Recent Stories with tag Easy Street Records

It's a drizzly Friday night, April 16, and Exene Cervenka--singer for L.A. punk icons X, solo performer, artist, and poet--is playing an acoustic set at the Queen Anne Easy Street Records to an excited crowd.

The store aisles are jammed with everyone from eight-year-olds to AARP-eligible warhorse punks, and they all devour Cervenka's mostly new material from her first solo record proper in sixteen years, Somewhere Gone. She sings her songs in a plaintive voice that sounds like an Appalachian mountain woman, and provides ragged-but-right accompaniment to herself on acoustic guitar. With her music and offhandedly humorous between-song anecdotes bolstered by the genial vibe (and the smuggled-in cans of Rainier circulating amongst audience members), one of punk rock's most influential and enduring figures has the whole room eating out of her hand.

Cervenka finishes her set and begins meeting, greeting, and signing autographs for fans. Much love is thrown her way, and she seems to genuinely cherish and appreciate it. She's done this free in-store for them on her dime, and she'll continue touring independent record stores in the same gypsy fashion for the next several days to promote National Record Store Day and independent music merchants in general. The phrase "changed my life" is uttered more than once by people in the line, and I find out from Cervenka's assistant Andrea that one admirer--a tall, sleepy-eyed guy in a baseball cap--plans on having the singer design a tattoo for him.

I bump into Exene's human canvas near the doorway as he smokes a cigarette outside. He's stoked, he tells me, despite the fact that he's nursing four broken ribs and has yet to feel the morphine intended to block his pain. "Saved damn near my whole arm for this," he says as he hooks one hand underneath his T-shirt sleeve to show me the bare space intended for the body art. "I'm gonna get Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos to do the other arm," he adds, beaming.

Once the crowd drifts away Exene pulls out paper and a Sharpie and begins sketching an elaborate pattern that looks like punked-up Maori adornment. She hands the drawing to her fan/tattoo canvas upon completion and imparts pointers on how to have the tattoo artist finish the work. Then she emerges from behind the counter. We can do the interview in the back, she tells me as we head to the store's rear and past the "Employees Only" door....

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"Bad name. Lame name, actually. But kinda funny in its lameness. That was the point, to some degree. It was the late 1980s and Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and swarms of other Seattle area bands released albums on Sub Pop Records, the label started by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. The kids were so uncool, they were beyond cool. They embraced and reclaimed their high school denigration: LOSER. Sub Pop Records even threw an event they called Lame Fest."

That's how Grunge, a new book of photographs by Michael Lavine, starts—with contemporary indie rock figure Thurston Moore's intro spotlighting the wink-wink, Can you believe this shit is happening? side of Seattle's inevitably overblown musical era.

He would know. Moore, of Sonic Youth, was making noisy guitar rock when Kurt Cobain was a hormonal, directionless teen. And he introduced honchos at Geffen Records imprint DGC to Cobain's band in 1990. (Nevermind hit on the label the following year.) And you could argue that thanks to grunge's massive success,...

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Photo courtesy David Belisle

Easy Street West Seattle's latest live event features photography from the neighborhood's own rock photographer David Belisle and tunes from the singular, moody Tiny Vipers (Jesy Fortino).

West Seattle resident David Belisle was tour photographer and personal assistant to R.E.M. from 2001-2008. His photo journal of the band, Hello, was our best-selling book of 2008. David has photographed cover art for Tiny Vipers, Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, the Blakes, Mudhoney and the Presidents of the USA, and his work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Spin, Mojo, Q Magazine, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Village Voice and numerous other publications. Currently, he has been touring as photographer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The show, "Musicians and Landscapes," will feature many of Belisle's photos of prominent musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, R.E.M., Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Band of Horses, Patti Smith, Eddie Vedder, Fleet Foxes and more. And, as the title implies, there will also be a generous number of landscapes from his travels with these bands.

The exhibition starts at seven. Tiny Vipers plays at nine. Gotta assume there will be priced-to-drink libations on hand, as there have been at previous Easy Street events.

Last Thursday, two days after Pearl Jam killed two nights at KeyArena, a reborn Alice in Chains did the same at the Moore Theatre. (Sadly, I missed it.) The like-old-times local show was just one stop on the band's first tour to support new music since 1993. Alice's heavy-as-ever new record, Black Gives Way to Blue, is released tomorrow.

 

The recent resurgence of Alice in Chains has been a contentious development for some nostalgic locals. The issue: Alice is continuing without its original enigmatic soul, the late Layne Staley. One writer, after catching the band's "secret" EMP acoustic set last month—happily, I made it—ditched the post-show Black Gives Way listening party because a Staley-less AIC challenged her constitution.

Look: Outright dismissal of this band's new and future musical output is stupid.

Yes, there's a new face (and much bigger hair) behind the mic that was once Staley's, but William DuVall isn't stepping right into the beloved former singer's shoes. Coincidentally or not, his vocal range is much like Staley's, though it has a signature nasal quality that sets it apart. And DuVall's tone complements co-frontman Jerry Cantrell's, creating vocal harmonies—always Alice's trademark—that beg you to sing along...and haunt your mind later. But Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Inez didn't invite DuVall into the fold to channel Staley. On the contrary, Cantrell honors his late cohort at every opportunity, still seeing Layne's absence as a regrettable, tangible void.

From the band's blog:

"The encore in Seattle began with Jerry coming out alone. A spotlight shined down on a stool, and Jerry sat down on another stool next to the empty one....I was wondering why our lighting guy didn’t take the spotlight off of the other stool and put it on Jerry, but then it dawned on me. Jerry played "Black Gives Way To Blue" by himself as the spotlight lit up the empty stool with a mic stand in front of it."

I too had been dubious about Alice in Chains reforming and revisiting the music given so much beauty and gravitas by Layne Staley. But my concerns vanished when I met Layne's brother, Eric, at that EMP show. When I noted that his presence said much about how he felt about Alice's continued existence, Eric said, "Jerry and the guys have been very respectful. They waited long enough." And what did he think of the news that the new record's title track, a tribute to Layne, featured Elton John vocals and piano? "Even my kids were impressed with that." Not only was it a pleasure to meet Eric—a very nice, gracious, obviously still heartbroken guy—but it allowed me to wholeheartedly appreciate and respect the show and new music that followed.

I hope other uncertain fans will do the same with Black Gives Way to Blue.

Easy Street Records' Queen Anne location is hosting a listening party and midnight sale of the record tonight. The album will also be available (as will liquor) at West Seattle's Feedback Lounge. Add Alice-related prizes to the music, videos, and fan fraternization, and it will be one fine night to both reflect back and look forward.

Some digits you may or may not have added up after witnessing—or regrettably only hearing about—one or both of this week's legend-building Pearl Jam shows:

0 Beers allowed in KeyArena's bowl. Signs at all lower-level entrances proclaimed the venue's dryness. The irony of this wasn't lost on Eddie Vedder. Between encores on night two, he pointed out that when the Key was actually used as a sports arena, alcohol could be consumed anywhere. He recalled being in the audience for a Paul McCartney show, frustrated that the authorities apparently worried that alcohol and "All You Need is Love" was a dangerous combo.

1 Cigarettes lit and quickly puffed by Vedder during an extended PJ jam each night. Also the number of songs played from the band's early '00s Binaural ("Insignificance") and Riot Act ("Save You") records.

2 Eyes exposed on both nights by the normally bespectacled Stone Gossard. The guitarist's usual tight haircut was also eschewed for a late-'80s Steve Turner-style shaggy 'do. Check the cover of...

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Slightlynorth shoots an amazing number of amazing pictures of this town. I'm in awe every third or fourth shot that I see.

And hey, he's a member—in fact, as of now, the busiest member—of the fresh, new, compelling SunBreak Flickr pool. If his photos are in there, yours should be, too. Join us. Spread your vision.

Got plans Saturday night? Unplan them. West Seattle's Easy Street Records is throwing a party—and it's bringing beer, freebies, and rock. New Pearl Jam rock.

The band's ninth studio record, Backspacer, drops Sunday—yes, Sunday—and Easy Street will be spinning it at 11 p.m. and selling it at midnight. A few hours earlier, the store will kick off its "Backspacer Bash" by serving bottled hoppy goodness, coffee, and other refreshments, playing live and rare PJ tracks, and rewarding PJ shoppers with band-related goodies. The charitable will score, too: Bring in two nonperishable food items, get a free band tote bag. Five, get an entry to win highly-coveted Pearl Jam collectibles (Benaroya vinyl, natch).

But that's all gravy. Go for the new PJ record. Backspacer is a 35-minute burst of optimistic rock fervor punctuated with beautiful, Into the Wild-ish strummers. ("Got Some" and "Just Breathe" are worth $11.99 alone. I shit you not.) It's not like any other Pearl Jam record. And it's as good as the best.