This Saturday, August 14 loyal Walkabouts followers are in for a treat at the Sunset, with doors opening at 6 pm (during happy hour). Carla Torgerson, Michael Wells, Glenn Slater, Paul Austin, and Terri Moeller (otherwise known in Terri Tarantula) will be playing songs written and/or recorded with Walkabouts leader Chris Eckman, who comes back to Seattle to work with the band in autumn.

Just because Eckman lives in Slovenia now doesn't mean the other vibrantly creative members of the Walkabouts shouldn't be able to play for their hometown fans, right? Thus, the Drunken Soundtracks, the moniker the Walkabouts play under while Eckman is away, taken from a sublime double CD compilation of lost songs by the group released in 2002. The show will be opened by Animals At Night leader Graig Markel, putting down production duties in his new home studio for one night to come out and deliver an also rare solo set. Walkabouts fans are a fervent and loyal throng, so be sure to buy your advance tickets here if you're as excited by this news as I am.

For fans of roots-based, poetic but dynamic rock, who want to sample more of the Walkabouts oeuvre by also legendary alternative artists such as The Minus 5, Jon Langford (of the Mekons), Steve Wynn and Linda Pittman, Gary Heffern and Beautiful People, etc., check the 2010 anthology in the meantime: Got No Chains: The Songs of the Walkabouts. They'll probably have some copies for sale at the show this weekend, and it is as highly recommended a taste of the talents of the band as their own Drunken Soundtracks.

There are a lot of fantastic books, albums, DVDs, and other things that any music fan would love to get this year, but may not know that they would love them yet. The pop culture pie hole is insatiable, and with the battered economy not everything I loved got the proper hype. This is Part One for me, the recorded sound segment.

When it comes time to buy stuff for friends (Christmas Eve, at Easy Street, Sonic Boom, or in my next installment, the Fantagraphics Store), you might see bundles of the below spilling out of my weary arms (if I haven't mail ordered extras already).

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he festive atmosphere of The High Dive seems like a wonderful place to reencounter the superb songwriting skills of The Walkabouts, under their pseudonym for this night. And now I realize that they're probably headlining, after Seeing Blind and the Randy Hicks Band, which means I can probably see Redwood Plan first and then head like hell over to Fremont to catch Drunken Soundtracks!

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But are you reading this web-page looking for worthy causes to support? You there — in the black — YOU are? Well, here's one then!

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