MICHAEL SWAN: SATURDAY, NOV. 7, 2009 >>>

1. Warren Miller's new snow sports flick Dynasty screens at 6 and 9 p.m. inside the Pantages Theater.

2. The D.A.S.H. Center in Tacoma hosts a free days of dance classes for kids and adults from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

3. The Metropolitan Opera presents an HD screening of Puccini’s Turandot at 10 a.m. inside the Century Olympia Theaters.

4. Guns N Rossetti will rock Buzzard’s Discs from 2-5 p.m.

5. The Mt. Tahoma Storytelling Guild presents its annual Tellabration! Storytelling for Grownups at 7:30 p.m. inside the Antique Sandwich Company.

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

LINK: Local movie starting times

LINK: South Sound Restaurant Guide

MICHAEL SWAN: ONE CITY. 30 DAYS. WHAT WILL YOU DO? >>>
 
Art at Work Month: Saturday, Nov. 7

November 2009 marks the eighth anniversary of Art at Work: Tacoma Arts Month. There is something for everyone to enjoy throughout the month: lectures, music, dance performances, readings, workshops, theater performances, visual art exhibits and more.

Here are today’s highlights:

Experience how everyday works of art played an important part of the life in the mid-1800s during Arts of the Fur Trade at the Fort Nisqually Living History Museum from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Tacoma visual artists let everyone visit their private studios during the annual Art at Work Tacoma Studio Tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For details, click here.

The Tacoma City Ballet opens up its Nutcracker rehearsal to the public from 2-4 p.m. for $5 a pop at the Jan Collum Studio, 508 Sixth Ave.

There are many more events today. For a complete Art at Work schedule, click here.

RON SWARNER: FOOD MATTERS >>>

Holiday Eating Starts Tonight: The second annual Chefs’ Night Out hosts the culinary powerhouses from this region at Pierce College Puyallup.

Thanks And Giving: The downtown Tacoma Melting Pot Restaurant will support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with its Fondue a Cure for Childhood Cancer signature chocolate fondue bars. For each $5 bar purchased, $1 is given to the hospital.

Plan Ahead: Mount Rainier Vacation Rentals near the mountain hamlet of Greenwater is offering a pre-cooked traditional Thanksgiving dinner delivered to your cabin’s refrigerator prior to your arrival.

Food For Thought: The right way to eat sushi.

LINK: Weekly Volcano’s Eat & Drink section

LINK: South Sound Restaurant Guide

LINK: South Sound Happy Hours

LINK: Wine and beer tastings

PAUL SCHRAG: BENEFIT FOR BRIAN REDMAN >>>

Metal has evolved. Apparently there are enough enraged teens to have catapulted a full on pop phenomenon, with new metal bands emerging daily.

And, forgive me, most of them suck. Instrumentation is sloppy, riffs are tired and repetitive, and grooves are barren. Even the rage, the heart of it all, seems staged.

But there is hope. And you can find it on a tour of new work by Vancouver, B.C.'s 3 Inches of Blood, a Tacoma staple and one of the best things to happen to metal in a long while.

With a show tonight at Hellâ's Kitchen, and the recent tragic loss of former 3 Inches bass player Brian Redman, the time to appreciate this band has never been better. 3 Inches of Blood are tight, brutal and as on-point as ever.

Redman, wherever he is, must be proud.

[Hell,s Kitchen, with The Jet City Fix, Glimpse, Monuments Collide, Saturday, Nov. 7, 9 p.m., $10 suggested donation goes to the family of Brian Redman, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003] 

MICHAEL SWAN: THE LITTLE PENGUINS AT THE JIVE TONIGHT >>>

In the Better Living Through Music section on the Weekly Volcano's Web site the Rev. McKinney states "The Cure and the Smiths, in particular, are names that come to mind when listening to The Little Penguins’ slick pop-rock compositions." Check out The Rev's thoughts on The Little Penguins here.

The Little Penguins join the Nightgowns and Erik Blood at Bob's Java Jive tonight.

[Bob’s Java Jive, with the Nightgowns, Erik Blood, Saturday, Nov. 7, 8 p.m., $7, 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843]

MATT DRISCOLL: MIGHTY HIGH PLAYS DOYLE'S TONIGHT >>>

Hashing out reggae rooted, Technicolor jams minced with blues ethos - like the child of Peter Tosh and Humble Pie with a trust fund - Mighty High brings Tacoma made island music to the masses. And by masses I mean white college kids with dreadlocks.

One love, yo!

[Doyle's Public House, Saturday, Nov. 7, 10 p.m., no cover, 208 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.7468]

MICHAEL SWAN: THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE >>>

Attention film festival junkies: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, screening tonight at 7 p.m., is one of the Olympia Film Festival’s best. Check it:

Quirky, dark, and deeply humorous, Seattle filmmaker David Russo’s feature debut The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is a stylish meditation on the meaning of garbage in our throwaway society. Dizzle’s an edgy, timely, bitterly funny allegory of life at the bottom.

When Dory, a computer programmer, loses his job, he embarks on a spiritual quest and finds a new home with a misfit nighttime cleaning crew in an advertising agency’s corporate headquarters. High art meets higher comedy as Dory and his new friends become unwitting guinea pigs in a marketing scheme for self-heating cookies with radical after-effects.

Wildly strange and intensely inventive, Little Dizzle finds itself snug up against such great titles as Being John Malkovich and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Dizzle director David Russo will be in attendance for a Q&A following tonight’s screening.

And now I return to the dark embrace of the movie theater. Olympia Film Festival huzzah!

[Capitol Theater, Saturday, Nov. 7, 7 p.m., $6-$8, 206 E. Fifth Ave., Olympia, 360.754.6670]

LINK: Olympia Film Festival schedule

MICHAEL SWAN: SUNDAY, NOV. 8, 2009 >>>

1. Cappy Thompson's exhibit Dreamscapes: Heaven and Earth closes today at the Traver Gallery with a party featuring food including a honey tasting, libations, classical Indian music and more form 2-5 p.m.

2. Warren Miller's new snow sports flick Dynasty screens at 5 p.m. inside the Pantages Theater.

4. The Olympia Film Festival continues its run at the Capitol Theater with 10 a.m. Kids Animation Workshop, 11 a.m. Hoppity Goes To Town, 1 p.m. Locals Only shorts collection, 3:30 p.m. Back To The Garden, 5:30 p.m. Sometimes A Great Notion, 8 p.m. Perdita Durango and 10:30 p.m. The Summer of 69.

5. An all-ages benefit for the family of Brian Redman featuring Owen Hart, Book of Black Earth, Sojourner, Poverty Bay Saints, Crooks To Kings and Cowardice will go down at 7 p.m. at Hell's Kitchen.

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

LINK: Local movie starting times

LINK: South Sound Restaurant Guide

MICHAEL SWAN: ONE CITY. 30 DAYS. WHAT WILL YOU DO? >>>
 
Art at Work Month: Sunday, Nov. 8

November 2009 marks the eighth anniversary of Art at Work: Tacoma Arts Month. There is something for everyone to enjoy throughout the month: lectures, music, dance performances, readings, workshops, theater performances, visual art exhibits and more.

Here are today’s highlights:

The Puget Sounds quartet will play lovely classical music inside the WW Seymour Botanical Conservatory from 1-2:30 p.m.

Tacoma visual artists let everyone visit their private studios during the annual Art at Work Tacoma Studio Tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For details, click here.

Organist Christa Rakich performs at 3 p.m. inside the Mary Baker Russell Music Center at Pacific Lutheran University.

There are many more events today. For a complete Art at Work schedule, click here.

JOE IZENMAN: ENDED UP A ONE-BAND SHOW. OH WELL. STILL AWESOME >>>

There's no point in beating around the bush, so I'll just get right to it: Sordid Sentinels are awesome. They're really, really good. Maybe you'll think I'm saying this because I've become friends with the band, because I've played a few shows with them. But I'm not. I'm saying it because they are really frickin' good.

I really want Sordid Sentinels to play more shows with different bands. They are the kind of band that you see once because they are opening for your friends' band, and then can't stop seeing them, no matter whom they play with.

A couple weeks ago, writing about The Vile Red Falcons (who have played with the Sentinels in the past, I believe), I expressed my enthusiasm for what is best described as straight-up, balls-out rock music. It is that same love that keeps bringing me back to show after show with Sordid Sentinels.

So it was that I ended up at Bob's Java Jive Friday night looking for a rock show. I knew that two of the four bands on the bill had dropped off, leaving Riley Gratzer of the Sentinels in a scramble to fill up the bill. But at the very least they would be there, with touring group Siren and maybe one other band.

Well, no other band stepped up. And then Siren didn't show. Which was a disappointment of some degree, since I had listened to a few songs off their MySpace, and was excited to see another band in the world with a melodica.

The disappointment didn't stick. It wasn't long before Sordid Sentinels took the stage, and did what they always do, plus some.

Gratzer and co. proceeded to rock balls (a key component of balls-out rock) through a set opening with the Muse-esque (hope they don't mind me calling it Muse-esque) “Robot Love,” the debut of new track tentatively titled Railroad Ties, plus “Russian Dolls” and crowd-pleaser “Walking The Plank,” both of which are featured in the just-completed local feature film Bestseller, directed by Gratzer's brother, Rick.

Following the teachings of Eddie Spaghetti (whether they know it or not), the band didn't bother leaving the stage and launched directly into their encore (also known as "Oh God there are no other bands fill time fill time!"), featuring signature covers of Queens of the Stone Age and Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean,” and an excellent rendition of “Float On” by Modest Mouse with surprise guest vocalist (and Where Sails Meet Rails bassist) Adam Zack. By the end of the night the Jive was bouncing and some of the crowd was even dancing, not the easiest reaction to provoke in Tacoma.

Guitarist Chris White was in top form, as always. We had a conversation a few weeks ago wherein he insisted that he does not shred. And he's right. Shredding is for metal-heads and hardcore thrashers. White does something different: he wails. And wail he did, through riff-rock and ripping solos alike.

Keyboardist Josh Price unfortunately continues to suffer the same fate as always: I have no idea what he's doing because I can only ever hear him on one or two songs. When I can hear him he is excellent, which is why this is a problem.

Anyway, the point is: go see these guys. And if you're in a band, play with them, because then your fans will leave as their fans, and that's what the Tacoma scene needs most these days: people getting into bands full of people they don't really know.