Things are picking up somewhat around here but not quite to the levels we can expect to see in the coming weeks. This is the time of the winter lull, when many bands are dormant in response to a limited audience. Marry that to the ongoing series of closing venues, general economic misery and a sense of societal decay that hangs everywhere like a heavy fog of diesel fumes over a poisoned bay, and you start to really get a feel for the physical pull of depression cratering the cultural landscape and beyond. Everyone lives to work and works to live, and nothing is getting less expensive or easier. We have a news cycle as alarming as it is deeply stupid, with a pinwheel of possible new adventures on the horizon, from manufactured wars to domestic terrorism by ex-military types to another possible pandemic. All of which have the opportunity to cease this little column and its small corner of expression in our remote home county. Which isn’t much in the larger view of things but still doesn’t make me feel particularly good. I’m nothing if not a man set on and obsessed with distractions from the massive, dumb forces rolling around like a uranium pinball on the terrain of our unfolding history. People get mad at me when I write this, but while art expresses the big things quite well, it just doesn’t change them, at least not in the way we all wish it did, anyway. Vonnegut agreed with me on that point (or rather, I with him), but I’ll probably still garner the ire of some wilted flower children who still haven’t recognized that the perfume promises of a New Age have shifted their scents to the coffin-freshener smell of the undead. Ah, yes, that new crypt smell, finer than the commercial cologne splendor of Corinthian Leather. It’s everywhere you look these days, where the real fortune is to be made in commodifying the decay until the money falls apart with everything else.
Oh well, let’s go on and go out and have whatever fun we can find anyway. It’s not like we have a choice.
Be well and consider this my first official welcome to you from 2025.
Thursday
Swing on by the Basement this evening at 8 p.m. if you are in the mood for some swing jazz and pop excellence, courtesy of Swingo Domingo. No cover at the door, but as always, consider bringing some coin for refreshments and to give the players a dram of something.
Friday
Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka continues its fine use of the pipe organ on site, with a concert by visiting virtuosic player Adam Brakel. The program includes appropriately Baroque tunes, as well as a rendition of French organist Léonce de Saint-Martin’s Toccata de la Libération, written to celebrate the 1944 expulsion of the Nazis from Paris. There is a suggested donation of $20 and the concert begins at 7 p.m.
Saturday
San Francisco comedians Spencer Devine and Rachel Pilson continue the last of their two-night headlining residency at Savage Henry Comedy Club tonight at 9 p.m. ($10). If you would like to get in on the ground floor of some rising Bay Area stand-ups, tonight or Friday’s gigs are the place to be.
On the topic of stand-up comedy, national headliner and late night TV performer Michael Palascak is doing an earlier set at the Arcata Theatre Lounge tonight at 6 p.m. Early bird tickets are going for $20, while the door cover will cost you $5 more. This show is advertised as having an 8:30 p.m. ending, so in theory you could hit both spots and fill your entire night with laughter for under $40.
Sunday
My beat is about live music but that’s nominal, given the gaps in that genre of entertainment locally, and the need to fill them with something to offer people outside of the confines of their own homes. That being said, I will never consider an endorsement of big screen Muppet movies to be filler: I do now, and have always, loved those fuzzy weirdos, and am happy to rep their canon. Especially when they are paired with an actor like Tim Curry, a man so multi-talented, unique, yet chameleon-like he seems like a being who, not unlike the Muppets, transcends the technical range of mere humanity. You can enjoy the antics of his Long John Silver and his scurvy crew of felted sea dogs at the Arcata Theatre Lounge, which will be showing the 1996 film Muppet Treasure Island tonight. Doors at 5 p.m., show starts at 6 p.m. ($8, $12 with movie poster).
Monday
Keep the home fires burning and close the pens and shutters tight; there’s nothing new tonight other than the first full moon of the New Year, the Wolf Moon.
Tuesday
Black Flag is one of the few original wave of American punk acts who have everything needed to cement a worldwide icon status: a highly influential discography that covers everything from early hardcore to proto-sludge, grunge and alternative metal; an instantly recognizable sound throughout despite five decades of line-up changes, with guitarist Greg Ginn remaining the only constant; and a four-bar, stylized logo that is instantly recognizable everywhere. Like a lot of iconic bands from many different genres, the band has various eras — I happen to be mostly into the sludgy, creepy-crawl and jazz punk sounds of records like My War and The Process of Weeding Out — and as such has a deep well to draw from for setlist. The current line-up, fronted by pro-skateboarder Mike Vallely, is currently on tour playing The First Four Years compilation album released in 1983, featuring tracks the band recorded before Henry Rollins joined as vocalist to inaugurate the band’s most famous era. You can catch them tonight at the Arcata Theatre Lounge at 7:30 p.m. ($43).
Wednesday
Not much going on tonight, so I’ll take a brief moment to point out two changes to your regular Wednesday night options. Big Mood, the weekly queer dance party at the Miniplex, is no longer happening on hump day but will return on Jan. 24, where it will take up residency on the fourth Friday of every month. Secondly, every Wednesday this month at the Logger Bar, you can enjoy the one-two fun blast of Jazz Bros at 4 p.m., followed up by karaoke at 8 p.m. Get it? Got it. Good.
Collin Yeo (he/him) believes that all the bullshit promises of A.I. can best be understood by discussing the Orphic Myths with satire and allegory. He will elaborate only if paid to do so.
This article appears in The Battle Over Bear River.