Sadly I wasn’t able to make last week’s Death Cab show in Bellingham, so I passed my ticket on to local music enthusiast Scott D. Here is his report from the show:

The air was electric with anticipation. The lights went out as smoke and a droning ambient noise filled the room. The crowd went wild. Lead singer Ben Gibbard’s voice soared over the fray, marking Death Cab For Cutie’s long awaited return to Bellingham. It’s been ten years since the band has played here in our basements and bars since …

I can’t remember the last time Death Cab For Cutie played Bellingham, but I know it’s long overdue. The last time I saw them was in the Viking Union Multipurpose Room, a long time ago. They’re finally hitting town, but sadly (and perhaps controversially), tickets are only available if you are a current WWU student. Which means all of their fans in town that supported them in the beginning can’t go to the show. The fair thing to do would be to have the band play a show at the …

I was able to look through the zines in my garage and found a decent pile of Bellingham music rags from the early-to-mid 90’s. The first zine I’m going to feature is Filter, a free music/entertainment newspaper that started spring 1998. The folks behind this paper were students at Western and also did a bit of writing for What’s Up Magazine when it first started around the same time. At the time I was doing a little writing for What’s Up, as well as the Every Other Weekly (now the …

Over at the Corner Pocket message board there was a discussion recently about Bellingham zines from the 90’s, specifically music zines. I was actually a pretty avid zinester back then and collected every local zine possible, and even produced one myself, called “Hmmm…”. Over the weekend I’m gonna dig through my boxes of zines and start scanning some of the more interesting articles and post them here. I’ll probably start with some of the more popular items, like early Death Cab show reviews, and kinda go from there.

Starbucks is putting out a CD of your favorite indie artists covering their favorite love songs. I know, Starbucks is a lame place to buy music (these days they usually only have about 5 CD’s for sale), but this might be somewhat tempting the next time you buy one of their new Vanilla Rooibos Tazo® Tea Latte’s. I have to admit, I’m interested in hearing more than half of these songs, including the Death Cab, Devotchka, Richard Hawley and She & Him tunes.
1. Death Cab for Cutie - “Love Song”
2. …

The big annual What’s Up Magazine awards show is coming up January 31st at Wild Buffalo. Make sure you show up early - this show always sells out. It definitely will this year - just look at that lineup! If you haven’t seen Sugar Sugar Sugar yet that’s reason enough to go - mark my words, this band has the potential to become Bellingham’s next Death Cab For Cutie, Posies, Idiot Pilot or Trucks - they are that good!