Do this:
Seattle hip-hop’s magical new wave is pumping up the revelry to the same degree old-school Seattle pumped up the melancholy. In my opinion, Mash Hall beats out fellow hip-hop acts Mad Rad and Champagne Champagne, both in the strength of their aesthetic (sweaty ’80s throwback rap) and their sheer level of energy. They played a packed, off-the-cuff show at Moe Bar on President’s Day eve that left the place feeling like that blown-out post-house party scene in Sixteen Candles.
They’re playing with Sap’N, who you will recognize if you went to last week’s Ladies’ Night show at Neumos, and DJ Darwin, of Mad Rad.
Mash Hall (formerly They Live!), Sap’N, and DJ Darwin at Chop Suey (1325 E Madison Street). Tickets $7 advance/$10 door.
Also of interest:
Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson is slated to appear tomorrow night at the Rainier Beach Family Center. Goodloe-Johnson will presumably be there to talk about Rainier Beach High School. The school district decided last month to try operating the school with two principals at the same time, and named Center School principal Lisa Escobar as the school’s new co-principal.
Hopefully someone will also bring up this. She certainly hasn’t returned our phone calls about it.
Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson
The event is being put on by the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition, a particularly active community group that, once a year, puts on a Rainier Beach Town Hall—an annual colloquium on the state of the far-south-end neighborhood. The last one took place in January.
Miss this:
Seattle feels like an entirely different town than it was even a year or two ago—so many great new acts have taken over the music scene since last February. Which makes it all the more frustrating when this city buries itself in ’90s nostalgia.
Marisa Meltzer wrote an entire book about the riot grrrl scene (which was centered to a large degree in Seattle), and she’s reading from it tonight at the U Bookstore. The book is part history, part personal tribute to the feminist punk movement of the early ’90s, by the author of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time.
There’s also a somewhat-touted (and actually pretty cool-sounding) reunion of Satchel, a band that hasn’t played a show in 13 years and was in the Seattle grunge scene so deep that you probably only know about them because of their inbreeding with other local grunge bands (e.g., Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard’s side project “Brad,” or pre-grunge progenitors “Malfunkshun.”)
Sounds great, in a sort of archeological way.
