I’ve got a lot on my mind but very little room to write about it, which is fine; I’ve been overlong in the intros lately anyway. So I’ll just give a peek instead of an essay about what I’ve been thinking about recently. Two things mainly, both published in this still-young year, the first I am digesting, the second I keep returning to and am, in fact, chewing on with my ears while I write this. Different mediums, you see. Over the holiday weekend, I finished reading a new translation of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, written by a British pop-historian with an ear for relatively current lingo and provocative vulgarity. I’ve been smitten by various translations of the lives of the 12 since I first saw the BBC production of I,Claudius as a kid, back when PBS was unfettered by reactionary Capitol Hill cavemen and allowed to show intelligent programming accompanied by a bit of blood, scandal and boobs. RIP to that publicly funded treasure.
My other thing is the Mayor Feedback EP by a favorite short-form composer Chris Zabriskie. I’ll always love “Air Hockey Saloon,” the first track of his I noticed way back when, but this new album breezes past my natural dislike of nostalgia to another room entirely. Known for his odd titles, I took this week’s column title from one of its tunes.
That’s all that’s fit to print for now. Welcome to June.
Thursday
Some evenings around here certainly seem to rhyme. Tonight is one such example, as there are a couple of free beer garden/tasting room shows starting at 6 p.m., featuring two of our finest local talents. At Six Rivers Brewery, you will find Dale Cash & Friends. I grew up down the street from Mr. Cash and when I was a kid, I marveled at his profound bass playing skills, my first sonic weapon of choice. I took exactly one lesson from him about fundamentals during which he showed me how to play over and along with Hendrix riffs and some Chopin Etudes to study. He left me with, “I don’t want to waste your time — everything you need to learn you will get from listening and practicing,” and was absolutely right. In case you have slept on it, he remains one of the greats, spiraling outwards from a megalithic, “in the pocket” blues foundation which you simply can’t teach, only discover. Come see for yourself. Water seeks its own level so I’m certain the “& friends” part of the show will feature no slouches either.
Meanwhile, at the Eureka Redwood Curtain Tasting Room, the young ace and musical jackalope Daniel Nickerson will be doing a solo showing of some of the magical oomph-a that makes the many other groups he fronts or plays in — like the Cowtown Serenaders, The Blueberry Hill Boogie Band and Makenu — so special.
Friday
First, some housekeeping and a mea culpa. I take a lot of notes for this column, but the handwriting from my crippled dominant hand produces a scrawl that looks like it comes from a doctor who’s been abusing his own medicine. It’s honestly a wonder I don’t mess things up more often. No excuses, just an explanation. When I reported last Friday’s free Big 8 show at the Logger Bar at 9 p.m., I was a week early. My bad. The good news is, if you still want some of that uptown New Orleans funk and soul sound far west of the West Bank, you are in luck tonight. Same time, same place.
OK, that out of the way, here are two gigs in Arcata. Froth is the name of the new-ish coffee shop where the wonderful and sorely missed Blondies used to live. It is putting on a cover-less, all-ages show at 7 p.m. featuring all local bands. I’ve pumped the fine post-metal apocalypse trio Gnawed On here before, but these other two bands are as new to this as the venue. Kept will be playing its first show and promoting its first EP release tonight, while Sew will be singing a song I have yet to hear.
A half an hour later at the Arcata Theatre Lounge, Danny Kiranos, aka Amigo the Devil, will be playing his raw and blackened folk tunes with support by tourmates Tele Novella and David Talley. One of my dear amigos from my long-ago touring days, Mr. Texas himself, Joe Dudley McCoy, is a fan, which is the best endorsement I can offer, because Old Hoss is a much more devoted music lover with far better taste and spirit than myself ($40).
Saturday
The Eureka Symphony presents the final night of its 2024/2025 season finale, appropriately titled “A Grand Finale.” The program features the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by late Romantic period Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz, with Cal Poly Humboldt professor Daniela Mineva on the keys, along with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, aka, “the dance one.” The string that ties these two pieces together shared roots in folk reels and dances at the time, a subject I covered with music director and conductor Carol Jacobson in a recent interview (stay tuned to this publication for more on that soon). As always, huzzah for our beloved local symphony, I’m certainly looking forward to this one, as any lover of orchestral music should be too. The Arkley Center for the Performing Arts is the place, 7:30 p.m. is the time, and the tickets are priced in advance from $21-$54, but if it’s not sold out and you show up early with cash, you might be able to score some $15 seats, $10 for students.
Sunday
The Redwood Interfaith Gospel Choir is presenting its spring concert just before the blooms go from vernal verdance to summer straw, nestled right between the Flower and the Strawberry moons. Which is just right, as far as I am concerned. This 2 p.m. matinee will be making the Arcata Playhouse thrum like a wooden diaphragm with the joyful vocal noise of the collective human bellows. What a treat.
Monday and Tuesday
I waited for unfurling confirmations and rooted around for sprouts, but found the early layer of the loam in the first week of June dry of musical fecundity. Make do with your own mulch and manure tonight.
Wednesday
John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, a man whose against-the-grain, gory and brilliant scattergun cinema poetry embedded itself into my young mind via the cult VHS days of my childhood. The Thing will always remain my favorite, but They Live is a great offering too, albeit more depressing because its alien threat seems more plausible, and abetted by the worst yuppie Quislings of our species. The movie’s Los Angeles is full of urban homeless camps housing radical underground revolutionary signal hackers who offer a vision of reality to the lucky few to snag a pair of illusion-stripping sunglasses before the group is snuffed out by a viciously realistic L.A. police force. An epic fight between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper in an alleyway stand-in for Plato’s Cave sees the brutal naked reality of interplanetary class subjugation overpowering the pain of the protracted brawl. A nonstop seesaw of paranoid horror and massive, violent action, along with some truly ugly alien overlords who give our own disgusting elite a run for their money. This flick has it all. Come see for yourself at the Arcata Theatre Lounge. Doors at 6 p.m., the show’s around 7 p.m., snag a seat for $6, or $10 if you want to leave with a poster.
Collin Yeo (he/him) is trying to monetize all his annoying qualities, not just writing. Fire sale, everything must go.
This article appears in Glory Over Land and Sea.