The Mayor's Office of Film + Music blows!

I used to think James Keblas was a cool guy. He helped found The Vera Project, Seattle's publicly funded and supported all-ages venue that not only hosts all-ages shows, but provides young people access and training in all elements of the music industry. He was an activist for Seattle's music community for over a decade. But a few years back he was recruited to be the director of the re-vamped "Mayor's Office of Film + Music." And ever since, we seem to see ever-increasing support for more regulation and harassment of local clubs by the mayor and the Office of Film + Music. What gives?

I'm a small government, less rules, less laws, let the free market decide things kind of guy. It's not exactly a popular position in Seattle, where people seem to love nanny state laws to govern civility at the expense of freedom of expression. And what's really changed in Seattle to cause this sudden need for more government oversight and regulation? Violent crime is actually way down. Clubs are ten times more safe than they were ten or twenty years ago. Clubs no longer have smoking, free flowing drugs or other problems they once did. Yet they still need more regulation? Do they want to take all the fun out of rock and roll?

The biggest push for government regulation of Seattle's music community has come from city in just the past few years after the Office of Film + Music was established. And it's come through a large number of proposals to regulate live music clubs. There have been attempts to force clubs into special licensing, to pay off duty cops to police public streets and sidewalks near clubs, increased fines related to noise complaints, and gearing more tax payer dollars towards creating new city positions for club inspectors. All during a time when there are less problems with clubs.

One would think having an long time music activist as director of the office that regulates live music clubs would help lessen the red tape and make it easier to promote and support local music. After all, the Office of Film + Music boasts about how much the music scene helps the local economy. One would hope Keblas would be working against increased club regulations and provide a buffer between the Mayor and the music scene. Sadly, things definitely seem to have gotten worse in the last couple years, rather than better. Is this what it feels like when a small local band you've grown up with sells out? Or when your highschool drug dealer becomes a cop? The transformation from music community advocate to music club cop has been... well... disappointing. Am I making too big of a deal out of the actions of this office in recent years? Maybe.

Want to see you your tax dollars at work? Check out the job listing for Nightlife Regulatory Coordinator. Apparently we are willing to spend $40 an hour for someone to "Design and implement a comprehensive regulatory program regarding nightlife establishments in the City of Seattle which includes outreach, technical assistance and enforcement efforts. Current efforts regarding nightlife are spread across numerous departments and are poorly monitored, coordinated and implemented." This person will "Coordinate the activities of the Joint Enforcement Team (JET), an interdepartmental team responsible for the regulation of the nightlife industry to ensure a safe and vibrant nightlife in the City. Identify and forward policy recommendations to the JET Policy/Action Team and defend those recommendations." It's a $75,000 a year city job, not bad pay for regulating and harassing local clubs! Just to put it in perspective, the new Club Czar will be paid a higher salary than your average Seattle teacher, librarian, UW college professor or local nurse. Do you think that's fair? Do you want to see your tax dollars spent on this new position, when we already have building inspectors, fire marshals and police doing the job adequately?

Ironically enough, the Mayor's Office of Film + Music hosted it's first monthly happy hour last night... AT A NIGHT CLUB! "This will be a great time to learn more about the Film + Music Office, meet new people in our music and film industries and discuss current issues spanning film and music in Seattle." Or so was the plan... the turn out at Moe's however was lackluster and some local music club owners and bookers weren't even invited, so the very real issues that have been everywhere in the Seattle press and most on club owner and music fans' minds over the past year regarding new nightlife ordinances and regulations didn't get aired. Maybe next month? Maybe the real music community can show up in bigger numbers and give Mr. Keblas and his office a piece of their mind.

ps- To the Mayor's Office of Film + Music, generally when you throw a happy hour you at least have some free food, if not free drinks. I can't see being stingy on a couple veggie platters when you are so willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on government bureaucracy, nightclub regulations and their enforcement.

The Mexican Blackbirds

I love this description The Mexican Blackbirds used to have for themselves on their old website:

"No goofy stage costumes, no stupid pyrotechnics, no deep, meaningful lyrics to try and impress the locals with, no inside jokes, and no gimmicks to fool anyone into believing we're superheroes. No preconceptions or in-depth notions that one day the world will see it our way and we'll be the ones making the millions. The Mexican Blackbirds — A fucking group of mismatched idiots whose only common ground is alcohol and real rock'n'roll, who in-between bickering with each other, just happen to be hell-bent on turning out rock and roll — not merely rock music or 'hard rock.'"

The Mexican Blackbirds put the punk back in rock from Tacoma in the first half the the 2000s. On their album "Just To Spite You," released by Dirtnap Records, they blast through eleven adrenaline and booze fueled songs in about 24 minutes. It fucking destroys. Remember bands Northwest bands like The Derelicts, Fumes, Fuckers and Zip Gun? Yeah, these guys were totally in the same territory, yet charting a path of their own. Fronted by Chris Trashcan (brother of Stu from the Valentine Killers & Midnight Thunder Express), a bunch of Tacoma band vetrans on guitars, and ex-Valentine Killers drummer Jill, the Mexican Blackbirds put out a string of great releases and played tons of kickin' live shows. These photos are from April of 2002, I think the venue was Industrial Coffee in Georgetown.

Band members: Chris Trashcan on vocals, Mekko Pillbox on guitar (I think he left the band after the first single came out), Kill Trueblood on drums (and some vocals), Corey Knafelz on guitar, and Marty Sparks on bass.

Discography:

• 2002, "Ain't Got The Time" 7" (Tacoma Records)
• 2003, "Just To Spite You" CD (Dirtnap Records)
• 2003, Song "Burn it Down" on "Dirtnap Across The Northwest" compilation CD (Dirtnap)
• 2004, Eleven songs on split LP with Pink Swords entitled "Black Vinyl Revenge Chapter 1" (Rockin' Bones)
• 2005, "Fear Of Texas" 12" (Mortville Records)
• 2006, Song "Second Time Around" on "The Funhouse Comp Thing" compilation CD (My Fat Ass)

SSP Wrestling + Lilly Warner photos + Cafe Venus = Awesome

Ronald McFondle of the SSP Wrestling league, photo by Lilly Warner

Lilly Warner, who took photos for both 10 Things and Tablet over the years, is the featured photographer in a show opening tomorrow night at Seattle's Cafe Venus and Mars Bar. This time around Warner focused her lens on the wrestlers of Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling, who have been wowing Seattle audiences for years. The walls of Cafe Venus and The Mars Bar, located at 609 Eastlake Avenue E, will be covered with photos of the different SSP wrestlers, both in action and hamming it up for the cameras. I've had a sneak peak at a bunch of the photos and they are awesome. And even though I over-use the word awesome, it definitely holds true in this case. The show runs from January 31 through February 29th and it's a cool place to stop by for a drink and food anyway, so check it out! The opening reception is Thursday January 31st, starting a 6pm.

Mudhoney still kicks ass!

Before the national and international press pounced on "The Seattle Sound" as the next big thing and started calling bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains grunge, the main pillars of what I thought grunge was at the time were Tad, Nirvana and Mudhoney. And personally, I always liked Mudhoney best. Mark Arm seemed to harness some of the same energy Iggy Pop had when fronting The Stooges, and I definitely heard more garage and punk influences in their early work.

There is this little tradition among my friends of having a "Mudhoney Freakout" at parties that always reminds me how great of a band they are. There is nothing like 30 drunk people screaming along to "Touch Me I'm Sick," "Burn it Clean," "You Got It" or "In 'n' Out Of Grace" at midnight. Granted, "In 'n' Out Of Grace" has a long jammy guitar part that always slows the party down a little, but then it builds up to the part where everyone yells "Oh god how I love to hate!" and it's pretty damn awesome. Seriously. Go play "Superfuzz Bigmuff" right now (or for those that don't have it on vinyl, your "Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles" CD) and rock the fuck out. You will feel much better.

(Oh, these live photos are from a fantastic show Mudhoney put on in April 2002 at the Crocodile Cafe)

Yes, even more Catheters photos!

2002 was apparently the first year I owned a digital camera, I found a CD I burned with about 1000 show photos recently, hence the overabundance of photos from that year on the blog lately. I promise you no rhyme or reason to the timeline of band photos, stories and info here, it's like a funhouse ride where you get on and don't exactly know what to expect. I am quite delighted with the number of people reading this blog lately, generally between 150 and 200 people stop by every day, which ain't bad. It's really hard to compare it to print though, when I did 10 Things as a zine I printed 3,000-5,000 copies of every issue, but it came out only every 4 or so months. It's hard to compare web readership vs. print, but I do like the immediacy of it all, the instant feedback, and being able to put up a bunch of color photos, links and music.

Anyway, The Catheters. These photos are from a show at the Sunset Tavern February 16, 2002. I've already written about their history and discography here and featured past live photos here, so there is not much I have to add. Except... one year they had a garage and punk festival in Vegas called the Vegas Shakedown. Headliners included bands like The New Bomb Turks, Nashville Pussy and The Donnas, but tons of garage and punk bands played over the weekend, including a bunch of Seattle bands. The Valentine Killers and the Catheters both played great sets at the smaller stage at The Gold Coast casino. I was watching the Catheters set with Brain LaManna, singer of the Valentine Killers, and he was saying to me how the Catheters were going to be huge. He just had a gut feeling about them, that their sound and live performance would propel them into popularity. We made a bet right then and there, $5, he saying they'd be on MTV within a year, and me saying they wouldn't be. LaManna, you still owe me $5.

ZineWiki

I've been meaning to plug ZineWiki.com for a while. It's a project I've spent a lot of time on editing and working as an administrator on, a Wiki entirely devoted to zines that has grown into the largest zine resource on the Web. It's full of zine listings, zine history, zine publishers, articles and more. It's definitely worth wasting some time on if you are into zines or small publishing.

Dead Low Tide

In December of 2001 ex-Murder City Devils Spencer Moody, Nate Manny and Coady Willis formed Dead Low Tide with Mike Kunka (ex-GodheadSilo and ex-Enemymine). The band was reminiscent of the Murder City Devils in many ways, especially Moody's singing, but they had less of the boom swagger swagger and a bit of a heavier rock feel (gone were the keyboards and Kunka definitely brought a harder edge to the music). Because of the MCD's connection, even before the band had released a record, they got on some pretty high profile bills, including opening for Reverend Horton Heat in early 2002, where these photos were shot. They also toured as The Melvins opening act during 2002. Dead Low Tide ended up breaking up while recording their debut album, which was released posthumously in 2003 by Tiger Style Records.

Band members: Spencer Moody on vocals, Mike Kunka on bass and vocals, Nate Manny on guitar, Coady Willis on drums, and roadie Gabe.

Spencer and Mike went on to form Smoke and Smoke with drummer Dan Haugh. Coady Willis went on to form Big Business with Jared Warren from Olympia band KARP.