It may be too early to tell, but I think that Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves is going to be the gift book of the season. For any music lovers and lovers who share music who have ever been spun around by the magic of giving a mix-tape or gotten one, the 60 writers in this fun, cute hardcover will be picking it off the coffee table through holidays and into 2010. If you received a mix that changed your life or at least your listening habits, and dreamed of those days when we used to have time to “sequence” the small but wondrous relational statements, dancing between the “Rewind” and “Fast Forward” to the “Play” and “Record” buttons with a stubborn sense of mission and vested passion, buy this book.

From the website of the same name edited by Jason Bitner (also a FOUND magazine co-creator), CFME squeezes a wide spectrum of beloved personal compilation tales from scribes such as Rolling Stone/Blender editor Joe Levy (“The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss,” because his ex dug X and grew him up a little), to Claudia Gonson of the Magnetic Fields, whose “‘John’ Tape, Circa 1986” tells how she was squeezed between a certain Stephin and a teenage friend named John who helped her distinguish “the difference between the Rain Parade, The Raincoats, and Rainy Day.”

MTV2 VJ Jancee Dunn has a classic yarn all about drinking beer and really discovering classic rock, whilst punk academic and feminist Anne Elizabeth Moore ties in illness and a strange synchronicity with Jeff Buckley’s demise. There is a wonderful aesthetic-romantic dialogue between fiction writers Rock Moody and Stacey Richter, and Love Is A Mixtape author Rob Sheffield recaptures a portion of his deeply touching full-length autobiography on the subject.

There are kids fighting about what’s “punk” and “not punk,” straight edge pranksters finding their dopplegangers and having a hard time letting each other go, getting lucky with a hot ex-cheerleader in college who disappoints by filling her entire gift with Pearl Jam, Goths impressing indie kids with sonic “gravitas,” doomed Winona-worship being healed by a new lover’s soul pop, the corny affections of an activist first love, and girls learning hard to avoid zine boys who get their romantic ideations from Lou Barlow.

The bigger story here isn’t the music itself, but the stories behind the recording and receiving of it: How barely-noted obscure anthologies sparked on-and-off relationships, lustily helped seduce objects of desire, turned people on to whole new cultures in song lists both never heard of or heard, or structured in new ways, or tossing both types together. It probably goes without saying that a lot of these writers are journalists and musicians and artists working successfully in various fields today; as it’s implied, mix tape makers “know how to give love,” not just talk about it.

Along the way and among the dazzling, tightly edited narratives are practical recommendations for how to fix a messed up tape (invest in a small Phillips head screwdriver), for transferring old cassette contents into your iPod, and for the various assortments of mix tapes to make: “Crush Tapes,” “Audio Postcard Tapes,” featuring the voice of the mix tape maker along with a selection of tracks, which isn’t done as much these days, “Era-Defining Tapes,” and yes, even the rare “Breakup Tapes” — among other types.

A whole volume to each category would have more than enough material (I made hundreds myself for all the different reasons, often combined), but I have the feeling the great punk rock dubs from pals at live shows and such haven’t been as prized and put away as the ones from lovers, mentors, best friends, and inspirations.

My favorite aspects of reading through the book though are seeing how certain artists and styles are ubiquitous in the world of exchanged personal soundtracks (the Velvet Underground, Bowie, bouncy romantic rap, Weezer, Nick Cave, Mos Def, etc.); how random many of the assortments are, blending lo-fi indie songs with the Beatles; or specifically expansive, as in New Yorker editor Ben Greenman’s excellent memoir, where she put the Cocteau Twins’ entire much-beloved full length “Blue Bell Knoll” on the second side of a C-90. I couldn’t help but compare these sequences to all the ones I made, and the ones I received, especially in the years mostly chronicled here (the 80s, but there are definitely emo lists and ones from non-pop eras as well). In the interests of full disclosure (blowing my own horn actually), I think my mix holds up pretty well in the story about a tape I sent someone — which is reassuring, as that cassette had many of my own favorite songs on it and was very significant to me personally.

Back to the practical matters, though — if you want to check out some adored shared music from the past, and get at least a glimpse of why it mattered so much to those who played it for each other, this also makes Cassettes From My Ex perfect as another musical research source for your own beloved collection (and hopefully mixes as well).

Chris Estey is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle and contributes to the KEXP Blog, The Stranger, and Three Imaginary Girls.

For most of those we know, life has become about negotiating the grid. I am between a landline with a broken ringer and an iPhone. I handled PR for Betty Davis, who like Faust initiated pure desire as progress, in a long-ago new age of feminist-fueled riff-rock, on album-as-manifesto long players crafted around and for sexual mechanics — who did her interviews for me on a wonky line whilst her soaps played in the background. I just paid for musical downloads for the first time three days ago, though I had been putting PR-sent music into my iPod for a while. Yes, I splurged on deep cuts (labyrinthine James Blood Ulmer jams I long ago sold off to get out of town once; a few more hip-hop versions on “Like A Rolling Stone”; a Jane Siberry CD mix, among others) I would have kept on crate-digging for as years go by.

But those crates of aren’t going anywhere. In Travis Elborough’s The Vinyl Countdown: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again (Soft Skull Press) we flip through the bins of history, on tables for both collectors and bargain hunters, its near-450 pages stacked with a gorgeous narrative of music played on Victrolas and streamed. And not just the hits either, but weird collections of imitation Top 40, alternative chartbusters, eclectic movements in semi-popular rock cults, and how strangely the release of this music never follows a plainly linear path. As in, vinyl virtually disappeared just before Chinese Democracy was done, but the buyers at Tower who eulogized its absence have vanished from music sales with their CD racks now, just as people are buying new LPs as the variant of choice.

Elborough is a regular freelancer to The Guardian (London), one of the best places to read about culturally important music (they also covered Betty Davis for me — thanks!). He was a bookseller for many years, and there is an elegant and in-depth bibliographical element to The Vinyl Countdown. I avoided the book for a few weeks from its potentially thin subject matter but finally asked for a review copy when I saw other positive reviews — I thought its tale of the tape, the 45, the eight-track, et al, were technical ones I’d read about so many times before. But the author has a marvelous wit and a real sense of history, that goes wide as well as listing long — herein are expert discussions of sleeve designs we love, fannish descriptions of head shops where one bought the best space rock, the stories between pivotal release and perennial mistakes everyone in the industry takes. Yes, it loves the album as a statement in itself, so the detailed reporting on recent technical developments is infused with both fear and joy. The actual bias is inevitably towards great music and whatever change meets it to bring it to us. Most of all, this story is a lot of fun to hear from Elborough’s point of view.

That Summertime Sound is a story within a story, a novel about the kinds of people who own little record stores, start adored bands, buy scads of vinyl and make mix tapes till dawn (and not just for lovers), and sometimes end up changing the world. Matthew Specktor’s first full-length book of fiction has characters you know and have been, especially if you grew up in the era of 80s independent rock emerging on the political margins of college social life and in the international journey of activists and artists.

That sounds a bit lofty, so let me put this another way (okay?): Specktor has a good-taste encyclopediac knowledge of “college rock music” and even the cultish forms those who make it and play it also acquire (R&B classics, soul gems, metal gods of our youth), and uses the novel format as a way to entwine it with winding tales he must have lived through and saw unfold. The 19-year-old protagonist-narrator is a typically wandering acolyte to alternative culture, on a road trip with three pals both more sophisticated and desperate than he to Columbus, Ohio — all of whom worship the Lords of Oblivion, a group that seethes with their societal dissociation.

Like young Werther, it is a story told long before it was written and always will be as long as 19 is an age for humans in capitalist culture, but the bits and pieces that make That Summertime Sound up, involving sexy older girls with lopsided haircuts and trunks of dusty grooves, give it the strange recognition of hearing your new favorite song. The four main characters’ backpacks are full of yellow-highlighted philosophy tomes, the 1986 equivalent of Manic Panic (what did we use then? Kool-Aid for my comrades), and they’re “digging in the crates for that one true thing” (got that off the dust jacket — fits nice here, doesn’t it?).

Specktor just received his MFA and currently works as a screen-writer. That Summer Sound has some cliches that could have been excised before publication. But if it finds its audience this will be as important to more well-read indie music fans than SLA Punk was to rural punks. It could be adapted deliciously for film. Right now, it’s an inspiring, entertaining read that will make one pine for an era (Reagan’s) many of us thought would bury us, not liberate us. And with the talent on display here I doubt this will be Specktor’s “finest worksong.”

by Chris Estey

33 1/3 is a series of pocket-sized books, each volume focusing on a single album. This is the 23rd installment of our attempt to read as many of the books in the series as possible, and to scribble some impressions of each. As always, please keep in mind that it’s always just one writer’s opinion, often skewed, and somewhat ill-informed. Accuracy is ensured as time permits. For the full introduction, check out the first installment and read the others here.

Part 23: Madness’ One Step Beyond by Terry Edwards

Madness were a crucial band in the defining of the Two Tone aesthetic, the Second Wave of ska which merged with late 70s UK punk rock. A big posse of boys in the nicest thrift store suits they could find making dance music for a smart and diverse crowd; bringing “mod” concepts back to rock after years of hippie lassitude; and following the gentle humor of unpretentious pub rock with a style even more openly fun were unstated elements of the music.

The many-membered Madness had all of these qualities, but the last one kept them from being fully embraced in the States till MTV were happy to show jaunty hits like “House Of Fun” and “Our House” in heavy rotation. One Step Beyond was their first record, and whilst author Terry Edwards agrees with most that it isn’t their best, it helped capture unbridled joy for the band on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world. American kids fell in love with them from the vids a couple of years later, yet the band — by continuing to release superb songs about their daily interests (”Michael Caine”) and even whole albums, like their brand new one The Liberty of Norton Folgate -- has always been about their Camden Town, London home.

Friend to the band, fellow long-time hard-working musician, and cracking tight writer Edwards has delivered a dream book for Madness fans, and considering there’s hardly any other ones available, I advise the true-blood Two Tone addict and the newly curious to pick it up. Inside information abounds, starting with the origin of “the Nutty Train” (the often-reused image from the cover of One Step Beyond shows six of the band lined up like, indeed, a cartoon of a human locomotive), and how Stiff Records label-fuhrer David Robinson looped their cover of original ska champion Prince Buster’s song from mere minute long title track of their debut to a first time out breakthrough single. (Buster has recently joined the band on stage in their many live reunions, showing how assiduously and sincerely Madness have been playing out and keeping their comrades around since the very beginning.)

Madness were always the jester in the deck of Second Wave, at first seeming too frivolous for post-punk’s more serious lot, but even on One Step Beyond tracks like “Razor Blade Alley” (actually about sexual diseases, as in “pissing razors”) and “Land of Hope & Glory” spoke of concerns for the working and lower classes. They didn’t have the miscegenated line-up of bands like The Specials and The Selecter, but all the bands found their love for this music in places that sold exotic Jamaican import 45s, as lead singer Suggs (Graham McPherson) did as a child on weekends from stalls at Nodding Hill. Being all Caucasian and specifically regional made them suspicious to American critics though, which tended to write them off — even as they would later craft elegantly moving universal pop bliss like “One Better Day” (on later-80s record Keep Moving).

It is wonderful that this 33 1/3 on such a contemporaneously transparent album of young music fans growing up in the 70s would arrive just as Yep Roc has released one of the best collections of Madness originals in many years, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. I’ve never had a problem with their other LPs full mostly of covers (that’s somewhat of a ska tradition, isn’t it? And Madness always gives their all on a tune they kype), but since interviewing Suggs for the Three Imaginary Girls website a few years ago wondered if they would make good on the publicity their Camden Town live reunions had engendered and create a masterpiece from their own pens.

The Liberty of Norton Folgate is a long, winding tour of the areas the band has grown up and lived in all their lives. It contains portraits of parochial pride (”We Are London”) and immigrants pouring into the city (”Africa”) — but besting with classically melancholy tales of romantic dissolution, “Sugar & Spice” and “On The Town” (which features a duet with Rhonda Dakar), which are two brand new Madness classics. Besides these hit singles-in-a-fair world, the fifteen track opus ends on the over ten-minute title track, a dub-and-dancehall opera on the city’s dark underside.

This kind of synchronicity, a great book about the band and a new great record from the band, shouldn’t be missed by fans of “dancing about architecture” (rock criticism) and as Madness once put on a t-shirt themselves, those who “Fuck Art, Let’s Dance.”

by Chris Estey

It was recently announced that Neutral Milk Hotel’s two landmark Merge albums, On Avery Island and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, will be reissued on 180 gram vinyl about a decade after they were first released. The latter achieved apotheosis even beyond the realm of critics and hipsters, becoming ubiquitous in the collections of any thinking music fan’s record collection.

The story behind this music — “a mythology and a dream, full of anachronisms and transmigrations and violations of the laws of nature,” as novelist Joshua Ferris describes it in a sidebar of the gorgeous fan-book Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records — makes essential the purchase of the tome alone. Yet editor John Cook (Chicago Tribune, Gawker Media) arrays in often shocking detail the creation of dozens of Merge albums from the viewpoints of bands, label owners, fans, reviewers, heroes, and villians, through oral histories that reveal the real and psychic trenches in which they were produced. Fortunately, there’s a very happy ending, and a rich canon of music Laura Ballance and McCaughan, the label’s founders, can be supremely proud of.

Merge Records was formed by Ballance and Mac McCaughan (“Death Chick and the Caveman”) in an aesthetic for and like their own hard working group, Superchunk. Both the band and indie label has been obdurate in economy and confluent with creativity. Just as major labels devoured and Balkanized the independent music scene of the early-mid 90s, Ballance and McCaughan crafted a unified vision, receiving many painful lessons as they championed pivotal releases from Polvo, Magnetic Fields, Spoon, East River Pipe, Lambchop, Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire, Camera Obscura, Richard Buckner, et al, and their own musical art.

Floating through this thick, colorful trade paperback history (several hundred B&W and color photos; less than twenty bucks; just out officially this week) you will be entertained by bonhomie-infused descriptions from their early company newsletters, spastically scrawled set-lists, scabrous letters from Steve Albini, faxed questions from Japanese fanzines, turn-downs from bad European distributors, and sparkling remembrances from every angle of the indie music scene. We learn how major labels have rarely been any good for anybody (except maybe getting recovering addict F.M. Cornog of East River Pipe his house before that wing of EMI collapsed and he went back to Merge, that return occuring a lot but usually after very bad luck), that selling decent quantities to people who give a shit beats out “going for the gold” in the mainstream, and may even get you into larger acclaim even with modest intentions (the album Funeral, for example). Thirteen employees strong now, and still putting out records like She & Him which are as noteworthy for the sprightly stories behind them as they are for the high quality of the music, Merge still takes chances. As Mac says, they have just as much committed to the several that sell less than ten thousand as they do to the occasional one that bursts into the one hundred thousand realm.

For many legendary labels, keeping it reasonable and still pushing boundaries would be enough. But the actual testament to their dedication is, in fact, an actual fanzine testament — they love their own bands, and this shows in the presentation of Our Noise. A lot of label-sponsored “art books” have been published before but the graphics in ON are just the (very tasty) icing; the stories are so fucking honest and when you think about the albums they’re discussing — Funeral, 69 Love Songs, all those classics from Spoon and Superchunk, Lambchop’s greatest, even comeback work from the Buzzcocks — you may feel special just being able to read about them.

I have slight criticisms of the book — one, a fanatic’s view in that perhaps the label’s trajectory should have been split into two volumes of this size, considering the incredible amount of music still left uncovered, especially the less popular records on the label — and NLM’s Jeff Mangum should have been throttled for a few quotes. (Typical bitching, right?) AND more photos of Laura when she was wicked little Goth vixen. Hot and scary!

But if there was a national genius grant for independent rock music, Merge should receive it. A label-involved self-tribute will always be suspicious, but it’s no surprise that Merge kicked so much ass when they decided to do one, raising the standards on these books from self-adoration to fun, poised, and lively real engagement with their schemes past, present, and future. Hell of a discography — and yes, a complete one is in here.

Plush, Austin SXSW 2009 (photo by Graham Smith)

by Chris Estey

The Gaslight Anthem are coming to the Showbox at the Market on Sept. 23, but I am going to the show to check out their tour opener, a new discovery for me, British singer-songwriter Frank Turner. His recently released album, Poetry of the Deed, combines a bracing mix of grizzled yet positivist lyrics sweetly, beerily crooned over acoustic rock that doesn’t arrive at punk but at least aims to. I have the feeling his opening that night might keep the cult-adored Anthem fans from shouting for their heroes, to stop and listen to something they weren’t planning on.

The Austin Chronicle has compared Turner to “Billy Bragg by way of Joe Strummer” but Bragg’s work has either been too raw or more assuredly soulful than this, and while the energy of The Clash is sort of here, what Turner really reminds me of is underrated anthemic rock band The Alarm. The opening track, “Live Fast Die Old,” sounds eerily similar to something like “The Stand,” clear-eyed rousers based on wage slavery and the anxiety of a world always on the brink of ending. Especially with Biblical imagery like “I bought myself back from the devil, now I’m keeping it all for myself / I’m taking myself out of the program because no one is blessing my health.”

Just as the personal fanzine-observations in “Try This At Home” reminds me more of Bright Eyes than Bob Dylan (“We sing songs about our friends in E minor” and “the only thing that punk rock really only means is not sitting waiting for the lights to turn green”), yet I don’t think influence from the more obscure or contemporary punk-inspired artists is necessarily a bad thing. Self-deprecation and a longing to drink beer in the grass of a park with also-aging pals will always score a winning stance. And though the wide-screen, blowsy, grinding blues rock of the title track risks overstatement, the Beatles-blended-post-emo mid-tempo knell of “Isabel” rewards frequent listening.

Maybe that’s why my favorite work is mostly at the beginning of the generous fourteen tracks of Turner’s third full-length, his first for Epitaph. Like many excited-about-poetry troubadours before him (“we’ll burn like a beacon, and then we’ll be gone”), his roots are in hardcore, the UK punk band Million Dead (R.I.P. 2005). Does he want the world now that Mr. Gurewitz has signed him? “Fuck yes!”

I question whether that will happen if he keeps waiting for “the rain to make him clean.” I bet he journals, and I think there’s some more detailed stuff in his diary about actual relationships that would hit harder than an image like that. I just hope, as much as Turner is concerned with the things that “damn us into hell,” he’ll work up a little more of the small, smooth redemptions which need less chorus roar and inspire hugs and kisses — which I suspect he’ll probably get next Wednesday night from Seattle-area fans.

Fantagraphics was started by a couple of guys named Gary Groth and Kim Thompson back in the 70s, when the hipness of Marvel super-heroes had been around for more than a decade, and creators were leaving that company and DC, and kids inspired by the undergrounds, were all starting to publish on their own.

Fanta began with the Comics Journal, a trade publication that was closer to critical fannish magazines in the rock world than the “buyer’s guide” tabloids hawking pricey back issues of “Golden and Silver Age” collectibles. It also had a self-conscious sense of evolution in its milieu, and would soon encourage the kids putting out New Wave mini-comics to get better and go for broke.

Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez were the Picassos of the punk-fueled indie comics scene, their shared Love & Rockets anthology featuring stories about such everyday (feminist friendly) heroes as Maggie the Mechanic, the trouble-bound and openly gay sprite Hopey, Izzy the mystical Gothic spinster, and a legion of Mexican-American (or just Mexican or American) personalities based as much in the weird people artists actually were or knew, as opposed to mythical Anglo muscle-heads with Messiah complexes. Rock and roll within punk art had really come to the comics world, starting with Love & Rockets in the mid-80s.

That’s not to say that writer-artists like Jaime and his brother weren’t hugely influenced by what came before — one glance at the BIG, thick new LOCAS II collection of L&R comics by the younger Hernandez shows his devotion to Archie’s eternally teenage world, the noir comics of Steve Ditko, the larger than life characterizations and visual flow of Jack Kirby, and the weirdness of underground godfather Robert Crumb.

LOCAS ll collects a huge amount of comics featuring a more mature Maggie, finding and losing romance with people like Ray (one part Chandler victim, another part mod hobo), “Frogmouth” (painfully sexy but achingly annoying), and reunions with Hopey and others in a strange relational ballet set in SW America. It’s a weird, flat plain of bizarre sex and twisted circumstance that would be the first collection of comics I would recommend for any adult wanting to get a handle on the aesthetics of the art form since it became culturally relevant to do so.

Meanwhile, Fantagraphics has also just put out a new issue of the Comics Journal #299, which has an incredible narrative by lawyer-outsider art-underground advocate Bob Levin, who explains how in the mid-70s an evolutionary-leap in the field was attempted by mysterious Montreal artist-performer Michael Choquette. Yet forces beyond the control of an expanding realm of innovative creators like Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman (Maus), Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live), Ralph Steadman (Pink Floyd’s art for The Wall and everything for Hunter Thompson), novelist and creative non-fiction genius Tom Wolfe, and Salvador Dali (!) kept this could-have-rocked-the-world comics anthology from ever seeing print. TCJ prints never before seen artwork from the doomed project alongside a fabulously written description of the energies that went into the creation of such a collection, and the mordant tragedy that was its damnable fate. Levin is the writer of several books on the struggle of comics and the counter-culture and transgressive fringes, and because of him #299 of TCJ is THE book about comic art to buy this year. The essays “Gender and Comics in Chicago” by Noah Berlatsky, once-local slacker cartoonist king Tom Hart’s analysis of the John Darnielle 33 1/3 compared with Daniel Clowes’ work and Tezuka’s extraordinary manga, backs up my bold claim.

Funny that I should mention the story of a failed but incredibly promising indie anthology from before the field began, as Fantagraphics has a new issue of its series Mome out too (Vol. 15, Summer 2009) and it is the current multi-artist series that has critics in the comics world and outside of it regularly amped. Helmed by Fanta’s new associate publisher (and previous PR king for the imprint) Eric Reynolds, alongside the company’s co-founder Groth, Mome has spent the past three years digging for new artists who could repeat the golden era of the undergrounds and the wave of new talent at titles like RAW and Weirdo in the 80s.

Reynolds and Groth pull in wonderful finds and serialized or self-contained tales from artists all over the country, such as Xeric-award winning storyteller Nate Neal (The Sanctuary) and Portland-based New York Times cartoonist Andrice Arp (contributing one of the best covers Mome has ever had this time out). But they also scour the world, finding talent like Spanish artist Max whose excellently designed “Confederacy of Villains” (which is inserted like an old mini-comic as an extra to the very handsome book’s format); and both bringing on board noted illustrators like T. Edward Bak and OG underground hero (Freak Brothers creator) Gilbert Shelton. The last few issues of Mome have really hit a hot-run of quality, and though some stories are more straightforward and others are expressionistic, all the art is always sweet.

So there you have it: Seattle-based Fantagraphics this month has just put out an equally gorgeous and necessary “greatest hits, volume two” of a seminal title; a collection of writing about comics that truly illuminates the wild worlds of the writers and art makers; and a vibrant example of what’s going on there now. And I have the feeling they’re going to be doing all that over again very soon.

photo by David Lichterman

By Chris Estey

There were some telling observations my friends made about the annual Seattle Center-based festival this year — the best one was, “Franz Ferdinand are playing? Really? When?”

FF are a fine band, but Bumbershoot 2009 is noteworthy in that even a working rock group with a quality significant fan-base and memorable hits from not that long ago could have been lost in the shuffle of What The Hell To See. This is a good thing — and the answer was, Monday, September 7th at 7:45 pm.

Another joke, similar in tone, is that we spent half the festival time consulting the guidebook itself — again, not a strike against the informative brochure, but the piles on piles of great bands, artists, comedians, literary types, and other cool stuff we were all trying to sort into A Singular Labor Day Experience.

The best testament to this high level of entertainment may be that when I took a cab down to the Center in the rain on Sunday, I expected a very sparse crowd — but it was only a little less dense than the sunny years when bodies seemed to popping out of every entrance and exit surrounding the grounds. Yes, attendance may have been down — but not all that much, due to people cramming into sheltered shows as the bad weather came and quickly went halfway through the weekend.

The events I’m reviewing below tend to be smaller in attendance, of more obscure acts, or not focusing as much on the musical aspects of Bumbershoot 2009 — I figured the best bands would mostly be reported on by the KEXP Music Lounge attendants for this Blog, and they have done a great job on all that the past few days.

I did walk past Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Minus 5, and many others, which were predictably fantastic — but that’s all I can say about the performances. I have no other significant impression to share — save for the ambivalence that Katy Perry creates, which is exactly up from the sheer loathing of her from most people during the previous year. (Yes, her “guilty pleasure” status is making her notable — a dangerous move, those who choose to comment on her, if indeed you don’t like her.) Also, I caught the Bumberflu at the very end, which is the only reason I missed the what-I-heard-to-be-magical Truckasaurus and Head Like A Kite outro at the EMP/SFM Sky Church!

So here it is, the highpoints I experienced at Bumbershoot 2009:

Saturday, September 5

F is for Food - 12:00pm

photo by Dave Lichterman

Seattle culinary experts Kathleen Flinn (author of The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry) and Tom Douglas (top food author and chef, restaurateur) had a marvelous discussion early on at the Literary Arts Stage as Bumbershoot started. Flinn read heart-poking stories from people regarding their relationships to food, from a kid who didn’t want escargot packed in his lunch (“Who is packing escargot in their kids’ lunch?!” Douglas asked), for obviously slimy reasons — to a poetic salmon fisherman dreaming of all the ways the fish he’s catching can be prepared for a meal (cooking, curing, in pasta, etc.). Flinn revealed the struggles and hard won successes she had at the Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, which inspired her novel, while Douglas talked about guests on his radio show discussing the prep work it takes when you want to eat animals from the urban wild, such as squirrel and duck. Speaking of duck, roast duck in the International District is what keeps Douglas from going vegetarian. For Flinn, it’s crispy duck as well, but also bacon. She talked about living on roast chicken while in Paris, which apparently is more delicious than what Americans make of “roast chicken.” The delicious joy of “that stuff in potstickers,” Pho on 12th and Jackson in Seattle, and much more was lovingly discussed, before we all ran to lunch.

Story Pirates AfterDark Present FOUND! -2:45pm

Davy Rothbart of FOUND! Magazine, a scrappy periodical made up of just that, scraps from other people’s lives found by the publisher and readers, introduced live musical numbers and comedy skits via video based on these bizarre discards. This is an unusual event for the Story Pirates AfterDark ensemble, as usually they go for straight improvisation, but the bold minimalism of tunes like the mopey yet hopeful “Dear John” and the hilarious complaint of a pledge who found his hazing a little too homoerotic confirmed the format for the theme. While the meaning behind the ribald sexual letters written by perhaps developmentally disabled people, and a discovered shopping list which includes several hundred dollars “budgeted” for crack and booze, may seem like normals laughing at the more unfortunate, it brings to mind all the strange stuff most of us do but don’t chronicle for strangers to randomly find. Though there is a comforting whiff of “glad I’m not that messed up” about it as well.

McSweeney’s New Fiction 5:15 pm

Starlee Kline from This American Life sure can memorize questions! Which as a host she shot at first-time novelists from McSweeney’s, Bill Cotter (Fever Chart), Jessica Anthony (The Convalescent), and James Hannaham (God Says No) on a panel that was awesomely revealing about what it takes to write  (“I hate it!” says Hannaham), be edited, and getting published. All three of the authors read just the right amount of examples from their books. Cotter’s smooth prose polished from freelancing at Spin and many other magazines evident in his story about an overweight gay man who tries very hard to resist the idea that he’s homosexual. Anthony’s tale about a meat-selling dwarf tried more chances, its best part being interactions between the protagonist and people who weird out on him. My favorite reader was Hannaham though, whose own story of being in mental hospitals and receiving brutal therapy treatments could be considered saturated in the literary market, but the keen humor and marginalized insight of the fiction based on that world really snagged me. The relationships each had with their McSweeney’s editor Eli Horowitz were each hilarious, with Hannaham being scared to death of him and following his suggested corrections til exhaustion, while Anthony went through the same ordeal and then resubmitted the first draft, which was approved with joy (something Horowitz is probably hearing just now, after her confession this weekend).

The Whore Moans Present: The Black Atom! - 6:30 pm

photo by Drake Lelane

Since 2005 The Whore Moans have been putting out their own brand of speedy bass-driven roaring punk-metal, with well thought out lyrics about America, religion, and failure. In the past, the band seemed almost too focused, its hardcore energy blowing every song to bits, and Jonny, Nikki O, Ryan, and Jason having apocalyptic amounts of fun every time I saw them play. The balls-clenching riffs and stage fits were still there in the Sky Church early Saturday evening, but two maraca-shaking backing vox gals from The Cute Lepers and two guys on keys and sax from The Hands helped out. There was some evangelism-style shouting about the economy and the love for their fans, with the newer material definitely showing more soul and straight rock influences. The promised spectacle wasn’t as unbelievable as the hype that had been given it, but unlike people I watched them with, I liked the strange juxtaposition of the screamy stuff with quietly stormy rhythms this time out. No, it didn’t gel, it was all over the place even as the band was dressed more dapper than they’d ever been, but this exact combination of old and new influences is unique and worth waiting for on their next record. It was a plane crash, but the flames went high, and as Buffy the Vampire Slayer says, “Fire is pretty.”

Os Mutantes -7:30 pm

photo by Dave Lichterman

The Bapitista brothers brought it back to Seattle for the first night of the Bumbershoot festival with a sound that was sort of like all the festival’s different aesthetics playing out all at once. In a way, Os Mutantes are THE Bumbershoot band — plenty of psyched-out lead solos, avalanches of acoustic guitar, surges of sonorous bass, enough percussion you could hang a thousand bandanas on, with comedy, and lots of love to boot. A child dances on the stage to revolutionary music created in a time and place you could be exiled for making it, Brazil in the 60s. Now it’s celebrated by a diversity-adoring American audience mostly not aware of the terrible trials of the band not so long ago. There was plenty of songs from their best period (first three records) and Os Mutantes sounded a bit more slick than they had when they first came to Seattle in 2006, but no less inspired.

Sunday, September 6

Stuff White People Like - 12 pm

I arrived at this event based on a book based on Christian Lander’s popular blog maybe thirty seconds in and by that time the Leo K. Theatre (AKA Literary Arts Stage) was 400 people thick, over fire limit capacity, putting me in the lobby to try to hear what was being said on the little television outside the exit doors. They may have a little TV up there, but it isn’t very loud, and people in the lobby were busy talking about not being able to get in, and the guy telling people they couldn’t come in had a deep low voice obscuring any sort of punch line I tried in vain to hear. That said, looked pretty funny. 300,000 daily hits for SWPL, the source for his Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions and so I guess I should have arrived early.

The Enablers Have Spoken And You’re Fine With Spencer Moody - 1:45 pm

Moody was/occasionally is the lead singer of the recurrent Murder City Devils, has a band called Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death, and owns the venue/art milieu The Anny Bonny. His poetry ranged from acceptable to very clever, as were much of the works by his friends Anthony Anzalone, Clyde Peterson, Patrick deWitt, Gavin Tull-Esterbrook, and Pete Quirk (of the Cave Singers). Andrea Zollo from Triumph of Lethargy (and before that Pretty Girls Make Graves) performed two Magnetic Fields songs from 69 Love Songs, “Abigail Belle” and “Kiss Me Like You Mean It,” with the lovely joy of an especially gifted Salvation Army gospel singer. She was backed by guitar player Derek Fudesko. In the blur of people reading their works, a friend of Spencer’s named Max came up from the audience to read a love ode to a Nazi war criminal (yes, it was probably satire) and something else that was pretty provocative too. Moody should arrange these things all the time; his friends can really write (especially whoever did the multi-page hangover tribute), and hearing the vulnerability of songwriters when they only have words on paper to share with an audience can be revealing. I just wish they would have stuck around to talk about writing with the audience; taking off immediately after the encircled group hug seemed oddly narcissistic and the opposite of everything else that just happened.

Parenthetical Girls - 3:30 pm

photo by Dave Lichterman

This band often arouses unique reactions in crowds; of course, lead singer-songwriter Zac Pennington seems to thrive on ambivalence (and this day even seemed to be courting it). When they play the Vera Project everyone seems pretty much in on the fact that this is a very precise, deliberate minority voice in a sea of noisy, formless bands with conformist intentions. At the Sky Church, there was dynamic tension between underground pop fans and musical and real tourists. When Pennington said they formed in Everett, someone near me spat out, “That figures.” (I have no idea what that figures, but it’s going to include me too I guess, being Everett-born.) There were joyful shouts at from the true fans, but it seemed as if everyone was too astonished at the group’s ability to shuffle guitar noise and fantastic drumming to mind some lyrics they probably fear their children thinking about. If anything, the elegance and persistence of the music dared the crowd into acquiring an appreciation for a band they may never have heard the likes of before. At the end of the set, though, it was announced that the keyboard player Matt Carlson would be leaving the group — this was the last show as we know of the Parenthetical Girls. Later on, Pennington said it would most likely continue in some form, though Carlson’s knowledge of the band’s songs will definitely be missed. A sad note after a stunning live achievement.

Matt Braunger, Reggie Watts, Todd Barry - 5:30 pm

Comedy Stage North was kept full and echoing with laughter all through the Bumbershoot festival, as comedian after comedian delivered consistently great sets, no matter what their particular approach to getting the funny.

Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre member Matt Braunger started off a trio of performers at 5:30 on Sunday in the most traditional stand-up fashion, with jokes about losing weight and his body type (“I’m shaped like a long baby”), and finding a balance between acceptable coarseness and friendly razzing.

It was an excellent way to warm people up for musician-magician Reggie Watts’ more surreal and physical humor, which combined audience expectations from his visual appearance (a floppy, Muppet-like hobo-poet persona) with a lot of great improvisational music anchored by mumbled, scatted vocals. Using a mixer and a keyboard, with rapping and mock-rock ballad singing, Watts was simply the personification of slapstick, every inch of his body used to entertain and freak out those who watched him. Even at his silliest, he approached subversion, and though from the cheers it seemed like he had everyone on his side, there was still a sense of danger in his playfulness. I could have watched all of his other sets this weekend and probably caught more each time. And perhaps understood even less than I had when I started.

Stand-up star and actor (“The Wrestler”) Todd Barry could have possibly been a disastrous choice coming up directly after Watts, whose styles couldn’t be more dissimilar. The one thing they had in common though was they’re both very smart, and expect the audience to be as well. So going from Watts’ visual anarchy to Barry’s focused insouciance was not too bumpy, at least after the first few minutes when the audience adjusted to the quieter approach. Barry’s persona is that of a cerebral, urban loner, who just wants to be left the fuck alone and when he dies will find the cockroach in heaven. He didn’t tear into any murmuring hecklers this time, though, which is the best part of seeing him live.

Wyatt Cenac, Marla Bramford - 7:15 pm

Comedy Stage North went from one great set of comedians to another, finishing out Sunday with The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac and Marla Bramford. The former has been added to the line-up of Comedy Central’s flagship program long after I gave up cable, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, having never seen him before either on television or in person. He seems like a sweet guy who is doing his best to withstand the absurdities of life’s caustic personalities, such as weathering people who call the miscegenated “Oreos” and “coconuts” (“Which just sound so darned yummy!”). I caught him twice during Bumbershoot, and his riffs on growing up in Texas were classic but not overstated. His inability to signify (“snap!”) as a teenager delighted the audience, who could identify with a comedian not so quick on the insults. Cenac’s gentle humor and gracious approach to his targets seemed to both charm and inspire praise comedy audiences used to more volatile personalities and material.

Bramford was a firecracker of mental health issues, pop culture debris, self-depreciative analysis, mocking Petco managers who tried to train her in the art of owning pugs (“They will just sit out in the sun till their brains burst!”), and her sternly wisecracking sister belittling her into being psychologically “mindful of emotions.” Like Watts, you have to watch and listen to Bramford very carefully or you may not only miss the point of her humor, you will rarely hear anything you can identify as a topic. She doesn’t seem to care if you accept her forthright weirdness, she’s going to take you down the strangest tunnels of her mind and assume you can keep up with every non-sequitur she spits out of the side of her pursed lips. Like the very best comedy, she speaks for the minority voice, and if crazy is the new queer as some activists claim, she might be the next generation’s major marginalist voice.

Monday, September 7

photo by Dave Lichterman

Eugene Mirman - 2 pm

The love for “The Mir-man,” as the Russian-born comedian occasionally calls himself, is evident among the rock crowds he opens for when on tour with The Shins and Modest Mouse. Star of stage, screen (TV, that is, as a shady landlord on the similarly adored HBO series Flight of the Conchords), and author (The Will to Whatevs) Mirman gave an inspired hour of sympathetic sarcasm on Monday afternoon. Only some of which is on his next album God Is a Twelve Year Old Boy With Asperger’s.

Through the reading of Tweets designed to hustle non-existent products (inspired by recently being asked to endorse something via Tweet by a company), bringing a giggly young woman up to respond to skewed seduction lines (she did so adorably), and showing a “Welcome to NYC” video on an overhead screen, Mirman made us all want to hug the shit out of him by the end. The bit about a twelve year old with asperger’s confronting him in Seattle (which is also the inspiration for the title track of his upcoming Sub Pop CD) displayed his perfect balance of agnostic struggle, deep empathy, and warm curiosity about the world.

The Lonely Forest - 3:15 pm

We Sing The Body Electric is the Lonely Forest’s new, second, and probably major-breakthrough full-length on Burning Building Recordings,and vivified-progressive rock tracks from it such as “Golden Apples of the Sun, Pt.1,” “Black Heart,” and “Two Pink Pills” seemed like a perfect fit for the cavernous, vermillion interior of the EMP/SFM Sky Church. Stuffed with people of all ages bouncing to the explosive new rock, the venue’s patrons were as joyful as the band was serious, blending post-emo expressions across a future-is-now canvas. Singer-songwriter John Van Deusenblends Coldplay-level bold statements with lo-fi indie rock aesthetic intimacy, and both their long-time grass roots fan-base seemed as pleased as those who have jumped on the bandwagon from their recent red hot buzz in press and on radio. The Lonely Forest seems idyllic for teenagers who want a band they can share that doesn’t insult their intelligence or judge them for needing the transcendent, and older fans remembering Pink Floyd and U2 can taste the familiar drama.

Champagne Champagne - 4:45 pm

photo by Jackie Kingsbury

Champagne Champagne followed The Lonely Forest immediately at the Sky Church, which isn’t as odd as it might seem, but helped bring things a bit more down to the real; Thomas Gray (the wild man) and Pearl Dragon (the jester) are funny, smart emcees capable of making bold statements and personal details too between satirical choruses and song references (a smidgen of Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky”). DJ Gajamagic likes his beats simple, his bass deep, and his textures unfussy, and there’s no reason fat monster joints like “Molly Ringwald” and “Hollywood Shampoo” shouldn’t be blasting out of both condos and trailer parks, parties and head shops before the end of this decade. Album! Album! The crowd was almost crushing and chanted back the words as they threw their hands you-know-where.

Wallpaper - 6:15 pm

Wallpaper is one of my very favorite bands in “Seattle”; although they are from Auburn, WA ,they sound like a new Sonics, or Wailers, or more traditional Sub Pop sleaze-pop punk. Apparently, the sticks have given them plenty of space to practice, as the trio sound even better live than on On The Chewing Gum Ground, with handclap-born drums crackling beneath quick licks as well as superb song-length riffs. From opener “Nod Off” on, the casual observer this afternoon might have dismissed them as a retro act, not hearing the black humor beneath the fuzz and stomp, with tales of junkies and the loveless as well written as anything by the Heartbreakers or the Only Ones. Already spawning excellent side projects like Basemint, I’m hoping this emotionally detached, but intellectually provocative group continues in spite of the trend these days of initial greatness exploding into other new bands.

This was a fantastic year at Bumbershoot; both bands and comedians seemed to rise to the swollen crowds — and the more-than-usual rain and economy may have affected statistics, but not the dynamic energies of artists and audiences engaging in an annual dialogue I’m sure is unique to our region. See you next year!

!!! at the Music Lounge
photo by Dan Muller

by Chris Estey

Maybe it’s how the bands bond intimately with who they know are big fans. (Last year, Two Gallants put on one of the best performances of the festival there.) Maybe it’s the excellent sound (hey, Kevin Suggs!) in the tucked-away special venue. Perhaps it’s the posh, comfortable seats in a cool setting indoors at a festival crammed with hacky-sack playing “dudes” outside, or nary a drum circle to be heard over the artist you’re trying to watch. But if there’s one thing that makes me really happy about the evolution of Bumbershoot over the years, it’s been KEXP hosting the Music Lounge. And this year the line-up is outstanding.

Though it’s pretty much already sold out, there will likely be tickets available for various shows at the KEXP booth on the festival grounds, so people attending should check in. And of course people at home can listen on the radio or Internet. KEXP will be having immediate coverage on the Blog all through the festival.

The Bumbershoot Music Lounge returns for its fourth year with this incredible line-up, all of whom are playing the festival otherwise:

Saturday 9/5/2009

12:00PM - Hey Marseilles

This orchestrally-involved folk rock band premiered some very cool new stuff at this year’s Capitol Hill Block Party; I have the feeling they will be previewing material written since 2008’s To Travels & Trunks this weekend as well. Huge buzz about this Seattle band which recalls a less cantankerous Decemberists — probably be the next big thing.

1:15PM - Telekinesis

Death Cab’s Chris Walla produced singer/drummer Seattle-based Michael Lerner’s self-titled debut; Billboard praised its balance of “familiarity and individuality.”

2:30PM - Gang Gang Dance

Thriving live and crafting sonic collages since the early part of this decade, Gang Gang Dance are going to be a high point of the festival, and a more coherent and song-based witness of the wildly eclectic band might possibly transpire in the Music lounge. Feel free to go nuts anyways.

3:45PM - Os Mutantes

Responsible for inspiring all kinds of psyche-rock experimentation since the 60s, these godfathers and godmother of the progressive AND punk movements will also be a can’t-miss event for old fans and new strange music acolytes alike.

5:30PM - Elvis Perkins in Dearland

Brass! Clarinet! Sax! Trombone! Roots with harmonica! Their 2009 debut features poetry and Old, Weird America noise. Should be outlandishly fun.

Sunday 9/6/2009

12:00PM - Common Market

206 hip-hop duo CM blends spirituality, social observations, and class war confessions (RA Scion) with some of the best deejaying you’ll ever hear (Sabzi). These guys are really wonderful whether in a very intimate setting or commanding a big stage. One of the sweetest moments you’ll have at Bumbershoot if you catch them here.

1:15PM - Sera Cahoone

Used to be the drummer in Seattle folk-art-psyche band Carissa’s Wierd and is now crooning and plucking for Sub Pop to national acclaim with the more traditional debut Only As The Day Is Long.

2:30PM - Vivian Girls

Listening to the Vivian Girls is like surfing on a dangerous sea of the sweetest foam you’ll ever taste. This three woman band is as subversive in their hooks and lyrics as they are infectious in their grind-pop sound. I bet we’ll hear some stuff off the new album; really looking forward to “The End.”

3:45PM - Holy Fuck

!!!!!

5:30PM - Raphael Saadiq

Used to make ‘em swoon as frontman in Tony! Toni! Tone! and brings his new-trad soul strut to Bumbershoot this year solo style. His album The Way I See It received three Grammy nominations.

Monday 9/7/2009

12:00PM - Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

This Austin band should please as they play out songs from their basement-gritty home cooked soul-rock Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! released this year. More brass!

1:15PM - The Cave Singers

This special treat should be way packed out, as the group plays songs from their two albums, including Welcome to Joy, just released on Matador. They’re the quietest band you’ll ever hear roar with sunshine at a big festival, getting even the most stubborn wooters to shut up and bask in their sound.

2:30PM - Akron/Family

Led by legendary Swans founder M. Gira, this mesmerizing collective can go from raging psyche-overflow to more sedate ballads in the drop of a painkiller in an IV. One of the most trance-inducing new folk bands you’ll hear, but their veteran experience kind of helps them achieve that bliss.

3:45PM - Vieux Farka Toure

Malian singer-songwriter who is the heir to innovator Ali Farka Toure. A masterful blend of funk happiness with hip-hop one beat, which will carry the hypnotism of this afternoon’s line-up into the third world.

5:30PM - Metric

Bunch of very talented wavos craft a reportedly killer album out at Bear Creek, their 2009 debut Fantasies impressing all my mates at Three Imaginary Girls. I have to hear that thing — but Bumbershoot is great for new discoveries such as this!

KEXP is a proud sponsor of this year’s Fisher Green Stage located next to the KEXP booth, the Broad Street stage, and EMP|SFM’s Sky Church. More information on the festival, including the full lineup and schedule is at bumbershoot.org.

*Note* YOU MUST ALREADY HAVE A TICKET TO GET INTO BUMBERSHOOT to attend the KEXP sessions. These sessions are free, but you must sign up below for each session you would like to attend as space is limited. Attendance is on a first come, first served basis. Once you are confirmed to attend, you will receive a confirmation email with details including where to pick up your ticket to the session and other important info.

by Chris Estey

“My favorite new band!” Russell Simmons once proclaimed. Billboard praised “Plug Tunin’” on its release as a song that would “knock you for a loop.” And they brought “3 Is A Magic Number” to rap music in both personal affirmation, musical soul, and mystical suggestion.

De La Soul changed hip-hop forever 20 years ago, and are on tour celebrating the anniversary of their debut album 3ft High and Rising. They will be playing the Fisher Green Stage on Saturday, September 5, probably including classic creations like “Rock Co Kane Flow” and “Me Myself and I” — but these are only irresistible gems in their crown of exceptionally creative and extremely intelligent hip-hop.

Pos, Maseo, and Dave were kids who obviously listened to everything, followed their own musical path, and are known to read a lot of different writers for inspiration (including Octavia Bulter’s empathy-inspiring science fiction, Donald Goines’ street lit, and soul-motivators like T.D. Jakes). The band members were individually born in the Bronx, but ended up all out on Long Island.

Pos and Dave started out in a band called Easy Street, and made deliberate efforts from the beginning to sound different from the rap dominators of their time. When they met Mase they continued on this uncompromising path. And even when their sudden shove into the spotlight got them in trouble on their first tour due to a lack of performing finesse (as well chronicled in Brian Coleman’s amazing tome of hip-hop recording history, Check The Technique) they came back again to keep innovating the field. As in De La Soul Is Dead in which they found their stride with Bob Power’s assistance on the boards. (Pos himself has become a production wizard as well.)

Riding on the success of Are You In?, De La Soul are not-to-miss live experience now, and their presence at Bumbershoot would be celebration in itself if it didn’t also remind us how much De La Soul’s debut 20 years ago made the music so much richer, deeper, and personally expressive.

photo by James Bailey

by Chris Estey

Head Like A Kite’s Dave Einmo gives us the best of both worlds: With his musical comrades he creates perfectly sound-designed art-rock records that just get better with each play; and when he turns up with Trent Moorman and fellow artists like Graig Markel and Zera Marvel live, it’s a Stones-on-ecstasy soul revue, getting people involved in the rhythm as they freak at the noise.

The new HLAK single, “Thrones of Glory” is coming out September 22 on iTunes. Boom Bip (Neon Blue) and Asya from Smoosh guest on it — but it’s your guess as well as mine who else will be joining Dave and Trent at 9:15 PM on Monday, September 7 at the EMP/SFM Sky Church.

Head Like A Kite has been featured on MTV2, NPR and has toured the US and Japan. The last album charted in the CMJ Top 50, hitting number one on KEXP and elsewhere. A great story from Trent Moorman’s POV can be found in last week’s Stranger. Here’s Dave’s description of the new track, which I am going to guess will be featured in their festival performance: “Transfusing the melodic timbre of The Postal Service and the eclectic mashups of Hot Chip with the springy guitars of Sonic Youth by way of Guided by Voices, HLAK’s “Thrones of Glory” is a sunny bliptronic indie popper.”

Head Like A Kite’s 2006 debut Random Portraits of the Home Movie, was constructed from samples of Super-8 home movies from the 70s. The success of the album led to tours of the US and Japan and an appearance on MTV2’s “On The Rise” and NPR’s Weekend America. Head Like A Kite then recorded for LA-based electronic label Mush, There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere. There is a full-length Head Like a Kite release planned for March, 2010.

For Seattle indie-electronic music fans who haven’t been able to catch them, and wonder where Seattle’s version of a band as strong as LCD Soundsystem might be playing out, close out the festival with HLAK, one of my very favorite bands ever.