Here we are at Day 16 of the Festival. If by now you're long tired of SIFF, you're in luck: STIFF starts tonight. And if you're tired of our takes on this year's festival films, check out reviews by Blue Scholars' MC Geologic. In addition to everything below, this weekend also offers the last chance to hit up two great documentaries, both of which we've previously mentioned, and both of which deserve another shout-out.......

"Blue Scholars" from Brokn on Flickr. Thanks! The most important thing we brought away from the EMP Pop Conference was the name Labi Siffre, along with a link to the English musician's blog, Into The Light. This was the fruit of a moving, well-researched presentation from Charles Aaron, music editor at Spin, and we can't wait to dive deeper into Siffre's poetry and musical catalog from the 70s and 80s. Aside from that presentation......

MUSIC: The 2008 Pop Conference at EMP kicks off today (and runs through the 13th). There's more than 160 presenters across some forty panels. Tonight there's a keynote panel (inspired by the current EMP|SFM exhibition American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music) with Louie Perez of Los Lobos and Raul Pacheco of Ozomatli. Later on in the conference, a performance by Blue Scholars, a talk about being a "ghostwriter" by the king of the......

Seattlest is quaking in their boots (bought especially for the occasion) with excitement for this years SXSW in Austin, Tex. We're making our initial sojourn to the festival and are so pleased to see there will be a strong Seattle contingent joining us in Austin this year. There are, to our calculations, 29 Seattle bands officially associated with the festival this year. These bands will be playing sanctioned showcases, what we will call "the......

Nectar was packed full of hiphop fans anticipating the power line-up on Saturday night. Macklemore, back from a tour in Europe, headlined in a masterful performance with special guests XPerience (out of Olympia) and Evan Roman; The Physics glowed with bright enthusiasm through their streamlined set; JFK of Grayskul (and his shaggy-haired little brother!) rocked some of his solo work, and we finally got to hear Wizdom do his thing. Wiz's solid work was......

Right on the heels of the announcement that the Mars Volta was added to the Sasquatch lineup, and right before tickets go on sale this Saturday, the three-day music festival has seen fit to delineate who will be playing on which day: Saturday, May 24th R.E.M. / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / The New Pornographers / The National / Ozomatli / Beirut / Dengue Fever / Fleet Foxes / The Breeders / Okkervil River......

After months of wild speculation, the official 2008 Sasquatch lineup has finally been announced: R.E.M. / The Cure / The Flaming Lips U.F.O. Show / Death Cab For Cutie / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / Flight Of The Conchords / Rodrigo Y Gabriela / Michael Franti & Spearhead / The Breeders / Built To Spill / The Hives / Tegan & Sara / The Presidents / Ghostland Observatory / Ozomatli / The New Pornographers......

Think nightlife is getting the short end of the stick in Seattle? Filled with righteous indignation over the way hiphop gets portrayed as Capitol Hill's downfall? We do, and we are, so it was a healthy shock to the system (and yet oddly familiar) to read about this Saudi hiphop group which, to the great chagrin and social shame of the guys' fathers and wives, made it onto MTV Arabia. From the MSNBC story about......

D.Black, co-owner of Seattle's Sportn' Life Records and full-time, big-time hiphop MC and producer, took a few minutes out of his increasingly busy life to talk to Seattlest about what he's been up to the past few months. Where you've seen him recently: hosting Grynch's album release on January 27th, or rocking the fog machine and The Life medallion on Day Two of The Program back in December. Catch him this Friday night: 8pm doors,......

At last, 2007 draws itself to a close! We've spent the latter half of December rocking out to an unhealthy amount of local hiphop and, accordingly, nursing a terribly un-hiphop head cold. We've had plenty of material upon which to reflect, however, including our experiences at Days Four and Five of The Program; allow us to offer you this monster post on that very material, after which we promise to only tangentially mention this five-day......

Okay, fine. We admit it: actually being at an event rocks at least ten times harder than watching it streamed online, no matter how good the audio/video feed is and no matter how much you love the internet. Day Three of The Program involved Seattlest physically putting our hands in the air and side to side (Grynch said to!), and even doing some headbanging to The Saturday Knights. Yes, we did spend physical, non-internet money......

First of all, we have grown slightly disenchanted with the SyncLive method of experiencing The Program. Though we were most certainly not enamoured with the Swollen Members and Blue Scholars shows on Tuesday, our friends who were actually there say the energy in the room made a weak set from Swollen 100% more bearable. And according to the Stranger's Paul Constant, the set from Blue Scholars on Day #1 was "legendary." We stand by our......

Five night Hip-Hop Extravaganza "The Program" began last night at 8:45pm, and we were in our pajamas eating stale Cheeto Puffs and drinking cheap red wine from the grocery store. What's that? Did you just call us a slacker journalist? Hardly -- we were watching the show on SyncLive, which streamed the entire show (plus soundcheck!) in surprisingly good video/audio quality. Once we figured out how to re-buffer the feed without refreshing the entire page,......

Okay, friends and neighbors. December is a huge month for local hip-hop, and not just because of Blue Scholars' The Program. This week, Chop Suey's got you covered for Monday and Tuesday with the Parker Brothaz tonight (GMK will be there! We love that guy!) and freestyle master Eyedea & DJ Abilities tomorrow night. Over in Fremont, Nectar's offering Waves of the Mind and Gabriel Teodros/Abyssinian Creole on the 13th (there are nine acts......

The Program (Dec. 18-22) will be way cooler than we initially thought, folks. Not only will some of the biggest names in NW hip-hop be on stage for your entertainment five nights in a row, but the latest news is that there are all kinds of technological tie-ins that will make this event very, very 21st-century. For instance: if you bring your cell phone to the show (haha! Who doesn’t bring their cell phone to......

True confessions time: We've never set foot in 826 Seattle. We think we might have seen the building once, at night, while driving somewhere else. We'd turn in our hipster license, but as Seattlest Jeremy notes, "parenthood remains the antidote to hipness." We've never been all that hip, but we are writers, we (used to) read McSweeney's, and we've been aware of Seattle's hippest educational center, 826 Seattle, since before it opened. We just chose......

Admittedly, the only reason we know this is because we submitted a poem and it's on a bus, and so we were invited to the party. Sadly there was never any chance that we were going to stand up in public and read it. Its only purpose is to disrupt the glances of bus riders lingering over the list of things you're not allowed to do on buses in Spanish, the announcement of whichever UW......

The third annual 826 Seattle benefit People Talking and Singing will fill the seats at Town Hall next Thursday. Comedian Patton Oswalt had to cancel, but the event still features host John Roderick of the Long Winters, Dave Eggers, comedians Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, New Yorker music critic (and current blogosphere gadfly) Sasha Frere-Jones, local songstress Rosie Thomas, and Geologic of the Blue Scholars. People Talking and Singing has become the must-see annual......

Bumbershoot 2005 hosted the inaugural People Talking and Singing show, where 2,800 festival attendees packed McCaw Hall to see Dave Eggers, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Mike Doughty, Sarah Vowell, and Death Cab for Cutie, all the while raising $18K for 826 Seattle, the youth writing center in Greenwood. Last year's event, also at Bumbershoot, was hosted by Daily Show Resident Expert™ John Hodgman and singer Jonathan Coulton. Eggers, Handler, Gibbard, and Vowell were back......

Heads up, Seattle: there's a Beat Battle going down at Neumos tonight (Thursday)! It's called something dorky like "Red Bull Big Tune Championships," but don't let the name fool you. De La Soul will be there, Brainstorm will be there, Daps1 (we hope) will be there. Vitamin D's on the bill, and Sabzi of Blue Scholars is planning on strutting his stuff. Neumos has DV-One of recently (some would say wrongfully) convicted fame on the......

Katelyn Hackett attends local hiphop shows. She will write about them for Seattlest. Another gleeful, sharp, and passionate local hiphop show came and went Sunday night at Neumos, and chances are high that you weren't there. Chances are high, actually, that you didn't even know it was happening. Seattlest heard about the show through our perusal of trusty MySpace bulletins; if we weren't already such devoted fans we could have easily spent the evening with......

Though Seattlest would love nothing more than to give you a proper review of the KEXP barbecue, we've come to the stinging conclusion that it's simply not in the cards. We just got a work deadline thrown at us like a ton of cliches and this is the best we can do for you right now. To be sure, the whole day was spectacular. The Blakes were top notch, even though we had to......

Can you think of a better way to spend your Saturday than kicking back on the lawn, chowing on a burger and listening to great live music? Didn't think so. Grab your shades, your sunblock and your appetite, kids. The barbecue is upon us! Providing the tunes are Blue Scholars (with 7-piece band!), Cloud Cult, Pela, The Cave Singers and The Blakes. We've seen most of these bands and can vouch for their fun factor,......

Oh Seattle, you make us feel so old. It was maybe a year ago and some, while we were wallowing in the mud at Sasquatch, clutching our $8 cans of Budweiser, when we finally said to ourselves, "You know what? Outdoor festivals suck." And then we recoiled in horror. Hating festivals is the very definition of getting old, isn't it? Really. There's an accepted narrative explanation of this phenomenon at pseudo-hipster bastions like The......

Seattlest arrived on scene soon after the Capitol Hill Block Party had opened. We wandered, checked out the stage locations and thought about getting a beer, then spotted a booth touting free bottled water. It looked like the booth had something to do with praying to the Earth Spirits or some other new wave white hippy crap, but we decided to take our chances. We asked for a water and oddly enough their were no......

Last week's high-profile, faux low-profile United States of Electronica show at the Comet should convince you to check them out at the Firehouse in Ballard Old Fire House in Redmond this weekend. Maybe this was supposed to be a Lashes show but now is an ersatz Lashes benefit due to Eric Howk's injury. How funny would it be if Blake Lewis showed up at one of the Blue Scholars' record release shows at the Showbox......

BENEFIT: The Clif Bar Save Our Snow Tour, featuring DJ Sabzi from the Blue Scholars, stops by Fremont to help start global cooling. First they came for the snow, but we said nothing, because we follow the sun. 7-10:30pm // Evo Gear in Fremont 122 NW 36th St. // $5 BOOK:Journalist and activist Ann Jones talks about her book Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan, her account of volunteering to teach English to......

MUSIC: Blue Scholars and Common Market 8pm // Neumo's // $20. 21+ MUSIC: Harvey Danger with Slender Means and "Awesome." 9pm // Crocodile // $25. 21+ (also an early show at 4pm for all-ages; $5) PARTY: Arcana: New Years Masquerade Ball 9pm // Capitol Hill Arts Center // $30 (or $75 for deluxe pimp action) MUSIC: The Melvins, Big Business, Porn, "Hot Sauce" Butch Darlene 8pm// Showbox // $25 "MYSTICAL" PARTY: There's this weird......

SEX: Sex-positive retailer Babeland closes out 2006 with their annual three day sale, with even some of their most popular toys marked down 25%. Let's face it, the other gifts you may have received this holiday season won't provide the long-term satisfaction something you pick up here will. 11am-10pm (also Noon-7pm Sunday and 11am-10pm Monday) // 707 E Pike St. // 25% off whatever pleasing your bits and pieces is worth MUSIC: As hard as......

As it should be, it's quiet this week in Seattle, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to do -- especially the closer we get to New Year's Eve. So without further ado, Seattlest's belated gift to you -- some shows: Thursday, December 28 >>> Vicci Martinez, Kym Tuvim, Jonatha King, and Danny Godinez at The Tractor. Singer/songwriter Vicci Martinez is not only an immensely talented artist with impressive stage presence, she's also cute as......