7 HOME CULTURE COLUMNS
Don't just take our word for it
5/9/2008 | Last week after the Musee Mecanique show at Caterina Winery, 7 editor Ken Paulman was riding his bike through the parking lot on his way home and he offered me some advice for the masses: "When PK says it's the best band he's ever seen, you better listen to him."
Artist moves away to find niche in Spokane
3/28/2008 | It's good to get out of Spokane from time to time. Getting in to Spokane, now that's a different story. John Waters moved from Spokane to Seattle during his 20s you know the clichι.
Thin Air celebrates Spokane music
11/12/2007 | Pat Dundas is deep in the trenches of the local music scene. For the last two years he's been standing on the proverbial milk crate in the corner, shouting into his megaphone about the quality and quantity of talent that resides in and tours through this sort-of-like-a-city-kind-of-like-a-town.
The Word is on the come up
11/7/2007 | Things were looking really good for the local music scene on all fronts last year. The acoustic scene exploded. All-ages venues were harder to kill than Steven Seagal. And there were more media outlets covering live music than ever.
A very good month
8/27/2007 | Platform Booking held the music scene down in August, but RAWK the Inland Northwest is making a run for September. Or, more accurately, RAWK teamed with Kelly Lotze's ERC Booking.
Short and sweet: Download fest should rock
8/20/2007 | For the past several years, indie-rock fans in the Inland Northwest haven't had much of a choice. Sasquatch was the one reason to go to the Gorge Amphitheatre. But the other indie-rock event at the Gorge Download Festival happens Saturday, beginning at 2 p.m. And even though it's one day and one stage, it's a doozy.
Super speakers: hearing is believing
8/9/2007 | A pair of stereo speakers that stand more than 7 feet tall it's something you'd expect to see on an episode of "Cribs" or "Celebrity Homes.
Toast to Caterina
8/3/2007 | Caterina Winery owns the month of August. The number and diversity of shows is outrageous. The winery recently added bottled beer. It will have its new stage up in a matter of days and will continue to host select shows on the patio, said Platform Booking's Patrick Kendrick, who runs the music and manages at Caterina, 905 N. Washington St. The month started strong with Cyrus Fell Down's CD release show. The heat continues tonight at 8 p.m. with the Acoustic Explosion 2007 all-star kick-off show featuring Marshall McLean, Kevin Long, Mordekye Layman and Melody Moore.
Radiohead tribute turns out OK covers
7/27/2007 | Ten years ago this month, Radiohead blew the door off the hinges with one of the most inventive and influential albums of the 1990s: "OK Computer." To celebrate the 10th anniversary of "OK Computer," hipster music blog Stereogum put together "OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer," with select artists covering songs in a compilation.
Fair kicks off film season
7/20/2007 | For more than seven years The Shop has been the heart of the South Perry Street neighborhood. The quaint coffee shop converted from an old auto shop was one of Spokane's essential allies for acoustic and indie music until last year. Consider some of the acts that have come through The Shop: Norfolk & Western, Point Juncture WA, Rocky Votolato, Jason Webley, The Pale, Shearwater, Mt. Eerie, Karl Blau and most of the K-Records roster.
Ink World hosts spectacle The Enigma
7/11/2007 | Fill in the blanks: "I am ______ who ______. "It's a question of self identity. The Enigma doesn't claim to have all the answers; there are still a couple of pieces missing to the puzzle. But he's not afraid to challenge the popular view. In fact, he's made a living out of it. The Enigma, aka Paul Lawrence, is one of the most well-known sideshow freaks in the business, unmistakable because of his horn implants and full-body jigsaw puzzle tattoo. The trademark puzzle pieces cover nearly every inch of The Enigma, but he maintains that it's what's on the inside that counts. "I'm just a guy who does that stuff. I'm just an entertainer who got a tattoo. Without it, I would still be an entertainer," The Enigma said during a telephone interview. The Enigma could've easily ended up a classical composer or in some other fine art instead of a monstrosity of a performance artist. That's the direction he was headed when he was young, taking piano, flute and dance lessons before age 10. But The Enigma's life took a turn at age 15 when he started swallowing swords on stages in Seattle.
For life, for luck, for love it's the date
7/6/2007 | Remember what you did on Jan. 1 of 2001? How about 2/2/2; 3/3/3; 4/4/4 or 5/5/5? Even 6/6/6 didn't cause much of a stir, except for scary movies and taboo. But what is it about the number 7? July 7, 2007 Saturday is turning out to be a bigger deal than all of those dates combined. 7s, especially in threes, seem to contain some magic in our culture. 777 is popping up everywhere, and with different kinds of symbolism, from the religious to the superstitious.
Transformers can't pull guns on Team Jordan
6/29/2007 | We have a no-guns rule at the headquarters of Team Jordan. That includes when it comes to TV, movies and video games. Classics from the 1980s "Star Wars," "G.I. Joe" and as much as pains me to admit it "The Transformers" cross the line. The pre-Columbine cartoons and toys weren't weighted with modern-day controversy. Still, looking back, Transformers was futuristic in both fantasy and the reality. A brief synopsis: The original Transformers series (1984) chronicles a war between two factions of advanced alien robots who came to Earth after draining their home planet's energy supply. While the tyrannical Decepticons seek to control Earth, the heroic Autobots fight to protect Earth's natural resources. What made Transformers cool and unique is that the "robots in disguise" masked their presence on Earth by transforming into planes, trains and automobiles (cue the "ree-eer-err-oor-irr" sound effects).
Rocker fights Net battles
6/22/2007 | Glenn Case is a songwriting warrior. Call him a master of song-fu. Outside of fronting local rock band The Half Racks, Case's battles are staged on the Internet, specifically on Song Fight! (songfight.org). Song Fight! invites participants to weekly songwriting contests in which they are given a title and/or certain conditions under which to write songs.
BOBfest retreats to '80s
6/13/2007 | Spokane's biggest all-ages band battle takes place Saturday, and for the first time in four years I won't be there to judge. I've always had a blast getting the goods on the high school music scene through judging BOBfest, but I'll be rockin' out with my own kids instead. Because I'm missing out on BOBfest which is Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Clocktower Meadow in Riverfront Park I caught up with Carly Thames, a long-time BOBfest judge and co-owner of College Road Records, the local label that produced the BOBfest compilation album. The studio's engineer, Carly's husband, Wade Thames, does the engineering work. One trend in this year's contest, according to Carly, is a retreat to the '80s with a lot of punk and metal bands. She was kind enough to give me the scoop on bands playing BOBfest this year with some comments on each band.
Sunday jazzy Sunday
6/8/2007 | Ella's isn't usually open on Sundays. But this Sunday the local jazz club is going to be wide open for an all-day jazz festival, CenterFest 2. Featuring 11 (mostly) local jazz bands, the event is the second benefit concert for CenterStage, featuring the usual suspects who can be caught cutting it up at Ella's Supper Club on the third floor of CenterStage, 1017 W. First Ave.
Self-made marketer
6/1/2007 | There I was, standing mesmerized in front of the entrance to Unified Groove Merchants, staring at a three-eyed baby on a Belt of Vapor concert flier.
Gorgeous summer
5/23/2007 | Ozzfest is free. Willie Nelson takes his picnic out of Texas and to the middle of nowhere. Download Festival gives Sasquatch a run for its money. And Kube 93 Summer Jam keeps it West Side (I mean, "Siyeeed") at White River Amphitheatre. This year's schedule for the Gorge Amphitheatre summer concert season is full of surprises. But don't be surprised if more concerts are announced for the late summer. Here's a roundup of the seven shows so far announced at the Gorge.
Underground comedy surfaces
5/11/2007 | I knew Scott Moran in high school. He's the first to admit he was not one of the "cool" kids. He was an average, goofy white guy.
Visual art and music collide
5/1/2007 | Without ever picking up a musical instrument or singing a single note, Laurentia Colhoff has taken the local music scene by storm in the last year. She's not a musician, she is an artist of the visual realm, but she is well-known among bands and their listeners. And she is infatuated with Spokane musicians, so much that Colhoff has been going to local shows with A-student attendance, taking pictures of bands and painting portraits of them. But it didn't stop there. Colhoff quit her job as a realtor and is selling her house so she can go on the road as the full-time manager for local stand-outs Matthew Winters and Paper Mache.
Get lost in soothing soundscapes
4/27/2007 | Don Emerson has an international reputation for his soothing sounds so it's fitting that his music is being used in massage therapy. His brand of country-pop was a hit at home and overseas during mid-'90s USO tours and house gigs in Las Vegas.
See it, buy it, play it
4/18/2007 | A cartoon about a talking wad of meat and his roommates a talking side order of fries that shoots lasers out of eyes and a talking milk shake with an attitude problem plus their white-trash neighbor, who is prone to air guitar solos and getting mutilated on a regular basis with characters this rich, who needs a plot? I'm talking, of course, about Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program block champion that was recently made into a movie, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters."
Joining funk forces
4/3/2007 | Andrew Means isn't totally sure it could have been a hallucination but the co-founder of Velella Velella seems to recall once sharing a bill with No-Fi Soul Rebellion, sort of. It would have been in Spokane, back in the Real Soda days when he and Michael Burton were still just a duo making bedroom hip-hop and No-Fi was still Missoula's flagship of funk before moving to Bellingham.
Dad remembers Dax Johnson
3/28/2007 | Dax Johnson was well-known in the area as a charismatic street musician with biker looks who would wheel a grand piano out to a corner and blow people away with his musical prowess. After his death in 2005, Johnson's dark struggle with depression and addiction came to light. There's painfully twisted irony in the fact that Johnson's last days were spent living on the streets, as a homeless person.
Hip-hop epitomizes musical democracy
3/21/2007 | A story recently appeared in the newspaper saying the current ilk of rap is corrupting youth, and the world is coming to an end, and it's all 50 Cent's fault, blah, blah, blah.
