Seattle writer Chris Estey will chat with Richard Hell, a true King of Punk, live on stage Thursday, March 21, at the Rendezvous in Seattle (2322 2nd Avenue) at 7 PM as part of a show promoted by the University Bookstore. Richard Hell has a new book out called I Dreamed I Was A Very …
I bought Armed Forces by Elvis Costello for my 14th year birthday present when it came out, from the import section of Budget Tapes N Records in Kennewick, WA. I had never been as excited about an album’s packaging before studying Barney Bubbles’ work on that one, which I wasted many hours absorbing, loving the …
I always think of this song as the pop music center of the 20th century. There are those 33 1/3 books, and the one on Low did a great job of describing its importance this way. Basically what you have here is Northern European melody with rhythm and blues backbeat; synthesized, but analog; intimate haiku …
Like fighters in a boxing match, raucous Seattle music writer Chris Estey goes ‘toe to toe’ with cagey music maverick Calvin Johnson about beards and other mysteries of life in the new film, Have You Ever Had a Beard? A study in contrasts, this film compares the lyric heavy songwriting of Calvin Johnson to the …
Morphine does for me what bands like The Smiths or The Cure do for so many others. They don’t have nearly the back catalogue, but Mark’s voice / lyrics /instrumentation combined are like several years of my life squeezed into sound. – Chris Estey is a renowned Seattle music writer.
. Scot-king songwriter, dark-hearted minstrel, troubled and temper-torn troubadour, bitter balladeer extraordinaire, roiling ace back alley jig picker Richard Thompson. I love this king of all the sad bastards with the golden hands, his records ooze delight and despair in the most organic and ornery of ways. Plays like the devil and knows all his …