What I expected Saturday afternoon when I showed up at Supernova’s downtown location yesterday afternoon was a video shoot for “When the Mountain Blows,” the closing cut from Big Wheel Stunt Show’s rockin’ new album “Cheetah Milque.” What it turned out to be? A steamy calendar shoot for the Renagade Girls. The rowdy and often scantily clad ambassadors of Tacoma’s Renagade Bikes had taken over the hair salon for a 1930s, gangster-themed hootenanny with Big Wheel playing the house band. (And yes, they spell renegade that way.)
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Boogie 4 the Cure has planned a benefit for Kent Morrill of the Fabulous Wailers, the local cancer awareness group announced. The event will be held on March 12 at the North Shore Golf & Country Club, 4101 North Shore Blvd. NE, in Tacoma, to help raise money for the influential Tacoma musician’s ongoing battle with prostate cancer.

Morrill is lead vocalist and keyboard player for the Wailers, the Tacoma group that helped launch the Original Northwest Sound with it’s 1960 garage-rock hit “Tall Cool One.” With Rockin’ Robin Roberts, the band is …

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Soundgarden will release its first live album, “Live on I-5” on March 22, and has headed into the studio to record new material, Rolling Stone reports. The live album consists of tracks recorded on their West Coast tour of 1996.

“We brought Adam Kasper out on the West Coast leg of our headlining ’96 tour,” guitarist Kim Thayil tells Rolling Stone. “We wanted him to record it for a number of things – as a way to appraise and review the performances, we were hoping to maybe provide content for B sides for foreign releases, and …

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Christian rockers Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant will bring their 2 Friends Tour to the Puyallup Fair & Events Center on Sept. 16. And when tickets go on sale, at 10 a.m. on Feb. 25, fans will be able to buy them through Facebook, the Puyallup Fair announced today.

Last week, the fair announced that it had ditched Ticketmaster and that patrons could buy tickets for Chicago, the first show announced for the 2011 season, directly through the Fair’s web site, sans service charges. Those tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. this Saturday. …

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If you’re an aspiring comic, tonight’s the night to dust off your best bits and step up to Tacoma Comedy Club’s open mike. As local blog Exit 133 initially reported, talent scouts for NBC-TV’s “America’s Got Talent” will be on site looking for potential contestants when the laughs get started around 8 p.m.

“They called this morning,” owner Aaron Flett, aka Riggs, confirmed when I called. “They’re going to see if any of Tacoma’s Comics or Seattle Comics have talent. If you’ve always wanted to try something, now’s the time to do it.” …

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All is not well in I Defy camp. So says vocalist Jason McKibbon who last night said he and the veteran Tacoma punk act are going through “a trial separation.” More specifically, McKibbon said he’d quit the group three weeks ago, angered by unpaid bills related to the recording of I Defy’s forthcoming album and DVD.

“I can’t keep spinning my wheels like this,” he said, though he predicted “The album and the dvd will still come out.

Sorry to break the news, I Defy fans. But maybe this clip, from happier times at the old Hell’s …

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German art-metal Rammstein will headline the Tacoma Dome on May 15, Live Nation announced today. The band – known for its theatrical style and vocalist Till Lindemann sometimes performing while engulfed in flame – will launch its nine-stop North American tour on May 5 in New York. Tickets for the Tacoma show will go on sale at 10 a.m. on Feb. 26, but prices were not yet made available.

Live Nation is reporting that all 100,000 tickets for Sasquatch 2011 are sold out, the earliest the Memorial Day weekend music festival has sold out in its first decade. The four-day event will go on from May 27 to 30 at Grant County’s Gorge Amphitheatre this year and feature Death Cab for Cutie, Foo Fighters, Modest Mouse, the Flaming Lips, Wilco and more on the main stage. We posted the full lineup earlier this month here.

Let the countdown begin. This weekend, recently reunited Tacoma sludge-metal titans Argonaut will unveil a new lineup featuring singer-bassist Matt Sader, drummer Brandon Boote, guitarist Dave “I’m in every band in Tacoma” Takata and newcomer Trina Walker replacing guitarist Scott Talbott, who took off for Reno.
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I was working on a story about the Chieftans and their Feb. 23 performance at Olympia’s Washington Center for the Performing Arts. And I checked out this YouTube video to see what group founder Paddy Moloney meant by Ottowa Valley Dancing. John and Nathan Pilatzke, the guys you see in this clip, will be part of the show.