If you haven’t yet discovered Rock Torch and are an over-the-moon audiophile or bibliophile, read on -- because this is one of the best ideas we’ve heard of since chocolate and peanut butter came together in an unholy union: Rock Torch founder Randy Abramson came up with the brilliant idea to ask musicians we love about which artists inspired/influenced them and why, and then put all the answers in a great big wonderful book.

Not only do they discuss in-depth what makes the music so off the charts, but also give album/listening suggestions by their recommended artist as a guide for new listeners. So that means you get the straight dope from Mike Doughty about Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy, Wanda Jackson writes about Elvis (is that simply perfect, or what?), and Ritzy Bryan from the Joy Formidable extolls the virtues of The Smiths. The list just goes on and on. Our own girl crush and local goddess, Rachel Flotard, contributed a piece on Dave Grohl and The Foo Fighters. Way to represent, PNW! Did we mention that this first volume of Rock Torch contains over one hundred essays? That is some serious brain candy for all the music lovers out there. The full color illustrations by Nicolas Nocera that accompany each piece make this compilation extra sweet.

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The volunteer-run, all-ages Vera Project at the Seattle Center recently hosted two Saturday celebrations of arty, musicy, writerly, printerly, poetry, baked sweet-nums creativity and I hung out at both, deflating my wallet for a huge stack of small press goodies. I do this whenever I can hit a Vera-sponsored craft thang, the most recent being the 5th Annual Hollow Earth DIY Holiday Fair, held this past December 8th. I saw some smokin' spoken word, hung out with my pals, and bought a lot of really cool music from Debacle, Medical, and ggnzla RECORDS at that one. (I'm going to write about the vinyl and CDs and DLs ASAP.) 

However, at the earlier event, the Short Run small press smorgasboard held earlier in November at the Vera, I picked up a sweet pile of chapbooks, comics, and yes zines that I've finally read through. And they're almost all brilliant. And so many of them too -- I've been going to zine events since, well, when zines were still called fanzines (but we won't get into that right now). But with the zine explosion and then zine decline-slash-advent of the boobwebs (my wife's name for the internet, I don't even want to glimpse her computer's search history), pickings at events like these started seeming meager and spare. But now that people are coming around again to the idea that owning a piece of art (which may or may not have writing and other stuff too) is actually too cool to believe and a spiritually profound way to live, no matter what your income is, old zinesters and new Do It Yourself darlings are choogling out self-published works again. To my heart's delight. 2012 seemed to be an awesomely inspiring year for those who wanted to put something out for their friends and new readers. Let's trip through the stacks fantastic (all are digest-size or thereabouts, which means half-sized, but thick with pages): 

Cometbus #54

This actually came out in 2011, but it's at the top of the list for being such an important example of how to tell a real life story about music, friends, and life. Aaron Cometbus has been making his perfect but non-pretentious collections of memoirs, essays, fiction, and reviews for many years without blowing his own horn too much about once playing in Green Day, and his own band Crimpshrine, and his work with the Gilman Street Project. If you want to learn how to live, scribble down your experiences, enjoy the best things in life (hint: money is a mere, not-too-classy option), dig in to this edition where he tags along with the punk pop trio to China for a tour for sure. This is where Aaron finally (peeps been waiting on this) examines how his friends Billie Joe and the rest gained power from being in an all ages punk rock scene, and then found lots of money and pain through ascending pop culture popularity. Aaron breaks the magician's rule by revealing many secrets of the inner circles of musicians (successful or not), and humorously juxtaposes his own addiction to literature and wandering experiential bliss with the mad-dog career of his old pals and the feral fandom of their followers. But he's still a fan. He loves these guys, and they love him, but love can be hard. (Four bucks. Available at Elliott Bay Bookstore and Sonic Boom, or order from Quimby's on the web.)

Mineshaft #28

Everett Rand and Gioia Palmieri publish the been-around-awhile, elegantly crafted, and impeccably edited Mineshaft, but it looks from casual glance to be a personal zine from underground cartoonists Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Pat Moriarity, musician Billy Childish and many others. And in a way it is -- the material is very intimate, even if you know the names of the contributors. This zine blows your mind on several levels: It's proof the zine can be a gorgeous looking small press publication devoid of bad cut-out artwork, knee-jerk "punk" graphics, or completelty unknown artists and scribes. Everyone involved with the mag are either famous, secretly famous, or absolutely funktabulous. If you wonder about the milieu from which artists like Chris Ware, Charles Burns, and others have sprung their pals are occasionally helping this couple put out what has become my most cherished running zine. It is also very perplexing in that I avoided it as a sort of old hipster sketchbook for awhile, but once you dig into the wildness of Crumb's dream journal, or the really good poetry, or the special comics from Moriarity and Kim Deitch and other Fantagraphics-favorites, it has much more depth than it appears. Yes, something that looks this good and is by your legendary counter-culture heroes is really this great. If you dig Arthur Magazine, or want to see what VICE would be more like if it wasn't trying to get ad money, hit this. ($9 and worth it: Mineshaft, P.O. 1226, Durham NC 27702.) 

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We wanted to give some love to the Richard Hugo House this week, because it’s amongst our favorite artistic community venues, and we don’t talk about it enough!

On Friday, November 16, as part of the 2012-2013 Literary Series, the Hugo House is hosting writers Ryan Boudinot (“Blueprints of the Afterlife”), Emily Kendall Frey (“The Grief Performance”), and Claire Dederer (“Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses”), who will lead a discussion of what to believe - and why Ya Gotta Believe!

With new music created by Jason Dodson of The Maldives, this event is going to be something super-extra-special, and super imaginary!

You should definitely snap up some tix online now, before it sells out.

{Ya Gotta Believe! | Richard Hugo House | Friday, 12/16, 7:30pm | $25 general, $20 HH members | All Ages, Bar with ID} 

On Monday, October 8 at 7:00 p.m., the Richard Hugo House, writer Frank M. Young, and artist David Lasky will be presenting The Carter Family: The Don't Forget This Song Book Launch Party. Young and Lasky are the creators of this delightfully unique illustrated autobiography about the first superstar family of country music (the one Johnny Cash was thrilled to marry into). They will be joined by fellow richly talented writers and artists Stacey Levine, Kelly Froh, Elissa Washuta and Mark Campos to present a multimedia reading, with musicians Laurel Bliss and Cliff Perry playing Carter Family songs. Plus, the RHH will be showing a video preview of The Winding Stream, a documentary about the Carter Family by Beth Harrington. There will be a dessert buffet (!!!), poet and proprietor of Pie Stand and Pie School, and copies of the graphic novel will be for sale by Elliott Bay Book Company -- live music and treats included for the outrageously low price at the door of $6!

The Carter Family was the birth, life, and death of a lot of music you hold dearest to your heart. If you hear their early-mid 20th century sides, your spirit will be consumed by a near-lost, old-time world of joy, sadness, sin, and salvation. The new graphic novel, The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song (Abrams ComicArts) is an October release (appropriately, for the autumn and before holiday book-buying), and can you fill you in on the rosetta stone of all your favorite American-fomented country-folk love songs, murder ballads, and spirituals. When family head A.P. Carter and his family sang about trains ("Worried Man Blues") you were on a freaking train, cuz. With all the passion of someone leaving town or coming home, craving change or even death, and planting deep the ever-giving roots for road epics, restless soul rambles, and every other trope in modern rock, twangy or not. 

The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song is the full-length collaboration between author/journalist/editor Young (who is from the American South) and Lasky (from Virginia), both having lived in Seattle through both the 90s alt-country music and alt-comics booms of this region. With their backgrounds and passions, no one else could have crafted a story this sensual, this paradoxical, and this compelling, even though the source material is pure gold. However, as music history so crucial, there have somehow been rare and few attempts to trace its anthropological and artistic necessariness to the C&W, gospel, and early rock scenes utterly indebted to it. Written with nuance and clarity, and lovingly drawn, the extended comic version of the Carter Family saga comes with a compact disc of eleven very rare radio sessions, making its worth far more than its cover price.

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Not to ruin the surprise for any of my loved ones, but this year you're getting a copy of the Bake It In A Cake cookbook for your upcoming birthday or holiday gift... and I'm hoping to get each copy signed by none other than the book's author, Megan Seling, at tomorrow's Bake It In A Cake book release party at Elliot Bay Book Company {in Capitol Hill}.

Tomorrow is going to be about more than just getting most of my holiday shopping done, it's going to be a wonderful celebration of all the amazing work Seattle's own (and radio DJ and acclaimed writer at the Stranger) Megan Seling has done for the world of baked goods.  

About two years ago, she started with an idea of combining two things we all love: cupcakes and pies, candy, fruit, or anything else she dreams up that is a delectable match for said cupcake shell.  Since then she's brought together banana cupcake with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Hello Panda chocolate-filled biscuits baked into mini brownies, and the holiday favorite--a mini PUMPKIN PIE baked into a cream cheese vanilla cupcake, topped with cinnamon cream cheese buttercream.

Each creation is a masterpiece, and so it's no surprise that in the last 2 years she's been praised by Martha Stewart, Rosie O'Donnell, and countless drooling sweets affectionados.  And now, everyone can be the life of the party snack table by creating our very own treat from the Bake It in a Cupcake: 50 Treats With a Surprise Inside cookbook.  

The book release party starts at 5pm, this Thursday (tomorrow) and, of course, there will be even be cupcakes!!!

In Waging Heavy Peace, Young is like a cool, old black-sheep uncle inviting you to kick back on the front porch on a summer evening with a cold beer, while watching the sun set and telling old stories. The preview chapter wanders like one of Young’s guitar solos, rambling from his model train collection, through David Crosby’s freebase addiction and relationship with Graham Nash, to the timeless beauty of the 1953 Buick Skylark, the Vietnam vet he hired to take care of his classic car collection, the barn that houses the collection and his business offices – all of which is just to introduce his obsession with sound quality and the evils of the mp3. Because you see, Young has an idea for a new technology that will pair the sound quality of vinyl with the convenience of mp3s. His is a storytelling style my mom (herself a huge Neil Young fan) calls “going down around Nellie’s barn.”

If you’re a music trivia freak looking for a comprehensive life story full of chronologically ordered details about Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and Crazy Horse, this book will drive you crazy. If you’ve ever wanted to kick back and shoot the shit with one of the greatest musicians of the last century, this is your chance.

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at Paramount Theater

When I saw that Rye Rye and Scissor Sisters would be touring together, my head almost exploded. Would I be able to handle that much neon, strobe lighting, lasers, and club beats in one evening? Heck yes! It was like completing a sweaty Baltimore bass half-marathon fueled completely on adrenaline and then being swallowed up in a congratulatory shiny glitter hug. [Ed. note: Damn girl!]

The diminutive Rye Rye took the stage with her duo of back up dancers, entertaining the crowd with their hardcore club moves. Slinging songs off her latest record Go! Pop! Bang! Rye Rye rapid-fired lyrics over a continuous undercurrent of pumping, dirty beats. She gave us the singles like “Sunshine," a product of her collaboration with M.I.A., and “Boom Boom” -- but then ended with the track that helped put her on Billboard’s 21 under 21 list, the dance hit “Shake It To The Ground.” As Rye Rye swaggered and ferociously spat out her rhymes, her dancers pulled audience members on stage, inviting them to shake their booties to the floor.  And you better believe they did! She danced with them, a whirling dervish in riotous turquoise, before wishing us all a good night in her sweet-soft speaking voice.

My sweaty t-shirt has just started to dry and unstick from my back when Scissor Sisters opened up with “Any Which Way.” Three minutes of that and I was back to being a hot mess. The crowd went crazy for Ana Matronic’s mid-song interlude describing the hunt for a bottle-tanned man.  The band played with their usual confidence and cheeky antics, but they seem to have also come into a relaxed familiarity, grown out of ten years of touring in mostly smaller venues. Spending an evening with Scissor Sisters, you get the feeling that we are old friends -- it’s like a class reunion for the filthy gorgeous.

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So, Judy McGuire, aka: Dategirl over at Seattle Weekly, just wrote a book! And she's having a release party to celebrate this book on Thursday, 6/14 at The Sunset!

The Official Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n Roll Lists is filled with, well, lists, like: 8 Reasons You Shouldn't Listen to Song Lyrics for Help With Your Love Life, and, I guess, all the things that Sid loves (loved?) about Nancy.  

And this is not going to be anything like a regular bookstore reading, because Judy's book release features DJ El Toro (Kurt B. Reighley) spinning tunes inspired by the book's lists, and a trivia contest with exciting prizes!!! Plus, afterwords you can stick around and see Amy Lavere with Shelby Earl and Mark Pickerel play for a mere $8.

So, I'll see you there, right??? RIGHT. 

{Thur 6/14| EARLY, 6-8pm: The Official Book of Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll Lists Release Party! | LATE 9pm: Amy Lavere with Shelby Earl and Mark Pickerel | $8}

"From Comix to Critique" is the slogan of Real Comet Press, which is the current retrospective show at the Fantagraphics Store and Gallery in Georgetown, featuring original art, graphics novels, and design work from artists such as Lynda Barry, Michael Dougan, Art Chantry, and Ruth Hayes. This Saturday, March 24 {at the same location} author Susan E. Kirtley discusses her book on Lynda Barry, subtitled Girlhood Through The Looking Glass. She will be interviewed by Cathy Hillenbrand, and an informal reception and signing will follow the live discussion. 

Kirtley is associate professor of English at Portland State University, and it's excellent she chose Barry as her subject -- she was the original "emotionally-socially tortured adolescent gal comics" star, her shattered, visually shivering odes to insecurity, anxiety, and the absurd abuses of the universe as charming and real-life ring true as any work by (colleagues) Matt Groening and Harvey Pekar. Regular readers of her cartoon in rock tabloid The Rocket were hooked for all time to her nervous, under-the-skin style of confession and observation. Kirtley's book is part of the University Press of Mississippi’s Great Comics Artists Series, which also includes works on Chris Ware, Alan Moore, Carl Barks, Jack Kirby, Garry Trudeau, and Walt Kelly.

So, just to recap: it's all going on this Saturday, March 24, 6:00 PM, at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S).

Also, don't forget that the Emerald City Comic Convention is coming up the weekend after this one -- and Fantagraphics will be there too, along with Seatte's own Jake Stratton hosting a nerd family feud gala event, some geek rock music, mook nihilsts testing out their military gaming skills, and maybe the same gaggle of fully decked Stormship Troopers and fully pierced Suicide Girls who collided into each other on the dealer's floor when I was there a couple of years ago (ah, good times). 

Here's a FBI press release lot of what I'm going for (and please note the further Lynda Barry tie-in at the bottom):

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In the spirit of the holidays, I wanted to put together a list of some things I've been reading (and coveting) lately - as well as things on my own wish list - that would make great literary gifts for friends and family this year. 

I heartily recommend you head to the local book store near you (may I suggest Queen Anne Books, Elliot Bay, or the UW Book store? Cinema Books on Roosevelt is also an excellent store for movie books - and a "dig through the stacks and explore" kind of place) to pick up a few of these: 

MOVIES!

Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film by Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly
Our own Chris Estey wrote about how awesome this is earlier this year, and omfg. It IS. Every single movie with any appearance by a punk rocker is detailed within. This book is one of my greatest treasures…and I haven't even gotten past the first 20 pages. Its completeness is amazing, and the reviews/descriptions of the movies are hilarious. I LOVE IT. And I have some half-assed notion of renting all the movies in it that I haven't seen - who wants to dare me? 

Deep Focus Books - Heathers, They Live, and Lethal Weapon 
When Soft Skull press announced Deep Focus last year I was SO EXCITED. These books are like the movie version of the 33 and 1/3 series. I currently have They Live and Heathers in my collection, and am excited to add more. In addition to the ones listed above, they also have The Sting, Death Wish, and The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (WHAT) available. 

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