The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR, is about an hour off the beaten interstate track, but it’s well worth the trip. It is the home not only of Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, but also a remarkable collection of vintage airplanes and spacecraft, including V2 and Gemini Titan rockets. The Spruce Goose, in …
This part-pug puppy watches The Lion King and experiences all of the tender sadness:
The Columbia Sky Observatory in Seattle, WA offers the tallest view available to the public west of the Mississippi. It can be a little frustrating to negotiate the surrounding one-way streets to get there, but the panorama is well worth the effort and the $14 fee. The Columbia Observatory may not be as well-known as …
The first thing you notice about Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers and their new coach, Chip Kelly, is how far it is from the city itself—about an hour’s drive south to Santa Clara in a neighborhood dominated by corporate office buildings. With its exposed white framework, the stadium has a slight resemblance …
For the first three quarters of Game 2 of the NBA Western Semi-Finals, the Portland Trail Blazers did everything they could to defy conventional wisdom. They crashed the boards, made big shots and on defense forced the Golden State Warriors to work for their points, and at the beginning of the fourth quarter the Blazers …
Last Saturday I headed back to the Highline for a sweaty, rowdy night of pure punk rock. Headlining the event was Moral Crux, a band I’d seen once before and was totally blown away by. They blew me away again. Front man James Farris is the quintessential punk. Sporting short platinum spikes, tight leopard print …
One should never judge a series by its first game, but with their 118-106 victory, the Dubs took care of business with a 20-point lead in the first quarter, never allowing the score to get close after that. Lillard and McCollum shot a combined 30% from the floor—they and the Blazers may have been a …
When I saw the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Los Angeles Clippers back in November, I wrote at the time that the Blazers looked better than expected, while the Clippers seemed to have more than their share of issues. I would have never predicted, though, that the Blazers would not only make the NBA playoffs …
I once heard a fan at AT&T Park say that he liked pitching duels when watching baseball on television, but when he was at the park, he wanted to see runs scored. I understood his perspective; hits and baserunners are a lot more interesting from the upper deck than a continual succession of pitches going …
Wednesday night April 27, Seattle’s Tractor Tavern hosted England’s Subways. Bursting with power and dripping with charisma, the band is led by they very boyish looking Billy Lunn. Add his brother Josh Morgan who thrashes the drum kit like a wild animal and Charlotte Cooper on bass. Charlotte was no slouch in the charm department. …
Night Two of the 2016 Seattle Ska Fest. The first band I saw was already on stage. The Mean Threes, a trio from Vancouver, BC, reminded me of a lot of sixties folk rock with provocative poetry and a reggae beat. Not a lot of on stage energy in this band, just laid back stuff …
“Empty is just exactly what it says it is. A song about emptiness,”said the band’s Shirley Manson. Strange Little Birds, Garbage’s sixth studio album, due out on June 10, was recorded and produced by the band in Los Angeles and is the follow up to 2012’s heralded Not Your Kind of People. https://youtu.be/W5ZgmPpDtXs
Wednesday eating from your yard tip~Onion chives are one of my top five favorite herbs! Both the flowers and the leaves have a sudtle onion flavor. My favorite way to eat chives are chopped up and heated with a quarter size of oil to flavor the oil before I throw in my eggs. The flowers …
Attention all you fans of punk pop, have you heard of the Subways? They’re an English punk pop trio and they’re coming to the Northwest this next week. Think New Found Glory meets the Runaways. They have a brand video out called Dirty Muddy Paws. Check it out here. They’re playing Seattle on April 27th …
Believe it or not, I’ve been to two Prince concerts. Not out of a “hometown boy made good” support kind of thing but mostly because Mrs. Rimkus was always smitten by him. And liked his music I suppose. They were electrifying shows. Those who never had the pleasure… Back in Prince’s early days, we boring …
Garrison Keillor has occasionally referenced the basement of a Lutheran church as well as a dinner entrée called a casserole (aka hotdish) during his successful, long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. I was raised in a denomination, i.e., the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), which is similar to Lutheran (two sacraments: baptism and communion). I …
Just saw that Garry Shandling passed away suddenly. I liked him. He made meta funny and accessible at once. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/24/471773637/actor-and-comedian-garry-shandling-dies-at-66 His appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee wasn’t that long ago: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/garry-shandling-its-great-that-garry-shandling-is-still-alive Note the title of the segment. Replayed the episode. A lot of discussion of death, almost eerily so. At one point Shandling …
President Barack Obama has spent the last few days in Cuba as part of his effort to normalize relations with the island that has endured a 50 year embargo. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama advocated for “human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion” during the trip to which President Raul Castro …
Muddy Waters was interviewed countless times in his long career, often by people who had little knowledge of his life or his music. Pete Welding was a different case. He owned Testament Records, a Chicago Blues label that recorded many of Muddy’s contemporaries and friends. In this brief but illuminating interview, Welding knows the likely …
At once lush, scatalogical, heartfelt, cosmological, lyrically-piercing and honest, Melody Pool’s new single “Love, She Loves Me” is not easily forgotten. This tune forms part of her eagerly anticipated second album, Deep Dark Savage Heart which will be out 29 April 2016.
Melbourne MC REMI and musical collaborator Sensible J share their first single “For Good” featuring Sampa The Great, from their upcoming album Divas and Demons, due for release later this year. After the success of 2014’s Raw x Infinity, REMI returns with a Dilla inspired, soulful track that features Sampa’s raw and powerful poetry while …
I’ve enjoyed David Axelrod’s podcasts of late. His most recent interview with Mark Leibovich of the New York Times is pretty insightful. Axe seems to be pretty good at getting his subjects to relax and open up, and he asks good questions. One of the more interesting exchanges was about Hillary Clinton’s limitations as a …
Lake Jons is one of Finland’s most hyped bands, rolling in like a thick mist on a sweet northern wind. Although Lake Jons comes from a garage on the outskirts of Helsinki, their sound is birthed in the woods and melodies of the Nordic landscape. They combine the harshness of a folk-ish disposition with the …
Swedish sensation Nadia Nair is back with another single from her debut album, Beautiful Poetry, which will be released on April 29th. The new song is called “Dear Brother” and features 90s-inspired production, upbeat bass and mantra-like harmonies. “Dear Brother” follows the more minimalistic first single, “Something Something Something,” which gained support from the likes …
I just watched Mavis! on HBO – this documentary is so good, it even caused me to have warm feelings towards Jeff Tweedy! There’s great vintage clips and commentary from Chuck D & Dylan, plus a warm moment with Levon Helm not long before he passed. – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! …
Drinking a cold beer and listening to Van Morrison’s near masterpiece Veedon Fleece. I always wanted to track down this album, now I am tripping through Van’s own Irish myth and stream of conscious ramblings toward rich green patches of brilliance. He’s just a giant mushroom. He doesn’t make much sense, but you are free …
No music fan with a pulse can resist a tune called, “Chimbombo,” and you can’t either…
Embattled singer/songwriter Vince Grant is championing honesty about mental illness by releasing the latest video for “Oceans II” (above) from his critically acclaimed debut CD My Depression Is Always Trying To Kill Me (below). This release has ignited public discussion about depression. The Los Angeles-based Grant is the rare musician who has openly addressed his …
I was having a beer with a friend of mine when I got the news of Keith Emerson’s death. There seems to have been a recent wave of rock and roll icons exiting stage left – and given all of our advancing ages – more soon to come. But hearing about the untimely demise of …
What does a record producer do? What does he bring to the studio? In the case of Phil Spector, it was usually a revolver, a cloud of dread, and a closet full of percussion instruments. Nick Lowe seems to have brought bonhomie and the shortest path through the session to the pub afterwards. To read …