Mementos of my own formerly-fair city were everywhere in Stamford and NYC. Starbux stands and Microsoft ads were ubiquitous, of course; but there were also Seattle’s Best Coffee-serving restaurants and Eddie Bauer boutiques. (There’s supposedly a Nordstrom in some suburban mall outside NYC, but I didn’t see it.) The Virgin Megastore in the infamously Disneyfied Times Square stocked plenty of Seattle bands, even the semi-obscure ones. (F’rinstance, a Fartz CD was on prominent display!) One quasi-Seattle-related person, Fantagraphics cartoonist Chris Ware, had a huge display of his (fantastic) original art in the Whitney Museum’s 2002 Biennial exhibition. And the Tuesday edition of everyone’s favorite rabid-right tabloid included a positive review of the new CD by our ol’ pal Christy McWilson.

TRIP ASIDE #2: My flights both ways, as previously mentioned in this space, were on the airline soon to be formerly known as TWA. Thanks to the overcast conditions also previously mentioned in this space, both flights offered the comforting illusion of sailing on a sea of cotton fluff. Only the eastward flight offered a movie (K-PAX, displayed on LED video monitors).

Both flights included stops at the ol’ TWA hub in St. Louis. Right out the window, you could clearly see the old McDonnell-Douglas HQ complex at the other side of the main runways. The building now bears a big Boeing logo, even though it’s becoming increasingly clear that MD has staged a palace coup and essentially taken over Boeing.

TRIP ASIDE #3: I’ll try to scan some snapshot-camera pix I took of NYC, including Ground-0 (still an extremely quiet and solemn quarter-square-mile surrounded by the famous NYC bustle).

‘A BRIEF HISTORY of banned music in the United States” contains snippets about various censorship drives, conservative and/or “radical” denunciations of songs and singers, and other assorted sanctimonious nonsense (including Wash. state’s thankfully overturned “erotic music” legislation).

COCA CLASSIC: Over a year since the demolition of the Center on Contemporary Art’s last exhibition space, the nearly 20-year-old anchor of Seattle’s “alternative” arts scene came roaring back to life this month. It opened a brand new headquarters in one of Capitol Hill’s last heretofore non-upscaled warehouse spaces, plentily conveniently situated for most of COCA’s longtime clique.

So there could be no more appropriate way to celebrate the end of the organization’s hiatus than by staging a massive party–at another, far more remote, location.

Thus, the opening fete for Black and Raw, the first show at the new COCA HQ, was mounted instead at the Big Building, a co-op studio space for iron artists and goth blacksmiths. Hundreds of past and present COCA friends had a smashing time in the big, drafty, beautifully dilapidated Big Building down in the Industrial District, beneath the Spokane Street Viaduct and across from the longshoremen’s union hall.

Among the evening’s delights were the Gothic Cheerleaders, doing their part to keep cartoony devil-worship alive…

… DJ (and fellow Stranger refugee) Riz Rollins…

…a skillful hula hoop demonstration…

…and the B-Hives, a (not only accurate but lively) B-52s cover band featuring, at left, longtime music-scene vet Alison Wonderland.

As was often the case at COCA’s previous incarnations, the party atmosphere outshouted the art on display. Those who noticed (and, yes, I was among them) saw a display of wrought-iron pieces, many by the metal artists who work in the Big Building. These ranged from the sublime (an orca’s tail) to the useful (a lot of candle holders) to the outlandish (fetish slave wear; the Henry Leinonen skull chandelier depicted here).

The Stranger, the weekly free tabloid with which I have an off-and-on stormy relationship, celebrated its tenth anniversary this week. The actual ten-year mark came last September, but obviously a lot of folks weren’t in the mood for celebrating anything back then.

I was asked to write something for it. It didn’t run in that issue (they promise it’ll run next week).

It’s a remembrance of local publications that have come and gone during the Stranger’s lifetime:

• The Rocket: The bible of Northwest rock had already been going for 12 years when the Stranger started. Shortly after that, publisher Charles Cross sold out to some Californians who drove it into the ground. Its demise in October 2000 is still mourned by many.
• Kutie: Sometime Stranger art director Hank Trotter’s moonlighting venture was a skin mag in the classic early-’60s style, full of the tease and style missing from today’s formula porn. Sometimes, the only way you knew the pictures were new was from the models’ tattoos. Five issues came out between 1997 and 2000; content from the unpublished issue #6 can be seen at www.kutie.com.
• Seattle Union Record: During the big newspaper strike of November 2000-January 2001, Newspaper Guild members put out their own thrice-weekly free tabloid. Freed from the dumbing-down demands of management, the newsies created a model for some future alternative urban daily.
• Metropolitan Living: The former publisher of The Employment Paper had what seemed in 1999 to be a smash idea: A slick, oversize monthly about local celebrities and upscale lifestyles; given away free to all at vending boxes, but intended strictly for the platinum-card elites. It lasted about a year and a half.
• Arts Journal: Another vehicle for luxury-goods ads, this one was mailed free to people who’d given money to Seattle’s bigtime arts groups. Its content was often outstanding; too bad most folks who’d really care about it (artists, actors, playwrights, etc.) seldom got to see it.
• Redheaded Stepchild: A visual-arts zine that was almost all text, this photocopied monthly newsletter chiefly covered professional and personal survival issues for contemporary art-makers. It started in mid-1999 and ran a little over a year, before its volunteer staff found better things to do.
• Seattle Gay Standard: An ambitious effort at a real competitor to the long-established Seattle Gay News. The Standard had ambitious stories, gorgeous color photos, and a relative paucity of boys-arguing-about-the-wallpaper cartoons. But it got caught up in the same 2001 ad slump that befell Metropolitan Living and Arts Journal.
• Perv: The Stranger’s own Dan Savage was one of the masterminds behind this 1996 gay-print alternative, a monthly four-page broadsheet focusing on the Capitol Hill queer club scene.
• Rock Paper Scissors: Ex-musician Thomas Marchese’s attempt to fill the Rocket’s void. The defiantly un-slick weekly free tabloid ran weekly from June to August 2001, and gave particular emphasis to the neo-metal community.
• The Seattle Scroll: Matt Asher’s fortnightly essay-and-opinion paper started in the fall of 1996 with a novel format–a single oversize sheet of book-stock paper, rolled up instead of folded. By its end one year later, it had become a regular tabloid. Asher was last heard from writing a novel in Vermont. The Scroll’s “media editor,” Jesse Walker, later worked in LA for a libertarian-leaning think tank.

The world has lost Spike Milligan, creator and last living costar of the BBC Radio Goon Show and pioneer of “zany” Brit comedy…

…and Arthur Lyman, one of the kings of Hawaiian pop music.

…Tuesday night in Pioneer Square. The police were out in their promised droves and operated under the prime directive of Fun Prevention. The thousand or so (almost all-white) Eminem-wannabe doodz who assembled from the suburbs, who hoped for a (less violent) repeat of last year’s unauthorized Mardi Gras street party were thwarted by arrests and citations for any untoward behavior, especially jaywalking. “Jaywalking,” as an arrestable offense, was interpreted to even include walking thru parking spaces. Thus, the doodz (and a very few doodettes) were crammed onto nearly impassible strips of sidewalk outside the Pio. Sq. bars (which, in keeping with city orders not to specially-promote Mardi Gras this year, mainly stuck to their regular fare of techno and white “blooze” attractions). Any dood who stood in one place on the sidewalk, even if the way in front of him was completely blocked, was “politely” ordered by the Fun Police to move along or else. The result: A lot of people out there, almost none of whom looked like they were enjoying the evening. (There were even almost no festive costumes; most doodz preferring to conform to the Abercrombie/Hilfiger uniform standard.)

Eight blocks north on First Avenue, several hundred other young folk were indeed having fun, at the Showbox’s all-ages Gwar show. The theatrcial-metal band’s durable formula of cartoon-gore spectacle was perfect for Fat Tuesday’s traditional meaning of one last debauch before the start of Lenten pentinence. Outside afterwards, the street was filled with sweaty, hard-of-hearing, happily-tired-out guys (and at least some gals) stumbling in blown-away, wide-eyed glee. Many were clad in T-shirts that had become permanently dyed pink-orange, from the band’s having drenched the front moshpit area with fake blood.

The lesson: Banning Mardi Gras isn’t good for anybody. Planning a safe, healthy mass release of pent-up emotions is much preferable.

THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS came in this morning, and that literary action-adventure epic Lord of the Rings snatched the most preliminary honors. No matter what you think of the film’s achievements, it’s a semi-sad occasion because its success means more bucks go into the undeserving pockets of Saul Zaentz. The minor media mogul didn’t have a direct part in making the new Rings film but still profits from it. That’s because he owns all the film and merchandising rights to the Tolkein characters. (He got those rights when he funded Ralph Bakshi’s failed 1978 animated Rings.)

As we’ve noted here previously, Zaentz is infamous as the record label mogul who cheated Creedence Clearwater Revival bard John Fogerty out of his royalties and song rights. In a particularly sleazy misuse of the Creedence legacy, Zaentz recently leased Fogarty’s antiwar anthem “Fortunate Son” for a “patriotic” blue-jeans commercial. (The song’s re-recorded with vocals that fade out before the harsh messages start.)

Friday night, I somehow managed to get into what was billed as the last local show ever by the world’s greatest rock n’ roll band, the Fastbacks.

The gig, at Ballard’s fab Sunset Tav, was only announced as the group’s farewell gig in the Stranger two days before; Kathleen Wilson wrote that singer-bassist Kim Warnick wanted to give up the grind (though she’ll continue with her own new band, Visqueen). Thus, apparently, ends 22 amazing years of Warnick, guitarist-songwriter Kurt Bloch, guitarist Lulu Gargiulo, 14 successive drummers, and some 160 (more or less) of the greatest happy/angry noise-pop created anywhere.

The show itself was sold out (I only managed to get in toward the end of openers Droo Church’s set). Many of the crowd had been FBX fans since the ’80s; others were young enough to have been conceived in the bathrooms during early Fastbacks shows.

It was a racous, intense, gorgeous night. Guys with middle-aged backs and knees were pogoing like the old days. Bloch, Warnick, Gargiulo, and alternating drummers Mike Musburger and Jason Finn were tight, loud, and completely Hi-NRG. Fun, sweat, and great memories were had by all, for nearly two hours.

But this is not to imply the Fastbacks are, or ever were, a nostalgia band. Their music is timeless; their basic sound has remained virtually unchanged all this time (except for becoming smarter and more professional). They never lost their classic garage-rock charm or sassiness.

The Fastbacks’ sound is built on simple, solid ingredients: Passionately belted vocals, alternately-keyed female harmonies, workhorse rhythm-section parts, deceptivel intricate guitar riffs, and, most importantly, the complementary interplay between happy music and sad/angry lyrics.

To have ever been a Fastbacks fan is to have fond recollections of having listened to, and identified with, Warnick’s spirited deliveries of Bloch’s negative messages. Typical topics include generalized loss and depression, loneliness, busted friendships, insufferable and/or uncaring authority figures, and frustration at the dysfunctional world of Reagan-Bush America (now more relevant than ever!).

On the bus over to the Sunset, I happenned to be perusing a John Gray self-help book I’d picked up at a bookstore remainder rack. In it, he talked about the need to express your angers and frustration, lest the negative energy build up inside you as a toxin to the soul. That’s the effect I’ve always gotten from the Fastbacks’ songs. They help me exorcise my depressions, and make me happy, at least for the moment.

And they always will, whether or not any more are released.

Though I’m certainly hoping more will be released, or at least “reunion” gigs will take place, or at least-least that Bloch can find a new performing outlet for his particular brand of genius.

…by the local-TV-news hype over “StormWatch 2002” (or actually hoped, like I did, to get caught up in the big rare Seattle snowstorm that, this time, didn’t happen). I speak of those of you who came to our spectacular MISCparty last Saturday night. Special thanks are due to the band Laguna!, to DJ Superjew and DJ E-Z Action, and to the staff of 2nd Avenue Pizza, without whom none of the fun would’ve been possible.

An in-the-works Chris Ballew tribute album! I’d love to record a version of “Volcano,” if they’ll use it.

…the Spumco animation studio has produced in years (yes, that includes the new Fox cartoon The Ripping Friends, which I promise to review here soon). Even odder, it’s hosted on the site of the essentially on-hiatus local label C/Z Records. (Found by Captain Rooba’s Riposte.)

PARTS ONE AND TWO of a tribute to the master of space-age pop music, Juan Garcia Esquivel, who died one week ago today.

A future without the major record labels!

…or what would at least make for interesting new stories:

• Boeing fires Phil Condit; cuts costs by closing the fancy new Chicago HQ, establishing a less top-heavy corporate structure, and installing a smaller main office back in Seattle.
• The new Seattle Seahawks football stadium is named after the largest consistently-profitable company still based here. At Costco Park, all soft drinks come only in 24-packs.
• Two National Hockey League teams in U.S. small markets go broke. One moves to Winnipeg, the other to the Tacoma Dome.
• Baseball commissioner Bud Selig gets “contracted.”
• New York Mayor Bloomberg is forced to resign amid worldwide public outcry over his plan to tear down Yankee Stadium.
• Inventor Dean Kamen shows off a working, affordable, two-seater solar car. Every Republican state governor in America vows to never allow the thing on the streets.
• The major record labels lobby for emergency “survival” legislation allowing them to retroactively cancel all artist royalties whilst setting up government subsidies for executives’ mansions and cocaine budgets.
• Clever rust-belt entrepreneurs form a joint company to buy up underused and/or abandoned factories and mills. Their clothes, shoes, DVD players, garden tools, and other products all carry the same patriotic-themed brand name (perhaps “AmeriMade”). Their ads’ message: If you’re not willing to pay more for an AmeriMade product, you’re a bin Laden sympathizer.
• Democrats retake the U.S. House of Representatives, despite endless rants emanating from Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, the Wall St. Journal, The McLaughlin Group, etc. that anyone who doesn’t vote a straight Republican ticket is a bin Laden sympathizer. The new Congressional leadership begins to openly ask whether permitting further broadcast-media consolidations would be unwise.
• The New Republic runs a lead editorial admitting it is no longer a “liberal” magazine, and hasn’t been since 1983.
• Amazon.com becomes “profitable” by spinning off all its slower-selling product lines (hardware, appliances, sporting goods, etc.) to co-branded joint ventures with traditional retailers. The hardware operation, f’rinstance, becomes “Jack’sHometownHardwareAndBaitShop.com, Powered by Amazon.”
• Osama bin Laden is found in November on a remote island just like a soap-opera villain, having had plastic surgery to look like a whole other person.
• A cheap, simple-to-manufacture AIDS treatment drug is announced. Unfortunately for Muslim African leaders, it turns out to be made from reprocessed pork semen.
• High definition (or at least medium-high definition) TVs finally become popular, chiefly for viewing DVDs.
• Politicians in slumping tourist states propose Nevada-style regulated brothels, sparking a rift between the corporate and moralistic branches of U.S. conservatism.
• Gangsta rap completes its disappearance from the music scene when its last major audience (white mall kids) collectively decides it would rather pretend to be Mexican.
• An NFL head coach admits reports that he’s gay.
• Somebody figures out how to turn a profit from a “content-based” website. But the formula’s still too labor-intensive, and the potential return too low, to interest any but the smallest mom-and-pop sites.
• A major retail chain is reorganized as a co-op of local store operators.

(Edna Gundersen in USA Today on Jennifer Lopez’s J. Lo CD): “If Lopez ever selects material suitable for her vocal range, she’ll be a mime.”