I’m going to keep this one brief because I’m on the backend of the long weekend and reeling from some bad business that went down on Kinetic Saturday. I’m talking about the last call at one of my longtime favorite watering holes, the Alibi. I had a farewell cocktail there after work the day before […]
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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Hardcore UFO’s
Well, it’s finally here, Memorial Day weekend, which locally means the Kinetic Sculpture whatever it’s called these days. The weather looks promising, and this stuff is always fun, a welcome diversion and genuinely organic article of regional fun that hasn’t been digested by the tasteless acid pit of global consumerism (yet). I’m looking forward to […]
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Farewell Transmission
I don’t have the space or interest for big elegies or bios just now, but I would like to note the passing last week of two American visionaries who were utterly unique, yet still enabled so much of what is organically fantastic in our nation’s music and cinema. Steve Albini was a master engineer, and […]
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Pomp and Circumstance
It’s graduation time again at Cal Poly Humboldt and due to the circumstances of our times, as well as the stupid pomposity of the University’s president and his enablers, grads will be walking just about everywhere around the county except for on the campus. I don’t have much to say about that beyond what I […]
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Desperados Under the Eaves
My serotonin levels are shot from reading too much of our local and national news, and, even worse, the responses in the comments section. The old adage “history is written by the winners” raises the obvious question, “Well then, what do the losers write?” As far as I can tell, the answer is comments, op-eds, […]
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Freedom of Choice
There was some sort of local scuffling happening during press time for this column, so under the comforting thump of a police helicopter in the near-full moon-lit sky over my home, I consulted an official government dictionary for American Media — both social and corporate — to help clarify some terms I’ve been hearing a […]
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The Royal Scam
On this year’s 4/20, let’s all take a moment to celebrate the true message of legalizing marijuana in the American way: Commodifying the struggle for freedom against oppression so that a small handful of rich assholes can get even wealthier without the unpleasantness of restorative justice for the millions of lives destroyed by the long […]
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Big White Cloud
No, we didn’t get a proper eclipse last Monday, but I still found a momentary pulse beat of Satori from a gliding collision of outside sources, and that’s good enough for me. I had been driving around listening to the sublime John Cale song I titled this week’s column after, so perhaps a moment like […]
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Reap the Wild Wind
Well, April is here, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain,” according to the poet T.S. Eliot in one of his most famous works. A popular interpretation of his provocation of calling this “the cruellest month” is the notion that new life coming out of […]
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Down with the Sickness
I’m going to be brief here because I’m recovering from some kind of minor crud. Looking through my recent history for possible disease vectors, from out-of-town visitors to a few crowded indoor situations, and I’m coming up with nothing concrete. So I’ll blame my troubles on doing sound last week for an incredibly strange and […]
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He Was a Friend of Mine
The Ides of March came last Friday, some 2060-plus years since mighty Caesar got smoked, and we lost our little king. I am talking about my partner and I putting down our sweet, little, old dog man, when the forces of time and congestive heart failure brought on a fast catastrophe. I had put some […]
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When the Springtime Comes Again
Spring is coming back, which means we’ve pushed through two human-made hurdles in which I have little interest: the Oscars and Daylight Savings time. To the latter I say pick one and stick with it, a sentiment shared by a majority of my fellow Californians, and, like many such things, an issue hopelessly tied up […]