♪♪
-Hi, and welcome to the show. I'm Nancy Guppy,
coming to you from the brand-new location of Roq La Rue Gallery.
Now, located at the intersection of Denny and Western Avenue,
Roq La Rue has taken over a 2,500 square foot loft
that boasts high ceilings, lots of natural light,
and plenty of wall and floor space
to showcase the gallery's slate of exceptional artists.
Currently on exhibit are three dynamite solo shows
by three dynamite painters:
Mary Iverson, Tim Cavnar, and Jed Dunkerley.
Although these paintings share a loose theme of landscape,
each artist interprets that concept in their own unique,
interesting, and quite beautiful way.
"Waterfalls", "Let My Ghost Linger",
and "Consumption" are up through May 3rd.
Hours and location are at roqlarue.com.
We've got an excellent lineup for you,
including Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
♪♪
-♪ Guess that this is goodbye ♪
-Music from Jul!et.
-♪ We've barely spoken ♪
-Raaaaai...nieerr Beeeer.
-That's the most perfect ad I've ever seen.
-And a new documentary on a classic beer.
And we'll begin with a visit to the creative world
of musician and entrepreneur, Michael Lee, aka Mikey Moo.
♪♪
-I'm still kind of getting my standing
and figuring out how to be a front person in a band.
I've, you know, always played in bands as more of a sideman.
-♪ Felt like it took a while ♪
-Challenge of being a front man for me
is just getting over my nerves, and it's pretty wild, you know,
I mean, you could rehearse as much as you want
and get so comfortable in your practice space.
And then there is just something about walking
out in front of people and the dynamic changes.
♪♪
I knew I wanted to play music since I was a little kid.
Certainly.
I mean, it started as thinking I just was --
wanted to be a singer and performer,
and then I got a guitar.
It was just a lousy little gremlin guitar that,
like the fret board was cut your fingers, you know?
-♪ Boy, what did they do to you? ♪
-And at the time I was growing up, you know,
like Seattle had already exploded
into this international scene.
These five teenage boys first started playing
loud music together two years ago
when they were all freshmen in high school.
I was in a band when I was a teenager
that kind of like blew up,
and then it turned into all these like
major label demo deals,
so I moved up here in order to like fulfill that dream.
That whole Seattle scene and explosion,
as progressive as a city as it is,
did not seem accessible or designed to be for me.
And I think that created a lot of conflict
because, you know, you want to be inside a club,
but you know that you don't get a membership, yeah.
-♪ Hold my hand ♪
♪ Don't even think ♪
♪♪
-When I was a kid,
I was kind of like locked into this really closed-down world
that made you conform.
♪♪
Just the knowledge of knowing that I was queer
made it instantly clear that the world was not designed
for me to roam freely within.
When you spend your life hiding for so long
and then you realize, oh, it doesn't have to be this way,
you know, once you kick that door open,
then that is going to just become
like a really important part about who you are
and how you want to express who you are to other people.
-♪ Every day is like an echo in the hall ♪
♪ And I can't listen to it anymore ♪
♪ Maybe we'll... ♪
-I feel like I only really found my footing with music
and my comfort with myself in the last like 10 years.
I've been out for a really long time now,
but really leaning into that as part of my identity
and the actual music.
♪♪
You know, I mean, I'm still kind of figuring that out right now,
like I don't know what queer music necessarily is
in the first place. It's not really a genre.
♪♪
-[ Singing indistinctly ]
-But I feel that it is a pillar
of what I'm trying to communicate.
-[ Singing continues ]
Mikey Moo; I've kind of taken into calling it queer psych pop
and I don't know if that's, you know, I mean,
trying to come up with words that can best label a sound.
I mean, to me it's pop music.
It's psych. It's rock and roll.
The lyrics deal with queer matters,
but definitely like bringing in different genres for sure,
and I like to dance all over wherever I can.
-♪ I am drunk on your innocence... ♪
-This is the first time I've ever written a full-length
and been like, okay, this is a statement of sorts.
Here is Mikey Moo's "Fresh Idiot" on vinyl.
I wrote the record on my own
and then workshopped it with some other friends,
but now I finally have a band with Scotty and Nicki.
So I'm really excited to collaborate and write with them.
It's the first time we played that.
♪♪
I'm learning that Mikey Moo is not just about me now,
it's about trusting the other two in the band...
♪♪
...because they're really truly two of the best musicians
in the town and dear friends.
♪♪
-[ Singing indistinctly ]
-Seattle is --
it's always been about not being a sellout
and all that kind of thing.
And I feel like the city is wanting for marketing, jingles,
those kind of things that like don't take itself so seriously.
-♪ I need a ♪ -♪ B-I-T-A ♪
-♪ Morning and night ♪
-Heavy Metal Marching Band is a project that Troy Nelson
and I started during the pandemic
because everything kind of shut down.
There were no more shows -- --
so we were just kind of goofing around.
We were making some jingles,
and then we did some for Saint John's, for my bar.
-♪ Saint John's takeout ♪
♪ The answer to your prayers is finally here ♪
♪ Saint John's takeout ♪
-The process is really collaborative.
Generally, we share a brain, and like,
I mean like, we have a really,
really good time creating this stuff.
We're just going to see where we can take it.
-Hey, what are you doing today?
-Well, I'll tell you.
♪ I'm gonna walk out to the Clock-Out, baby ♪
♪ They got everything you want and need ♪
-I feel like Seattle's
music scene is the coolest it's ever been.
It's people who have just gotten so creative with what art is.
There's so many new projects and collaborations,
so there's just all sorts of music
kind of going around all the time
and all sorts of different kind of music.
So I'm really excited to see what the next chapter is,
and I'm like, wow, Seattle is where it's at.
Thanks, everybody. Good night, we're Mikey Moo.
Love you. Thanks. -We love you, Mikey.
-"Fresh Idiot",
Mikey Moo's new release on Killroom Records
is available on vinyl as well as a digital download,
and catch the band's live and free
in-store performance at Easy Street Records
happening Saturday, May 3rd at 7:00 sharp.
♪♪
-Welcome to the Seattle Art Museum.
We're in the galleries right now for Ai, Rebel:
The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei.
I'm standing in front of one of Ai Weiwei's most iconic works,
called Dropping the Han Dynasty Urn.
It is a triptych, that is to say, three images;
black and white photographs of him dropping a vase.
This is an ancient vase from the Han Dynasty.
And you see him letting go of it in the first one.
The second one almost as it's about to hit the floor.
And the last image is of it smashing to bits at the bottom.
He's against a gray wall,
and this image was taken by his younger brother Ai Dan
testing out, actually turns out, a new camera,
a Nikon F1, I believe,
which could take many shots per second.
So in some ways it was a spontaneous thing.
They were just playing around with a new camera, a new toy.
But on the other hand,
it's also an important aspect of Ai Weiwei's
longstanding practice
in really disrupting our notions of status quo.
And this image, and this act,
this performance was in -- cause a great stir.
It was very shocking for people at the time
because, after all, who destroys antiquities like this?
You keep them in museums,
and they are very valuable,
and they are also a relic representing the ancient past
of China, so the destruction was just shocking at the time.
In fact, we also know it was shocking because --
to Ai Weiwei himself,
because afterwards he writes in his memoir a little note
that tells us that they, he and his brother,
after smashing it,
actually took pains and took care to sweep up the shards
because he didn't want his mother to see this mess
that he had made.
I thought that was a very funny thing
that I had discovered in during this research.
The other thing that I never knew and also came out
when I was reading about this project
is that when I visited Ai Weiwei in his home in Portugal,
he had a Han Dynasty vase on one of his bookshelves.
So these are three black and white photographs,
but it turns out that the vase is green in color.
After so many decades, I never,
it never occurred to me to think about the color of the vase,
which is actually a deep green.
♪♪
-Ai, Rebel:
The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei
at Seattle Art Museum runs now through September 7th.
Reserve your ticket at seattleartmuseum.org.
♪♪
Rainier Beer, launched in the late 1800s,
was a fairly popular brew,
but the brand did not take off until the mid-1970s
when a series of unique and hilarious commercials
put it on the map.
"Rainier: A Beer Odyssey", a 2024 documentary
that tells the story of this hugely successful ad campaign,
is currently getting a second round of screenings
throughout the Northwest.
Here's a preview.
♪♪
-You'll see the big red initial R,
brewed by Rainier Brewery in Seattle.
-For many years, advertising was held in contempt.
-A wonderful beer.
-We began to develop ideas
that were contrarian to contemporary beer advertising.
-They weren't like ads;
they were just like these short films
that were just sort of put out into our consciousness.
-Raaaai...nieeeeer Beeer.
That's the most perfect ad I've ever seen.
-Rainier wants you to know about quality.
♪♪
-They were creating work
that became the envy of the community.
And the question is, who were these guys?
You had this small boutique agency;
17 people in a warehouse.
-Seattle was so young and so naive.
-And that was in the depth of that depression
that we were in, and it created this opportunity for optimism.
-"The word I'm looking for," he says, "is novel."
And the human reaction to novelty is to smile.
♪♪
-When they gave us these commercials,
they were really giving us ourselves.
-It's not brain surgery, it's only advertising,
but you might as well do it well.
-Here we are.
-Action, bottles.
-These Rainier ads were such a fabric of the community.
-All a-beer!
-It wasn't like anything else that was on television.
♪♪
-We're all a big team, and this is Mick Rooney saying,
sell, sell, sell for Rainier.
♪♪
-"Rainier: A Beer Odyssey" screens
at the Bellingham Pickford Film Center on Saturday, May 3rd,
and at the Historic Everett Theater on Thursday, July 17th.
♪♪
Our musical guest this week is Jul!et.
Here she is with her bandmates, Gerson Zaragoza on bass,
and Phil Winston on drums,
performing "Nobody's Fool" from the stage
of the mighty Sunset Tavern.
♪♪
-♪ Guess that this is goodbye ♪
♪ I can't say my heart is broken, we've barely spoken ♪
♪ One day you're gonna walk by my shadow in the record store ♪
♪ Too bad I couldn't love you more ♪
♪ I've been counting the days ♪
♪ I've been making mistakes ♪
♪ I've been counting the days since you left me on read ♪
♪ Say it to my face if it was something I said ♪
♪ You like girls who break the rules but really, do you? ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm nobody's fool ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ I'm glazed over behind the eyes ♪
♪ I'm brainstorming fifty different stages ♪
♪ Ways that you could fit in ♪
♪ Won't come closer, now the air is thinning ♪
♪ And I'm feeling so embarrassed over hooking up my oxygen now♪
♪ I've been counting the days since you left me on read ♪
♪ Say it to my face if it was something I said ♪
♪ You like girls who break the rules but really, do you? ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm nobody's fool ♪
♪♪
♪ Maybe I should change, maybe I should act smaller ♪
♪ Would've made you stay but you're not a fool either ♪
♪ Something's gonna break when I look over my shoulder ♪
♪ At the kind of girl you wanted ♪
♪ Yeah, it's no secret ♪
♪ I've been counting the days since you left me on read ♪
♪ Say it to my face if it was something I said ♪
♪ You like girls who break the rules but really, do you? ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm nobody's fool ♪
♪♪
♪ When your true colors show ♪
♪ Can't say I don't take it personal ♪
♪ I've been counting the days ♪
♪ That I keep making mistakes ♪
♪ Yeah, I've been counting the days since you left me on read ♪
♪ Say it to my face if it was something I said ♪
♪ You like girls who break the rules but really, do you? ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm nobody's fool ♪
♪ I'm nobody's, I'm nobody's fool ♪
♪♪
♪ I'm nobody's ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Catch Jul!et live at the Fremont Abbey
on Tuesday, April 29th,
and watch for her new single, "Battery" slated to drop in May.
And that's a wrap.
Big thanks to Roq La Rue Gallery and founder-owner
Kirsten Anderson for hosting us.
And a reminder that "Waterfalls",
"Let My Ghost Linger",
and "Consumption" are up through May 3rd.
And we're going to leave you
with a visual feast of the cherry blossom explosion
on the University of Washington campus.
Now, it's a short season for cherry blossoms,
about two weeks, but those two weeks are glorious.
So enjoy, and we'll see you soon.
♪♪