Recent Stories with tag Sub Pop

The Capitol Hill Block Party kicks off today and stretches through Sunday evening. A few festival updates via their twitter news feed to note: will call opens at 11 a.m. in case you want to beat the rush, the music starts at 3:30 p.m., and single tickets to today's festivities are gone baby gone. While this is sad for procrastinators, it's somewhat good news to those who purchased tickets early: according to LineOut, they restricted themselves to selling fewer tickets than the last year's crowd-crushing Frizzelle-lifting peak attendance (Sonic Youth). Finally, to make more room for meandering, food carts will be sparse within the fences (appropriate, given their sparseness in the city); so plan on patronizing one of the restaurants within the grounds or stepping out of the festival to stimulate the local economy via your hunger and thirst.

Sure, some of the biggest draws may be from out of town, but the festival is also a great place to sample a bunch of local (and locally-connected) bands. The lineup promises a overflowing smorgasbord of Seattle bands on all of the stages, but to catch up with your friendly neighborhood musicians, be sure keep an eye on the Kerry Zettel-curated stage at the Cha Cha. You can also check out the eclectic interests the kids at the Vera Project by visiting their stage, situated away from the lure of the beer gardens. There's also a not-quite-secret stage at Vita's bean room, for those who secured the right credentials (hint: visit the AT&T store).

Below, a few day-by-day reminders of sets to consider, complete with a few videos to help you pass the time until the gates open. As usual, take advantage of the vast comments section to let us know who you're dying to see....

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The good folks at Sub Pop, fresh off the label's twenty-second birthday last month, have decided to act like responsible grownups and take care of local music youngsters. To that end, they just donated $15,000 to non-profit all-ages venue The Vera Project, and have challenged the people and businesses of Seattle to come together and raise another $10,000 to help the Vera reach their spring fundraising goal of $25,000 by May 15.

This isn't the first time Sub Pop have put their money where their mouth is: Just last summer, they donated $10,000 to the Northwest Film Forum to help the the arts organization close its $70,000 budget shortfall.

Speaking about this latest donation, Sub Pop's Megan Jasper said, "It's through artistic expression that we discover who we are as individuals and who we are as a community. When young people have the freedom for this type of exploration, anything is possible. They end up making music, opening music venues, becoming djs and working at record labels, and in doing so they change the world. We feel so proud to support the Vera Project."

To which Monica Martinez, a Vera Project volunteer member replied, "Sub Pop and Vera both emerged from Seattle's homegrown, grassroots music scene, and both have grown into stable and thriving local institutions. Sub Pop's pledge will help Vera cultivate the future of Seattle's music and arts scene." Get a room, you two!

Donating to the Vera has its perks: 

Vera will show its appreciation to those who pledge $300 and up by mounting their name on a gold 7” record inside Vera's venue; those who pledge $1,000 and up receive a gold LP record.

Plus, the Vera is listing the names of spring fundraising drive donors, updated every so often. I see the names of people I know! They are famous! (And the Vera's recent web redesign is most excellent.) ...

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Sub Pop spinoff label Hardly Art has been promising major Carissa's Wierd news for weeks now, and today they delivered. The seminal late '90s Seattle chamber pop band--featuring Sera Cahoone, Jenn Ghetto, Mat Brooke, and Ben Bridwell, amongst other local luminaries--is reuniting for a one-off performance at the Showbox in July. Tix are $18 and go on sale this Saturday. Full details from Hardly Art after the jump.

I am very happy to today inform you that on July 9 of this year Carissa's Wierd will be playing at the Showbox here in Seattle. This will be the band's first show since 2003, and is their only show currently planned. In addition to principals Mat Brooke and Jenn Ghetto, the band will include Sarah Standard, Robin Peringer, and Sera Cahoone. Pre-sale info for the show is available here.

As previously reported, Hardly Art will be releasing a Carissa's Wierd retrospective (They'll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003) on July 13, 2010 and subsequently reissuing the band's three studio albums, all of which have been long out of print and never before available on vinyl or digitally.

The Soft Pack, looking hard.

I know Male Bonding is all kinds of up and coming (with their Sub Pop debut Nothing Hurts due May 11), but the band's biggest problem--at least when it comes to superficial success across the pond--is that the balding guy with glasses provides lead vocals on most of their songs, instead of the blond bassist. No offense, dudes, I'm just sayin'. The blisteringly fuzzed-out London trio started their Tuesday Chop Suey set twenty minutes late, but that's okay, since they have just under a half hour of fast and furious material anyway. Everything works out for these guys. 

Meanwhile, The Soft Pack has some deliciously catchy rock songs. In describing their sound as "smart," I mean that both ways: there's hooks galore guaranteed to have you bopping along, and they also have a song about California's economic crisis. The San Diego four-piece formerly known as The Muslims kicked things off with "C'Mon" before tearing through, oh, about fourteen songs, basically everything off of their upbeat full-length, The Soft Pack, as well as a few older tracks. Sign me up for any band where the drummer stands while he plays--The Soft Pack is just damn fun.

Vote Nirvana this Election Day. On Tuesday, the band's seminal first record, Bleach, gets the 20th anniversary reissue treatment from Sub Pop on both CD and white vinyl. And its "I was there!" (and we all know you're lying) 1992 Reading Festival show hits both CD and DVD shelves. Oh, and you can watch the latter on Fuse (Comcast channel 476) at 8pm. How's that for bipartisan?

"This is too painful," says a lean, towering Krist Novoselic into a stage-right microphone. Then he shifts from mock compassion to mock reassurance: "You're gonna make it, man."

He's talking to a frail, blonde fright-wig- and hospital gown-wearing Kurt Cobain—and to the thousands assembled at the 1992 Reading Festival—who's being ushered to his own mic via wheelchair. The Nirvana singer grabs the mic with jittery hands and feebly pulls himself up. The chair's pilot, British rock journalist Everett True, rolls it away.

"Some say love," Cobain croaks, "It is a river ..." And he falls flat on his back.

Somewhere behind him on the huge airplane-hangar stage, Dave Grohl punctuates the faux faint with a heavy, staccato drum flourish.

 

This is the ironic, winking opening of Nirvana Live at Reading, a long-overdue, never before complete document of the band's ability to wryly enjoy the music and the hype they created. However briefly they could.

Watching Kurt Cobain poke fun at his overblown, distressed media image and then tear into what would become the most storied show of Nirvana's abbreviated existence is somehow, 15 years after his death, still a bitter pill to swallow. From the moment he dons a guitar and effortlessly forces the instrument into a tortured squeal, you want the real guy back. Not his likeness in a stupid video game.

But the Reading show is the closest we'll get to a living, breathing Cobain, and, I think, to actually seeing how he viewed his career and fame. It's also perhaps the best Nirvana performance—in a studio or on a stage—we'll ever hear.

As the band tears through most of Nevermind's already-iconic tracks (only skipping "Something In The Way"), its frontman appears healthy, engaged, and enthused. Until Cobain dedicates "All Apologies" to his divisive wife Courtney Love, encouraging the massive crowd to overlook the "crazy stuff" they may have read about her and chant, "Courtney, we love you!", there's no physical sign—other than that opening jab at the media—of his pain, addiction, or irritations.

Cobain displays, through fleeting gestures and performance techniques, many sides of his chameleon personality in the two-hour set. He enthusiastically jumps around with his guitar through "Aneurysm" and employs a casual axe-slinging swagger in "School." The singer screws with his vocal inflection for the verses of "Sliver." He clears his throat after the first line of "In Bloom," then completes the song with what has to be an intentional, extra-gravelly monotone. As he and Novoselic tease the opening of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the frontman shoots the bassist a knowing smirk. (It's the closest Cobain gets to smiling, which Novoselic and Grohl do, with obvious aplomb, throughout.) He dumps his guitar on the stage during an extended "Love Buzz" jam. The man never takes off that hospital gown.

And after he tags a brilliant, Hendrix-style "Star-Spangled Banner" to the end of closer "Territorial Pissings," Cobain calmly knocks over speaker stands with his guitar's neck, climbs down off the stage, and hands the still-wailing instrument to the crowd. Cobain, it appears, in the midst of personal struggles and media-magnified drama, thoroughly enjoyed this performance.

I can't imagine any rock music fan who won't feel the same way. This is a legendary band at its best, with its fast-burning fuse at its brightest. Add a vivid film-to-video transfer, classic music video-style editing, Technicolor stage lights, and original, freshly mastered, multi-track audio, and Nirvana Live at Reading is the best means we have to celebrate what the band was—and wonder what it could have become.

Blitzen Trapper manage to have their cake and eat it too: They mine traditional pop and folk sounds for their timeless-sounding songs, yet manage to inject just enough strangeness to make their records (and shows) a joyous ride.

The Portland band played a too-brief (blame lead singer Eric Earley's thrashed vocal cords) but enthusiastic show at Neumo's Sunday night to a capacity audience, and I haven't heard so many people sing along at a show in a long, long time. Tracks like "Furr," with its memorable lyrics about a boy raised by wolves and an instantly-adhesive folky melody, turned the jaded cluster of humanity jamming the house into happy grade-schoolers.

Earley and co-singer Marty Marquis made a great team, the former's effusive energy contrasting amusingly with the latter's deadpan between-song patter (incidentally, Earley sounded great despite--or perhaps because of--the wear on his voice). And the entire band played tight, offering a good mix of material from all three of their full lengths. The audience...

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