Hey, thanks for picking the paper up on this Thanksgiving weekend, and happy Thanksgiving to you, our readers. Without you — well, I’d probably still be slaving over a hot stove and carving turkey at some local eatery. As you might guess, the Thanksgiving holiday tends to put a crimp in the local entertainment scene. […]
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
Smells like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire
Book by Matt Taibbi. Published by Black Cat Books. There are only two reasons to read the otherwise decrepit Rolling Stone magazine these days, and neither of them have anything to do with music. One is David Rees’ pissed-off clip art comic strip Get Your War On, and the other is the stiletto sharp journalism […]
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Rooster McClintock
Oct. 27, 2007 Live at the Ocean Grove Crunk music is the notorious southern brand of hip hop — dizzying repetitive beats crafted to make dancers ecstatic, often with the assistance of alcohol and drugs. A pre-Halloween evening with Humboldt honky tonk band Rooster McClintock at Trindad’s Ocean Grove offers an easy comparison: honky crunk. […]
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Why Kerouac Matters
Book by John Leland. Published by Viking. Few literary brands need to be reduced in size and fable more than that of Jack Kerouac. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road, the hip European clothing shop Hogan debuted its own line of Kerouac-inspired beatnik clothing, including boots starting at $475. Clearly […]
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Help!
Directed by Richard Lester New 2-disk DVD release Apple/EMI Even if there are movies greater than Help! — which recently arrived in a new DVD edition — it’s hard to think of movies more wonderful. The Beatles were great enough without their film work, but the double whammy of Hard Day’s Night and Help! was […]
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Post-Vocal Symphonies
My co-worker Heidi asked me a question at the office the other day, something along the lines of "Do you know anything about a band from Canada coming to town? I can’t remember the name but my friend says they’re good." "Are they Quebecois?" I wondered. I’d heard about that show. She didn’t think that […]
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The Alchemist
CD by Witchcraft Rise Above Records/Candlelight Records. The reality that any band immersed in a “retro” rock sound faces is that an inability to transcend novelty can result in them becoming a footnote in music history. After two releases of Black Sabbath/Pentagram-worshipping doom, Sweden’s Witchcraft was close to a point of stagnancy that could have […]
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The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
Published by Black Lizard Over the past 15 years, a steady stream of good, bad and indifferent anthologies has promised to deliver the thrills of pulp fiction. But for all the retro cover art, melodramatic blurb copy and Quentin Tarantino allusions, their contents have been shockingly deficient in what aficionados consider to be the real […]
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Ghostface Killah
Ghostface Killah is a brilliant storyteller and lyricist, and is the only Wu-Tang Clan member still making relevant solo albums. He’s a prolific and increasingly media-savvy artist who nonetheless seems to constantly shoot himself in the foot commercially. He’s also a crybaby. Recently, word got out that Wu-Tang Clan would release its first album in […]
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Generation to Generation
Ritchie Havens may not be the best songwriter out there. In fact, he’s quick to defer to his peers, and he’ll tell you it took him years to get past singing other people’s songs. And he’s not the greatest guitar player — he has an idiosyncratic style that’s mostly rhythmic strumming. But he knows how […]
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Wooden Shjips
CD by Wooden Shjips. Holy Mountain Records. Psychedelic rock has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the past few years, and we here in California have been lucky to witness such homegrown talent as Comets on Fire, Citay and Six Organs of Admittance as they have nursed the scene from its humble beginnings to its […]
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Snoop Dogg
In concert Thursday, Oct. 25., 2007 At the Eureka Muni. I was convinced that the Snoop show, which went down Oct. 25 at the Eureka Municipal Auditorium, would be a total sausage fest (mostly dudes I mean). I thought said sausages would shed tears and scream and jump up and down excitedly, kind of like […]