Music
Every year, in the dog days of summer, a slew of bands descend on Wright Park. With temperatures reaching unbearable levels in the past few weeks, there's little to do but take off most of your clothes and embrace the hellscape that is summer in 2015. If you're interested in
Stage
In the Pixar film WALL-E, a junk-collecting robot is left all alone on Earth with nothing to do except clean up the mess that humans made and pine for companionship. At night, he warms himself in a shipping container with nothing more than his cockroach friend and an old VHS
Music
Even if it wasn't always explicit, the punk explosion of the late ‘70s always shared a kindred spirit in the birth of rock in the ‘50s. While the squalls of sound were certainly more extreme, there was always a sense of looking back - just further back than the bloated
Stage
I've recently been rewatching a delightful show from Canada called Slings & Arrows. As the title might suggest, the show has to do with the works of William Shakespeare - namely, a Canadian Shakespeare company that finds itself straining under the pressure of an action movie actor in the title
Music
I've spent years watching James Jenkins grow and change as an artist. When I first met him, in 2006, he was fronting a band called Mama Loves Daddy, which was caught up in the torrent of psychedelic garage acts in Tacoma, operating under the umbrella of Team Unicorn. Jenkins fronted
Music
When you're a kid, fantasizing about being a rock star, doodling your future band's logo in your notebook, there's a certain image of the lifestyle that you'd eventually have. Usually, this image has very little to do with actually performing. Sure, you might have a picture of saying things like,
Music
I'll be the first person to admit that I'm not plugged into the local hip-hop scene. When I hear any hip-hop, it's usually through the blogosphere, when a group or an MC has risen through the ranks and made enough noise to get recognized by tastemakers. It's through these channels
Music
What more is there to be said about Vicci Martinez? After years of performing here and around the world, I think it's reasonable to say that she's established herself as an iconic Tacoma figure. Starting out performing in open mics, becoming a consummate singer-songwriter, she then moved on to the
Music
For roughly a decade, one of the most compelling live acts in Washington has been a two-piece alt-metal band called Lozen. With just drums and guitar, Hozoji Matheson-Margullis and Justine Maria Valdez composed bone-rattling, minimalist bits of stomping sound. Unimpeded by the complications of other instruments, Lozen was able to
Music
There are few things more intimately connected in this world than love and music. The feeling you get when you fall in love, the songs that take on unreasonable importance over the course of relationships, the musical salve you apply to your wounds when you're going through a breakup -
Music
We're entering the portion of summer where things really begin to pay off. I mean, some of you weirdos have been enjoying this hellscape we call Washington under the thumb of climate change, but we reasonable people have been locking ourselves indoors. But now, the truly exciting parts of summer
Music
An unfortunate thing that music fans in the South Sound have come to expect is for fun, new venues to bite the dust. Noise ordinances, safe-guards (damn those necessary sprinklers!), and generally obscene costs of upkeep tend to get the majority of new venues to bite the dust. This is
Music
It is hot as hell in the Pacific Northwest, right about now. Still, something that always sits right with hot weather is music, and summer tends to burst with concerts and events to take your mind off the encroaching sun and its dastardly ways. In addition to the many events
Outdoors
In the song "Sloop John B," Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys detail a catastrophic sailing expedition that erupts in a booze-driven saga of fist-fights and stolen corn. The protagonist just wants to get home, but first he must hoist the sails and turn the boat back toward where they
Music
As I sit here, in the cozy darkness of a bar, and write about another band, I reflect on the possibility that my journeys through Tacoma today may have resulted in my first sunburn of this new summer. That yellow psychopath we call the sun got me. I've written many
Music
Tacoma, as an entity, is both damned and elevated by our self-imposed status as a "gritty" city. The elements that bring us pride and outsiders fear - the vanishing buildings that bore all the markings of a city long past its prime, but with underground music scenes that made downtown
Stage
Look. Women and men? They be different. Driving, shopping, asking for directions, watching sports, cooking their own food, planning weddings, being prone to or shunning commitment, knowing how to set the time on your VCR, etc. These are struggles we deal with every day of our lives! Luckily, there is
Music
"Clap Your Hands," the first song on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled debut, was met with a lot of resistance by music critics. The lo-fi, circus-y feel of the song, was interpreted as the band being needlessly difficult, especially as the entree to an album full of buzzing, synth-y,
Music
Years ago, when I was making my first little excursions into the world of the deeply nerdy and wonderfully heartfelt world of artists like They Might Be Giants, Daniel Johnston, and Jonathan Richman, my dad would poke fun at me by pointing out the frivolity and randomness of their song
Music
Even though it shouldn't be, it's a surprise when a musician takes a new direction. We've been conditioned to think of artists in one way or another, so any stray movement is met with derision and disbelief. Straying from what we perceive as an artist's sweet spot is a controversial