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washington dept. of natural resources via kxly-tv spokane
I’ve known, and occasionally worked with, Gillian G. Gaar for as long as I’ve been writing these MISC ventures.
You know her from her contributions to the Rocket, the Stranger, ArtsFocus, Tablet, the Belltown Messenger, and other local and national periodicals; as well as her books about Elvis Presley, Nirvana, the Beatles, and women in rock.
She needs some expensive surgery to restore the vision in her left eye.
Like so many in and on the periphery of the music scene, she has no insurance.
She’s started one of those online fundraising drives.
She’s a quarter of the way to her goal already, and could use your help getting the rest of the way there.
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Dennis White, who runs the Dadastic! record label, has been making T-shirts commemorating Belltown’s still-mourned Dog House diner and piano bar.
For a limited time you can get one for $17 (with a free CD thrown in), and have $5 of the proceeds go to Gaar’s medical fund.
(The hereby-linked page says the deal is over, but White says you can just mention it when you order and he’ll still do it.)
miyavik.deviantart.com, via sodahead.com
Acoustic/emo/neo-folk/whatever singer-songwriter John Roderick has helped bring back an old tradition at the again-locally-owned Seattle Weekly.
In the heritage of such long-remembered Weekly cover stories as “Should Gays Act ‘Gay’?” and “Is ‘Grunge’ Too White?”, Roderick has crafted the zeitgeist-challenging manifesto “Punk Rock Is Bullshit.”
Before we get into the critique of his critique, let’s let his critique speak for itself a little:
Ultimately, punk rock was a disease of the soul, a doctrine of projecting and amplifying feelings of insecurity and fear outward and inward until the whole world seemed like an ice cave. It wasn’t necessary to judge every new piece of art against unwinnable criteria, or ourselves against imaginary standards of altruistic correctness. It wasn’t preordained that fun, lighthearted inspiration was shallow or contemptible; nor was it true that everything sucked, that life sucked, or that the world sucked. Successful art isn’t always garbage, and lazy, shitty art isn’t always teaching us something.
That’s harsh. (Or, in the made-up “glossary of grunge” published by an ignorant NY Times, “Harsh Realm.”)
Did an entire neo-bohemian generation really let itself be suckered into something this terrible?
Well, no.
“Punk rock” meant many different things to many different people.
To some, it was simply the continuation of dirt metal, stripped down for greater immediacy.
To others, it was a movement to strip rock n’ roll back to its garage rock (if not its R&B) roots.
And yes, to some it was an excuse for drinking, drugging, vandalism, and other unhealthy behaviors.
Calvin Johnson famously redefined punk broadly enough to include innocent teenage love songs—just as long as they were created and distributed in adherence to a strict “indie” ideology.
That was a near-exact opposite of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s “cash from chaos” motto, which involved staging scandalous events for maximum publicity (and commercial) value.
Yeah, there were punks who got all self- (and other-) destructive.
But there were also punks who took the DIY ethos seriously, who built venues and labels and movements.
Punk was/is big enough to include skinheads and longhairs; junkies and straight-edgers; riot grrrls and Suicide Girls®; vegans and 7-Eleven fans; born-again Christians and neo-pagans and devout nihilists and even a few Jews.
But, for argument’s sake (and what punk rocker doesn’t like a good argument?), let’s say there’s one particular strain of punk ideology that (1) makes kids believe (for the rest of their lives) that everything completely sucks, and (2) prevents them from doing a damn thing to improve their lives or their world.
It wouldn’t be “punk rock,” whatever that is (see above), that does that.
It’s something within them that does that.
Call it a mental/psychological condition, if you will, with “punk rock” as a thin excuse smeared on top.
As ex-Funhouse bar owner Brian Foss said in response to Roderick,
In my life I’ve always seen joiners, people who need some kind of rule book to live by. Be it religion, or politics, or sports/D&D, or yes, music scenes, some people have little imagination. I’ve also seen people take inspiration and make up their own shit from whatever culture they were exposed to. Something to prime the pump, jump start their own creations.
In my life I’ve always seen joiners, people who need some kind of rule book to live by. Be it religion, or politics, or sports/D&D, or yes, music scenes, some people have little imagination.
I’ve also seen people take inspiration and make up their own shit from whatever culture they were exposed to. Something to prime the pump, jump start their own creations.
Other responses: Megan Seling noting how punk wasn’t intended to defeat Reaganism but help people survive it; Grant Cogswell seeing it as a natural response to the media-conglomerate controlled pre-Internet culture.
scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk
No, today’s princess is not about romance: it’s more about entitlement. I call it “girlz power†because when you see that “z†(as in Bratz, Moxie Girlz, Ty Girlz, Disney Girlz) you know you’ve got trouble. Girlz power sells self-absorption as the equivalent of self confidence and tells girls that female empowerment, identity, independence should be expressed through narcissism and commercialism.
These Streets, the musical revue/play at ACT (running through March 10) about four women in the ’90s Seattle rock scene and two (mostly) supportive boyfriends, was constructed as a series of non-linear “moments.”
Scenes bounced between the past and present; the “past” storyline covers five years in the characters’ lives. Many of these short scenes and mini-monologues depicted single ideas or emotions.
In the show’s spirit, this piece is also a sequence of moments.
I mentioned in my 1995 book Loser how the national media’s false “grunge” stereotype included “no women in sight, not even as video models.”
But in the real Seattle scene, women were involved in leading roles from the start. Women were singers, instrumentalists, managers, promoters, venue owners, zine publishers, photographers, DJs, and record-label owners.
In keeping with the scene’s ethos, most of these women weren’t vying for fame and fortune. (The exception, Courtney Love, already had a record deal before she came here.)
But then a scene that, to many of its members, was an alternative to the major-label machine, became re-defined as fodder FOR the major-label machine.
The global music industry, at what turned out to be its peak of money and power, trawled Seattle fishing for superstars. The Gits were negotiating with a label when singer Mia Zapata was killed. Seven Year Bitch released one album on Atlantic, then broke up. But most of the scene’s women were ignored.
Over the years, “grunge nostalgia” books and documentaries (most made by out-of-towners) continued to ignore artists from the scene who hadn’t become big stars, including the women.
One of Harley and Rudinoff’s goals with the play was to remember this forgotten history.
These Streets, along with its concurrent poster-art and oral-history exhibit at the Project Room gallery on Capitol Hill, received massive coverage in local and national media.
The show includes parts of 18 vintage songs, originally recorded by 14 different female-fronted Seattle acts. Having four different characters singing the songs allowed the show’s makers to feature diverse musical material, from ballads (“power” and other) to straight-out punk blasts.
If any of those bands at the time had received a fraction of the publicity These Streets received, who knows what could have happened?
In keeping with the do-it-yourself spirit, These Streets was staged and produced by Gretta Harley and Sarah Rudinoff, who’d also written it (with Elizabeth Kenny).
Kenny and Rudinoff played the older versions of two of the characters. Harley sang and played guitar in the show’s tight backup band. Harley had been in the ’90s rock scene with the bands Maxi Badd, Danger Gens, and Eyefulls. She and Rudinoff currently perform as the duo We Are Golden.
ACT Theatre provided the auditorium space and various production services, under its “Central Heating Lab” program. (Carlo Scandiuzzi, ACT’s executive director, had promoted punk and new-wave gigs at the Showbox in the early 1980s.)
Harley, Rudinoff, and Kenny spent two years developing the script and score, based in part on interviews with some 40 Seattle-scene veterans. Twenty-three of these women were featured in historical graphics installed in the ACT lobby.
The show’s present-day storyline involves five of the six characters (yes, that’s a plot spoiler) reminiscing about their days of non-stardom, while surveying their later lives of houses, kids, divorces, and stints in rehab.
And they still have the urge to make music and art, to be on stage, to be loud and passionate in front of a crowd.
The world of their youth, the pre-dot-com Seattle of 1989-94, has largely vanished. The city isn’t the same and neither are they.
According to Harley, the present-day scenes refer to a time when “you’re in this stage of life and you look back and take ownership of it. But then you’re also looking forward for first time in a very particular way. I hope the show helps to illuminate that ownership of this time in our lives, and also look back and say, ‘Hey kid, you had a lot of guts to get up and do that.'”
Harley says the making of These Streets was “a great experience. People who lived it seem to really love it; they feel that it’s very authentic. A couple of people said it inspired them to pick up music again.”
While no further performances have been scheduled past its three-week run, “we’re taking it one step at a time at this point.”
(Cross-posted with City Living.)
via vintageseattle.org and capitolhillseattle.com
In 1964, Seattle voters soundly defeated an “open housing†ordinance that would have let anyone live anywhere. It lost by more than 2-to-1.
'out of work sith lord.'
The Emerald City Comicon, held at the Washington State Convention Center, has become an annual sign of Spring’s impending arrival in Seattle. It’s March! Time to shake off that Gore-Tex and wool. Time to reveal the unencumbered Real You to the world, by becoming your favorite fantasy character.
Like most “comics conventions” around North America, including the giant San Diego Comicon, the Emerald City Comicon is only partly about comic books and mostly about fantasy film/TV. This year’s special guests included Star Trek: TNG and X-Men star Patrick Stewart and ’60s Batman stars Adam West and Burt Ward.
But the real stars every year are the attendees themselves, channelling their copyrighted-and-trademarked icons.
Perhaps nowhere was this smelting of commercial art into folk art more obvious than with the guy who played the Star Wars theme on bagpipes, while riding a unicycle.
(P.S.: For a viewpoint on Comicon from an actual comics creator, check out Donna Barr’s blog.)
(Cross-posted with Unusual Life.)
via silver platters and queenanneview.com
gawker.com
haley young, via seattlemag.com
You really ought to see These Streets, the new play at ACT about five women in the ’90s local rock scene.
Its writers (Gretta Harley, Sarah Rudinoff, Elizabeth Kenny; pictured above) were there. They know of what they speak.
I mentioned in my book Loser how the national media’s false “grunge” stereotype included “no women in sight, not even as video models.”
But in the real Seattle scene, women were involved in leading roles from the start, on stage (Kim Warnick, Sue Ann Harkey, Barbara Ireland) and off (managers, venue owners, photographers, zine publishers, etc.).
Now, the truth may at last become better known.
via imcdb.org
the aurora kmart in 2002
via huffington post