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 […]
The Setlist
Our picks for the week’s best live music plus interviews and music news.
Posted inMusic
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 […]
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Passions and April Fools
I want to have fun and just play this week, but I have massive contrasts on my mind. Blame the first night of Passover, a venerable celebration of the safety for the first-born sons guaranteed during widespread destruction by painting the blood of the Paschal lamb on the doorframe in a ritual which likely has […]
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Spring Thaw
Oh baby, it’s that most magical time of the year. I know you can dig it because the ground around here is profoundly wet but can you smell it? Hell, I think I can even taste it. I am talking, dear readers, about the first week of spring. It has come at last and not […]
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DJs, St. Paddy’s and a Gut-string Quartet
John Steinbeck set his 14th novel Cannery Row in the height of the Great Depression, in a town dominated by one industry: fish canning. We live in such a place now — wait. I was going to write an introduction about a changing mono-economy, its effect on the local culture and how the citizens view […]
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Musical Transmitters
I’ve been bloviating a lot here lately, so I’ll make this short and sweet. I heard a sound last week, a most unique and wonderful sound, and I would like to share it with you, inasmuch as I can transmit that information via the printed word. I went back-country snowboarding on Horse Mountain last Monday […]
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Like the Saying Goes
Inspired by the use of the first half of the old adage “In like a lion, out like a lamb” employed by the Eureka Symphony for its concert series this Friday and Saturday, I started digging around online to find the origin of this March proverb. I didn’t get very far, as I am an […]
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Preach, Manic Street Preachers
As I write this, I am watching the snow melt on my porch in the early afternoon of a bank holiday Monday. What could be more wholesome and Peanuts-esque than snow on President’s Day? Well, how about living in a country where children don’t get slaughtered at school on Valentine’s Day? All because a group […]
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A Little Sentimental
This was a week of contrasts for me, many of them bittersweet. While I appreciated the sunshine on my face all week, I don’t relish wearing T-shirts in February. We need our winter rain and snow, and sunny days in midwinter do not auger well for the new year. I don’t want to have another […]