the hum / By Bob Doran

Is Nerdcore Dead?

More rock? You’ll find various flavors Friday night at the Arcata Community Center where Flogging Molly is the headliner. Dublin-born bandleader Dave King came out of the ’80s L.A. metal scene where he played with members of Motörhead and Krokus. When he decided to find his own way, he began looking back to his Irish roots. In 1997 he met fiddler Bridget Regan and over time the two of them assembled a rockin’ Celtic band that played a long string of Mondays at an L.A. pub called Molly Malone’s, thus the name Flogging Molly. “We’re not a traditional band,” says King of the band’s neo-Celtic sound. “We are influenced by traditional music and inspired by it, and we put our own little twist on it. If it didn’t have mandolin, accordion, fiddle and whistle, it would be punk rock, and if it didn’t have guitar, bass and drums, it would be traditional Irish music,” he adds, noting, “You can’t be bothered being labeled.”

Whatever you call it, it’s proven quite successful. As the bio on the F.M. website puts it, the band is “marketable.” They’ve been a hit on the Warped Tour more than once and wowed the Coachella crowd this summer. The spring release of their latest disc Float shot them to No. 1 on the Billboard indie albums chart and No. 4 on the top 200. Opening the Arcata F.M. show: Pacific Palisades politi-punk trio Jackson United and Chico-based acousti-punks Nothing Left.

Also on Friday, an Un-Dam The Klamath benefit at HSU’s Goodwin Forum as part of the anti-Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples’ Week. Headlining the show is Audiopharmacy, an organic hip hop crew from San Francisco with duel turntablists, Spanish- and Middle Eastern-style guitar, flute, melodica, “dubbish fretless basslines,” and two MCs/poets: Pasha and Zygoat. Also featured: raw, indigenous hip hop by Savage Family, and Cihuati-Ce, aka Xela, co-founder of Los Angeles-based womyn’s group Cihuatl Tonali.

At Cecil’s in Garberville Monday, a campaign meet-and-greet for SoHum Healthcare District Board candidates Judi Gonzales and Ed Smith with music by pianist Joey Edelman and jazz flautist Matt Eakle, best known for his work with the David Grisman Quintet.

Coming up Wednesday, Oct. 22, an all ages Bad Kitty show at the Manila Community Center with Detroit-based punkabilly power trio Koffin Kats.

That same Wednesday night at the Red Fox, eDIT from Glitch Mob joins DJ Touch of Deep Groove Society and Danny Corn from 3WS for a night of dance music. Expect some serious grooves from all, especially eDIT who is more laptop musician than DJ, playing what he calls “digital crunk shit.” What’s it like? The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones uses the descriptive term “lazer bass,” honing in on the prominent low-end electro boom. A Glitch Mob remix, “West Coast Rocks,” now in my iTunes rotation, starts out gently enough with snatches of familiar raps over a loop of mid-’70s Isley Brother sweet soul, then it stutters before mutating into a throbbing digi-bass thing decorated with glitchy blips, building to a bombastic body-rocking barrage and concluding with a snippet of Ice Cube declaring, “Today was a good day.” Great beat, and as the kids used to say on American Bandstand, “You can dance to it.”

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