There aren't many people who have amassed as much goodwill in this music community as Ashley Graham, a publicist and writer who balances having her own local, independent PR company, Wig PR, and being the regional publicist for Live Nation. There's a semi-regularly feature on the Seattle Weekly's music blog Reverb that responds to her LN press releases. She's wonderful, lovely and helpful (including always returning my e-mails promptly at seemingly unusual times).

Unsurprisingly, she's throwing a great party this weekend (tonight in Seattle, tomorrow in Spokane) with some great bands all weekend. It's become something of an annual tradition (although last year's was unfortunately nixed by the sudden closing of The King Cobra). Tonight kicks off with SHIM, Paris Spleen, Telepathic Liberation Army and The Spinning Whips at the High Dive (21+, $7) and tomorrow SHIM and Paris Spleen are making the drive to Eastern Washington along with The Globes and Space Opera 77 to Sunset Junction in Spokane (21+, $6).

As of today, we're officially in the second half of 2008. Welcome! To gear you up for another fabulous six months of local Northwest releases, we here at imaginary headquarters have brainstormed an imaginary mix for all of you, containing some of our favorite songs by Northwest artists released this year to date thus far.

No promises that each of these will make our Best of 2008 Reader's Poll final list, but at least this way you have the next six months to follow-up and listen to these releases before you have to decide. To paraphrase imaginary ChrisB, we feel like this list is pretty unfuckwithable. But that doesn't mean that we didn't inadvertently overlook something great. If you have additions for our list, please chime in with your comments below.

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Tonight at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard there's a special benefit show going on. It's called "Goin' To California" and it features a whole bunch of Seattle bands singing songs about California. The whole thing is an Earth Day benefit and proceeds go to Sustainable Ballard.

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The organization is as worthy as their lineup is spectacular this year.

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I completely spaced recommending a really cool show for last night (3/30) -- the Wig Fits All Heads anniversary show at the High Dive, with Iceage Cobra, Shim, The Trucks, and Seaweed Jack. D'oh!

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See what's in the stars -- and the record stores -- for you for January 2006, featuring reviews of Antony And The Johnsons, Elekibass, Queen, The High Violets, Shim, Red Pony Clock, and more.

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