Walkie Talkie Blog
DANGERS OF THE TWEE DEATHTRAP >>> "The road was uneven," says Kyle Hill. "It was eight in the morning and I was on my way to work. It was raining, and I was going southbound on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Seattle. There was a seam in the road that
Walkie Talkie Blog
THE POWER OF WORD OF MOUTH >>> Being that Louie G's Pizzeria opened a mere four years ago, in 2007, it could be said that it's still finding itself as a restaurant. What seems abundantly clear, however, is that the space is certainly still finding itself as our newest all-ages music
Walkie Talkie Blog
MOVIES WITH DUMB NAMES >>> The latest installment in the Scream franchise does well to usher the series into the new landscape of horror-littered with torture-porn and cat-voiced Japanese ghost children. Fans of the previous films will likely enjoy Scre4m, though toward the end, the audience gets a little lecturing to
Walkie Talkie Blog
MOVIES ARE GOOD FOR DULLING THE INNER PAIN >>> Note: It's time now, once again, for me to break out my jeweler's loupe and take a long, hard, judgmental look at a preview for an upcoming film. Red-band trailers be damned! Track records for remakes in general are notoriously shaky, but there
Walkie Talkie Blog
THE LAST HURRAH >>> There was a certain frantic desperation in the air, Saturday, on-ostensibly-the last day of SXSW. (There are sparse shows happening here and there Sunday, but the festival's basically over.) The sudden realization that a million shows have happened over the past few days and I've only seen
Walkie Talkie Blog
DAY FOUR >>> If Oberhofer was on the verge of making it big on the way to SXSW, his performances yesterday will push him over the edge. I caught part of his set early in the day at the Brooklyn Vegan party at Barbarella, and then his whole set later in
Walkie Talkie Blog
DAY THREE >>> The Back Pockets are fucking awesome. With roughly seven members (nine if you count the interpretive dancers in animal masks), the Back Pockets aim for and achieve a certain kind of grandiose chaos. All of the men are dressed in filthy wedding gowns. It seems like one of
Walkie Talkie Blog
DAY TWO RECAP >>>> Yesterday was mostly spent at the Spider House - an awesome venue with three stages. If you weren't into a particular band you could walk to another stage and see what was happening there. The mission for being at the Spider House was to see Butts (Seattle) and
Walkie Talkie Blog
FIRST IMPRESSIONS >>> Walking through crowded Sixth Street in downtown Austin was startlingly similar to strolling on the midway at a carnival. Enormous crowds of people push past each other, music blaring from every location, the smell of food carts sweetening the air, lights garishly illuminating the fronts of buildings which-frankly-begin
Walkie Talkie Blog
LOCK YOUR DOORS, DRAW YOUR SHADES, LISTEN TO PUNK ROCK >>> I've never liked Valentine's Day. In third grade-as was customary-my classmates and I were required to pass out Valentine's Day cards to one another. Later in class, someone walked around the room with a trash receptacle for people to dispose
Walkie Talkie Blog
ALL-AGES ACTION IN OLY >>> In my childhood home, I would often stand down the hallway from the computer room, wherein my father would sit and listen to records. Bizarre songs that seemed to go on forever that sounded like jazz, but filtered through a kind of loopy logic that always
Walkie Talkie Blog
MOSHING ON THE INSIDE >>> In the interest of full disclosure, I must inform you that my hands are quite soft. I am a delicate flower, born to watch energetic moshing from afar and never to participate. Accordingly, when a mosh pit broke out almost immediately after the initiation of Apache
Walkie Talkie Blog
MIND-BOGGLINGLY AMBITIOUS PROJECT >>> Just got this in my mailbox from Crystal Dorval of Vancouver, BC, dream-pop band My Friend Wallis (by the way, you are such a putz for missing the band at the New Frontier; they were awesome): I wanted to inform you of a project I am taking on
Walkie Talkie Blog
IN THE BUSINESS, THIS IS CALLED A TEASE >>> Sordid Sentinels play rock music, plain and simple. They are upfront about it. They're not reinventing the wheel, nor do they intend to. What they mean to accomplish is to perform good, soul-nourishing rock music, and they accomplish it quite nicely. They
Walkie Talkie Blog
CULT FILM ABOUT HOT DOGS, PUNK ROCK AND COFFEE >>> There's a certain "what the fuck" grandeur to Straight to Hell Returns. Absolutely nothing beyond the first couple minutes (in which some greasy gangsters hide out in the desert after robbing a bank) makes one lick of sense, but that's all
Walkie Talkie Blog
MOVIES THAT DIDN'T SUCK THIS YEAR ... KINDA >>> I've had the bittersweet duty of reviewing movies for the Weekly Volcano since April. In that time, I've been forced to witness more than my share of cinematic atrocities. Who could forget Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore in 3D?
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THE WARRIOR'S WAY OPENS THIS WEEK >>> Note: While this is a slow week for movies, I'm just way too swamped to review a trailer for an upcoming movie. So, I've asked my 13-year-old cousin, Gavin McKinney, to review The Warrior's Way for me. He did, and you'll be able to catch
Walkie Talkie Blog
ALEX COX IN THE HOUSE >>> As an avid reader of Roger Ebert, I am well aware of Straight to Hell. Director Alex Cox, after making the counterculture classics, Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, directed a series of films that were viciously panned by Mr. Ebert. I have yet to
Walkie Talkie Blog
The delirium of Yo Gabba Gabba!, or: How to try (and fail) to not look like a creep at a children's show >>> Upon my arrival at the Tacoma Dome, I immediately felt woefully out of place. A giant line wrapped its way around the sidewalk as hordes of adorable children
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THEY FUCKING KILLED IT>>> Turns out that I need to get down to Olympia more often. Walking around its gloriously flat downtown; stopping in to prefunk at the Brotherhood Lounge and later at Jake's; seeing the city teeming with young, fresh-faced hipsters-it was kinda like heaven. Rounding the night out with a performance