Can't Miss It: Thusday
HI-TECHNO: Not all rock band guitarists have day jobs slinging pizza, as "Battle of the Tech Bands" tonight at the Pyramid Alehouse amply demonstrates. Part of the Washington Technology Industry Association's Summer Celebration and co-sponsored by Xconomy.com, five bands at least one of whose members works for a tech company take the stage tonight in an all-out battle for the popular support of an audience more accustomed to khaki slacks than tattered jeans.
5-10 p.m. // Pyramid Alehouse // 1201 First Ave. S. // $40 non-WTIA member, $35 members
LO-TECHNO: Mr. Quintron ranks as one of the oddest and most original acts currently touring the US. An electric organ player from New Orleans, he's notable as an inventor of various Rube Goldberg-esque musical devices, including the "Drum Buddy," an optical theremin-based drum synthesizer that looks like the famous Burroughs-Gysin "Dream Machine." Quintron performs with his wife, Miss Pussycat.
8 p.m. // Chop Suey // 1325 E. Madison // $12
DA KLASSICS: Charles William Eliot is one of the most influential Americans you've never heard of. In 1869, he was selected to lead the then-floundering Harvard College (later University). Among his landmark achievements were the introduction of standardized entrance testing, the imposition of near-universal secondary school curriculum standards (since everyone wanted to get into Harvard, even then), the development of tax exemption for non-profits, and finally, the "Harvard Classics," a monumental 51-volume series of classics that Eliot deemed essential to liberal education. Published in 1909 and originally known as "Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf" (in reference to the space they took up), the Harvard Classics have long since fallen out of favor as the culture wars over the canon continue to flare on campuses. However, in 2007, New York-based writer Christopher Beha, while recovering from lymphoma, went through and read the whole damn series. The result is the book The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, which has been attracting endless attention in literary circles. Beha reads tonight at Elliot Bay; also check out the blog that started it all.
7:30 p.m. // Elliott Bay Book Co. // 101 S. Main St. // free!
