Vic Chesnutt on tour earlier this year with bandmate Guy Picciotto at his side.

​If you're headed to Ballard this evening, stop by Hattie's and throw a dollar in the kitty for Tina Chesnutt. At the behest of part-owner Jeff Taylor, the neighborhood institution is collecting funds to help Vic Chesnutt's widow with his many remaining medical bills. You can also donate online via the PayPal account that his dear friend Kristin Hersh has set up.

This is part nine in a ten-part series; previous entires can be viewed over here.

​While there's certainly nothing wrong with melancholic musical homages like Lou Reed's Magic and Loss or Elvis Perkins' Ash Wednesday, it was incredibly refreshing that Visqueen leader Rachel Flotard chose instead to honor her father with uplifting, anthemic pop. The songs on Message to Garcia exuded not just affection for her dearly departed dad, but her fearless command of the almighty power chord.

Though I'm admitted biased, thanks to my friendship with Flotard, it doesn't take a filter of friendship to see that this lady is probably the most likable and hilarious rock star in this city. Clip of her performing the album's opening track "Hand Me Down" at the Tractor Tavern earlier this year is after the jump.

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Rabid Child Images

Spaceman hyped up crowds in 2009.

​It was a really good year to be into local hip-hop. Whether you were at the Capitol Club, the Corner, parties down on Airport Way, the Hidmo, Croc, Nectar, or on Twitter, things cracked off; a bevy of local releases and parties, matched with the glorious weather, made this summer one for the Seattle music history books. Sometimes I wonder if this is how excited people early in the grunge and punk scenes got in the mid-1980's (it sounds so far away ago...) when they witnessed such solid music being released by their city. Not only have the quality and attention been stepped up, but the cameraderie is what truly makes the success of local hip-hop so remarkable. Defying the crabs in a bucket mentality that's fostered by the colder sides of industry, artists came together, collaborated to make great music and produced outstanding live performances. Now, the scene is percolating; national attention is already brewing, and breaking out of the Seattle bubble is truly inevitable as we launch into the next decade.

Besides The Physics High Society EP and Shabazz Palaces' two-disk masterpiece that were listed on our Top Music in 2009 list, I wanted to highlight some great achievements-- songs, albums, mixtapes, and videos-- that were produced out of our town. Not a complete and definitive list, but a good wrap-up if you were living under a rock.

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​True, on Saturday, you'll still be sweating booze and reeling from that anonymous sexual encounter during your NYE celebrations. But don't let that stop you from enjoying the new year. So, after you load up on medical marijuana and antibiotics, limp on over to the High Dive to catch some first-rate local hip-hop, including performances by Macklemore, Dark Time Sunshine, and THEESatisfaction. It will ease the headache--and that burning sensation.

Gillian Welch, the love of my life

​I forced myself only to pick one Marymoor Park show for this list, because I had such a jolly good time at all of them that they probably would've comprised half my list otherwise. But it seemed unfair to do that, because the venue is so obviously superior to any other venue in or around this city that any show I see there takes on automatic significance.

But this one wasn't just special because of where it took place. It was special because it brought two of my favorite artists together, one of whom I'd loved for years and years, but never saw live (Gillian Welch) and one who actually played a request my friend and I passed up to him on a piece of paper (Sam Beam). It was special because the weather was perfect and I was surrounded by wonderful people. And if I could travel back in time to relive just one show from the past year, this is the one I'd pick.

Brandon Harr

​ Last night's Murder City Devils reunion show was, in a word, sublime. The openers Cold Lake and Past Lives proved great choices as they aptly conveyed a vibe of being seedlings from the MCD's musical tree. After overhearing the prevalence last night of "I've been to see the Priest five times" style stories circulating throughout the crowd, I thought I'd share a few of my own before moving on to a synopsis of last night's performance.

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Khingz

​I'm not going to rank these, because I think that when it comes to albums, rankings are at least partially if not completely arbitrary. At least, when I do it. But I do feel that several albums were woefully neglected on our top ten list, the creation of which was a group effort.

Khingz - From Slaveships to Spaceships

If I absolutely had to pick the best hip hop album to come out of Seattle in 2009, this would be it. I've been listening to it nonstop.

The Maldives - Listen to the Thunder

This record shows the Maldives at their recorded best, and while Jason Dodson's lyrics are simple, his songs give me the warm fuzzies.

The Tea Cozies - Hot Probs

I've said it once and I'll say it again: this album is a gem, one in which the songs don't all sound the same and all the songs are good. While the garage-y numbers are good, however, it's the poppier fare that I keep going back to over and over again; particularly "Behind the Glass Eye" and "Corner Store Girls."

Duff McKagan's column runs every Thursday on Reverb. He writes about what's circulating through his iPod every Monday.

​Somehow, I had to turn everything around. Two weeks spent in the hospital doing a no-blink stare confronted with the fact that things in my life would have to change drastically left me exhausted, confused, and actually somewhat exhilarated.

In my 20s, there were two things I never really had to come to grips with or deal with: taking responsibility for my actions and thinking about what I would do other than music. I just didn't think that I would be around to deal with this shit.

After being mired in and shackled with the constant blackness of drugs and drink for as long as I was, a person just gives up. Sure, there is a weird hope for things like a miracle cure, but that is as close as you get to hope. A tragic event is more likely the case. And bracing for something like death happening to you gets somewhat softened by the cushioning narcotic fuzz. But suddenly here I was: sober and in a doctor's care, my two-week withdrawal softened by intravenous morphine for the pain and Librium for the delirium tremors.

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This is part eight in a ten-part series. Previous entries can be viewed via this link.

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Former Pedro the Lion leader Dave Bazan's solo debut EP, Fewer Moving Parts, showed a great deal of promise, but nothing could have prepared me for the graceful triumph of Curse Your Branches. From the perspective of someone who's proud to be a theologian's daughter, but also endlessly vexed by the conflicts surrounding faith, Bazan's open-ended meditation on his personal struggles with the subject was as refreshing and profound as it was brave and addictively uplifting.

He's also pretty damn creative with how he presents his material in a live setting, often playing select, intimate shows to small groups, such as the series of "living room shows" he has scheduled around town for January. Most are sold out, but you can still get tickets for the January 8 show over here. A clip of Bazan performing "Please Baby Please" in his own home is after the jump.

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This is actually from REVERB, but here are the Maldives, preparing to blow everyone away. I have no idea why that crazy bitch is up there, too.

​4. Scarub at Nectar

While this show wasn't the most well-attended hip hop show I've seen all year -- hardly -- it was all the better for me, because I had more room to dance. Which is what the people in the crowd wanted to do. Scarub had other plans: he actually stopped all of us once because he wanted us to listen to the lyrics. But he had a hard time doing that, because his beats were great, too and as I said -- we wanted to dance. The Grouch and Murs may be the most famous of the Living Legends, that show cemented my unwavering personal belief that Scarub is indeed the best MC in that crew.

3. Balkan Beat Box at Showbox at the Market

This was one of those rare shows where every single person in the room was dancing the whole time. I don't love listening to this band's albums -- though I dug Nu Made, the remix album they put out this year, quite a bit -- but I will never miss them live.

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