Say What?!

​The box is finally out. The gargantuan Super Deluxe Nevermind box set, which features the remastered album, b-sides, demos, rare live recordings, and video, is perhaps the truest look into the creation of the classic record, yet it will be absent from the shelves of most local record stores. Beginning with its release yesterday, Best Buy will be the lone purveyor until October 24, selling it for a handsome $136, according to USAToday.com. The exclusivity is the result of a deal the electronics giant brokered with the box's publishers, record label Geffen/Universal.

In an e-mail blast sent out yesterday, written by store manager Melanie Sheehan* entitled "Thank You Wayne! Thanks for Nothin, Geffen," (referring to the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne's in-store meet-and-greet last week, and Nevermind's original Geffen-affiliated DGC imprint respectively), local indie Sonic Boom Records expressed their displeasure with the label's decision, and made it clear that they plan on transplanting as many box sets as possible to their customers as they become available.

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Alternative Tentacles

Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine.

​Even before he flew up to Seattle for Sound Fest, the inaugural three-day punk-rock festival that took place at five Seattle venues last month, friends back in L.A. warned Jello Biafra not to participate for fear the promoters would shortchange him. So Biafra--the former Dead Kennedys singer who played the festival with his Guantanamo School of Medicine--took the extreme stance of demanding his pay up front.

"Chuck Berry was famous for never walking onstage until he had all the cash in his hand," Biafra said. "And this was having to play the Chuck Berry card." Not everyone was so lucky. A month after the fest, many of the festival's headliners are still owed money.

To fans who attended, the event went off smoothly, but behind the scenes it was a different story, almost from the beginning. When word of Sound Fest made its way to Shawn Stern, founder of punk stalwarts Youth Brigade and the organizer of the annual Punk Rock Bowling Tournament in Las Vegas, he sent an e-mail to bands and agents warning them against playing. "After witnessing his disastrous attempts at promoting concerts around L.A.," he said of promoter Lou Medrano, "my friends and I felt it was important to warn others against working with him."

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You gotta hand it to Jon Huntsman. At least his Nirvana reference in last night's GOP presidential election debate was pegged to "All Apologies," and not "Smells Like Teen Spirit," one of the most overplayed pop-culture nods of the last 20 years. However, there should be more talk about policies that will ensure jobs and a healthy future for today's teens and 20-somethings, the people who, you know, are on the hook to foot the bill for their parents and grandparents' health care in the long haul.

The same politicians--especially the class of candidates in the GOP field who say ObamaCare's mandated health insurance is unconstitutional--who will stop at nothing to preserve GUARANTEED, GOVERNMENT-MANDATED HEALTH INSURANCE (Medicare) for the elderly, will come up with EVERY POSSIBLE REASON to smack down guaranteed, government-mandated health insurance for people between the age of 18 and 65 (ish).

How is it that guaranteed health care--through government-mandated health insurance (Medicare)--for the elderly is a sacred cow and guaranteed health care for teens and 20-somethings, etc., is off the table? BECAUSE TEENS AND 20-SOMETHINGS DON'T VOTE! IF THEY DID, POLITICIANS WOULD HAVE TO DO THEIR BIDDING.

I've sent notes to all the GOP presidential candidates (OK, I'm behind, and haven't pinged Camp Perry), asking them all a series of identical questions about music, pop culture, etc. At the end of the list, I include a couple of policy questions. I haven't heard back from any of them (I know, shocker). But here are the questions I want answered from the presidential field:

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just wanna be slaves to an age-old trade, y'all

​Over the weekend, a statement from Tractor Tavern sound engineer Doug Krebs started making the rounds on Facebook, alleging that he'd been drunkenly assaulted by Head and the Heart frontman Jon Russell at a show last Tuesday (bolds his):

NOTICE OF CAUTION TO SOUND ENGINEERS OF THE BAND THE HEAD AND THE HEART

Last Tuesday night I was violently attacked by the lead singer of this band, Jon Russell. ...This attack was without any provocation and specifically directed at sound technicians. After approaching me at my work station and rudely accusing me of not being attentive or qualified for my job (which everyone in attendance refutes completely) I calmly asked him to leave. He angrily demanded to know what my name was. I told him I was not going to talk with him and asked him to leave once more. Thinking it was over, I went back to resetting the board. Out of nowhere he attacked me and began to choke me, pulling me out of the sound booth and digging his fingernails into the back of my neck while pushing his thumbs into the front of my throat. After his friends noticed he was attacking me, they grabbed him and removed him from the club kicking and screaming. All of his friends apologized profusely saying he has a bad temper and was intoxicated. He is now banned from entering my workplace for any reason indefinitely.

More here. Sub Pop has issued the following statement from Russell apologizing for the incident:

I deeply regret and am ashamed of my uncharacteristic behavior last week. I have expressed as much to the owner of the establishment and attempted to apologize to the person who I hurt, face-to-face. And while my apology can't erase my actions or make up for anything, really, it is sincere. I am truly sorry.

All of which might bring to mind another case of alleged drunken assault from a couple years ago by a little rap act known as Mad Rad--only there are some telling differences.

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Meet Mic Phenom. You can read about him, as well as the local battle-rap scene in this week's feature article "Art or War"?.

When I went downtown to the Harbor Steps to interview Mr. Phenom for this piece, I had a secondary plan in mind: After we spoke, I would ask him--without warning--to spit a freestyle on the spot, which I would videotape in order to show our readers how fine-tuned his skills as a freestyle specialist were. When I asked him after the interview, he agreed without a second thought. This is great, I thought. I'll get to shoot some raw, unrehearsed footage of one of the region's most prolific battle rappers doing what he does best (with a beautiful backdrop, I might add). I asked him to rhyme for a minute. He rapped seamlessly for 59 seconds. Not. Fucking. Bad. I thought. This guy is good (and did he say "half as sick as the son of S.A.M.?"--cue hammering man).

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Fleet Foxes' sophomore record, Helplessness Blues, drops on May 3.

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So I was supposed to have this out with the Weekly's own Nick Feldman, a little well-reasoned pro/con on the whole Macklemore issue, but then yesterday I got into a little Twitter scrap with my esteemed colleague (and friend) Jonathan Zwickel over at City Arts (which has a fine cover story about The Head and the Heart this issue), with him standing in for the pro-Mack/Head and the Heart/"sincerity" position. (Sorry, Nick, let's you and I throw down on the next one.) I'm juggling a few deadlines right now, so I don't have time to post it all here, but consider the following a sort of Greatest Twits collection of our conversation (more beef after the jump):

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Tom Dougherty

​With all due respect to my esteemed colleague John Roderick, hating on hating is the most tired kind of hating there is. Especially when it's the complaint, commonly leveled, that music critics should be more positive and just promote what's good instead of critiquing what's bad. Critique . . . what does that word sound like? Oh, yeah: critic. It's the nature of the job to criticize, to have opinions positive and negative, and to express both in a way that makes for good reading. Especially in this day and age, if people only want recommendation--not critique or discussion--there are plenty more efficient avenues for that than finding a writer whose tastes align with their own. Algorithms can do that. What algorithms can't do (yet) is crack jokes, express joy, and wallow in rage and apoplexy at the state of some musical abomination--that's what critics are for. "People don't want to learn the reasons to hate something, they want to be turned on to something good"--tell that to Lester Bangs (and, yes, I realize we can't all be Lester Bangs).

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Photo by Ryan Lewis

​A few weeks ago, we shared some of our most eagerly anticipated music happenings of the upcoming year--and among those 17 items was the booking schedule of Fremont's Nectar Lounge, a venue made one of Seattle's best in 2010 thanks to the booking talents of Meli Darby. But after two exciting years there, she's accepted an offer from storied Belltown venue the Crocodile to join current national talent buyer Eli Anderson. Never fear--Darby still plans to stay involved with Nectar too, through her promotional entity ReignCity. In her words: "New year, new challenges, new growth."

On the decision:

I absolutely love Nectar, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities that I've had to grow as a talent buyer and a concert producer. This decision did not come easy--it came with a lot of thought and a real heavy heart. Ultimately I'm super-excited for the decision I've made. Constant change in life, and in your career, can never be a bad thing. And I absolutely intend to continue to do shows at Nectar--there are some shows that just belong there.

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​Last night Mayor McGinn held a Nightlife Initiative update meeting at the Central District's Washington Hall, announcing tweaks to parking passes, liquor laws, and noise ordinance violations. Noise violations are said to be a problem that needs addressing. But, reports the Daily Weekly's Keegan Hamilton,

According to the Mayor's press release, just six percent of the 2,400 city residents who offered feedback on the nightlife initiative reported having "a significant problem with nightlife-related noise at least once per month." More than 65 percent, meanwhile, said they never had a noise problem.

So what are McGinn's new rules going to entail?Read more about the mayor's take on decibel levels and bass-heavy hip hop on the Daily Weekly.

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