at The Showbox

 

Perez Hilton’s leap into the music business is, in nearly every way imaginable, a complete failure. He was given his own imprint at Warner Brothers and thus far, his only signing was a French pop star named Sliimy, who was already on a European imprint of Warner – this meant that the former Mario Lavandeira turned catty gossip blogger has basically been used to give an American promotional boost to an artist already part of the label, not his own discovery. It’s looking more and more like a tax write-off than anything else. When Hilton got into a spat that turned modestly violent with Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am at a Canadian music awards show, he got little sympathy from any existing artists. In fact, quite the contrary, the most critical people were known musicians. Despite those setbacks (did I mention Black Book magazine pointed out that nearly every musician Hilton supported on his site was already written about favorably on the in the indispensible British music site PopJustice?), Hilton jumped in feet-first to promote his first musical tour.

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Bumbershoot takes place at the Seattle Center this September 5-7 and there's about a million and a half things to do (bands, literary panels, art shows, Flatstock, kettle corn lunches) over the three-day fest.

To help folks (especially ourselves) prepare for Bumbershoot 2009, we put together this lil mix of some of the things you should add to your Bumbershoot scheduling spreadsheet. We hope this helps you pick your must-sees or at least provides a soundtrack as you wander to and fro.

 

{go listen}

at Capitol Hill Block Party 2008

They were full of boundless energy, dancing ridiculously on stage in their stylish outfits, and proclaiming to the crowd that this would be “the greatest night ever!”

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My feature over on the KEXP Blog for Audioasis this week is an enormous interview feature from eight local bands: Mono in VCF, Seaweed, Das Llamas, Shake Some Action, Fleet Foxes, Sneaky Thieves, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, and Saturna.

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