4 p.m. Friday, June 27, Seattle Weekly HQ. Ever incur the ire of your editors by fucking up typeface and style standards on an alternative weekly’s music listings calendar? Constructive criticism: It’s a goddamn drag, so instead of striving to do my job correctly, I bid my cubicle adieu and decide to hustle to five shows in one pedal-to-the-metal Friday night, smoking, drinking, and barfing rock ‘n’ roll till the sun comes up.
5:05 p.m. Tower Records, Queen Anne. Vendetta Redsee also my patronizing feature on p. 43are just beginning a free set in the parking lot. It’s Nelly hot out herre, and more than a few hundred meatheads, swept-up teens, and local indie notables, including Ben Clark from the Lashes and Jay Clark (no relation, I think) from Pretty Girls Make Graves, have converged. The distortion keeps cutting out on Erik Chapman’s six-string, but frontman Zach Davidson rallies, piggybacking and/or bum’s rushing his cohorts and leg-locking the flimsy tent’s support beams like a kindergartner on monkey bars. An impressive ovation ensues. The postscript: touchy-feely, formal, sit-down autograph session. Punk ain’t dead after all!
6:10 p.m. Easy Street Records, Queen Anne.The Red were painless, pretty fun even, but instead of getting my thong John Doe’d, I sashay down Mercer to another in-store starring L.A. freestylist Aceyalone. A clerk promptly informs me that today’s performance may be delayed since Aceyalone notorious for flaking on gigshas already missed two (!) flights to Seattle. The shop teems with hoodrat harlots whom I’d gladly mack on if I were capable of convincingly incorporating even outmoded hip-hop colloquialisms like “mack on” into my rap. For better or worse, management throws me under the bus, informing the masses that Aceyalone is, indeed, not in Seattle (although he will be at Chop Suey tonight as scheduled), which kinda, you know, totally and irrevocably fucks my five-shows-in-one-day column concept.
6:45 p.m. Virginia Street and First Avenue. I could’ve taken the No. 8 to Graceland to catch Hint Hint opening the first of two gigs with Out Hud and !!!, but inexplicably hop aboard the No. 18 and fester in gridlock with rancid commuters. I think another member of the Lashes is sitting behind me discussing Vendetta Red with a young woman, but I’m too bummed on this column falling apart before sunset to eavesdrop. Bonazelli Rock Hedonism Starship, 2003!
7:30 p.m. Graceland, Capitol Hill. I stroll in just after Hint Hint’s last song, executed for a zombie-fied all-ages crowd of maybe 50. This is technically my third show of five; I’ve watched exactly one band and have had no cocktails or meaningful conversation with anyone. I take five seconds to deep throat a screwdriver, trudge into the showroom, and get blown away Iraqi civilian-style by Out Hud, a keyboard/DJ/guitar abstraction from “Berkeley, N.Y.,” according to their Marky Mark-look-alike ivory tickler, Nic Offer. Music “expert” that I am, I only recognize Offer as the frontman of tonight’s much-hyped headliner, !!!, when he vaults into the audience during “Dear George Bush: There Are 500 Words for Shit and One Word for Music. Fuck You, Out Hud” and does the hustle with everyone, including Weekly contributor Kurt B. Reighley, one of seven people psyched enough to shake some reciprocal ass.
9:30 p.m. My friend’s apartment, Capitol Hill. Companionship. Transportation. Narcotics. My friend, S, is driving, I have shotgun, and morphine pills and absinthe are low riding in bitch.
10:15 p.m. Zak’s, downtown. Zak’s final-ever punk-fucking-rock blowout is, in actuality, merely respected booker Brian Foss’ last hurrah, although the venue is currently in last-rites territory. Glad I’m so on top of the scene that I learn this week-old tidbit as Skull Sucker sets up. As rad as it would be to spend all night throwing firecrackers with and/or at the deadbeats under the basketball hoop, Chop Suey’s Prince Paul/Aceyalone bill offers cocktails and booty dancing. We’re splitsville after three chords and little-to-no truth, our lives unchanged.
11:30 p.m. Chop Suey, Capitol Hill. Prince Paul tugs off his warm-up, warns us that he’s a “producer/DJ” type, not an entertainer, sleepwalks through an endless career retrospective, and spins “classics” by House of Pain and Onyx. The crowd buzzes that Aceyalone ain’t showing. In mean-drunk mode, we jet. It’s so that kind of night: The bastard eventually showed.
1 a.m. My apartment, Capitol Hill. I spin Missy Elliott and the neighbors bang on the wall for the first time in five months, immediately exceeding the aggregate excitement of all five “shows.”
2:30 a.m. !!! after-party, Capitol Hill. The dudes from !!! are DJing. They don’t spin House of Pain or Missy, but somehow, some way, people dance.
3:30 a.m. Alley outside !!! after-party, Capitol Hill. S pukes Linda Blair-style two feet in front of . . . Jay Clark from Pretty Girls, who responds, “Jesus!” Full circle alert!
5 a.m. Broadway Avenue and John Street, Capitol Hill. I walk home at sunrise, nowhere close to puking or getting laid. Five shows, one night, more or less. Mostly less.
