The best part about Friday's "Guilty Pleasures" show at the High Dive in Fremont was arguing whether the songs that were played were in fact guilty pleasures. Ok, the actual best part was hearing the songs. A close second was second-guessing the decision to play them. The way it worked was a local band got up on stage, played three songs they considered to be guilty pleasures, and then made way for the next guys. The DJ spun related material while the next band plugged in their guitars and whatnot which allowed Seattlest plenty of time to turn to random people in the crowd and insist that "The Ace of Spades" is not a guilty pleasure - That's just a badass song. "Allentown" is a guilty pleasure. "Benny and the Jets" is a guilty pleasure. That "Since you've been gone" American Idol song may or may not be a guilty pleasure, but two bands played it so the consensus would seem to be that it is. "Jenny (I got your number)" is way beyond a guilty pleasure, and we were questioning it's inclusion until, you know, they played it and it was a lot of fun. "They" played it and we couldn't tell you who they are because most of the bands just skipped right over introducing themselves - No one's guiltier over these pleasures than the bands that took the time to learn them. It was for a cause, though - Money was raised for Mercy Corp. and an otherwise sedate Fremont Friday (finals week) rocked at the High Dive.
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About seventy percent of my iPod contains music that could be construed as a guilty pleasure, and most of that is right out there in the open. I'm just not really feeling a whole lot of guilt over it. However, there's also a playlist so innocuously named that it couldn't possibly attract any attention ever and that playlist contains the lowest of the low; the truly embarrassing shit, the shit that is sure to come on the moment I let random play deejay a party. more ›

Okay, okay, you have empathy fatigue or some bullshit like that and you don't want to even hear it anymore. You gave! We know! Don't even mention the word "benefit" in your presence or you're likely to go off on some compassionate conservative rant right here. So, we won't. We won't say that Guilty Pleasures at the Sunset tonight is a benefit. more ›