Music
So you think that you and your fledgling band can practice on some kind of a street corner or maybe in a park or on a bus or rooftop? Untrue! Your band is required to convene in a small room of some sort. But where to find such a room?I
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1973: The Modern Lovers record "I'm Straight". The song centers on lead-singer Jonathan Richman calling a girl and pleading with her to break up with her boyfriend and date him instead. The boyfriend, whom Richman refers to as "Hippie Johnny," isn't unfit to date the woman because he's abusive; he's
Music
Andrew Jackson Jihad represent, I think, a fine example of music’s tendency to stage a collision between means and ambition. “I would say, it’s a combination of what we listen to and enjoy hearing, along with the means that we had — the instruments that were readily available to us
Music
I've struggled over the years with glam rock. Accepting its basic concept has been hard - as a genre, it flies in the face of the importance we music snobs put on credibility. It's somehow reassuring to know that 50 Cent really did get shot, or that Isaac Brock learned
Music
Just a little down the road from Station 56 exists a budding rock venue. It's called The Cake Room, and its first official show was Dec. 5, but the professionalism already on display in the still-building space is astonishing. The setup in its current state is somewhat barebones, but the
Music
Human Skab’s strange journey started in Olympia in the mid-‘80s. A 10-year-old boy at the time, he gained notoriety through cassette tapes of psychotic-sounding experimental punk that he recorded in his garage. Beating on buckets with spoons; violently strumming the guitar he didn’t know how to play; screaming oddly poetic
Music
In the local music ecosystem, all-ages venues are invaluable. I think that a lot of under-agers are agonized by being under 21, not because they’re unable to drink in bars, but because they’re constantly being deprived of the opportunity to see amazing shows. Tacoma understands this, but it has always
Music
Christopher Francis & Son already sounds like a band that’s too big to talk to me. The first song of theirs that I heard (“Coinlocker Baby”) had that kind of breathtaking quality that seemed to announce the arrival of a new year-end best-of candidate. The moody vocals and acoustic guitar
Music
I couldn’t be happier that sunny, optimistic pop is coming back into favor. What’s worse than a world of music that collectively decides to celebrate the dour? I guess it’s all cyclical. Sunny pop, just like the mopey stuff, eventually reaches a breaking point. At that point, it’s struck down
Music
Is there a need, anymore, to make a point of defining certain bands as “bedroom pop”? More and more, the act of retreating to one’s bedroom and putting hissy, intimate pop to tape (or computer) is becoming as common as garage bands ever were. The only reason I bring it
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For those who know me, it should come as no surprise that I’m not exactly an expert on rap. I enjoy some of it, sure. Mostly, rap that appeals to me is attached to music that would be compelling regardless of whether its accompanying vocals are rapping or singing —
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At the hipster-hop Mad Rad is coming to Jazzbones and all hell is likely to break loose BY REV. ADAM MCKINNEY In music, there’s often a tug-of-war between recording and performance. Some bands, like TV on the Radio, can’t quite manage to translate the magic of the recording studio
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In writing about NoMeansNo, I’ve been charged with describing the indescribable — of describing a true original. To my ears, many of the band’s songs are informed by Frank Zappa’s twisted experiments with rock ‘n’ roll. But NoMeansNo’s (admittedly limited) influences are immaterial in considering the effect they’ve had on
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My dad is a huge fan of progressive rock. He’s very opinionated on the matter. On more than one occasion he’s admonished me for describing a band as “proggy,” or for trying to tell him about some new subgenre, i.e. post-rock — he says that something so unclassifiable that it
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The old Western State Mental Hospital was founded in 1871. Inside its walls Washington’s (and, indeed, some of the world’s) most violent and deranged patients were housed. It’s no secret that treatments for psychosis were, at that time, quite primitive. The inmates were positively tortured in an attempt to exorcise
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I don’t think I’m revealing any secrets here when I say that critics tend to get bored with whatever they’re reviewing. As their careers progress, whether they’re movie critics, art critics, or music critics, the appeal of left-field artists grows exponentially. Give the critic something he’s not expecting and the
Features
Can a sandwich hold a grudge? Are its feelings hurt if you get it special ordered? Do sandwiches feel jealousy? Do they ever worry that you'rre thinking of another sandwich while you'rre eating it? Sandwich-lovers feel all these things. They feel passionately about all things mashed between bread; they feel
Features
Can a sandwich hold a grudge? Are its feelings hurt if you get it special ordered? Do sandwiches feel jealousy? Do they ever worry that you’re thinking of another sandwich while you’re eating it? Sandwich-lovers feel all these things. They feel passionately about all things mashed between bread; they feel
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Folk in this day and age can be a tricky proposition. Lone guitarists singing their diaries tend to evoke unfortunate memories of coffee shop performances and jerky sensitive guys at college parties. As a result, it’s completely understandable that some people bristle at the mention of listening to (or, god
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I have always found the world of tattoos and tattoo-lovers to be strange but undeniably beguiling. Though I now inhabit that world (just barely, thanks to my crude — yet-tasteful flamingo tattoo) I still don’t quite understand it. People speak about their future tattoos as if they were talking about