Month: February 2012

Have You Ever Had a Beard? – A New Movie Featuring Calvin Johnson of K Records/Beat Happening to Premiere March 5 at Northwest Film Forum in Seattle

Like fighters in a boxing match, raucous Seattle music writer Chris Estey goes ‘toe to toe’ with cagey music maverick Calvin Johnson about beards and other mysteries of life in the new film, Have You Ever Had a Beard? A study in contrasts, this film compares the lyric heavy songwriting of Calvin Johnson to the …

Hawaii Five-O: Jack Lord is Shockingly Handsome and Wo Fat is Deliciously Evil Throughout! By Tom Kipp

Forgot to mention that I recently made a nice score at our (admittedly odious) Best Buy store up at Northgate, where I will occasionally buy TV shows on dvd when the “loss-leading” spotlight happens to shine on some portion of my Personal Pantheon! On the most recent visit, in addition to the hernia-inducing 57-disc 24: THE COMPLETE SERIES (list …

WHY THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS BEEN LEFT BEHIND (NO MATTER WHAT THE AMERICAN RIGHT CLAIMS) By Ben Easher

Neoconservatives accuse Barack Obama of leading the United States down the road to communism. In reality, mainstream Democrats have become more fiscally conservative since the Cold War era. Obama is no more economically radical than Richard Nixon, whose presidency produced the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, increased spending on social programs, …

Listen Whitey! Author Pat Thomas to Appear at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland April 22

[LISTEN, WHITEY! author Pat Thomas will be reading / presenting / playing music from the book and companion album on Sunday, April 22nd at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland.] Over a five year period in Oakland, CA, archivist Pat Thomas befriended key leaders of the seminal Black Power Movement, dug through Huey Newton’s archives at Stanford University, …

The Presidents of the United Sates of America Rock The Showbox Market, 2/17 and 2/18, By Holly Homan

This Friday and Saturday nights Seattle will witness the return of local icons, The Presidents of the United States of America (Presidents for short). The Presidents, fronted by the charismatic Chris Ballew came onto the national scene back in 1995 with catchy, poppy tunes like Kitty, Peaches and Lump (the latter of which was parodied …

Ducky – Like Rain – Overdose MP3

Ducky – Like Rain from Bicephaly Pictures on Vimeo. From Ducky’s press materials: “Ducky, aka Morgan Neiman, has a producer’s instinct and a powerful voice. She has been making music since she was 13 years old, and has played alongside the likes of Japanther, Ninjasonik, Roxy Cottontail, Trouble Andrew and Action Bronson. Her latest release, …

The Spring Standards – Here We Go

From the Spring Standards’ press materials: “In yellow//gold, The Spring Standards deliver 2 EPs that can be described as a set of fraternal twins, metamorphic stages, or acts in a drama. yellow is a nostalgic meandering through the trio’s shared childhoods—they started playing folk music together as teenagers in the rural landscapes of the Pennsylvania/Delaware …

A Little-Known, Spare, Very Beautiful, and Extraordinarily Unlikely Example of the Artist Whitney Houston Might Easily Have Become, If Not For Clive Davis’ Greedy Intervention In Her Career, By Tom Kipp

I wrote a rather lengthy comment tonight for a friend’s largely critical thread re: the departed Whitney Houston, but, just as I was about to post it, it FUCKIN’ DISAPPEARED and I was far too pissed to attempt to re-create it from scratch. Anyhow, one aspect I’d included was the fact that there is a little-known, spare, very beautiful, and …