Live music June 7 at Benbow. George Clinton danced by the Eel River in a peacock headdress, pink and yellow mini-braids, and a checkered brown baller jacket down to his knees. The crowd sang out, "We want the funk! Gotta have the funk!" and bounced together in the same collective energy. Little girls danced on […]
Music
Coverage of the music scene in Humboldt County with upcoming shows from locals and out-of-town acts, reviews, interviews and more.
Posted inMusic
Gods of the Earth
Album by By The Sword. Kemado Records. When The Sword’s Age of Winters dropped in 2006, the album was received with a great deal of enthusiasm, especially by those heralding the band as part of the retro-metal movement that has barreled its way through the indie underground in recent years. Paying equal homage to both […]
Posted inMusic
No Paraskavedekatriaphobia
Did you notice the date on this paper? It’s Thursday the 12th of June, which makes Friday June 13th. That’s right, Friday the Thirteenth. I guess it’s no coincidence that M. Night Shyamalan’s latest scary movie, The Happening, opens that night. What’s the big deal that makes it an unlucky day? Hard to say. Those […]
Posted inMusic
Jack and the Beanstalk
Ballet performance by North Coast Dance. June 7 at the Arkley Center It was a pleasure to sit in the tastefully ornate Arkley Center in Eureka on a Saturday afternoon. North Coast Dance’s artistic director, Danny Furlong, choreographed his vision of Jack and the Beanstalk as a vehicle for his company members and younger students […]
Posted inMusic
Some Excellent Funky Beats
funk — noun Origin mid-18th cent. (first recorded as slang at Oxford University in Oxford, England perhaps from funk in the slang sense (tobacco smoke) or from obsolete Flemish fonck: "disturbance, agitation." a style of popular dance music of U.S. black origin, based on elements of blues and soul and having a strong rhythm that […]
Posted inMusic
The Hot Tempers vs. The Cold Hearts
Roller derby, May 28 at Redwood Acres. It was girl-powered mayhem in the heart of Eureka. Inside Redwood Acres Fairgrounds, hundreds of ballistic screaming roller derby fans filled the bleachers, floors and walls on both sides of the brightly lit auditorium-turned roller rink. Dirty hippies, rednecks, chuckling groups of young guys, suave punk-rockers, polite looking […]
Posted inMusic
For Emma, Forever Ago
Album by Bon Iver. Jagjaguwar. It is the stuff of folklore how songwriter Justin Vernon (under the name of "Bon Iver") created and produced his sparkling solo debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. After spending several years in North Carolina with the band DeYarmond Edison, Vernon returned to his native home in Eau Claire, Wisc. He […]
Posted inMusic
Thing of the Past
Album by Vetiver Gnomonsong When The Band released Music From the Big Pink in 1968, the record was a revelation, a watershed, especially among fellow musicians and singer-songwriters across the globe. It was a new type of Americana — one that embraced a lost songbook of American folk, blues, rock and country and reinterpreted them […]
Posted inMusic
Dreamers
When I met Israeli rocker David Stitch from The Mother’s Anger a couple of years ago, he was living some weird version of the American rock dream, traveling around the states, living in the band van, calling no particular place home, playing soaring guitar and writing intense songs. Last week he called me from his […]
Posted inMusic
Street Horrrsing
Album by Fuck Buttons ATP Recordings I’m not entirely sure what a Fuck Button is. As a noun, it could be what you press in times of distress. As a simple statement, it perhaps expresses a preference for zippers. With an added comma, it denotes that a preference for zippers has been denied: “Fuck, buttons.” […]
Posted inMusic
The Education of Hopey Glass
Graphic novel by Jaime Hernandez. Fantagraphics. It’s a commonplace claim that comic books (pardon me, Graphic Novels) are now literature. Jaime Hernandez’s latest graphic novel is typically engrossing, and may very well be literature, but it’s also a lot more fun to read than most "real" novels. The Education of Hopey Glass is as character-driven […]
Posted inMusic
Knockemstiff
Book by Donald Ray Pollock. Doubleday. Donald Ray Pollock’s debut collection of stories has some obvious antecedents: the trailer park realism of Raymond Carver and the comic Faulkner of the Snopes cycle, maybe even the drug-soaked prose of Denis Johnson in Jesus’ Son. Pollock has his own strong voice, though, writing intense stories that are […]