Fallon, Obama, Black Thought

This is the moment we've been waiting for since then-canidate Bill Clinton got all saxual on Arsenio. (And yes, I really thought I was clever for making the Fallon-Hall connection until I Googled it.) ENOUGH CHIT CHAT: here is President Obama getting down on a politopical slow jam with Jimmy Fallon and his house band, The Roots.

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Our music photo intern, Cozell Wilson, is sadly ending out his last few weeks with us, so I thought I'd take a minute to pay tribute to him and his talents. Cozell, who studies film and video communications at Seattle Central, is a great photographer and also has a surprisingly fine falsetto, as seen above in his recent tribute to the late Whitney Houston. This video is SW Editor-in-Chief Mike Seely-approved. Visit Cozell's YouTube page for more of his work.

As a side note, I went to high school with Cozell, and it's nice to see that some people really don't change from when they're 16 to 26.

Jason Baxter - "Video Freak" (via Cairo Records)

Jason Baxter is a prodigious multi-tasker. Currently, the dude divides his time between running the in-house publicity for Sub Pop sub-label Hardly Art, making the hypnagogic pop as one half of local electronics duo USF, and writing the fledgling indie comic Trip Fantastic along with illustrator Derek Charm. Recently, his job juggling has included overlapping gigs writing the all-ages column for the Stranger, doing PR for all-ages venues Cairo Gallery and the Vera Project, and managing the UW's online Rainy Dawg Radio. Point is, the guy stays busy.

His latest bit of business is "Video Freak," a meticulously dubbed-from-VHS* mixtape of LOL'90s TV ephemera and smooth digital studio funk--"studio bumpers, sports blooper soundtracks, weird adverts and bizarro music cues"--that sounds perhaps unsurprisingly of-the-moment in these Retromaniacal times. Visit the Cairo Records site for the full description and a partial track-listing.

*Also a good cheap way to add that analog tape vibe to your home recordings, a la Hieroglyphic Being.

I couldn't agree more with Grandy's prediction of an "especially otherworldly elegiac" set from "an awe-inspiring band" when talking about TV on the Radio's booking to headline the three-day Capitol Hill Block Party. After losing bassist Gerard Smith to lung cancer just last month, it was hard to predict how the Brooklyn rockers would proceed--and for now, that route seems to be without replacement.More >>

Renee McMahon

Robin Pecknold's Fleet Foxes played the Moore on Tuesday, May 3. Yes, he appears to own only one sweater.

I don't know why it took me so long to find this review, but if you only read two takes on Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues, make NME's hatchet job one of them (a taste after the jump).

I can't say I agree with its premise that FF epitomizes the "fake-rustic rootsiness that seems to be colonizing our era," but it'll give you something to think about. Fake-rustic rootsiness may be colonizing our era, but Fleet Foxes are hardly the worst offenders. As the band made clear at the Moore on Tuesday, they're pulling away from the indie-folk herd, heading down far rockier terrain, as opposed to descending into faux-Americana. It's a path they're well-suited for.

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The band's been playing a number of secret garage shows for contest winners and a handful of their fans. Andy Harms over at 107.7 has the details. This bit here is particularly excellent:

Just as impressive was after the fact when the music was done and the band came out to shake hands, sign autographs, and take pictures. They didn't set up a table and filter people by like it was a lunch line. They didn't put a 15-minute limit on the meet and greet and shove off with a "too bad" to anyone that didn't fight their way to the front for a picture. They literally spent as much time mingling with the crowd afterwards as they did playing their set (over an hour), ensuring that everyone (fans, cops, radio station nerds, blackberry employees) that wanted to say hello and chat could.

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@GanstaFleetFox: Almost as entertaining as @FleetFoxes.

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Nirvana first performed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" live at the OK Hotel on April 17, 1991, making Sunday its 20th live anniversary. EMP has a flyer for the show--see it after the jump--in the Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibit, which opens on Saturday).

I must admit I don't remember the first time I heard it. But even though I was a young kid growing up in the greater Seattle area, I'm sure I heard it on MTV first. Surely someone else has a more memorable story about the first time they heard one of the most important songs to come out of Seattle. Yes?

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Slideshow: Get an early look inside Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses.

When MTV gave Kurt Cobain his Moonman for Nirvana's "Best Alternative Video" win at the 1992 Video Music Awards, they made a little bit of a mistake. The win was, of course, for the genre-defining "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but someone at the factory hadn't been listening to the radio in the last 18 months. Cobain's statue, which sat next to his bathroom toilet and was later sold at auction, reads: "Smells Like Team Spirit."

The statue is just one of the many goodies on display at Seattle's Experience Music Project's exhibit, Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses, which opens to the public on Saturday, and runs through April 2013. Check out our slideshow for an early look inside.

Krist Novoselic

Nirvana bassist, and former Reverb columnist, Krist Novoselic took this picture of Kurt Cobain while they were on an early tour of Europe with TAD. Novoselic opened his "trunks" to the EMP curators for Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses.

Nirvana fans are remembering Kurt Cobain today, 17 years after his untimely death at the age of 27. By the next anniversary of his death, his intense fan base will have a new, more public way to cope.

Experience Music Project's exhibit Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses, which opens April 16, will include, according to the museum, "a 'confessional' in which fans can record their own stories, memories, poems and other thoughts about the band, its music and its members. That footage will be woven into concert film and interviews that screen continuously during the exhibit."

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