

Tonight, SIFF Cinema at the Uptown screens Ken Russell-and-the Who's Tommy, and here are Stranger film intern Amy Scott's reasons why you should go see it.
Referring to Tommy, the musical album, Steve Knopper in Kill Your Idols writes, “The central maddening contradiction of Tommy is it retains musical power because it makes no sense,” and this also applies to Ken Russell’s adaptation, which adds even more breadth to the story's confusion via picture power, with a thick and buttery spread of surrealism.
Reasons to get stoned and watch Tommy:
9) Quadraphonic restoration, SIFF better REPRESENT
1) Ken Russell
7) Tina Turner’s rendition of “The Acid Queen” is AH-MAZING complete with the grooviest bass-line ever, gigantic needles, red platform shoes and a Darth Vader helmet.
11) Russell updates the album’s time period, placing it in 1951, then outfitting it with kaleidoscopic psychedelic imagery and 70s décor
17) Ann-Margret’s champagne, chocolate and baked beans bubble bath and phallic-pillow humping.
546) Roger Daltrey is the most convincing deaf, dumb, and blind kid, ever. His “huh” face after “Christmas,” gets a good ten-seconds of camera love before the slow zoom-out to an awkwardly-robed Eric Clapton
200) “Smash the Mirror” is PERFECT in all of its confetti glass. The song is combined with “I’m Free,” (instead of “Sensation”) and Daltrey waddles haphazardly—on water/through fire, plus upside-down camera angles, carnival-sounding synths, and Pinball worship
5) Keith Moon as “Uncle Ernie”
9) Jack Nicholson sings quietly and winks in time with the music
12) KEN RUSSELLPlus many more.
What do you think this team's goal song should be? Discuss over here! (Because it's gonna have to be better than what the Nashville Predator's have got.)
Awww. It's a a nice spot, and kudos to the governor. But whoever did the music should be punished by being forcibly gay-married to Donald Trump.
This month we're doing a theater theme, with special guests David Schmader and Sarah Rudinoff. As always, they will just sit there and read whatever they like, silently, to themselves, just like you, while Kyle O'Quin plays classical music on the piano.
Schmader is The Stranger's longtime Last Days columnist and a theater-maker whose new show, A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem, closes this weekend at Richard Hugo House (click here to get tickets). Rudinoff is a Genius Award-winning actress currently in rehearsals for a new thriller written by Keri Healey called Torso, which runs March 9-March 31 at Theatre Off Jackson.
The silent-reading party happens in the Fireside Room at the Sorrento Hotel, it starts at 6 pm, it's all ages, it's free, and the drink special is a $5 Manhattan. More on how weirdly fun it is right here.
The Vera Project turns 11 today! Which has caused me to fall under a nostalgia-filled daze while I recall some of the best shows I've seen there over the last decade and one year. What have been some of your favorite Vera Project memories? Share them here.
Kiss, the Doors, or Red Hot Chili Peppers? Vote here!
I did not know until today! SHOCKING!
What does an eight-year-old girl sing about in her first hardcore song? Her pet goldfish and dog, of course.
So this is what happens when metal fans play in the snow.
Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet anniversary tour is coming to Seattle in March!
Find out here. (It's pretty awesome.)
See Ovi in action here.
Megan Seling has compiled a long list of bands with the word "whiskey" in their name, all with links. Enjoy this list here.
It echoes through the mind while reading this, whereas how many of us can instantly hear Mahler’s Ninth in our heads? (Not me.)
And an UPDATE with an explanation and apology from the front-row-seated culprit.
Thanks, Greg.
And thanks, stinkbug!

Demarre McGill's first name is pronounced "de-MAR-ay," and on the day I meet him near Benaroya Hall, he is dressed like a prep-school success with the slightest extra flash. He's an easy talker, polite, focused, and with a smile, like his mother's, that spreads the width of his face. "They almost named me Demarrio! Then I'd have had to be an R&B singer," he says, laughing. "I'd have made it work." He's interested in classical music as music, not as "the finest music," he says, and tells me that his regimen for auditions includes choosing an anthem he plays before and after tryouts. For Seattle, it was Lupe Fiasco's "The Show Goes On." "So thanks, Lupe—who's from Chicago, by the way," he says.
Damien Jurado's new videos is kind of scary while Death Cab's is pretty sad. Watch at your own risk.
It was just announced that the Sasquatch! line-up will be released February 2nd, which means we have a few weeks to fill the rumor mill with all sorts of speculation! Discuss who you think is playing the festival (and who you would want to see play the festival) right over here with all the other music nerds.
Featured on the soundtrack of the 2011 film The Artist is music from Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo—and Vertigo co-star Kim Novak is pissed. From the press release and trade ad Novak's produced to express her fury, courtesy of Deadline Hollywood:
“I want to report a rape,” said Kim Novak, the legendary star of “Vertigo,” “Picnic,” and many other revered classics. “My body of work has been violated by ‘The Artist.’ This film took the Love Theme music from “Vertigo” and used the emotions it engenders as its own. Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart can’t speak for themselves, but I can. It was our work that unconsciously or consciously evoked the memories and feelings to the audience that were used for the climax of ‘The Artist’....It is morally wrong of people in our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what the original work was intended. It is essential that all artists safeguard our special bodies of work for posterity, with their individual identities intact and protected."
Even stupider: Novak's manager admits to Deadline Hollywood that The Artist "had the legal right to use the music."
Here's hoping Ms. Novak is never forced to learn firsthand exactly how ridiculous her claim of "rape" is. (But I wouldn't mind if someone hit her in the face with a pie.)
Have you noticed? For 12 days I'm highlighting 12 local bands that will probably be doing really great things in 2012. So far my list includes Black Breath, Grenades, Boom City, and Special Explosion. If these names mean nothing to you, I suggest you spend the last hour of your workday ignoring that to-do list and saying hello to some of your noise-making neighbors.
We had a white Christmas after all!
Dig in right over here if you like to do that sort of thing!
And it is the best thing I've seen all year.
One of many reasons to celebrate the coming year, from the NYT:
Two musicals that flopped on Broadway in the 1980s but went on to become cult legends—the stage adaptation of the novel “Carrie” and the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth heartbreaker “Merrily We Roll Along”—will receive important revivals in New York this winter.
The original creators of “Carrie” have rewritten the book and composed several new songs in hopes of rescuing the musical from Broadway ignominy, suffered in 1988 when their $7 million blood-soaked production freaked out critics and closed after 21 performances. The revival will have minimal special effects—which the creators saw as overwhelming the Broadway production—and will try to tap into societal concerns about teenage bullying.
The Off Broadway company MCC Theater is producing the revival, which starts performances on Jan. 31, and stars Molly Ranson in the title role and Marin Mazzie as Carrie’s mother...
The original Broadway production of Carrie was such a travesty it became the standard-bearer for musical travesties. I can't wait to hear about the new production.
You might've heard, Cee Lo green covered Lennon's "Imagine" but changed one line of the song. Read all about it (and vote in the official poll) here!
Make your Friday even brighter with over two hours of music, approved by all the music-lovers at Line Out!
Example: Here's a song I listened to over 100 times in 2011.
What song did you fall in love with this year? Tell me all about it here.