From the Apr 7 – Apr 13, 2005 issue

Music

Live Wire

Girls, Girls, Girls

by Jennifer Maerz

Moby, Tommy Lee, and Kelly Osbourne all in Seattle in the same week? Our celebrity threshold expanded just slightly at the end of March when all three marquee names slipped in and out of town--some more publicly than others. Moby was at Barnes & Noble to promote his new book, Teany--which I hope is a livelier read than his latest made-for-TV-commercial music output, Hotel, is on the ears. Not that Tommy Lee's DJ set at Club Medusa was much better musically. The portion I heard sounded like bad Ibiza techno, but maybe he cranked into rock mode later that night. You don't go see Mötley Crüe's drummer for his mash-up skills, though (or, in Lee's case, his way with a laptop and a second DJ at his side). You go because he's still a stone-cold fox (as the ladies dancing in lingerie shirts on the tables around him can attest) in a "White Boy" wife-beater and a newsboy cap. And it's always encouraging to watch a famous rock star look like he's having the time of his life presiding over a club where people are sardined and slack jawed around him, green lasers are jumping around overhead, and the hardcore female fans wait around for hours with a Sharpie in hand in hopes of getting a breast signed (speaking of which--Megan, did you make it happen?).

Kelly Osbourne, however, was nowhere near emblazoning breasts at El Corazòn over the weekend, where she was checking out a show by New York flavor of the moment, the Bravery. Osbourne was in town on an early publicity tour for her upcoming, Linda Perry-produced record, Sleeping in the Nothing, and she got on the guest list for a bunch of good shows--from Dizzee Rascal (who put on a stunning set with a second MC and a DJ at his side) to Chop Suey's laptop battle. The Bravery show was pretty damn packed, however, and Osbourne got an escort out a couple songs into Ash's headlining set. I did the same, as Ash's watered-down pop was much less of a charge than the Bravery--who sound like clones of the Killers, meaning, take 20 years off the date and they'd be scoring Some Kind of Wonderful or one of Molly Ringwald's many coming-of-age scenes, with all the new-wavey, chest-beating, hook-stocked angst they delivered to an enthusiastic crowd.

In other band news… Hideaki Sekiguchi (AKA Billy), bassist for Japan's Guitar Wolf, died of a heart attack in Tokyo at age at 38. The band had played a show at Chop Suey early last month… The Iron Composer crew are moving their popular musical theater battle to the EMP Sky Church (they've got to do something with the space, right?) and are shifting their contestant focus to national acts… And Akimbo's kit-rattler, Nat Damm, has a silk-screened poster series on "drummers that rule" up at Neumo's through April 20.

jennifer@thestranger.com

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