After debuting last summer, Seattle music festival Palestine Will Live Forever is coming to Capitol Hill this weekend at the Volunteer Park Amphitheater.
Launched in 2024 by DJ Gabriel Teodros with an event in Seward Park, the second year of the benefit festival is scheduled to include appearances by Macklemore, Prometheus Brown, Fem Du Lit, and more. Continue reading
The grown-ups seemed to enjoy the vibes as the Capitol Hill Block Party went “21+” for the first time this weekend.
“I love that it’s 21 plus…. we get to have fun and not worry about, you know, other people’s kids,” one CHBP veteran attendee told CHS. “it allows us to have a little bit more freedom.”
CHS reported here on the paring down and scaling back of the annual Capitol Hill music festival that also reduced its schedule to two days as the production from the folks behind Pike/Pine institutions including the Neumos and Barboza family, Lost Lake Cafe, the Comet, and Big Mario’s streamlined the long-running event. Continue reading
(Image: Capitol Hill Block Party)
A grown-up Capitol Hill Block Party will debut this weekend as the music festival makes its first run as a pared down, two-day, 21+ only event. The CHBP’s neighborhood producers are watching how the new format unfolds and planning for the future. 2028 would mark the 30th edition of the festival, one of the few ticketed, multi-day music festivals on the planet to take place on city streets Continue reading
This weekend brings the 2025 edition of the now two-day Capitol Hill Block Party music festival to the streets of Pike/Pine. Its arrival marks a different sort of fun in the sun milestone on Capitol Hill. Free music and movies season is in full swing. Plus, if you want a free block party, you can head up the Hill for the 15th Ave E Patio Party Saturday noon to 5 PM:
Enjoy the summer weather with a DJ, local food, lawn games, a patio lounge, and a beer/wine garden. Meet our neighborhood merchants, and enjoy all that 15th has to offer!
Here is the rest of the summer freebie schedule around Capitol Hill.
Center City Cinema at Cal Anderson Park
Movies start at 6:30 PM
July 18: “Shrek”
July 25: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”
Five years ago, Dan Gregory’s life changed forever when he was shot by the brother of an SPD officer during the 2020 protests on Capitol Hill. The trauma left deep scars, both physically and mentally, but through music, DJing, and an unexpected Capitol Hill community on the dodgeball court, he found a lifeline.
“Music Saved My Life”
For Gregory, DJing is survival.
“If it wasn’t for music and having an outlet, I probably would have offed myself,” he admits. “That was a lot to go through, and I’d still do it all over again if I had to, but music is how I process my emotions.”
Under the moniker DJ Danny G (formerly DJ oohchillem), Gregory has turned his pain into a magnetic force, curating sets that bring people together at everything from bus stop pop-up jams, homeless camps, or local taco stands.
Today, he brings music to the busy courts of Cal Anderson just blocks away from 11th and Pine and the center of where CHOP formed five years ago this month.
“I love how music can change an environment,” he says. “People come in stressed, and then the right song comes on, and suddenly everyone’s singing along. That energy is everything.” Continue reading
The producers of the Capitol Hill Block Party are also pulling back on their other big summer Seattle music festival.
Block Party’s Daydream State production company has announced its 2025 Day In Day Out festival has been canceled.
“We want to thank our community of music lovers who made DIDO such a great experience over the last 4 years,” the company said in the announcement. “We’re taking 2025 off to regroup and refocus our efforts to other endeavors as we reimagine the fest and site to come back even better in the future.” Continue reading
(Image: Punk Rock Flea Market)
No construction cranes over Capitol Hill might mean rents are going to keep going up.
But they’re not tearing your favorite bar down.
And the Quality Flea Center will be around for another year on 15th Ave E.
The organizers behind the Punk Rock Flea Market have made official what was already pretty damn clear: The old Capitol Hill QFC the market started calling home isn’t going to be demolished any time soon.
The PRFM is returning to the QFC this month: Continue reading
Caps for Slats (Image: CHS)
The Caps for Slats mural hangs today on the Comet ceiling
March marked the 15th anniversary of the death of Chris “Slats” Harvey—an inimitable, charismatic, punk-rock presence who could be spotted at Capitol Hill’s bars, live music venues, and rehearsal studios, often wearing his signature, all-black “uniform” of a New York Dolls t-shirt, leather jacket, skinny jeans, and a wide bolero hat. Slats was a living reminder of what Seattle and Capitol Hill used to be.
A co-founder and lead guitarist of the early 1980s Seattle punk band the Silly Killers, he achieved some level of local celebrity in later years just for being, well, Slats. CHS included Slats among those who should appear on a fictional “Capitol Hill Seattle $1 Bill.” WIRED magazine’s feature article about urban eccentrics included an interview with Slats. T-shirts with Slats’ image were sold at the Capitol Hill Block Party. When he died on March 13, 2010, just one day before his 47th birthday, The Stranger announced, “A part of Seattle won’t look the same without him.”
Last year, I took a deep dive into Slats’ life to learn more about who he was beyond the iconoclastic neighborhood character. I tracked down and interviewed the Silly Killers’ co-founder; now 70 years old and living a quiet life in Colorado, he shared with me a rare, unreleased, 40-year-old Silly Killers demo recorded in the basement of a house shared by members of a seminal Seattle punk band with a future Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Famer filling in on drums. I interviewed his Canadian half-siblings, who recalled Slats’ summertime visits to their family’s DIY farm in rural Canada as a youth. I also interviewed his former music peers and childhood friends, and gathered photographs, show posters, and other Silly Killers-related ephemera.
My article, which offers a trip back through Seattle’s early punk-rock history and presents a nuanced portrait of Slats, is online here.
To mark the occasion of his passing, here are a few insights I learned about Slats during my reporting:
1) “The Silly Killers were certainly a big part of my music history.” — When asked to recall some of the earliest and most influential shows he attended, Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready listed Van Halen and KISS at Seattle Center, Motörhead at the Paramount, and the Silly Killers at the Laurelhurst Fieldhouse (McCready, 15 years old at the time, recalled watching the show through a window with a friend while standing outside in the dark). During its short existence (1981-1983), the Silly Killers opened for Black Flag, D.O.A., Hüsker Dü, and Social Distortion. Continue reading
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Capitol Hill is a neighborhood of music. A Seattle City Council member wants to help protect your ears.
A bill discussed Wednesday morning by Councilmember Dan Strauss and his Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee would create new regulations requiring designated “loud music venues” to “offer patrons hearing protection with a noise reduction rating of at least 20 decibels, for free or for sale on the premises.”
“If hearing protection is offered for sale, at least one option must be offered for $1.00 or less,” a presentation (PDF) on the proposal reads. Continue reading
There will be big changes for this summer’s Capitol Hill Block Party, one of the few ticketed, multi-day music festivals on the planet to take place on a city’s streets. Producers have announced the 2025 lineup including big changes as the festival will drop its Friday opening day and the annual music event will transition to a “21+” only event.
The 2025 Capitol Hill Block Party will take place on only two days — Saturday, July 19th and Sunday, July 20th.
We’re checking with CHBP to learn more about the changes. Producers announced this week the full lineup and details would be revealed Tuesday morning. Some early sale passes for a planned three-day festival had already been on sale.
The downsizing and streamlining of the 27th edition of the Block Party also comes with a more modest lineup than the neighborhood experienced in 2024. 2025 CHBP will bring some fun acts but nothing appears to be on the scale that Chappell Roan hype reached at last year’s festival as Pink Pony crowds inside — and outside — the Block Party’s fences swelled to epic proportions.
The 2025 CHBP lineup is led by Thundercat, Porter Robinson, DJ Pee.Wee, The Dare, Dora Jar, Fcukers and several other bands and DJs the old people reading this will say they have never heard of. Continue reading
