Top 10 in 2011

I went out of my way to see a huge amount of live music in 2011. I've decided to pick my favorites in 3 main categories: favorite national acts, local favorites and new favorites. There aren't always ten winners, I only pick 7 national acts, 11 local favorites and eleven new favorites. I also pick 5 best songs and 4 additional accomplishments.

Best National Acts local favorites who've gone national and my favorite non-local big acts

Presidents of the USA - I saw them twice, at PUSA Fest and at Bumbershoot on the main stage. Both times I had Ben, Carina and Heather with me, and enjoyed the crap out of it. The Prez still rock out and get big crowds bouncing around to the beat and sweating all over each other. Having my kids along puts it over the top, the Presidents kept me and my kids rocking in 2011!


Das Racist played the Sasquatch Preview show, Sasquatch, the Capitol Hill Block Party and Bumbershoot, so they went from unknown to my favorite rappers. All tan everything indeed.


Two of my top national acts - Death Cab For Cutie and Maklemore & Ryan Lewis - get props for best live song (Where Soul Meets Body and Just Dance, respectively) below.

Decembrists added an additional voice, I think the original female vocalist left the band later in 2011 after this show.


Finally caught up with The Reverend Horton Heat live, the kids and I have some fond memories of his hits a decade or so back.



Foo Fighters did their bombastic rock show at the Gorge Friday night at Sasquatch.




Local Favorites

Mad Rad always puts on a great show with standout songs like Life On Party Mountain and You Only Live Once (air keyboards!)

Kimya Dawson is an idiosyncratic performer who brings passion and creativity and thoughtful patter into a show like nobody else does!

The Thermals reliably kick my ass and this year I got multiple ass kickings at the Sasquatch kick-off show, at Sasquatch and Bumbershoot.

PWRFL Power made a rare appearance at Magma Fest doing thrashy guitar work, nice to see him again, it had been way too long.

Brite Futures matures into an arena rocking heavy weight. I remember seeing them as Natalie Portmans Shaved Head at the EMP Sound Off many years ago, they've made it almost to the top.

Land of Pines - saw them at least 3 times: at the Vera, CHBP, and Reverb.

Ryan LaPlante

Kinski always puts on a solid set of great music

Silicon Girls - got to know a nice kid in the band while he was volunteering for the All Ages Movement Project, I enjoy their shows.

Hey Marseilles has consistently brought it - I still remember a cover of Love Insurgent from a few Bumbershoots back that ruled. They were in prime form in 2011.




Bear Cove from Bellingham kicked it out




New Favorites - Bands that I immediately liked that I had never seen before, sometimes I'd never heard them either.
Titus Andronicus

The Globes - listed in best song for "A Stitch Can't Save the World" and here's "Stay Awake" from Sasquatch:

Antlers - one of many excellent Sasquatch performances, need to see them again

The Smith and Westerns - another band I was unfamiliar with that played an excellent set at Sasquatch.

Other Lives were another discovery at Sasquatch

Tokyo Police Club - another unknown to me band that ruled. Sensing a trend?

Champagne Champagne did shows at the Vera Project and CHBP and Bumbershoot, I believe. Hip hop rap duo, excellent material and the two voices are different and play well together; every performance is an instance party, worth checking out if you ever get the opportunity. They've spent a fair amount of time touring with STRFKR recently.

Sol broke out some, I like the live lineup here with a drum set, bass, backing vocals, and a DJ who might have some keyboards.

TacocaT - palindromes and bright punk thrashing, gotta love it!


Sleeper Agent


My Goodness packed quite a punch for a duo.




Best Live Song

I Like Giants by Kimya Dawson Kimya had another one about a friend dying that had me in tears, and Alphabut is the Stairway to Heaven of little kids songs

And We Danced by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. The Town, My Oh My, and Dark Side all hit it out of the park or is it the Key



Where Soul Meets Body by Death Cab For Cutie (I'll Follow You Into the Dark, Title and Registration, that one jealous one "Gotta spend some time love... I will posses your heart")Listening to Where Soul Meets body at Sasquatch as my Mom's soul was losing it's last tenuous hold on her body sure gave it a wallop.

A Stitch Can't Save the World by the Globes

The River Runs Deep by Knowmads




Special props

At 4,078 views Macklemore & Ryan Lewis playing "And We Danced" is my most popular video. I managed to post it a few weeks before they got the song out which drove traffic; their video came out a little later and it has 652 thousand views.

My blog on the Craft Spells show at the Vera Project was my most viewed blog. Every week multiple people were viewing it; I'm not sure why it had so much more staying power, I have to attribute it to the audience - the fans. I can't see that I did anything special that was different from my other blogs. If it was something I did, I'd do it more!



I saw Knowmads at the Vera Project right before my fiftieth birthday. Shortly after that I took a class in interviewing musicians and had to select somebody to interview so I contacted their agent and set up an interview. They were young and therefore less intimidating, I suppose. My first on camera interview was with Knowmads Tom Wilson and Tom Pepe.


My video of the interview got 567 views, and blackout3842 (who does media, social media and web wangling for the Knowmads) posted excerpts that got more than 2,300 views.


Sea Cats were my son's first local band crush. We saw them at a Veracity show and got an inexpensive CD that Ben enjoyed, then he randomly got to see them do an outdoor show at the Seattle Center when he and Carina were wandering around. They got a nice gig at the Vera Project and I interviewed Josh Davis before it.

January Retrospective

In January I saw the All Ages Project show (Kimya Dawson rules! and I enjoyed seeing Duston's band My Parade) with 3 bands; I'd seen Kimya Dawson before (CHBP and 2x at the Vera).

I saw the Veracity show with 3 bands, all new to me. (Dead Coats, the Masque) I got an some excellent audio recordings, I'll have to figure out how to post those to the web.

I saw Jon's 50th Birthday Bash with Ryan LaPlant and Wired, got some good audio recordings from this too.

I saw the Rock-N-Roll carnival with 6 bands, Hounds of the Wild Hunt, Eric Miller, Mini-Rex, Sex Offender, Badlands and Creem City, I'd seen Badlands before at a Veracity show.

I also was a table host at the Vera 10th Anniversary auction, so I got to see Thee Satisfaction - I saw them at Bumbershoot last Summer in the Sky Church. Here's a photo from the Sky Church show:

Highlights: Ryan Laplant rocking our butts off solo, Kimya Dawson brilliant and unpredictable, making me cry twice, Wired's intelligently composed tightly performed suite of rock history, the Masque playing an awesome song that I missed in real time due to cooking tacos that knocked my socks off when I played back the recording, lots of talented and appealing performers that I'd never seen before, lots of music and good times.

Lowlights: the things I missed: Forgetters, the head-liners of the Rock-N-Roll Circus: RepoMen, Church for Sinners and Strong Killings, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger


So I made it to 4 shows and an auction in January and saw 15 bands including 12 bands that were new to me. Not a bad way to start the year!

Nothing special going on for the next few months, festivals don't start for a while yet. I don't know if I can keep up a 15 band/month pace for the next couple of months, most likely it'll drop off to 6 or 9 per month, we'll see how it goes.
The festivals should help pump the numbers up, but it'll be hard to actually get caught up with blogging about them: so many bands for days on end, an embarrassment of riches.

All Ages Movement Project show at the Vera

Heather volunteered as a front door assistant and I volunteered for cleanup at the All Ages Movement Project (AMP) show in January. The headliner was Kimya Dawson (awesome!) but I'd never heard of the intro bands. I was checking out "My Parade" on youTube and enjoying some political punk music and the camera finally panned enough to the left that I saw a guitarist that looked familiar. I could swear that was Dustin, the guy who sits at the front door a the Vera Project. The camera tracked back to the middle so you could see the female vocalist and the rest of the band, so I wasn't completely sure but it sure looked like him.

The day of the show I ended up chatting with a dude I had never met before the bands started. I mentioned tracking down the band's video and thinking I'd seen that kid from the Vera Project - Justin (doh! I knew it was Dustin, I just mis-spoke). The guy laughed and said "yeah, Dustin is in the band." Turns out he was the bass player. I didn't know until later when they took the stage.

First up was these guys, they may be Silicon Girls but I'm guessing.


They put on a solid short set, and the Vera was lively with people staying from the AMP stuff and more dropping in to see the show. One guy came in all made up in green so I had to talk to him. He was coming from an appearance at a kids birthday party.


He asked about what we did at the Vera and I told him about music, the art gallery, the screen-print and recording studio.

"What about performance?" he asked, and I could see what he was getting at. We've had the occasional break dance show, fashion shows, and quite a few seminars. Not much in the way of acting or plays, and not a whole lot of spoken words stuff.

Next up was "My Parade" - the band with Dustin in it. The mix wasn't great, so it was hard to hear the lyrics or much else clearly over the bass, but the beat was fun and the band got the crowd moving pretty well. I got a CD from them so I can listen to their lyrics and hear the different parts.


We had Selector Dub Narcotic spinning disks, turns out he runs K-Records in Olympia so he's a local legend and a bit famous. He got a crowd up on the stage dancing for a bit right before Kimya went on.


...and finally Kimya took the stage. She was in rare form, comparing rose petal tea to bath water and playing her numbers briskly. The sound was a little ragged at first - there's a charming bit where she screams due to the feedback in this video:



...but they dialed in the sound after that and it was a classic fun upbeat Kimya Dawson show. She took a couple of requests and Yoda did yoga and ended up on stage for an extended bit with Kimya, riffing on corporate control and having a great time.


Kimya did a rap song that was interesting, she's always had a way with longer less repetitive lyrics and the rap format actually fitted her odd song structure approach fairly well. She had Your Heart Breaks playing a simple drum line against the rap for surprisingly effective result - quite political of course, which is what you expect from Kimya: intensely personal, highly political, life and death, suicide, depression and friendships, the subjects are what Kimya's passionate about.

She played a song I was unfamiliar with about a transgendered pre-op friend dieing of cancer that made me cry, and I discovered new depths in "I Like Giants" that made me cry as well. Really a very moving show and a great way to start out the new year.