Ben Lashes of Seattle rockers the Lashes gets to interview Slash of Guns N' Roses for Spin.com. The video, which would have benefitted greatly from subtitles (maybe that's just our crappy desktop speakers though), includes the phrases "How about the marshmallow cheeseburger?" and "Boy I wish I had brought a lighter, I could have got that for you," as well as some adorable fandom from a few teenage boys. Has anyone heard Chinese Democracy yet?......

Willy Porter promotional photo © Rodney Bursiel We first became privy to Willy Porter years ago when he opened for Tori Amos at the University of Central Florida, and we still dig his impressive guitar skills and rootsy acousti-pop songwriting. He'll be rolling into town tomorrow night to play an early show at the Tractor with the amazing ladies of Raining Jane. We got him on the phone this week for a little insight into......

Last week, we headed out to Smith to catch up with local singer/songwriter Molly Rose, to chat about her work, learn about her purpose in life, and come back here to tell you people all about it so that you'd feel inspired to head to Columbia City Theater for her show this Thursday night. It was happy hour. We took a booth in the back of the room because, despite the spectacular noise discrimination on......

When Seattlest was just a wee lesbian growing up in a small southern town, we did what we reckon other wee small-town lesbians did: we listened to a lot of k.d. lang and the Indigo Girls. We went on long road trips across the whole state with the windows down, our other closeted friends with us, singing "Galileo" at the top of our lungs. Ah, those good ol' days of closeted small-town life. It's......

Photo of One Be Lo by Kyle Johnson. One Be Lo, a nationally acclaimed independent hiphop artist hailing from Pontiac, Michigan, is fond of our city. "In Seattle, I get an epiphany every day," he says, recounting his insights gleaned from dining with local Vietnamese families and browsing through the shelves of the Emerald City’s bookstores. The emcee leans in closer. "Seattle’s giving me my second wind." An avid learner and frequent public speaker,......

Seattlest has heard good things about the All-Star Pop Culture quiz at Jillian's ever since it started up. We still haven't had a chance to check it out—Tuesday's our regular trivia night, even when we're not hosting. But since the spring season kicks off tonight, we did the next best thing: interviewed Trevor Trifiro, the brains behind the quiz. Assume I've never played pub trivia before. What should I expect when I come to All-Star......

Austin-based band Monahans do to music what poetry does to words. Tonight, they'll bring their stylin' tunes to the Tractor. Also on the bill is local songwriter J. Tillman and the very pretty Zera Marvel. We called up Monahans frontman Greg last week during their brief stint with the Cowboy Junkies to find out why he thinks people should come to tonight's show. 9 p.m. // Tractor Tavern // $7 Where are you right......

Seth Kolloen starting covering sports for Seattlest in January 2005. Late last year he took over as editor, before leaving us to become the editor of the brand new Sports Northwest Magazine. We caught up with Seth poolside at the W Hotel to discuss the move to press row, his sports blog, and why he won’t be calling Maggie Gyllenhaal any time soon. How did you get involved with the new magazine? In one sense,......

The Starlings—a band that started with Joy Mills and her husband Tomm but has since grown into a solid foursome—have spent the last couple of years forging their way through the local music scene, touring now and then. This Saturday, they'll celebrate the release of their second independent release, Marvelling the While—a wonderful collection of country-pop-and-blues-infused Americana that further solidifies their rootsy sound. The party's at the Tractor, where all rootsy CD releases tend......

The recent demise of Seattle's Pacific Rim Brewing comes with a happy ending, at least for Seattle beer drinkers. Local home brewer Alejandro Brown (known as Big Al) is putting the finishing touches on purchasing what remains of Pacific Rim, and plans to have beer rolling out sometime this summer. While Pacific Rim will be missed by many (mainly Rat City IPA for us), it's great to see an avid homebrewer getting a chance......

Macklemore, recently back from touring Europe, sat down with us at Vivace last Saturday to discuss his art, his ego, and his shoes (among other topics). Get the low-down here, and don’t miss the man’s show at the Vera Project tonight with Illmaculate and Ricky Pharoe! What’s going on artistically for you? You’re working on your new album. What’s up? I'm excited about my music for the first time in a while. I recently just......

Seattlest is most familiar with Drew Emmitt through his time with the fabulous bluegrass group Leftover Salmon. Now Emmitt's coming to town with his own band (named, aptly, the Drew Emmitt Band) and will be helped by openers the Hackensaw Boys. If you haven't caught the Hackensaw Boys, their live show is a raging good time. They're the definition of high-powered, high-speed punk-rock bluegrass and, before you know it, you, too, will be hopping......

Local Singer/Songwriter Joanna Horowitz got a crazy idea a year or so ago. A long-time musician involved in the theater business, she thought it might be fun to write a musical. Enter 100 Heartbreaks... The plot, in a nutshell: Singer/songwriter Charlane wants to cross over into country music. She figures that, if she gets her heart broken 100 times, maybe she'll be ready to write an honest country heartbreak song. She gets stuck when......

If you've yet to hear Barton Carroll's work, you should get on it. There's a Billy Braggish quality to it, a little Bruce Springsteen. There's a little Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark going on there, maybe even a little bit of the Pogues. His guitar work isn't necessarily extraordinary, but it builds cascading walls of sound that wrap around you, creating a nice little room where the songs dance amid filtered light and......

Last summer (ah, summer!) we drove down to Portland for their annual Pickathon Roots Music Festival, where we found ourselves exposed to all manner of folkies from Portland and beyond. One of the bands that stole the weekend for us was from Indiana, of all godforsaken places. On Saturday night, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band played a show in the barn that seriously blew our mind. Joined by Seattleite Jason Webley, they just played......

Seattlest David: What's up, computer? Computer: Good evening, Dave. Everything's running smoothly. And you? Seattlest David: Well, not so great. Can you explain why the bus tunnel's computers weren't working during the busy holiday shopping season? Computer: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Seattlest David: Uh, ok, well, actually, looks like everything's fixed now. How about the problem with the New Year's Eve fireworks? Computer: I'm sorry, Dave, I don't have enough......

DJ Nphared spins for Sportn' Life artists, including D. Black and Fatal Lucciauno, and he also DJs for Grynch. Seattlest enjoyed his mixes at the Parker Brothaz show on Monday, so we set out to learn more about this guy's ethos. What two records, more than any other records, influenced your adolescence? The first album I remember listening to religiously was Geto Boys' Till Death Do Us Part. I thought they were the illest,......

A few weeks ago, singer/raconteur Jenny Owen Youngs was in town, playing at the High Dive the same time as the Fremont Bridge was being closed evenings, which led to our arriving mid-set in a state of high dudgeon. We decided to skip a half-assed review, and afterwards fired off some impertinent questions via email. We just heard back, and as you'll see, Jenny schools us a bit. Now we adore her even more. If......

Trouble in Tahiti / Rita: Seattle Young Artists Program @ CHAC 8-10pm, Nov. 16-17 // CHAC // Tickets $20 in advance Friday and Saturday, Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program perform at CHAC with an unusual double-feature. We buttonholed our friend Jonathan Dean, the Education Department's Artistic Administrator, and peppered him with hard-hitting questions to get to the bottom of all this. MvB: You're doing two shows, one by Leonard Bernstein, one by Gaetano Donizetti. What's......

Adrian Tomine started making comics in his teens when he created Optic Nerve. In it, he tells stories about people who tend to be searching for answers to questions they seem to think everyone else already knows. After a few years putting out Optic Nerve on his own, it was picked up by publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Tomine is coming to Seattle to promote his first full-length graphic novel Shortcomings. Seattlest used it as......

Andrew Le, known further and wider as Nam, is one of those artists Seattlest's been seeing over and over again at most of the local hip-hop shows we attend; sometimes he even ends up on stage, making the performance bang that much harder. We emailed him questions, he emailed back answers. Why hip-hop? Why Hip Hop? Why not? Hip Hop is the one of the best ways for people to express themselves. I got into......

Ravens & Chimes [myspace] have been artist of the day on Spin, and you've heard them on John in the Morning. Their new album, Reichenbach Falls, "dropped" last month. They are hot. Two Ravens, Abe Pollack and Brittany Anjou, are Seattle types. Pollack went to U Prep, Anjou's a Roosevelt grad. Word! We emailed Pollack some questions, he emailed back answers. 1) How did you end up in Brooklyn? I moved to New York six......

Mateo Messina, a Seattle native, has been composing television and film scores and penning symphonies for 10 years. His most recent score is for the upcoming, buzz-magnet comedy Juno. His latest symphony will be heard tonight at Benaroya Hall's (sold out) Symphony Legacy concert. (That's him above, at last year's show.) Messina's Symphony--a benefit for Seattle Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center--features the combined musical talents of the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest......

In 2004, Ken Jennings redefined success on Jeopardy!, banking over $2,500,000 as he won 74 games. Those of us who get paid in bar credit know it's hard to make a living through trivia, but Jennings has done it. He turned his obligatory cash-in-on-your-15-minutes book, Brainiac, into something much better and broader, an examination of trivia history and culture. He also moved from Utah to the Seattle area. That, and Brainiac's paperback release tomorrow, gave......

Seattlest fell in love with Gabriel Teodros after the Capitol Hill Block Party this summer, when Teodros brought up artist after local artist to join him on stage at Neumos and threw down a song or two about sexism. Teodros is the real deal, one of the best men Seattle hiphop has to offer to the world at large, and here's what he's thinking about these days. We're all wondering why you're not named on......

This weekend, Seattlest scored an email interview with Larry Mizell Jr, aka Gatsby of Cancer Rising, aka Man About Town (our term, not his). Readers: read on! Mr. Mizell, you write for The Stranger and keep an active music blog, in addition to being a local hiphop artist. What's it like to be an artist AND an observer of the Seattle hiphop scene? What trends are you seeing in local hiphop? It's been fantastic writing......

We were first turned onto Susan Werner back in our New York days when she played a free show at the World Trade Center. We were broke and all about free things, and we had a nice healthy respect for the sort of music the show sponsor WFUV felt like sharing with the world. We were impressed then by her candid poetics and a particularly lovely tune called "Time Between Trains" that stuck with......

he 1960 Huskies, who will be honored en masse Saturday when the Dawgs play #1 USC, lost only one game and beat #1 Minnesota in the Rose Bowl, the only time the UW's beaten a #1 team. Husky historian W. Thomas Porter recently finished a book about that 1960 team, A Football Band of Brothers: Forging the University of Washington's First National Championship. It's quite a tale--Husky coach Jim Owens, who'd coached under legendary taskmaster......

In December we wrote about local restaurant review site Urbanspoon. We loved it then, we love it now, and we've been loving it in the interim. Since we last chatted with Ethan Lowry, one of the three brains behind the site, Urbanspoon has really fleshed things out and branched out to a bunch of other cities. Are you a food guy or a tech guy? What's your background? I've been eating since I was born,......

Last month the Husky basketball team went to Greece together. They played some local teams but, also, since they are students too, got some in-depth instruction on Greek history from Dr. James Clauss of the UW Classics department. Dr. Clauss is also head of the UW Honors program, and a winner of the UW's Distinguished Teaching award. The Huskies went 2-3 in basketball on the trip, but we thought it would be interesting to check......