"Chromeo @ Capitol Hill Block Party, 7/26/2008," by Seattlest Donte. Ahh, Saturday! A chronologically arranged discussion of the Block Party, Day Zwei (Day Eins here): The Physics: It's weird to see them in daylight, but then again, their happy, casual version of hiphop meshes well with a sunny day and a stomach full of the Champagne of Beer from the nearby beer garden. Justo and Thig had Monk Wordsmith (Thig's brother) on stage with......

Without Green River in 1984, there might be no Sub Pop Records today. Without Sub Pop in 1987, there might be no Mudhoney—or even Pearl Jam—in 2008. (Green River begat Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone; MLB begat PJ.) And without either in the 80s, there likely would have been no "Seattle Sound" explosion in the early 90s. Fortunately, the timing and location were right for both the post-punk-rock band—originally comprised of singer Mark Arm,......

At the same time that major-label releases from Nirvana and Pearl Jam were drawing international attention to Seattle's rock scene, the Gits were building an underground following with their raucous, blues-infused punk sound, their 1992 debut album, Frenching the Bully, and their singer's versatile, vibrant pipes. Cobain had cadence and a smooth/sandpaper rasp. Vedder had a deep-welled baritone croon. Mia Zapata had a sweet, soulful, explosive growl that should have been just as famous.......

The Budos Band opened up the night in style! Photo by Seattlest's Abbey Simmons. The Saturday Knights/Budos Band show at Nectar on Friday night was sold out by 9:30 p.m., as in guest lists closed, no further entrance, and crowds of people partying outside the gates. Seattlest arrived at a normally respectable hour of 10:45 p.m. to find the Budos Band's shiny brass horns blaring, congo drums thumping, and every inch of Nectar packed with......

Scottish band Sons and Daughters maintains a fierce sound that fluctuates between rock and punk, paired with catchy choruses. If you still need a sonic picture, they’ve opened for Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand and The Decemberists. Sons and Daughters are playing Neumo’s tomorrow night, a re-scheduled show, due to "logistical problems," from earlier this April. Considering that their latest album tells stories of depression and loss, we can only imagine what these logistical problems may......

We didn't go to a single concert at the Showbox last year. Ok, so we saw Obama at the SoDo, but that's not nearly the same thing, even though there were bands preceding the politics. It's most unusual for us to have a Showbox-free year, that's for sure. But along with that Gutter Twins show in March, there're a few more events on the Showbox calendar that are worth buying tickets for in advance......

Time magazine claims, "You can't swing a dead cat this time of year without hitting a Top 10 List." Never one to waste a perfectly good dead cat, we decided to take a swing and create a Top Random-Number Shows Seattlest Saw This Year. And now, without any further ado, here's how your favorite bloggers broke down the year: According to Dante, everything else pared in comparison to Daft Punk at WaMu Theater 7/29/07. OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!......

This is the end, the end of free movies, care of Scion. Single tear. Via their Route film series, the youth-oriented car company has already tackled the true-to-life topics of blood diamonds in hip hop and nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community. Now for something completely different: Daft Punk's Electroma is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become......

firefighter sculpture2 by El Gregein. Anyone else reminded of Daft Punk? Find more happy memory-evoking images in the lovely Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

We were bummed we didn't make it down to Portland for Jim Blanchard's show at the Night Gallery (we were stuck at the Ballard Sunset Bowl where we overheard a guy in the bathroom piss AND puke at the same time, which can't be normal. Who pukes standing, while pissing?), but lucky for us the show is now on the gallery's site. There are some classics here - including the Afrouni-Teat, a version of......

It’s been just about a week and a half now since the grandmasters of interplanetary French electro-house graced Seattlest’s fine city. Now that the formerly much-anticipated Alive 2007 tour is almost over, Seattlest can only get its Daft Punk fix through the blogosphere, comparing online video posts and reading contentious hipster blogs that argue about at whom’s house the robo-duo first played. Lucky for Seattlest, The Fader’s online blog continues to publish the tour diary......

Last week, Seattlest posed the question, "Just what is WaMu Theater?" According to the comments that followed this question, WaMu Theater is an "insincere" "characterless" "uninviting" "concrete cave" with "crappy sound". Whoa, Seattle. Harsh words. In the interest of fair reporting, we accepted an invitation to speak with Andrew Roe -- Marketing Director and Talent Buyer for AEG Live. We asked Mr. Roe whether there's more to WaMu Theater than what it appears to be......

When entertainment giant AEG Live announced plans to create a new and innovative music venue inside Quest Field Events Center, we imagine a big to do with all the local press in a large room packed with music lovers on one side and bankers on the other. Wonder which side was clapping more wildly... We haven't been to WaMu Theater yet, but with the kind of high-profile shows the place has been booking (Deftones, Daft......

"Daft Punk @ WAMU Center, Seattle, WA, 7/29/2007" by Seattlest's own Donte. Looks like it was an amazing show! Big thanks to Donte and everyone else in the Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

In anticipation of French house DJs Daft Punk's show at WaMu Theatre this Sunday, head to Lower Level at the Capitol Hill Arts Center tonight for a screening of the first film directed by the electro duo: Electroma, a film made by Daft Punk, is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human. Their symbolic quest, which takes them from......

Seattlest, it must be admitted, is not always ahead of the zeitgeist. We (or at least this author) only ever got around to reading Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life in like 2004. Thus hyped for the good old days of the real underground, we were inspired to go see Dinosaur Jr. a couple months later when, reunited, they stopped by the Showbox. Now, we must admit to never having really listened......

OMFG! Daft Punk is coming to Seattle! Air too! How do you announce those things on the same day? It's just too much. I can't breathe. I think I'm gonna go lie down until more details on ticket sales are announced. Video of Daft Punk at last year's Coachella after the jump.......

A good rule of thumb for playing trivia: When in doubt, go with your first answer. It saves arguing and cuts right through potentially endless cycles of self-doubt. Unfortunately, Tuesday night at the Hopvine, that rule of thumb failed us. Twice. And left our team, I Am Anna Nicole's Babydaddy, in second place. "What philosopher is associated with deconstructionism?" Our gut answered quickly: Baudrillard. Wait a second, said our brain, I think it's Derrida. Our......

Its Christmas Eve and the pickens are slim. Here are some random things around town tonight that look potentially do-able: MUSIC: Punk, Pabst and Porn with DJs 23rd Hour and Nils Forever. This is mostly because we love the Juju, their deals are usually no cover and this doesnt look too holidays-ish. 9 p.m. // Bad Juju // Free MUSIC: The Suffering Fuckheads Xmas Eve Party. No clue if this is worth recommending or......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

Tuesday 7th >>> Foreigner at The Paramount. Be warned: whether you're cold as ice or hot-blooded, this is the kind of rock that leads to double-vision. *video: Urgent 8:00pm; $40-$150. The $150 includes a pre-show wine tasting and meet & greet. >>> Bonnie Prince Billy at The Tractor. Will Oldham has been keeping us at arm's length with the "Bonnie Prince Billy" moniker for years. We can pretend it isn't true, but it is.......

Tuesday 17th >>> Beirut at The Croc. This 20-year-old wunderkind from Albuquerque is the latest entrant into Who Wants To Be a Gypsy Rock Star Millionaire? 9pm;$10 >>> The Secret Machines at The Showbox. The sonically huge psych rockers will be performing tonight in the round, each member of the trio on an elevated platform on the venue floor. If nothing else, it's something different. 8pm doors; $14adv/$16dos. All ages Wednesday 18th >>> The......

Celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday with the Bikini Bandits and Phillyist! (NSFW). Speaking of Mr. Franklin, send in a picture of Ben (or Ed Rendell) with a red tongue and win a free t-shirt. And they might have the next YearlyKos in Philly. You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. LAist's sex advice column on......

So when you commit yourself to double-booking for an evening, how do you prepare? Ordinarily Seattlest doesn't have an issue since there's a bit of a break between events, or one is low-key, the other more lively, but Monday night we made the decision to not only catch the synthy-goodness that is the Rentals at Neumos, but to catch some of New York's finest MCs at the Boot Camp Clik show at Chop Suey......

Actually, we heard Murder by Death (myspace) first, then Two Gallants (myspace). Both are remarkable for what we're going to inventively call "the new lyricism" -- a two-fisted Carver-esque stylistic concern for narrative produced by a mutant strain of whisky-slugging Decemberists from the wrong side of the tracks. Murder by Death, out of Bloomington, Indiana, has a song on their third album, In bocca al lupo, called "Sometimes the Line Walks You" -- which gives......

In all the annals of music, it's hard to imagine anymore specific a genre than "gypsy punk." But that's just the sort of cabaret-esque insanity that Gogol Bordello brings to their shows. The band's story is as strange as their music and stage shows. Frontman Eugene Hutz is a Ukrainian refugee displaced as a child in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. After bouncing through various European countries, he wound up in Vermont. As an......

Apparently, Jesus rocks! Or at least music made by people who love Jesus is capable of rocking. That seems to be the theme of Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?, a documentary about the Christian rock scene screening tonight at the 911 Media Arts Center Theater. The film primarily covers a Christian rock festival in downstate Illinois, chockful of interviews with the performers as well as festival-goers. And whaddya know: Directors Vickie......

The Boston-area rap duo Big Digits will make their triumphant return to our side of the hood Saturday, nearly one year after their victorious "rap battle in Seattle" (Get it? It rhymes...) whereby their west coast rivals Cancer Rising "got served" a rap-tastic smackdown that shamed Larry Mizell into hiding. But seriously: The show Big Digits put on last May at the Lo_Fi was one of the year's best performances, particularly for the insane,......

What better way to enjoy Memorial Day weekend than under a cloudless sky with a sweltering sun on the hottest day of the year? Seattlest hates hot weather (we tend to sweat easily and a lot), but we braved Saturday's exxxtreme temps to catch some outstanding music at Sasquatch. When it was all said and done, we had seen eight full acts and pieces of another three; we also managed to successfully avoid sunburn.......

Who doesn’t love pornography? Ok, how about the pornography business? You probably don't know that much about it, but Legs McNeil does. Legs McNeil, former editor of Spin magazine and former editor-in-chief of Nerve, gets down and dirty with his newest book The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of The Porn Film Industry. In the past, his focus has primarily been on music, including Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, a......