The last time they rolled through town, two years ago, the members of Friends Forever were nearly obfuscated by their homemade display of fireworks, colored smoke bombs, and an oversized beanbag-like "Killball"—a flashy display of lowbrow punk-rock pyrotechnics and theatrics that eventually brought the cops to the Aftermath art gallery's back lot. This time, the Load Records act is returning to Seattle to turn indie record store Electric Heavyland's parking lot (252 NE 45th St) into a makeshift venue. Per the band's mantra of playing wherever they're able to park the old Volkswagen, the Denver trio will be sharing gravel with the Ultra Boys on Thursday, August 18, at 6:00 p.m. (it's a free show). Expect plenty of low-end metal riffs, crazy keyboard belligerence, and enough industrial noise to make a broken radiator sound like a purring kitty. Bassist Josh Taylor adds that's not all the band has in store: "The last year has brought some crazy changes for us. For starters, we have all passed on our roles in the band to new members so that none of the original dudes are in the band anymore," he writes via e-mail. "We have become three blonde women instead of three hairy, gross men." Wherever they end up on the gender spectrum, the band has been hard at work writing new material for a follow-up to 2003's Killball, which was loosely based on a conceptual sport involving PCP and the future of football.
That same Thursday night, Ann Arbor–based Found magazine is throwing a party at Re-bar in celebration of all the smutty goodness inside the premiere issue of Dirty Found. For those not familiar with the popular four-year-old publication, editors Davy Rothbart and Jason Bitner coalesce great random photos, to-do lists, notes, and other castoff urban clutter into an entertaining glossy mag that comes out about once a year. Dirty Found takes that concept a step further, presenting a hilarious collection of pacts (where "Tony" agrees "There will be no masturbating [jacking off] after this contract is signed"); pussy shots, pencil-drawn fantasies, and creepy admissions ("Daddy's favorite things... [in Sex-Land]: Daddy dressing up like a girl; me pissing in his mouth."). Every object is scanned and laid out with coffee-table-book precision, turning a pop-culture lens on a random collection of strangers' sex lives. For the Seattle stop of the Dirty Found tour, the editors will present a hilarious PowerPoint/slideshow display. The party starts at 8:00 p.m. and the $10 admission fee includes a copy of the magazine. (To stack yet another item onto Thursday's list, popular rock writer Chuck Klosterman will also be in town that night, reading from his new book Killing Yourself to Live at University Bookstore. See Megan Seling's article on page 45 for more info.)
For every so-called cursed Seattle space, there's a club owner determined to prove the negative legacy wrong. It's been almost a year since the Hideaway closed its Fourth Avenue Belltown location, and even longer since the previous tenant, Sit & Spin, shut down. But expect to see new life in that vacancy, as Marcus Charles (Bad Juju Lounge, Neumo's) and Jerry Everard (Neumo's, the Rendezvous) open a new bar, tentatively called Spitfire, with food and booze—but no live music. "While we love live music, that space needs to move beyond a live-music venue," says Charles. "The new neighbors and the various Belltown organizations that are behind the city's current crackdown on music venues and clubs wouldn't allow it to continue to be a club. The Sit & Spin was... figuratively the living room and literally the laundry room for the old neighborhood. We want to bring some of that back." To that end, he envisions a casual bar where you can hang out and watch sports without the typical sports-bar vibe. Expect the Spitfire to open sometime in October or November.
Three One G records will release the debut EP from Head Wound City—an avant-hardcore supergroup of sorts featuring the Blood Brothers' Jordan Blilie and Cody Votalato, the Locust's Justin Pearson and Gabe Serbian, and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—on November 8. The group took only a week to record a seven-song EP blasting out in under 10 minutes, with a sound "kind of like if Alien and Predator started a band instead of fighting each other," Blilie explains on Head Wound's Three One G bio page. The bio also states that the joint efforts started with a discussion between the members of the Blood Brothers and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs when the two bands played together in London—one drunk-dial to Pearson and the lineup was solidified. Who says those blotto 2:15 a.m. calls are good for nothing but long-winded voicemail messages?
