For reasons of space and decorum, I’m going to (mostly) hold my tongue about 2024, other than to say, man, what an evil nightmare. Here’s hoping the next one eases up a lot. And if it doesn’t, I’m coming swinging for the kid in the top hat and the “2025” sash. See ya next year. […]
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
Blue Christmas
I was woken up late last night by the hooting of two owls somewhere outside of my bedroom. Despite my fairly new fascination with birdwatching, this was not the gift I was hoping for, as I was still recovering from the shock of some loved ones being in a car wreck earlier that day (they’re […]
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Dead Flag Blues
For obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking lately about the more headline-grabbing political violence expressed by solo actors, rather than the steady, deadly wall of daily violence enacted by our domestic and foreign policy. As I write this, it looks like the cops have someone in custody for allegedly killing a health insurance CEO in the […]
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Chariots of Fire
The rains have broken for the moment and we are in the season of low sun, when the horizon can be a blinding thing to behold at the edges of the day, particularly in the hours leading to sunset. That December sun is really something, particularly if you are driving, riding a bike or trying […]
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Simple Gifts
“‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.” Joseph Brackett Jr., Shaker Elder, 1848. If you ever find yourself in the […]
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Under the Milky Way
When I was a boy, I had a recurring dream about a vast, white expanse, possibly snow, possibly fine sand, probably something entirely different. Across this ethereal tundra walked a procession of animals, creatures of all kinds from across the world. Giraffes, kangaroos, lions and cheetahs mingled with penguins, bright green frogs, tortoises, ostriches, butterflies […]
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How Does It Feel?
The continuum of American politics since the honeymoon wore away in the Obama years has come with a basic axiom that things will stay the same while they somehow continue to get worse. As the faux chrome of change peeled off 44’s machine and rusted over with the same decayed patina of the horrors of […]
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Send in the Clowns
Due to the nature of deadlines and the passage of linear time, I have far less insight into the winner of the presidential election than you, dear reader, as I am writing this on Election Day. And I don’t want to make any predictions about it, either. I view coin-flipping as a byproduct of nervousness […]
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Box of Rain
It’s fitting that the man who co-wrote the most famous song about dying, by a group called The Grateful Dead, would see fit to pass away during this period of days that finds the living in communion with the departed, surrounded — around here at least — by a fat backdrop of rain. More on […]
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A Song for You
I’ve been trying to find healthy ways to sublimate my grief at the maddening state of the world that doesn’t involve completely disconnecting, because I am not a monk, ascetic, Zen master, or nihilistic doomsayer. I am none of those people, I’m pretty simple, actually, as I suspect a lot of you out there are, […]
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Idioteque
In a 2006 essay in The Nation by the late, great Alexander Cockburn called “The Triumph of Crackpot Realism,” Cockburn gazes at the normalized, violent insanity wrought by Washington D.C. on the Middle East and quotes the work of the American sociologist C. Wright Mills: “In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with […]
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John Brown’s Body
I’ve been trying to make sense of how so many people, some of whom I once considered to be moral, ethical, and generally “good eggs,” as Bertie Wooster would say, can’t seem to take a hard line on the genocide our country is currently abetting in Palestine and now Lebanon. Some things don’t have the […]