I’ll never forget what it felt like to be backstage just before Ray Charles took the stage at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival in 2003. There was a crackling electricity in the air as the man himself stood waiting to be called up to play just a few feet from me. He was bobbing to the music and smiling his famous broad smile, but even so he couldn’t hide his intensity. His chin was slightly raised and his head cocked a little to one side—he was listening. Surveying. No matter how many thousands of times he had done this, no matter that he had to lean hard on his other senses to compensate for his lack of sight, he was not going to let a single detail about what was going on around him escape his attention. Whatever he was measuring—the mood of the crowd, the tightness of the band, the distance up the stairs—he seemed to lock it in just as his name was called, taking the stage to thunderous applause with the confidence of a musical legend.
Articles by Steve Palopoli
Bassnectar’s UCSC Connection
When Lorin Ashton, better known by his stage name Bassnectar, performs at the Catalyst this Sunday and Monday, May 6-7, it will be a sort of homecoming. Since graduating, the UCSC alum has since gone on to become one of the biggest names in the electronic and digital music scene, but he remembers the city fondly as the place that nurtured his creative spirit.
Firehose’s Surprising Journey and Santa Cruz Connection
Firehose will always be associated with Mike Watt’s beloved hometown of San Pedro, but the truth is that if it weren’t for Santa Cruz, the band never would have existed.
Retro Glamor Meets Garage Rock In The Wild Ones
In 1958, the man who would go down in history as Australia’s first rock & roller, Johnny O’Keefe, recorded “The Wild One.” Its opening verse eventually become one of the most famous in early rock, thanks to Jerry Lee Lewis’ arguably more convincing version. O’Keefe also recorded—twice—the song “Shout!,” getting his own hit version into stores only a month after the original landed on the charts. “Shout!” was picked up by the Shangri-Las for their 1965 debut album, Leader of the Pack. Then it was recorded again by Joan Jett on her 1980 debut album Bad Reputation, which featured guest appearances by two of the Ramones, Dee Dee and Marky. Years later, Jett would cover…”The Wild One.”
Cassidy Meijer, 1978-2012
“All the smiles were prescription/And the laughter was canned/And nobody listened to my asteroid band” — “Asteroid Band,” Sin in Space
The Pixies Mystique
Charles Michael Kittredge Thompson IV has been a solo artist for three times as long as he was originally with the Pixies. He’s released three times as many albums as he did with the band, under three different stage names—his original Pixies moniker Black Francis, the solo change-up Frank Black and even the combination Frank Black Francis.
Top Ten Cult Films, Then And Now
It’s starting to seem like just about anything can be called a cult film these days. The Breakfast Club? Ghostbusters? Saw? Sound of Freaking Music? Are you kidding me? Those movies were all monster hits when they came out, and never stopped being loved by legions of fans around the world. They are and probably always will be as mainstream as it gets.
The Sound and The Fury
As one of the most popular punk bands in the mid-’90s Santa Cruz underground scene, Fury 66 is a local legend, and their songs are still remembered today. Just not by their lead singer. Which made their reunion show at the Catalyst this week a bit of a tricky proposition for frontman Joe Clements.
The King of The Uke
The simplest way to prove to the world that an instrument rocks is to play an actual rock song on it. This is not rocket science. It worked for the banjo a decade ago when the Gourds famously covered Snoop’s “Gin and Juice” (hip-hop, sure, but boasting just as much street cred). It would work for the cowbell if somebody cool would put out Clangin’ to the Hits.
Slow Gherkin Reunites
By the time Slow Gherkin broke up almost a decade ago, ska was the epitome of uncool. Even the band itself had given up on it by their last album, 2002’s Run Screaming. This despite the fact that through the late ’90s and into the new century, Gherkin’s explosive, hypersmart brand of ska had made them the most popular Santa Cruz band of their generation.
