I have two festivals to recommend today, each on either end of our county’s share of the 101. First up on the northside at 3 p.m., RampArt Skate Park is home to Bushfest, a metal-palooza full of shredders and screamers, priced at a very reasonable $20 for 13 bands, $15 if you get an early-bird […]
The Sturgeons
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Friday, June 9
With Oyster Fest looming on the horizon, it might seem premature to offer my trademarked “Show of the Week,” especially this early on, but here we are. The date is 6/9 and The Sturgeons have decided to celebrate one of the most egalitarian and mutually beneficial bedroom maneuvers with a show at the Jam (insert […]
Posted inMusic
Bee Loud
June has arrived, which means summer is basically here. It certainly was for me last weekend but more on that later. Before industrial societies overtook the global paradigm, summer started when nature felt like it, which, for classical and middle period Europeans, usually meant sometime in May, and certainly well before the summer solstice. The […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Friday, April 21
Two good shows tonight, so let’s not dawdle. At 7:30 p.m. at the Trinidad Town Hall, you can listen to the exotic-yet-dis-tinctly-comforting tunes of Canary and the Vamp, as the band whirls and twirls through the various Tin Pan Alleys of the Naked City in the geography of the Great American Songbook ($10-$20 sliding scale). […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Friday, Dec.9
Every so often there’s a band that I find myself writing about repeatedly that simply occupies its own territory in the landscape of our culture. One of those lurching mutants that scuttles around the margins of society with enough force to overcome its oddness and allow it to exist as a rolling juggernaut. Well, tonight […]
Posted inMusic
Alive and Kicking
I’ve been thinking about the stage a lot lately, and live music in general. The last time I played a live show (before this year) was Sept. 11, 2017, when I played guitar for a krautrock-influenced jazz group that my friends and I threw together to open for my buddy Mike Dillon’s band. It was […]
Posted inMusic
Spookyville
Halloween tends to promote itself, even when it lands on a Monday, like in this wretched year. That’s just an invitation for a long weekend. I’ll probably go out, even though it’s the first day of the working week. I’m not too stressed about missing out on distributing candy, as I doubt that the forces […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
Boom Times
This week’s headline might be a little sarcastic and only half-referencing what will undoubtedly be a spectacular fireworks display on Monday evening. Many people are really hurting and upset right now. It’s hard to look at the disorder in our world and find much hope. As someone who could be referred to as a “geriatric […]
Posted inMusic
The Sturgeons Suck
Like a lot of you out there, last week came at me pretty hard and fast. As a member of the “gig economy,” which is shorthand for the reduced circumstances that almost everyone under 40 has to live in so that three men can own more wealth than more than 150 million Americans, I am […]
Posted inMusic
Mr. Moonlight
February is an often overlooked month, a wet and cold placeholder in the depth of the northern hemisphere’s winter that isn’t even considered worthy of 30 days. Throughout history various cultures have named the month after frost, river ice, firewood cutting, mud or even cabbages (cole crops were staples of the winter in most of […]