Note from Shilo, CultureMob’s Queen of Content:

CultureMob is now in sunny SAN DIEGO and has plans to open in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Orange County by the end of June! In honor of our foray into sunny Southern California I have a special guest blogger, Thaïs, who just returned from kicking off festival season right at Lightning in a Bottle in Santa Barbara.

Do you like to write about arts and entertainment and want to be a guest blogger for CultureMob? Send me a message: shilo@culturemob.com

GUEST BLOGGER: Thaïs

The expedition started out on Wednesday, May 21 deep into the night. After rushing to get ready and loading up the van and trailer, we picked up our fellow copilots. We were now off to make a 24 hour drive, on our way to beautiful Santa Barbara to catch the breathtaking forest festival, Lightning in a Bottle!

Luckily for my boyfriend and I we were blessed with two angels that liked to drive and ended up doing so most of the way. Ah, what a lovely drive it was! With a bed in the back, and DJ Noisemaker pulling a 24 hour live set in the captain’s chair while we chain-smoked and cuddled, I couldn’t have asked for anything more!

After the long haul we made it to Lightning in a Bottle, where we met up with our wonderful camp GFP, Ghetto Fabulous Projects, Leaders of Random. And what a lovely bunch they are.

For three entire days we had the chance to stay at this divine location. Full of love, magik and sooo much more. Everywhere you turned a bright, enlightened spirit would be there warming your heart and filling your soul with ridiculous amounts of love. If I wouldn’t have known any better, seeing as I have been to quite a few festivals in my past, I would have swore I was in a Dream Land, on a magical adventure with fairies and dragons…oh my!

We had the chance to make it to all three stages, four if you want to count the Renegade Stage. Each one spiraled towards the sky with it’s own individuality. The Bamboo Stage, or Main Stage, was made of thousands of pieces of wood, woven together to make a star-like tetrahedron. What countless hours this must have taken, each piece individually strewn together! Next was the Wookie Stage…we didn’t get to make it to this one too much but it did consist of a large, shell-like DJ booth with a few other posts surrounding the area. And last but DEFINITELY not least was the Tree Stage. This was the stage that just seemed to be bumping at ALL hours of the night! It looked like a pirate ship with different rooms and levels…and what a fun stage to dance on! This was where most of the most rockin’ DJs played, jamming out in all hours of the night. David Starfire, Bassnectar, Glitch Mob, and so many others kicked our asses here. There wasn’t one moment that the dance floor wasn’t PACKED!

When we weren’t dancing our little butts off or conversing with tons of magik folk, there were booths to discover, such as Kelsey’s Creations with fairy-like tutus and Foxy’s Tooth Bling, where you could bling out your teeth with tiny sparkling jewels. And of course there were also live artists, fun air-brushing, and don’t forget the organic yummyness of food everywhere!

All I’ve got to say is thank you, Lightning in a Bottle for a most exciting, freakin’ fabulous, lusciously divine weekend! I’ll be seeing you at Lightning in a Bottle 2009- it only gets better from here!

Free tickets! Free tickets! Free tickets!

DJ ?UESTLOVE! DJ ?UESTLOVE! DJ ?UESTLOVE!

CultureMob.com is giving away 70 tickets to the party: CultureMob.com presents THE ROOTS New Album “Rising Down” Listening Party hosted by BLACK THOUGHT and featuring DJ ?UESTLOVE with special guests. It all goes down at Neumos on Capitol Hill Thursday June 5.

CLICK HERE to go to contest entry page.

?uestlove is a gifted producer and an incredibly skilled jazz drummer, best known for his work behind the drum kit for The Roots. He has worked with a myriad of very talented musicians and artists including D’Angelo, Al Green, Zack De La Rocha, Fiona Apple, Erykah Badu, Joss Stone, John Mayer, Common, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Dave Chapelle, Christina Aguilera and Jay-Z. June 5th he will be laying down fat tracks in his DJ shoes and you can expect a mix of classic hip-hop, funk, soul, and rock; the dance friendly beats will have Neumos poppin’ hot all evening long.

Winners will be selected at random and notified by email on May 30; non-winners can buy tickets at the door or in advance through Ticketswest for $15 (available soon). Doors open at 8PM and sorry toddlers, this one is 21+ only. The Culture Mobsters will be out in force, promoting our awesome website, spreading the good word about the Seattle arts scene, and most of all: enjoying life. Hey, we practice what we preach!

Don’t miss the party! ENTER TO WIN today.

I wish I could write a review of Atmosphere’s performance at the Showbox SoDo last night, but I can’t. I never saw the show, because I was thrown out due to a case of mistaken identity. For real.

Let me ’splain:

I had been trying to get a ticket to the sold-out show for about a week and a half, with no luck. Then the night before a friend texted me that he had an extra ticket to Atmosphere, and did I want to go? My reply was two words, and the second one was ‘YES’. I had never seen Atmosphere before and was excited as I had heard great things about their live shows, and I love the Showbox SoDo’s warehousey feel.

The crowd out on the warm Tuesday evening for the much-hailed hip-hop duo from Minnesota was dense and all-ages, with a bit more mad-dogging and less open smiles than I am used to in my usual electronic music crowd. If you like rap though, last night the Showbox SoDo was the place to be, and I was stoked to be swirling around in the mix.

Arriving late, of course, I had missed the first act and Abstract Rude was up on stage laying down rhymes and steadily working up the crowd in front of a big banner proclaiming, “When life gives you lemons, you paint Seattle gold.” 

I watched all this with my friends and our beers, caged off like the animals we are in the drinker’s section. When Abstract Rude finished up we all headed outside to check out one of my friend’s new pimp van, actually, the pimpest van EVER in the history of the universe and sweetest ride you ever saw, with running lights, a drink table and DOUBLE privacy shades. Straight pimp, straight up and down, like six o’clock.

After the fresh air/smoke break we headed back inside; Atmosphere was about to go on! Stamps on the wrists we walked up to the entrance, but the bouncer took one look at me, flashlight to the face, and would not let me pass. Whaaaaa? I held back, my friends went on in, then I tried again and he still wouldn’t let me in. I thought he was just being a jerk so I went around to the other entrance, which unfortunately was already closed for the night. The ladies there directed me back to the bouncer, who still wouldn’t let me inside. He said I had started a fight earlier inside the club, kicked some girl’s face in, knocked over a bunch of tables, then ran out screaming F you! F you! F you! to the bouncers.

Uh, yeah. This was not me. I am a peace lover, which is exactly what I said to the bouncers. “I’m a peace lover! I’ve been outside hanging out with my friends!” They were not having it. 

“Well, it was some girl who looked just like you,” the bouncer admitted, though still not waivering in his duty to keep the crowd safe from short, blond, table-trashing maniacs. So apparently last night a 5′4″ girl in a blue tank top, black skirt, fluorescent yellow fishnets, black and white striped legwarmers and a giant fuzzy fake fur coat beat someone up at the Showbox SoDo, knocked over several tables and did not take names. And because of that, Shilo missed the show.

It would have been funny if it didn’t suck. My friends all assumed I had gotten back in to the packed club and was dancing up at the front- after all, why wouldn’t the Showbox Sodo have let me back in? I cabbed it home and was in bed by midnight. Now I am all about new experiences, and this was a certainly a new one for me, but when said experiences interfere with new music, I get a little ticked off.

So how was Atmosphere? One of oppressive security at the Showbox SoDo, of bouncers who must not score very high on the job-satisfaction list, of people who need to CHILL OUT. The energy at hip-hop performances is palpably different from that at other shows, fomented in large part by the security forces who prove the cliche true that if you are looking for trouble, you will find it. 

But last night they made a mistake. The Showbox SoDo kicked out a peaceful dancer, someone who calms down violent drunk guys outside of clubs, marches in anti-war protests, has a peace sign tatttooed on her forehead and happens to write for a Seattle entertainment website. Oops. I’m guessing the party in the van was the best of the night, anyway.

So if you are wondering how the performance really was, here’s a message I got this morning to whet your appetite: Honestly the show was kinda mediocre, definitely very rehearsedly-adlib-like. Tried to play it off that ‘just because you’re Seattle and you’re holding it down’ but it was pretty scripted… didn’t sound mixed very well either. Kinda mixed like they’re trying to impress you with loud more than feel or good sound. Anyway, um shit stop throwing tables and getting kicked out of places alright?”

So there’s your review; now I gotta go clean this blood off my knuckles. Just kidding- I think the Showbox SoDo owes me a show ticket AND cab fare. Anyone else out there actually see Atmosphere perform and want to add their two cents in?

If you are heading to the Nas show at the Showbox SoDo this Friday night, tread lightly- and watch out for those crazy table-throwing blond girls- they’re everywhere.

Hey all you crazy, fevered, music-obsessed Seattleites out there! There’s a new forum for enthusiasts to get a good dose of first-hand Seattle music news from people in the know: SeattleSubsonic, otherwise known as “The Sound From Under the Clouds.” Pretty good, huh?

Local music freak, uh, I mean local music fan Kevin LeDoux, formerly of the Northwest Music Blog, has started a new website with a stellar lineup of writers and featuring all the best in Seattle sound, including recommended shows, venues, and blogs; they also have a calendar of upcoming events and articles about the freshest local acts bubbling up as well as the big tours making the rounds.

So why are we promoting another blog on the CultureMob blog? Shouldn’t we be snarkily trashing SeattleSubsonic with a hipster sneer, straight out of our tight pants and from behind messy purple hair? NAH. We’re not like that. Seattle’s a big little town and the more local music support and artist promotion circulating around, the better. This city is known for music (just ask my generation) and no mayor, no closed venues, no decibel meters can stop that. Seattle’s music enthusiasts can and must work together to foster the creative arena, support the artists out there every day doing their thing, and build the Seattle music scene up from a buzz to a barbaric yawp.

Seattle has heaps of interesting music blogs out there reporting back on various aspects of the local music scene, such as NWTekno, Nada Mucho, LineOut, Three Imaginary Girls, Sound on the Sound, Reverb, Seattle Live Music, and many more, all with the same goal: to get you out there and involved in the amazing music scene, whether you like electronic music, punk rock, jazz, or all of the above.

And besides, CultureMob.com is the only website where you can find events concerning all your entertainment interests; not just music but movies, comedy, theatre, dance, sports, festivals, lectures, and community gatherings. Only on CultureMob can you track your favorite performers and get alerted when they come to Seattle, add a MySpace or Facebook calendar to your profile, email your friends about upcoming events, and post previews, reviews, and comments of artists, events, and venues.

So check out SeattleSubsonic and in the immortal words of one of my good friends and local artist: GET INTO IT! It’s your town, your life, your evening: make it one for the blogs.

Want to win a pair of tickets for the June 5th performance: CultureMob.com presents THE ROOTS New Album “Rising Down” Listening Party hosted by BLACK THOUGHT and featuring DJ ?UESTLOVE with special guests at Neumos?

SURE YOU DO! CultureMob.com is giving away 70 tickets, and all you have to do to win is come back here on Thursday May 15th and enter to win. Winners will be selected randomly.

?uestlove is a gifted producer and an incredibly skilled jazz drummer, best known for his work behind the drum kit for The Roots. He has worked with a myriad of very talented musicians and artists including D’Angelo, Al Green, Zack De La Rocha, Fiona Apple, Erykah Badu, Joss Stone, John Mayer, Common, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Dave Chapelle, Christina Aguilera and Jay-Z. June 5th he will be laying down fat tracks in his DJ shoes and you can expect a mix of classic hip-hop, funk, soul, and rock; the dance friendly beats will have Neumos poppin’ hot all evening long. 

If you don’t win, tickets will be on sale soon through Ticketswest for $15 in advance; doors will open at 8PM and sorry toddlers, this one is 21+ only. The Culture Mobsters will be out in force, promoting our awesome website, spreading the good word about the Seattle arts scene, and most of all: enjoying life. Hey, we practice what we preach!

See you back here on May 15th!

Wow, save the date on this one! Thursday June 5th it is going DOWN at Neumos as CultureMob.com presents THE ROOTS New Album “Rising Down” Listening Party hosted by BLACK THOUGHT and featuring DJ ?UESTLOVE with special guests.

?uestlove is a gifted producer and an incredibly skilled jazz drummer, best known for his work behind the drum kit for The Roots. He has worked with a myriad of very talented musicians and artists including D’Angelo, Al Green, Zack De La Rocha, Fiona Apple, Erykah Badu, Joss Stone, John Mayer, Common, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Dave Chapelle, Christina Aguilera and Jay-Z. June 5th he will be laying down fat tracks in his DJ shoes and you can expect a mix of classic hip-hop, funk, soul, and rock; the dance friendly beats will have Neumos poppin’ hot all evening long. I absolutely cannot wait for this party and I hope to see you all there on the dance floor gettin’ down beside me.

The Culture Mobsters will be out in force, promoting our awesome website, spreading the good word about the Seattle arts scene, and most of all: enjoying life. Hey, we practice what we preach!

Tickets will be on sale soon through Ticketswest for $15 in advance; doors will open at 8PM and sorry toddlers, this one is 21+ only. CultureMob.com will be giving away a whole bunch of free tickets: stay tuned at CultureMob.com to find out how you can land some of those and for more information about ?uestlove, Blackthought, and The Roots.

Last Thursday I showed up to Midtempo Madness at the new Pioneer Square nightclub Crimson C at 10PM, my normal time of arrival, being the total nerd of the club scene and all. I fully expected to, like usual, be the first one on the dance floor and get the party going. Pushing my way past the smokers outside to the heart of the club, I realized that this party didn’t need me to get it going- the dance floor was already packed! It had started like wildfire with NoiseMaker on the decks and this was no ease-into-it night: to my thrill, everyone was getting down. My purpose in life is to get people to get down, on the dance floor or otherwise, but this crowd, with a stellar female presence, needed no help from me at all. The sheer excitement for the lineup had everyone buzzing and smiling and dancing, club nerd one and all.

After yet a-whompwhompwhomp-nother inciting and enticing set from Seattle’s funky crunkbrother NoiseMaker, rapper Souleye and DJ team BLVD proceeded to lay it down thick; the dance floor went wild and minds were blown right out of that little club. You can always tell when the experience of new music has gotten under the skin of someone: moon eyes, mouth hanging slightly open, distinct lack of articulate vocabulary, palms upturned in a gesture of thrill and disbelief: what do you MEAN I have never heard these guys before? The combination of Souleye’s gritty and organic rap lines laid over the twisting electronic loops of BLVD is an anti-match made in deep in the human consciousness; we crave this variety. Sameness is a safe and warm feeling, but we don’t settle for contentment. We want to be on fire, and to light it we need originality, diversity, and risk. We need this music.

I can’t explain electronic music, but I can explain what it does. In this case, your mind starts drifting off to the ether-sphere of sound with the long, guitar-studded electronic mash of BLVD and then is brought back to earth by the gritty and genuine words of a poet. It’s the mix, the to-and-fro, the take-it-away and give-it-back-again that takes music from being a constant good thing to being absolutely great. The boys of BLVD and Souleye have discovered this thrilling melange of earth and ether. It speaks so well to the human audience because we too are part heaven and part earth, part spirit and part body, part electronic sound waves and part rap. The dance floor of Crimson C spread right up through the tables and bar area as no one could resist the hot gooey bass. And damn that boy can rap!

Then, holy Thursday night, came Vibesquad, a producer whose bass takes no absolutely no prisoners whatsoever. I thought the whole of Crimson C was about to shake right down to rubble, leaving only the dancers and DJ there- and no one would even have noticed, so powerful is the spell of this DJ. The twisted, mutated sounds; the crackles, beeps, growls, and thumps don’t just speak to us alive out here in the world, they insist that we open our eyes and move. In the presence of Vibesquad, you have no choice but to exist in the present. Everything else goes away and we lap up the sounds, like starving refugees from society, our bodies as our spoons.

I am an unofficial ambassador of crunk, you might say, and had been telling my friends about this show for weeks and insisting they go. All through the night people kept coming up to me saying, “Oh wow, Shilo, you were right, this is AMAZING! I can’t even believe it!” Then a little shake of the head and the aforementioned glazed look of new music discovery. That is also what I live for- to share with others the transformative power of music that I have experienced in my life. Why do I, why do we, love it so much? Why do we love the thick, dirty bass and the filthy beats so much? I may not be able to explain it but I sure as hell can understand it. I want you to as well, but be warned- once you go off the deep bass end, there is no going back. Once you put on the suit of Captain Crunk, no other electronic music will quite do it for you: not drum and bass, not dub step, and certainly not house.

So what is this blond girl going on about? Why is she so ’bout it-’bout it with this music which doesn’t really have a name but is seeping up and over the nation from the West Coast and Colorado and conquering dance floors wherever it goes? Find out for yourself at Dirty Velvet May 16 at Nectar when Noisemaker, Novatron, and Kraddy and OOah from THE GLITCH MOB start a musical riot in Fremont. Buy tickets now; the show will sell out, and it is quite possible that people will be falling from the balcony, going into spastic dance fevers, twitching their minds all the way over to new dimensions, and having so much fun their hearts explode and they wake up in their yard. It might even happen to you, so get ready for your next life-changing music experience.

Do I have to say it? See you on the dance floor.

THURSDAY:

• Trinity in Pioneer Square turns 3 years old this weekend and kicks off the big three-day event with a no-cover Thursday night with deejays Darude, Beefer, Noah D. and Pressha spinning along with many others; the fun continues all weekend long.
• Right around the corner at Contour is the Booty Call Pump Up the Jammies Pajama Jam featuring four hot female deejays (Naha, BFly, Suzi Star, and spinning mad beats in- what else- their PJ’s! Come to get down and then go night-night.
• Do you like your fun hard-rock style? At Neumo’s The Shackeltons will be thrashing about with The Hands, New Faces and Born Anchors and championing the resurgence of good old-fashioned Americana: Rock and Roll, baby.
• If you are into hard-core punk (as opposed to sissy-face punk), get to El Corazon for The Dillinger Escape Plan- you will be pummeled raw by the recklessness theses boys spew forth.

FRIDAY:

• Just in case you didn’t know, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama arrives in the Emerald City today for the Seeds of Compassion Workshop which starts off with a bang and a sweet concert at Key Arena with the two-acoustic-guitar magic that is Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds. My tickets are burning a hole in my fat little hand; I hope you have yours.
• Who can miss Broken Disco’s One Year Anniversary Party at Chop Suey up on the Hill? A whole slew of out-of-towners like Tittsworth are on the lineup, making the usual sweatfest Broken Disco even dirtier than usual.
• Prefer funk for your Friday night? The Boogielistics lay it down and pick it back up at Lo_Fi.
• For those of you who like your musical experiences sitting down, Miss Saigon opens tonight at the Tacoma Musical Playhouse. Read the preview here.

SATURDAY:

• Do you like to be the first to know about the hottest, newest sounds? Get to Chainsaw Nouveau at the Oseao Art Gallery, an event by Immersion System presenting the newest genre of electronic music, you guessed it: Chainsaw Nouveau. A little dancing bird told me that Von Dewey spins at 3AM.
• RJD2 at Chop Suey brings hip-hop into the future with never a genre-limiting border in sight. He’ll spin, sing, play instruments- hell, he might even dance.
• Had a hard week? Want to really go crazy? Head to The Comet where King Brothers and Shellshag will be promoting rowdy behavior with their punky antics and noiseful, raving distortion. Beer will be spilled.

And here is the rest of the lineup so far: Stone Temple Pilots, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Ingrid Michaelson, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Jakob Dylan, !!!, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Saul Williams, Joe Bonamassa, M. Ward, The Walkmen, Asylum St. Spankers, Dan Deacon, MIDIval PunditZ, Blitzen Trapper, Bedouin Soundclash, Tim Finn, Dale Watson, John Vanderslice, Final Fantasy, The Fall of Troy, Orgone, Forro in the Dark, Ryan Bingham, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, Arthur & Yu, Darondo and Nino Moschella, Pacifika…

Many more to be announced soon! Stay tuned.

What are you doing this frisky Tuesday night? Why not come out and make a difference in the future of the world at the Beats for Obama Benefit in Fremont at Nectar Lounge?

Beats for Obama is no boring yada-yada schmoozefest fundraiser; this is a get-downathon featuring local deejays spinning their favorite breaks, dubstep, drum and bass, and hip-hop. Join DigDug, Slantooth, Futuredub (Shapeshifter and Contents), and Vendetta Kane as they spin the night away: fun with a purpose! Spoken word talent Verbal Oasis will be in the house as well and prizes to be auctioned off include two lift tickets to WhistlerBlackcomb, Barackawear hoodies, teeshirts, and lots of other goodies. This benefit is just in time to throw some support to the Obama campaign before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22; Pennsylvania has more delegates at stake than any other upcoming primary or caucus and thus is extremely important in securing the Democratic presidential nomination.

So why beats for Obama, as opposed to jazz or easy-listening or guitar riffs? I asked benefit organizer Karen Johanson who replied that the music selection tonight reflects the fact that Obama is fast becoming the delegate of the youth of America, if he isn’t already.

“Obama has proven his capacity to unite divergent personalities and communities and to mobilize America’s youth to become involved in the political process in a way I have not seen with others,” Karen says, and I agree. Race and gender seem to be the big talking points in the country concerning the two major Democratic presidential hopefuls; however age is just as important of an issue (to all of us youngsters, anyway). Obama, like dubstep and that damn boom-boom music, simply connects with youth in America better than his competition. To me, Clinton is old news and represents another generation, a group of people who are out of the loop, whose interests revolve around Social Security and medical benefits. My friends are more concerned with saving our environment, creating a peaceful world, and getting a job that pays the bills (ah, the ideology of youth!). I am a young white female and I feel that Obama is better suited to understand and address the issues that affect me and the youth culture today- and we just happen to be the future of this country and the world, you know.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. The Beats for Obama Benefit represents the connection with young people that the Obama campaign is fostering and running with; if you agree with me then put your money where your ideology is and come out to Fremont tonight. Doors at Nectar open at 8PM; suggested donation is $7 although bigger donations are certainly welcome. Come for a night of sick bass beats, undulating dubstep and fat raps; leave with the knowledge that you made a difference, however small, in the future of our America- and you did it by having fun.