Music-scene predictions for 2008

Unfortunately, the wireless connection on my crystal ball has been weak lately. So the picture's a little bit fuzzy ... but here's what I'm reading for the 2008 Seattle music scene:

• A new band will be warming up for its first practice, when a Sub Pop artist rep will pass by — and sign the unnamed band on the spot.

Unable to come to an agreement on its name, the band will break up before its first show.

• A famous club that closed at the end of 2007 will be purchased and reopened as ... the House of Crocodile.

• The mayor's office will push City Council to change last-call from 2 a.m. to 10 p.m. (Bars and clubs playing "smooth jazz" will be allowed to stay open until midnight.)

• With tensions running high after "a game of Scrabble gone bad," Death Cab for Cutie will break up. When emotions flatten, DCFC will get back together — but Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla maintain a simmering feud over whether "emo" is a real word.

• A patron of a Seattle hip-hop show is searched by a club employee, closely checking for guns, knives, drugs, taping devices, etc. Two weeks later, they marry. "It was love at first frisk," the patron explains.

• "Operation Line Cut" results in the arrest of dozens. In this elaborate "sting," undercover detectives posing as club patrons offer bribes to those waiting in line to enter, to allow them to "cut." After noting that no criminal acts took place and ordering the immediate release of all those arrested, a judge moans, "Don't you detectives have anything better to do?"

• After a popular five-night run at Neumo's at the end of 2007, hip-hop duo Blue Scholars stuns Seattle, announcing it will play every night of 2008 at the same club. Within a week, the entire run is sold out.

• Though press releases hail it as "the world's largest Starbucks," neighbors and arts patrons are less than enthusiastic when the coffee giant purchases the Odd Fellows Hall and turns it into a drive-through large enough to accommodate a dozen SUVs at a time. In an attempt to placate the protesters, Starbucks plays swing music, hires out-of-work actors as baristas and offers the salsa-puccino.

• What is billed as "the world's first carbon-neutral music festival" is launched in Seattle. Organizers of the "Stay Home and Turn Everything Off Music Fest" call their project a smashing success — though they do add, "We're not really sure."

• After his take on '80s pop released in late 2007, "American Idol" phenom Blake Lewis announces he has invented a new genre: grunge-hop. He releases a dark album, "Nevermind My Beat-Boxing."

• Courtney Love sues Britney Spears, claiming "she's impersonating me without my permission."

• Seattle's 911 answering system is updated, to include the option "if you're calling to complain about noise from a bar or nightclub, press 1."

• The following Seattle billboard causes a sensation: "Will the owner of the last live-music venue to close turn off the amps?"

• A local music blog features the following post: "Someone I know who I trust highly told me someone else who is a very close source and reliable said, 'Something very important will be closing — or maybe opening — soon.' Details to follow — but remember, you heard it here first!"

• The Jimi, an unusually shaped condo, is unveiled on East Lake Union. Owner Paul Allen explains the design was in honor of his guitar hero's hairstyle. The headband-shaped deck is panned by critics.

• Absentee owner Stephanie Dorgan finally announces why she closed the Crocodile: "I circled the block looking for parking, and then I said, 'Aw, screw it.' "

• The Capitol Hill Block Party is reborn. Billed as "the world's first vertical music festival," it takes place entirely in a condominium, with different performers on each floor. Patrons of a bar across the street call the police, complaining the condo is making too much noise.

• KEXP, for years Seattle's favorite independent music station, moves to Portland.

Meanwhile, in the real world ...

• The bright new indie-pop band Stella By Starlight plays Fremont's High Dive (9 tonight, $7).

• The somewhat bizarre Coconut Coolouts — the Minus 5 meets the Banana Splits? — lead a benefit for Crocodile employees at Chop Suey (9 tonight, $6). The Intelligence, the Girls and Das Llamas are also on the bill.

• Normally, hard-hustling Grayskul is putting in the heavy work on tour. This weekend the Seattle hip-hop duo grinds it out right at home, with two shows at the High Dive (6 and 9 p.m. Saturday, $7).

• Beatles-inspired Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, and heavy rockers the Lonely H, put on a show at the all-ages Vera Project (7:30 p.m. Saturday, $10).

• Hip-hop at the Sunset? GMK, Brainstorm, Tiles One and others bring rhymes and beats to this Ballard house-of-rock (9 p.m. Saturday, $5).

• Throw Me the Statue begins a modest "residency" at Chop Suey, playing three consecutive Mondays, beginning this week. Final Spins, featuring TMTS guitarist Joe Syverson (you may remember him from Terror Sheets), is also on the bill (9 p.m. Monday, $6).

In February, Secretly Canadian Records will release Throw Me the Statue's debut album, "Moonbeams."

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com