Saturday night after Fools Play I successfully walked the 2.5 blocks to Le Voyeur in time to catch the music show that was happening there. Of the 4 music acts, I had seen three of them before.
Frances Rose is a goddess who stuns you with her golden voice. Breathtaking as always.
The Old Salt attacks with his driven, unconventional soundscapes:
The Old Salt: Makin’ Whale Songs
The Old Salt and Terrapin Productions really complement each other’s sounds. They play in a similar genre but with very different styles.
But the real revelation of the night was Dreamy Weather, whom I’d never heard of before this show:
Dreamy Weather: Dreamy Duet
A duet with a ukulele/vocalist and an electric guitarist, Dreamy Weather blew me away. Evelyn (ukulele/vocals) has a sing-songy, high voice like Katharine Whalen (of Squirrel Nut Zippers) or Nataly Dawn (of Pomplamoose), but with a bit more power behind it. And she looks like a cross between Zooey Deschanel and Lisa Loeb. Plus she plays the ukulele, which is always a bonus for me:
Dreamy Weather: Ukulele Lady
Completely adorable and enjoyable. Evelyn and Frances Rose geeked out about Beyoncé between all the sets. Dreamy Weather only performed a small handful of songs, but that’s just because they’ve only been playing together for a very short time and don’t really have any more songs. I totally would love to see them perform again soon.
The rest of the month of February is P.C. (that’s “Pretty Crazy” to you). There are a whole gob of pretty durned awexome music shows happening. This weekend are two of ’em!
All playing Le Voyeur in Olympia. Show starts at 10:00 PM… which just so happens to be when Fools Play Improv gets over. And Fools Play Improv just happens to be about three blocks away from Le Voyeur. So, y’know, if you wanted to go to Fools Play and then afterwards stroll on down to Le Voyeur to catch this show, well, then you’d be doing exactly what I’ll be doing!
Details:
The Old Salt/Terrapin/Frances Rose/Dreamy Weather (Facebook Event)
@ Le Voyeur
404 4th Ave E, Olympia
Tonight, 10:00 PM
FREE! 21+
As part of their “Dorner vs Tookie” tour to support the release of their collaboration album, these Hellfyre Club members are going to be stopping by The Crocodile in Seattle for what looks to be probably the best overall hip-hop show of the year. With a lineup like that I can’t really see how it’ll be topped.
Details:
HELLFYRE CLUB: Busdriver, Open Mike Eagle, Nocando & Milo [Seattle] (Facebook Event)
@ The Crocodile
2200 2nd Avenue, Seattle
Monday 2/17 8:00 PM
$15, All-Ages + Bar
Circumstances willing, I will be at both of these shows, and I’ll be back with photos and reports. I SHALL SEEST THOU THERE!
Every year at Fools Play’s Valentine’s Day Special, one lucky audience member wins a date with a Fool… a date that happens during the show and is filmed live. This is that date (2014):
Last night Fools Play Improv was excited to be invited to be one of the 5 troupes in the 1st Annual South Sound Improv Comedy Festival. The others were:
And finally, the troupe that organized the whole thing, the brand-spanking-new Something Wicked, which is put on through Harlequin Productions. Yes, the same Harlequin Productions where Fools Play was briefly based for a while in about 1999.
The show was divided into two parts. In the first part each troupe performed a short (15-minute) set of whatever they wanted to do. Though I believe Unexpected Productions and Fools Play were the only troupes that didn’t go over their allotted time rather significantly.
And since I am myself, I of course made an animated GIF of part of the show:
Generation Friends gets a live suggestion from the audience.
In the second half of the show, each troupe led a game that incorporated some members of the various other troupes.
It was a pretty fun night. Kalum the Teal Fool and Andre the Crimson Fool absolutely killed it with their characters “Reverend Jim Peaches” and “Augustus” respectively. And it was good to network with a bunch of other improv troupes in the area. The possibilities for co-shows and collaborations with the other Oly troupes is tantalizing.
Special thanks must go out to the alien from Cocoon who made a surprise appearance:
Book of the Month: Urville by Gilles Tréhin
An incredibly fascinating book. Gilles Tréhin is an autistic savant. For years and years he has been painstakingly designing, conceptualizing, and drawing a fictional city on a fictional Mediterranean island: Urville. Gilles creates the entire fictional history of this city from its founding through today, and has painstakingly detailed and perspective-accurate drawings of all of its districts throughout the course of its history. The amount of detail in both the renderings and the history is truly astonishing, and the drawings are all internally consistent with one another. Here’s a sample drawing:
Pont des Investitures (Investiture Bride), built in 1138.
And there are some 300 drawings in this book.
Movie of the Month: Pacific Rim
Guillermo del Toro does giant robots (Jaegers) vs giant monsters (kaiju) in a rain-soaked, near-future Earth. The results are not terribly surprising, but pretty spectacular nonetheless. This is the first live-action giant robot movie that I can think of that is actually good. Del Toro’s mastery of the visual medium is supreme, and the look and feel of the movie is incredible. The design team did an excellent job of not mimicking any specific robot or monster source, and the results somehow pay homage to almost every giant robot. The ultimate pastiche, the ultimate tribute, but still Pacific Rim manages to stand on its own and not be beholden to its influences. Plus it’s danged good fun.
The Zoo at Night by The Jesus Rehab
Urville by Gilles Tréhin
Pacific Rim
