…a hopeful mood and awful music.

This morning I experienced a lousy mood and terrific music.

I deliberately stayed away from election-nite coverage, instead watching the surprisingly good Sonics win their fourth straight basketball game. Then I stopped by the new Carpenters’ Hall in Belltown. (The old hall had been razed several years ago for a high-rise condo, incorporating the smaller new union hall.) There, the monorail campaigners held their party. The aforementioned awful music was provided by a lowest-common-denominator “blooze” band, churning out tedious arrangements of the tritest ’60s-nostalgia hits.

(Memo to all campaign organizers: Progressive politics isn’t just for Big Chillers anymore.)

But aside from that, it was a triumphal evening. Asking taxpayers to make a major investment during tuff economic times is always a challenge. (Note the inglorious defeat of the statewide highway levy.) But despite that, and despite the powers-that-be’s smear and scare campaigns, the monorail referendum achieved a solid lead in the polls, pending the late absentees. The city came together to create a better future for itself, in the form of a tourist-friendly commuter system (or a commuter-friendly tourist attraction).

Then in the morning came the horrible news. The GOP goon squad held onto the U.S. House and had regained at least a tie in the Senate. This means the Consitution-busters, the domestic enemies of freedom, have a rubber-stamp Congress to pass any roughshod legislation, appoint any crook, and give away the whole country to the billionaires.

Of course, the Democrats hadn’t provided much of a hindrance to these schemes anyway. Maybe this second-straight electoral debacle will, once and for all, finally discredit the Democratic Leadership Council and its Right Lite policy of subjugation.

The terrific music that cheered me up today came from the previously discredited Trio cable channel. This morning it showed one of the hundreds of British music shows in its library. This particular hour compiled old performance footage by scads of early punk legends (Sex Pistols, Clash, Jam, Iggy, Siouxsie, Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Undertones). It all cheered me up immensely.

You have every right to ask why I’d frown at 1967 nostalgia music but grin at 1977 nostalgia music. Well, there’s a reason. The band at the monorail party interpreted old Beatles and Stones numbers into slowed-down, dumbed-down exercises in collective self-congratulation. The live performances in the punk documentary were brisk, brash statements of mass resistance. The Thatcher and Reagan regimes (like the Bush regime today, only slightly less stupidly) were on jugggernauts to redistribute wealth upward, to spread war and poverty, to make the world safe for corporate graft. Punk rock, at its best, was one big loud defiant NO! to the whole reactionary worldview.

(Progressive politics isn’t just for slam-dancers anymore either. But punk’s classic note of rejecting the given situation, and creating/demanding a more human-scale world, is something we could all use a lot more of now.)

…are appearing Monday at the Paramount. But, as far as I’ve been able to determine, no Seattle media have mentioned the local angle to the fantabulous neo-pop-rockers’ success. The producer of their CD is none other than longtime Seattle-scene stalwart Gordon Raphael, who’d been in Sky Cries Mary and at least 30 other bands. Raphael had been trying to keep a tiny NYC recording studio open when a series of schmooze-connections brought him to the band. The rest is infamy; he’s now ensconced in London, knob-twiddlin’ for assorted Next Big Thing acts. From the looks of this picture, he’s become quite the neo-fop.

…it’s “Songs About Nuclear War from the ’80s.”

I love Seattle’s annual great all-you-can-eat buffet-O-culture; and this year’s version was better, overall, than those of the previous few.

A relative dearth of bigname touring rock acts (whose summer schedules are increasingly tied up in package tours) meant the spotlight shone a little higher on the locals, and on acts such as Wilco and Blonde Redhead that can draw and wow a crowd without having been on TRL.

A brief history of the Shoot: It began as an early ’70s free fest, designed to use all of Seattle Center for the first time since the World’s Fair a decade before. It started relatively small, but blossomed when national stars were added to the mix (necessitating a cover charge).

Early programming was heavy on the already-calcifying tastes of bland baby boomers; white blues bands and Ronstadtesque commercial balladeers predominated the main stages. Black performers younger than B.B. King were seldom booked. Rock n’ roll bands were mostly of the nostalgia-reunion variety.

By the late ’80s, somebody at One Reel (the former hippie-vaudeville production company that’s run the festival since almost the start) finally wizened up and started inviting new generations of performers to the main stages. That coincided with the rise of “alternative” rock (some of whose local legend-makers performed at the festival), alt-country, white hiphop, and even punk/new wave reunion tours.

But it also coincided with the rise of big corporate-rock arena tours, in which the likes of Sonic Youth were pushed onto stages previously reserved for acts of Rolling Stones-level popularity. As the ’90s progressed-regressed, the big acts became Bumbershoot’s main draw, causing ticket prices to go up every year and causing the phase-out of less-commercial costly fare (such as the Seattle Symphony).

Now, the tide might be turning again. This year’s B-shoot had more of a balance. Local and smaller national acts got more attention. The emphasis was less on getting that precious wristband and/or spot in line for the superstars, more on just being there, having fun, and exposing oneself to something new and intriguing. Which is how it oughta be.

My personal memories of this year’s fest: Kulture Shock’s rousing ethnic-melange at the EMP Sky Church (followed by Yva Las Vegas’s empassioned set in the same building’s open mike later that night). Ani DiFranco’s forceful anti-Bush rant in Memorial Stadium. An eight-woman klezmer band at one of the smaller outdoor stages. The welcome arrival of clammy skies on Monday, marking the all-but-official end of summer. And the ambient sounds heard passing through the gorunds late Monday night, especially those of the Fun Forest amusement rides winding down for the night.

THIS PAST SATURDAY was proclaimed “Car-Free Day” by certain local lefty advocates. Certain other lefty advocates mounted a day-long political fair the same day, at a site approximately two miles from the nearest public transportation.

The “Rolling Thunder Down Home Democracy Tour,” a summer barnstorming chataqua revue whose organizers include Jim Hightower (pictured above) and Tom Hayden, set up its elaborate show at Prtrovitsky Park, deep in the Renton/Kent suburban sprawl. At least 6,000 humans came for all or part of the event, braving 88-degree temperatures and problematic parking to take their Volvos and minivans (many festooned with environmental bumper stickers) to the large county park. Hundreds of others came by chartered shuttle buses from Seattle.

Once there, they got to listen to many speakers and musicians (including the Pinkos, seen below), toss objects at caricatures of Enron execs in a “Carnival of Oppression and Fun,” stroll among literature booths hawking every cause from unionism to veganism, and participate in forums and workshops teaching how to organize grass-roots campaigns in your own community’s sod.

It was a fun time, and an opportunity for left-O-center types of many assorted persuasions to come together and share, if nothing else, a sense of I-Told-You-So about today’s corporate embarrassments and political anti-freedom attacks. More than that, it encouraged all these folk to come together, to take action, to work toward a better world instead of just protesting against the one we’ve got.

One of the smallest and most curious displays at the event was a small table offering stickers, badges, and pencils on behalf of an unofficial, unauthorized “Cusack for President” campaign. The women running the table didn’t know that the John Cusack silhouette on the badges is an image from Say Anything, nor that that film had been set in Seattle.

The image of an undefeatable Cusack in Say Anything, wooing a reluctant Ione Skye by lifting a Peter Gabriel-blaring boom box up toward her bedroom window, is a great metaphor for what the left needs. Director Cameron Crowe’s commentary track for the film’s DVD release invokes Cusask’s undying love-quest as representing “positivity as a rebellious stance.”

For too long, we’ve let the conservatives get away with branding liberals and progressives as cynical spoilsports who only see the negative in anything and anyone. But these days, it’s the Right that’s pushing the bad-attitude envelope. They’re openly selling political policy to the highest bidder, running roughshod over Constitutional rights, and rumbling about trying to start another war for oil. They tried to hound Clinton out of office over sins much more minor than their own. They’ll use any demagoguic tactic to win elections, from borderline-racism to libel to hypocritical religious pieties.

A few of my more cynical leftie acquaintances have, to date, been content to sit around and scoff that this is simply the way it is. I prefer to think it’s not the way it has to be.

Or, as Hightower puts it, “For too long progressives have walked fearful of their shadows, whimpering and whining about what’s wrong and fighting amongst themselves over crumbs. That time is over. It’s time to sing and work and build a new community dedicated to hope and real change. And good beer.”

IN OTHER IDEOLOGICAL NEWS, one guy claims the 9/11 attacks might not have been an act of war (intended to conquer ertain territory or overthrow certain regimes) but of “fantasy ideology”–intended mainly for the perpetrators to live out “a specific personal or collective fantasy.” In this case, the fantasy of being a wrathful deity’s servants of vengeance. (The writer also claims the same justification’s behind less-lethal political-theater acts, such as disruptive protests that turn bystanders’ opinions against the cause supposedly being promoted.)

Y’ALL BE SURE TO ATTEND our glorious MISCosity Breakdown live event, this Friday evening (7-9:30) at the spiffy Rendezvous, Second Avenue north of Bell Street. At least five writers from the print MISC will appear; there’s also some odd video and music plus some other unannounced surprises.

TWO OF THE TENTPOLES of Seattle’s anti-youth culture have suddenly collapsed after almost two decades’ worth of litigation. Ex-City Attorney Mark Sidran’s anti-postering law was thrown out by a judge; band flyers started reappearing on light poles the very next day (though the 50 “Fuck Mark Sidran” posters someone put up were systematically removed by someone else).

And the nefarious Teen Dance Ordinance, which essentially shut down all-ages music shows in Seattle in 1985, was finally replaced by a far less restrictive law. Just don’t look for any immediate explosion of open-to-under-21s gigs. Some bars have already been hosting no-booze, all-ages matinee and early-evening shows (under recently relaxed state Liquor Board regulations). Despite the daily papers’ renewed teen-bashing editorials, the clubs aren’t making significant profits on these shows. Nonprofit all-ages promoters (the Paradox Theater, the Vera Project) rely heavily on volunteer help and monetary donations (the latter of which are darned hard to come by in the current economy).

HERE’S SOME MORE CAPITOL HILL BLOCK PARTY images from a few weeks back, that of several baseball-backstop climbers and one clever stilt walker viewing Sleater-Kinney for free.

A FEW WEEKENDS LATER, the Bite of Seattle hosted one of the most bizarre cover bands I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of bizarre cover bands). The members of “Grunge: A Tribute to the Seattle Sound” seemed to know the ridiculousness of their premise, going as far as to introduce Alice in Chains’s “Man in a Box” with a rousing cheer: “This next one’s for all the kids to dance to!” The group appears regularly at Doc Maynard’s in Pioneer Square, where the audiences might or might not get the irony.

AT AUGUST’S FIRST THURSDAY ART WALK, painter Jessica McCourt found out her exhibit at Bud’s Jazz Records didn’t make the newspaper listings. So she did her own leafleting, dressed up as one of the characters from her show “Saints, Sinners, and Monkeys.”

…has come and gone. There seemed to be something missing from it this time, something uncommercial and unrehearsed. (Aside from the street beggars, such as this one dutifully preparing a sign reading “Smiles Are Free, Heroin Isn’t.”)

Most of the action took place behind the plastic-wrapped chain-link fence separating the $10 admission stage and beer garden from the much smaller free performance stage and the handful of “political” booths (most of which were exclusively devoted, in this age of corporate corruption and government power-grabbing, to the notion that all it takes to be “political” in a morally-superior way is to eat the right foods.)

A P-I freelance writer loved the (quite rockin’) set by the Gossip (above), and particularly noted the singer’s willingness to show off part of her bod. The writer was much less approving of Helle’s Belles guitarist Adrian Connor showing off part of her bod. Yo, Chris Nelson: Equality works both ways. A svelte straight woman has just as much right to take public pride in her midriff as a voluptuous lesbian does.

Meanwhile, other acts just rocked on, oblivious to the made-up controversy, such as local skeptical-pop stalwarts Peter Parker.

In another part of town over the weekend, the indie role-playing-game store in the U District that took the place in neighborhood gamers’ hearts from the short-lived Wizards of the Coast palace held its own “coming out” party of sorts, setting up some tables on the sidewalk so as to give some hardcore gamer dudez a dose of what’s stereotypically thought of as a rare and not-always-craved commodity among gamer dudez, sunlight.

The NY Times ran a long and rather dumb article on Wednesday about the Montreal Jazz Festival, one of the largest events of its type on Earth. The feature’s writer loves the festival all right, but questions what the heck the culture of jazz music has to do with La Belle Provence.

I’ll tell you what. Quebec has long thought of itself as the bastion of European civilization in North America. Jazz, or rather certain flavors of classic and modern jazz, have long been commercially centered in Europe, particularly in France. You can hence think of the Montreal fest as a gift of the Francophone world, graciously giving a North American-invented genre back to us.

Also, a major feature of the festival is a nightly downtown street party with high-energy “world music” acts. I just saw one such performance tonight on the Francophone cable channel TV5. A big street party’s the sort of event everybody around the world can dig (they even had ’em at the Salt Lake Olympics). But in a city of hot passions and often cold weather, a summer night’s especially worthy of celebrating. And the Quebecois I saw did just that, splendidly.

…Die Now.” (Steven Levy, Newsweek)

JIM HOAGLAND ASKS, “Where is the populist outrage that would have swept the Capitol even a generation ago, when investment bankers and tycoons were more target than vital source of campaign funds?”

ANOTHER UNEXPECTED SOURCE is now speaking out against record-industry greed.

DIGITIZED VERSIONS of those music-video precursors briefly shown in film jukeboxes in bars, Scopitones!

…to Rosemary Clooney–singer, actress, aunt of Batman, mother of Twin Peaks’ Agent Rosenfield, and ex-wife of Cyrano de Bergerac.

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the movie Singles, writer-director Cameron Crowe’s light-‘n’-fluffy love letter to Seattle and the striving, sincere young adults therein.

At the time of its release, it was the victim of a Warner Bros. marketing campaign that emphasized the suddenly-hot local bands in its audio background (the soundtrack CD came out months before the film did), rather than the characters or plot(s). When it turned out to be a frothy tale of six dating-scene survivors, only one of whom was a musician, certain audience expectations were shattered. Nevertheless, it had a respectable theatrical run and remains a decent-selling video title.

It’s also the rumored unofficial inspiration for the Warner-produced sitcom Friends. (Check-list the similarities: A sextet of dreamy looking young Caucasians, representing a variety of serious and artistic careers, all of whom hang out at the same coffeehouse, most of whom live in the same apartment building that inexplicably has a couch in its front courtyard, and who head into and out of assorted romantic entanglements, sometimes with one another.)

According to the “grunge” stereotype popular in the national media of the film’s time, young Seattlites (especially those involved in the rock scene) were alleged to be listless, rootless, directionless slackers. Crowe saw something quite different: Aware, ambitious moral-decision-makers who want to take charge of their lives, to make a difference in the world and to experience ultra-ecstatic true love, but who are (to varying degrees) thwarted by an urban society that wants to stick them into confining, unfulfilling roles.

Campbell Scott (the film’s real male lead) plays a state transportation planner who’s staked his whole up-n’-coming career on a proposed elevated-rail project he calls the Supertrain, bound to resolve rush-hour jams, slow down suburban sprawl, and create a more Euro-like urban community. (Any similarity to currently hyped elevated-transit proposals is purely coincidental.)

Scott’s main affection object, played by Kyra Sedgwick, has some not-completely-identified job trying to stop water pollution.

And Matt Dillon’s messy-haired musician character is shown by film’s end to be the most courageous of the lot. He systematically, indefatigably works on getting his girlfriend bac, just as he works on getting his musical career off the ground. His no-compromise stance toward realizing his dreams makes him a heroic ideal to which the other characters can only try to emulate.

That said, Singles remains a fairly dumb film. The gag scenes and plot complications are way too predictable. The drab lines and situations given to the characters mirror the drab life-destinies they’re trying to escape. But it gives its characters far more dignity than so many later mating-n’-dating comedies.

And, of course, local viewers l love the many geographic inaccuracies (Sheila Kelley’s character bicycles from south Lake Union across the Fremont Bridge and into the Pike Place Market in successive shots), the now-gone sites (RKCNDY), and the now-gone cameo players (Wayne Cody, Layne Staley).

…aren’t the only people who want to put a muzzle on what you can say or do online. Now some aspiring political operatives in the state that gave us our duly-appointed President are putting out the big guns against a website that apparently offered lots of consumer-information posts about escort services and links to the services’ own sites. (The site itself is now down.)

…yet another blow, effectively killing off another great music sharing portal, Audiogalaxy.com. It was the best of its type, until the next one comes along. Which it will, despite the the forces of control.

IN SLIGHTLY HAPPIER NEWS, it’s increasingly apparent Arthur Andersen & Co. will pay the ultimate price for its past funny-money chicanery, and will essentially cease to exist except as a lawsuit-settlement entity. It’s time other companies faced similar disillusionments (not mere breakups). Clear Channel Communications is first on my list, followed by the major record labels. I’m sure you could think of others. Any suggestions?