The Siren’s Song remains open and as long as that remains the case, I will be discussing the gigs there, as we need to hang onto our quirky venues for as long as we can. Once gone, they don’t tend to return, nor does the gap left in their wake ever seem to be sewn […]
Dead Drift
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Mirrors in the Mirror
I’m chopping away at this on the last Monday in February, all the while considering, however far in the back of my head, that I’m about to, God willing, hit another birthday next week, on the first Wednesday of March. All night I’ve been listening to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s gorgeous Spiegel im Spiegel, one […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, June 28
I’ll toss out three all-ages gigs from McKinleyville to Eureka (in order of time) and you can decide which ones warrant further examinations. At 5 p.m. at Six Rivers Brewery, Oryan Peterson-Jones plays a free set of his world-traveling inspired guitar picking. Two hours later at 7 p.m. at the Outer Space, you will find […]
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Music Tonight: Monday, Aug. 7
Here’s a night of punk in various forms from straight-up to folksy going down at the Siren’s Song Tavern. Local distortion-mongers Dead Drift are hosting a show that includes Connecticut-based folk punker David Coffey Taylor and Irish-flavored local rippers Wyld Banshee Whispers. Just $10 gets you all three bands and everything kicks off at 8 […]
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Music Tonight: Thursday, June 15
Guitarist and composer Oryan Peterson-Jones is kicking off his June tour with a free evening at the Humboldt Bay Social Club at 6 p.m. If you’re in the mood for the goods — very well- played Americana, folk, world music and flamenco-style guitar — tonight’s the night, until he returns at the end of the […]
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Songs for Summer
As a music-obsessed teen in the late-1990s, I often found myself at odds with prevailing sensibilities, an alienating experience that has actually helped me over the years. How? Well, to paraphrase my cousin Jet, the secret of eternal relevance is a withering distrust of most current popular culture. So while some of my peers were […]
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Music Tonight: Monday, April 24
Here we go again, another Metal Monday over at Savage Henry Comedy Club at 7 p.m. Los Angeles grind band Cancer Christ joins forces with a squad of local acts, including Dead Drift, Mystery Meat and Human Soup Hot Tub, the latter of which wins the ignoble distinction of making me gag every time I […]
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Color Wheel
Well friends, it’s the beginning of flower season again and I could not be more pleased. I’m talking calendulas, daffodils, trilliums, California poppies (not the band, but they are fine, too). I have an abstract relationship with flowers, in that I encounter them as a cheerful addition to my daily life without choosing to become […]
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Stretch Out
I’ll keep this brief because I really stretched out in my ekphrastic music writing this week and I don’t want to test your patience. It’s a brand-new week, a new month dawns, my birthday is just around the corner (next Thursday for anyone thinking about buying me a rideable war bird, black market Gundam suit […]
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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Full disclosure, I absolutely love autumn. In fact, fall is one of the only times I feel justified in my general instinct to cloister myself away from the rest of the human world while finding a balance between social isolation and subterranean slumber. This might seem like a cop-out to many of you and I […]
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No Country for Old Young Men
I’ll admit I am a bit of a jerk. I try not to be but my heart is heavy. The first election I was old enough to vote in was Bush vs. Gore and since then it’s basically been a backslide through unending war, recessions, bailouts for the financial industry and lately a gross turn […]
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Meltdown Fest
It’s been a bad week, to be honest. My news-addicted mind experienced a mild apoplexy at two items I can’t help but treat as related. The United Nations has released a stunning report that humans — and more specifically our exploitative world economic engines — are accelerating the extinction of some million-plus species of plants […]