Happy Birthday to Me

Please, please, I (Jamie "JJ" Hellgate, founder and CEO of H Is for Hellgate) am not accepting gifts...unless that gift is your presence at the Sunset Tavern in lovely Ballard for a show featuring some of my most favoritest local bands:

9 PM - Panther Attack (Shredding. Sweet, sweet shredding.)10 PM - H Is for Hellgate (That's us)

11 PM - Hungry Pines (Rock. Ness. ROCKNESS!)

12 PM - Emblematic (Ass-shaking indie rock.)

Because it's my special day, I wrote a special I-don't-give-a-f*ck setlist featuring our weirdest and most instrumental songs (plus one cover). Here it is, with notes, in case you care:

1. Engineering a Loose Cannon (From our forthcoming second album, inspired by something a homeless guy said to me last summer outside the QFC on Broadway and Pike, "You wouldn't be my first choice, but you wouldn't be a bad choice.")

2. Description of the Prior Art (An old song from my Henkensiefken days about feeling bad for dumping someone. I'm a jerk.)

3. Cool Your Jets, Four Eyes (Instrumental from our first album. It's not really about anything other than rocking.)

4. Dusk at Devil's Tower (From our forthcoming second album. References the a Native American story of seven sisters being lifted to the heavens [into the constellation named after the Greek Pleiades]by the monolithic Devil's Tower in Northern Wyoming in order to escape a bear attack.)

5. Thunderbolt (From our forthcoming second album. Based loosely on Athena and trying to find some of her mythical traits of courage and strength within myself.)

6. What It Is (Mostly instrumental song from our first album. The name was taken from a t-shirt given to a friend when he asked the WestCostanostra for a cigarette. The phrase "what it is" was repeated ad nauseam over the course of the drunken weekend that followed.)

7. Quid Pro Quo (Instrumental piece from our forthcoming second album. I tried to write a ten-minute piece. I failed...it's only seven or eight minutes, depending on how fast we play it. The name means "this for that"....I was doing a lot of compromising when I wrote it.)

8. The Chain (yes, the Fleetwood Mac song.)

Please join us for a fun night!