The Stranger

Learned Seattle-based music scholar Pat Thomas has written what promises to be an illuminating analysis of music’s role in one of America’s most volatile cultural movements, Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965–1975. Thomas interviewed Black Panther Party members and discussed obscure records inspired by and supportive of the movement while also spotlighting sympathetic honkies’ sonic contributions to the cause. He reads from Listen, Whitey! and hosts a listening party for Light in the Attic’s accompanying soundtrack. (Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, 1201 S Vale St, www.fantagraphics.com, 6 pm, free, all ages) by Dave Segal

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If you don’t already know, Smash Putt is the intricately explosive mini-golf extravaganza that’s delighted lucky Seattle attendees for a good couple of years. (Think miniature golf as played in The Road Warrior, and you’ll be close.) The latest iteration is subtitled 2012: Final Apocalypse! and promises “new high jinks and mechanized madness,” complete with scratch ’n’ sniff technology and gravity defiance alongside the beloved golf ball cannons. Crucial bonus: There is a full bar. (Smash Putt Sodo Fairways, 2724 Sixth Ave S, www.smashputt.com, 3 pm–midnight, $11–$15.50, 21+) by David Schmader

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Remember when Wikipedia protested SOPA by shutting down for a day, forcing you to extract facts from your own brain? Remember when you spent 24 hours claiming Charlie Sheen was in Three Men and a Baby? Internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon will explain how an unholy axis of government and corporate media wants to make your life like that all the time. In her timely new book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, MacKinnon proposes a sort of internet bill of rights demanding that the World Wide Web serve people first and corporations second. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, www.townhallseattle.org, 7:30 pm, $5) by Paul Constant

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Despite a name that conjures images of this generation’s worst recycled fashion atrocities, Austin outfit White Denim are much more than bleached trousers or fleeting fashion trends. The band’s rapid interplay of rich guitar tones and almost polyrhythmic percussion coalesce with psychedelic rock and vague ethnic overtones to stirring effect. For predecessors, think Eat a Peach–era Allman Brothers. Live, the band’s energy may just create a vacuum in the place of Wilco’s headlining set. (Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St, www.stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $41.25, all ages) by Grant Brissey

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Tonight, LA’s Dengue Fever and SF’s Secret Chiefs 3 combine forces to… well, it’s tough to predict. The former filter sublimely kitsch Cambodian folk into their tuneful psych pop, while the latter—who often feature Seattle avant-garde musicians like Eyvind Kang and Dave Abramson in their lineup—meld sonic elements from Arabic, Persian, and Indian cultures, plus those from metal, Morricone’s soundtracks, and electronica into mind-boggling fusions of aural mystique. Whatever the case, this matchup should spark fascinating world-music mutations. (Neumos, 925 E Pike St, www.neumos.com, 9 pm, $17, 21+) by Dave Segal

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Every Matt Ruff novel is different from every other Matt Ruff novel. That’s a great thing, because it keeps the local author’s work fresh and surprising: He’s written a Philip K. Dick–ish spy thriller, a romance with multiple personality disorder, and a sci-fi rebuttal to Atlas Shrugged, among others. This is the launch party for his new alternate-universe thriller The Mirage—about the United Arab States declaring a war on terror against the Christian fundamentalists who destroyed the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers—with a Q&A session hosted by, um, me. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, www.elliottbaybook.com, 7 pm, free) by Paul Constant

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