Monthly Archives: November 2009

Sports

Mora’s Seahawks Take Another Beating

There seemed some reason for optimism yesterday as the Seahawks got one of their top players back from injury. Cornerback Marcus Trufant’s back was healed enough for him to play against Dallas. He probably wishes he’d taken another week. Trufant picked up three pass interference penalties trying to defend Dallas’ receiver Miles “Always Smilin'” Austin, who still ended up with a touchdown catch. The Seahawks lost 38-17.

The only trouble Austin encountered all day was on his attempted “dunk” attempt of the football over the ten-foot-high crossbar after his touchdown catch–Austin didn’t quite have the ups to make it and flipped the ball over the bar at the last second.

By the end of the game, Trufant was getting inside help on Austin, which is not the scenario you envision for a guy with a six-year, $50 million contract.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks offense was fighting itself. T.J. Houshmandzadeh’s frustrations at not being more of a focal point in the offense have reached the “openly-second-guessing-his-quarterback” point. At this point, Hasselbeck apparently has to explain after every play why he didn’t throw to Housh.

“He needs to get in line,” Jim Mora said of Houshmandzadeh.

The bright spot for the Seahawks was the play of middle linebacker David “The Heater” Hawthorne. Taking over for the injured Lofa Tatupu, Hawthorne played like the Tatupu of old, recording five tackles, two sacks, and forcing a fumble. At this rate Tatupu may end up getting Wally Pipped.

The Hawks host Detroit next week, one of four teams left on their schedule with one win or less. If nothing else, the Seahawks have shown that they can crush inferior teams, with a 28-0 victory over St. Louis and a 41-0 dismantling of Jacksonville as their two wins of the year. So despite the Hawks’ 2-5 record, there’s hope they can make this season respectable.

That wouldn’t fool anyone, though. The Seahawks are a sub-.500 team now, probably headed toward some serious rebuilding.

Theatre

Stokley Towles’s Guided Tour of Where Seattle’s Water Comes From

Stokley Towles’s Waterlines closes with one final performance this Sunday at 7 p.m., at Noodle Works Studio in the ID. Tickets $11.

Stokley Towles has a great way of playing a beat-change. Say he’s been performing a monologue as a water supply worker who wakes up at night to pay attention to the rain, and he needs to shift gears back into lecture mode for the next scene. After the last word of the monologue he just stops, giving the audience a moment to absorb the oddity of the subject, and slowly scans the audience with his bright blue-gray eyes. And once he glances across all the faces, evaluates the response from the twenty or so people packed into the well-lit office break-room where he’s performing his show Waterlines, it’s done. The moment has passed and he can go on, the audience willing to follow him along the next tangent.

Brendan Kiley, writing about Waterlines in The Stranger this summer, described the writer-performer as “a disarmingly charismatic man—tall, tanned, and wholesome looking, like a Christian camp counselor,” and that’s a pretty good take. Cheerful and engaging, Towles, with the support of the city and Seattle Public Utilities, has crafted a compelling short work that’s somewhere between a lecture and an educational TV show a la Bill Nye, about Seattle’s water supply.

Performed in an office break-room at Noodle Works Studio—a brick building kitty-corner to the Uwajimaya parking lot in the International District—Waterlines completes breaks down the boundaries of performance and lecture. There’s no stage, no lighting per se, and though Towles occasionally performs in character, more often than not he’s simply talking to the audience, telling them a true story about where are water comes from and what’s in it.

In tangential leaps and bounds, it tells the story of SPU’s water tasters (yes, we have some), explores the weird stuff you find in the sewers, talks about grease hot-spots, rats in toilets, where our municipal water comes from, and gives you the back-story on bottled water. It’s sometimes esoteric, sometimes mundane, and always enthusiastic, almost to a fault. On more than one occasion, Towles came dangerously close to didactic with his illustrations, such as well he demonstrates the comparative cost of a bottle of water versus tap water with a cascade of pennies.

That said, Towles’s work is a fine example of fundamentally re-thinking how the arts can play a greater social function. The piece reminded me quite a lot of local artist Chris Jordan‘s Running the Numbers series, where he uses dry statistics to illustrate terrifying social, economic, and ecological problems by actually representing them visually: the millions of bottles and bags consumed by Americans every few minutes, the number of children without healthcare, and so on. Similarly, Towles’s work simply makes his audience focus on what they take for granted every day, and hopefully makes them ask difficult questions about what it will take to preserve those luxuries in the future.

Music

The Revival Tour Hits Town on Halloween and Leaves Us All Smiling

In the back seat of a ’77 Thunderbird, squashed between my brother and sister while my mom taxied us somewhere, I learned to hate country music. It was the ’80s and KMPS was playing corporate-filtered country through the cheap speakers of our American car. I guess anyone else would have felt the same. Things change.

Many punks and former punks are embarking on what I’ve been attempting to coin as the “punk rock retirement plan.” Namely, country music. Chuck Ragan (of my favorite post-hardcore band, Hot Water Music) is quickly building a reputation as a master of this genre. His Revival Tour gathers musicians from various punk and non-punk bands to join him onstage.

A Revival Tour show is organized much like a true Southern revival. The music starts with all of the bands and performers on the stage playing a song together before performers take their turns, inviting others to share the spotlight with them. There is no true headliner and the band schedules posted around the venue merely said “Revival Tour.” This organization allows the musicians to seem more like family and the audience to seem more a part of it. Clapping and singing along is a requirement.

On the tour with Chuck Ragan last night were Audra Mae, The Watertower Bucket Boys, Austin Lucas, Bob Lucas (Austin’s father), and Jim Ward. It may sound like hyperbole, but each of these musicians was downright amazing.

 

Audra Mae will absolutely slay you with her honest and soulful voice. She sings bluesy country songs about heartbreak that, if you have any heart at all, will tug so hard at your heartstrings that you’ll probably fall in love with whatever girl (or guy) dances nearby and spills her water on you. Just be warned, this is country music and she (or he) will leave you.

The Watertower Bucket Boys came out in lovely party dresses and work boots. The audience clapped along to every single bluegrass song about drinking that they played. They started with a cover of a Tumbledown song (Mike Herrera of Bremerton punk heroes MxPx’s new country band), which seemed appropriate given that they hail from Portland. It sounded much better and more fun when these gentlemen played it.

Bob Lucas was spending his last night on the tour before going back home. He informed us that he had been playing banjo for about 48 years. That kind of experience just can’t be found in the punk scene, for obvious reasons. He played a song about his love for the banjo that showed off exactly how talented he was at the instrument. His fingers were flying over the strings as he smiled and sang.

He and his son, Austin Lucas, played “Donkey Headed Woman,” a duet that showcased how innovative he was as well. All evening, musicians would shout out keys that the songs were in so that the others could join in with little prior knowledge. They were all pretty standard keys: D, E, A minor, G, etc. However this song sounded different from every other and used chords structures that sounded completely strange. Mr. Lucas called it a “weird ass little song.” It was one of the highlights of his time on stage with nearly every musician.

Austin Lucas played a couple songs and reminded us that he’d be back in town at The Tractor on Monday opening for Langhorne Slim. Austin’s song, “Go West,” has been one of my favorite songs since I saw him play it at the now-defunct King Cobra (opening for “punk rock retirement plan” locals Tumbledown) about nine months ago. It’s clear he was raised in a musical family. Not just because his sister joined him and his father on stage, but because his guitar work is fantastic and his songs are heartfelt and wonderful.

Chuck Ragan played and it seemed like the entire crowd was singing along. His strong, rough vocals inspire us with their songs of perserverance. Similar to Bruce Springsteen and his common-man approach to music, Chuck Ragan makes us all a part of what is going on. The music is not only accessible, it’s powerful and poignant and tells the stories we are all currently living.

Well past the switch to daylight savings time, Jim Ward took the stage. His voice fluctuated between Dylan and the signature sound from his post-hardcore band, Sparta. Oh, he was also in a little band called At the Drive-In. Ward’s punk rock retirement is more of a blending of country and his post-hardcore roots. His passion really shines through on his songs.

A cover of Rainbow Connection by Ward (on banjo for the second time ever live, he mentioned) and Audra Mae had the crowd feeling young again on Halloween, despite being so early in the morning.

The Revival Tour is well titled. Not just a revival of the spirit, but a revival of things we might have forgotten. Revival of the pang of heartbreak or the joy of a simple song. Revival of clapping and singing along. Revival of our country roots after a hard career of rocking.

At about 2:45 in the morning, we all stumbled out of El Corazon revived and smiling. I would bet a dollar that many of the people in the venue had just had the most fun on Halloween ever. I know I did.

News

De-Timbaland-ing Chris Cornell’s Scream

1 Comment

Not many people picked up the former Soundgarden howler’s last studio album. Released in March, Scream debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200, then plummeted with record-breaking speed. The problem? Chris Cornell fans rejected his club-friendly makeover and Timbaland fans (are you out there? anyone?) didn’t get the concept. Musical FAIL.*

But Scream may get a second, beat-free life thanks to Canadian musician-producer Jordon Zadorozny. Brought in by Michael Friedman, an LA industry guy who heard “‘Black Hole Sun’ greatness deep within” some of Scream‘s songs, Zadorozny has, with Cornell’s permission, “peeled back all the beats and turned up whatever guitar” he could find in at least one track, “Never Far Away.”

Listen for yourself. Is it better than what you hear in the video? Overly produced in the opposite direction? (Where’s the guitar coming from, anyway?) Would you, old-school Soundgarden fans and smitten grunge-era girls, buy a re-imagined, rocked-up Scream?

*Not exactly. Scream is just the latest phase of Cornell’s genre-dabbling career (which I had the pleasure of speaking to him about earlier this year.) The album’s actually an addictive, not entirely guilty pleasure that improves with each listen. But Cornell’s vocals are, regrettably, buried beneath layers of flowery electronica.

Music

De-Timbaland-ing Chris Cornell’s Scream

1 Comment

Not many people picked up the former Soundgarden howler’s last studio album. Released in March, Scream debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200, then plummeted with record-breaking speed. The problem? Chris Cornell fans rejected his club-friendly makeover and Timbaland fans (are you out there? anyone?) didn’t get the concept. Musical FAIL.*

But Scream may get a second, beat-free life thanks to Canadian musician-producer Jordon Zadorozny. Brought in by Michael Friedman, an LA industry guy who heard “‘Black Hole Sun’ greatness deep within” some of Scream‘s songs, Zadorozny has, with Cornell’s permission, “peeled back all the beats and turned up whatever guitar” he could find in at least one track, “Never Far Away.”

Listen for yourself. Is it better than what you hear in the video? Overly produced in the opposite direction? (Where’s the guitar coming from, anyway?) Would you, old-school Soundgarden fans and smitten grunge-era girls, buy a re-imagined, rocked-up Scream?

*Not exactly. Scream is just the latest phase of Cornell’s genre-dabbling career (which I had the pleasure of speaking to him about earlier this year.) The album’s actually an addictive, not entirely guilty pleasure that improves with each listen. But Cornell’s vocals are, regrettably, buried beneath layers of flowery electronica.

Film & TV

So We Think We Can Sew

The episode starts with only six contestants left, and of them two guys, Christopher and local designer Logan left.  Althea thinks that girls are stronger, well except for Gordana, who is a Bosnian Serb, so she doesn’t count.

The contestants have face away from the runway, and when they turn around, their winning looks are onstage.  Their challenge this week is to create a companion piece that complements and enhances their best look.  Logan doesn’t have a winning look, so he has a sad. The look he’s working with is his gown from the first episode. He buys 40 zippers.

Logan says Althea is making pants like Melvin, who got kicked off early on for his jodhpurs. Logan is from Idaho, so he can work on his car and make a dress–the best of both worlds.  Christopher is working on thirty yards of fabric and wants to make a crazy, high-volume gown. Of course.

Tim comes in and helps Carol Hannah have a breakthrough.  He loves Irina’s tapestry fabric, and says that what she’s doing is unexpected in a good way. He tells Christopher that next to his winning dress, the one he’s working on looks twenty years older. OUCH. He tells Althea that it’s a good start, though the volume of the pants are disconcerting.  Tim isn’t wild about Gordana’s design, but he’s excited about Logan’s piece.  Ruh roh, Althea is annoyed that the collar on his outfit looks like the one she made for the Christina Aguilera challenge. She gossips about him with bitchy Irina and her model.

Everyone has a lot to do the day of the runway show.  Irina won’t lend Gordana a hook and eye.  Logan thinks Irina needs to be humbled.  Althea thinks Carol Hannah is a one-trick pony because she always makes dresses.  Irina thinks Althea’s sweater looks like the one she made the previous week.  So basically everyone has turned into big ol’ bitches.

At the runway, the judges are season 2 alum Nick Verreos, Nina Garcia, and random Kerry Washington. Every designer is totally in love with his/her look.  Nina thinks Christopher’s huge gown is ill-proportioned and bottom-heavy.  They love Irina’s outfit, calling it elegant and cozy, though Nina thinks the dress itself looks cheap. They don’t like Gordana’s at all. (Nick says it looks like a Polish office worker, and there is nothing grosser than a Polish office worker.  YUCK.)  They love Carol Hannah’s deliciously simple and light pocketed dress. Nina thinks Logan’s dress looks like an unflattering student project.  Nick thinks it’s ’80s futuristic. They love Althea’s pants.  Irina calls out Althea’s big sweater for looking like hers. 

The judges deliberate, and Althea wins.  The bottom two are Logan and Gordana.  Gordana’s in and Logan’s out.  Frowny face.  He’s taking his silver pants and he’s going home. Here’s his goodbye speech:

Next week: more bitches talking shit.