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 […]
Wet Spot
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Bienvenidos
As an ad hoc cultural ambassador to the region and self-professed “music bozo,” I’d like to humbly welcome the assorted students of the area back to the academic grind. I won’t waste your time with a bunch of flutey language and annoying BS; I will instead direct your no doubt divided attentions to this big […]
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Game of Tones
Early on this week is a great time to catch great bands in the fringes of bigger genres. Noise punk, grindcore, psych rock and various other troubadours of the outré are hawking penillions of perverse metrics. If you are a fan of all things weird and glowing, from now until Cinco de Mayo is going […]
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Ship of Fools
No intro this week. I’m too busy spending my time reading opinion pieces on Twitter and elsewhere explaining why the establishment heads in the Democratic Party hung all of their impeachment hopes on a career G-Man instead of making what I am sure is the very difficult case that we have in office a mendacious […]
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Spring Reverb
Spring’s coming and along with it is St. Patrick’s Day, the Vernal Equinox, Purim and the Worm Moon. Also a certain group of my friends — you know the ones — tell me that Mercury is currently in retrograde. So, if all of this change going on — the most chaotic of which for many […]
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This Wheel’s on Fire
Local fuzzy Americana quartet Hollow Down began the year on the road with a plan to tour the United States in their beloved home and bus, bringing their vibrant live gospel to the masses. Last week that dream was destroyed when the rig in question went up in flames on a lonesome stretch of State […]
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Animal Instincts
I am writing this in my living room on my couch with a large Italian mastiff snoring like a Sardinian sow pig behind me. She doesn’t mean any offense and, in fact, Grinza is a sweet dog, stinkiness notwithstanding. She’s better company than most people, if I am being honest. I mention her because she […]
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Back in Town
I have written here before about my antagonistic relationship with nostalgia and the withering contempt it generates in me. As Spider Jerusalem from Warren Ellis’ excellent comic book Transmetropolitan observes, “The future is an inherently good thing.” However, with all of the familiar faces and returning musicians in this week’s column, I find myself flexing […]
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Get to the Show and the Voting Booth
This has been an ugly and busy week. White terrorism has been in the news and in our own community someone was stabbed to death in Arcata in what I am sure was a tragically pointless dispute. Two lives are now ruined: the victim’s and the alleged attacker’s. This isn’t a crime to put on […]
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Anniversaries, Dreams and Hauntings
I am not a nostalgic fella and I tend to have a private needle that clicks between “ignorant indifference” and “seething distrust” when it comes to all of the hallmarks and anniversaries that we are collectively reminded to celebrate. However, in deference to my readers, of whom I am genuinely fond, and for the sake […]