Results tagged “nostalgia”

When Seattlest tells people we are going to see Journey, Heart, and Cheap Trick tonight (and we have mentioned it as often as possible, which may or may not have been obnoxious), the response is typically one of two options: the enthused "OMG I love Heart!" or a groaning "Well, that takes me back a ways..." In honor of tonight's 70s and 80s explosion at the White River Amphitheatre, we have just one very important question for you: what is your dearest, most beloved Heart-related memory? Ours involves air guitar and jumping on a couch.

As ChrisB of Three Imaginary Girls points out, losing your job sucks. Losing a job that meant a lot to you sucks more. And losing all that during the holidays? Well that just blows a goat.

Last night, Seattlest hit up the Red Bull Big Tune 2007 Championship at Neumos just like we said we would. The idea of the competition was to showcase U.S. hip-hop producers in the form of a beat battle, tournament-style; in between rounds we were treated to the skills of DV-One and Just Blaze, and also to a mini-concert from giants De La Soul. We were not expecting this last, and it was kinda fun. Our favorite part was seeing Neumos packed with locals excited about hip-hop, though. "The whole city's here," Courage of Eastern Sunz commented before the rounds began. "Do you know what the prize is?" No, we did not, but later we discovered the winning producer would be going home with some expensive sound monitors and a recording date in LA with a hip-hop star. Sweet.

A friend of ours -- and Into the Woods connoisseur -- says this is the best of the non-Broadway productions he's seen. We had never seen it before -- we like musicals fine, but for some reason we associate liking Sondheim with, you know, the fun of terrible key parties like in The Ice Storm -- and had only the faintest notion about its fractured fairytale plot: there's a Baker and his Wife who want to have kids but have been cursed by the Witch next door, Jack and mom and his magic beans, a more indecisive Cinderella than you'd expect, and a shiv-wielding Little Red Riding Hood. Having kids can be the moment you finally let go of your toys and stop looking upward for advice -- in a story like this, that means dad and mom have gotta go. In the first act, dads get left behind like nobody's business, in the second act, moms get clubbed to death.

Seattle Rep's The Murderers is three monologues, one after the other, that thankfully get more entertaining as the show goes along. Each monologue deals with a murder (or murders) committed at the Florida retirement community, and sends up a different view of senior citizens -- as old moneybags who keep their heirs on tenterhooks, as randy old goats, as cash cows for the unscrupulous. It's a mildly dark series of "I-dun-its" for Matlock's urban audiences and their graying kids. Any younger, and you're there just for Sarah Rudinoff, which is right and good.

Our sophomore year boyfriend was mid-grope when we heard our first Spoon song and stopped paying attention to him entirely. While the relationship proved futile (shocking!) our love for "Change My Life" remains as solid as ever. Is it hormone-fueled nostalgia that keeps our Spoon flame burning? Or is it just Britt Daniel?

We’ve all heard it. Many of us have even said it. A “religious experience.” As in, “Seeing Tool at the Paramount was just amazing – like a religious experience.” It’s different for everyone. For some, it’s all about the environment of the show – the venue, the crowd, maybe the mushrooms you ate about an hour before the lights went down. For others, it’s all about the band. Maybe it’s Tool at the Paramount. Maybe it’s Phish’s 2004 final show in Vermont.

From the North, the resurrected form of grunge godfather Malfunkshun, played the High Dive Tuesday, their first show anywhere. For those of us obsessed with a certain era of local music history, the 60 minute blast of heavy rock was a beautiful thing.

One of Seattlest's favorite Christmas presents this year: Clark Humphrey's Vanishing Seattle, a new entry in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series by retro-Seattle authority Clark Humphrey. We're a Seattle transplant, ourselves, but we've been interested in Seattle history since we decided we wanted to stay here (about a week after we arrived, as we recall), and we quickly noticed that Humphrey was a consistent, articulate voice advocating for that history.

At the risk of beating the pulp of the dead horse, Seattlest knows that many are still without power at home. We feel a little remiss in that all that we can do is sit around and post lame things about it when, instead, we should be going out there and doing something about it. Well, the problem is that we have a barbarian's understanding of electric fundamentals. Sure, sure. We can wire up 12 volt DC gadgets in our car; we can even wire some rudimentary circuits on the ol' 110 in the palatial estate. So perhaps it is more accurate to say that we have an educated barbarian's understanding of electricity.

High-energy garage rockers Tokyo Police Club could easily have been victims of their own hype, but last night at Chop Suey the kids were more than alright. Their music can best be described as "Strokes nostalgia," as much of it contains the same kinds of nimble guitar licks, arching keyboard lines, and overprocessed megaphoney vocals as everybody's favorite 2001 NYC culture icons (see TPC's call to arms "Cheer It On" [mp3]). While a couple years ago we might have found their sound to be tired or run-of-the-mill, the last Strokes album did sorta suck, and so someone had to pick up where they left off, even if it was four kids from outside Toronto. Seeing Tokyo Police Club perform, we couldn’t help but get a good-natured vibe from them. Like most great bands, lead singer David Monks affects a mild pseudo-British accent, though his voice was rough and scratchy, worn out from all the touring, which hurt his ability to yell when needed. Fortunately for him, keyboardist Graham Wright was there to pick up the yelling slack, as well as beat his tambourine ferociously and engage the crowd in very polite banter. Such nice boys, they even got everyone clapping on a few songs. The band kicked off their brief set by holding up signs to spell out their name before tearing through the entirety of debut EP A Lesson in Crime. As they only have seven songs recorded, and as each of those songs is under three minutes, they had to throw some new material into the mix to fill up their time. Once they get a few more songs, we're sure they'll be back headlining some time soon.

If it's not a great Gatsby, we can blame F. Scott Fitzgerald's preference for establishing mood at the expense of story arc. The good news is that this production revels in atmosphere: Tom Lynch's pitch-perfect set design and Jane Greenwood's gorgeous '20s costumes -- combined with Scott Zielinski's dreamily radiant lighting -- conjure up exactly the right nostalgia for a time that never was. We could have done without the itinerant saxophonist, whose bluesy wails belong in the adaptation of a novel by Saul Bellow, not Fitzgerald.

A few days ago, we said that MOMIX is "the thinking person's Cirque Du Soleil" and we'd like to take that back now. That's not to say that their new work "Opus Cactus" wasn't beautiful, color-drenched, packed with impressive technique, and expertly executed, because it was all those things. It just wasn't anything more. "Opus Cactus" was like ordering an iPod and opening the perfect, sleek packaging only to discover someone screwed up at the factory and your new gadget wasn't there: gorgeous to look at, but nothing substantive under the surface.

For those of us compulsive channel-changers whose dials aren't permanently affixed to KEXP or NPR, finding good stuff on the radio can be maddening.

Let's say you're on an airplane, sitting next to someone completely unfamiliar with Pop Surrealism or Lowbrow, but who's curious about what you do. Without using any visual aids, how do you explain the movements to her -- in such a way that the Lowbrow fan sitting across the aisle learns something, too?

Comic book fans from around the world woke up today to breaking news of an imminent re-match between award-winning Canadian cartoonist Seth (aka Gregory Gallant) and local comic book publisher and Comics Journal executive editor Gary Groth. Their previous battle from the late '90s left many spectators wondering if another round of their incendiary exchanges would incite Groth's well-documented flair for explosives and firearms, provoking Mr. '30s Fetish to respond in kind.

This week Seattlest was craving Greek and maybe a little childhood nostalgia. This combo usually means Yanni's Greek Cuisine on Greenwood, where Seattlest has fond memories of dining when we were young.

Wonder Bread plant in the Central District, a mere half mile away. We had seen the Wonder Bread sign from across the city, a beacon of nostalgia from when folks thought that bleaching food made it more nutritious. Turns out Interstate Bakeries vacated the warehouse over five years ago. Now the PI reports the block is being bulldozed for redevelopment and several groups in Seattle are requesting the sign be preserved, much like the Rainier Beer ‘R’ and the blue flame from Washington Natural Gas – both now on display at the Museum of History and Industry.

’80s nostalgia fetishists from around the globe will descend on Astoria, OR this coming weekend, June 3-5, for the Goonies 20th Anniversary Celebration, honoring the epic Cold War classic that according to many film critics encapsulated an era with its subtle yet strained references to the Iran/Contra scandal.

Man, oh man there is some good live music this weekend.