Steve Palopoli

Staff Writer

The Jimi Hendrix Blues Experience

Billy Cox has been playing Jimi Hendrix’s music on and off for five decades, since the two of them served in the army together as teenagers and formed their first band. Cox was there with Hendrix onstage at Woodstock and played bass in the Band of Gypsys and the reunited Jimi Hendrix Experience right up to the guitar legend’s last concert 12 days before his death in 1970.

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Devil Makes Three Returns to Santa Cruz

Wicked Good: DM3 plays the Catalyst this Friday.

The Devil Makes Three has been spoiled by good audiences. As in crazy good. That’s the same adjective guitarist and lead singer Pete Bernhard uses to describe the vibe at some of the band’s current West Coast tour dates. In Portland, where he’s calling from, they sold out the 800-seat Wonder Ballroom, and two nights before that, fans were bum rushing the stage when they played to 1,000 people in Humboldt County.

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Nick Gallant Uncovered

Last week, video game publisher Activision announced that it’s bringing down the ax on the Guitar Hero series. For the gaming world, it’s the end of an era—in six short years, the original Guitar Hero and its many sequels became the third-largest video game franchise in history. They revolutionized the very notion of what hit video games could be, turning color-coded button-pushing into a rock-star fantasy for the 21st century and selling 25 million games in the process.

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Jesse Scheinin’s Musical Mystery Tour

As I’m sitting in the Saturn Café talking to Jesse Scheinin, his eyes suddenly shoot upward, as if intercepting an invisible signal above us. I concentrate hard for a moment, trying to drown out the conversations around us and the clatter of dishes and silverware, and realize he has tuned in to the sound of Bon Iver’s “Lump Sum” drifting across the room from the jukebox.

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Michael Been: 1950-2010

Michael Been: 1950-2010

There are cult bands, and then there are cult bands. Fans of the Ramones or the Misfits, for example, may treat them like cult bands, quick to point out that they were so far ahead of their time that the mainstream simply didn’t know what to do with them until long after they were gone, when they were vindicated by a rise to legendary status.

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