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. […]
Black Plate
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Saturday, Jan. 18
The Arcata vintage shop Redwood Retro is an interesting up and coming venue, filling a much-needed spot on the scene with an emphasis on the DIY, casual nature of a town whose offbeat charm and mushy beauty seems on the verge of evaporating in the face of high rents, poor management and lowering imaginations. The […]
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Fat Cats, Bigga Fish
I’ve been hearing a lot about the idea that our current situation is the fault of the American voters, some even suggesting, in this paper and elsewhere, that the public can’t be trusted with the task of participating in a democracy. Given that this week covers the inauguration and return of a very divisive president, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Saturday, May 25
It’s Kinetic kick-off day, and there are a lot of officially sanctioned diversions and pleasures to be found from now until Monday, which I will leave to the side for your discretion. One off-the-books gig I will mention is happening on the race route near the Manila Community Center at 1 p.m., where Black Plate, […]
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Hardcore UFO’s
Well, it’s finally here, Memorial Day weekend, which locally means the Kinetic Sculpture whatever it’s called these days. The weather looks promising, and this stuff is always fun, a welcome diversion and genuinely organic article of regional fun that hasn’t been digested by the tasteless acid pit of global consumerism (yet). I’m looking forward to […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Monday, Aug. 28
Forget about the sold out Center Arts gig, if you didn’t get tickets for Sylvan Esso earlier then you are S.O.L. Which is a piece of luck, as tonight’s edition of Metal Mondays at Savage Henry Comedy Club is fantastic. Humboldt-grown but Los Angeles- based Biomass is a group that balances the harmonic splendor of […]
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The Grateful and the Dead
In Emily Dickinson’s poem “There’s Been a Death, in the Opposite House,” the reader is given a glimpse, from the outside looking in, of the social mechanics of death “In just a Country Town.” The narrator/neighbor watches the windows open, a mattress taken outside, and the retreat of the defeated doctor met with the arrival […]
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Make It So
Cicero, writing a couple thousand years ago in a now dead tongue, wryly noted the habit among the wealthy men of Rome of copying the ostentatiousness of a great man’s sumptuous villas, while showing no interest in imitating his fine personal virtues. Ain’t that the rich for you? Then, as now, money could not buy […]