5 Things To Do Today: Strangely Alright, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, "The Miracle Worker," the Hoot Hoots ...

By Volcano Staff on February 20, 2015

FRIDAY, FEB. 20 2015 >>>

1. Strangely Alright is more than all right - the band is awesome. Its music is fun, timeless and real. The band can laugh, cry and flip people off all in one album, backed up by talent and experience. Fronted by longtime Tacoma musician Regan Lane (Baby Knockors, Strypes, Groovy Times in Babylon, BrokenNess), take the Beatles and Super Furry Animals sprinkled it with some Bowie, Traveling Wilburys and Elvis Costello and add confessional lyrics ala John Lennon and Bob Dylan and you have the five-piece power pop band Strangely Alright. "We'll perform new material I have written Friday," says Lane, "plus a Weezer-style cover of ‘Imagine,' some New York Dolls and Ramones." Our new single, ‘Come on,' will be released in a few weeks. In fact, we'll be releasing a new single and video every two months this year." Well, all right! Catch the band with SleepyPilot at 9 p.m. in The Swiss Restaurant and Pub.

2. Broadway Center for the Performing Arts presents Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo at 7:30 p.m. in the Pantages Theater. Delicately stuffed into tutus and man-sized toe shoes, the gender bending all-male ballet company returns to deliver hilarious twists on classical ballet. A worldwide phenomenon, the comedy of "The Trocks" is only outmatched by their technical prowess. Performing en pointe, these "mallerinas" revel in buffoonery and antics with perfectly pointed toes and leap to the heavens with attuned choreographic precision.

3. Nena Curley was 14 years old when she performed the role of Sarah, one of the blind girls, in the Lakewood Playhouse 2003 production of The Miracle Worker. Twelve years later, Curley is the stage manager and production manager for the theater company's current production of The Miracle Worker, William Gibson's inspiring 1959 drama about blind, deaf and mute child Helen Keller and teacher Annie Sullivan's extraordinary efforts to communicate with her, which hits the stage at 8 p.m.

4. Weekly Volcano scribe Rev. Adam McKinney has long been in love with the fizzy, cartoonishly bright power pop of the Hoot Hoots. With their driving indie rock, dressed with colorful costumes and embellished with lyrics about robots and dinosaurs, the Hoot Hoots have embodied the height of blissful optimism for him in the Pacific Northwest. Seeing them live is a sweaty, exuberant joy. Read his full feature on The Hoot Hoots in the Music and Culture section., then catch the band with the Jesus Rehab, Fruit Juice and Trees and Timber at 8 p.m. in The New Frontier Lounge.

5. Obsidian in downtown Olympia hosts "Invokation," a night of gothic, industrial, darkwave and electro tunes spun by DJs. Dress to depress for a night of classic bats-and-bondage soundscapes, beginning at 9 p.m. Bela Lugosi's dead - long live Bela Lugosi!