The Spectacular Saturday Series begins this Saturday at the Fantagraphics store in frisky Georgetown, starting with the press party for NEWAVE! The Underground Mini-Comix of the 1980s.

If you're a fan of graphic novels like Ghost World and wanted to see the raw cool beginnings of Daniel Clowes and his fellow "ink studs," this would be like releasing a DVD set of a mess of vintage Velvet Elvis and Paradox performances for Death Cab and like-minded band fans. The mini-comix and zine scenes back in the Reagan era were entwined around each other, filled with post-Robert Crumb surreal political protest and punk rock splattering and autobiographical bizarreness.

Clowes won't be at the event this Saturday, but a lot of his contemporaries are in this lavish, beautiful, hardcover ode to that berserk generation, and many of them will be at the store to celebrate: Jim Blanchard (a Roq La Rue gallery demigod whose depictions of celebrities and weird kids and meat are queasy-legendary and painstakingly rendered), David Lasky (who has a comic in The Stranger this week and is working on a GN tome based on the Carter Family with scribe Frank Young, for the Smithsonian), Dennis Worden (whose nihilistic Stickboy was a proto-grunge era favorite, as ubiquitous in coffee shops in Seattle as Tad records), and Michael Dowers, who will be giving a mini-comic demonstration and giveaway. It all takes place this Saturday, January 30, beginning at 6 PM and tapering off at 9. Music to be performed by iji, as a special treat.

After this, coming up through the top half of February will be a signing for Chocolate Cheeks by cruel children's tale satirist Steven Weissman. His books were big sellers at Confounded, when it used to exist in the same space as Wall of Sound on Cap Hill. He masterfully captures the dark side of kids' lives and the usually banal cartoons created for and by them, with nasty little brute characters and a chaotic mess of misadventures. His work is very accessible and trouble making indie-punks would probably feel his comics are more friendly than VICE's Johnny Ryan but not exactly Dennis The Menace either. This party will be held on Saturday, February 6, from 7 to 8 PM.

 

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at The Vera Project

Nana Grizol played The Vera Project on Tuesday, Jan. 19th along with Max Levine Ensemble, iji and A Million Years Ago. If you didn't already know about this show... see here, here, here, here, and here.

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I am fairly certain that imaginary keenan and I have created an airtight case to get yourself to the Vera Project on Tuesday {1/19} to see Nana Grizol {exhibits one, two, three, four}, but here are a couple more reasons to get you and your posse there:

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For some reason as stressful as it is sometimes to do, I found myself compiling a bunch of year end and decade end lists over the holiday weekend. So many so, I decided to spread out all my lists throughout the week. Today we'll start with the meat of the list -- my favorite releases of 2009.

As long as I've been making lists, it's always been apparent that I'm partial to Pacific Northwest bands... and this year it's especially so. I'm sure I've forgotten something that I love beyond belief.. but here is the list as of *right now*. What are your favorite local and non-local releases of 2009?

 

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I don't know how it happened, but half the year officially is over! That means that we're half way to end of the year list time! I know that for a bunch of us, there are few things we love more than lists and mix tapes (I usually make a mix for friends of my year-end list favorites) -- so it makes sense we should do a mid-year check in and see what's topping our Best of 2009 list. Here's my off-the-cuff list of what albums would vying for Top 10 of 2009 in my book:

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at The Crocodile

Huge mega thank yous to everyone who joined us this past Saturday for the Three Imaginary Girls' Top of the Croc party, celebrating the grandest of re-openings of the Crocodile. The night featured stellar performances from iji, BOAT, Tullycraft, and "Awesome". Since we're a little biased with how much fun the night was, we wanted to share some of what a couple other fine Seattle reporting establishments had to say about the night: * Seattle Bids Twee Adieu {The Finest Kiss} * Tullycraft's Last Seattle Show at the New Crocodile {Megan Seling, The Stranger's Line Out} And for my favorite part... your photos! There are so many amazing ones to choose from. Head over to the Three Imaginary Girls Sparkly Indie-Pop Flickr Photo Pool to see them all... and if you have any, you should add yours to the photo pool as well!

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Huge thanks to everyone that came out to the Crocodile on Saturday night!

It was wonderful to have all of our favorite folks in one place at the same time. We hope that you had a tasty (and commemorative) Top Pot doughnut and a Vain updo? And most of all, we hope you had as much fun welcoming the Crocodile back as we did.

If you've got any pictures you want to share, add them to the Three Imaginary Girls Sparkly Indie-Pop Photo Pool group on Flickr. We'll be gathering all the photos in the coming days and putting together a photo album of the night on the site and we'd love to have your shots!

Also, tell us what you thought of the new place, the bands, the everything.

Was your beer really cold too?

As Steve Louie's photos of opening band iji (above) and BOAT (below) suggest, the bands really brought it. (BTW, nice Crocodile shirt D. Crane!)

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if you couldn't tell by listening to our visit to the TBTL studios on Wednesday night (listen here to the 9p slot on 4/1/09), we are so utterly excited for the big Top of the Croc bash to commemorate the grandest of re-openings of the Crocodile tomorrow night (Saturday 4/4).

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See Tullycraft and iji at Top of the Croc on Sat 4/4!

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See "Awesome" and iji at Top of the Croc on Sat 4/4!

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