Pairing is a weird notion, particularly in art and music, where not every comparison is consonant. A lot is left up to individual taste, as well, which is the nature of critical study. My general criteria for reviewing local music is as follows: I won’t write about anything I disliked (this town ain’t big enough […]
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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Party Rocking
The art of the playlist is a lot like conversation, there’s a flow state that wants to be achieved by the unconscious mind for the benefit of the collective whole. When choosing our songs, we are likewise choosing our words and tailoring them as best as we can for the context of the desired exchange. […]
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Good Rituals
Summer is finally here, in the technical sense. I inaugurated the season last weekend by working on Saturday, then spending all day Sunday at the first iteration of Fernstock, serving as the emcee and one of the judges. And while I have plenty of experience with the former, I have a different experience with the […]
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Songs for Summer
As a music-obsessed teen in the late-1990s, I often found myself at odds with prevailing sensibilities, an alienating experience that has actually helped me over the years. How? Well, to paraphrase my cousin Jet, the secret of eternal relevance is a withering distrust of most current popular culture. So while some of my peers were […]
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Bee Loud
June has arrived, which means summer is basically here. It certainly was for me last weekend but more on that later. Before industrial societies overtook the global paradigm, summer started when nature felt like it, which, for classical and middle period Europeans, usually meant sometime in May, and certainly well before the summer solstice. The […]
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Follies, Diversions and Crowds
It’s interesting how associative memory works. I can think of someone I know or have known, and that thought will pass through like a windy cloud, shapeless and fleeting. However, if I am in a crowd of people (say, for instance, the Arcata Plaza on Kinetic Saturday) and a familiar face pops up, all of […]
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You Can’t Fight in the War Room
I’ve always found it kind of odd that we call it Memorial Day, since the American consciousness is generally incapable of attaching memory to reflection in a way that serves as a reliable monument to the past. We tend to expand grievances while bumping out facts in favor of a national mythology incompatible with an […]
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Timelines
Last weekend, I decided to do something I occasionally find myself driven to with the same blind intensity of purpose that steers a spawning salmonid: I rewatched a favorite movie. Not just any movie, but one I consider to be perfect from the score to the atmosphere to the acting, just a wholly enjoyable experience. […]
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Poly Promenade
Living year-round in a college town is weird and it seems living in a Cal Poly town is only going to be weirder. Assuming I will ever be able to afford to permanently settle here, my years will always be divided by the academic calendar, already askew from nature, beginning as it does, in autumn. […]
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The Infinite Jukebox
Last week we lost Harry Belafonte and early this week, Gordon Lightfoot saw his last sundown. In both cases, there is in my mind a tone of triumph rather than tragedy, as they died at advanced ages, in which living is in itself an achievement. Particularly in the case of Belafonte, who was a four-year […]
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God’s Eyes
“Every love story is a ghost story” was a favorite quote of the late author David Foster Wallace, which he attributed to the later author Virginia Woolf. This wasn’t the case, however, as the quote has been traced to the Australian author Christina Stead, who was referring to writing after the death of her husband. […]
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Color Wheel
Well friends, it’s the beginning of flower season again and I could not be more pleased. I’m talking calendulas, daffodils, trilliums, California poppies (not the band, but they are fine, too). I have an abstract relationship with flowers, in that I encounter them as a cheerful addition to my daily life without choosing to become […]