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You may not know it yet, but you are going to love Kaitlyn Lusk. She first sang with the Baltimore Symphony at age 14. A year later, she was chosen as featured vocal soloist for composer Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony suite. If you're a Tolkien geek, her
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I encountered Jake Shimabukuro through his much-admired rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," a piece that went viral in YouTube's infancy. Since then he's toured with Jimmy Buffett and played the West Hollywood House of Blues, B.B. King's Nightclub in New York, Bumbershoot and popular
Music
I think we each have that friend who "discovers" Facebook memes that made the rounds two years ago. We think, "How can he just now be seeing this? Has he really never heard ‘The Bed Intruder Song?' Does he still think Rick rolling is funny?" Last month I was that
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Irie, braa! Sadly, most Americans' understanding of (and appreciation for) reggae begins and ends with Bob Marley. But the genre is doing just fine these days, thank you, and not just in Jamaica. The father-and-sons quartet New Kingston are of rasta heritage, but the Pantons are second-generation Americans who drop
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Recycling is a way of life in western Washington, but do you wonder if you're truly making a difference? A few cans and bottles here and there can't make that big a dent, can it? It's easy to get cynical about such things. Upon closer inspection, it turns out snipping
Arts
Let's be honest, if I told you two very skilled college theater departments were staging productions of classic American plays this weekend, you wouldn't get too excited about that, would you? Instead, prompted by a suggestion from Volcano editor Ron Swarner, let's pretend these productions are duking it out mano-a-mano,
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It may be impossible to overstate William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr.'s contribution to pop music. For once, the term "living legend" sells the guy short. No less an artist than Bob Dylan listed Robinson among his favorite poets. It's not merely that his hits represent a significant chunk of the American
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I spent last week in the skin of a monster. I'm playing Roy Cohn, the very real attorney who guided the knife point of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare, then adamantly denied his own homosexuality even as he was dying of AIDS. He's a character in Tony
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Tacoma's homegrown crooner Rocky Sandoval is the definition of an artist on the verge of stardom. After graduating from the Musicians Institute in L.A., he was featured on MTV's Score, then made top 15 on Making the Band. His greatest national exposure to date has probably been season 1 of
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If you think the height of guitar music is a stoner's curbside rendition of "Wish You Were," then prepare to have your mind blown. (Seriously - why does every guitarist learn "Wish You Were Here" fresh out of the gate? What's wrong with a little "Bourrée in
Music
If you think the height of guitar music is a stoner's curbside rendition of "Wish You Were," then prepare to have your mind blown. (Seriously - why does every guitarist learn "Wish You Were Here" fresh out of the gate? What's wrong with a little "Bourrée in E Minor?") The
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Thanks to The Grand Cinema in Tacoma and Olympia Film Society in Olympia, you can not only stroll the red carpet in your Sunday finest, you might also win one of several fabulous prizes. Show up to Theatre on the Square in a movie costume (Death to
Archives
James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma” restores the wounded heart of the Western and rescues it from the morass of pointless violence. The Western in its glory days was often a morality play, a story about humanist values penetrating the lawless anarchy of the frontier. It still follows that tradition in
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I don't normally do this, but I'm at a loss to describe Ultra Violent Rays' trippy electronic sound, so instead I'll let the band give it a go: "Imagine Philip K. Dick howling at a pale and dangerous moon while Siouxsie Sioux does a rain dance around him, but instead
