Seattle’s all-ages concert guide You don’t need fake ID to have fun.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times ran a story on July 5. I’m copying it below because of silly registration that’s a pain: here’s a copy or the actual times page

UPDATE: Rumor has it that the Seattle Times may be doing a story on the House - more info as available.

UPDATE: Councilwoman Brenda Stonecipher has responded!

When MercurialSound started, we began it in the boring town of Lake Stevens: about 40 minutes north of Seattle, the kind of city made up of housing developments with no real downtown. The closest city we had was Everett: and Everett had no real music scene. So we drove down to Seattle, almost every weekend, show after show after show.

Today I’m...

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Hello! It’s announcement time!

Things are good. We are all busy. Summer Jobs, summer trips, etc. As usual, we are asking for more help! If you would like to help with the CALENDAR, please send in an email to editors at mercurialsound.com. It’s not much work at all - you can take on as little or as much as you would like. If you would like to write, take photographs, etc, please also let us know!

The show? The soon to come, AMAZING, rocking, best show ever, mercurialsound first CONCERT? It’s been rescheduled. So… you’ll hear about it later.

As is getting popular lately (and we’re big fans of the practice ourselves) the Old Firehouse has released a compilation CD of music recorded at the firehouse itself. If you don’t live out toward Redmond, the firehouse is one of the oldest Always All Ages venues like… ever. Vera’s neat, but Redmond Firehouse has them beat when it comes to age. Here’s a nice quote from...

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Holly is back with us (she used to do the calendar) but now she is a photographer! She shot an great set of pics at the Schoolyard Heroes/Vaux show on the second.
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I’ve read a thousand columns written by older-generation music critics discussing how the internet has forever changed music. This is not an incorrect statement by any means. Music now comes at an accelerated rate; a single can be released on mp3 as soon as it is recorded. It is also, now, with the help of websites that search mp3 blogs, easy to download every single song you’re looking for.

It would appear, then, that the era of purchasing music is coming to an end. Why buy something you can have for free? I know there are some out there who would disagree with me, and I’m sure they would make valid points. But I don’t care about that argument. I would however, like to note that I just downloaded The Raconteurs “Steady, as She Goes,” not because I care at all about The Raconteurs, but because I heard of it. If anyone tells me of, or I find out about the existence of a song: I will download it.

But all of that’s what the point...

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Now that the summer of 2006 has arrived it seems important both to look back and forward.

We’ll start by looking back. Remember the summer of 2005? Yeah, it sure was fun. We laughed while watching “The War of the Worlds,” and we cried while watching Kanye West on the Hurricane Katrina relief benefit, but more importantly we listened to Sufjan Stevens. In fact, I doubt any of us actually did those other things (I was at Bumbershoot during the relief benefit. I did see War of the Worlds, sadly) because we were too busy listening to “Illinois,” over and over again.

Seriously. It was everywhere. Today you probably know who John Wayne Gacy Jr. is, while a year ago you had never even heard the term “clown killer.” You know all about the 1858 presidential debates and you know the skill level...

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Calvin Johnson is a very well-known name in independent music circles, especially in the Northwest. As the founder of K Records and a founding member of Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic Sound System, and The Halo Benders, and something of an indie rock founding father, he’s kind of like our Ian MacKaye. The thing is, Ian MacKaye makes listenable – even excellent – music, whereas Johnson’s output leaves much to be desired, at least from this reviewer.

I know there must be loads of people out there who are fans of Mr. Johnson’s particular brand of raggedy, off-kilter, tuneless offerings, but I just don’t get it. I normally try to listen to an album several times before writing a review of it, but to be honest, I haven’t been able to make...

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Disclaimer: Some of us have cleaner mouths than others. Joey is a punk rocker, and has a vocabulary that matches. Deal with it.

I’m going to run down the statistics of this concert real quick.

Cost of actual concert: $15.00 at the door.
Number of bands playing: 2
Number of bands I actually wanted to see: 1

I didn’t actually have to pay for this show, such are the perks of being a well-respected journalist. But many people did pay the $15.00 cover charge ($13.00 advance),which begs the question: was it worth it? The short answer is: maybe. There is no long answer.

The local all-ages music scene has been reduced to a string of maybes. Maybe I’ll be able to stand and go without cigarettes for four hours. Maybe I won’t mind not being able to step outside the club. Maybe it’s not worth it to take three buses to some shitty hole in the...

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Go Here! Do it!
You’ve never heard of the Love You Tigers. I can almost guarantee that. Just take a look at the page views from their Myspace page: 542 as of right now. If they were from Seattle I wouldn’t be as confident, but even the biggest anglophile could not have heard of this unsigned one-man-band from the UK. I’m not joking: look on a site that searches Mp3 blogs and see if you find them. I have. And you won’t. Despite the lack of audience, or perhaps because of the lack of audience they are now the most exciting band to come from the United Kingdom for quite some time.

Love You Tigers is the brainchild of musician Ben Johnson, formerly a group consisting of two tiger lovers. The lore of Love You Tigers involves a musical disagreement that resulted in second...

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I’ve always been a little weary of The Postal Service. There seems to be something missing from their electro-pop hybrid. Sure, they have the brand-names of Ben Gibbard and Jenny Lewis, but I always felt they were just a whinier version of Ontario’s Russian Futurists. Now there is more competition for Gibbard and company: armed with a drum machine and synthesizer comes Vancouver’s Small Sins.

Canada must be full of these guys. Or maybe it’s a music critic’s contrarian nature. Either way, Small Sins Astralwerks self titled debut is a rich and ethereal listen.

Small Sins is the outlet for Canadian musician Thomas D’Arcy. D’Arcy has bounced around Canada in various bands before deciding on recording an album by himself on a seven track recorder in his basement.

While “Small Sins”...

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On 2001’s “Southern Rock Opera,” Drive-By Truckers imagine themselves as an arena rock band playing to sold-out crowds in amphitheatres across the country. Saturday June 10, 2006 they got the opportunity to play an amphitheatre: but are you sure Hank done it this way? Opening for Black Crowes, DBT were met with an apathetic response and a lot of empty seats.

The White River seats were roughly ten percent filled as DBT took the stage around seven o’ clock under a clear Seattle sky. Despite poor interest the band was un-phased, ripping through songs from their last four albums. Live, they don’t imagine themselves as an arena rock band, but become one entirely. If you close your eyes during their extended guitar solos and heavy guitars you might just believe you were seeing the Stones in seventies.

The...

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