This is the longest week of the year but there is still plenty of nightlife, despite the absence of our collegiate population. We have noise shows, rock shows, folk and metal galore. I have carpentry and gardening projects to catch up on myself, and I can’t be bothered to waste the sun jabbering away so, […]
The Setlist
Our picks for the week’s best live music plus interviews and music news.
Posted inMusic
Fathers and Fests
We are creeping toward the salad days of summer, my dears, and this week has some proper preludes for that laziest, grasshopper-ish of seasons. Oyster Fest is here (a truly strange notion to me as no one sensible in my former home of Louisiana eats oysters in the warm months, but we are luckily blessed […]
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Amp Up and Ramp Up
It’s a packed week of great music so I will keep this intro as lean and mean as a vintage WWF wrestler’s rant track. Here goes: The weather’s fine, the music’s good, so get off the couch ya potatoes (hold the last vowel sound before cutting with the sibilant S) and see some dang shows! […]
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Party Like There’s Probably a Tomorrow
Memorial Day weekend has come and gone and with it the inauguration of the summer festival schedule begins. The 42nd installment of Summer Arts and Music Festival is happening in Benbow this weekend and, although I will likely not be there, I will be thinking about my erstwhile Southern Humboldt home and the charming people […]
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Art, Motion and Sound
It’s Memorial Day weekend and the sweet days of Kinetic Madness await all you lucky kiddies by the bay. I’ll be in another bay area missing the sculptured fun but making up for it by celebrating the 97th birthday of a very special lady. So I wish you all a spectacular time behind the magical […]
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Call Me By Your Band Name
The more creatively named bands featured this week got my wheels spinning down memory lane. Despite a preternatural and seething distrust of all things over and done with, I couldn’t help thinking about some of the uniquely named groups I’ve encountered over the decades. I myself used to front a New Orleans-based punk/psych outfit called […]
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Call Your (or Somebody’s) Mother
I will make this short and sweet, like these fragrant May nights we are lucky to share. Your life started with a womb — unless you were hatched like my friend Walt the bearded dragon — and if you are lucky enough to still have its owner as a positive part of your life, you […]
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A Little History, a Little Dancing
On May 5, 1862, the badly outnumbered Mexican army won an unlikely victory against the invading French during the Battle of Puebla. The significance of the short-lived victory took shape in the following year as the French established themselves as rulers with the capture of Mexico City. In a rallying sign of solidarity as far […]
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and All Week
My roommate has been reading Macbeth all week, which sparked a discussion about our favorite Shakespeare plays, quotes and characters. While his is currently the titular power-hungry Scotsman and the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquoy appears to have all the quotes he needs to satisfy, I am not so easy to satisfy anymore. Sometimes […]
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Vinyl for the Soul
This week includes an important day for your local music scene, sandwiched right between 4/20 and Earth Day. It’s Record Store Day, a barely decade-old bridge between the music collecting public, independent record stores (what’s left of them) and the recording industry (what’s left of it). Why would I mention an ostensibly commercial holiday in […]
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Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood
This is a special week because this one has — cue the Theremin music — a Friday the 13th in it! Ooooh. Ahhhh. Spooky. Why is Friday the 13th especially spooky exactly? Ask five different people and unless you get any overlap on the “I honestly have no idea” response, you are very likely to […]
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Great Artists, Appreciative Crowds, Beautiful Place
We have a busy week this week. The Redwood Coast Music Festival will be in full swing from Thursday through Sunday with live American roots music invading Eureka venues with a passionate intensity matched only perhaps by the tidal drift of neighboring Humboldt Bay. The bands and details are too many to mention in this […]