Saturday, February 09, 2002

IT'S BEEN A LONG HARD DOWNHILL CLIMB: Friday night, I somehow managed to get into what was billed as the last local show ever by the world's greatest rock n' roll band, the Fastbacks.

The gig, at Ballard's fab Sunset Tav, was only announced as the group's farewell gig in the Stranger two days before; Kathleen Wilson wrote that singer-bassist Kim Warnick wanted to give up the grind (though she'll continue with her own new band, Visqueen). Thus, apparently, ends 22 amazing years of Warnick, guitarist-songwriter Kurt Bloch, guitarist Lulu Gargiulo, 14 successive drummers, and some 160 (more or less) of the greatest happy/angry noise-pop created anywhere.

The show itself was sold out (I only managed to get in toward the end of openers Droo Church's set). Many of the crowd had been FBX fans since the '80s; others were young enough to have been conceived in the bathrooms during early Fastbacks shows.

It was a racous, intense, gorgeous night. Guys with middle-aged backs and knees were pogoing like the old days. Bloch, Warnick, Gargiulo, and alternating drummers Mike Musburger and Jason Finn were tight, loud, and completely Hi-NRG. Fun, sweat, and great memories were had by all, for nearly two hours.

But this is not to imply the Fastbacks are, or ever were, a nostalgia band. Their music is timeless; their basic sound has remained virtually unchanged all this time (except for becoming smarter and more professional). They never lost their classic garage-rock charm or sassiness.

The Fastbacks' sound is built on simple, solid ingredients: Passionately belted vocals, alternately-keyed female harmonies, workhorse rhythm-section parts, deceptivel intricate guitar riffs, and, most importantly, the complementary interplay between happy music and sad/angry lyrics.

To have ever been a Fastbacks fan is to have fond recollections of having listened to, and identified with, Warnick's spirited deliveries of Bloch's negative messages. Typical topics include generalized loss and depression, loneliness, busted friendships, insufferable and/or uncaring authority figures, and frustration at the dysfunctional world of Reagan-Bush America (now more relevant than ever!).

On the bus over to the Sunset, I happenned to be perusing a John Gray self-help book I'd picked up at a bookstore remainder rack. In it, he talked about the need to express your angers and frustration, lest the negative energy build up inside you as a toxin to the soul. That's the effect I've always gotten from the Fastbacks' songs. They help me exorcise my depressions, and make me happy, at least for the moment.

And they always will, whether or not any more are released.

Though I'm certainly hoping more will be released, or at least "reunion" gigs will take place, or at least-least that Bloch can find a new performing outlet for his particular brand of genius.

posted by clark 9:17 PM

Friday, February 08, 2002

THANX TO THE NEARLY 100 souls who braved the blustery Feb. night to attend our suave Signifying Nothing exhibition opening last night. The rest of you can see it seven days a week until March 6 at the 2nd & S. Jackson.

BACK ON THE POP-CULT FRONT, that PBS workhorse Sesame Street got a major format overhaul this week. The kiddie-ed show now features far fewer one-minute-or-less blackout skits and films, instead favoring longer segments (up to 10 minutes) with narratives and familiar characters. Producers say this restructuring is the result of intense audience research into what Those Kids Today prefer to see.

This, of course, begs the question: What will come in future years, as this long-attention-span generation enters adolescence? I'm no corporate futurologist a la Faith Popcorn, but there are certainly intriguing possibilities to imagine emergine sometime in the mid-2010s:

• USA Today adopts a new format, with no stories running fewer than 3,000 words.

• C-SPAN has higher ratings than MTV.

• Sony announces an enhanced DVD hardware format, allowing a single disc to hold those newly popular eight-hour movies.

• Basketball courts across America go unused; poker tables become hot sellers at Wal-Mart.

• Restaurants start charging by the hour.

• Latest teen-fashion craze: The Ring of the Nibelung look.

• Funny bullet-item lists go way out of style.

posted by clark 11:13 AM

Wednesday, February 06, 2002

THIS IS THE TIME, THIS IS THE PLACE: Be in Seattle's still-earthquake-hurt-after-one-year Pioneer Square Thursday evening to see my own (gorgeous) photo exhibition Signifying Nothing at Zeitgeist Kunst & Kaffee, 2nd & S. Jackson, 6-9 p.m. See ya!

posted by clark 10:27 PM

FOLLOW THE WAR-MOBILIZATION of America's single most vital industry.

ONE MORE REASON I love the CBC: Tonight they ran a documentary about the first year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, right after a one-hour profile of Olympic women's hockey players.

posted by clark 10:15 PM

Tuesday, February 05, 2002

SOMEBODY HAS THE GUTS to say in a newspaper opinion section that "To be anti-Bush is not anti-American." Of course, he had to say it in a Brit paper....

...WHILE HERE ARE some more examples of "the New McCarthyism."

posted by clark 1:34 AM

Monday, February 04, 2002

THE SOOPER BOWL, surprise-surprise, turned out to be A Real Game for once, instead of a rout or a dogged defensive stalemate. It went all the way to the last second with a long-distanct FG by the team all the experts said would never make it.

There's just one discomforting aspect: The winners just had to be the team in red-white-n'-blue, even named the Patriots. It was an almost scriptable result right after a three-hour pregame show, a halftime musical bombast, and umpteen paid and unpaid ads, all full to the proverbial brim with flag-waving sloganeering and solemnities. The whole interminable ad campaign for "America" as a product even made the Britney Spears Pepsi spots look comparatively tolerable.

posted by clark 1:06 AM

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