We assume Mr. Ticketmaster will look something like this when he arrives in court in May

​*Did we say "massive"? We meant "depressing".
**Did we say "exciting"? we meant "boooooorrriiiinnnnnggg".

If you bought tickets on Ticketmaster's website between October 21, 1999 and October 19, you've probably received an email that looked something like this recently. The email was sent out after a class action settlement was proposed in the case of Curt Schlesinger et al. v. Ticketmaster--a case that was brought on in 2003 when two dudes, Curt Schlesinger of Illinois and Peter LoRe of New York claimed that the convenience fee and the UPS delivery fee charged by Ticketmaster on ticket orders violated California's False Advertising Law (FAL) and Unfair Competition Law (UCL). The email laid out--in the typically romantic language of law--the exciting** news that, unless you object, you will probably be sent a redeemable discount code for $1.50 per transaction you made (up to seventeen!) that can be applied to...wait for it...future Ticketmaster transactions. If you paid that pesky UPS fee, you could be in line to receive a whopping, $5 discount on such deliveries in the future.

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Total Control
Tuesday Nov. 29th, 2011
The Crocodile

There are basically two types of Total Control songs: the minimal synth jams (a la Adult.'s Ersatz Audio label or Seattle-bred synth punk pioneers the Screamers), and the wire-taut punk guitar stomps--both types abrasive and droney, with the vocals drenched in reverb. Live, the Australian group concentrates pretty exclusively on the latter, so if you came hoping for the killer "Paranoid Video," like the girl whose shouted request for the song before the band's final number went coldly ignored, you were out of luck. Honestly, it was "Paranoid Video" and the songs like it--"Retiree" or the bass synth lock-groove "Pyre Island"--that got me to last night's show, but I wasn't exactly expecting it; live footage of the band shows them squarely in the punk mode, and a friend of a friend on FB wrote of a recent Total Control show, "There was a Casio on stage, but no one touched it." The good news though is that Total Control's punk songs also rule hard.

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​​​Band: The Grizzled Mighty
Release: The Grizzled Mighty
Label: Self-released
Release Date: Out Now

White Stripes comparisons are inevitable when you're a bluesy, male-female garage-rock duo with a long-haired woman on drums and a long-haired dude on guitar who slathers his vocals in reverb. White Stripes comparisons are also inevitable when you sound just like the White Stripes. The Seattle band's debut isn't bad, just derivative. Guitarist/vocalist Ryan Granger also plays in Fox and the Law, while drummer Whitney Petty used to play with Deerhunter.

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​Haunted Horses, the pairing of guitarist/vocalist Colin Dawson and drummer Myke Pelly (also of Footwork), makes experimental music that befits their moniker--spooky and unsettling atmospherics atop muscular, galloping instrumentals. In September, Haunted Horses had the auspicious honor of being the only band featured in a New York Times slideshow called "Seattle, Post Grunge" that otherwise included photos of Kurt Cobain's Denny-Blaine house and visitors to EMP's Nirvana exhibit. The Haunted Horses photo shows Dawson's back in the foreground at an August show at the Black Lodge while some serious-looking fans look on.

Haunted Horses' latest release is Oblivion, which contains the clanging, apocalyptic "The Ivory Horn" and the chugging fireball of a track "Star Arcs." If you want to hear more of the band's recent work, check out Oblivion's companion, the three-song Mirrored Orbifolds.

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The Black Keys' forthcoming album El Camino drops this coming Tuesday, and yesterday the band put three additional songs from the album (in addition to the already-released "Lonely Boy" and "Run Right Back") on its website. You'll have to enter an email address to listen to the new material--"Gold on the Ceiling," "Sister," and "Little Black Submarines"--and the latter, which begins uncharacteristically with an acoustic introduction before morphing into a full-scale Black Keys barn-burner, was the highlight after a couple initial listens.

Listen to the songs here.

Laura Musselman

Jeff Ament used a prototype of his signature bass at the PJ20 festival in Wisconsin.

​Jeff Ament can have whatever bass guitar he wants. And for more than 20 years, the Pearl Jam bassist has amassed a collection of vintage, new, and custom-made instruments. He likes them heavy and a bit larger than most
players prefer.

Mike Lull knows this well. Most of Ament's basses have gone through Mike Lull Custom Guitars. In his modest shop in a nondescript row of storefronts in Bellevue--featuring a gold record for Pearl Jam's Backspacer in the entryway--Lull builds, repairs, and "sets up" guitars and basses. For his part, Ament has commissioned Lull to custom-build at least 20 basses.

A couple of years ago, Lull handed Ament a bass that stopped him cold. No member of Pearl Jam had ever endorsed an instrument before, but Ament told Lull he wanted this to be a Jeff Ament signature bass. Using the model as a prototype, Ament and Lull went to work together, tweaking the instrument. Lull says Ament was involved in every step of the process, even redesigning the logo himself.

"To say that [Ament's] been intimately involved in this whole thing is an understatement," Lull says.

"Mike has built the best new bass I've ever played," Ament said in an e-mail. "The only rule is, in representing the band, that we back anything with our name on it 100 percent. This bass isn't a mass-produced, big-company, made-in-China/Mexico instrument. Mike makes each bass right here in the NW. Over 20 years of collaborating, designing, and building basses has gone into my model."

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​Artist: Bobby Charles
Release: Bobby Charles re-issue
Label: Rhino Handmade/Light In the Attic
Release Date: Dec. 15

1. The high point on Bobby Charles' self-titled record is "I Must Be In a Good Place Now". This found, 1972 gem, ranks high among the underappreciated singles of its era. Charles never enjoyed even the moderate stardom of, say, Harry Nilsson, but the tunes here share in the latter's way of being comforting without being gratuitous, and catchy without being grating. In other words: great, long-tail pop music.

2. I have a greater appreciation for the tastes of Vetiver, who covered "I Must Be In a Good Place Now," on their 2008 Sub Pop release, Thing Of the Past.

3. The Light in the Attic guys always make me feel like a dumbshit for not having records in my collection/rotation already. This one if no exception. They're working in tandem with Rhino Handmade on this release.

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[Geo Quibuyen/Al Jazeera]

Occupy Portland

​During his recent nation-wide tour as the MC half of Blue Scholars, Geo Quibuyen (aka Prometheus Brown) had the opportunity to observe Occupy encampments in sixteen cities, and interact with protesters in all walks of life. Immediately following the tour--which concluded in New York--Geo put his thoughts down on paper for Arab news-giant Al Jazeera's English website. Read his essay here.

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​LAKE
Gravel 7"
12/6, K Records

"Gravel" is the second song on quirky pop group LAKE's 2009 release Let's Build a Roof, one in a long line of singles by K Recs artists (including City Center, Christmas, Chain & the Gang, Joey Casio, Atlas Sound, Kendl Winter and Bobby Birdman) to join the Dub Narcotic Disco Plate 7" 45 series. If you're unfamiliar with the series, just remember that any sentence joining "K Recs" with "Dub Narcotic" will always lead you straight to K Recs ringleader Calvin Johnson, who in this case re-works selected tracks into his own artistic rendering.

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Augustine Magdalene

​The situation I'm spending the night before Thanksgiving at Ballard's Hazlewood with Cristina Bautista, the tiny 24-year-old Visqueen bassist and solo artist. Bautista learned the guitar at age 9 when her mom taught her to play "House of the Rising Sun"; started her first band, Paxil Rose, at 14; and joined Visqueen in 2009, around the time she switched to the bass full-time. "I play a ham-fisted guitar," she says. "I feel more natural writing songs on the bass."

How She Got Here Bautista's an East Coast transplant: She lived in New Jersey with her single mom until she was 11, when Bautista taught her to use the Internet, which then allowed Mom to reconnect with an old flame who lived in Seattle. The two moved west soon after. "I loved it right away," says Bautista. "The first day I moved here, I saw Krist Novoselic crossing the street!"

In June, Bautista moved back to Seattle after trying out life as a student at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. It didn't work out. "Everyone wanted to get rich and famous," she says. "I was the only one saying 'I want to tour! I want to be the sixth person in a four-person car and sell CDs out of the trunk.' " She now spends her days looking after her elderly grandmother, whom she was named after. "I'm learning to speak Tagalog," she says. "I know how to say 'My back hurts.' "

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