(Cross posted with the Capitol Hill Times.)

Thoughts on recent performance events, big and small, on the Hill:

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1) The Capitol Hill Block Party.

From all accounts it was a smashing success. Some 10,000 people attended each of the event’s three days. Except for one no-show due to illness, all the big advertised bands satisfied their respective throngs. Seattle finally has a second summer attraction with top big-name musical acts. (I personally don’t consider an outdoor ampitheater in the middle of eastern Washington to be “in Seattle.”)

But as the Block Party becomes a bigger, bolder, louder venture, it can’t help but lose some of its early funky charm, and a piece of its original raison d’etre.

Once a festival starts to seriously woo major-label acts, it has to start charging real money at the gates. It’s not just to pay the bands’ management, but also for the security, the sound system, the fences around the beer gardens, and assorted other ratcheted-up expenses.

That, by necessity, makes the whole thing a more exclusive, less inclusive endeavor.

The street fair booths that used to be free get put behind the admission gates. The merchants, political causes, and community groups operating these booths only end up reaching those who both can and want to pay $23 and up to get in.

I’m not suggesting the Block Party shut down or scale back to its earlier, small-time self.

I’m suggesting an additional event, perhaps on another summer weekend. It would be what the Block Party used to be—free to all, but intended for the people of the Hill. An all-encompassing, cross-cultural celebration of the neighborhood’s many different “tribes” and subcultures. An event starring not just rock and pop and hiphop, but a full range of performance types. An event all about cross-pollenization, exchanges of influence, and cultural learning.

It wouldn’t be a “Block Party Lite,” but something else, something wonderful in its own way.

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2) Naked Girls Reading: “How To” Night.

A couple of years ago, a friend told me about a strip club in Los Angeles called “Crazy Girls.” I told him I would rather pay to see sane girls.

Now I have. And it’s beautiful.

“Naked Girls Reading” is a franchise operation, originally based in Chicago. But it’s a perfect concept for Seattle. It’s tastefully “naughty” but not in any way salacious. It’s not too heavy. It’s entertaining. It’s edifying. It could even be billed as providing “empowerment” to its cast.

The four readers last Sunday night, plus the dressed female MC (costumed as a naughty librarian), all came from the neo-burlesque subculture. But this concept is nearly the exact opposite of striptease dancing. There’s no stripping, no teasing, and no dancing. The readers enter from behind a stage curtain, already clad in just shoes and the occasional scarf. They sit at a couch. They take turns reading aloud. When each reader has performed three brief selections, the evening is done.

Each performance has a theme. Last Sunday, it was “How To.” The readers mostly chose types of texts that are seldom if ever read aloud in public. Given Seattle’s techie reputation, it’s only appropriate that we rechristen instructional text as an art form.

Selections ranged from explosive-making (from the ’70s cult classic The Anarchist Cookbook), to plate joining in woodwork, to home-brewing kombucha tea, to deboning a chicken (from The Joy of Cooking), to the famous Tom Robbins essay “How to Make Love Stay.” The women performed these selections with great humor, great voices, and great sitting posture.

Despite what you may hear from the Chicken Littles of the book and periodical industries, The Word isn’t going away any time soon, any more than The Body. Both obsessions retain their eternal power to attract, no matter what.

“Naked Girls Reading” performances are held the first Sunday of each month in the Odd Fellows Building, 10th and East Pine. Details and ticket info are at nakedgirlsreading.com/seattle. The promoters also promise a “Naked Boys Reading” evening at a yet-unset date. (The participles won’t be all that’s dangling.)

My ol’ pal Riz Rollins is back in the Stranger this week. It’s only a one time gig, as an interviewee instead of as a first-person essayist like he used to be in the paper, but it’s still great to read his worldview. He’s one of the most thoughtful people I’ve known in any sphere, let alone the sphere of dance music.

This month’s Atlantic Monthly cover story bears the supposedly provocative title “The End of Men.” Essayist Hanna Rosin declares male dominance is or will soon end in vast stretches of western society—almost up to (but not yet including) top corporate/government leadership. She cites a steadily increasing female dominance in high-school graduation and college enrollment rates. She surveys a post-industrial developed world that declares little need for either muscle-bound labor or macho posturing. And yes, she dutifully mentions Lady Gaga’s videos as somehow symbolizing women’s new-found smugness or something like that.

But I couldn’t help but notice the mag’s cover icon. It’s a male symbol with a drooping arrow. Just like the logo of ’80s local (and all male) punk band Limp Richerds, one of Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm’s several secondary projects.

Many Seattle music scene vets remember Gary Heffern as the gracious, powerful, charismatic frontman for the Cunninghams and other legendary outfits. Before that, he fronted San Diego’s first important punk combo, the Penetrators.

But before that, his story gets even more fascinating.

Heffern’s early childhood was spent in an orphanage in Finland. He’d been “the youngest of eight abandoned siblings found in a barn,” as related by San Diego music historian Ray Brandes.

Heffern’s back in Finland these days. He participated in a TV documentary about his orphanage years, Sweet Kisses From Mommy. The whole thing’s now up and streaming at Brandes’s site.

Finally saw the Seattle Art Museum’s exercise in quesitonable idolatry, Kurt.

As my ol’ acquaintance Charlotte Quinn later summarized it to me, “So depressing. And so bad.”

The icon-ization of someone who not only had a complicated relationship with the cruel master that is “fame,” but who was killed by that master. Well, by that and that even crueler master known as heroin.

The pieces in “Kurt” (aside from the actual photos of Cobain by Charles Peterson and of latter-day Cobain fans by Alice Wheeler) were big, nay humongous, paintings and sculptures and videos and installation pieces made by artists from across North America and Europe. They were made for the museum “market,” though not specifically for this exhibition.

And they by and large sucked.

When the most lively piece is a video of a mall rat (portrayed by the artist herself) dancing in an energetic yet amateur fashion to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” you know something’s amiss.

But really, what could have been done with that subject? You have a dude, a gifted yet confused dude, who has three public faces: sensitive boy poet, BS-shearing aggressive rocker, and suicide-by-the-installment-plan junkie.

Take the music and the words away, which pretty much has to be done in visual still imagery, and that’s all you have left—graven images of a very reluctant god.

RULES: Comedian/singer/musician/cabaret improvisor Reggie Watts gets discovered, and fawned upon, in New York magazine.

DROOLS: The long puffy story completely ignores the fourteen years Watts spent as a working musician in Seattle, equally adept at rock, power pop, funk, jazz, and avant-improv.

Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren is dead. He is survived, but just barely, by the music industry he’d teased and manipulated.

The Alex Chilton tributes continue, from ex-local music writer/historian Ann Powers and local generalist blogger The Mysterious Traveler.

MISCmedia is dedicated today to Alex Chilton, a music legend since age 16 and a gracious gent by all accounts.

Big Star \”September Gurls\” live

Heck, even “AutoTune the News” is more arousing than many of Billboard.com’s “50 Sexiest Songs Of All Time.”

Onetime Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg, who was more recently one of Air America Radio’s revolving bosses, says the liberal talk radio distributor could have had a chance, had its organizers been willing to lose money and plea for donations.

At Paste magazine, Rachel Maddux asks the musical question, “Is Indie Dead?” Her answer: Yes. Deal with it and move on already:

Indie is, at once, a genre (of music first, and then of film, books, video games and anything else with a perceived arty sensibility, regardless of its relationship to a corporation), an ethos, a business model, a demographic and a marketing tool. It can signify everything, and it can signify nothing. It stands among the most important, potentially sustainable and meaningful movements in American popular culture—not just music, but for the whole cultural landscape. But because it was originally sculpted more in terms of what it opposed than what it stood for, the only universally held truth about “indie” is that nobody agrees on what it means.

Been wondering when Seattle would get a permanent, tangible Kurt Cobain memorial other than that bench in Viretta Park? Wonder no longer. Here’s the “giant Cobain-inspired guitar” neon sign for the new Hard Rock Cafe on Pike Street. You know, the bar/restaurant/club/merch shop that was supposed to have opened last summer.

The Seattle Symphony’s just hired a 17-year-old substitute conductor!

In perspective, this British youth named Alexander Prior wasn’t born when Nirvana’s Nevermind came out, or when the first issue of The Stranger was published.

Alaska Airlines is sponsoring an official fan site for Belltown’s own Olympic speed-skating champ, Apolo Anton Ohno. The site’s name, “followapolo.com,” reminded me of this novelty classic.