Results tagged “westcoast”

Who will triumph as the West Coast champion of the DMC turntablist competition tonight? And--perhaps even more interesting--what interesting tricks of the turntablist trade will he or she bring to the tables? 206 Zulu somehow finagled to host the left coast heat of the international championships here in Seattle, at the Vera Project. The only kind of scratching Seattlest does personally is of the "where it itches" variety, and DJs from all over the West Coast will be competing, so this should be a real treat.

Tonight's sky should be just as active, though not nearly as much of a surprise. The last visible full lunar eclipse until 2010 takes place tonight and, weather permitting, should be in clear view for Seattle. The full eclipse will begin at roughly 7pm and should last nearly 50 minutes. Moon watchers are in for an extra treat, as Saturn should be visible too.

U-N-I, the L.A. headliners at last night's show at Chop Suey, is the profoundly West Coast hiphop equivalent of human superficial fascia: loosely, intricately webbed, sticky, and pliable. Tricky, surprising beats backed Thurzday and Y-O's tight rap in a dizzying but relaxed kind of way. The night was solid for such an unsung show, with performances from some of 2008's most promising local acts: J. Pinder (his ballsy, impeccable timing meshing perfectly with high-power Vitamin D beats), the infectiously vibrant GMK, and Stranger fave The Physics.

Wild speculation surrounding the possibility of Radiohead playing somewhere in Washington sometime in the next year has got us pissing ourselves with excitement. The P-I A P-I reader blog called Ear Candy** thinks they might headline the Sasquatch Festival at the end of May with REM and The Cure but our sources are suggesting the band will embark on a West Coast run after their European summer tour ends. As of right now, the only guaranteed U.S. shows are a handful of random gigs in the South--kicking off in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Cinco De Mayo of all times and places. After all, nothing pairs quite like cheap tequila and sophisticated Brit rock.

We may have the lowest crime rate in 40 years, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

Kristy Lee Cook may be the closest we get to a local hand in the pot this year. Which basically means Blake Lewis might get to keep his crown. (Did he get a crown for coming in second?)

Austin-based Anglophile pop quintet Voxtrot just can't help but draw comparisons to bands like Belle & Sebastian, Morrissey, the Wedding Present, and even the Cure. After a couple well-received EPs, the band put out their self-titled debut full-length earlier this year (see above single "Firecracker"), and then proceeded to tour up a storm. Now the boys are back on the West Coast: Voxtrot headlines an extremely twee-centric all-ages show (Division Day, Tullycraft, and Math and Physics Club are also on the bill) at Neumo's next Tuesday night, and Seattlest has one pair of tix to give away. Enter to win by filling out the form below. No worries: Your info is safe with us and will not be shared with advertisers and/or the government, yadda yadda yadda. We'll be drawing one winner Monday at 10am.

And we mean everybody: the New York Times, Pitchfork, the ever-fickle blogosphere. Seems that it's not hard to garner that kind of love and affection when you're a Brit-leaning pop quintet straight outta Austin. With clever arrangements, charming melodies, limber lyrics, and jangly guitars, Voxtrot just can't help but draw comparisons to bands like Belle & Sebastian, Morrissey, the Wedding Present, and even the Cure. After a string of well-received EPs, their self-titled debut full-length came out in May, and since then, they've been touring nonstop (most recently as openers for Arctic Monkeys), while also performing at the Pitchfork festival, the Siren Music Festival in Coney Island, and at CMJ.

Six Organs of Admittance is one man--Ben Chasny--and whoever he gets to come along for the ride. Shelter From the Ash, Chasny's ninth album under the Six Organs name (out today), features contributions from his Comets on Fire bandmate Noel Harmonson, Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers, and Superwolf/Zwan's Matt Sweeney. The album is a freak-folk magnum opus, full of well-restrained improvisations and fluid ruminations, considered and varied instrumentation (electric, electro, and acoustic), hypnotic vocals, and genre-melding that runs the spectrum from slowcore to psych rock and everything in between. For the time being, Chasny's doing a series of solo Six Organs of Admittance in-store dates on the West Coast before touring all proper-like come early 2008. So expect less weirdo post-folk noise and more intensive finger-picking (see above). He hits Seattle on Thanksgiving Eve for a free in-store at Sonic Boom Capitol Hill. This is your only chance to see Chasny before (gulp) next year. Like you've got a reason to stay in on a four-day weekend.

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 in the dorm--non-athlete guys--worked out a lot and then sat around in front of mirrors with their shirts off. "Steroids" they whispered to one another, "I'm starting a cycle." It went around the building like a bootleg tape. "So-and-so's hooking me up." And by second semester there were a lot of little, big men lurching around, popping zits and raging from time to time.

Kim is off to see Susan Werner at the Triple Door Sunday night.

Seattle. Portland. Which one's better? You may say: "How can you choose? Each has their good points. It's like asking which religion is better." Guess what, asshole, that Negative Nellie attitude is the reason nobody ever asks for your fucking opinion. Jerk. Yesterday, Jeremy Barker advocated the pro-Seattle position. Now, it's Portland's turn.

Next Wednesday night San Francisco's Magic Bullets make a stop in Seattle at the High Dive. They've been touring the West Coast in support of their debut album, the awkwardly titled a CHILD but in life yet a DOCTOR in love, out earlier this year from Words on Music. The San Francisco Chronicle aptly summarized the music of Magic Bullets as drawing from "the emotional candor and jerky rhythms of the '80s post-punk era to carve a wistful but upbeat niche for itself in San Francisco's indie-pop scene." Which can be translated as: they catchy. For proof, check out the above video, Magic Bullets' cover of "I Could Be Happy" by Scottish new wave band Altered Images.

Yes, we know we've been plugging this band a lot lately, but it's only because they live up to the hype. Besides, after Battles' show tonight at the Croc, we probably won't have anything to say about them for at least a week or so. But no promises. Seattlest chatted with John Stanier, the man behind the kit, as the sonically solid foursome headed up the West Coast.

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on.

One day in the early 90s, then-Husky basketball coach Lynn Nance said to himself, "You know, I'm pretty happy with Prentiss Perkins and Bryant Boston at guard," and declined to offer a scholarship to a young Canadian and UW fan named Steve Nash.

Are you a hophead? If you are, get your butt up to Cooper's Alehouse on Lake City Way on the north side of the city. Their 5th Annual IPA Festival is currently in full swing. They have some very tasty beers on tap and more on the way.

Via Seahawks Insider:

Last Friday we were lunching outside Von's, and a stream of conventioneers was passing by. Some of them stopped at Von's and we couldn't help but notice that a number of them tripped on the single step on the way in. They'd alert the ones behind them, and they'd take a ridiculously large step through the door. When Von's filled up and they started filtering back out, they tripped on the way out. We didn't remember ever tripping on that step, so we asked this one guy what the convention was, and he told us it was the National Association of Elementary School Principals. We don't normally laugh at people tripping over things in real life, but when elementary school principals do it, it's very, very funny. (The conference's theme was "Soaring to New Heights.")

Seattlest has been through our fair share of earthquakes, and while Jonathan Raban's book Surveillance gave us a quivering reminder of the Nisqually quake, we understood the optimism inherent in his ending. Seattle is still there; shaken, likely forever changed, but still there. We know quakes can be insanely devastating, but they don't scare us nearly as much as what we discovered in grad school in central Illinois: tornadoes and wind storms. The first time we set foot in the plains outside Champaign-Urbana, we were gripped with a paralyzing terror that we would simply float up off the planet, untethered by mountains, water...hell, even a small hill would have helped. Our brain would conjure far-off mountain ranges from cloud formations, and we would engage in the explicit delusion that they were indeed there, comforting us with their solidity, mass, and means of escaping the never ending flatness. We lasted a mere three and a half years there, and ran screaming back to the West Coast.

Seattlest's former elementary school, Madrona, is the leading edge of a terrifying movement in Seattle Public Schools.

Maybe it's because we're from the East Coast, but we're firm believers that there's some sort of force field around the West Coast, keeping all the singer/songwriters from becoming world famous and conquering the planet in the same way that eastern folksingers like Dar Williams and the Indigo Girls have.

We were jazzed, and, it appears, overly optimistic, when we heard Seattle U might go D1 in basketball again.

Jamelle McMillan may be Nate McMillan's son, and he may have a D-1 scholarship, and he may be the top-rated point guard in the West Coast according to Scout.com, but in the unlikely event that we had to pick one of O'Dea's guards for a pickup game that would determine the fate of the free world, we'd pick Chris Banchero.

*Sample set: Live on Mix Up Radio Australia, November 2006

Tuesday, January 9

President Gerald Ford's memorial service is today, we thought we'd present these remarks Ford (shown here with George Harrison) made about Seattle upon his visit here as president on September 4th, 1975. Not the most interesting reading, but they seem extemporaneous and are perhaps a good snapshot of what one president thought when he thought of Seattle in the 70s: fish, Boeing, and international trade:

It is really wonderful to be in Seattle, and I do thank you for the beautiful salmon. We are now the beneficiaries in my State of Michigan, not of salmon quite as large as that, but salmon. We started developing a few years ago by transplanting some salmon from this area of the world, and we now have tremendous supplies in Lake Michigan of Coho salmon. And we are proud of it. They don't match that salmon in size, but they do remind us of the west coast and the wonderful opportunities that all of you have who live here.

Continue reading "Gerald Ford on Seattle"

SPORTS OBSESSION: Any longtime Seattlest reader knows that we can't get enough of curling, whether it's watching on the CBC or playing ourselves at Seattle's Granite Curling Club, the only dedicated curling facility on the West Coast. Our obsession is often met with odd looks, but a curling open house is honestly one of the best ways going to spend your time/money.

The weather outside will be frightful, but the hoops will be f-ing delightful at Bellevue Community College Saturday for the Les Schwab Hoops Challenge.