Stage
"We are obligated by law to inform you that this play contains adult language and themes," director Scott Campbell warns before the opening of the world premiere of Under the Circumstances, a play with the purpose of exploring "the relationship between words, friendship, and our own sense of self." Written by
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If the label alt-Christian acoustic rock stops you dead in your tracks and makes you do a U-turn, then you might miss one of the most cultivated local artists. Aaron Spiro is the king of crescendo and a master of emotionally charged vocals. At times he sounds like Coldplay’s Chris
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This week Club Impact hosts a night of electronic bands featuring Bellingham band Robotronica. Since I’ve been waiting for a day when Tacoma would embrace its inner robot, I decided to devote my column to the subject. Though there has been a thriving electronic music scene in Seattle for years thanks
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The Musée National Picasso in Paris is closed for renovations and their huge collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures by Pablo Picasso is going on a world tour - first stop, Seattle Art Museum. Never before have so many works by the master been on display in
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By now, I’d imagine you’re probably sick and tired of me writing about Puyallup. It seems like every time I cover a band from P-town, all I can do is blabber and yak about my memories from growing up there. Puyallup Viking football, yada, yada, yada. Skipping school and smoking cigarettes,
Arts
The Musée National Picasso in Paris is closed for renovations and their huge collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures by Pablo Picasso is going on a world tour - first stop, Seattle Art Museum. Never before have so many works by the master been on display in America, and we
Music
Joell Ortiz, a longtime indie-rap darling, is quickly garnering a reputation as one of the best emcees in hip-hop. Tacoma's best rap group (as deemed recently by the Weekly Volcano), City Hall (Todd Sykes and EvergreenOne), is buzzing in the Northwest and beyond after the recent release of their first
Stage
There are elements I've come to expect from Olympia Family Theater: technical polish, figurative costumes, jokes for adults and, above all, an auditorium full of gleeful kids hopping in their seats. OFT and director Jenny Greenlee continue that reliable tradition with a reprise of A Year with Frog and Toad.
Music
The musical connection had been there from the very start. At the conclusion of our first jam session, Duff called around the city to find an available recording studio. A new online music store had approached him to contribute a song to their catalog. The rock had gone so well that
Stage
I reviewed an exhibition of Joe Penrod's intriguing blue-tape shadows three years ago at the now defunct Black Front Gallery in Olympia. The works he's showing at Fulcrum Gallery in Tacoma are exactly the same only more sophisticated. The idea is as profound as it is simple. He traces the cast
Features
So, Oktoberfest isn't official over until the end of this weekend, but it's really quite over for me. I needed to shake-off the sauerkraut and gut busting brats for something that reminded me of vacation. I haven't been on a real vacation in over two years, and at this rate,
Stage
We all know what it feels like to be stuck in a job we hate, where managers lead by harassment and double down on strategies that didn't work the first hundred times. Imagine you're trapped in a low-rent Chicago sales office with five alpha males, each struggling to sell Florida
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Strength was just a rock band, but soon they would transform into a quintessential party band: part disco, part R&B, part electronica, part funk. Their ability to transform a room into a pulsating party machine was on full display in their last appearance in Tacoma, at the Squeak and Squawk.
Music
Oh, nothing feels better to me than those rare instances when I get to act like a DJ. It happened recently at a friend of a friend's birthday party. Plugging my iPod into the speakers, carefully choosing what song to play next, my heart racing as the end of the
Music
OLYMPIA LIVE! >>> Friday, Oct. 8 What an eclectic bill has been gathered together for Olympia Live! - a benefit show for young breast cancer survivors. You've got a little bit of everything here, from the country-fried rock of Rodeo Kill, to the jazz swing of the Jessica Blinn Quartet, to the
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Volcano editor Matt Driscoll never saw Titanic, on pure principle, despite months of begging from his then girlfriend. Thankfully, Driscoll ditched that bag for a hip eventual wife who's never seen Titanic either, meaning the Driscoll household as a whole is completely unfamiliar with the cinematic vehicle that launched Gaelic
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They do have the funk. Seattle's Combinator are old-school Red Hot Chili Peppers in training socks, minus the gonzo edge but with a jazz-pop buzz fueled by improvisation. Born in Seattle in early 2013 when long-time musical co-conspirators Isaac Chirino and Sean Fairchild were introduced by mutual friends to the
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The show features a rotating cast of musicians in a multimedia spectacular that carry the band from its jangly, Liverpudlian roots to the grand psychedelic finale of Abbey Road (in my opinion, the greatest pop disc ever recorded) and Let It Be. Since the cover band's inception in
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Leave it to liberals to use the economic collapse to point out there might be a better way of doing things than the capitalist orgy and TV dinners we've grown up on. Award-winning political cartoonist Ted Rall is just such a whacko, and his new book, The Anti-American Manifesto, is
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A state income tax specifically designed to take more money from the rich? That's the idea behind Initiative 1098, which if passed would institute a state income tax on Washington's most wealthy to pay for education and health programs. Rich guys like Bill Gates Sr. are in favor of it.
