Woke up this morning with a tune in my head: an old Joe Jackson thing called "Fools in Love." "Fools in love, they think they’re heroes ’cause they get to feel no pain. I say fools in love are zeros; I should know. I should know, because this fool’s in love again." Joe comes off […]
Music
Coverage of the music scene in Humboldt County with upcoming shows from locals and out-of-town acts, reviews, interviews and more.
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To Be Still
It is no misnomer that singer/songwriter Alela Diane Menig falls into the growing musical community known as "New Weird Americana" or "Freak Folk." What’s interesting about her segment of this developing "scene" or movement are the roots, which derive from British folk traditions, which in turn borrow from earlier Gaelic musical traditions, namely Scotland, Ireland […]
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Talkin’ Nocturnum
Anyone out there ever eat at O-H’s Townhouse? It was a classic old-school steak house, a place where you could pick out your meat from a glass-fronted case, then hit the bar for a shot of straight whiskey to be sipped while sitting in a cushy red Naugahyde booth. The cushy booths are still in […]
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Ghostride The Whip
If we were to put the Oakland Hyphy movement and its precursors on a timeline, it would look something like this, according to Ghostride The Whip: Black Panthers social solidarity movement … city wide crack epidemic of the ’80s … MC Hammer … Too Short … Mac Dre … Hyphy. Narrated by MTV anchor and […]
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Middle Cyclone
It’s hard to imagine a comparison of the delicate nuances of Antony Hegarty, from Antony and the Johnsons, with the type of brashness offered by singer/songwriter Neko Case. But as Antony had used Japanese Butoh theater (mainly through the legendary performer Kazuo Ohno), in which the performer attempts to embody a non-human form, such as […]
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Embracing Ridiculousness
When Jordan "Yogoman" Rain called last week, he was on campus at Fairhaven College, part of Western Wash. U. in Bellingham, where he was finishing up paperwork to graduate with an interdisciplinary degree in music and business. Diploma in hand, he’s now ready to become a full-time musician, which is what he’s been doing already […]
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Oneness
For fans of African music, Senegalese kora player Youssoupha Sidibe was the highlight of last summer’s Reggae Rising, strumming intricate melodies on his 21-sting harp. Born in Dakar, Youssoupha did not follow the usual path to kora. Traditionally in his culture, sons learn from fathers in the musician caste. Famous players like Toumani Diabaté came […]
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Themselves
The Hunter Plaid Gallery was packed. There was a tall woman with a white flat top, short women with short skirts and an innumerable number of average height, nondescript men with mid-length hair, beards and beanies. With a $10 "suggested donation" cover, it paralleled a high-society column of fandom: A veritable Arcata gala, the open […]
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Dark Was The Night
On the occasion of its 20th year, the Red Hot Organization, an AIDS fundraising and awareness group, has released Dark Was the Night, a two-disc (or a three-disc vinyl) compilation with a "who’s-who" of indie rock of the past decade. Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National worked with Red Hot founder John Carlin to […]
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Kool Keith — Dr. Octagon vs. Dr. Dooom
Perhaps Kool Keith is krazy, but that’s part of his appeal. The New York native Doctor of Dooom and eight-sided polygons has been rapping explicit non-sequiturs since 1988, and experienced a brief institutionalization stint after the release of his first album with the Ultramagnetic MCs titled Critical Beatdown. Some 21 years later the man is […]
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Estranged Meadow
If you were a kid in the late 1970s/early ’80s and your parents loved you, then you must have gone to Disneyland, which means you must remember when Space Mountain glistened with newness and high tech. You also remember waiting … and waiting … and waiting … in the outside line expecting that once you […]
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The Hustle Gets Harder
Music maverick Adam Drucker, aka Doseone, or simply Dose, is an artist who straddles traditional boundaries and wears many hats. He started out in Cincinnati as a literate, high-speed, rhythmic rapper, a Scribble Jam champion MC who teamed up with DJ Jeff "Jel" Logan and headed west to Oakland. There he joined forces with like-minded […]