Volume One was pretty cool. Two was better. Three was great. Volume Four is hands down the best. Is it simply because it's new? Because the songs are still fresh? We don't think so. There's more more to it than that. Ever have one of those days, when you're listening to KEXP and it feels like they're playing everything just for you?--those days when the DJ is charged up and brimming with unbelievably great ideas......

We wish it wasn’t the case, but KEXP’s pledge drive (donate) is forcing some of us to seek ugly alternatives in light of the station’s increasingly aggressive tactics. Don’t get us wrong—listener-supported music is a good thing. KEXP offers more original, independent content than most of the stations in the country, let alone the region. But the confrontational demands for cash are beginning to resemble a back alley shakedown. "We KNOW you're going to......

Photo of The Physics by Ryan Lewis. We love some hiphop with our coffee in the morning, and KEXP's John In The Morning obliged us today with a live set from easy-going, hard-working local stars The Physics! You can stream the set and interview on KEXP's website by clicking here and setting the time to 8:07am. What you'll hear: "Brand New Thang", "I Heart Beer", an interview (including some good-natured ribbing about The Physics'......

KEXP moved ahead yesterday with its plan to broadcast on a radio station in New York City. Hopefully you remember the gist of the story, but if not, a bit more than a month ago, the station announced a partnership with Radio New York called Radio Liberation. The plan at the time was to export six hours of programming to a terrestrial radio station in NYC. We don't listen to morning radio ourselves (too much......

Hurray for Seattlest Charles, who will be on the radio tonight at 8:30pm, on KIRO 710 AM. The show is called Too Beautiful to Live, and he'll be discussing the pillow fight he engaged in over the weekend. What pillow fight? This pillow fight.......

Lisa Confehr and Kaitie Warren are the co-directors of Balagan Theatre's Romeo & Juliet, and they deserve co-praise for the hectic, breathless pace of this 16-actor-strong production. (Now through March 22nd, Thurs-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Tickets: $15 advance, $20 at the door.) We don't need to recap the story of Romeo and Juliet, right? The direction of the Capulet party and the fight scenes is superb, edge-of-your-seat stuff, and we're not just saying that......

Today KEXP and a public radio station in New York (WNYE 91.5FM) announced they have joined forces to create a partnership called: Radio Liberation. The partnership will bring six hours of weekday KEXP programming, a nightly world music show, and a weekly Kevin Cole broadcast to New York starting March 24th. Radio Liberation also plans to expand KEXP's already extensive live programming and performances, tapping into New York City's vibrant touring and music scene.......

As we mentioned last week, Fremont's Nectar Lounge hosted a two-night One Be Lo extravaganza this weekend, promising Grayskul, DV-One, and a producer's showcase. It was the first show we've ever attended at Nectar, a classy, high-tech venue with a balcony level full of unbalanced tables, votive candles, and red pepper flake shakers. Next time we're at Nectar, we want some of that pizza we saw around. Hiphop and pizza... is there a combination more......

Zooey Glass gives a little sermon, in the longer sermon that is Franny & Zooey, about "the Fat Lady" -- Seymour once told him to shine his shoes (before a radio show?! as Zooey argued) for this mythic creature, who it's said lives inside every one of us. When we saw Jersey Boys at the 5th Ave on Friday night, though, she was sitting behind us. She clapped as the familiar doo wop songs began,......

Fircrest, Washington, is a bedroom community of Tacoma that's just a little bit bigger than Central Park. It was developed in the twenties by Edward Bowes, who later gained national fame as the host of Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, a radio forerunner of American Idol (Frank Sinatra's career took off after he won). Sunday was the first time we'd ever been to Fircrest. Sunday was the first time we'd ever heard of Fircrest. We went......

If you've been following Seattlest David's football and cooking series, you'd know that there's hardly anything more unlikely than that he'd be talking about cooking to a regional radio audience. And yet, he will, today at 2:45, on the KUOW program Sound Focus--discussing a football-season-long odyssey in which he's cooked everything from deep-dish pizza to deep-fried ravioli. Perhaps the most memorable moment in his odyssey was when David learned that unlike water, oil doesn't have......

Despite what you may have heard the past few days--scuttlebutt about the sale of the Showbox Market and subsequent consolidation of venues at the SoDo location--it turns out that the original (and best) Showbox is staying right where it is, thankyouverymuch. Says Chad Queirolo, Talent Buyer/Manager for both Showboxes: It used to be once a year an especially virulent rumor that the Showbox lease would end in March. This has been happening for at......

On Sunday night, Seattlest and a bunch of other Seattleites showed up at Chop Suey for the "Jive Turkey Extreme" Cancer Rising cd release party. The Valley (a Seattle rock band) opened, but we missed their set due to an emergency Piecora's artichoke-heart and sun-dried tomato pizza slice run. Ah, well. No matter. We were still among the first hundred people to buy our ticket and therefore obtain a free copy of Cancer Rising's hot-off-the-presses......

Grayskul's coming home to the 206, and Seattlest will be there to welcome them at their concert on Friday night. We have been thoroughly enjoying Grayskul's 2007 release, Bloody Radio, since it came out in September; the first single from the record, "Scarecrow," is catchy as hell. Grayskul's music is a richly melodic, edgy journey through the weird and the relevant; listen here, and don't miss Grayskul's older stuff, especially from Deadlivers. We recommend "Prom......

Enough. It's Bacon Salt Backlash time. Seattlest got in our car to drive home last night and Bacon Salt came on the radio. We opened up the newspaper yesterday and Bacon Salt. Bacon Salt, Bacon Salt, Bacon Salt. Nothing against these guys personally, but if we are subjected to one more recounting of the glorious beginnings of Bacon Salt we're going to go nutso. Yes, well, little Bobby was playing baseball in the yard and......

We've said it before. It's impossible not to have a good time at a Presidents show. Seriously. You can try all you want. You can stand in the corner, scowling at everyone and thinking of all your dead relatives, but once that toe starts tapping, it's all over. Soon you'll be smiling and before long you'll be rocking out along with everyone else. Such was the scene last Friday night at the Pyramid Alehouse Get......

We have no doubt that one day we'll all live in little Matrix pods where a single media conglomerate will spoon-feed us newspapers, TV news, radio and, yes, blogs and collect our excreted dollars and votes for their own nefarious purposes. Jay Inslee, however, thinks that future may not be inevitable, and blathers on about it below. If you're of like mind get thee to Town Hall on Friday for the final public hearing on......

Woody Guthrie was, and in many ways still is, one of the most important figures in the history of American music. He's responsible for hundreds of songs, some of which are still being found and put to music. His contributions to the American songbook include, of course, "This Land is Your Land," but also "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Pastures of Plenty," and other topical tunes by which topical songwriters continue to measure their worth. He also......

Katelyn Hackett attends local hiphop shows. She will write about them for Seattlest. Another gleeful, sharp, and passionate local hiphop show came and went Sunday night at Neumos, and chances are high that you weren't there. Chances are high, actually, that you didn't even know it was happening. Seattlest heard about the show through our perusal of trusty MySpace bulletins; if we weren't already such devoted fans we could have easily spent the evening with......

A more dismal Northwest football weekend we can hardly remember. First, on Saturday afternoon--as NYC sportscaster Warner Wolf would say, "If you had Washington State and 45 points, you lost!" Oregon beat the Cougs 53-7, and the game wasn't as close as the final score indicates. The Cougs were down 40-0 at halftime. We flipped on the post-game show to hear the Cougs' radio team explaining why it's hard to recruit top athletes to Pullman.......

Seattlest feels dirty (not in a good way) after reading the Oxford American's article on indie rock and Seattle. Bill Wasik's piece about indie rock and the blogs and radio stations who love them revolves around Seattle and KEXP. He frames us as the first city of indie rock, which, first of all, doesn't seem right. We have a decent amount of indie-type bands and some clubs and Capitol Hill, but... do you think we're......

It's not Yeats's centre that cannot hold, it's the right wing. For some time now, to quote The Second Coming,The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The Dems betray us with wimpishness while the radio rethugs rush to attack phony soldiers. Further signs of unraveling: GOP house organ WSJ discovers that business interests no longer trust the GOP. Smart, those corporate business guys. Like all bullies, they can......

Real estate search engine Rotten Neighbor promises to help you "find bad neighbors before you move." What evils have users uncovered behind the closed doors of the Emerald City? Near Carkeek Park: Grouchy Old Man w/ Loud Music The grouchy old man who lives here likes to play his radio very loudly in his backyard. Lately he has begun playing it in the middle of the night and the cops have been called several times.......

Well, shit. This weekend has been kind of a bust for shows Seattlest was supposed to see. Friday night, we were supposed to go see Hillstomp at Conor Byrne. We thought we had seen them, and we thought they rocked our socks. Apparently, we saw Miss Mamie Lavona the Exotic Mulatta and Her White Boy Band. Last night, we drove on over to West Seattle to the Skylark to check out Mishka Shubaly. This one......

Last night was our first live encounter with Ohio's Over the Rhine, and the Triple Door turned out to be the perfect venue for the neo-cabaret sound of their new album The Trumpet Child (which they're streaming on their site). Tonight's show is sold out, but they're doing SRO sales at the window. The Triple Door website will tell you the show's at 8pm, but we showed up at 7:45pm last night and got sat......

Last night Richard Wiseman -- "Britain’s only chair in the Public Understanding of Psychology" -- spoke at Town Hall about his study of quirkology. Which, if you don't know, is the study of the offbeat in human behavior as a way of shining light on why we act the way we do. Here's a short recap of what we learned about: >>Speed dating: He didn't get into this in the talk, but it sounded interesting,......

It's a newer, thinner Dan Thiessen presiding over Bellevue's 0/8 Seafood Grill and the adjacent bar, Twisted Cork. "I stopped drinking and lost 80 pounds," he confides, no mean feat for a dude who clearly wants to become the Tom Douglas of the Eastside. His most recent accomplishment: winning the Seattle leg of national poke championship with a three-level, "Walk on the Beach" theme: a palate-cleansing spritzer of Kestrel Viognier and Dry Soda Lemongrass; the......

The Mojo and the Sayso which opened at ACT last night is four actors and a car, but the car is the thing, the main entity. The car is the set, the stage, and the focal character. It may not have any lines, but it stands in for everything that moves playwright Aisha Rahman's story forward. It's the absent child, gunned down by aggro off-duty cops, it's the broken family, being rebuilt from the ground......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

Quick, someone come up with a word for the blog you write in order to get the last word in after quitting a job. We're not even going to attempt it because we suck at that sort of thing and there's no need to burn a stick of embarrassment in here. Here's the post-firing tell-all blog of the moment, though, lovingly written by Kevin Ken Vincent, long-time KUOW employee, freshly unemployed: KUOW has always had......