I’ve been watching old movies and listening to even older songs lately — no surprise there —mostly dipping into the early British career of Alfred Hitchcock and the tunes of Fats Waller. Let me tell you, innuendo was a magical thing before the squares and moral morons figured things out and got (only just) wise […]
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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Near Wild Heaven
In her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery tells us of a particularly earnest and yearning moment in her eponymous heroine’s youth: “It wouldn’t matter if I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for missing this one. They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining […]
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Heaven or Las Vegas
I’m making myself laugh imagining the story of a man who manages to completely ruin his life in next week’s pummeling four-day gauntlet of Super Bowl Sunday, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. One could argue there’s a break Monday but that’s just for casuals. Win or lose, a team’s fans need a day […]
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See No Evil
A funny thing happened the other day. I was sitting in my truck, birdwatching at the slough and thinking about really nothing much other than the overflowing banks, and an obnoxious bag of trash floating several yards out in the deep water. A weird “Eureka!” moment crept up on me like that garbage flotilla I […]
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Dry the Rain
I’ve been enjoying the frantic back and forth between the flood days and warm sun days, so I haven’t really paid much attention to January slipping by. Which is unfortunate because it’s one of my favorite months. They all have their charm, depending on where you are, and my associations from childhood with our Humboldt […]
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Campfire Headphase
Regular readers of this space know that I tend to eulogize a lot, and lately I’ve taken an interest in promoting the life’s work of people who left the land of sunshine in 2023. This isn’t out of some morbid impulse or gothic obsession with death. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, as the more […]
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On the Tundra
As I have mentioned since the arrival of winter, this season has a lot of dead nights on the calendar of live entertainment. However, even a leafless tree or dead snag can hide a honeycomb in its trunk. This week is one such honeycomb. We have it all going on: big name entertainers spanning across […]
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People Like Us
I hope you all landed on the other side of the year safely, with minimal damage to yourself as well as any municipal structures, especially fire hydrants. I stayed in and watched movies; that’s the era I’m in now, I guess. It’s probably for the best. As I warned last week, having been on this […]
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Father and Child Reunion
As a fan of editorial cartoons from years long gone, I can assure you that few themes survive the incomprehensible gulf of time’s effect on human culture and meaning other than a small handful of personifications. These caricatures — the fat cat business tycoon, the resolute but downtrodden worker, the clumsy, vicious and stupid warmongering […]
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Nativity
I didn’t mention it at the time because I had other things in mind, but one of the greatest Irish songwriters of all time, Shane MacGowan, dying in the same news cycle as Henry Kissinger sounds like the beginning of a joke you would tell only when drunk and with friends. The real dark harmonic […]
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New Moon Fever
I don’t attribute much of human behavior to the far-out celestial bodies in our solar system. Credit that to a rebellious streak I’m employing against my now-deceased parents who met in the 1970s in a transcendental “community” that was somewhat active in that archetyping. I don’t worry about which planet is in retrograde. I do, […]
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Silent Nights
It’s no secret that our nightlife, bountiful as it may be for an area as remote as Humboldt County, ebbs and flows. Especially this time of year, when the holidays and the schools more or less dictate the terms regarding the potential audience numbers needed to lure bands, promoters and venues into production mode. That’s […]