So I was quite please with the first hour of the performance. It felt like a combo of Night at the Apollo meets A Prairie Home Companion meets Native American culture. Gene Tabagan was the host of the evening and told humorous short stories through music. Reminding us “to breath” I assumed this entertaining yogi who sang tales of his family was going to pave the way for the rest of the show. His sidekick, the violinist, Swil Kanim, was remarkable and you felt his energy through every flick of the string.

From funny to serious, we all paid our respect to our veterans, past, present and tomorrow. One vet came to the stage and was given the most beautiful blanket that seemed to represent an appropriate blend of Native American roots with the American flag of today. Not only was the gift breathtaking, but I’m pretty sure I heard a few soft tears in the house.

Then we were treated to a band by the name of Silver Jackson. Straight out of Alaska, this young group could easily open for Vince Mira. With songs about craziness, cops and love, this toe-tapping intermission was music to my ears – so to speak.

But the last hour turned out to be quite different than the first. Not that this was good or bad – it was just different. The Little Big Band was a melting pot of ethnicities/cultures/musicians, slapping us in the face with their points of view. Their performance was personally not my cup of tea, but as I looked around I saw a lot of receding hairlines and wrinkles that seemed quite pleased. 

During one song, Gene dressed up in Native American garb and danced around the stage as a bird while the singer jazzed her way through a song about domestic violence. I didn’t much care for the song, but the dance was a much appreciated reminder of the first half of the show.

Personally, I think this soul/funk/cuban/middle-aged folk band would’ve fit perfectly smack dab in the middle of Folk Fest, but in the middle of Meany Hall I was confused. What finally made me leave was when the band played a song that basically screamed at us to STAND UP. After the chorus told us to do so about 50 times, without a hint of anyone actually following their orders, my friend and I took that as our queue to stand up and walk out.

What we had come for – the wild dancing, drums and maybe even a bonfire, we pleasantly got in the beginning and then quickly lost by a very big band with lots of opinions. Again, maybe my expectations got the better of me, but overall I’d give this show a passive B-.

If you’re looking to experience more of the Native American vibes, you can still catch The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Indigenous Voices Reply at the Burke Museum. On display are historic objects and photographs from the 1909 fair with contemporary artwork by 16 Native artists. This special exhibit ends November 29th.

Oddfellows Drama by seadevi

I couldn’t pass up posting this picture by seadevi. Remember to put photos in our pool and maybe one of us will interrupt their workday to post your amazing pic.

Today I went to the final sing-along party for the Henry gift shop installation “I know, I know” by Jenny Zwick and Joe Park. When I arrived, neither of them were around- but their life size cut outs were. Their faces and bodies had been projected on to wooden silhouettes and anchored on a boat marooned in the left corner of the Henry gift shop. Below the boat, a strobe light and wind-blown metallic strips simulated a stormy sea.

Jenny and Joe hadn’t worked together before this installation. Their names were drawn out of a hat by Gift Shop curator Matthew Offenbacher and then they were given two weeks to come up with a piece to entice gallery-goers.

According to Regina Hackett, the two vendors who ran the Henry’s gift shop went belly-up, providing the imputes for Offenbacher’s whimsical gift shop project. Offenbacher hopes the exhibitions at the shop will “fall like dominoes: a cascading cavalcade of adventurous, collaborative, celebratory artistic energy.”

I dinked around the space, touching the artist’s installation drawings on the wall and eating Offenbacher’s delicious (and spicy) chocolate cookies.

Jenny and Joe arrived and began to unpack their ukuleles and banjos. “What a beautiful ukulele!” exclaimed Betsey Brock, the Henry’s communications director. “Did you know that they sell combination ukulele-banjos in Seattle?” Jenny said, before unearthing a tiny wind blown piano (called a “Melodica”).

Jenny began to strum the banjo and Betsey began to sing. Since the piece was an open installation, any visitor could come in and sing along. Most of the folks who wandered in looked confused – but pleased.

After singing the same song for almost half an hour, Betsey brought out ukulele-versions of songs by Radiohead, the Magnetic Fields and Rihanna. They were a hit.

“I have an urge to drum something” Offenbacher said emphatically. Unable to find a tambourine, he settled for hitting the sides of the marooned boat.

By the time I left the installation, the weather had turned from dreary to dark- but my mind was still somewhere tropical and Hawaiian.

The next artists to be paired up at the Henry are Claire Cowie, Sol Hashemi and Jason Hirata. Their installation launches November 20th. You should go.

The store will also have a Wish Table, consisting of books needed for the school’s library. If you buy a book from the Wish Table to donate to the school, you will receive a 20% discount on all your purchases.

If you cannot make the Book Fair, you can still help local schools: The bookstore is holding a Shop Local For Schools campaign all this weekend, where 10% of your purchase will be donated to the school of your choice.

So if you like books (especially work by local novelists), and you like schools, you may want to pay Queen Anne Books a visit this weekend, especially on Sunday afternoon for the Book Fair.

In one particularly effective moment, a woman’s naked body was re-arranged by the dancers in different locations on the stage as if she were a puppet. Their movements were purposeful and efficient as they dragged her around, bending her over, lying her down, and eventually tying her body into an elaborate knot.

While the impulse for movement may have been lust, their executions rarely felt sensuous or sexy. As a man sat with his legs in a V shape and his arms tied behind him, a woman attempted to push her head through the nook between his arms and his body. She pushed and pushed until he had to restrain her as she reached manically into the air. In another scene, a woman leaped on to the shoulders of a man, crawling down his chest, and through the space in his legs, pulling his pants down along with her. She leaped three times over him, until she had been disrobed and lay naked beside him.

Most movements were repeated ad nauseum. The movements seemed uncontrollable, as if they were a manifestation of addiction. The dancers moved because they had to move…because something, memory or perhaps emotion, was controlling them.

I’m not sure if everyone in the audience enjoyed the piece as much as I did. It was not an escapist fantasy. It was also not particularly cohesive. But it was confrontational in all the ways you’d hope a performance would be.

As far as I can tell, everyone even sort of cabaret-y is going to be involved–The Tiger Lillies, The Circus Contraption Band, Orkester Zirconium, even Emerald City Soul Club is getting in on the show. Performance art and dancing and drag and comedy and something for pretty much everyone.

We recommend any of it, but particularly Scarlet Room with Vagabond Opera on Wednesday at the Triple Door. There are two shows: one at 7:00, all ages, and one at 10:00 21+. I particularly enjoy the description of Vagabond Opera: “Weaving elements of Kurt Weil, Duke Ellington and Edith Piaf with absurdist flair, theatrics and an old world mood, Vagabond Opera presents the new wave of opera–lusty voices singing in 13 languages and presenting a cabaret of rich musical phrasing, sparkling lyrics and indomitable stage presence, all played with exuberance, skill and a gritty Vagabond edge.”

We’ve talked about Scarlet Room here before, but the last time they played the Triple Door Bonnie Vie had this to say about them: “The band is like a fantastic mechanical doll; churning out a whirl of circus and cabaret melodies, with a stage presence that is larger than life.  With dark music-box-style keys, Alexsandra Weil – the group’s vocalist and pianist – weaves elaborate stories, written by Scarlet Room’s drummer, Eloise Govedare.”

The Triple Door is probably the perfect place for the spell of all of this dark swirling cabaret. You probably don’t want to miss it.

Today with more ballots counted the separation has only gotten smaller; the Seattle P-I and other media outlets are now reporting that McGinn leads Mallahan by 462 votes. If a dozen of them stayed home, you could fit this number of people into Jillian’s on Eastlake or the Jefferson Community Center.

Next count update comes tomorrow afternoon. Go ahead and kick your shoes off, Greg Nickels, it’s going to be a while til you find out who replaces you.

That all said, I was just as excited to go to Silent Movie Mondays. This Mighty Wurlitzer Organ induced movie experience isn’t new to Seattle, but it was to me. After 3 years of living here, I finally had a chance to enjoy my first film at The Paramount. I’ve seen plenty of shows there, but it just seemed different to actually sit back for 2 hours and watch a movie while Jim Riggs, the organ player, jammed away with such caress and ease.

After stalling the movie thanks to latecomers (this would never happen at 45th Guild) we finally were graced with our feature film – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Apparently this was a very important movie for its time because it was the first flick was able to film in the ocean. You can tell the movie took advantage of this brand new technology because there were maybe a few too many scenes that lasted a wee bit too long and all there was to show for it were some little fishies, lots of coral and a big shark.

The movie was entertaining in the way that you see old photos of yourself with a bad trendy hairdo. It wasn’t a quality movie, but one to laugh out for it’s ridiculous characters and bad acting. And sure, the organ maestro played perfectly with each scene and we all had a few chuckles. But I also found myself nodding off every now and then because I just couldn’t stay interested to the actual movie.

Maybe I’m no movie buff, or maybe I just rather see laugh out loud silent movie comedies, but 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea just wasn’t for me. If I were a critic I’d give it a solid C. But thanks to some free popcorn my boyfriend scored, the beautiful ambience that is The Paramount and the very talented organ man, I’d give the Silent Movie Monday experience a whole hearty A.

Silent Movie Mondays is happening throughout the month of November. To get tickets, click on this link.

South Carolina offered the company $170 million in upfront grants for startup costs, plus multiple tax breaks that would be worth tens of millions of dollars more[Times].”

Talks between the local union and the company fell apart, while the workers at the plant in Charleston voted to remove the union [PI].

One of our townsmen, who was just flattering himself with the idea of having acquired some proficiency as a skatist … while making a round on the rollers, at the Pavilion … got himself into an ungainly ‘posish,’ when the skate he was for the instant turning upon in a twinkling left him in the lurch. In gravitating to the floor, which he did with inconceivable rapidity, and that, too, without the least restraint over the grotesque contortions and genuflections [sic] of his limbs he went down in an unseemly pile, sustaining considerable injury.

The opening was attended by 100 or so people who skated all day long and then cleared the floor for dancing at 9:00.