It’s fitting that this year Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, when Catholics traditionally give something up to pay penance to a greater spiritual truth. Love and romance, in my experience, also involve giving things away and sometimes those things are just too much and the whole thing crumbles like […]
The Setlist
Our picks for the week’s best live music plus interviews and music news.
Posted inMusic
Bowled Over
January has come and gone, and now midwinter has truly set in. With it comes the shortest month and, for many, the biggest sports event of the year as well: the Super Bowl. I used to enjoy watching football but the commercialization and hyper-militarized nationalism of the culture coupled with the extreme reactionary response from […]
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Creatures of the Night
I’m finally kicking the flu but I am not at full speed, so this has been a slow and wet week. I tried going out but didn’t do well with that and ended up crawling back into my lair to listen to blues music and dispense sluggish and hazy bon mots to my friends and […]
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Wellville Blues
When John Harvey Kellogg developed his now famous Corn Flakes in the end of the 19th century, the product was intended to promote better health through blandness, the idea being that an unexciting and flavorless beginning to the day would discourage the consumer from committing an act that the staunch Seventh-day Adventist considered to be […]
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Go On Without Me
I went out a few times this last week, and I am paying for it now. From Blue Lake to Eureka, I trekked about for social and musical engagements, and now I am a wreck. I trusted you, Humboldt, and you have rewarded my childlike faith in your essential goodness by giving me your germs. […]
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The Gilded Cage
As I write this on Monday, the first day of a brand new year I can report to you, dear readers, that I am sharp of eye and frosty of mind, having bucked my regular New Year’s Eve trend of getting wasted drunk. So rather than sitting in the soggy detritus of another tanked evening […]
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Rockin’ in the New Year
Have you ever skipped a rock across a frozen pond? It sounds like tension cables snapping or an industrial spring being tuned. It sounds like Star Wars blasters, particularly if the ice is thin or there are holes in it. It’s a perfectly natural sound but it doesn’t seem like one at all. It seems […]
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Enter the Yuletide Slumber
I have to admit it: I am a bit of a Grinch. It isn’t because I dislike Christmas as a holiday, mind you; I enjoy the lights and the bonhomie and the carols (the minor-key ones anyway). I even like fruitcake and being cold, though both in very small doses. As I write this I […]
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Macktown Smackdown
By Collin Yeo Having gotten slightly verbose and heavy in last week’s introduction, I am going to leave this one a tad lighter. This week I’ll be looking for themes to some evenings while making occasional rude personal connections to our local geography and generally stinking things up with what I’d like to think passes […]
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Singing at the Landscape
Last week was a weird one for me. The whole Sunday-Sunday run I felt a little out of frame and unusual. Blame it on the Super/Frost Moon. Blame it on that modern vampire-cult the GOP passing a dungeon-crafted tax bill during the witching hour that doesn’t even disguise their contempt for basically everyone I know […]
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Hear Some Music, Make Your Own
For most of us, last week was likely less stuffed with music and more stuffed with other temptations. A few legendary artists came through town but the streets were fairly empty over the holiday. This week is enjoying a trickling in of musical acts as the students and civilians likewise return to our county. So […]
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A Musical Feast
It’s finally here. That most musical of feast days when we celebrate the gift of harmony with the rapturous delight of food. That most sacred day of eating for the musician and music fan alike. I am, of course, talking about the Wednesday, Nov. 22 feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. […]