Two Saint Patrick’s Day events fueled by alcohol, nostalgia and buoyant celebration in equal measure went together like green dye and beer last week.
The Ghosts of Seattle Past project took over LoveCityLove’s new location at 1406 East Pike Street for Saint Paddy’s. Given the event’s overarching theme—an Irish Wake for Seattle places lost to development—it felt poetically apropos that the art space has grown out of the site of the old Royal Cleaners laundromat like some sort of creative weed.
LoveCityLove’s walls were tiled with photos and maps, all spiking into the past with vivid brushstrokes. Alice Wheeler’s vivid imagery of the local gay community—flashily-attired drag queens whose fierceness hid the weariness of the outside world’s prejudicial baggage—registered strongly for me in the dimly-lit space, as did Miha Mahato’s striking art/comics assembled from painstaking cut paper.
Portions of the Ghosts of Seattle Past book affixed on poster board lined fold-out tables, and it was possible to read some of the essays slated for inclusion. The crude charm of the space, a Tupperware container nearly picked clean of its garden-salad contents, and rows of pre-poured plastic cups of Fremont Brewing Company beer gave the entire event the feel of the coolest Elks’ Club party you never attended. The packed house exuded a mood more celebratory than us-vs.-them bitter, a vibe more than reinforced by co-founder Jaimee Garbacik’s enthusiastic informal MC’ing.
The Wake’s most profoundly moving pockets (from this corner, at least) were provided by oral testimony. Filmed excerpts included Chris Porter’s reminiscences of Sit and Spin, and Hollis Wong-Wear’s in-the-moment recall of the late, lamented Capitol Club. In person, Sarah Galvin read evocative poetry chronicling an awkward, impassioned romantic clinch in an abandoned building. Graham Isaac gave wry testimony to the odd punk rock/Evangelical Christian fusion that was Paradox and Mars Hill, and Erin Gilbert told a tale of a candlelit late-night party in the vacant, atmospheric husk of the Kalakala. Robert Zverina’s slide show and stories of Fremont’s ‘90s artistic-squatter heyday brought a lot of laughter and at least one misty-eyed toast.
It’s entirely fitting that my camera mostly cried uncle at any attempts to shoot the event: That elusiveness only reinforced the feeling of being in the middle of something precious and ephemeral. I can’t wait to see the book, and what Garbacik and company’s project will bring next.
There was much more at the Ghosts Wake, but three blocks away at Neumos, punk rock—specifically, the Saint Patrick’s Day Punk Rock Massacre—beckoned. The venue’s crowd more than made up for their modest numbers with whooping (if mosh-pit-free) enthusiasm.
Magpie-flitting between both places meant that I missed Chrome Lakes’ opening showing (their Fugazi-meets-Franz Ferdinand sound, however, has been floating my boat in a major way of late). Fortunately, Bad Motivators followed with an all-covers set that suckled at the teat of nostalgia before spitting a (metaphoric) mouthful of garage-punk milk back at the audience. The short and sweet four-song performance culminated with a fun-as-Hell rendition of the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster,” goosed along by a guy in a shrimp costume jumping onstage and smacking a cowbell like an invertebrate possessed.
Third-slot occupants Spinning Whips contrasted by serving up mostly originals, and a fine decision it turned out to be. Fronted by singer/guitarist Jordan West (late of the late, great Iceage Cobra), the Whips’ sound injects fat arena-rock and power-pop melodies into a brew of riff-heavy psych-rock and snotty Ramones/Black Lips directness. Think Deep Purple fronted by Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer, delivered with ramshackle go-for-broke energy, and you’re in the right ballpark. They officially hit full-on band crush mode when they garnished their set with a turbo-charged cover of The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” and the finest rendition of The Damned’s indescribably magnificent “New Rose” I’ll probably ever hear (short of the original).
I’ve been shouting to the rooftops about headliners Hounds of the Wild Hunt for a lot of years now, and that fervor’s only going to continue after their bracing onstage turn last week. Their sound—scrappy, larynx-blasting punk with an epic scope that suggests The Clash and Bruce Springsteen sharing their working-stiff flannel shirts—deserves at least as big an audience as their partial spiritual forebears, Social Distortion.
Like the rest of the bands on the Saint Paddy’s bill, the Hounds played with a sense of fun that lent a house-party air to the night. The band reminisced about bonding in suburban Tacoma over their mutual love of punk rock before bass player Ryan Devlin sneered through a decadent cover of Richard Hell and the Voidoid’s “Blank Generation.” And a few brand-new tracks just hammered home the necessity for a follow-up to the Hounds’ brilliant 2012 release El Mago, stat.
Things thundered to a close with a wonderfully ragged cover of The Clash’s “White Man in Hammersmith Palais,” an apt vehicle for guitarist Jonny Henningson’s bull-in-a-china-shop charisma, Devlin’s and drummer Cary Davis’s fist-pumping rhythm section, and guitarist Nick Anderson’s wild-eyed Mick Jones yelp. Misty memories and raucous celebration, it seems, make wicked slam-dance partners.
