In recent years, New York band Gang Gang Dance has become a creative force in experimental rock, with a sound created by intersection of a wide pastiche of influences. The conceptual bent of their new album seems to be something like a 2008 version of an album like Talking Heads Remain in Light, mixing electronic, […]
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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Weird Halloween
No need to try fitting the Starving Weirdos into any pre-ordained category. They’ve coined their own name for their non-genre — "floorcore" — although it’s more a description of the band’s performance style than their sound. Bandmembers kneel or crouch on stage or in whatever room they’re playing (there’s often no stage) amidst an assortment […]
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Offend Maggie
The San Francisco-based group Deerhoof can be a polarizing band. Naysayers can’t stand the cacophony, or bassist Satomi Matsuzaki’s high waif-like falsetto vocals, often mixing Japanese and English lyrics together, creating abstract nonsense. Their songs constantly contain different parts lending to an angular, at times, fragmented sound. Fans love their music for all these reasons. […]
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Go Fish
Back in 1965, when musicians in San Francisco were just starting to invent psychedelic rock, an equally psychedelic folk/rock band called Country Joe and The Fish formed across the Bay in Berkeley, initially to serve as opening act at a campus performance by The Fugs and the poet Allen Ginsberg. In the beginning, the band […]
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Tim /Pleased To Meet Me
Hailing from Minneapolis, The Replacements were a fatalistic band. Headed by songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Paul Westerberg, the band drew praise from mid-’80s critics, and garnered a dedicated nationwide core of fans, but they couldn’t get enough radio airplay (thought to be too rough-around-the-edges) and thus didn’t sell enough "units." Meanwhile, live they were wildly […]
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Way to Normal
Ben Folds has let his imagination run away with him — an imagination he’s always had, but which has been reined in for most of his recording career. First it was kept in check by the three-person, three-instrument trio Ben Folds Five, which, even when it began to add string quartets and flugel horns, retained […]
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Is Nerdcore Dead?
Don’t be surprised if you see zombies walking the streets of Arcata Thursday. It’s not that Halloween has come early, and no, they’re not extras in a Jon Olsen video — they’re probably on their way to see mc chris at Humboldt Brews, as he brings the mc chris is dead tour to town. The […]
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Ask Your Neighbor
Underground instrumentalist Phil Spirito has journeyed from one obscure band to another. His membership with rex brought him together with Chicago-based band, Red Red Meat, many of whose members — including leader Tim Rutilli, Ben Massarella and Brian Deck — would later form Califone. The mixture of these two bands would result in an interesting […]
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Kraftwerk and The Electronic Revolution
Kraftwerk is a tough band to cover in a documentary because the scope of their influence on modern music is so wide that it’s nearly impossible to grasp, and their discography is so multidimensional that something is bound to be left out. A comprehensive and interesting history on the band seems like a difficult task, […]
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Ill Bill
Thursday’s Ill Bill hip hop show at Mazzotti’s on the Plaza was a complete "brodeo." What is a brodeo? A brodeo is an event where men bro down, or bro out. Basically, the audience was almost entirely composed of dudes (which I don’t really consider to be a great representation of humankind). At one point, […]
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The Resonance of Objects
Their record company, Matador, refers to them as a “nomadic duo” and notes that Nathan “Naybob” Shineywater and Rachael Hughes, aka Brightblack Morning Light, are “currently living in rural New Mexico” (judging from the photo supplied, somewhere out in the desert). More immediately, Brightblack is in greener climes, on their way south out of Oregon […]
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Irie, or Not?
If you don’t pay close attention to what’s going on in Southern Humboldt you may not have heard that there was some serious confusion last week regarding two SoHum events: last Saturday’s Humboldt Hoedown and this Saturday’s Irie Boogie. Both affairs were scheduled for Southern Humboldt Community Park, a lovely spot right outside of Garberville […]