Seattle Weekly
As you’re surely aware, this Saturday, The Seattle Weekly’s local music festival, REVERB, will take place in Ballard. The Maldives, the Girls, Champage Champagne, THEE Satisfaction and a whole bunch of other awesome artists will be performing (for the full line-up and schedule, check their website.) While wristbands are already dirt-cheap,the Weekly is giving away six pairs of wristbands, which will get you in to all ten venues participating in the festival on Saturday. Unless you’re underage, in which case you’ll need to let them know so they can get you an all-ages wristband (which still gets you into four venues: Salmon Bay Eagles, New York Fashion Academy, Hattie’s Hat and the Ballard Loft). Just send them an e-mail at giveaways@seattleweekly.com today before 5 p.m. with REVERB in the subject heading and your full name in the body of the e-mail (and the type of wristband you need). Winners will be selected at random and alerted shortly after 5 p.m. on Thursday.
What the bulk of the great albums of this year have in common is each is organized by a ruling concept. This does not mean they are concept albums, in the sense of Dr. Octagon’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, Handsome Boy Modeling School’s So, How’s Your Girl, and other works designed by Dan the Automator. No, the rappers of the current moment are not playing roles that can be easily discarded on the next concept album. We get strange truths from the concepts made by these rappers/producers—the black Han Solo, Shabazz, the Dro Bots, the Cigar Rock Star. For them, the new world around us, a world that has gone through considerable changes, demands this unified and systematic approach to rap and beats.