Don Project

After having read the Wikipedia entry for midlife crisis, I think The Get Up Kids might be right in the middle of theirs. They have a "desire to achieve a feeling of youthfulness," might have a "sense of remorse for goals not accomplished," and exhibit "a fear of humiliation amongst more successful colleagues." However, they haven't bought a sportscar yet, so their latest tour might just be a reconstruction of their core ideals and not a midlife crisis after all.

Their new songs are clearly an attempt to reach out to a new, younger audience--though that younger audience was relegated to the balcony of Neumo's on Wednesday, they enjoyed the songs at first. As it got later in the evening, they stopped dancing and started leaving. By the end of the set, about twenty under-21 patrons remained. You couldn't really blame them, they didn't know the words to the old songs or the new songs. They didn't have the emotional connection to the band that the old folks did.

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The hand stamp crowd on the floor enjoyed the hell out of every other song. The Get Up Kids mixed their new material in with the old to give us a break from dancing, I assume. There were a smattering of people that kept up their enthusiasm for the new songs, but most were just waiting to sing along with their hands in the air again. When a song from the first two albums was played, however, the audience came alive. Even when they chose a song from the last two records, the crowd was more enthusiastic than for the new material.

It must be tough to be in this position as a band. They undoubtedly want to progress and evolve, but they simply can't. Honestly, Get Up Kids fans tend to get a little crazy. For example, one gentleman was overheard talking about how the band "changed his life." When the band launched into a well known chorus, the front half of the floor was pointing to the sky, smiling and singing loud enough to regret it the next day. This kind of fanaticism must be both exhilarating and exhausting to see every night. It's no wonder the band spent some time in retirement before coming back last year.

Now that they're back, it remains to be seen if they'll stay. They're visibly enjoying themselves, but while most people survive their midlife crises, bands rarely do. In the meantime, us old folks will keep going to their shows and singing along with the songs we know and love. These newfangled electronic songs will probably just remain our rest breaks.

The audience at Sunday night's forgetters show arrived with lofty expectations. They wanted to experience a life-changing moment. They were looking to relive the glory days. They yearned to be part of the beginning of something special. If Blake Schwarzenbach's new band continues to play, the audience may look back at this show as all of those things.

Much of the crowd at the all-ages Vera Project was comprised of 30-40 year old males. I recognized many familiar faces from local punk bands and record stores, and even more were local writers, DIY community organizers, and record store clerks. The influence of Jawbreaker and/or Jets to Brazil on these music lovers was clear. Yet, interspersed among the old punks was a new generation of blue-mohawked and black-hoodie-wearing kids, some who must have been just starting school when Jets to Brazil was ending. The whole crowd had enough respect for the new project to not yell out any of these old bands songs, and one boisterous crowd member even shouted out my favorite forgetters' song, "Too Small to Fail." They were there to hear something new. It was tinged with nostalgia, perhaps, but definitely new.

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Listening hard to forgetters, you can pick out sounds from both of Schwarzenbach's early bands, though it's easier to draw parallels with Jawbreaker. There's more noise than Jets to Brazil had, and more straightforward rhythms. Prevalent in the set was the Jawbreaker trick of including samples of various poetry readings, nature shows, or political speeches, usually as introductions to songs. The mix kept the vocals low, just like early Jawbreaker records.

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When the Dylan-looking Schwarzenbach took the stage, the crowd enthusiastically showed its appreciation for the artist. It's understandable that he has gained such a following: He is a phenomenal lyricist, a genre-pushing guitarist, to all appearances, a genuine person. He spent much of the time before his set at the merch table, not in some green room. He showed some visible signs of nervousness before the first song as well, but those faded when the music started.

These songs have the added bonus of being really good. They're distorted and rough around the edges but full of driving energy. Topics seem to range from political to personal and the compositions radiate a certain inner strength. The set included a slower song or two in the midst of the head bobbing ones, but this was not a problem for the audience who applauded just as vigorously for every song.

As the final event in the Vera Project 10-Year Anniversary celebration, Sunday's show was the perfect choice. The show dug up some of that nostalgia for the great things that have passed, but hinted at future possibilities. Undoubtedly, everyone that was there is looking forward to the next forgetters show and the full length record that they'll be promoting then. When this happens, we'll all be able to say that we saw them first and we told you so.

The Get Up Kids will be at Neumo's on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011. Doors are at 7 p.m., tickets are available for $21 in advance, and the show is all ages.

The Get Up Kids aren't really kids anymore.

Emo wasn't always the maligned subgenre of punk that it is today. In the mid '80s, East Coast hardcore punk bands begin to tire of being angry all the time. In fact, they started to feel downright sad about it. Bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace had people crying at their shows and musicians were realizing their music could have a power to inspire people to feel something other than anger.

About thirteen years after Rites of Spring and Embrace broke up, the genre was popularized and summarily ruined. While emo songs were always melodramatic, they became comically so. Bands like My Chemical Romance started wearing eyeliner and dyeing their hair black, brushing it to the side in a precursor to the world's next Celine Dion, Justin Bieber. Yet just before this mainstream explosion, the genre was at its peak and producing some amazing bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, and Texas is the Reason.

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The Get Up Kids appeared on the scene in 1997 and straddled the line between underground and mainstream just enough to keep their indie credibility. A couple years after forming and releasing their debut on Doghouse Records (whose Doghouse 50 compilation first introduced me to the band), the Kansas City, Missouri, quartet was signed by a tiny label called Vagrant Records and went on to make that label an indie household name. However, they never really broke into the mainstream.

Fans of The Get Up Kids often explain this in a simple way--their first two studio records were awesome, the last two... not so much. Four Minute Mile and Something to Write Home About are albums filled with songs that make you want to sing along because you feel the same things they do. The songs rock out when they need to and scale it back to create the proper tension when they're supposed to. My sister and I wore our voices out on I-5 express lanes singing along to Something to Write Home About on the way to work many times. However, with On A Wire and Guilt Show, The Get Up Kids toned it down and lost all of their soul. There are a couple flashes of decency, but the records just don't have the same emotion, and that's what this genre is all about.

After a couple years off, the band started working on new material in 2009. While touring for Guilt Show, the band looked like they hated each other and played like it was their job. I saw them last year and, with the crowd singing along, the band was smiling and actually moving around the stage. Now a new record is on the way this year, and they are back in town to sing along with us again.  The new songs on There are Rules are decidedly more electronic and will probably appeal to the all-ages balcony section, while us old folks are on the floor waiting to sing along to the old material. Check out this track from the upcoming release, warm up your voices, and come out to the show.

Blake Schwarzenbach is one of the best punk lyricists of the last 25 years. After reading his compositions, it's no surprise to find that he is an Adjunct Professor of English at Hunter College in his spare time. Schwarzenbach is bringing his lyrical prowess to The Vera Project on Sunday with his new band, forgetters (no "the", no capital "f") and it will be a fantastic show.

Schwarzenbach's new band is a bit of a throwback to his first band, the famously influential Jawbreaker. They played their last show at the Capitol Theater in Olympia in 1996, but Schwarzenbach returned to Washington later with Jets to Brazil, a much more solemn but just as amazing band. It's been awhile since Blake has played here, as Jets to Brazil last came through town in 2003 and Thorns of Life, his short-lived punk-rock supergroup, never made it to our lovely state.

Middle-aged and older punks are sorely looking forward to the return of the punk troubadour and fans of Jawbreaker will not be disappointed with forgetters. If you need more encouragement to go to this show, it's all ages and you'll be home in time to rest up for work on Monday. If that's not enough, here is a selection of my favorite Schwarzenbach lyrics.

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"We met in rain, you asked me in. Seemed like a good sign. Now I need a guillotine to get you off my mind." - Sea Foam Green (Jawbreaker)

"Then she said, 'Why, why, oh why, oh why? Why are you always like this? If I'm having fun then it's breaking your heart. Besides, you said I could have it.' Then the cops showed up." - Bad Scene Everyone's Fault (Jawbreaker)

"If you could save yourself, you could save us all. Go on living, prove us wrong." - Save Your Generation (Jawbreaker)

"You're not punk and I'm telling everyone. Save your breath, I never was one." - Boxcar (Jawbreaker)

"Tasting you and rain, I walk down to the train, trying not to look down. This day could someday be an anniversary. Everything is light and sound." - Sweet Avenue (Jets to Brazil)

"Turtle on its back in the desert sea and you look like a cool drink just slightly out of reach." - Sea Anemone (Jets to Brazil)

"I'm a straight-up ghost in a tattered cape. Too small to fail but, baby, someone's gonna love me someday." - Too Small to Fail (forgetters)

Doors open at 7:30. The show is all ages and tickets are still available at only $11. Street Eaters are opening.

Let's face it, you're bored with music. Pop music is too vapid and indie music just becomes the new pop eventually. The radio used to be interesting but even the alternative to the alternative station is just doing what everyone else is. Very little new music really challenges you or makes you wonder how it was made.

A group of Seattle musicians felt largely the same way when they started the Cumulus Festival. 2011 marks the third year of the independent festival, which begins this Thursday. Lucky enough to attend all the Cumulus Festival shows, I can say that the variety of bands has been staggering and every night left me amazed at what had happened.

I sent some questions to the organizers to get some inside information about the festival and spread the news that something exciting and different is happening this weekend.

Let's start with the basics. Who is involved with, and what was the inspiration for beginning, the Cumulus Festival?

Levi Fuller, Kenny Day, and I (Mark Schlipper) are the three guys behind the festival. At the time Kenny was the drummer in The Luna Moth (Dan Colavito is now). Basically, the three of us liked playing shows with likeminded bands and wanted to provide an outlet for, and show appreciation of, the local talent. So the idea for a festival to showcase 'em came to mind.

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Why instrumental (or mostly instrumental) music?

[It's the] nature of the Luna Moth coterie really. We wanted to focus on the kinds of bands we often played shows with. And often those bands are of the more instrumental variety. That inspiration and the initial concept of a mid-winter Seattle festival named after a cloud formation paints a particular kind of picture. Our curating process hasn't ever had a concrete set of rules, mind you, we've always just approached it with a "we'll know it when we hear it" logic. And it's just happened that it's less likely a prominently vocal fronted band has fit in that picture.

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For repeat visitors, how has the festival changed since the idea began? What are your goals for this year?

In spirit, the festival remains true to its initial goal of showcasing primarily Northwest talent, in bands that are stretching themselves outside the more typical rock idioms. The changes that have come aren't so much about the festival, but the bands. While we have a few people back from previous years, we always want plenty of new acts as well. And as the bands on the roster change, so does the fest. But (and this goes to the second part of your question) we've always tried to foster some diversity in the talent. From esoteric and acoustic to electronic and dancey, from soloists to large ensembles. Each year we've just tried to present bands that fit under the "Cumulus" umbrella and that we think are awesome.

Oh, and the first year we had five bands a night. This year it's four, four, and five.  :)

Recount a couple of your favorite moments in the past two festivals.

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• Meeting a journalist who flew all the way out from Italy for the fest.
• Talking to fans toward the end of night three who had been to all three shows and were as simultaneously exhausted & elated as we were (i.e. you :) ).
• Having people come to me speechless after that one Scriptures song, because it's rad as fuck, and no one had any idea what to expect. (They're back again this year!) 
• The Eastern European guy who somewhat drunkenly called one of my bands "the saviors of rock".

To be honest, a lot of it blurs, it's night after night of meeting awesome people, seeing awesome music, it's madness in the best way possible.

How has the response been from the music scene?

The response has generally been very good. For some bands, it may just be another gig on the calendar. For others, it's an opportunity to make a rare appearance. And for still others, it's an opportunity to play with acts they've admired for a while but hadn't thought they'd ever share a bill with.

Has it become easier or more difficult to find bands?

It seems it's getting more difficult honestly. Partly because we try to keep it fresh with new bands, and we're pulling from a limited pool. But also partly because I just think there are fewer bands playing "Cumulus" music these days. Or if there are, we're just having a harder time finding them because maybe we ourselves aren't gigging as much and making as many connections. One of this year's bands (Lowmen Markos) came from a chance conversation between me and a barista for example.

What do you perceive as the future of the festival? What's next?

The future's open. We don't generally think that far ahead. We focus on kicking out this year's fest. Then, we sleep and don't talk about it for a while. Then, this summer, one of us will start the email thread, "so ... Cumulus ... 2012?"  and we'll take it from there. It's strictly a labor of love for us, so the only real motivation is whether or not we can pull off a festival worth that labor? Can we compile a big enough list of "Cumulus" bands? If not, do we need to redefine what that means? Do we shorten it to two nights? Should we bother at all? I don't have those answers yet.

Cumulus Festival begins 8 p.m., Thursday, January 20, at Chop Suey with Master Musicians of Bukkake, Scriptures, Perish the Island, and Lowmen Markos. Day two is at 9 p.m. on Friday at The Funhouse and features AFCGT, Panther Attack, The Tron Sack, and The Luna Moth. The festival concludes with its only all-ages show at The Black Lodge on Saturday at 7 p.m. with You.May.Die.In.The.Desert, SNDTRKR, Moraine, They Rise We Die, and Joy Wants Eternity. All shows are $8 and will more than likely blow your mind.

Emo music is not for quitters. This might seem counterintuitive, but emo bands continue to make records and play shows despite how popular it is to hate them. Furthermore, a number of emo songs are about believing in things long after everyone else has given up on them. These folks are not throwing in the towel just because of general disinterest.

Emo poster boys Chris Conley (the distinctive voice of Saves the Day) and Chris Carrabba (aka Dashboard Confessional) made a visit to Neumo's recently to relive their past glory. It seems strange to base your career on whiny songs about girls, but it has served these two gentlemen well for the past ten years. There's something universally identifiable about their work that propelled them to stardom in 2001 and continues to draw crowds today.

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Conley played Saves the Day songs on simple acoustic guitar. Between songs, we shouted out our favorites and the set developed along the lines of our requests. Some requests were denied as "needing the full band" but, in general, the crowd seemed pleased with the selections.

Conley's uncanny, high and nasal voice was clear and strong as he powered through our requests, mostly from Saves the Day's biggest release, Stay What You Are. My favorite song, This is Not an Exit, was played early on, with its positive, reassuring ending line "Just know you did it all the best that you knew how" being followed by a sincere "I love you guys" from Conley. Near the end of his set, he announced that Saves the Day would be releasing a new record soon.

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The tour is based on the ten-year anniversary of Dashboard Confessional's release The Swiss Army Romance. As such, Carrabba was here to play the entirety of his first full length to promote its re-release as a limited edition box set. He went on to play for nearly two hours, a feat that I would think his voice could not handle. However, the last song was just as strong as the first song, even though he appears to strain terribly to reach his high notes. His guitar was spot on and even without a backing band, the songs still packed their usual punch.

One of the secrets to Carrabba's longevity is that he takes lots of breaks during his set by simply not singing. Hardcore punk vocalists learned this trick back in the '80s when they would hold the microphone out to the crowd and let them do the singing for a bit, conserving their voice and making the crowd feel like a part of the band. Carrabba took these types of pauses in his lyrics to allow our voices to shine. When Carrabba complimented us on our singing, a feisty crowd member replied "You should try it!" I, however, welcome the encouragement for singing along. When I saw Dashboard Confessional at the sold out Northgate Theatre in 2002, I got yelled at by teenage fangirls for singing along.

The audience/backing choir was loudest for songs from the first two records as well as a few singles from Dashboard Confessional's more recent releases. He also included most of the songs from what I consider to be his best release: the So Impossible EP. Perhaps I enjoy this release so much because Dan Hoerner, guitarist for Sunny Day Real Estate, collaborated on it. However, I think that the real reason I love it is because Carrabba loves it. These songs mean something to him. They commemorate an actual event that he feels deeply about and that comes through in the recording and live. He ended the evening with Hands Down, a song about "the best day I ever had." We felt this enthusiasm and sang along like we remembered our best day from ten years ago, too.

To really participate in this show, I feel like you had to be there. This sounds trite for a show reviewer, but I mean it in a larger sense. You had to be there in 2001 and be deep in the midst of some soul crushing heartbreak. You had to be there when that heartbreak faded out and your last four records just haven't been as powerful. You had to sing along at this show looking back and remembering how the songs were such a big part of your life that you can choose to revisit or choose to leave on the CD rack. That crowd is getting smaller every year, and Dashboard Confessional is fading from relevancy. We're getting old and whiny songs about girls just don't cut into the heartbreak like they used to. We still love you, Dashboard Confessional, we just don't want to be with you. It's not you, it's us. It's not that we're quitting, it's just that we're saying goodbye.

Bronze Fawn crafts amazingly layered and expansive sounds with merely a power trio and more guitar effects pedals than seem reasonable. Their live show is accompanied by video edited on the fly to match up with the music. I've seen them four or five times of the past couple years, and their first full length, Lumber, is in heavy rotation on my various music devices.

Thursday will be, barring any future reunions, Bronze Fawn's final live performance. Guitarist Bryce Shoemaker is apparently off to post-graduate work, and the band has decided they have reached the end of their era. To be honest, it feels a little bit like the end of an era for all of us. Progressive and challenging music seems to be on the way out while vapid, electronic pop music is surfing a neon 1980s nightmare straight back into our social consciousness.

Luckily, Bronze Fawn are bringing friends along to their farewell party. The Kindness Kind are gathering acclaim playing enchanting electronic-tinged indie with soulful female vocals.  Eighteen Individual Eyes are an upcoming girl band headed by Jamie Hellgate that plays dark indie reminiscent of Denali, but with guitars. Blue Light Curtain have been shoegazing for fans of The Cure since 2004.

It all goes down at Neumo's this Thursday, November 18. Doors at 8 p.m., 21+, tickets are $8, available at the door.

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About two years ago, I had a housemate move out. He's a good guy, but he left behind about two truckloads of stuff including a green Piaggio Ciao moped. That moped has sat in the garage, waiting for a day like this past Sunday.

Sunday was particularly special because of the Couch Fest Film Festival. I attended last year's and loved it, but found myself doing a lot of walking between houses. This year, the plan was for my lovely girlfriend and I to ride mopeds to the festival and recreate our second date. The only drawback to that plan was that I had never ridden a moped or motorcycle before in my life.

After cramming my giant head into the helmet in the garage and finding suitably ironic riding mittens, I set about learning the craft of moped travel. It turns out that riding mopeds is a lot like riding bicycles. A moped just goes faster and requires less pedaling. The most difficult part is getting the moped started, but a little downhill slope helps to alleviate much of that difficulty.

I rode the four miles from my Greenwood house to the U-District without any incident. A guy on a scooter even afforded me one of those knowing waves that I see all the motorcycle guys sharing with each other. With the sun warming my mostly black helmet and the crisp breeze reddening my cheeks, I met with my lady and we rode up the hill towards the "experimental house."

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After awkwardly knocking at the door, we paid our $5, sat on a fake fur-covered piano bench and joined in the experimental program with two other gentlemen. A smallish flat screen TV in the corner was already in the middle of the program as we sat down, but the host was nice enough to immediately start it again for us once it ended. My personal favorite film at this house was Six Hours, a three-minute shot of a woman walking up stairs, set to a marimba soundtrack, with the shot rotated and clipped up in disorienting ways. My date and the house's host preferred TAK, which featured images of children's picture books set to a disjointed electronic soundtrack.

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After the disappointing turnout at the experimental house, we were a little discouraged that the festival might be dwindling in popularity. However, we were reinvigorated by a short moped ride to the "comedy/inappropriately awesome house apartment," which held about sixteen people at one point during our viewing. Sitting on the floor by a giant record collection that I desperately wanted to flip through, we watched the films projected on a sheet hung on the wall. In the comedy section, I liked Be My Brother, which was both comedic and personally touching. My girlfriend preferred the crowd favorite, Battle of the Bozos, a true story about two offices that set up inflatable clowns across the street from each other in New York.

"Inappropriately awesome" was a difficult category to judge. I picked Intervieweer (link is different version from Couch Fest version), where people answered a question and asked a question of various people at a party. However, most people were disgusted enough by Feeder that they picked that one, which spent 24 hours inside a man's mouth.

After the popular comedy/inappropriately awesome house, we then walked the block to the "documentary house." We pushed through a deep maroon curtain into the TV room and found a place in the pseudo-Moroccan decor to watch the program on an actual tube TV. Once again, my date and I differed on our favorites: I chose Forty Foot, a sweet piece about an Irish swimming hole, while she picked The Poodle Trainer, a poignant film about a Russian woman dedicated to training dogs for the circus.

It turns out we missed two of the top 3 overall films (The Surprise Demise of Francis Cooper's Mother won the "Golden Couch" and Famous 4A got bronze, while my girlfriend correctly picked The Poodle Trainer as the second-prize film), but we still had a fantastic time. As we turned our sub-50cc machines to the north and made our way home, it was natural to reflect on our day. We got to sit on the floors, piano benches, and couches of three strangers' homes. We watched short films in rooms full of other strangers. We felt the autumn chill on our cheeks and smelled the oily exhaust of a two-stroke motor. We smiled and laughed at our luck at living in a city with Couch Fests, mopeds, and seemingly endless possibilities for a wonderful Sunday.

The best short film festival in the city is happening tomorrow. I went last year and it was awesome.

Here's how it goes: You show up at a stranger's house and watch an hour or so of short films with a bunch of strangers sitting a bit too close to you on couches in various states of disrepair. Then, you go to another house and do the same thing. At the end, you vote for your favorites. That simple process is Seattle's own Couch Fest.

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The final details for the 2010 Couch Fest short film festival have just been released. This year, the festival is centered in the Capitol Hill area and sure to draw a crowd at a low admission price of $5. The films start at noon and you switch houses every hour until 6 p.m. Bring snacks, bring a date, bring a smile, and bring wheeled transportation to get you from house to house.

The pogo is a simple dance. You basically just jump up and down. You don't have to be in rhythm, you don't have to know any fancy steps, you just have to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. It is, by far, the happiest of all the punk dances.

Last Thursday, the Showbox crowd was pogoing its heart out to the '90s punk-flavored pop of Superchunk. Touring in support of a new record and some re-releases of old classics, the fine folks of Superchunk showed that they still have as much energy as they did when they began 20 years ago. Most of the crowd appeared to overcome the natural process of aging as well, and by the end of the night, the crowd was bouncing around like giddy schoolchildren at recess.

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Superchunk inspired all this delight just by being a fun band. They provided the counterpoint to Teenage Fanclub's set. Perhaps it was just the fact that it was past my bedtime, but Teenage Fanclub were boring. They seemed to suck all the energy out of the room and my lovely date for the evening was even inspired to take a little nap. Locals Telekinesis were a much better fit and would have kept us awake all evening.

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As soon as Superchunk took the stage, the room woke up. Around the room, heads started popping up over the crowd like human popcorn. By the last three songs, it seemed everyone had remembered that having fun was as simple as jumping up and down. Their encore capped it off with covers of great punk songs by Government Issue and the late Jay Reatard, as well as a Magnetic Fields cover.

Despite having to get up 5 hours after the show ended, the evening was very fun to be a part of. If you're in need of a pick me up, try putting on a Superchunk song and jumping around. Invite some friends. Have a pogo party!