Posts tagged “Katie Kate”

Jared Cortese, Dom Cortese and Julia Massey, in their basement house party venue “The Cortex,” July 15, 2014. PHOTO CREDIT: PORTAITS BY HAYLEY YOUNG

Seattle Magazine, an actual, real-life magazine, just published an article on their website entitled “The 50 Bands Rocking Seattle Music Right Now.”

You should peruse the entire article, but here are the three highlights for me: Look at the Indie Pop section and you’ll immediately see some of my favorite musics being avidly represented:

• Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount / The Jesus Rehab
  Anyone who has been reading this website for any length of time (or who knows me in real life) knows what fondness I have for these two bands, so it’s really exceptionally awexome to see them getting the same amount of love from an actual, real-life website and not just mine. Here’s a sample of what Seattle Magazine had to say about them:

  Massey recalls Regina Spektor, with her playful voice, prolific songwriting and bouncy pop lyrics, and Cortese’s sound is reminiscent of Weezer, for its big power chords and shrieking, catchy solos.

• Prom Queen
  It is much to my chagrin that I have never seen Celene perform live as Prom Queen, only as her chiptuned alter-ego Leeni. But I have a great liking of Prom Queen’s dark, David Lynch-esque 60s pop stylings. And I proudly backed the Kickstarter for her very ambition Midnight Veil project. Seattle Magazine sez:

  Also known as Leeni, this prolific Seattle singer first came on the scene with chiptune compositions (using Nintendo Gameboy sounds) and has since honed a 1960s Parisian noir aesthetic.

Out of all 50 of the bands listed in the article, I had only ever seen two others perform live:

• The Hoot Hoots
• Katie Kate

Yikes! I had heard of most of the acts in the article (and heard a handful of them on KEXP), but many of these are complete unknowns to me. The article seemed to be skewed strangely, with some of the genres having dozens of included acts whereas the hip-hop genre only included three acts (none of which were Three Ninjas, bee-tee-dub).

But still it is very cool seeing Julia Massey & The Jesus Rehab get a modicum of the praise they deserve.

SPEAKING OF seeing The Jesus Rehab, they’re having a show this Friday evening! It’s on Bainbridge Island!

Jesus Rehabbed on an Island

Bainbridge Island is, unfortunately, a bit over an hour’s drive away from my house (it might be much shorter than that for Seattle peeps depending on the ferry schedule). So I am a very soft maybe for this show.

But if all possible YOU SHOULD GO!

Details:
The Jesus Rehab with Specters at Spaceship (Facebook event)
Friday, August 22nd 7:00 PM
@ Spaceship
10598 NE Valley Rd, Bainbridge Island, Washington 98110
21+, $10 (adv) $12 (door)

HOORAY FOR MY FAMOUS FRIENDS!

More resources:

• Seattle Magazine: http://www.seattlemag.com/
• Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount: http://www.juliamasseymusic.com/
• The Jesus Rehab: http://www.thejesusrehab.com/
• Prom Queen: http://promqueenband.bandcamp.com/

I saw two major Hip-Hop shows in February: Busdriver at Neumos and Three Ninjas & Tangentbot at Chop Suey!

First off was Busdriver. I’ve talked about him before on my website, and seen him several times at Neumos. I went with Three Ninjas, Tangentbot, and HeartFeltRobots. Before the show Three Ninjas chatted a bit with Busdriver on account of having done a remix of an Open Mike Eagle & Busdriver song. My pal HeartFeltRobots even made Busdriver his very own felt Busdriver Bot!

Busdriver started his set with a very cool visual effect: all the lights were off, but he had a blacklight that also emitted lasers in such a way that they made a starfield on the background. Then he stood in front of the blacklight and starfield wearing all white. He made Tangentbot very happy by rapping over an Aphex Twin song for his encore.

Two of the opening acts were women hip-hop artists, Night Fox and Katie Kate. They were both very good, though I kinda liked Night Fox’s energy a little more. They were unlike many women hip-hop artists that I’m used to, in that they weren’t full of “even tougher than a man” bravado (even though there was a fair share of cussing). Night Fox’s voice periodically had an almost-Billie-Holliday warble in it, and at times sounded like an American Miho Hatori. Plus she was tiny and kinda adorable. Katie Kate was a much more polished performer and technical musician — I learned later that she’s a classically-trained pianist and graduated from Cornish with a music degree! Anyway, the point is they had a really fascinating style of hip-hop. I almost want to call it “Cutesy Hip-Hop” but that sound a little degrading. The point is, it was fun and inviting instead of angry and aggressive.

You can watch a Katie Kate music video here!

As for the Chop Suey show the next week, Threeni & T-Bo (as they will now be referred to in the rest of this post because it sounds awful) were the opening act for the Fake Four tour, which is the same tour that Open Mike Eagle opened for last year. Good company! And Carrie actually got to come with me because for once she didn’t have to teach on a night where there was an awesome music show!

They completely killed their set. The highlight of the whole night was when Threeni and T-Bo performed an absolutely epic cover of Jewel’s “Foolish Games.” For realsz! Ch-ch-check it out!

Like what you heard there? About to commit seppuku because you missed it? Stay your blade, I say! For Three Ninjas & Tangentbot will be performing a Mardi Gras party at the Skylark Café on Tuesday the 8th! THAT’S TOMORROW, HOMESLICE!

Carrie & I didn’t stay for the whole show because:

1. We live in Tacoma
2. I had to be at work at 8:00 the next morning
3. We’re old

But another excellent act that we got to see was Abadawn, a rapper with an extremely young countenance (he looked like he was 15) and a fascinating style. He had two vocalizations: a hip-hop voice that had inflections and flow that reminded me somewhat of Eminem, and a full-on death-metal screech/growl voice. He switched freely between them. Also, his songs were short, which I really appreciated (a couple were only like 45 seconds long, I swear). They were like a little nugget burst of energy, like a hip-hop haiku of rage.

So: February = good month for hip-hop shows.