BOB'S BUMBERSHOOT PICK: THE VIVIAN GIRLS

The Vivian Girls. Bumbershoot, at 6PM Sunday on the Broadstreet Stage


Vivian Girls meet The Real Housewives

Okay, music fans. It's Labor Day Weekend, otherwise known as Bumbershoot, a time when myriad bands from all over the world (as well as comics and artists and dancers and filmmakers) converge on Seattle to shimmy in the shade of the Space Needle. How do you pick? We're going to see the Vivian Girls. You've heard them on the radio (and maybe on my mixtapes) and you love them, too.

"Where Do You Run To" by the Vivian Girls

The Vivian Girls--named after oddball artist Henry Darger's girl warriors--are Brooklyn garage girls that play dreamy pop, write great songs that hearken back to the Girl Groups of the early sixties as well as punk rock of the seventies, with a little Olympia, Washington thrown in for good measure. They're playing this weekend at Bumbershoot, at 6PM Sunday on the Broadstreet Stage. Don't miss them.

DEEP RED BELLS

Tacoma girl Neko Case sings a haunting song about another Northwest celebrity, the Green River Killer.

"That has a lot to do with growing up in Washington state during the time when the Green River Killer was active, when I was in junior high. It's frightening. It has a lot to do with when you're a kid and you see that stuff on TV all the time---the news definitely made the distinction that these women were prostitutes, in fact they didn't talk about them like they were women much at all, which made me feel really bad for the women. Myself and many, many other young women that I knew at the time were very, very scared of the Green River Killer. It was very much a part of our psyche, and it still is, when you grow up with that kind of stuff. Washington had a lot of serial killers---a lot. The whole time I was growing up, there was Ted Bundy, or the guy in Spokane. And when I was in Vancouver, they finally caught the guy---all these prostitutes were disappearing from downtown, and nobody gave a shit about it. Actually, the people of Vancouver gave a shit about it, but the local government didn't, because a lot of them were prostitutes, some of them were drug addicts, so they figured they were lost anyway. I actually think there's a civil suit in Vancouver---you might want to check on the facts on that---because they could have figured out who this guy was a long time ago, and they didn't bother to do it. The government would make up these wild claims---'Well, we might think it might be a white slavery ring,' blamed it on Asian gangs---it was really gross. Same thing with the Green River Killer: they knew who he was for a long time, but they couldn't bring him in on technicalities. I'm sure that it upset the people who had been looking for him that long just as much as the parents of the people he had killed. These women's lives just never seemed that important; they weren't really made that important on the news. It was all about fear. I guess the song is basically me just thinking, 'What are their lives? What would their families do?'"


Neko Case travels between alt country and indie rock, between Patsy Cline and the New Pornographers. Her voice is arresting--equal parts honey and cayenne. She just released Middle Cyclone, which may be her most fearless album yet. This time she brought along her friends M Ward and ex-Band member Garth Hudson, as well as members of Giant Sand, Los Lobos and Calexico.

Read the AV Club review here.
Read the Pitchfork review here.

SOMETHING STUPID AND CONTAGIOUS

Nirvana perform "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on Top of the Pops. This four chord blitzkrieg attacked the world the year I moved to Seattle. In an instant, alternative rock was commercial, predatory A and R men descended upon Puget Sound, and sleek Paris runway models were sporting "Le Grunge." A screwed up Aberdeen kid from the muddy banks of the Wishkaw was suddenly a reluctant hero. He couldn't just "play the hit." As you can see, he did it his way. Punk or die.


This performance smells more like teen spirit than the official MTV-ready video. Ironic, right? In spite of the artifice, this is the real deal. A total refusal to simply entertain, to surrender, to just be stupid and contagious. We screened this clip during our underground garage party and people screamed and threw folding chairs. It was happy and kind of sad, and yet I guess it makes me smile. I found it hard--it's hard to find. Oh, well, whatever. Nevermind.

TEARS IN THE RAIN

It won't stop raining! Here's a great rainy scene from "Blade Runner." This drippy wet neo-noir, cyperpunk, hard-boiled, detective flick really captures the last few wet days. If you've ever watched attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion you know what I mean.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR DIES IN SEATTLE JAIL

Strange story. Roxanna Brown, director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand, was scheduled to speak in a symposium at the Univeristy of Washington. She was arrested in Seattle on wire-fraud charges for jacking up prices of Asian antiquities. While in police custody, she complained of stomach problems, but no medical help was available. She died in jail at about 2:30 Wednesday morning.
I'm sure we'll learn more about this strange tale. It sounds like a bad movie-of-the-week, and I bet people are scrambling for the rights.

SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR

New Year. Death Cab for Cutie, live at the Showbox, Seattle.

CROCODILE TEARS

The Crocodile Cafe, famous Seattle music venue since 1991, is finally calling it quits. The tiny Belltown club was at the epicenter of the 1990s Seattle music scene. Nirvana, Sunny Day Real Estate, Band of Horses, played here before going on to international fame. Owner Stephanie Dorgan, who divorced Peter Buck of REM last year, wasn't answering calls from the press, but the doors were padlocked today, and employees had been told to stay home.

to catch a whif of the Croc, click button: