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Nathan Weinbender

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A&E >  Entertainment

Dream of the ’90s is alive in Polaris

If you were a kid in the ’90s – or if you were the parent of a cable-consuming kid in the ’90s – you’re probably intimately familiar with Polaris’ song “Hey Sandy.” You may not recognize that title or the name of the band, and you probably can’t sing the words, either, since the mush-mouthed lyrics are still the subject of much debate. You would know it, though, as the theme song to the TV series “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” which ran on Nickelodeon for three seasons (and later in endless reruns) beginning in 1993. The show’s music was credited to Polaris, a shaggy trio who performed that famously mumbly theme song in the show’s opening credit sequence.
A&E >  Entertainment

Hard rock brothers take scene by storm

The didgeridoo is probably the last instrument you’d expect to hear on hard rock radio, but Like a Storm is looking to change that. The metal band, founded in New Zealand by brothers Chris, Kent and Matt Brooks, considers didgeridoo as integral to its overall sound as the guitar and bass. Matt Brooks, the band’s lead guitarist, said the decision to incorporate the didgeridoo into Like a Storm’s repertoire came about naturally.
A&E >  Entertainment

Dream of the ’90s is alive in Polaris

If you were a kid in the ’90s – or if you were the parent of a cable-consuming kid in the ’90s – you’re probably intimately familiar with Polaris’ song “Hey Sandy.” You may not recognize that title or the name of the band, and you probably can’t sing the words, either, since the mush-mouthed lyrics are still the subject of much debate. You would know it, though, as the theme song to the TV series “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” which ran on Nickelodeon for three seasons (and later in endless reruns) beginning in 1993. The show’s music was credited to Polaris, a shaggy trio who performed that famously mumbly theme song in the show’s opening credit sequence.
A&E >  Entertainment

Fact, fiction collide in ‘Collected Stories’ at Modern Spokane

There’s an overused axiom that you should write what you know, and following that age-old advice certainly comes with its consequences. Writers often treat their own lives as fodder for fiction, integrating private matters into their work. But at what point does artistic liberty veer into invasion of privacy? Donald Margulies’ two-character drama “Collected Stories,” which opens tonight at the Modern Theater Spokane, delves into this moral quandary by way of a mentor-protégé relationship that begins to crumble when it’s discovered that one woman’s fiction is the other’s reality.
A&E >  Entertainment

Famous sleuths Holmes and Watson visit Civic Theatre stage

Everyone loves a good whodunit. While Spokane Civic Theatre continues its production of “Clue: The Musical” in its downstairs studio space, another mystery, “Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of the Sign of Four,” premieres on the main stage tonight. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1890 novel, the second to feature literature’s most famous detective, the story follows the typical blueprint of the best Holmes mysteries: It involves enigmatic puzzles, mistaken identities, action and peril (this one features an unfortunate accident with a crocodile) and a little romance.
A&E >  Entertainment

Guitarist Laurence Juber excels at ‘borderline everything’

Countless artists have been influenced by the Beatles, but few ever get to perform with an actual member of the Fab Four. Laurence Juber first picked up a guitar as a teenager in the early ’60s, right as Beatlemania was reaching fever pitch in his native England. Fifteen years later, he was playing guitar with Paul McCartney’s band Wings, a role he filled from 1978 to the band’s dissolution in 1981. “It was a fantastic experience,” Juber said of his three-year stint in Wings. “It was also a fantastic education. I always refer to it as getting my masters from McCartney University. … It kind of unlocked my own ambitions to be an artist, as opposed to being a hired gun musician.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Juber excels at ‘borderline everything’

Countless artists have been influenced by the Beatles, but few ever get to perform with an actual member of the Fab Four. Laurence Juber first picked up a guitar as a teenager in the early ’60s, right as Beatlemania was reaching fever pitch in his native England. Fifteen years later, he was playing guitar with Paul McCartney’s band Wings, a role he filled from 1978 to the band’s dissolution in 1981. “It was a fantastic experience,” Juber said of his three-year stint in Wings. “It was also a fantastic education. I always refer to it as getting my masters from McCartney University. … It kind of unlocked my own ambitions to be an artist, as opposed to being a hired gun musician.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Bringing back big rock

There was a time when big, flashy rock ’n’ roll bands dominated the airwaves: KISS, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Def Leppard – they were a dime a dozen. Now they’ve become more of a commodity, and although old school rock bands certainly still exist, they don’t have the same mainstream popularity they once did. But We Are Harlot is looking to change that. The music of the California four-piece is a throwback to the glossy, flashy sounds of arena rock from the late ’70s and early ’80s, which is a style that even the band’s members recognize might not be immediately marketable.
A&E >  Entertainment

Silent Comedy rocks with religious fervor

The Silent Comedy’s live shows have often been likened to religious tent revivals, and that seems appropriate: Joshua and Jeremiah Zimmerman, two of the band’s founding members, are the sons of a former traveling preacher, and they spent much of their childhood surrounded by gospel choirs in churches around the country. “There’s a wild, twisted, Pentecostal vibe to our shows,” Joshua Zimmerman said, noting that he was inspired by the church music programs he and his brother were exposed to as kids. “There’s such a power in that environment, all these people together and singing and everyone’s a participant. … We were raised on that. Our music isn’t religious and we’re not religious guys, but that kind of aesthetic and that kind of passion in performance just comes out whether we want it to or not.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Stage Left Theater takes on provocative psychological drama ‘Equus’

It’s kind of a surprise that Peter Shaffer’s controversial 1973 play “Equus” is being performed at Spokane’s Stage Left Theater. Not only does it deal frankly with the darker side of psychology and sexuality, but it requires one of its actors to be completely naked onstage. It’s much edgier and unremittingly bleak than your typical local theater production. The nudity is perhaps the most well-known element of “Equus,” and it was heavily publicized when Daniel Radcliffe stripped down during the show’s 2007 Broadway revival. Troy Nickerson, who’s directing the Stage Left production, has suggested the show to various theaters over the years, but it’s usually rejected because of its adult themes and often disturbing subject matter.
A&E >  Entertainment

Stage Left Theater takes on provocative psychological drama ‘Equus’

It’s kind of a surprise that Peter Shaffer’s controversial 1973 play “Equus” is being performed at Spokane’s Stage Left Theater. Not only does it deal frankly with the darker side of psychology and sexuality, but it requires one of its actors to be completely naked onstage. It’s much edgier and unremittingly bleak than your typical local theater production. The nudity is perhaps the most well-known element of “Equus,” and it was heavily publicized when Daniel Radcliffe stripped down during the show’s 2007 Broadway revival. Troy Nickerson, who’s directing the Stage Left production, has suggested the show to various theaters over the years, but it’s usually rejected because of its adult themes and often disturbing subject matter.
News >  Spokane

Review: Modern Theater’s ‘God of Carnage’ rivets attention

The wickedly acerbic domestic satire “God of Carnage” is only 80 minutes long, and the two married couples at the center of the play are at one another’s throats for about 70 of those minutes. But what are they really fighting about, and why? Do they even know? The intellectual volleying that goes on in Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning play, running at the Modern Theater Coeur d’Alene, is enough to make your head spin. It’s only at the end, after tears have been shed, vomit has been cleaned up and decorum has gone right out the window, that we realize all this fighting has gotten the characters absolutely nowhere.
A&E >  Entertainment

Bernstein anchors symphony’s Mideast tour

Considering that this weekend’s Symphony Classics program is being advertised as a musical tour of the Middle East, it may seem unusual that the whole thing centers on a famous Leonard Bernstein composition. But Spokane Symphony conductor Eckart Preu says he built the program around the American composer’s 1965 choral piece “Chichester Psalms,” which was written in Hebrew, as a way of exploring the more abstract themes present in Middle Eastern culture and the compositions inspired by it.
A&E >  Entertainment

Graceless under pressure

Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” traps us in an enclosed space with four self-absorbed, strong-willed characters and asks us to look on as they slowly unravel. By the end of the show, grievances have been aired, prejudices have been revealed, alliances have been formed and then broken, and they’re all but clawing at one another’s throats. The Tony Award-winning play, which premieres tonight at the Modern Theater Coeur d’Alene, unfolds like a more manic, farcical version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”: It concerns two upper-middle class couples who, when confined to closed quarters for an evening, cling to forced civility until they crack and begin trampling on common sense and social graces. It’s like an episode of “Masterpiece Theater” devolving into a National Geographic special.
A&E >  Entertainment

Marshall McLean Band show celebrates video release

The stark imagery of the Marshall McLean Band’s new music video seems to neatly encapsulate the simple, driving force of the group. It’s merely three guys playing their instruments in a weathered, rustic setting – no frills about it. You can tell it was shot in the dead of winter – you can see their breath hanging in the air – but the music seems to be keeping them warm. “I think it really worked out for what it is,” McLean said of the video, which was filmed in January. “We really just wanted a video that just showed us playing music.”
A&E >  Entertainment

The beat goes on

The guys in Beat Connection are always thinking about their next step. The Seattle-based four-piece is in between albums, but they’ve remained busy on the live circuit. On a Monday afternoon, they’re recovering from a stint at SXSW, where they played eight gigs in three days, and now they’re resting in Denver before a string of shows that brings them to Spokane on Saturday. It’s been nearly three years since the band released its debut LP, and there hadn’t been any new Beat Connection material until a trio of singles started popping up online in late 2014. The band’s drummer, Jarred Katz, a Spokane native, says that the long wait for a new release was a strategic move.
News >  Features

Theater of the absurd

Since the birth of cinema, film distributors and theater owners have been devising new, attention-grabbing ways to hook audiences – everything from Smell-O-Vision to IMAX 3-D to those seats that move and shake in sync with what’s happening on the screen. Producer-director William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of movie marketing, even went so far as to wire random theater seats to jolt viewers during his 1959 horror cheapie “The Tingler.” It’s a practice as old as the art form. Over the next week, the Bing Crosby Theater is screening two wildly dissimilar films – the cult comedy “This Is Spinal Tap” and the Oscar-winning thriller “The Silence of the Lambs” – in similarly nontraditional ways: The gimmicks aren’t nearly as hacky as Castle’s, but don’t expect to pay your money and then sit quietly for a couple hours.
News >  Spokane

Review: Strong Civic Theatre cast carries uneven ‘Clue’

In the back of the programs for Spokane Civic Theatre’s new production of “Clue: The Musical,” there’s a page of grids and boxes that asks, “Can you solve the mystery before our detective?” Just like in the classic Parker Brothers board game, a murder has been committed, and it’s up to us to determine the who, the where and the how: There are six suspects, six possible weapons and six potential locations, and we’re supposed to take notes that will help us deduce the identity of the culprit. That’s the niftiest invention of the show, directed by Keith Dixon, which, while not a particularly memorable piece of theater, has a lot of goofy energy. It’s set, as these types of stories always are, in a creaky, old mansion where a dinner party is being thrown. Mr. Boddy (Ben Dyck) is our host, and he announces from the get-go that he’ll soon be murdered by one of his guests. The show isn’t so much about who eventually kills him, but rather who will get to him first.
A&E >  Entertainment

Choose your weapon: Civic Theatre stages ‘Clue: The Musical’

No matter how many times you sit through “Clue: The Musical,” the odds of seeing the exact same show twice are pretty slim. There are 216 possible endings to the story, in which it is revealed that one of six characters committed a murder in a certain location with a certain weapon. The show, which premieres tonight at Spokane Civic Theatre, follows the basic format of the classic board game “Clue” – there’s one dead body and six suspects, and it’s up to you to finger the culprit. Was it Miss Scarlet in the ballroom with the candlestick? Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the revolver? Mrs. White in the kitchen with the rope? You know the drill.
A&E >  Entertainment

Symphony premieres Thai composer’s tribute to Spokane’s Welty

Tonight’s Symphony with a Splash concert is special for a couple reasons: Not only will it serve as a 100th birthday celebration for Spokane humanitarian and benefactor Dr. Elizabeth Welty, but it will also mark the world premiere of Thai composer Thiwangkorn Lilit’s newest composition, itself a tribute to Welty and her contributions to the arts. Lilit owes part of his success to Welty: He was discovered as a young music student in Thailand by Spokane piano teacher Margie Mae Ott, and his studies (at Gonzaga and Whitworth universities, and later the Boston Conservatory) were sponsored financially by Welty. He first came to Spokane in the 1990s, and he now recalls the experience as a transformative one for a wide-eyed 20-something.
A&E >  Entertainment

Choose your weapon: Civic Theatre stages ‘Clue: The Musical’

No matter how many times you sit through “Clue: The Musical,” the odds of seeing the exact same show twice are pretty slim. There are 216 possible endings to the story, in which it is revealed that one of six characters committed a murder in a certain location with a certain weapon. The show, which premieres tonight at Spokane Civic Theatre, follows the basic format of the classic board game “Clue” – there’s one dead body and six suspects, and it’s up to you to finger the culprit. Was it Miss Scarlet in the ballroom with the candlestick? Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the revolver? Mrs. White in the kitchen with the rope? You know the drill.
A&E >  Entertainment

Symphony premieres Thai composer’s tribute to Spokane’s Welty

Tonight’s Symphony with a Splash concert is special for a couple reasons: Not only will it serve as a 100th birthday celebration for Spokane humanitarian and benefactor Dr. Elizabeth Welty, but it will also mark the world premiere of Thai composer Thiwangkorn Lilit’s newest composition, itself a tribute to Welty and her contributions to the arts. Lilit owes part of his success to Welty: He was discovered as a young music student in Thailand by Spokane piano teacher Margie Mae Ott, and his studies (at Gonzaga and Whitworth universities, and later the Boston Conservatory) were sponsored financially by Welty. He first came to Spokane in the 1990s, and he now recalls the experience as a transformative one for a wide-eyed 20-something.
A&E >  Entertainment

Crowder brings ‘folktronica’ sound to Rock and Worship Roadshow

David Crowder’s music is difficult to describe in tidy terms. It’s part synthetic and part organic. It explores religion and faith. It’s as informed by the digital sounds of EDM as the down and dirty grit of bluegrass. If you were to search for one of his albums at a record store, you’re as likely to find it with the contemporary Christian artists as with the Americana musicians. He’s usually labeled by critics as a “folktronica” artist, which sounds at first like an ungainly Frankenstein of a genre but is actually a perfect description: Crowder came about his unusual style by fusing together his musical influences from growing up in the South in the 1980s.
A&E >  Entertainment

Signs point to evening full of laughs

Bill Engvall has been performing stand-up comedy since the early 1990s, and out of the countless routines he’s written over the years, he’s most famous for three little words: Here’s Your Sign. That’s Engvall’s signature catchphrase, which has its origins in a routine wherein the comedian hands out figurative “I’m stupid” signs to people who ask ridiculously dumb questions. Beyond that oft-repeated punch line, Engvall is most closely associated with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a hugely popular troupe of comedians (Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White) that spawned three concert documentaries, a TV series and a satellite radio program.
A&E >  Entertainment

Try your luck with these shows

St. Patrick’s Day might fall on a Tuesday this year, but that’s no excuse to skip out on the celebrations. Looking through the weekend’s live music listings, Saturday night seems to be the best time to go out, drink some green beer and listen to music in honor of your Irish brethren. Both Irish pubs in the downtown area – the venerable O’Doherty’s and newcomer Knockaderry (in the former Sidebar near the county courthouse) – will be open Saturday morning for a long day of Irish-style merriment.