MUSIC: The Hotel Cafe Tour at Neumo's is sold out, so why not change things up with internationally celebrated Irish pianist John O'Conor at Meany Hall. Impress your friends with an all-Beethoven recital including the "Pathétique," "Waldstein," and "Moonlight" sonatas, and Bagatelles, Op. 126. Melinda Bargreen calls him "spectacularly good." And Beethoven, hell, if Wikipedia is correct, that guy was no slouch either. 7:30 p.m. // Meany Hall, University of Washington // Tickets: $20,......

Kurt Cobain shaped the country's rock music landscape while wearing Converse sneaks. He blithely, angrily altered Seattle's future, ripped a hole for the city on the map of pop culture, all while wearing Converse. He went nuts on stage. He whispered and screamed. He played the shit out of guitars. He shot up and nodded off in the shoes. Kurt killed himself while wearing Converse. The shoes were prominent in the image that famously......

Kurt might be amused to learn that, since 2003, at least one jackass criminal has been using his social security number to make fraudulent purchases. Said jackass has apparently skimmed some £36 million—about 5,000 million US dollars these days—from the deceased rock star's estate. "Mr. Cobain" might have continued his spending spree had he not slipped up in 2007; his purchase of a $3.2 million New Jersey mansion drew the attention of Courtney Love.......

Musicians who remain active in the recording industry for over 20 years usually become internationally famous and aim to save the world, or quietly cultivate a devout fan base by emancipating humanity one pair of ears at a time. Mark Pickerel—drummer, vocalist, and Ellensburg native—has followed the latter career path. While in high school, Pickerel joined what would become one of the most notable—and yet most overlooked—bands of the grunge era. Seven years later,......

We think of Kurt Cobain’s short, violently-ended life like Clarence Worley does The King’s: "In Jailhouse Rock he was everything rockabilly's about. I mean, he is rockabilly. Mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he couldn't give a fuck about nothing except rockin' and rollin', living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse." In most respects, Kurt lived—and died—just how he wanted. But it would be nice to still have him around. He’d......

So the lovely and talented Britney Spears has reached that beautiful moment in a young celebrity's life when the media decides they need to draft your obituary. Yes, it seems the AP has concluded that Ms. Spears' mortality is sufficiently imminent they need to prepare for the story. Of course, drafting an obit in advance is an industry-wide practice, but for a 26-year-old? Of course, 27 is the age to die at for rock stars:......

Yes, it's actually been 14 years since Unplugged in New York aired the first time, on the TV channel that once stood for Music. Fourteen years since you perched on the edge of the couch, possibly stoned, wearing intentionally crappy clothes, your bleary eyes glued to the set. Since Kurt Cobain had just a few months left of his short, tortured life. Today, you can buy/rent/rip the DVD. If you're like Seattlest, you haven't......

Next year’s publication of Itch, Love Stories About Heroin means that if you've been waiting for a full-length, in-depth book about Alice in Chains' Layne Staley—well, don’t get your hopes up. You'd think someone would've managed to write a Heavier Than Heavenish Staley biography by now. After all, Staley's voice was as unique, his contribution to Seattle's 90s music scene (arguably) as important, and his death as grisly as fellow heroin addict Kurt Cobain's.......

In central Illinois in the 1990s Seattlest was a wee little college freshman exploring the twin wonders of new music and new drugs. Nirvana, for example, was making some music we got really into, so much so that we learned of Aberdeen, WA, even though we'd never been to the West Coast, much less the Pacific Northwest, or Washington, or Seattle. At nearly the same time we encountered our first vanity steroid users. Some guys......

Wait--choke back that vomit. We're making shit up. Speculating doom, if you will. Only half of that title is true. Charles Cross' 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain actually is being adapted for the big screen. By highly-anticipated The Kite Runner and Wolverine screenwriter David Benioff, no less. (Aside: Seattlest once met Benioff at an Austin bar, while unsuccessfully schmoozing with Hollywood types. Before we knew better, we asked him, "Are you a writer, too?" Ha.)......

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then,......

We start things off this weekend with a simple two words from Donte: Muthafucking Justice! As Halloween approaches, it seems that the tradition of Seattlests stalking each other continues. Seth will attend the opening night of the Seattle Opera's first ever co-production with New York's Metropolitan Opera, Iphigenia in Tauris, which is conveniently scheduled at the exact fucking same time as the Husky/ASU game. He'll try to catch the fourth quarter at the Spectator on......

Musical hyphenate-extraordinaire Shawn Smith has been fronting bands and playing solo in Seattle for about 15 years. As recent, local music history goes, he’s as seminal a figure as Kurt Cobain—and more prolific—though not nearly as high-profile. He should be. Always busy, Shawn’s currently spending time with Kevin Wood, covering Malfunkshun tunes (and writing new ones) as From the North. His band Brad has a new album recorded and will, he’s confirmed, play in......

Kurt Cobain’s widow and his hometown have a lot in common. Both Courtney Love and Aberdeen have battled substance abuse. Both are scorned for their blighted appearance. And both had a lot of wood running through them in their heyday. But only one of these Cobain survived-bys wants to memorialize Kurt Horcrux-style—to protect and preserve the bits of his soul still influencing music, pop culture, and the minds of talented, tortured teens. That would be......

Remember the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, the album that made the band—and the word "grunge"—a household name? A naked baby, swimming blithely in pristine water, reaches for a dollar bill—a dollar bill that's on a large fish hook. The image is memorable for its ironic, dangerous, clear message. Courtney Love didn't catch the meaning. Director AJ Schnack does. Love reportedly made $50 million selling 25% of Nirvana's song catalog in 2006. More recently, she......

We know that the weather has been rainy and overcast and downright crummy these last few days, but never fear: things are looking up! And just in time for this weekend's Capitol Hill Block Party, which over two days features three stages and nearly fifty bands. One of the bands that we're most excited to see is Britain's The Cribs. Comprised of three brothers (twins Ryan and Gary Jarman on guitar, bass, and vocals,......

This weekend the National Weather service is calling for mid-70s to 80 degrees. You may want to recover from heatstroke by rehydrating in an air-conditioned theater with other bepinkenned Seattleites, and their melanin-endowed friends savoring their little moment of schadenfreude. (Here's the Seattle Times cheat sheet on the various venues.) · We caught the press screening for the not entirely laugh-free Death at a Funeral with a friend who said, summing up Frank Oz's......

This weekend there are a lot of shows that we recommend you avoid, not that you're going to listen to Seattlest and tear up your tickets or anything, but if you previously had no idea these were happening this weekend you can pat yourself on the back for successfully avoiding any mention of them so far. First Fishbone is playing Studio 7. Stay away. Second, Jello Biafra is in town. Not there's anything wrong with......

Well, you did it, Seattle. You got into the finals at American-freaking-Idol. What the hell? It wasn't supposed to be like this. You were supposed to fade out gracefully when everyone realised that there were some real hard-core singers involved with this competition. But no, Seattle. You had to flash those bedroom eyes of yours, do your best (a.k.a. worst) James Brown-ish dancing. You had to beatbox and reach your hand out at the camera......

Sadly, we didn’t live in Seattle when grunge was born and raucously reigned. British rock journalist Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography—on sale now, just in time for the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death—did. And it sure is tempting to live vicariously through the 600+ pages of his book. For those fascinated with this era of Seattle music, Nirvana looks like an educational, entertaining read. We could probably even tolerate True’s repeated, misguided Pearl......

First of all, despite what you read in the Times and the P-I about Donald Byrd's Never-Mind (which came and went over the weekend), it's not all that, as Brendan Kiley says over on the Slog. We've become fans of Byrd's "neo-expressionist" style, but Never-Mind (at this point) is short on style and substance. It came off like "Frank Miller's Never-Mind": an ugly cartoon of drug abuse, of dysfunction, of iconic fame. Not that......

Spectrum Dance Theater at the Moore Theatre 8pm tonight, tickets $15-$45 (plus fees) Spectrum Dance Theater's Never-Mind had its world premiere last night and ends tonight. It's a disturbing work, set to Kurt Cobain's perturbing music. If repeated shotgun blasts bother you, this is not your kind of show. If you're intrigued by the idea of Cobain getting a fix from Love, or seeing fans swept up into his tragic dance, then make plans.......

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, care if I'm old." Perhaps Kurt Cobain didn't care about aging, but we think he would care if he knew that Breed would end up as the soundtrack to Major League Baseball 2K7. The soundtrack also includes the Stooges and the Pixies. You can hear the whole thing here. Baseball video game soundtracks have advanced somewhat since the days when......

If he were alive today Kurt Cobain would be blowing out 40 candles on his birthday cake. We were 19 when he died, and were sleepwalking through a higher education that we never asked for at a university in central Illinois where life, frankly, sucked, and it was made worse when we heard that the guy who single-handedly saved us from the ridiculous crap we were filing our ears and minds with until then had......

That dialing noise you hear is Mayor Nickels phoning it in. With filing week in the books, Nickels now has seven opponents in September's primary, none of whom will challenge him in any way. Among the candidates are Omari Tahir-Garrett, who hit then Mayor Schell in the head with a megaphone in 2001, and Richard Lee who is investigating the death of Kurt Cobain. Both ran for mayor four years ago; neither did very......

Seattlest isn't shy about telling people that we went to the same high school (Garfield) as Jimi Hendrix. And usually they are impressed. We are certain that, if we would only conform to accepted societal standards for oral hygiene, this fact alone might get us laid. Garfield guitar dorks have long fantasized about finding lost Hendrix lyrics in an abandoned locker. But we've recently learned that those dreams are futile. Hendrix started writing songs only......

Here we are in the home stretch of the 31st annual Seattle International Film Festival. If you haven't seen a great foreign film/documentary/indie flick, or at least an advertisement featuring aspects thereof, you only have till this Sunday to do so. Between now and then, some festival films of note (and in a nutshell) include: · 5 X 2 - Five Times Two, from the director of Swimming Pool, a look at five significant events......

Aberdeen, Washington, where Kurt Cobain's life began and ended, has announced that they will be honoring their fallen son by adding the words "Come as you are" to the city's signposts including the welcome signs that visitors will see when entering the town. The Kurt Cobain Memorial Project is the force behind the new signs and has other memorials such as a park, a youth center and a graffiti wall planned. According to this......