Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 07, 2012 at 02:00PM0 Comments
Madonna previewed new single “Give Me All Your Luvin’”—featuring M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj (pictured)—during the Super Bowl.
Turns out Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show was just a warmup for a year of stadium concerts. Madge and Live Nation announced today that she’s hitting the road on Memorial Day, touring behind her new album MDNA (due out March 26)—and she’ll be in Seattle on October 2. Her KeyArena show is bound to be a high point of Seattle Center’s 50th anniversary celebration of the World’s Fair, which runs April through October and already includes appearances by Radiohead, Coldplay, and the Black Keys.
But if we had to hold out for one show, it’d be the Material Girl’s. Who else will bring along an army of backup dancers dressed as gladiators? She’s still got it at 53—and she can draw a larger audience than the biggest game in American sports. According to the Nielsen ratings, more than 114 million tuned into her halftime show on Sunday night, while Manning v. Brady drew 113.3 million viewers. Madonna, 1. Football, 0.
Portland’s jazz phenom shows off her new album, Radio Music Society.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jan 30, 2012 at 11:00AM0 Comments
Bieber’s hair can’t compare.
Sadly, some know Esperanza Spalding simply as that girl who took Justin Bieber’s Grammy for best new artist in 2011. But Bieber couldn’t even out-hair the Portland-born jazz bassist, a charismatic bandleader who’s nine inches shorter than her instrument but larger than life when she performs. Ever since her self-titled debut in 2008, the 27-year-old phenom has emerged as “the hottest pop-jazz crossover artist since Norah Jones,” to quote our sister publication Portland Monthly. She’s brainy, setting William Blake to music, and appeals across borders, switching easily from English to Spanish to Portuguese.
And she has a new album out March 20, Radio Music Society, which comes with 12 concept videos shot in New York City, Barcelona, and Portland. She’ll show off her latest work at the Paramount Theatre on April 24. Tickets ($30-$42) are on sale now at stgpresents.org.
Dr. House is now a piano man—see him at Benaroya Hall.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jan 23, 2012 at 10:30AM0 Comments
The Hollywood triple threat is back.
Seems there’s a new genre of music on the rise: Hollywood’s leading men play the blues. Cynics might call it “aging white men and their midlife crisis band,” but a few of these acts are legitimate. Steve Martin won the top bluegrass prize of 2011 with the Steep Canyon Rangers (but then again, we knew the Renaissance man had musical chops ever since he payed tribute to King Tut). And Woody Allen, now touring with his New Orleans Jazz Band, has been playing the clarinet since his teens. Jeff Bridges has gone Method, living out his folk hero role from Crazy Heart in real life, and Tim Robbins? Well, let’s just say he was getting over Susan Sarandon with a really talented backing band…
The latest leading man to reinvent himself is House star Hugh Laurie, who released his debut New Orleans blues album, Let Them Talk, in September. We’ve seen Dr. House at the piano every now and then, but that’s only an inkling of all the pent-up jazz riffs that have occupied Laurie’s ‘gawky English frame’ since he was little. With his backing Copper Bottom Band, he warms up with a little Thelonious Monk or Louis Armstrong; the Brit even takes us down the “Suwannee River.” And he’s not half bad (watch the clip below). The best part about actor/comedians-turned-musicians? A serious upgrade in audience banter.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jan 11, 2012 at 10:30AM0 Comments
Thom Yorke and crew come to Seattle this spring.
Very interesting. First Coldplay announces an April 25 concert at KeyArena. And now Radiohead is coming on April 9 as a warmup to their mid-April headlining gig at Coachella Music Festival in California. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of ‘90s arena rock—this is good news all around. It means that KeyArena bookers, in the thick of planning a spring/summer concert season to coincide with the 50th anniversary celebration of the Seattle World’s Fair, are getting the big national acts over Tacoma Dome.
And with Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and the Rolling Stones considering a North America tour this year—in addition to the Black Keys, who already have a Portland date on the calendar (UPDATED and now a local date!) —Seattle could be in for a very big spring. Here’s hoping.
Tickets ($70) to see Radiohead at KeyArena on April 9 go on sale this Saturday at 10am atticketmaster.com.
We had the LA rockers on repeat for about a decade—but we can’t bring ourselves to see them in concert this Friday.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Dec 15, 2011 at 11:00AM0 Comments
It just ain’t the same anymore.
I’m not afraid to say that Guns N’ Roses helped me make friends. I had just started a study abroad program in Melbourne, Australia, and was living in a dorm full of locals who weren’t as enamored with my accent as I was with theirs. It’s not like I had moved to Tokyo, but yeah, there was a little culture shock. Start with the guy on my hallway who actually used all the Aussie slang printed on coffee mugs in tourist shops: “chockablock,” “good on ya,” “fair dinkum.” They slathered tar on their toast and called it Vegemite. They hated peanut butter.
The only common ground I found in the beginning was “beer”…until I heard Slash’s guitar solo to “Sweet Child o’ Mine” through my next-door neighbor’s walls. I knew that solo. I loved that solo. Not back when they first debuted Appetite for Destruction— I was only six, and Slash wasn’t the greatest role model —but through high school and college, when I played GNR on repeat for the better part of a decade. It was “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City” before every soccer game, and “November Rain” when I was mad at my mom for not letting me wear man-sized flannel shirts to school. And when I daydreamed about fronting a rock band, I always started my set with a cover of “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” If Axl could hit those falsetto notes, imagine what a girl could do!
It seemed my Aussie wallmate had the same daydream. Aaron, a skinny redhead who disappeared behind his electric guitar, had been perfecting the Slash solo in his dorm room—with the door open—for the better part of an hour. I got up the nerve to peek in, offered some kind of lame compliment, and then got to chatting about how amazing it would be to see GNR live. The rest, they say, is ace.
Fast forward to today. A week after Guns N’ Roses entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (beating out Northwest favorites Heart, no less), a ghostly shade of the band is slated to play KeyArena this Friday.And it’s killing me. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to seeing them live, but this is imitation GNR. A cover band. Axl Rose, now with cornrows, and his backing seven. Sure, Duff McKagan’s new band Loaded will open, and I hear the concerts are three-hour epics, but when it comes to the international language of Slash’s guitar solo, I’d rather hear the original.
The husband-and-wife pop duo plays the Crocodile tonight.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Dec 14, 2011 at 11:30AM0 Comments
After months spent sailing the Eastern seaboard, husband-and-wife duo Tennis turned out Cape Dory in January, a debut album of nostalgic ’60s pop gems that reflected all that sunshine and fresh air. It was a slice of summer in the middle of the winter.
But Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore seem to have found their sea legs with brand-new single “Origins,” off their forthcoming album Young and Old (due out Feb 2012). It’s more grounded, with a hint of soul (bolstered by synthesizers and a horn section). It bodes well for tonight’s concert at the Crocodile; tickets are ludicrously cheap ($12) and still available atthecrocodile.com.
Originally published December 2011. "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge,” Hunter S. Thompson warns in the opening pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as he freewheels across the Nevada desert in a red Chevy convertible with a trunk full of drugs and booze. (“Two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine…”)
But what would Thompson’s mescaline-fueled misadventures sound like if they were a symphony? It’s the latest challenge set by Seattle’s Bushwick Book Club, a rotating cast of singer-songwriters that performs original music inspired by a monthly reading assignment. Bushwick launched in October 2010 with a Slaughterhouse-Five session at the Can Can cabaret (and about 50 friends in the audience). Since then, they’ve tackled S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Frank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, even Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Tonight, they’ll hold their biggest show yet, as the 60-piece Seattle Rock Orchestra joins them for a little Fear and Loathing at Town Hall.
The Bushwick Book Club Seattle and Seattle Rock Orchestra Present: Original Music Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Dec 9 at 8pm at Town Hall. Tickets are $13–$15.
Portland’s folk phenom shows off her new children’s album at the Vera Project.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Nov 30, 2011 at 11:30AM0 Comments
Considering that Portland folk star Laura Veirs sang about mermaids and moonbeams before she gave birth, a children’s album seems an obvious postpartum project. She takes froggy a-courtin’ on Tumble Bee, a spirited new collection of folk covers borrowed from Woody Guthrie and Peggy Seeger, African American lullabies and Civil War–era fiddle tunes. Don’t try to resist “Prairie Lullaby” when she plays an all-ages show at the Vera Project on December 3; the gentle, swaying song (with a bit of yodeling) could rock any Scrooge to sleep.
Laura Veirs and the Tumble Bees play an all-ages show at the Vera Project, Dec 3 at 3:30 (doors open at 3). Tickets are $10, $5 for children 12 and under. Babes in arms free.
After nearly a decade of being pegged “alt-country,” Sykes and guitarist Phil Wandscher enter new territory on their latest record, Marble Son, which explores the darkness and chaos of ’60s psychedelia and art metal. Even the explanation of the album title is heavier: “I liked the idea of something beautiful that may or may not be appreciated in it’s own time,” Sykes says. “Of course, a statue comes to mind.”
They’re joined by opening bands the Highway Kind (with Matt Camirand from Black Mountain) and Low Hums (with Jonas Haskins/Jason Merculief of Alela Diane).
To enter to win tickets, email SeattleMetTix@gmail.com with “Jesse Sykes” as the subject, and a reason why you want to see the show, by Friday, December 2, at 5. The winner will be notified by email shortly after the deadline.
Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter play Neumos on Dec 7. Doors open at 8.
January just got less dreary—the LA soul band plays two nights at the Showbox.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on Nov 18, 2011 at 04:00PM0 Comments
I recently tried to request Fitz and the Tantrums’ "MoneyGrabber" at a wedding reception in Rhode Island, and the DJ blew me off. Two likely reasons why:
1. “MoneyGrabber” sounds like “MoneyGrubber,” which is the last thing a new bride wants to hear at a wedding. Exception to the rule: Kanye West’s “Gold Digger.”
2. The six-piece LA soul band isn’t as recognizable as a Gaga, Spears, or Perry—yet. Front man Michael Fitzpatrick and his crew have been packing clubs in Southern California with their dance-friendly ‘60s retro since 2008, but it wasn’t until the release of their 2010 debut album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, that they started picking up steam. This year they were late-night regulars (Jimmy Kimmel, Conan, and Leno) and did a tour of summer festivals that would have exhausted James Brown. Hopefully by 2012, they’ll be in rotation with “Edge of Glory” and “Billie Jean” at a wedding reception near you.
Until then, see Fitz and the Tantrums at Showbox at the Market on January 20 and 21. Tickets ($20-$25) are on sale Saturday, November 19, at 10am atshowboxonline.com.
Ten years ago, Minus the Bear was just a fledgling Seattle indie band. Or, more specifically, five dudes who hung out in a bar all the time, trying to crack an inundated local music scene with prog-rock songs about sex and booze. Their beards were shorter; their song titles sillier (“Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!”) But they had talent, no doubt. Their debut album Highly Refined Pirates—a party in a CD case—came out at the hands of legendary producer Steve Fisk, who also worked with Nirvana, Soundgarden, and the Posies.
A lot can happen in a decade. Four albums. A new keyboardist. A chance to open for Soundgarden. Headlining tours. Marriage. Babies. It’s enough to make a man reflect. Before the band wraps up its 10-year-anniversary tour at Showbox at the Market on Friday—where they’ll play Highly Refined Pirates in its entirety—bassist Cory Murchy chatted with us about “five boys turning into men.”
How has Seattle changed since you guys started?
When we first started out our shows were at the Paradox [an all-ages club that’s since closed]. Luckily the Vera Project still does all-ages shows. It’s kind of neat, though: It’s a lot of the same characters and a lot of the same players from 10, 15, 20 years ago. There’s a thread of continuity.
Do you think your music has changed drastically?
Hopefully it just shows progression, growth—you know, five boys turning into men, learning how to live together and make the tour happen. This is our livelihood, our business, and it’s also our art and our life.
What would you call what you’re playing now?
Classic rock for the future. You want to listen to it now, and hopefully you want to listen to it 20 years from now.
What’s the biggest highlight of your career so far?
The fact that we can do this 10 years on is our biggest achievement. It took us a while to gain some respect in Seattle. There were other bands that came out at the same time that got a lot of attention, and got really big, and a lot of those bands are gone. I’m proud to say that 10 years on, we’re still chugging at it and there’s really no end in sight. It’s awesome to see Seattle finally come around and realize we’re not just another local band.
Minus the Bear plays Showbox at the Market on Nov 11 at 9. The Velvet Teen opens.
It’s been 20 years since the passing of French iconoclast Serge Gainsbourg, a prolific songwriter and provocateur whose 550 songs and 30+ albums earned him bipolar praise (he was called everything from “debauched” to a “modern-day Baudelaire”). The Vatican banned his breathy duet “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus” (“I love you, me neither”), featuring orgasmic panting by Gainsbourg’s longtime lover Birkin, but that only encouraged him. He was a fervent drinker, smoker, poet, and paramour who bedded Brigitte Bardot—but it was Birkin he adored, who was mother to his daughter Charlotte, and who now owns a portion of Serge’s song catalog.
The British actress and chanteuse—a talented solo artist in her own right—is still going strong at 64. As for why now, why more Serge?She responds on her website:
I too wondered why I was singing Serge again, even if it was celibrating the 20 years after Serge’s death, even if it was a very personal 40 years since “Melody Nelson” but what did I have to offer … i’d done it all before, Serge in pop, arabesque, classic quator, 14 musiciens, 6 musiciens, a harp, a squeeze box, violins … this year others have started, their “Serge” was a new point of view, their interpretations… so I started contemplating, putting it all off …
Then there was the Japanese disaster … of unbelievable horror, earthquake, tsunami, and then the ghasly news of the nuclear horror, the like of which we had never witnessed … the images…
What to do ? I have known these people for forty years… “go there” I thought… tell them that back home folk are thinking of them, but get there, “and do what ?” what can I do ?….the only thing i can do… a concert …
Birkin is joined by Japanese musicians for her “Serge Gainsbourg and Jane via Japan” performance in Seattle. To enter to win tickets, email SeattleMetTix@gmail.com with “Jane Birkin” as the subject, and a reason why you want to see the show, by Monday, November 14, at 10am. The winner will be notified by email shortly after the deadline.
Jane Birkin performs at the Neptune Theatre on November 29 at 8.
Before joining Seattle Metropolitan, Laura Dannen covered all things A&E as deputy editor of Time Out Singapore. She’s an award-winning reporter and editor whose team of entertainment junkies delivers daily doses of news, reviews, and interviews.
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