Music
Growing up, my brother and I were burgeoning Japanophiles, like I suspect many prepubescent boys are. Anime, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Pokemon, and other exports made up a lot of our lives. The Power Rangers caused controversy in our household and across America by, I guess, inspiring boys to inflict
Stage
If you're anything like us at the Weekly Volcano, you've spent plenty of time around people who can't prevent themselves from relentlessly quoting Monty Python. Films like The Meaning of Life and Life of Brian, along with Monty Python-adjacent movies like A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, get a
Music
There are scarcely more pop cultural figures that have been documented and analyzed the way that the Beatles have. In a way, this is good, because this is the rare case of a pop culture entity's story having a satisfying beginning, middle, end and epilogue. The Beatles were famous and
Music
I think it's safe to say that I'm a wimp. Let me count the ways: I have a bad hip at age 28; I sometimes listen to Iron & Wine before falling to sleep, Sam Beam's hushed voice spiriting me away to a dream land where I almost always miss
Stage
In the dark days before I started writing for this fine rag, I was hired on at an ice cream shop for a very silly reason. It was during a group interview and, when asked if I had any special talents, I offered that I could do an impression. Rather
Music
I've never been an expert on hip-hop, having been sheltered from it through the majority of my formative years. What I knew was relegated to what flew by me on the radio, and the years when that exposure would have happened were a particularly fallow period for the genre, coming
Music
In a way, it's a bit of a shame that the saxophone, as a totem, came to become irreconcilably tied to either sexy times or terminal hokiness - and frequently both. The instrument has been practically plagued, guilty by association with images of Rob Lowe wailing on one in St.
Music
While there's certainly not a dearth of options for your entertainment dollar in the City of Destiny, it can still be reflexive to look at a place like Seattle with envy. A metropolis with an artistic bent like Seattle is, by its nature, positively lousy with shows every night of
Music
For as long as I can remember, depression has been a part of my life. I didn't think anything of it, this persistent weight on my shoulders and ache in my heart. Winston Churchill famously characterized depression as a black dog, sitting in his lap and never giving him peace.
South Sound Cinema
As we approach this Sunday's Academy Awards, it's valuable to look past the pageantry and consider the story that the Oscars tell about the lives we've lived for the past year. Regardless of the value that you place on the ceremony, the Oscars have a funny way of taking a
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It takes a hell of a lot of work to keep a music venue going strong, especially one that incorporates all-ages shows and makes risky booking decisions. Even a city as vibrant and artistically-minded as Olympia can fall victim to lackluster attendance, acts of God, and financially ruinous emergencies that
Music
As I was growing up, roller rinks represented ticking time bombs of messy emotional development. Birthday parties, graduation parties, post-soccer pizza parties - any reason to assemble a jumbled group of children would somehow coincide with a trip to a roller rink, and thus result in hormonally tormented proto-humans walking
Stage
In the past decade, or so, there's been a relative dearth of good biopics about musicians. It used to be that playing a legendary artist in a movie usually resulted in acclaim, but that well has run dry. One might be able to trace this fading genre back to Walk
Music
Why on Earth did anyone ever think it would be a good idea to remake Carrie? It happened, through no one's coaxing, in 2013, and, despite being directed by the woman that brought us the heart-wrenchingly potent Boys Don't Cry, it proved ultimately unnecessary. The 1976 Brian De Palma adaptation
Music
In the incubator that was my childhood, the types of music I was exposed to were fairly limited. Thanks to my local oldies station, KBSG, I was bathed in pop music from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Years later, through pop cultural obsessions and exposure to more varied people, my tastes
Music
One of the nice things about being even marginally aware of one's local music scene is the ability to watch as artists grow and evolve. This isn't something that we necessarily become privy to once a band has broken through that cultural membrane to find mainstream success. Sure, we got
Music
In 2011, one of the best sports movies ever made was released, and no one really noticed. If you haven't seen it - and most people haven't - do yourself a favor and check it out. The movie's called Goon, and it tells the underdog story of Doug, who, despite
Music
It can't be understated the enormous role nostalgia plays in how we ingest all matter of art, but especially music. Much in the same way that smells have an uncanny way of triggering astonishingly vivid memories, music has the ability to transport you back to a specific moment in time,
Stage
The Rocky Horror Show - in its several incarnations, first as a stage musical, then as a film, and finally as its endlessly running combination of the two - is iconic in spite of itself. Richard O'Brien's original play was created at a time when cult productions and irony weren't
Music
When it comes to progressive rock, I've never had the ability that my dad does, to be able to let tricky time-signatures, disorienting tempos, and almost aggressively grandiose scopes simply wash over me. The same music that relaxes him, and many other prog-rock aficionados, has a tendency to rattle my