Seattle Times
Alice in Chains has scored a No. 1 hit with possibly one of the catchiest songs in its nearly three-decade history. The Seattle metal band’s single “Check My Brain” rocketed straight to No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Songs Chart and No. 1 on the R&R Rock Chart. The song is on the band’s upcoming album “Black Gives Way To Blue” on Virgin/EMI, available Sept. 29.
Rolling Stone
After 36 hours of wet, discouraging weather, Bumbershoot saw its biggest crowds on Monday for final-day headliners Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand and Black Eyed Peas. Props to the young music fans of the Pacific Northwest: without enthusiastic teens and 20-somethings braving the dreary conditions, this year’s festival would’ve been a literal washout. Local love: The Cave Singers sang beneath the Space Needle, Truckasauras rolled through EMP, and Wallpaper (actually from Auburn, Washington) covered their own greatest hits. Bumbershoot had its troubles this year, but Northwest talent wasn’t one.
Check out extensive coverage of the three-day festival from The Strangerand the Seattle Weekly
The Stranger
You’ve never heard “Jesus Christ Pose” done like this. Sung by Pastor Pat Wright and her Total Experience Gospel Choir, the Soundgarden metal song becomes gospel-ized into a slow-boiling power ballad in the hands of Wheedle’s Groove, a loose agglomeration of youngish and oldish Seattle musicians with funkiness laced deep in their DNA. This radically repurposed “Jesus Christ Pose” is just one standout on “Kearney Barton,” a new nine-track album released by local label Light in the Attic on September 8. Recorded in the North Seattle Audio Recording studio of revered engineer Kearney Barton (Sonics, Wailers, Black on White Affair), it’s loaded with phenomenal cover versions and complemented by three strong originals. Matt Sullivan, along with engineer/percussionist Dylan Frombach and DJ Supreme scoured their vast collections to recommend an interesting array of songs for Wheedle’s Groove to interpret. Sullivan says, “It’s an honor to be involved in a project like this—Northwest music history in the making.”
Billboard
Pearl Jam scores the week’s highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100, which also sees the Black Eyed Peas, Jay Sean and Creed all making waves. Entering at No. 56 is the Seattle rock band’s “The Fixer,” which earns Pearl Jam its best-ever download sales week with 32,000 tracks. The last time Pearl Jam was on the Hot 100 was in 2006 with “World Wide Suicide,” which debuted and peaked at No. 41 the week it sold 20,000 downloads.
Billboard
Primary Wave Music, has put together a partnership with Motel 6 that will give touring rock bands free lodging in exchange for putting up the “Rock Yourself to Sleep logo on their social network sites, like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. “Being on the road is an integral part of a band’s success,” Primary Wave partner/chief imagination officer Devin Lasker.” Unfortunately, touring is an expensive proposition, so we created this program to alleviate that burden.” Motel 6 became the sponsor of the campaign.
Rolling Stone
Today, Activision has confirmed that a Kurt Cobain character will be playable in Guitar Hero 5 alongside Carlos Santana, Johnny Cash, Shirley Manson of Garbage and Matt Bellamy of Muse. Two Nirvana tracks, Nevermind’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and a live version of “Lithium,” from their 1992 headlining slot at England’s Reading festival, also join the game’s set list, a first for the seminal band that defined the grunge era. Watch Cobain’s avatar rocking “Smells Like Teen Spirit” below:
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Seattle Times
With summer chamber festivals winding down and the big concert-hall season yet to begin, things are a little slow on the classical-music front. Still, there’s some curious local activity bubbling up in oddball corners of town. This week, the Early Music Guild and the Seattle Composers’ Salon offer, respectively, programs that range from stately baroque to ear-stretching avant-garde.
The Stranger
Director Jennifer Maas’, whose latest project was co-producing Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, is working on a feature-length documentary called Wheedle’s Groove, which will explore Seattle’s underrated funk and soul musicians from those genres’ late-’60s/early-’70s heyday. According to the film’s website, the filmmakers have tracked down and interviewed musicians from the scene as well as interviewing Seattle noteables including Quincy Jones, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Mark Arm (Mudhoney), Ben Shepherd (Soundgarden), and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) The film is nearing completion, with a release slated for 2010. Here is a little preview of what to expect from the doc:
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Seattle Times
Havana-born Pedrito Vargas has toured with Cuban-music legends Los Van Van and Barbarito Torres. Now at home in Seattle, Vargas and his group, Ashé, are bringing their blend of contemporary Cuban music, with its hints of salsa, jazz, funk, rock and hip-hop, to City Hall’s free noon lunchtime concert series today. When not jamming with Ashé, Vargas runs Paladar Cubano, a Cuban-food truck on the corner of North 90th and Aurora Avenue North.
