posts by Adam McKinney
By Adam McKinney As autumn rolls along in Washington, the days getting shorter, the air taking on that familiar bite, more folks will be choosing to stay indoors and curl up with a good book. While readers can surely find many good selections on The New York Times Best Seller List, the question bares: why …
By Alec Clayton For three days in July, volunteers will get together to create a mosaic mural for the Plum Street Tiny Home Village in Olympia. Participants will create a welcome sign measuring roughly three by five feet comprising several small, house-shaped mosaics. The project is spearheaded by Stacey Waterman-Hoey, director and founder of Arbutus …
By Adam McKinney Tiny Holes seemed destined for underground music fame, if they hadn’t disbanded so quickly. The Olympia band only had a few months over the course of 1980 and ’81, in which to spread their delightfully inscrutable New Wave and art-rock stylings, before going their separate ways, with no full-length album ever released. …
By ADAM McKINNEY Though its four members now reside in Portland, Oregon, Old Time Relijun began life in Olympia. Indeed, few bands feel quite as much like Olympia: ambitiously odd, disarmingly immediate and unafraid of experimentation. The fiery noise-rock group got its start in the ’90s, eventually releasing eight knockout albums through 2007 before going …
By ADAM McKINNEY In 1974, Mel Brooks directed two of film’s all-time-great comedies, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. If the latter shines brighter in hindsight, it’s due to a giddily silly riff on Mary Shelley’s timeless story and a sense of humor much smarter than Brooks lets on. When he found massive, Broadway success with …
By Adam McKinney You may be forgiven for, after hearing that a band calls themselves the Tallboys, envisioning a field of littered cheap beer empties after an ill-advised rager. In actuality, the Tallboys aren’t quite that rowdy. Oh, sure, the Tallboys want you to have a good time, and I’d hazard a guess that they’ve …
By Adam McKinney Roots music has never really been far away from the contemporary, American-music landscape, but the past couple decades have seen it enjoy a resurgence in popularity and visibility. Some of this has to do with the indie folk-rock boom we experienced about 10 years ago, which undoubtedly served to shed a light …
By Adam McKinney In music, there are few pleasures so simple and satisfying as hearing two simpatico voices becoming sweetly intertwined in duet. For the singers, thought and care surely go into planning harmonies and other intricacies, but the effect comes across as effortless – the audience is free to be swept away by those …
By ADAM McKINNEY If a man made his career by setting the mood for the happiest moment in a couple’s life, how could he continue after having his heart shattered by a cruel ex-lover? That’s the idea examined, however lightly, by The Wedding Singer, the 1998 Adam Sandler film considered by many to be his …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Neil Simon, Jason Haws, Harlequin Productions. That alone should be enough to convince theater lovers to buy tickets to I Ought to be in Pictures. A typical Simon comedy/drama, this lovely little show elicits laughter, and it is human drama as true as true can be — …