Last Saturday night was a long anticipated event, the return of NJ ska band Streetlight Manifesto. SLM are a very tight band. They exude an energy on stage that is reflected in their music, but not in their physical actions. This is not a band that interacts much with their audience. They get up on …
I keep my grandpa’s wooden box full of foreign coins and coins I find interesting. I hadn’t looked through it for a long time. I was dusting tonight and found this CTA token. What happy memories~thought you– and all of the Chicago diaspora nation– would enjoy seeing it. I don’t know if tokens like this …
I am extremely grateful that Ian Hunter is still with us. So underrated… He has a new record coming out called Cross My Fingers. Since I saw Ian and the Rant Band on their 2001 tour I honestly don’t think anyone has put out better music since. We’ve had Rant, Shrunken Heads“, Man Overboard, and …
A side project from her work as front woman of Philadelphia indie punk band Little Big League, Michelle Zauner released a tape in June 2013 under the solo moniker Japanese Breakfast. The tape was titled June and boasted thirty tracks written and recorded every day of the month. A stark deviation from Little Big League’s …
In light of the recent stories about Roger Ailes and what appears to be the locker-room culture at Fox News, this would be an appropriate musical theme for their broadcasts: Fountains of Wayne’s, “Traffic and Weather”. “We belong together, like traffic and weather . . . “
I saw the Furs the first time at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on August 21, 1981, 34 years and 11 months to the day before last night’s show at the Santa Monica Pier. That show was opened by the Chicago power pop band, The Kind, and was followed by a night of dark droning …
This tune is truly special. It starts out pained, focused and inward but opens to illuminate an emotional story and sonic landscape as big as all of our sadnesses put together. The voice of Darling Cora (Darlene Cuevas) has a delicious range, vivid color and a soothing, comforting feel. She sounds like the Mona Lisa, …
Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir, Wild, became a successful movie with Reese Witherspoon, is a good storyteller whose online talks and Q&As never contain a dull moment. It was during one of my searches for her talks that I learned that she had resurrected her advice column, Dear Sugar, as a WBUR podcast with Steve Almond, …
Fitz and The Tantrums’ self-titled album came out June 10. The first single, “HandClap,” was #1 most added at Alternative radio for 3 weeks in a row, was in the Top 5 of Spotify’s US viral chart and is already in a FIAT ad. It’s big and danceable and may be the summer song for …
Oregon’s Willamette Valley has some of the best wine country on Earth, especially if you’re into the Pinot Noir variety that Rex Pickett made famous with his novels Sideways and Vertical, the latter of which is set in Oregon. For those who live in Portland or are just visiting, most of the wineries are within …
I shouldn’t like Skating Polly, two Oklahoma kids playing thrashy post punk, but it turns out I love them utterly to bits. I got the album on a whim, and to check them out further, seeing as it turns out I’d seen them live supporting Babes In Toyland. I’d kinda filed that away in the …
Friday night July 8 Seattle’s foremost punk club, El Corazon, hosted one of punk’s foremost bands, the Dickies. Hailing from So Cal, the Dickies have been around since 1977 and are essentially the clowns, the satire of punk rock while still being punk. The band integrates numerous props in their performance including an anatomically correct …
Maccie is from a different Portland, “I grew up in Portland, Ontario in foster care, and from a young age I used music as an escape. I always had a passion for singing but when I discovered the piano at age 8 I was hooked. I taught myself by ear, I learned piano, then moved …
At an East Portland Blog staff meeting tonight, one of our fine writers related a story about visiting the Billy Graham Library in North Carolina. This reminded me of hours lost in the 1970s sitting forcibly quiet and heroically bored as my parents monopolized the lone family boob tube watching televised versions of Billy Graham …
From the album Impossible Dream out August 5, 2016:
Purslane has more omega 3 than any other leafy green. Purslane is easy to find in the cracks of the sidewalk. Kay Young substitutes the purslane for lettuce in tacos or sandwiches. Bonus no chopping or wilting! The leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. I vote for raw~the less work the better! I added …
This news may only be important to the truly NBA-obsessive, but for those who haven’t heard, Kevin Durant has left the Oklahoma City Thunder to join the Golden State Warriors. From Durant’s standpoint, the reasons are obvious. He believes that he has gone as far as he could with the Thunder and sees the Warriors …
Samm Henshaw will release his second EP, The Sound Experiment 2, via Columbia Records this summer. He describes this song as “a mission-statement to honing your craft, and being able to do anything when you put the work in.”
On Saturday June 25 the long awaited return of So Cal’s Tiger Army came to El Corazon. The last time Tiger Army played in Seattle I think it was 2008 or 2009. The band took some time off, but Seattle hadn’t forgotten them. The club was packed and there was already a good crowd when …
Just heard about Garrison Keillor’s recent retirement from A Prairie Home Companion. He actually did so as well back in 1987, but over the next several years he gave in, bit by bit, to his audience’s demands until the show returned in its full reincarnation in 1994. Now that he is 72 years old, however, …
Much as the Golden State Warriors’ loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA finals has been described as a collapse, Game 7 was anything but. It was biting, scratching and kicking warfare for a full 48 minutes. Such games always come down to someone making a big play at the end, and when Kyrie …
Johnny Cueto, whom the San Francisco Giants acquired last winter, is the hands-down best free-agent signing thus far in 2016. Yesterday, he won his tenth game and reduced his season ERA to 2.10, which would actually be about half that total if you subtracted the five-run innings he suffered on two occasions in April and …
After the United States’ 2-1 Copa America quarterfinal victory over Ecuador Thursday night, the team jogged and sprinted by turns around the pitch. It may have been helpful conditioning, but they looked like they were running for sheer joy, reveling in the cheers from the fans still filling half of CenturyLink Field here in soccer-mad …
Today’s NPR Fresh Air show features a review of a debut album by Margaret Glaspy, who grew up in Red Bluff, CA. I once was treated to a private concert with some friends at her mother’s house, where she sang country tunes and Great American Songbook standards, with a banjo accompanist who did a respectable …
She’s all the rage in NYC. After you hear this song and see this video you will understand why she’s our unanimous 2016 Artist of the Year. Mitski insists she didn’t write this song to stick it to the smelly white boy indie rock establishment, but it works on that level anyway. Mitski will be …
Game over, writers. The robots are are here and writing scripts. – Harper Hull
As one would expect, Muhammad Ali’s passing on Friday has generated a flood of tributes and commentary over the weekend, far greater than the usual obituaries that stand at the ready at the Times and elsewhere for such occasions. To this, I would add the following comments. First, Ali strikes me as one of the …
Regardless of who takes home the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship trophy, the Golden State Warriors’ 2015/16 season will be remembered mostly for their 73-9 regular season record, much as the 1995/96 Chicago Bulls are remembered for their 72-10 mark. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the Warriors did more to validate themselves as champions in …
As is my wont, I recently got hooked on a song released many years ago, a totally new discovery to the clueless me. The Cure’s “Exploding Boy” popped up on KEXP and I thought, “Holy shit, Robert Smith’s still got it.” Of course, the song was released probably circa 1980 as a B side. Anyway, …