Tag Archives: Light in the Attic Records

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Pack Your Earplugs and Your SunScreen for Some Free Live Music This Weekend

Hobosexual bring their big-ass rawk stomp to West Seattle Summer Fest once more. (photo by Tony Kay)

Two things need to happen before it’s truly summer in Seattle: First, there’s gotta be, well, some real sunshine for more than a couple of days in a row; and second, the free live music festivals need to proliferate. Mother Nature will be cooperating big-time on the former, so it’s no surprise we’re faced with a major Sophie’s Choice this weekend on the sonic front.

Today marks the start of one of the best free music festivals in town, the West Seattle Summer Fest (Friday through Sunday at the West Seattle Junction). Great lineups have been a reassuring consistency at the Summer Fest for the last several years, and not surprisingly Summer Fest ’14 continues this winning streak. Two-dozen acts grace the stage at West Seattle’s Alaska/California junction, and nearly all of them are worth catching.

Friday’s Summer Fest highlights from this corner look to be: Killer Ghost, a great, growly low-fi garage rock act hitting the Junction stage at 5pm; Country Lips, the wryly-witty local Buck Owens to Brent Amaker and the Rodeo’s anime Johnny Cash (7pm); and the mighty masters of two-man epic rawk, Hobosexual (8pm).

Saturday’s top picks include Sundae and Mr. Goessl (a great retro-jazz duo with Jason Goessl’s spare, liquid jazz guitar and gorgeous vocal trills from Kate Voss, 2pm); Charms, a shoegaze outfit whose ethereal sound is grounded by a propulsive rhythm section (4pm); The Fabulous Downey Brothers, a daft combo sporting a sound and performance style that suckles the mutant teats of The Residents and Devo (5pm); two sets of Vox Mod‘s expansive electronic gorgeousness (7:40pm, 9pm); and a closing set by Portland epic pop duo The Helio Sequence.

Finally, Sunday serves up what are sure to be fine sets by Northwest music vets Carrie Akre (atomic-voiced former frontwoman for Hammerbox and Goodness (2pm) and Stag (a sterling power pop ensemble headed up by ex-That Petrol Emotion singer Steve Mack and Alcohol Funnycar axman Ben London, playing at 3pm). Other high points for Summer Fest Sunday include the Darci Carlson Band‘s  4pm set (Carlson’s got a fetching raspy snarl of a voice), and a rip-snorting shot glass of rockabilly, courtesy of Billy Dwayne and the Creepers (6pm)

Overton Berry classing up the Light in The Attic Joint on Saturday? Count us in. (photo by Tony Kay)

You’d think that Summer Fest’s Saturday line-up would be unmissable, but the crate-burrowing reissue emperors at Light in The Attic Records have to go and throw the first annual Light in The Attic Summer Spectacular the same afternoon in Ballard (at 913 NW 50th St), replete with an equally terrific roster of artists playing live in the sunshine.

Local jazz legend Overton Berry‘s become a LITA staple thanks to the label’s reissues of his recordings and his Wheedle’s Groove connections: He lends his soulful piano stylings to a 4pm set. Alex Maas, lead singer of Texas psychedelic freaks (and former LITA signees) The Black Angels, doesn’t perform solo sets every day, so it’ll be fascinating to hear his trippy, distinctive  voice unadorned by The Angels’ usual wall of cataclysmic sound when he plays at 5:15.

Local boys Donnie and Joe Emerson, meantime, became one of LITA’s great comeback stories when the brothers’ long-forgotten teenage recordings were reissued in 2008. Saturday’s 6:30pm set will represent only their third live gig in thirty years (one of those gigs was a solid opening set for Rodriguez in 2012), and if there were any justice in the world they’d be sharing stages with like-minded blue-eyed soulsters like Fitz and the Tantrums and Pickwick.

DJ Suspence mans the turntable between the Summer Spectacular live acts, and vendors from Sub Pop Records to Jemil’s Big Easy food truck will pepper the sidewalks for the afternoon, too.  And if you’re (rightfully) oscillating between LITA’s Summer Spectacular and Saturday’s Summer Fest lineup, a fast car–or maybe the U.S.S. Enterprise’s transporter–could prove as essential as the earplugs.

 

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Second ‘Wheedle’s Groove’ Collection Puts on the Boogie Shoes

Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle Funk, Modern Soul & Boogie Volume II 1972-1987 is the best kind of historic artifact—an irresistible, hard-dancing release that constitutes another glorious feather in the cap (make that the flash pimp hat) of indie label Light in the Attic Records.

That’s no surprise given the mini-cottage industry that LITA’s constructed for the last ten years atop Wheedle’s Groove, the wonderful 2004 compilation that first exposed the world to vintage 1965-1975 Seattle soul sounds. Over the decade, the label’s put out reissues of unreleased/out-of-print jewels from Wheedle’s alums Overton Berry and Robbie Hill’s Family Affair, a limited-edition box set of 45s, and the terrific 2010 Wheedle’s Groove documentary. This wealth of material reconstructed a nearly-lost corner of Seattle music history. And most importantly, it grooved like hell.

If Wheedle’s Groove II is an indication, this particular well ain’t nowhere near dry. The 18 cuts on display cut a wider swath chronologically and stylistically than the first Wheedle’s Groove, showcasing local R&B’s radical metamorphoses through funk, disco, hip-hop, and electro-pop. DJ Supreme La Rock, the wax-spinning Indiana Jones whose crate-digging helped begin the Wheedle’s odyssey ten years ago, compiles and sequences this follow-up to favor flow over chronology, and it plays like a lovingly-curated set of house party jams. The historic end’s ably held up by City Arts scribe Jonathan Zwickel’s engaging liner notes, which include interviews with band members and some fascinating backstory to boot.

Several cuts, like Don Brown’s insidiously-catchy soul/yacht rock fusion “Lose Your Love,” possess hooks that woulda made ‘em hits if their creators hadn’t been so removed from the rest of the world. But that geographic isolation also infused these Seattle acts with a raggedness and character removed from the homogenizing influences of music epicenters like LA and Detroit.  M’s third-baseman Lenny Randle’s “Kingdome” swings with a call-and-response funkiness way cooler than you’d ever expect from a sports novelty tune, and an easygoing summery looseness informs the stunning vocal interplay on Cold, Bold, and Together’s 1972 jewel,  “Let’s Backtrack.”

Disco casts a long (and for some of the musicians interviewed, unwelcome) shadow over several Wheedle’s II tracks, but even the frothiest moments offer plenty of big and small pleasures. Priceless’s “Love in Your Life” and “Look at Me” capture the inspiring sound of scruffy indie musicians crafting dance music as lush and escapist as anything by Chic or Tavares, while local vocalista extraordinaire Bernadette Bascom augments her killer pipes with a healthy dose of humor at the front of Epicentre’s “Get Off the Phone.”

The best selections on Wheedle’s Groove II really seem to be beamed in from some parallel soul universe. Frederick Robinson III’s “Love One Another” probably sounded antiquated in 1983 with its shuffling real drums, chugging rhythm guitar, and Robinson’s rough velour-soul voice, but it’s an oddity (Christian protest funk?) that’s as magical and to-the-bone soulful as it is unconventional. The enigmatic Malik Din’s skittery synth-funk track “Trouble in Mind” sounds like Curtis Mayfield cutting a new-wave song for a John Hughes flick, while Prince’s cyborg twin shows up in robotic Euro-disco armor on Teleclere’s awesome, delirious 1983 dance jam “Steal Your Love.”

Teleclere: (Funk) Robots in disguise on ‘Wheedle’s Groove Volume II’.

Canny spinner that he is, DJ Supreme programs the most epic track at the end. Robbie Hill’s Family Affair provided one of the first Wheedle’s Groove’s finest moments with their potent Sly Stone-influenced “I Just Wanna Be (Like Myself),” but their 7-minute 1975 jam “Don’t Give Up,” which closes Wheedle’s Groove II, is nothing less than a stone masterpiece. Starting at a soulful simmer with a reflective spoken-word intro, languid wah-wah guitar, and some breathtaking falsetto crooning, Hill’s in-the-pocket drums kick into a driving funk groove halfway through, punctuated by an almost psychedelic jazz flute. You couldn’t ask for a more unconventional, gorgeous, and unerringly booty-shaking capper to this unconventional, gorgeous, and unerringly booty-shaking collection.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Your Live Music Bets for the Weekend of October 12th through the 14th

It’s getting colder and wetter out there: All the better for you to catch some live music this weekend.

Tonight (Friday, October 12):

Reykjavik Calling with  Apparat Organ Quartet, Sudden Weather Change, Asgeir Trausti, and the Redwood Plan @ Neumo’s. Free Admission. Doors at 8pm.

This is the third year that Seattle’s hosted a musical summit with its sister city of Reykjavik, Iceland. As we’ve reported once or twice in the past, the shows are customarily wonderful. And like the preceding two, this one should be a kick and three-quarters. The Icelandic contingent includes the wonderful mechanoid pop of Apparat Organ Quartet, an epic blast of jagged guitar rock from Sudden Weather Change, and suave dance pop courtesy of Asgeir Trausti. Super-special bonus: cross-continental songwriting collaborations will pair Apparat Organ Quartet with local writer Ryan Boudinot, and Seattle new wave marvels The Redwood Plan with Icelandic author Sjon. Oh, and it’s totally free, too, so arrive early.

Corin Tucker Band, Houndstooth, Dude York @ The Crocodile. $15 at the door. Show at 8pm.

One of the trilling, thrilling voices that fueled Sleater-Kinney, Tucker’s work with her self-named ensemble augments S-K’s angular post-punk guitar attack with warmer melodies and Tucker’s more romantic melodic sense. The openers represent the yin and yang of the headliners: Local boys Dude York cover the art-punk end, while Portland’s Houndstooth generate dreamy pop with a  twist of shoegazer atmosphere.

Rodriguez, Donnie and Joe Emerson, Michael Chapman. $15 advance, SOLD OUT. Doors at 8:00pm.

If you haven’t seen the fabulous rock doc Searching for Sugar Man yet, the very existence of this show provides one spoiler right out of the gate: The doc’s subject–enigmatic singer/songwriter Rodriguez–did not shoot or immolate himself onstage. He’s headlining this Tenth Anniversary Tribute to Light in the Attic Records, the crate-digging label that lovingly reissued his lost-classic records, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality. Also on the bill are grown-up pop-wunderkinds Donnie and Joe Emerson and veteran British folk-guitar wizard Michael Chapman. It should be an amazing night, but if you’re not one of the lucky humans who already holds a ticket to the sold-out gig, Searching for Sugar Man‘s still playing at the Varsity…

Lushy, Summer Aviation @ The Skylark Cafe. $5 at the door. Show at 8pm.

West Seattle’s best live-music venue (from a programming standpoint, for sure) serves up some serious, chic swankness in the form of Lushy. The long-running lounge-pop act has been proffering their incalculably cool tropicalia for years now, and they always sound smooth as silk live.

Saturday, October 13:

Bananarama @ The Hard Rock Cafe. $15 advance. Show at 9pm.

Just a week after the Psychedelic Furs’ Showbox gig, another fondly-remembered band from the Reagan Years hits the stage at the Hard Rock. It’s anyone’s guess as to how many original members of the chirpy new-wave girl group will be onstage tomorrow night, but you’re damn sure to hear “Cruel Summer,” and 100% of the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society’s fight against breast cancer.

Drew Grow and the Pastor’s Wives, Fort Union, Ole Tinder @ The Comet Tavern. $10 day of show. Show at 9pm.

Yeah, Bob Dylan’s playing on this night, but for my money, you’ll get a live singer-songwriter show much closer to the heart at the Comet with Portland’s evangelically-powerful Drew Grow. If there’s a human being who hurtles himself more into live performance than Grow, we’ve yet to locate them. Middle-slotters Fort Union have more than proven their awesomeness as a live act already (and have delivered a sparkling new long-player to boot), so repeat after me: Get there early.

Sunday, October 14:

JEFF the Brotherhood, Diarrhea Planet, Moldy Castle @ The Crocodile. $15 advance. Show at 8pm.

JEFF the Brotherhood have been kicking around for about twelve years now, bashing out a style of rock that somehow combines Camaro-worthy arena riffs with indie-rock raggedness, all without any post-modern irony. Good as their recordings are, though, they pretty much rule live. Plus the opener’s named Diarrhea Planet, for God’s sake.

Woods, Night Beats @ Barboza. $10 advance. Show at 8pm.

I won’t prattle on yet again about the abject awesomeness of Texas expats Night Beats too much, except to say that their unhinged live performances scorch synapses faster than a mug of electric Kool-Aid. Headliners Woods hail from Brooklyn, and their sound normally leans towards a mellower, folk-infused variety of psychedelia–a mild contact high to Night Beats’ acid-induced freak-out.