Last week saw the departure of two very different musicians who have been extremely important to me throughout my life and to a great many other people as well, I would guess. First was Michael Hurley, the outer than outer limits singin’ stranger, with a singularly baffling songwriting skill that worked as an organic lightning rod connecting the supernatural to the most familiar root essences of our earthly soils. A man who could sound like a slow-rolling comedy routine, a tragic lover, and a quavering ghost haunting the wires from the telephone poles to the hi-fi speakers, wrapped around the world and back. Often on the same record, sometimes in the same song. If discarded car radios and phonographs could set down taproots of broken instrument strings and grow the saplings into vast forests of wooden-vinyl-transistor antennae trees, he’d be the wizard who blew life into the characters that inhabited the dusty settlements and deep, remote pockets of that wilderness. Kitchen sink dramas of love and loss melt like rain into mud in such a landscape, where the beautifully feral side of our national myths hide in the dwindling ecology of Weird America, a place that suffers daily clearcuts to make way for the all-consuming and consumed beef creatures of our commercial monoculture. Listening to his music reminds me of an America worth not only preserving, but fighting for and restoring mightily.
Speaking of fighting against monoculture, nobody portrayed visceral antagonism toward the empty horror of a purely transactional, commercial supermarket society like British post-punk pioneers Gang of Four, particularly on their first two albums. That magnificently abrasive, brilliant, casually literate and violently danceable despair, a glorious sound of rebellion against everything forced on us by the parasitic wasps running our governments, was crafted in no small part by the tight and always right funk notes of bassist Dave Allen. I remember the exact first moment I heard their debut album Entertainment! because it didn’t just leave an impression, it penetrated my teenage skull and buzzed around in a fury I can still feel today. If you haven’t heard it, treat yourself.
As a final consideration and send off for two such rare birds as Hurley and Allen, consider these lines from the former’s song that makes up the title of this week’s column, as a farewell:
“And now I see the wind Blowin’ from Northwest I hear them Honkers again On their rambling quest Over Lord’s Valley I roll like a ball And in the wind I hear them call Wild goose, loose goose, I count them all …”
Thursday
The Logger Bar is once again hosting a show perfect for its coral-like layers of a century of (occasionally) polished rustic ambience. Tyler John Kraehling is a traveling troubadour whose singer-songwriter repertoire takes the audience down the backroads of folk, country and blues, with both wilderness and signposts running through the mud and gravel. He’ll be doing his thing at 7 p.m., and though I doubt there’s a cover cost, if there is it’s less than a drink and twice as fun.
Friday
There’s a slap-dance night of tightwire funk and bounceable jams happening at Humbrews at 8:30 p.m. for those of you itching to boogie. Seattle’s instrumental funk ‘n soul band True Loves joins forces with local mothership Object Heavy to make the floor rippled and body strengthen with the healing frequencies of the Groove. Early tickets are going for $18 and it will cost you two bucks more at the door.
Saturday
I am happy to report that the Siren’s Song Tavern is still up and running, and hosting a wicked and heavy show tonight at 6:30 p.m. Two of my favorite local amp slappers Ultramafic and Psyop Victim will be testing the earthquake retrofitting of the building, while another act I have yet to experience live but am sure is great, Floating, joins riff-sawing touring bands Sorcia and Mother Root. This all-ages gig has a $5-$20 door cover.
Sunday
I mentioned earlier about the Logger Bar often having bands that blend into the environment of the venue but tonight’s gig is going to be a little different. Not that there’s a clash happening here, it’s more like a rare bird will be nesting in the joint. Santa Cruz’s Supernaut plays a type of epic, heavy rock and mystic metal the likes of which you rarely see these days, but is always a treat. War hammer drums meet ‘verbed-out, free-range vocals and versatile guitar work that spans the geography from the bloodied fields of victory to the forbidden caves of danger. It’s some awesome shit and if you roll by around 7 p.m., you can hear for yourself.
Monday
Savage Henry Comedy Club is once again hosting Metal Monday, an early (7 p.m.) all-ages throwdown that starts the week out right. Tonight’s link-up is particularly fine, with post-post grunge band Gnawed On coming down the mountain with Mystery Meat, Abandons and Only Echoes.
Tuesday
Many ages ago, I was introduced to the music of the late griot desert-rock and groove master Ali Farka Touré. His hypnotic tunes always put me in a state of contradiction: traveling sounds becoming a static liminal space where storytelling transcends the Babel Tower restrictions of language to tap into a communication deeper than meaning. And though he disappeared into that realm past the signpost of the living nearly 20 years ago, his son Vieux Farka Touré continues manning the sonic caravan, with many improvements of his own woven into the sails. This show should be superb and the Arcata Theatre Lounge will be starting things up around 7 p.m. for those of you worried about the clock tomorrow morning ($33.59).
Wednesday
You’d think if a recent Oscar-winner reportedly got beaten up by a masked, racist mob and abducted by a violent, occupying government force, it would make quite a stir, with an accompanying condemnation by many world governments, as well as the Academy of Motion Pictures itself, which would, at the very least, name the victim and the belligerents. But the Oscar winner in question is a Palestinian man, Hamdan Ballal, the mob was made of West Bank Israeli “settlers” and the abductors — according to some witnesses — were members of the IDF. So instead, the world gets another string in the impossibly large tapestry of Arab (particularly Palestinian) dehumanization from the West. If you are outraged by any of this, I reckon the very least you can do is watch the man’s documentary film No Other Land, which Ballal co-directed. It screens at the Minor Theatre tonight at 7 p.m., with donations suggested from $5-$15.
Collin Yeo (he him) appreciates a good full moon, although he (probably) isn’t a werewolf.
This article appears in How the Klamath Dams came down.