April ends with this issue, along with a microdosing session of damnation in my house that began with an early Holy Saturday and ended with a rewatch of Citizen Kane last weekend. The connective tissue between these events came courtesy of a revisit to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, where, sometime around April 10, 1300 A.D., the author and the shadow of the poet Virgil found themselves at the mountain of Purgatory, having committed to climbing over Satan to dig out of Hell. Like Calvin and Hobbes digging to China, but to escape wrath rather than incur it from a father who’d have preferred the driveway to remain un-holey. Digging oneself out of a nightmarish descent seems worse than anything, but it has been done as recently as 1985 by the mountaineer Joe Simpson as captured in the 2003 documentary Touching the Void. By comparison, my reading experience was way less harrowing.
I like to reread Dante around the April anniversary of this trip outta Hell. It’s like Bloomsday, which I have no business celebrating yet because I still haven’t read Joyce’s Ulysses. Divine Comedy has an ascension after the fall, whereas Orson Welles’ debut masterpiece offers no such release. From the white squall of a childhood remembered in the deathbed dreams of the protagonist, the life of Charles Foster Kane is a cursed journey into the vampire’s castle of empty treasures. It’s an excruciating two-hour surgery where the soul is sucked out of the tyrant of Xanadu and spun into a hideous pandemonium of cluttered wealth until Rosebud, the last relic of his purity, is burned by bored and exhausted workers. His dearest memory is reduced to an unremarkable tinder for a private inferno burning for as many lifetimes as his empty wealth will fuel it. Horrible stuff, more terrifying than the best horror films and a perfect cinematic coda to our last Gilded Age.
Well, at least that Gilded Age had some gilding. Museums, opera houses and libraries. Islands of old growth groves among the wreckage of unchecked capital. Let these new monsters build their ballrooms and arches. Let them have their super-yachts and crypto-powered company favelas. May their grotesque wealth feed the furnaces of the artificial sun in the cosmos of their own opulent damnation. You and I only need the old gold standard price of a couple of coins for the ferryman when our time’s up.
Welcome to May, the only month that begins with solidarity for the rest of us bored and exhausted workers currently digging our way out of damnation.
Thursday
Humbrews has been peeking its head out of the wet loam and into the sunshine with a fine run of shows. This week’s calendar has more heat under the bonnet than the previous ones, suggesting no end to the building head of steam, and tonight has a lot of horsepower. Tony Furtado is an OG road dog of the finest order, having slung his banjo around the world since the late 1980s while evolving a hybrid Americana style that is as vibrant as it is connected to the petrified roots of our ancestral musical lineage. If that is of interest to you, he will be onstage with his excellent trio sometime after 8 p.m. ($25).
Friday
Bay Area indie-jazz act Heart Matter will be jamming at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 7 p.m. I’m notoriously a sucker for a vibraphone-heavy sound, and plonker Dillon Vado jams on some locally produced Marimba One gear, so more points in his favor. Singer Amy D provides the other portion of the melodic centerpiece to the quartet, and everything I’ve heard so far suggests a good time. Twenty bucks is a deal for tonight’s May Day fare. The workers of the world certainly include musicians, after all.
Saturday
Two bitchin’ rock shows tonight, on either side of the bay for those of you forced to take sides. First up at the Shanty at 8 p.m. you will find the mighty Black Plate at what is likely to be their last show until the harvest moon of fall comes tickling down from the sky. Also on the bill is newly minted doom-ish group Hearth from the lovely Open Head Records scene, along with Duff Strugglers II and Stridor,whose guitarist Nathan Balano will be celebrating a birthday. Happy birthday, Nathan! This show is free so you can pass on the cash by buying Mr. Balano a sody pop or something else wet and refreshing.
Meanwhile, an hour and a half later at Humbrews, Humco hero pantheon rockers The Hitch have saddled up yet again for a six-string dust up, along with local mysterions Magic Ov Spell, who are not, despite certain misinformation out there, called “Magic of Spells” or any similar formation. This show should be a shoulder-to-shoulder deal, so I’d suggest snagging a $15 advance ticket rather than a $20 at-the-door stub if you want to guarantee a spot in the crowd.
Sunday
Speaking of double-headers, here are two classy matinees for fans of instrumental music from the “classic” end of the instrumental repertoire. Garrick Woods is a CPH instructor and fantastic cellist whose chops I recently enjoyed at the Eureka Symphony early this month. He’s going to act as musical director and conductor along with fellow instructor and concertmaster Holly MacDonell for a free performance by the Partnership in Music Orchestra, a cross-age combination of the Humboldt and All Seasons Orchestras at the Eureka Women’s Club today at 2 p.m. There’s talk of Gershwin and Smetana on the program, along with others.
An hour later at the Lutheran Church of Arcata, you will find the season finale concert for the Eureka Chamber Music Series, featuring a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged for strings performed by a diverse trio of talented players composed of cellist Amos Yang, violinist Daniel Roberts, and violin and viola technician Tom Stone. Tickets for this event cost $5 for students and $20 for the general public, and the performance includes a conversation portion with the musicians.
Monday
May the Fourth Be With You, happy Star Wars Day, yada, yada, Yoda, who cares, really? Well more than a few people, apparently, so the Arcata Theatre Lounge has you covered if you are among that crew. There’s a showing this evening of Rogue One, arguably the best Star Wars entry from the last decade, along with a grab bag of goodies to offset the somewhat higher than normal $14 ticket price. Doors are around 6 p.m. and the show starts a little after 7 p.m. Nanu nanu.
Tuesday
Scottish and Cape Breton-style fiddle master Hanneke Cassel is back in town to saw away at the good stuff for the lucky folks in the audience at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 7:30 p.m. This iteration of her band is a trio with cellist and singer Tristan Clarridge along with Keith Murphy on guitar and vox. The tickets are an agreeable $23, and regular local concert-goers don’t need me to tell them this is a bargain.
Wednesday
Back to the Arcata Theatre Lounge tonight for a proper Sci-Fi Night, this time with a showing of 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan, a sort of proto-Jurassic Park piece of disaster cinema featuring a plot by some sneaky, undercover interstellar amusement park operators to stage a kaiju showdown on their grounds as a means of eradicating the human public through the irresistible lure of public spectacle. This is the 12th installment of the rubber suit soap opera and is packed with a lurching junk pile of the teetering camp of its predecessors. In short, a great time. Same deal as ever: Roll through after 6 p.m., plunk down $6, or $10 if you want to leave with a poster, and find a perch for the duration of the fun.
Collin Yeo (he/him) has never ridden in a limo or a private jet but once used a toilet that was formerly owned by a Rockefeller.
This article appears in Know Your Rights.