Dr. Dog played the Showbox Sodo on Friday, October 29, 2010. Photo by Laura Musselman.

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Dr. Dog
Showbox Sodo
Friday, October 29, 2010

Watching a scrappy little band climb up the ranks of the rock and roll clubs can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster. We, as music fans, develop these ridiculously intimate connections with bands over the course of their careers, and seeing them playing bigger venues and finding ourselves pushed to the back of the crowd, paying more for tickets, more for beers, and more for parking can serve to drive a wedge right in the middle of that lifeline. (See John Roderick's post about the politics of becoming popular for a bit of a deeper insight into that phenomenon)

Over the past two years, Philadelphia's Dr. Dog have gone from playing the Tractor Tavern to the Crocodile and now have found themselves bumped up to the bigs, playing at the 1500 person capacity Showbox Sodo (surprisingly skipping over Neumos or Showbox at the Market in the process). Given that I haven't heard Dr. Dog in a Gap's in-store playlist or seen them prominently featured in a trailer for the new Judd Apatow film, I was a little befuddled by the choice of venue, and walking into Showbox Sodo on Friday night (after finding a parking spot directly across the street from the venue. Score!) and judging on the comfortably half-full room, it would be easy to say that it was an unfortunate booking choice. However, everything about Dr. Dog's current show says they'll have no problems packing rooms of this size in the near future.

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​Even dismembering dudes in a Sissy Spacek meets Jack Nicholson performance in the video for La Sera's "Never Come Around," (after jump) Katy Goodman's the hottest thing to come out of the indie-rock cupboard since Ben Gibbard went vegan. If Sub Pop/Hardly Art ever had a chance to make money selling posters instead of mp3s it's for the La Sera's 7-inch, due Nov. 16.

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... might just have to be the Blood Red Dancers' "Fur Skin Coat." Happy Halloween, Seattle:

Sean Symphony (left) and Spaceman (right)

​The Northwest Sneaker Expo--which also featured performances from Wizdom, State of the Artist and LA's Pac Div--was emceed by Luck-One, Vitamin D and surprise guest J. Pinder. Factor in displays from local urbanwear boutiques like Officials Vintage and Kicks and Tees and some hilarious rap battles, and you can mark another one in the win column for local hip-hop.

Spaceman (left) and Eighty4 Fly (right)

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Logics, Sneaker Expo organizer and emcee

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​If you can believe it, Gibbard says, "I'm so proud of this album that at this point I don't care if people don't like it."

It's been nearly two and a half years since our beloved local giants, Death Cab for Cutie, released their last full-length, Narrow Stairs, a solid record -- especially live (though I have to confess that, at least for me, it gets the least plays of any full-length release in the Death Cab catalog). Even with the release of The Open Door EP and Twilight single "Meet Me on the Equinox" (money talks) last year, my Death Cab withdrawal has been close to reaching a boiling point.

So it is good news for all DCFC watchers that Gibbard told Spin this week that the band's new full-length should be out in time for spring. And from the sound of the interview, it should be a pretty big departure from Narrow Stairs.

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Cyn Eng-dinsel

Jon Pontrello plays Conor Byrne with Kevin Murphy (Moondoggies) and Kevin Barrans (Maldives) on Thursday, Nov. 4.

​It's a lot to take in, I know. Here's how it breaks down:

2000: Jon Pontrello starts playing drums in Everett's The Familiars, featuring Kevin Murphy and Bobby Terreberry, half of today's Moondoggies, a band he occasionally joins on banjo.

Spring, 2004: A two-day hike in the Olympics, near Bogachiel, turns into a near-death experience when Pontrello and a friend get lost and spend eight days in the rain before finding their way to an emergency station. They walked out of the woods on Pontrello's 18th birthday.

"I was hallucinating and losing my touch on reality," he says. "And it got really, really bad and to the point when I realized nobody was going to come and rescue us. I felt like I was kind of on the other side of life."

The experience became the inspiration for the song "Lost," a track on his self-titled release, Youth Is A Train--out Nov. 4.

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Skip forward to 1:30.

We don't typically weigh in on Godsmack news here, but I just got an email from Universal Records with an apology from Godsmack singer Sully Erna. His apology (after the jump) is related to comments made about Creed and its singer, Scott Stapp, at a show in Connecticut earlier this month. While trying whip the crowd into a frenzy, he made an off-hand remark that if fans weren't game, they should go to a Creed show. Apparently a fan didn't appreciate the sentiment and flipped Erna the bird. Erna shot back: "You like Creed? You like Scott Stapp? He's a faggot! Faggot!" To this, the folks in the front of the crowd cheered and tossed their arms in the air.

His apology is the antithesis of humble, and amount to an apology for attacking Stapp and Creed, not for using an anti-gay slur. Here's a taste:

I would like to send my sincerest apologies to the members of Creed, Scott Stapp and any of our fans that I may have offended for an insulting and disrespectful comment I had made towards Scott Stapp and Creed at a show Godsmack recently played in Connecticut at Mohegan Sun. I have no excuses whatsoever. The truth here is, there has been a lot of bad blood for many, many years between myself and Scott concerning his actions towards a young fan he disrespected, and how he has treated people in the past. And from that day forth I had completely lost all respect for him.

Classy, huh?

Is there really nobody at Camp Godsmack who things his homophobic slur should be accounted for? Or in this scene is it more reprehensible to attack Creed than gays? Judging from the reaction of the crowd at the show, I'm starting to think so.

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

​In 1984, Izzy Stradlin lived in an apartment across the street from me in Hollywood, right behind the Chinese Theater off Hollywood Boulevard. The man seemed to ALWAYS have an acoustic guitar in his hands, and was always writing bits and pieces of songs. He still does this today.

There was one especially melodic thing that he had been working on, and every once in a while he would dust it off and work on it some more.

By 1986, our band Guns N' Roses had a record deal. With that money, I put myself on a small stipend that could basically pay my rent--or half-rent, I should say--for about six months.

One of my best friends at the time was looking to move to Hollywood from her parents' house somewhere in Orange County. She and I decided that we could share rent on a one-bedroom apartment on Gardner; she would get the bedroom, and I the floor of the dining room (which I cordoned off into my little den of darkness).

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Dhani Harrison, with his Fistful of Mercy bandmates Ben Harper (left), and Joseph Arthur (right).

​Yesterday I caught up with Dhani Harrison, the renaissance man who studied at Brown, has worked for Formula One, and manages the musical affairs of his late father, the Beatle George Harrison. He's coming to Showbox at the Market with his new band, Fistful of Mercy (featuring Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur) for a sold-out show on Nov. 9. I've got more of our chat coming up next week, but for now, here's some of what Harrison and I talked about over Breakfast (at 1 p.m.).

Hey, Dhani, what's going on?

I'm just sitting in a diner in Los Angeles because my house is full of crazy people and my office is full of crazy people. It's actually most pleasant, my favorite place, called The Snug Harbor. It's this lovely little '50s diner that I go to.

Do you dip your sausages in syrup?

No, actually, I'm a big fan of a good English breakfast, the whole fryer kind of thing.

Can you find a good English breakfast in Los Angels?

They have good bacon here, I have to say. It's usually a test of the place. Good bacon, good eggs. Yeah, it's the nearest I'm going to get to a whole fryer.

Did you get into the whole bacon craze in the last couple years?

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A small sampling of what Leary Records will have on offer

​The prognostications for record stores may be dire, but Seattle's probably the place to open a record store if you're inclined to take on such an endeavor. Leary Records is taking over the space Dissonant Plane formerly occupied, at 5459 Leary Ave NW, and will reveal its wares -- including a shit ton of used vinyl -- to the public at 11 a.m. The store doesn't appear to have a web presence yet other than its Facebook page, which claims that the store has recently acquired "soooo much psych." Enticing! Especially considering that the grand opening festivities will include performances from Handshakes and Megabats, whose creepy ambient psych feels like someone just stretched out your brain like Silly Putty. Bands play at 6 p.m., and the store is open until 8 p.m.