So you wanted to know all about Culturemob.com right? ITV (Independent Television) interviews Culturemob CEO and Founder Steve McCracken outside Seattle’s popular night spot Neumos…hey, wait a minute. That’s me!
Check out this video and find out what I have to say about Culturemob.com
Thanks to Amy and the crew at ITV.
In the last three weeks, we’ve rolled out a bunch of new features and a major redesign, all of which I’d like to draw attention to.
We’re finally branching out and covering more cities, starting with Portland and Denver. Seattleites, tell your Portlander and Denverite friends to go nuts! We’re looking to improve our coverage in those areas, so let us know what you’d like to see on our site for Denver and Portland.
This is a big one and we think that we’ve got a damn good first iteration. Plug your event into our system and not only will your fans be able to track your event with our RSS and iCal feeds, but we’ll make sure that your event is also covered by the following:
If you got an event you’d like to promote, give it a try and let us know what you think. We want to be your one-stop-shop to promote your event.
The nature of events is very fluid. Lineups might change, the start-time will be pushed back, the location might move. Because of this, we’ve added the ability for any user to be able to edit an event, artist, or venue. If something is wrong, make it right.
We wanted a quick way for folks to be able to tell their friends the details of an event that they’re interested in. We’ve added the ability to use your address book from AOL, Outlook, Yahoo, GMail, Plaxo, and more.
We’ve added the ability to build and place a widget of your events on pretty much any type of page: MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress, just using straight up html, and many more. Speaking of which…
Now you can grab your My Events RSS feed and plug it into your Facebook page. You can tell your friends what events you’re interested in attending. Bands, grab your artist RSS feed and your Facebook page will be populated with a list of your events.
We’ve got a vibrant base of users posting comments on artists, events, and venues. Now if you click on their user name, you can see all their comments. If you see a comment with some good taste, you can see what else that user recommends (or tells you to stay away from). Also, you now can post your beautiful mug for your avatar in your account page.
I can’t quite call it a redesign, but we’ve made some major refinements to the design. For those interested in the reasoning behind the changes, Designer Chris Brummel has written more about that here.
So there you go. And we’ve got lots more coming down the pipe. Make sure to let us know what you think of these features and what you’d like to see added.
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.
Starting last month I began volunteering for Earshot Jazz to help keep their calendar up to date and to, perhaps, make it a little more comprehensive. In doing so, I’ve pretty much become an expert on what jazz artists are playing where in the Emerald city. So in updating the calendar, I noticed that both Dr. Lonnie Smith and Kurt Elling are coming to town in June to play Jazz Alley. Both are incredible artists that are on my list to see. Whoohoo! June is going to rock, or, er… swing?
Dr. Lonnie Smith is an authentic master of the Hammond B3 organ. For over five decades he has furthered the sound of Jazz, created a worldwide fan-base, and revealed his musical talents on over seventy albums. I have several of his CD’s and they are fabulously funky. However, the real attraction for me is guitarist Peter Bernstein, who I saw play a few years ago at the Ballard Jazz Festival. Peter’s playing just floored me and I’ve been a fan ever since.
In my opinion, Kurt Elling is simply the finest male jazz vocalist since Frank Sinatra passed away. Kurt has seven Grammy nominations to his credit and won Down Beat’s Male Vocalist of the year in both Critics and Readers polls for 2007 (the fourth time he’s won the top spot in both polls). His version of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” on his “Flirting with Twilight” CD, is one of my favorite jazz vocal tracks of all time.
So for some hot beats & cool jazz, make your reservations at Jazz Alley today or you might not be able to get in the door.
There’s no doubt that the Two Loons for Tea live performance at the Triple Door Musicquarium was one fresh experience. I wrote a comment/review of the show under the name Fred Roth (my comment here), but I have to tell you that there are no words that can do last night any justice. You had to be there to know what I’m talking about. Here’s a short but sweet video clip of Two Loons for Tea performing one of my favorite tunes of the night.
Two Loons for Tea is signed by Sarathan Records.
Mell Dettmer was in the house and did a duet performance with Two Loons very own Jonathan Kochmer. My good friends were there, met some really cool people. Kicked it with the Drummer Jay Hoots. Some guy started doing an interpretive dance that seemed strangely appropriate. It was one of those great nights in Seattle.
It reminds me of my other great nights in Seattle. Here are my top 10 greatest nights in Seattle for 2008 so far (in no specific order).
1. New Year’s Eve Party at Le Pichet featuring Seattle’s hottest band New Faces
2. Dinner with Cheryl Waters (KEXP) at Verve Wine Bar. We have to do that again!
3. My night at ToST watching the band Marmalade with Davee C on Drums
4. Gutter Twins at the Showbox (at the Market)
5. Watching Chris Brummel play the bass with the band Super Sonic Soul Pimps at the Nectar Lounge
6. The Rawstock Short Film Festival at the ACT Theatre
7. Two Loons for Tea at the Triple Door’s Musicquarium
8. Having a beer with Kevin LeDoux and Chris Pierard at Park Pub
9. X live at the Showbox (at the Market)
10. D. Black, GMK and Grynch at the Vera Project
You can find other great nights in Seattle here at culturemob.com
Yes, finally it’s Springtime in Seattle! Yeah, the colors, the birds, the daffodils, the SNOW!!!
Okay, that video above was from New York in February of 2006 but it did snow here in Seattle today!
All aboard the Springtime Express! You don’t need a ticket, you just need a thick winter coat, a dorky yet warm hat, a pair of gloves and some ear warmers. Then repeat after me: “it’s not cold outside! it’s not cold outside! it’s not cold outside!”
I just shot this video of the important things you’ll need this spring!
Springtime my…eye!
On a more serious note, there are a lot of fun event to check out while waiting for spring to appear. Next Thursday starting at 10am you can take a trip to the Nordic Heritage Museum for example. Make no mistake, it’s a springtime celebration. Children can make fun springtime crafts from the Nordic countries. So go have some fun out there!
Find more warm events this spring at culturemob.com
We’ve been mulling the possibility of running a CultureMob Street Team. I did a little write-up about it.
The short of it, we’ll be down at the Nectar this Friday watching the Super Sonic Soul Pimps. Come down and say hi
Our city is on fire. The streets are smoking with hot deejays, the buildings are blazing with passionate performers, the bars are burning wildly and the galleries are smoldering with artists you have never heard of. Seattle needs your help- but don’t grab the buckets, grab your friends and plunge headfirst into the fire-stoked madness yourself. If you haven’t noticed the smell of something big about to happen in Seattle, then you need to get out there and feel the frisson of energy in our city. I dare you.
Seattle is crawling alive with talented artists and performers pouring out their souls on stages, behind decks, on the canvas, on the microphone, every single night. You might think that the “Seattle arts scene” is reserved for cool, young people with crazy colored streaks in their hair who have no worries and plan secret parties under bridges and dance all night and live only to have fun. Well, yes, this is one of the blazin’ hot music scenes in this city. But there are more, so much more.
Seattle is stocked full of people who know that the transcendent experience of shared understanding through art does not discriminate; it goes way, way back into human history, beyond race, beyond gender, beyond class, beyond all the labels we want to separate ourselves with. This need to be understood through creative expression is universal and much more important to our happiness than any contrived consumer “needs” for big screen TVs or picket fences. It is an innate necessity in every single human on this planet, and I experience it every night in Seattle. I see middle-aged men with bad haircuts playing their souls out to a crowd of strangers on a Monday night. I hear singers like Vicci Martinez grabbing the ears of everyone in the Showbox with her open, clear voice; her tales of lost love overwhelm me, not because I am so into her music, but because she is. I wander into the sports bar Fuel in Pioneer Square and am completely bowled over by a random butt-rock band screaming and giving their absolute all to a mad, slammin’ crowd of fifteen. On Friday nights at Trinity the booty-shaking, bottle-full-a-bub Top-40 crowd proves that they too, must dance to the beats and gets down accordingly; I clap for comedians who live to make people laugh despite themselves. I see artists at events painting and bravely putting themselves out there to have their innermost expressions judged; I watch actors on tiny stages who have devoted hours and hours of their lives to entertaining YOU.
You may not be into bluegrass music or improv comedy or punk bands, but as a human you will appreciate the passion, the energy, and the enthusiasm that these artists create to make our world a little more colorful and exciting, a little more alive. Are you part of this world of creative expression, taking place all around you in Seattle, burning it down venue by venue with a flaming passion? You should be, and now you have no excuse. Get out there, I dare you. Follow your interests on CultureMob.com and meet your community; then go further and try something new, something weird, something a little uncomfortable. The notion that the secure, convenient experiences are the most worthwhile to pursue is just wrong. We spend our whole lives trying to create a safe little bubble away from weird situations and unusual moments, to pare down the excitement in favor of a warm cup of tea. I know the green tea is yummy and your couch is comfy, but get off it- no one ever had a soul-changing experience while Tivoing stories about other people’s lives.
What is your story? Is it full of amazing, random experiences that have changed who you are? Do you remember meeting that painter who transformed the way you think about art with the stroke of a brush? Have you been blown away by a musician who is channeling a higher power so much that his hands don’t even seem to touch the guitar? Have you been moved to tears by the words of an actress that will never win an Oscar? I have, this week, in Seattle, experienced this passion, this unabridged enthusiasm for life and art and the expression of the desire for understanding and communication that fills every single human being on this planet. Right here, in Seattle, every night.
Art is for every human being; we are all privy to the energy of the universe; all you have to do is follow your interests and find your community. Do you like offbeat, quirky theater productions? Multi-media art installments? Crass comedians? Quilting extravaganzas? Dance-offs? All of the above? Whatever you are interested in, there is a community in Seattle waiting for you to share your experiences and opinions, and you can find them at CultureMob.com.
Our city is on fire! Is your life? Get out there, Seattle, and add to the flames. I’ll see you on the dance floor.
Shilo Urban
This past week you might have noticed some new features on the site that have the staff here going ga-ga. We want to point them out to the folks out on the Intertubes to see who will go more ga-ga:
AND MY FAVORITE: You can now subscribe your calendar and feed-reader to recommendations, saved events, custom searches, artists, and venues. I’ve subscribed to my recommendations in my calendar and now get calendar alerts synced with my computer and my phone to let me know when events I want to see are coming up. I’ve also got a feed for very specific events by browsing “Music” and applying a facet for “Hip-Hop” and “Funk”; then saving the feed. Or if you want to follow all of the events at your favorite venue in your RSS reader or your Outlook or iCal calendar, just click on the icon.
We hope that you get a chance to try out these features and let us know what you think…