the lyrics are full of good life advice. Rule number one: “Whatever you do, don’t funk with my groove.” Rule number two: “Let the musicians be your physicians.” I could listen to it forever. MS
(Sun, 9 pm, Promenade) Thenewno2 is led by a couple of famous musicians’ sons: Dhani Harrison, son of George, and Paul Hicks, son of Tony. The band (whose name is pronounced “the new number two”) displayed a fairly straightforward rock approach on its first album, but their second release, thefearofmissingout—as its internet-inspired title might indicate—is a much more adventurous blend of sounds, with electronic, hiphop, and even viral video samples crowding the mix. To help you picture it better: Ben Harper and RZA both make appearances. JOSEPH STATEN
(Sun, 12:45 pm, Fisher Green) Theoretics bring a mostly straightforward brand of hiphop that was very popular around the turn of the millennium: lyricism-oriented, positive, and uplifting. But the twist this Seattle-based seven-piece group brings to the table is a big, booming instrumental arrangement—which includes a sax and a stand-up bass. This, combined with the deft rapping of the group’s two MCs, combines for a live set ideal for moving a sweaty Bumbershoot crowd. JS
(Sat, 12:15 am, Exhibition Hall) If you want to feel like a dinosaur, go listen to some of this Tiger & Woods crap the kids are dancing to these days. The song “Come Down” is nearly eight minutes long, and it’s literally the same three beats with one guy chanting the word “been” over and over. That is all that happens. Been. Been. Been. Been. “Gin Nation” is even longer and even less interesting and OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD. MS
TONY BENNETT
(Sun, 3:15 pm, KeyArena) Tony Bennett is best known for abandoning a vital organ in the Bay Area. He has been crooning since birth, 87 years ago. And after being tragically (but fairly) pigeonholed as a Las Vegas dud, he suffered a nearly lethal cocaine overdose in 1979, after which he shared with his sons a realization that remains poignant to this day: “It seems like people don’t want to hear the music I make.” DH See preview, page 17.
(Mon, 8:30 pm, KeyArena) Two Fresh are twin brothers Sherwyn and Kendrick Nicholls, who create innovative hiphop with a unique sampling style, with Colby Buckler holding it down on drums (hiphop drumming seems to add an element of impossible to an already challenging task, but he does it well). Speaking of challenging tasks, being in a band with a family member seems even more impossible. I always think about Wynonna and Naomi Judd. Can you imagine? Touring with your mom? Anyway, kudos to Two Fresh! Twins are neat! EN
TY CURTIS BAND
(Sun, 12:15 pm, Mural Amphitheater) This young blues guitarist from Salem, Oregon, has already put out four albums. He plays an electric-guitar-heavy white-guy version of old-school blues rock. He’s no B.B. King, but if you like this sort of thing, he writes his own songs, plays the guitar energetically, and sings with spirit. He’s bound to appeal to fans of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. GA
TY SEGALL
(Mon, 3:15 pm, Fountain Lawn) If there are trucker caps, shirtless babes, and pot brownies to be had at Bumbershoot this year, the Ty Segall show is probably where you’ll find them. The distorted guitars, drawly lyrics, and semi-surf-rock tones of the former Epsilons frontman are the perfect soundtrack to a summer festival. MD
TYRONE WELLS
(Mon, 9 pm, Promenade) Spokane folk singer-songwriter Tyrone Wells is a finelooking man with no hair and a guitar. He has a friendly voice involving the reassuring sound of plenty of breath. He describes his lady as moving like a “swirling,” “fragrant” “sea breeze,” and sometimes his songs are on TV shows. Or kind of a lot, actually: Intervention, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Rescue Me, One Tree Hill, As the World Turns—the list keeps going. Go Spokane. JG
(indie rock–tinged hiphop band?) will release Mumps, Etc. in October. The first single, “Sod in the Seed,” is heavier on the hiphop than the band’s previous efforts, and it kind of reminds me of Gorillaz. Well, then. Hopefully their Bumbershoot set will feature even more new material, so we can better understand the direction they’re going. MS
(Sat, 1:45 pm, Fountain Lawn) Do you like bands that sound like early Fugazi and/or the Replacements? Do you like no-bullshit rock without a bunch of bells and whistles, pink hair dye, or Auto-Tuned kittens meowing in the background? Do you like heavy guitars, intelligent lyrics, and lots of hooks for your brain to latch on to? Do you like food? Do you like coffee and/or long walks on a beach? If you say “yes” to liking even ONE of the aforementioned things, then you’ll LOVE Unnatural Helpers. I bet you’ll especially love the brand-new song from Land Grab (due out on September 25) called “Hate Your Teachers.” It was hand-tailored to be a backto-school classic. KO
(Mon, 4:30 pm, Exhibition Hall) These three lads from Liverpool play music that sounds like it should be in commercials, and alas it has been. It’s rock music that relies heavily on synths and sounds fun, energetic, and is probably easy to dance to. Don’t go looking for the secrets to the universe here, but sometimes you don’t have to learn anything to have a good time. “The lasers fill our minds with empty plans/I never knew I was a techno fan/ooh ooh ooh oooh oooh.” DE
(Mon, 8:30 pm, Fountain Lawn) Kurt Cobain’s favorite Scottish pop band came back from a 20-year hiatus in 2010 to drop the surprisingly strong Sex with an X album. While it doesn’t equal the raunchy vitality of the Vaselines’ first gush of twee-pop effervescence—hardly much tops their first two stunning EPs, Son of a Gun and Dying for It—the new material proves that creative core Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee haven’t lost their ability to craft catchy melodies, devise clever vocal interplay, and pen witty lyrics. They also deliver some of the most hilarious between-song banter in the biz. D. SEGAL See preview, page 20.
WANDA JACKSON AND THE DUSTY 45S
(Sun, 9:30 pm, Mural Amphitheater) Wanda Jackson was there when everyone decided to slap country and R&B music around a little bit and call it rock and roll. She was one of the human beings who dragged rockabilly into this world. Wanda Jackson will survive us all. Now she’s on tour with the Dusty 45s, who are themselves no slouches with the country and the rock and the ass-kicking. This should be a special one. PC
WHY?
(Sun, 1 pm, Exhibition Hall) I’ve been so enamored with Why?’s 2008 release Alopecia—the captivatingly dark lyrics, subtle beats that get more interesting with each listen—that I didn’t even notice the band released Eskimo Snow in 2009. Even more notable, the hiphop-tinged indie rock band
(Sun, 4 pm, Fisher Green) Just when you thought all possible combinations of “wolf” had been taken by other band names, BAM, Yelawolf hits you in the face, but not with his beard—he doesn’t have one; those are reserved for other Wolf (and Eagle and Bear) bands—no, he’s going to hit you with his Southern hiphop that sounds like the kind of hiphop an early ’00s teen was probably exposed to in high school. I suppose when Eminem and Kid Rock are involved, it’s going to sound like that. Familiar and… well, I’ll just leave it at that. EN
THE YOUNG EVILS
(Sun, 4:30 pm, Promenade) In some ways, the Young Evils seem less like a band and more like a recipe for a cake. The ingredients: good looks, apt musicianship, charming lyrics, music industry connections, informed enthusiasm, and an apparent hunger to succeed. It would be easy to slag them off as privileged, but their songs are just too good. It’s inventive indie rock without a lot of room for overplaying, which helps, because it’s the harmonies and words that are the icing on top. DE
BRIAN POSEHN
(Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 2:45 pm; Mon, 6:15 pm; Intiman) Brian Posehn is a well-loved nerd’s nerd type of comedian. You’d probably
recognize him from small parts on ’90s TV shows like Friends, News Radio, and Seinfeld. Oh! And he was also a regular character on Just Shoot Me! Remember that show? Somehow I watched, like, every episode of that. More recently-ish, Posehn has been involved with The Comedians of Comedy, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, Tom Goes to the Mayor and The Sarah Silverman Program. He has a funny voice and seems like a nice guy. EMILY NOKES
THE COMEDY STAND
(Sat–Mon, 3 pm, Vera Project) This is the battleground on which the Northwest’s top comedians will wage war with each other in an hour-long battle to the death by jokes and giggles. The lineup will include different local laff-makers each day, such as Adam Ray, Joe Fontenot, Heneghen, and Manny Martin, all produced by “comedy producer” Sean McCann, who is probably Irish. DEREK ERDMAN
DAMIEN LEMON
(Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 2:45 pm; Mon, 6:15 pm; Intiman) Damien Lemon is one of those subtle, straight-faced guys who can crack up a room with a simple ribbing on cross-racial adoption. Based out of New York, Lemon effectively delivers material based on supremely unfunny things like economic recession and sexual harassment with a rare, clever touch of class.
MELODY DATZ
DAN SODER
(Sat, 2:45 pm; Sun, 6:15 pm; Mon, 4:30 pm; Intiman) “I’m a really nice and funny person.” —Dan Soder’s Twitter account, July 25, 2012. DE
DOUG BENSON’S ‘DOUG LOVES MOVIES’
(Sat–Mon, 4:15 pm, Bagley Wright) This is your chance to watch Doug Benson tape his popular podcast, Doug Loves Movies, with a few funny friends. (If you’ve never seen a comedy podcast taping, it’s like standup comedy only with more sitting.) Come for the jokes, stay for your chance to win things, up to and perhaps including Doug Benson’s water bill. CIENNA MADRID
FRED ARMISEN
(Sun, 8 pm; Mon, 1 pm; Intiman) Fred Armisen’s fan base is mostly due to Portlandia, the hit documentary series that shows the daily struggles of living a more alternative lifestyle than your neighbor in an all-white city. Portlandia’s just been renewed for a third season by IFC—great news!—but this is Armisen’s chance to show neophytes just how fucking funny he can be on the balls of his own two feet. C. MADRID
JACKIE KASHIAN
(Sun, 1 pm; Mon, 2:45 pm; Intiman) Jackie Kashian has contributed to This American Life, she hosts a very funny podcast called
JAMES ADOMIAN
(Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 4:30 pm; Mon, 2:45; Intiman) James Adomian is really fucking funny. Perhaps best known for his impersonations of George W. on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Adomian is funny enough to keep me glued to a crappy smartphone video for an hour and a half as he pounded cans of Tecate and went on about being gay, being a wrestler, being Danny DeVito. I look forward to seeing him without having to squint. MD
JAY HOLLINGSWORTH’S TRUE STORY COMEDY SHOW
(Sun, 1:15 pm, Vera Project) Ever wanted to know how much of a comedian’s standup routine is based on reality and how much is just hilarious bullshit? Jay Hollingsworth invites comedians on stage to present their best sets; then grills them on what elements are true and what has been beefed-up for the sake of good storytelling. C. MADRID
KAREN KILGARIFF
(Sun, 2:45 pm; Mon, 6:15 pm; Intiman) At first listen, Karen Kilgariff’s new EP , Behind You, harkens back to ’90s-esque heartfelt guitar strumming and girlish vocals—and then her lyrics kick in. Kilgariff tells it like she sees it, giving shit where she sees the shit’s due to 21st-century icons such as Modern Family, Tina Fey, and Jesus Christ. MD
KURT BRAUNOHLER
(Sat, 6:15 pm; Sun, 1 pm; Mon, 1 pm; Intiman) This comedian is also the brains behind several web series and radio programs, though his jokes are hit-and-miss. He leans toward self-deprecating without being personal enough to provoke empathy, and yet there is something SO SLIGHTLY QUIRKY about him, which somehow makes him charming even if the shit he’s saying isn’t funny. ERIN PIKE
LAFF HOLE
(Sat–Mon, 6:30 pm, Vera Project) Come out to see the best local comedians Seattle has to offer! Each day, Laff Hole will be hosted by a different sketch group or comedian and will feature four or five local standups, including Adam Firestone, Tristan Devin, Edrease Peshtaz, Jessica Strauss, Brent Flyberg, and Brett Hamil, among others. C. MADRID
NICK SWARDSON
(Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 4:30 pm; Mon, 2:45 pm; Intiman) You probably recognize Nick Swardson from Grandma’s Boy, Reno 911!, Bucky Larson, and just about every Adam Sandler movie ever, but you may be surprised to learn he’s also a standup comic! He makes jokes about things we can all relate to: drunkenness, STDs and old people. HANNAH WILSON
PAUL F. TOMPKINS & FRIENDS
(Sat–Mon, 6 pm, Bagley Wright) Paul F. Tompkins knows how to wear suits and tell jokes with the ceremonious flair of a Kentucky Derby dandy. He’s been on every great comedy show of the last two decades—from Mr. Show with Bob and David and The Paul F. Tompkins Show to There Will Be Blood Featuring comedians Jen Kirkman, Kumail Nanjiani, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, and more! C. MADRID
RON FUNCHES
(Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 6:15 pm; Mon, 4:30 pm; Intiman) Laff-master Ron Funches grew up on the mean streets of the South Side of Chicago and eventually moved to Oregon, providing a gold mine of comedic material, which touches on race and regionalism. He’s black, he’s clever, and fun is actually part of his last name. DE
‘TOO BEAUTIFUL TO LIVE’
(Mon, 1:15 pm, Vera Project) Luke Burbank is a Seattle radio personality who leads a cast of cohorts on a daily podcast that is funny, witty, and informational. I’m normally wary of how radio and television acts will translate in a festival atmosphere, but the TBTL team’s charm is sure to please a portion of any crowd. DE
‘CHRISTOPHER MARTIN HOFF REMEMBERED’
(Sat–Mon, Fisher Pavilion) Christopher Martin Hoff, who died suddenly this spring, was the first artist who’d been confirmed to be featured at Bumbershoot. This is not the show he’d have intended, but let’s take this time to consider a wide collection of his works and personal materials (which comes on the heels of a recent smaller memorial exhibition at Linda Hodges Gallery, and will be followed by an exhibition of his early works opening September 6 at Fountainhead Gallery)— not to mourn what might have been, but to celebrate and learn from what was. JEN GRAVES See preview, page 25.
‘ELVISTRAVAGANZA’
(Sat–Mon, Seattle Center Pavilion) Fifty years ago, Elvis came to Seattle to shoot the movie It Happened at the World’s Fair—and now Seattle’s number-one Elvis fans, the fantastic Marlow Harris and Jo David, have organized his second coming. Elvistravaganza includes an exhibition of 15 LA artists inspired by the King, curated by past museum and gallery director Annie Adjchavanich and Juxtapoz founder Greg Escalante. Among the rest of the Elvis-loving artists from around the world are Finland’s Markku Laakso. You must see what he makes. Here’s Harris’s description: “Markku is from the village of Koppelo in the Lapland town of Inari. He paints traditional Lappist peasants with Elvis.” Yes, he does. Mm-hmm. It’s as good as you hope it is. JG
‘NOW’
(Sat–Mon, Fisher Pavilion) Seattle artist Dylan Neuwirth’s 12-foot circular neon sculpture NOW—it resembles a rainbow looking at its reflection in grayscale—changes hues “to represent our continuous cycle of personal change across time.” JG
(Sat–Mon, Seattle Center Pavilion) The first iteration of Record Store opened in December 2011 in an empty storefront in Pioneer Square, in conjunction with Chicago artist Theaster Gates’s Listening Room installation at Seattle Art Museum. DJs hosted listening parties so that people could exchange ideas and dance moves at a “store”
where nothing was for sale. Bumbershoot continues the tradition created/curated by SAM’s Sandra Jackson-Dumont and Olson Kundig Architects. JG
‘SKYWARD!’
(Sat–Mon, Fisher Pavilion) Just like the Space Needle, the Seattle World’s Fair, and the creation of The Jetsons all in the same year sent projections of the future out into the ether, so Skyward! is a display of contemporary artists’ visions of what’s to come—“and what life might be like if we lived in the sky,” write curators Shelly Leavens and Jana Brevick. The lineup of artists is starry: Britta Johnson, Emily Pothast and David Golightly, Vaughn Bell and Iole Alessandrini, Heather and Ivan Morison, Ron Lambert, Hollow Earth Radio’s Garrett Kelly and Amber Kai Morgan, and more. JG
‘THIS IS GLASS’
(Sat–Mon, Fisher Pavilion) “And you think our title is a little vague?” says curator Sarah Traver, laughing, when asked to explain what This Is Glass will cover. Turns out it’s a group show meant as a counterpoint to the new Chihuly Garden and Glass displays that are also going to be at the heart of Bumbershoot. This Is Glass “takes a closer look at how glass is being used in contemporary art outside the realm of craft and the Dale Chihuly/Dante Marioni beautiful-object realm,” Traver says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Artists include Matthew Szosz (pronounced Zoze: “best last name ever”), Edison Osorio Zapata, Christopher McElroy, Katherine Gray, and John Drury and Robbie Miller working together under the name CUD. JG
‘BED SNAKE’
(Sat, 6:45 pm; Sun, 2 pm; Center House Theater) Bed Snake is a hiphop musical by Noah Benezra and Hannah Victoria Franklin that premiered at Washington Ensemble Theater. Wolf is a dopey stoner; Kry$tal is a famous rapper who is also the devil. Wearing a magenta bra and fishnets, Kry$tal seduces Wolf into selling his soul, after which he ends up onstage with her as part of rap duo Blood Kry$tal Wolf. The rhymes that come out of their mouths will make you laugh until your face hurts: “Her pussy is a dark fuckin’ chasm/ My girl Kry$tal invented the orgasm… When you see the girl, man, kiss the ring/Kry$tal got titties made out of bling.” ANNA MINARD
LG! CABARET: JUST DANCE!
(Sun, 7 pm, Center House Theater) Live Girls! Theater, dedicated to promoting new works by women, produces a biannual cabaret with a bunch of ladies. This round, the theme is “just dance,” so expect about a thousand Fame references, leg warmers, leotards, and other tributes to popular dance culture (Dirty Dancing? Saturday Night Fever? That Ciara song “1, 2 Step”?). ERIN PIKE
‘MISS FANNY’S FUN BOX’
(Sat, 3:45 pm; Mon, 5:15 pm; Center House Theater) Local comedian and actor Kate Jaeger—a longtime affiliate of Live Girls! Theater and Wing-It Productions—knows how to own a stage and is frequently funnier than a purse full of parrots trying to give each other manicures. Her solo show Miss Fanny’s Fun Box chronicles the final episode of a children’s show before it gets shoved off the air by Extreme Toddler Cage Match
BRENDAN KILEY
NERDPROV
(Mon, 3:45 pm, Center House Theater) IT’S NERDS + IMPROV = HA-HA-HA. Standard improv usually has a dollop-sized dose of nerd, so this particular strain of improv
promises to be positively bursting with it, broaching all kinds of nerdy audience-suggested subjects like Star Wars and nerd video games and Harry Potter and nerd comic books. Nerds. EP
RAMAYANA YOUTH ENSEMBLE
(Sat, 2:30 pm; Mon, 2:30 pm; Center House Theater) ACT Theater is in the middle of producing a new adaptation of the Sanskrit epic poem the Ramayana, which concerns monkey kings, demon armies, early thoughts about dharma, and the journey of Rama (an avatar of Vishnu) to find his kidnapped wife. As part of its own epic journey, ACT has been making connections in Seattle’s Asian communities, and this youth ensemble has 20 performers using dance and puppetry from India to Indonesia to interpret their own version of the story. BK
SANDBOX RADIO LIVE!
(Mon, 7 pm, Center House Theater) Sandbox Radio Live! reanimates the old-fashioned radio show with short sketches—some comical, some not-so-comical—and entr’acte music and fake commercials. Some live radiodrama programs are dull as dishwater, but Sandbox pulls from some of Seattle’s best theater talent: Leslie Law, Charles Leggett, Scot Augustson, Paul Mullin, Amy Thone, Jose Gonzales, Marya Sea Kaminski, and dozens of others who bring the high-octane, sprawling comedy of a group of professionals flying by the seats of their collective pants. BK See preview, page 27.
SKETCHFEST SEATTLE
(Sun, 3:45 pm, Center House Theater)
Some of Seattle’s most favoritest sketchcomedy groups that regularly perform in the oldest sketch-comedy festival in the US: Charles, Ubiquitous They, and the Entertainment Show. What do they all have in common (besides being regulars at SketchFest)?
Stranger comedy correspondent Lindy West has heaped loving praise on all three. BK
WING-IT PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS ‘ELECTION SHOW’
(Sat, 5 pm; Sun, 5:30 pm; Center House Theater) Longtime Seattle improv favorites stage a presidential election cycle in 60 minutes. If only we could dispense with this presidential election so quickly. Mitt Romney is clearly inept, unfit for the job, and bound for the dustbin of history. How long before we can start forgetting that he ever existed? BK
THE ATOMIC BOMBSHELLS
BURLESQUE
(Mon, 8:30 pm, Bagley Wright) The Atomic Bombshells are Seattle’s most venerable
burlesque dancers—one of their award-winning members, Miss Indigo Blue, even has her own Academy of Burlesque with 11 different teachers. The Bombshells have been instrumental in spearheading the Seattle burlesque revival, practicing the old-fashioned stuff with new inflections—queer, neo-vaudeville, boylesque, what have you.
BRENDAN KILEY
THE CHERDONNA AND LOU SHOW
(Sun, 8:30 pm, Bagley Wright) Cherdonna and Lou are the gender-bending, brilliantly campy modern-dance duo whose latest show, out out there (A Whole Night Lost), will warp your mind with delight. (Key pleasures: Lou’s gorgeously eloquent dancing, Cherdonna’s entire head.) DAVE SCHMADER See preview, page 27.
GALUMPHA
(Sat, 12:15 pm, Bagley Wright) An athletic, acrobatic trio whose performance style lands somewhere in the intersection of dance, theater, and comedy, Galumpha often uses odd props (Velcro and tennis balls, for example).
ERIN PIKE
JOHN WATERS
(Sat, 8:30 pm, Bagley Wright) The American treasure behind such cult-film landmarks as the coprophiliatastic Pink Flamingos and the glorious, original Hairspray takes the stage to tell charming tales of his luridly charmed life. According to its PR, This Filthy World: Filthier & Dirtier finds Waters focusing on “his early artistic influences and his fascination with true crime, exploitation films, fashion lunacy, the extremes of the art world, Catholicism, sexual deviancy, and a love of reading.” D. SCHMADER See preview, page 21.
MAXIMUM VELOCITY
(Mon, 12:15 pm, Bagley Wright) Velocity Dance Center, which won a Stranger Genius Award in 2003, has been a fertile local incubator for internationally renowned choreographers. (The latest big shot, Zoe Scofield, won a prestigious award from the Princess Grace Foundation this year and has also been nominated for a 2012 Stranger Genius Award.) This showcase will be a primer of Seattle’s modern-dance scene: Scofield’s meticulously designed, often spooky (though occasionally funny) “feral ballet,” and Amy O’Neal, a leader of the pack in fusing pop culture and hiphop with modern dance. Both Scofield and O’Neal are rigorous, inspired artists moving along very different aesthetic trajectories. Joining them: young Turks Kate Wallich (who works with tight, moody ambience) and Markeith Wiley (who, like O’Neal, injects his modern choreography with b-boy and other street-dance styles). This should be a broad, informative survey of Seattle dance that goes down easy. BK
SYMPHONY UNTUXED
(Sun, 12:15 pm, Bagley Wright) Take a break from the sun and the more frenetic sounds to sit in an air-conditioned room, listening to virtuosos do their thing, but without the penguin suits. Assistant Seattle Symphony conductor Stilian Kirov will lead a chamber orchestra through baroque music, some Piazzolla tangos, and a piece for violin and cassette player titled “Memo.” BK
BUSHWICK BOOK CLUB, SEATTLE PRESENTS ‘A WRINKLE IN TIME’
(Mon, noon, Leo K.) Bushwick Book Club is a local music series wherein musicians read one particular book and write an original song or two in response to it. It’s often a funny, strange anthology of an evening, and you can always tell when the performer didn’t actually read the book in question, which is fun, too. Today’s book is the classic A Wrinkle in Time, and musicians include Sean Nelson, along with some of the most entertaining Bushwick veterans— Tai Shan, Wes Weddell, and most especially Bucket of Honey. PAUL CONSTANT
CHARLES PHOENIX: DESTINATION
1962 SEATTLE WORLD’S FAIR!
(Sun, noon, Leo K.) Phoenix, who is purportedly a “Retro pop culture humorist and author,” will discuss the “kitschy pop culture of yesterday,” in particular the 1962 World’s Fair, which, rumor has it, happened 50 years ago. PC
‘GO THE F TO SLEEP’ WITH AUTHOR ADAM MANSBACH
(Sat, 3:30 pm, Leo K.) I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. It’s a kids’ book with a cuss word in the title. Why is it such a huge deal, with Samuel L. Jackson and Werner Herzog getting involved? It’s not that funny. People with kids tell me that I’d understand the viral appeal of Go the Fuck to Sleep if I ever had kids, but I just don’t think it’s that good of a joke. Look, I can play, too: Winnie-the-Poop. Get it? No? It’s kind of subtle. Oh, fuck you. You’d understand if you had kids. PC
HEDGEBROOK BUSTS
FEM-MYTHS
(Sat, noon, Leo K.) Whoever named this event should be fired. You get some of the best spoken-word poets in the area—including Karen Finneyfrock and Tara Hardy—on a bill and you waste space in the title on a shitty made-up word like “fem-myths”? Here’s
what you need to know: Hedgebrook is an awesome organization from Whidbey Island that is devoted to literature written for and by females. Some of those females will read. You will not be bored. The end. PC
‘THE JOY OF CENSORSHIP’ WITH ‘MAD’ MAGAZINE’S JOE RAIOLA
(Sun, 1:45 pm, Leo K.) The senior editor of MAD magazine will discuss “banned books, movie ratings, the FCC, the Patriot Act, and the true meaning of obscenity,” as well as the history of MAD. This will be an interesting talk, and I bet there will be a lot of single men in the audience if you’re looking for love, ladies. PC
‘LETTERS TO KURT’ WITH AUTHOR ERIC ERLANDSON
(Sun, 3:30 pm, Leo K.) Erlandson was the guitarist for Hole. Letters to Kurt is a collection of letters Erlandson wrote to Kurt Cobain. I bet Cobain would have hated the fact that this reading exists. PC
‘MODERNIST CUISINE’: FOOD FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE
(Sat, 1:45 pm, Leo K.) I don’t know if I ever want to cook from Modernist Cuisine—I’m more a casseroles and steak kind of guy— but I sure do love to read it, and I definitely want to eat recipes from it. Modernist Cuisine examines all the latest ways to cook food—using science!—and today, some of the scientists and chefs who helped write the book will discuss why it’s so important. The big caveat here is that if you attend this reading, you will want to buy Modernist Cuisine, and it costs just over six hundred dollars You read that right. PC
‘REDEFINE’ MAGAZINE PRESENTS MOTION & MOVEMENT IN MUSIC VIDEOS
(Mon, 3:30 pm, Leo K.) We get lots of e-mails from dancers accusing us of not caring enough about dance. To those dancers, I say you should get down with the man (and woman) in the mirror before you accuse anyone of not giving a shit about dance. Read the title of this event. Why would anyone want to attend that? It’s about something very interesting— the way music videos present dance—but the title of the event and the description, which promises an “open community dialogue,” sound to me like a PhD-level lecture on The Epidemiology of Drying Paint, presented by Professor Rotting Corpse. PC
REMIX, PLAGIARISM, OR THEFT?
FEATURING KIRBY FERGUSON AND QUENTIN ROWAN
(Mon, 1:45 pm, Leo K.) Quentin Rowan published a pretentious thriller that was almost immediately proven to be a patchwork of plagiarism, from sources as obvious as Ian Fleming and Graham Greene. Then he wrote a memoir about his experiences. I urge you not to attend this reading, thereby giving this loser another moment of literary fame. Shame on Bumbershoot for trying to cash in on Rowan’s sleazy aura like this instead of booking a real, deserving author instead. PC
THE STRANGER’S GUIDE TO AMERICA: STORIES BY DAN SAVAGE, LINDY WEST, CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE, AND BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
(Sat, 7 pm, Leo K.) Conflict of interest alert! These guys are really funny and smart. They’re also my coworkers—or, in Lindy’s case, former coworker—and bosses. So, yeah, take my recommendation with a grain of salt: I’m biased. But you should go to this anyway, because they’re awesome. PC See preview, page 23.
TRIVIA NIGHT WITH KEN JENNINGS
(Mon, 7 pm, Leo K.) One time, I found myself
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standing in Tom Skerritt’s living room with Ken Jennings. I didn’t want to mention Jennings’s record-breaking winning streak on Jeopardy! because I figured everybody did that. So instead I thanked him for being so funny on Twitter. It’s true! Jennings is a hilarious crafter of tweets, and he’s charming and very funny in person, too, which makes him a brilliant choice for a trivia night host. This should be fun. PC
BEST OF SIFF 2012 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS
(Sat–Mon, 4:30 pm) A collection of the best short films of SIFF 2012, chosen by SIFF audiences.
BEST OF SIFF 2012 JURY AWARD WINNERS
(Sat–Mon, 3:30 pm) Another collection of the best short films screened at SIFF 2012, as chosen by SIFF jurists.
WHY DUBSTEP? WHY TRAP MUSIC? WHY NOW?
(Mon, 5:15 pm, Leo K.) It’s time again for Bumbershoot’s most confusing and awkward panel discussion series, the Why This? Why That? Why Now? “investigations.” Why bother? Why feign interest? Who cares? PC
WHY FAIRY TALES? WHY WAR ON WOMEN? WHY NOW?
(Sat, 5:15 pm, Leo K.) If you have to attend one of these things—and believe me, you don’t—this is the one to attend, because it stars my lovely and hilarious former coworker, and current Jezebel editor, Lindy West. Lindy will make up for whatever lack of guidance or intelligence the rest of the yetto-be-determined-at-press-time panel will provide by sheer force of will alone. PC
WHY HIPSTERS? WHY SLACKTIVISM? WHY NOW?
(Sun, 5:15 pm, Leo K.) Another day, another confusing and pointless panel discussion with a cloying name! This one features brilliant comedian Solomon Georgio, though, so it’s at least guaranteed to be funny. PC
WRITERS OF ‘FUTURAMA’
(Sun, 7 pm, Leo K.) At last! Because you demanded it! The writers of Futurama will discuss writing Futurama. Panelists include David X. Cohen, Eric Horsted, Ken Keeler, Josh Weinstein, and Mike Rowe. If you’re a fan of Futurama, you don’t need me to tell you to go to this. If you don’t know what a Futurama is, this would be an incredibly boring panel to sit through. PC
Curated by SIFF, the 1 Reel Film Festival is Bumbershoot’s annual “celebration of cinematic brevity,” this year featuring more than 100 short films from around the globe, running continuously—in a room containing air conditioning and comfortable chairs—throughout the festival. Every hour brings a new program, full list of programs below. All showings at the SIFF Film Center. DAVID SCHMADER
ART ATYPICAL
(Sun, 2 pm) Short films with an artsy bent, from documentaries on artists to experimental art films.
DANCE IT OUT
(Sat, 1 pm) A collection of dance-themed shorts, from choreographed technology to modern dance in space.
EXTREME ATHLETICISM
(Mon, 1 pm) Shorts chronicling hardcore sportiness, including extreme diving, extreme skateboarding, and extreme surfing.
EXTREME!
FACE THE MUSIC
(Sun, 1 pm; Mon, 2 pm) A collection of music-themed shorts, featuring such subjects as the Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, Australian punks, and elks wandering around to Fleet Foxes songs.
FILMS4ADULTS
(Sat–Mon, 8 pm) Short films that are unafraid to be bizarre and family-unfriendly. Topics include dried blood, venison, a ravenous monster, a missing toddler, and a haunted hotel.
FILMS4FAMILIES
(Sat–Mon, noon) A collection of shorts you’d be happy to watch with your 6-year-old niece and 80-year-old grandmother.
FLASHES OF FUNNY
(Sat, 2 pm) Short films that better be funny, or the title of this program is a lie. Includes silent slapstick, fake Canadian campaign ads, and a puberty comedy from Germany!
NERDS UNITE
(Sat, 5:30 pm) Tales of pointy-headed obsession, involving everything from superheroines and hackers to animated Stanley Kubrick.
SIFF FLY FILMS 2012
(Sun, 5:30 pm) The results of this year’s Fly Filmmaking Challenge, wherein four local directors have 10 days to shoot and edit a short film.
STRANGE LOVE
(Sat–Mon, 7 pm) Squirmy tales of the search for love, with side trips into obsession, confusion, and a lake.
THE UNEXPECTED
(Mon, 5:30 pm) What do you expect? YOU WILL NOT FIND IT HERE. What you will find: shorts about weirdly beloved teddy bears, psychedelic animation, and a Behind the Music–style exposé of the barbershop quartet Lucifer’s Crewcut.
