The merger of Scott McCaughey from Minus 5 and Steve Wynn, former leader of the LA-based ’80s band the Dream Syndicate, makes for a perfect doubleheader. Together, the songwriters have culled baseball folklore, stories and forgotten personalities to inspire a new album that, to borrow baseball verbiage, goes the distance. With the contributions of REM/Minus […]
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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Afro Blue
As any musicologist will tell you, the blues comes from Africa. Nowhere is this more evident than in the bluesy music that comes out of Mali, particularly as played by the late great guitarist Ali Farka Touré, whose sound was famously described by Martin Scorsese as "the DNA of the blues." Before he died in […]
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Indigo Shoes
If you’ve been lucky enough to see the local band Absynth Quintet play live, you know they’re amazing. Sometimes the improvisational jams may go on just a tiny bit too long, but the individual band members’ undeniable talent quashes any negative aspects on that front. The collective picking styles presented by Ian Davidson on banjo, […]
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Heavy Psych
Along with the likes of Kyuss, Monster Magnet and Fu Manchu, Nebula helped shape the direction of the ’90s desert/stoner rock movement. They didn’t necessarily enjoy the high profile fanfare and commercial success of their peers, but thanks to impressively consistent recordings and Eddie Glass’ signature guitar style, Nebula quickly established themselves as one of […]
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Mind-Altering Music
Psychedelic: It’s a word that conjures images of stoned ’60s-style hippies with flowers in their hair noodle dancing to endless guitar solos. My New Oxford American Dictionary tells me it’s an adjective "relating to or denoting drugs that produce hallucinations and apparent expansion of consciousness" and also "a style of rock music originating in the […]
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Parc Avenue
I’m sick of Canada. I’m tired of hearing about their state-funded schools, National Health, and their music. Canada has the nerve to fund the arts in their country, including partial support of a large number of bands — Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Broken Social Scene, The Stars, The New Pornographers, Destroyer, to name a few […]
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The Outlaw
What do you say about Willie Nelson? He’s an icon, an American treasure, a songwriter with a beat-up guitar who transcended the world of country music he came from, and transformed it in the process. Willie was a Texas boy who made the leap to songwriter-central, the country music capital, Nashville, in 1960. His song […]
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Friendship Nation
It’s okay to want to get naked. In fact, I would encourage every one of you to give in to that urge, that natural instinct that Foot Village evokes through their latest release Friendship Nation, in what may be the very nexus of acoustic hardcore and scum-folk, if there has indeed ever been one. There […]
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My Blueberry Nights
Timing. In an interview concerning his latest film, My Blueberry Nights, Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai explained that his film is about relationships and timing. Then again, nearly all of his films revolve around human relationships and timing. Sometimes he draws a winning hand; sometimes he comes up snake eyes. From his first film […]
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Organic Gumbo
When Ida Guillory was growing up in Lake Charles, La., playing accordion was not considered ladylike. That didn’t stop Ida. She would eventually be crowned Queen of the Zydeco Accordion. "Music — zydeco music — was in my family as long as I can remember. I had two uncles that played accordion and a cousin […]
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Parades
"To be lonely is a state of mind, something completely other than physical solitude." "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea." — Danish writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) There are Scandinavian countries where daylight lasts for days on end, or darkness continues from one day into the next, depending on […]
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Reggae Rising
Hippies from the hills, turbaned dreads, tattooed party boys, college kids, urban refugees, friends and families — they all gathered by the Eel River once again on the first weekend in August for another round of Reggae. Aside from the split with the Mateel (which seldom came up in conversation), it was the same as […]