Tag Archives: Crosscut

From Crosscut: Rejuvenating one of Seattle’s oldest theaters

I wrote the below profile of one of the city’s oldest music venues, the Columbia City Theater, for Crosscut last week. The theater reopened on June 25 and it is celebrating its grand reopening with two free concerts this weekend. The full story can be found after the jump.

Seattle’s newest music venue is also one of its oldest — the Columbia City Theater.

Located in Rainier Valley, the theater has roots that go back to the days of vaudeville. It originally opened in 1917 and has served as everything from a movie house in the 1950s to a home for DIY punk rock shows in the 1980s. During the heyday of jazz, its stage hosted local legends such as Jimi Hendrix (performing as a member of his high school jazz band) and Quincy Jones, as well as national titans not from around here, including Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and Ella Fitzgerald.

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From Crosscut: A review of Alice in Chains at the Paramount 02.04.10

Below is an excerpt of a review I wrote for Crosscut. You can read the entire review by clicking on the jump.

Alice in Chains is one of the more interesting cases of a major grunge group experiencing post-90s success.

They don’t carry a catalog of anthems like Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. They’re nowhere near Nirvana’s poppy punk-metal hybrid style, and they don’t define their genre in the way a band like Mudhoney does. Oh, and their original lead singer died suddenly, replaced by a relative unknown four years ago. All of this points to Alice in Chains being one of the least likely comeback bands from the era of flannel fashion and Neanderthal hairstyles. But they’re not only making a comeback, they’re cranking out a batch of quality new tunes to boot.

There they were Thursday night (Feb. 4) at the Paramount Theatre, nearly two decades after the g-word was in Vogue, playing to a capacity crowd of rabid fans while supporting a new Grammy-nominated album — last year’s exceptional Black Gives Way to Blue. The album, which lost to AC/DC for Best Hard Rock Performance, was released 14 years after the band’s last studio recording.

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