Some asshole’s broken-down Dodge Caravan is making Nirvana look bad. The decrepit piece of shit has been rusting like a cheap can in front of a hotel on Bell Street for the better part of two months, the lone Nirvana sticker on the back window convincing tourists only poor people and scumbags listen to Nirvana around here anymore. Normally we’d expect a Megadeth sticker from this type of vehicle, but to soil Nirvana’s good......

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......

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,......

Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Hillary Clinton's conviction that our next president must be a "fighter" now has literal representation: Fighter of Foo Dave Grohl has announced his candidacy as an Independent. HARP magazine's new issue showcases the "worldwide exclusive" scoop; the online version of the piece highlights the former Nirvana drummer's "politics" and electability likability. A few snipped-up snippets: On why he’s the right candidate for the job: “Every night when I’m on tour, I bring my message......

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......

The only thing more sad and lame than a cover band is a tribute band. (Usually.) Well, even worse is a tribute band that plays the music of an another band that still exists. No, wait—a tribute band that plays songs from a one-off band’s one-off album … whose members live on. That’s truly scraping the musical barrel-bottom. Okay, okay. Worser yet is a national tour of three tribute bands that run this lamentable......

Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar). Indeed, it's hard to get noticed......

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......

Last month, in response to a push to "reconsider" old Mudhoney songs, we said that the band never made it big because they sounded more "rough and fuzzy" than the Big Four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains). We said that singer Mark Arm's style--as well as the band's--was "not bad, just different." After witnessing Mudhoney's transcendent assault on El Corazon Friday night, we'd like to propose a reconsideration of the band itself.......

So Krist Novoselic blogs for the Weekly now. Oooh. Courtney Love doesn’t need any stinking alt-paper to share her anarchic thoughts. She’s got authenticity. She’s got voice. She’s got MySpace. Love’s latest piece, a 3700-word manifesto—titled "oh shit the inspartion fairy sprinkeld her glitter"—speaks volumes about her character. its ironic cos its loose and sick and cool and beuatiful and Linda doesnthave time ever- wich is a shame as its our record mostly tho......

We hear the insults. Bloggers are no-names. We are malcontents. We live in our parents' basements, practicing onanism like Tiger Woods practices putting. Well we have news for you, blogger-haters. Laugh no more, because a man who has the earned respect of many for his political activism and musical genius is joining our growing club. Krist Novoselic has started a blog. This hero of the 1990s, a man who had the courage to throw his......

All of Seattlest will be struggling to remember that Sunday is the day we turn our clocks back one hour. We hope you remember too. Kim is so much of a puppy-lover, that she’s donating her Saturday to the folks at Pasado Safe Haven. She’ll spend Saturday night helping her mandolin player and his girlfriend celebrate their new wood floors. Sunday is dedicated solely to NaNoWriMo. The Cinerama is showing the super-extra-ultra-final cut of Blade......

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.)......

The Onion AV Club says Mudhoney's 1991 album Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is worth a re-listen. Say they:[EGBDF] came out two months before Nirvana's Nevermind—and in a sense, it's the Bizarro Nevermind ... Every Good Boy in hindsight sounds like the grunge that should've been: ratty, humble, punky, weird, and catchy without resorting to grunting machismo. Our resident grunge expert, Seattlest Clint, is in Chicago for "a wedding of people I've never met" (hey,......

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,......

In a few seasons, Seattle indie stalwart Sub Pop will shed its adolescent husk and turn 20. Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, the dudes who put Soundgarden and Nirvana in bins before major label reps stormed Seattle, will, according to this bio, celebrate "as conspicuously as they can manage." As well they should. They were the fuse to said bands’ (and others’) genre-birthing TNT, after all. And though maybe not as globally revered since the......

Unbeknownst to us, producers of CBS's glossy detective series, Cold Case have been using all sorts of pop music from Toby Keith to The Postal Service to elevate the cool factor of each episode. Their website even has a page listing the "Music of Cold Case" -- some episodes of which showcase a single recording artist (such as the 2/18/07 "Blood on the Tracks" episode featuring music from Bob Dylan). So there we were, watching......

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......

Admittedly, this weekend is pretty dead. Here's what we got: Tonight there's Flee the Century at the Blue Moon, along with Red Rapture and our dear friends in X-Ray Press. Behold the video for FtC's synth-heavy "Pinned by a Pinch." Tomorrow night, skip shaving your armpits and join all the feminists and assorted rabblerousers at the Showbox for the fierce-as-ever Patti Smith. Lately, the lady's been performing a lot of covers, including Nirvana's "Smells Like......

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......

Seattlest, it must be admitted, is not always ahead of the zeitgeist. We (or at least this author) only ever got around to reading Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life in like 2004. Thus hyped for the good old days of the real underground, we were inspired to go see Dinosaur Jr. a couple months later when, reunited, they stopped by the Showbox. Now, we must admit to never having really listened......

If your significant other’s a shameless grunge geek and has big, blank walls at home, here’s a fine birthday/anniversary/no-real-reason gift idea: an "archivally processed gelatin silver" Charles Peterson print. This one, we think, is a particularly nice choice. Peterson (and Lance Mercer, of course) chronicled the wonder years of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam in incredible candid (and on-stage) photographs. And now, via some New Mexico outfit called Soulcatcher Studio, you can own some......

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......

"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......

-Vista shipped today! Oh, wait, it's just their new Vista blog. Forget it. -Item: what "nasty dull rainy dark hell hole filled with dumb redneck simpletons" does a former Nirvana bassist call home? -Gluten-Free Girl let's loose with the longest explanation of the shortest tattoo we've ever seen. The tattoo reads, "yes." The explanation is here. -That libertarian guy who crashed King 5's senate debate between Cantwell and McGavick has a television commercial now.......

We love Husky football, even when the team is in the midst a "victory deficient stage," we still get excited for games against Top 20 teams. Which is why we are clearing our schedule to watch the purple and gold get absolutely stomped in Norman tomorrow when they face the number 10 ranked Oklahoma Sooners. The game will be a rematch of the 1985 Orange Bowl in which the Huskies and the Sooner Schooner beat......

The Melody Unit's Kevin Kelly On a Life Spent in SeattleMusic, Why the Band Never Made It, and Why He's So Ambivalent AboutTheir Latest (Greatest) Album We were getting a little antsy sitting around Kai's Bistro in the U-District, because our interview subject, Kevin Kelly, the leader of the band The Melody Unit, seemed to be running late. Finally, a little confused, we stood up and held a copy of the band's last album, Songs......

A post in Tuesday's DCist mentioned a campaign in the other Washington to adopt a bland song named "Come to Washington" as an official "city anthem." Then, in a follow-up post, DCist nominated nine other, better songs. Readers voted for their favorites and suggested a few more. The current fave seems to be the Magnetic Fields' awesomely evocative "Washington, D.C." Naturally, this has us pondering songs about Seattle -- not songs by artists from......