Halloween tends to promote itself, even when it lands on a Monday, like in this wretched year. That’s just an invitation for a long weekend. I’ll probably go out, even though it’s the first day of the working week. I’m not too stressed about missing out on distributing candy, as I doubt that the forces […]
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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Sweepin’ Up
I want to do a little housecleaning before the month ends and my memories are lost in the unceasing accumulation of days. First up, I have a hearty thank you to Carol Jacobson and company over at the Eureka Symphony, who put on an incredible opening night on Sept. 30. I had never before heard […]
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Dr. Strangelove 2.0
Sunday marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anybody want to guess why I’ve been thinking about that lately? With no sign of de-escalation in sight on the European front, we’re all back under the umbrella of the dumbest human action imaginable: the specter of nuclear war. Back in 1962, […]
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Free Parties and Spoken Words
The zaftig orb weaver, often called a pumpkin spider, near my front door is getting fatter on her buggy spoils by the day, preparing for her brief voyage into motherhood before she returns to her ancestors in the Land of Frosts. My night walks and bike rides are by default becoming sharper and creepier, with […]
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Jazz in the Bardo
I have been trying to find a way to tie the works of the author Hilary Mantel with the music of Pharoah Sanders, and have been coming up bare, I’m afraid. Last week both died, leaving this land of plangent weeping, fallen violence, and occasional delicious meals and orgasms, in favor of the fields in […]
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To the Fall
Here we are, meeting together on the shores of the third season in the northern hemisphere, freshly appointed in our various positions, and shaking off the languorous coma of summertime to gather the power needed to squeeze every drop of warm pleasure out of the encroaching autumn. Our eyes are tuned to the angle of […]
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Clair de Lune
Well, this was quite a weekend, let me tell you. Apparently there was something called a Pisces Moon on Saturday, which is supposed to turn people like myself who have a birthday between Feb. 19 and March 20 into wicked and fantastic werewolves. Or so I am told; honestly I’m so checked out on the […]
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September Song
I spent Labor Day weekend participating in two of the more sublime and less evil American pastimes: the yard sale and the barbecue. The former was nice — I certainly met a lot of the neighborhood and even a few readers, which is always a nice encounter out in the wild. After having spent the […]
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Night Riders
It’s Virgo season, which, for an astrology heretic like myself, basically means “smokey summer/early fall.” Last weekend was also my baby brother’s b-day, so many happy returns, dear Tyler. This is a time of year when I like to take long evening drives out to nowhere, playing music loudly, with the windows open because, for […]
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Goodbye, August
Laying out in my sunny backyard last weekend with my friend Chini and the two gray sister cats that make up my brood, I had a moment of pure summer idyll. It might have had something to do with practicing my pitch wind-up with a few yard apples, or the sheer blue of the sky […]
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Two Kinds of Tunes
It has stuck with me over the years is how haunted some artists are (or were). I’m talking about folks like John Fahey, Townes Van Zandt, early-career-pre-coming-out Janis Ian (her record Between the Lines remains one of my misery favorites) and the late Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., who unceremoniously drank […]
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Make It So
Cicero, writing a couple thousand years ago in a now dead tongue, wryly noted the habit among the wealthy men of Rome of copying the ostentatiousness of a great man’s sumptuous villas, while showing no interest in imitating his fine personal virtues. Ain’t that the rich for you? Then, as now, money could not buy […]