The library book-sale tables are out of sight, the basketball backboards stashed backstage and the Roller Derby track rolled up in a storeroom somewhere. Folding chairs stand in straight rows as the jazzophiles file in and find their seats, anxious to hear the men in matching suits from New York blow into town and blow the town down, their Ellingtonian lungs deployed to raze this gym with a sound as powerful as Willie Mays. The band struts in from the wings, sits, and starts blowing Dukelike from sheet music, the brass muted so it almost squeaks from the trombonists’ noses, fast, with a classical tone, a hard Boppishness wrapped in uptown tailoring that morphs into a light blue Monkdom, tooting a little ironically along with graver accents of deep lefthanded melancholy.
Sound Tsunami
Hear to Help Japan will feature the psychedelic Noise Clinic, experimental sound artist Bill Walker and heavy metal headbangers Fiends at Feast, to raise money for an estimated 98,000 evacuees still displaced in the island nation.
Pet Cause: Bigfoot Benefeet
Santa Cruz musicians and musical establishments are banding together for weekend-long “Bigfoot Benefeet” to keep the institution afloat.
Gillian Welch Album Worth The Wait
In 2009, a full six years after the release of Gillian Welch’s critically acclaimed Soul Journey, Welch’s partner David Rawlings was asked when their next album would come out. “On the happiest day of my life,” he replied.
Boy Severely Injured in Sand Tunnel Collapse
Ryan Buchanan, 17, is in critical condition after a sand tunnel that he and a friend were digging at Sunset State Beach collapsed on them.
SmartMeter Opponents Step Up Tactics
The wildfire of rebellion against PG&E’s plans to install SmartMeters in households across the state is growing hotter by the day. Before sunrise on Monday, June 27, about 50 demonstrators surrounded the gates of a PG&E yard in Capitola to keep workers from exiting and installing wireless SmartMeters in local neighborhoods, as PG&E had announced would happen that day.
Book Bloggers Here To Stay
A few years ago I worked for a newspaper on the East Coast. It was a very small town paper with not much news to report but it was owned by a huge media company. The media company sent us to various educational seminars about the internet. One of the most important things I learned was that everyone educates themselves via the internet before shopping.
Mandolins at UCSC
Bill Monroe, the legendary father of bluegrass, was one of the earliest musicians in the U.S. to bring the mandolin into the mainstream. Though it never approached the ubiquity of the guitar, the instrument has grown in popularity since then and even made the transition to rock, thanks in part to the Band’s Levon Helm and later Rod Stewart (who can forget the mandolin riff in “Maggie May?”)—and yes, even a couple of Grateful Dead songs (“Friend Of The Devil” and “Ripple”). Most of all, the mandolin has acquired an eclectic group of ardent fans who strum, pluck, and play the mandolin both professionally and for fun. Many of them are at UCSC this week for the eighth annual Mandolin Symposium.
Maybe in Florida, Lady, But Not Here
Cheryl L. Beauchamp, 34, from Tampa, Fla., was exploring Santa Cruz on foot last Thursday, taking a walk along Highway 17.
New Stow Video Surfaces
TMZ has just released a video of what appears to be Bryan Stow at the Dodgers-Giants game in which he was brutally attacked. The video shows Stow in the bleachers, arguing with a Dodgers fan. At one point, the fan has a finger just inches away from Stow’s face.
