Shane Diamanti Headlines the Vera Project Friday October 16

I'd only done two interviews on my blog, but Shane Diamanti saw the Knowmads interview and hit me up. Shane was a teenager in High School in Lynnwood and had a bit of viral success in early 2013 with his Dictionary Freestyle Rap.

This is a Dictionary Freestyle I did during hip hop club! I hope everyone can enjoy! Our hip hop adviser just start throwing me random words out of the dictionary and I went off of that and it came out pretty dope! There are some parts where it's muted because our hip hop adviser said I couldn't upload it unless I muted the part's I swore so I did! But hope everyone will enjoy the freestyle I did over Sunshine by Atmosphere!
Posted by Shane Diamanti on Thursday, May 2, 2013

I was a bit flattered and happy to interview Shane. Shane dreamed of being a successful performer and wasn't shy about reaching out. I wondered how things would go for him, if he'd ever achieve his dream of headlining shows.

A couple years later in early 2015 Shane got in touch and let me know that it was going pretty well! He had a show at El Corazon in May, and if he wasn't headlining at least it was his EP Release Show. I went ahead and interviewed him before the show and while I missed that show I was able to catch him opening for Mark Battles at the Vera Project a month or two later.

Talking to Shane before he managed to make some of his dreams come true and seeing how he worked towards them, in some ways the worst things that happened to him were the best things. They got him out of his comfort zone, motivated him like nobody's business, and inspired his music. It wasn't clear to me how he might achieve his dreams, and I doubt it was clear to him when he was still in High School, but in adversity he found his commitment to his craft and pursued that like a maniac and the rest is just the details.

So the latest news is that Shane is headlining a show this Friday at the Vera Project.


I'll be there. I'm signed up as the show photographer, but that's probably wishful thinking. If any of the key slots needs to be filled I'll end up doing that instead, so I may end up at the front door or in concessions or roaming security, we'll see. In any event I'll end up helping out with cleanup and I'll sneak into the show room and catch some of the show at least. If you make it to the show, say hi!

Musical Plans

There are interesting musical options over the next few days. After some thought I'm planning an ambitious weekend, hopefully it'll work.

It starts with Friday's Out To Lunch show by the Maldives, one of my favorite local acts (I've got lots of favorites). I saw them at the first Run Vera Run event at Seward Park, at an Out To Lunch show on Harbor Steps a few years back with my daughter, and at Bumbershoot more than once. Jason Dodson also does an occasional solo bit too. Here's a photo by Joe Mabel of the Maldives at the Ballard Seafood Fest, as you can see they have a fairly large band. Fun band, well rehearsed, alt-country songs, good stuff.

The weather looks to be hot and sunny, so maybe we'll stop for a beer on the way back to the office since I'm working the regular 9 to 5 gig in the office downtown.

After work I head over to the Vera Project where I'm volunteering - running sound, so I'll plug microphones in for the Youth Speaks event. This will be poetry and spoken word with a DJ so it's probably some music to, but pre-recorded so the microphone setup isn't too complex. No band to mic, just a few mics for spoken word performers.

I'll miss the Friday night West Seattle Summerfest with Pony Time, The Shivas, La Luz, Lance Romance doing a DJ set and the Thermals headlining - solid lineup and a free show so I hate to miss it, but I still have Saturday.

The West Seattle Summerfest lineup on Saturday includes Sisters, Naked Giants, Wimps, Black Whales, S, The Fame Riot, Kithkin, Vox Mod and the Cave Singers and more. It lasts from Noon to late but I don't, so I figure my son Ben and I can go and see 2 or 3 bands. Maybe Naked Giants, Wimps and Black Whales in the late afternoon, for example. Here's a picture of Naked Giants (at least I think it's Naked Giants, it's from the EMP Sound Off! this Spring)

From here the logistics are slightly tricky. My son is 17 which is fine for West Seattle Summerfest, but the Minus 5 are playing the Tractor Tavern (21+) so my son can't go. I'll have to get him home but leave myself in Ballard. If I drive all the way home from West Seattle to drop Ben off I'm probably not going to be energetic and motivated enough to get our of the house and drive back to Seattle in the evening.

Looks like I need to have Ben head home with a sister, or put him on the bus. That way I can see the Minus 5 with McCaughey and whoever - I saw them at Bumbershoot several years back and really don't want to miss the chance to see them again. They already canceled a Tractor show to go play a show with Tweedy (it may have been a Young Fresh Fellows show that was cancelled, my memory is uncertain).

I can't find pictures from Young Fresh Fellows or Minus 5 shows I've been to, so I'll post an odd (crappy) video of Scott McCaughey doing a Minus 5 song called "Oh Sht Man." Great song, lousy video but the audio is OK. This was from a many hours long "show" with Robyn Hitchcock and other local Seattle luminaries at the Cyclops in Belltown. I think it was really more of a rehearsal than a show - they didn't charge anything and just played an insane number of songs. Hitchcock said they were auditioning the place as a hangout to work on their performance to replace an older hangout they used to use in Belltown.


West Seattle Summerfest is a personal favorite - I remember seeing Shelby Earl doing her different songs with a simple stripped down approach, her music that had something - and this was in 2010, before the albums and NPR love and Amazon's "Best Album You Might Have Missed" award. You can see some amazing, memorable bands and it's free


There's a nice circularity here - I led off with the Out To Lunch series, wandered over to Shelby Earl via West Seattle Summerfest, and now of course I can't stop until I also point out that Shelby Earl is playing a free Out To Lunch show on Wednesday August 19 at Two Union Square. It's worth checking out the web site, there are so many good bands playing like Fly Moon Royalty, Naomi Wachira, the Staxx Brothers, Craft Spells, McTuff, The Dusty 45s, Lee Oskar, Tubaluba, Bleach Bear, Vaudeville Etiquette, St. Paul De Vence, Industrial Revelation, Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band, Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme and more.

Here's the overall West Seattle Summerfest schedule, this is a great lineup of local talent for free. I may miss most of it but I encourage anybody who has the time to see as many bands as possible.

Band	Day	2015 Set time
Gibraltar	FRIDAY	3:00
Evening Bell	FRIDAY	4:00
Pony Time	FRIDAY	5:00
Deep Creep	FRIDAY	6:00
The Shivas	FRIDAY	7:00
La Luz	FRIDAY	8:00
DJ Lance Romance	FRIDAY	9:00
The Thermals	FRIDAY	9:30
Sisters	SATURDAY	11:00
Pig Snout	SATURDAY	12:00
Navvi	SATURDAY	1:00
Timbre Barons	SATURDAY	2:00
Naked Giants	SATURDAY	3:00
Wimps	SATURDAY	4:00
Black Whales	SATURDAY	5:00
S	SATURDAY	6:00
The Fame Riot	SATURDAY	7:00
Kithkin	SATURDAY	8:00
Vox Mod	SATURDAY	9:00
The Cave Singers	SATURDAY	9:30
The Solvents	SUNDAY	1:00
Memphis Radio Kings	SUNDAY	2:00
Stereo Embers	SUNDAY	3:00
Sick Sad World	SUNDAY	4:00

TacocaT, Chastity Belt, S and Childbirth at the EMP Pop Conference

I've mentioned that I like to take engineers visiting from out of town out to see some local music. Recently the EMP held the annual Pop Conference with the theme "Get UR Freak On: Music, Weirdness and Transgression" and booked TacocaT, Chastity Belt, S and Childbirth for an opening show in the Sky Church.

This is the sort of different musical experience available in Seattle that would be hard to come by in most cities. The top few cities have comparable and better - NY, Chicago, LA, and a few other huge cities have truly varied and huge music scenes, but few cities under 1 million have the variety and depth and deep bench that Seattle has. This is exactly the sort of show I look for to take the visiting engineers - it's even all ages!

There are challenges, though. The Get UR Freak On theme and sexual content and tone are generally not appropriate in a business environment. On the show web page there were links for the bands & one of the links led directly to "I Only Fucked You as a Joke"

From the album it's a girl!

While this is a valid artistic expression and probably more common than anyone wants to admit (and a great song!), this is inappropriate in a business context.

On the other hand, we're talking a business context in Seattle, after all. And I've had mild problems with boundaries on occasion too, I overshare on occasion and... well, I talked myself into it.

I mitigated the risk of triggering corporate pain and HR investigations (can you tell I work at a large corporation?) by adding a "BTW If you follow the links and listen to the bands, use headphones. Some of this stuff is NSFW - REALLY!" clause to the email and sent it out to 10 coworkers at Cisco. I wouldn't try that with a larger list or a list that included more people that I didn't know well, but I felt safe in forwarding it to my coworkers, we're all adults with reasonable senses of humor.

It was a great call, of course, but that was never in doubt as far as bands go. About the only thing that didn't go well is that we took so long eating dinner before the show that we missed Childbirth - dang, they had songs I wanted to hear live. Better luck next time, I'll have to keep an eye out for them.

We managed to make it for a classic S set: introspective and haunting, guitar driven without wailing, more a reverb and space approach. Sometimes the lyrics were more out front with multiple parts, sometimes the lyrics faded into the songs yet echoed with emotions felt from a distance or remembered with fading intensity. The instruments change up on occasion for some keyboards but the haunting quality and the feeling of remembered emotional intensity remains.

The EMP Sky Church is a great place to see a show, nobody is very far from the performers and the sound is excellent. My cell phone shot above doesn't do it justice, but it gives you some idea of where we are and the scale of the performance space, anyway. I found a nice creative commons photo from Joe Mabel (here's his flickr page)

I enjoyed it but the Indian engineers were subdued - it's kinda subdued music as far as that goes, I suppose. They were looking for more active music, stronger beats and motion and dancing preferred. Dancy pop music would be more up their alley.

Chastity Belt was up next and while they're not poppy, they certainly brought a higher energy level, louder beat and more positive subject matter to the table. Chastity Belt is more guitar oriented rock and roll, loud with backbeat and a full sound - rhythm and lead guitar, bass, drums and solid rock and roll vocals. Not pretty and polished, more powerful and sneering or laughing - sometimes with us, sometimes at us, a committed performance with a fuck you if you don't like it attitude. That very attitude makes it more appealing and evocative. I just convinced myself they're punk rock too (coming from me that's a compliment) but I've never sweated the categories all that much..

Since my cell phone photo is lame as usual I dug up another creative commons photo so you can see what we saw. Heck, with my nearsightedness we're probably seeing more than I saw at the show in this photo, it's got details! (This photo is from Joe Mabel again; his flickr)

The vocals in Chastity Belt are classic rock and roll, not pretty but expressive, able to get a bit raw, to surge to a powerful crescendo and wind it back, but used in a pretty aggressive manner. This is not subtle music, this is loud amplified music that knows it's load and amplified and likes it and has a swagger or maybe a strut.

Fun set, talented band worth seeing in a great venue.

Next up was the sheer (surf?) pop sweetness of TacocaT. This was the perfect for the visiting engineers. Well executed songs, guitar driven with a great beat, very dance friendly. Bright and exuberant, TacocaT has so much fun you can't help but have fun too.

I have no idea if the visiting engineers were able to hear the vocals and understand them, they all speak and understand English very well but getting TacocaT's word play and underlying meaning can be challenging. Figuring out cultural references the first time you hear a song in a live setting in a non-native tongue would be challenging.

That's OK, they loved the show based on the music and the beat and the performer's visual appeal and what they got of the word play, it was a wonderful upbeat fun set. TacocaT always puts on a great live show - you should see them outdoors on a sunny day with a bubble machine!

Thanks to three kick ass bands for providing a great show and a different perspective and entertaining some friends who flew pretty much all the way around the world for the privilege. I love showing Seattle's music scene off, especially when the bands are so talented and fun. Another great show!

2015 EMP Sound Off! Ruled Like It Always Does

I work with engineers from India who visit Seattle for a few months and work on assorted technical issues around our Mediasense media recording server appliance. As a total local music geek, I've taken it upon myself to make sure they get a good introduction to the Seattle music scene before they head back home.

It's tricky - finding a good show that fits 4 or 5 schedules, making sure we have some way to get there and back, making sure it's not too weird or offbeat (I like that stuff but many don't), the venue's not too dive-ish, etc. All ages shows tend to be a good bet, less drinking and more focus on the music

Every Spring the all-ages EMP Sound Off! shows happen in February with the Finals in March (more or less). This is reliably one of my favorite sets of shows every year. I love getting to know new bands and I'll get to see 12 bands I've never heard of (well, this year I'd heard of 2 but that's an outlier, never happened before). The EMP chooses great bands from a variety of genres out of a large number of applicants and the talent is always amazing.

Each of the 3 semifinal shows has 4 bands, for example we saw Bleachbear, Supersoaked, Champagne Babylon and Night Space. The bands go on in a random order and play for about 40 minutes each.

Bleachbear winning their Semifinal round

Champagne Babylon got the Wild Card runner up spot

Super Soaked rocking out

The judges gather after the show and award a winner and a runner up. There's also an audience participation award; we (the audience) scream for each band and the band with the loudest fans gets some additional prizes. The winner of each of the 3 semifinals goes to the finals. One band from the 3 wild card (runner up) teams is also selected bringing the total to 4 bands.

Once again the 4 bands play in random order and the judges award the title and we all cheer and head home happy and sweaty after another great night of music.

The winner gets studio time and equipment and a performance slot at Bumbershoot. There were a couple of additional festivals with buyers in attendance signing up bands for the year's regional festivals.

This year the energy was very positive and we had a wide range of acts and styles of music. I enjoyed the heck out of it and every single band I saw is worth keeping an eye on. Bleachbear, Naked Giants, Emma Lee Toyoda and One Above None Below have all been getting gigs around town & that's just the shows I noticed.

In the finals One Above and None Below came from the Wild Card slot to win it all with an electric performance against intense competition - intensely happy and upbeat competition, every single act seemed to be having the time of their life and obviously enjoyed getting to play for us.

The peak acts got us dancing and sweating and having a great time, and every act was interesting and different and unique. It was  a memorable introduction to the all-ages Seattle music scene for the engineers who'd flown around the globe from almost the exact opposite side.

Shane Diamanti: Upcoming EP Release Show at El Corazon

Shane Diamanti has a sold out EP Release show this Friday May 22 at El Corazón.

I interviewed Shane two years ago and figured it was time to check back in.

It’s been a couple of years, what've you been up to?
Shane: I did “Dictionary Freestyle” on Facebook and that blew me up (over 1,000 likes & 100 shares, feel free to check it out and give it some love), I got tons of messages, I walked around my city and people knew who I was. That was crazy.

I went and saw Sam Lachow, he came up to was like “I’m a fan of you man” “What?” “Yeah, your dictionary free style!” what the heck, and Raz Simone came up to me “I know who you are.” I look up to these guys, it was cool.

I wrote a lot but I wasn't recording for a while.

Shane “worked” the Sam Lachow w/Gifted Gab & BFA show at the Neptune in November of 2014 from the audience
Shane: I met people that night, when Sam called for people to get on stage they yelled “pick Shane” and Sam said “I know Shane, get up here Shane” and people might’ve been rapping and having fun, but I was talking to everyone on stage so I could get the connections. I already knew Ariana DeBoo and I was talking to Sam’s saxophone player and we’re cool now, I was just talking to him today. I talked to Raz that day, Sam, to all of them.

That inspired me – damn, I could be on that stage again! The last time I did shows was in High School and only 30 people came, it wasn't that cool.

I’m going to book a show, I booked it at El Corazón lounge – when I messaged them first they were like “you want a weekday?” and I said “you want it to sell out?” and they said “all right, you can have a Friday.” 

It’s about to sell out. (It sold out weeks ago now.)

I’m excited for that, I’ve never headlined before, this is my first headline.

Who are you playing with? 

Shane: Ronnie Dylan & Dyllyn Greenwood, my DJ Jay Battle & Ronnie Dylan’s DJ is Jake Crocker

Release show? 

Shane: Yes, my EP release, my first professional recorded EP. I always recorded in my room but now I’m recording down at Jay Battle place. It’s called “Changed My Mind.” Over time I changed my mind about what style I should have, so I was like I should just have an EP with every style, trying something out.

I’m still going to do stuff off my album, I’m working on getting that out next year in December. I’m working on a mixtape that IS my style so people know what my style is like. I’ve been trying to get a whole bunch of music written. I’ve been working for this for six years.

I always dreamt this stuff – one day I’m going to be on the radio, I’m about to be on the radio. One day I’m going to sell out a show, I’m going to sell out a show! (Sure enough, he sold out the show).

I always dreamt this stuff, but now I’m about to do it so now I gotta make dreams that are even higher. Next year I want to have an album release in December and I want to sell out the Neptune. That’s my goal.

I want this show to be for the fans. They’re not really my fans, I call them friends. I took the bus to Olympia, Lacey, Everett, Arlington, Marysville, I’m going to Wenatchee taking the train this weekend, to meet everybody. It’s one thing to send someone a link “yeah, come to my show” but it’s another thing to meet them in person, hand them their ticket and see their face. They’re happy to meet me and I’m like “I’m happy to meet you!” it goes both ways.

 It’s going to be crazy!

Sebastian Mehenka covers "A Sky Full of Stars"

My wife pointed out Sebastian Mehenka's work on YouTube to me and  I enjoyed it. His video of "A Sky Full of Stars" in particular was well done. He covered it for his girlfriend and his clear earnest vocals carry the romantic song with a nice effects presence making it sound like he's singing in a large echoing room. The piano playing is nice and I'm pretty impressed by the visual content too. There are some interesting ideas and themes. BTW was that a shrimp or a lobster scooting along? Surprising yet fitting visual element, somehow.

He has other content worth checking out too.
Sebastian lives somewhere off in Canada near Toronto, nowhere near where I live, so YouTube may be the only way I'd ever see Sebastian's work. I always enjoy it when I stumble across nicely crafted music and listen to something unanticipated that I like.