Sounds Profound
Three bands that will resound in memory banks for months
The Rolling Stone Showcase at Palm Door What this event lacked in schwag – no free beer? – it more than made up for with a six-hour night of music from the best new bands ...
Texas Tornadoes
Monterey County’s most ambitious musicians seize South By Southwest’s unique platform.
AUSTIN – Wearing only tight green briefs and a Robin Hood hat, Rushad Eggleston dangled upside down like a bat from a rusting, two-story-high piece of scaffolding. Somehow, he managed to hold onto his oversize ...
High and Climbing
Banff Mountain Film Fest scales the upper echelons of outdoor adventure film.
Standing on a foot-wide ledge, 1,800 feet high up above the Yosemite Valley on the rock face of Half Dome, Alex Honnold began to have some serious doubts while attempting to make the first free ...
High Spirits
Increasingly supernatural F*ck, I’m a Ghost haunts Woody’s Bayside Grill Friday.
F*ck, I’m a Ghost guitarist-vocalist Quinn Thompson adds tendrils of guitar that wrap around the rhythm of his band’s song “Short Straw” like vines. Inside a dimly lit Pacific Grove home, his vocals barely break ...
Power Trip
Carmel Valley author debuts 'Cuba Rising' with a talk in Monterey.
Carmel Valley resident Jonathan Showe has been to Cuba close to 80 times. He understands the most populated island in the Caribbean, how it has resisted the tides of change – vintage American cars with ...
Rare Prize
CSUMB scores Pulitzer-winning Junot Díaz for its President’s Speaker Series.
In 1996, Junot Díaz burst onto the literary scene with Drown, a short story collection set in his native Dominican Republic and New Jersey. It included “Ysrael,” a tale about brothers who form a plan ...
Whoah Zoe
The former Vermillion Lies star uncorks her own career.
To listen to Zoe Boekbinder’s Artichoke Perfume is to enter an alternate reality populated by dead tightrope walkers, typewriter girls struck down by San Francisco streetcars and freshwater turtles dreaming of a dip in the ...
Singular Talent
Kim “Vermillion” Boekbinder visits East Village as her solo career trampolines across the creative canvas.
“You know what?” Kim Boekbinder says. “I’m just going to give you some dirt, because I feel like it.” As Vermillion Lies, Kim and her sister Zoe Boekbinder formed a part-cabaret, part-folk, part-performance art music ...
A New Day
Fast-rising regional stars of Forrest Day join Battlehooch at Fernwood on the eve of debut CD.
Forrest Day’s songs are tailor-made for the stage. The seven-piece San Francisco band’s “Secret,” for example, features chanted vocals, two horns that underscore the stomp of the track and a beat that hits as hard ...
The Messenger
Dead on Arrival: 'The Messenger'' examines the ordeals of an Army casualty notification unit.
Like Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which focused on a bomb disposal unit, The Messenger looks at another highly specialized type of soldier working for the American military during the Iraq War. Rather than being ...
Roots and Branches
Country singer/songwriter Lacy J. Dalton combines roots music with contemporary sounds.
Western music has always encompassed story songs about gunfights, roundups and serious saddle time sung by real working cowboys and cowgirls. And country singer/songwriter Lacy J. Dalton says she has always loved the unique Western ...
Warming Pattern
Hot Club de Watsonville gets London Bridge Pub’s new lounge cooking.
Paris in the 1930s was bursting with art, literature and music. A stroll along the city’s famed Champ-Elysees could uncover a black-clad Jean-Paul Sartre scribbling existential musings in a battered notebook at a café or ...
Next Big Swing
Dizzy Burnett and Grover Coe stir up a swooping dance night at Cibo.
In the late ’90s, a swing revival hit this country hard, transforming legions of wallflowers into dipping, stepping, spinning dancers. Locally, the house band for this music and its accompanying dance craze was the Dizzy ...
Sharp Shears
Relocated Martin Shears gives Monterey County one of its strongest singer-songwriters.
Back before grunge and rap rock washed over the world of rock music, altering it forever, there was an outpost – below a mainstream dominated by hair metal groups and boy bands – of late-’80s, ...
Mini Mighty
'Exposed', Carmel’s newest gallery: tiny, edgy and atypical.
With around 100 art galleries, Carmel-by-the-Sea has a variety of creations for art collectors. But the small seaside town might be best known for a place to score lovingly painted portraits of pets or plein ...
Funky Folky
Beach House and Kurt Vile light up a lively weekend at Fernwood in Big Sur.
The dream-pop, Baltimore duo Beach House – headlining Friday night’s show at Fernwood – added an extra tour date just to play in Big Sur. The band played Sur back in ’07 at the Festival ...
Good Wood
Rollicking Woods Tea Company rumbles into World Theater.
Like the NFL’s 1972 Miami Dolphins and the NCAA’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, the Vermont musical quartet Woods Tea Company has a perfect record. “There isn’t an audience yet that we haven’t been able to crack,” ...
Spicy Rice
Red Beans & Rice remixes one of the county’s favorite blues blends.
Even though Red Beans & Rice has undergone a major change in ingredients, bandleader Gil Rubio says the long-running local blues outfit will retain the same basic flavor – with a few dashes of Latin ...
The Beat Goes On
Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur dreams – and nightmares – are memorialized in an ambitious new DVD/CD.
After the success of On the Road made his mind all goopy with fame, celebrity, Beat wannabe kids yakking, hangovers ringin’ his head like an empty bell, Jack Kerouac decided to dry out in Big ...
Unmistaken Child
Born Again: Unmistaken Child offers a peak into Buddhism’s take on reincarnation.
With striking images of Nepal’s remote Tsum Valley and a compelling central character attempting to complete a task that he believes is beyond his abilities, Unmistaken Child, a documentary about a disciple’s search for his ...
Still Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull revisits standards in new CD, Big Sur for benefit.
Listening to Marianne Faithfull’s 1964 hit “As Tears Go By” and then her 1979 track “Why’d Ya Do It?” is as bracing as a bucket of ice water in the face. The former is a ...
Hot Like Lava
The Hot Toddies take their smokin’ show to Jose’s and Fernwood.
When The Hot Toddies performed at Jose’s this past May, it was hard to know where to look. Onstage, the quartet of fetching females was decked out in elegant dresses as if they had prom ...
Heart Full of Soul
Wilson sisters, Tyler Bryant play first Monterey Rock Festival.
In one of the most easily recognizable rock songs of all time, the jagged guitars and propulsive rhythm of Heart’s “Barracuda” come barreling at listeners like a pack of wild animals. While it’s easy to ...
Distant Noise
Los Enanitos Verdes roll from Argentina to the Fox.
There aren’t many Argentine rock acts who have penetrated America’s consciousness. (Who has heard of Soda Stereo or the Intoxicados?) The band trying the hardest might be Los Enanitos Verdes (“Little Green Dwarves”). Back in ...
Dork Love
Young punk purveyors The Adorkables debut a 12-song CD in Salinas.
You could say that Eric Gentry is a big Descendents fan. Currently, Gentry’s wife is pregnant with their first son, who will be named Milo after Milo Auckerman, the vocalist of the goofy ’80s hardcore ...
Pop Starts
Fall music faves, from Marianne Faithful to Rodney Atkins.
Monterey County isn’t home to a bustling metropolis. Salinas is about the same size as Paterson, New Jersey, while Monterey has a population closer to that of Juneau, Alaska (thankfully without the Palin factor, except ...
Profound Sound
The Stone Foxes steer their unusual brand of the blues to Woody’s.
One might expect a member of the blues rock revivalist duo The Black Keys to throw down support for the young S.F. quartet The Stone Foxes, whose debut includes takes on blues classics “Rollin’ and ...
Infrared Exposure
Local surf rock legends hang ten at finale show.
Listening to most classic surf guitar bands, it’s easy to picture surfers cruising on slowly peeling waves, walking up and down their long boards as gingerly as ballroom dancers. But listening to the late ’90s ...
Omani It’s On
Rising Salinas reggae rocks Giovane’s.
Cold ocean air blowing over fertile valley soil has caused Salinas to become a leading food producer around the world. It’s harder to pinpoint the conditions that have caused the county seat of government and ...
Shivas Me Timbers
Garage rock meets ’60s sounds at New Monterey gigs.
Whenever there’s a promising young garage rock band performing in Monterey County, you can usually spot a large man with a Rick Rubin-like beard in the audience taking in the action. That’s Bob Gamber, owner ...
Pixie Dust
Black Francis frontman Charles Thompson does double-duty.
The groundbreaking ’80s and ’90s alt-rock band, The Pixies, had a great strategy. They’d lure you in with bassist Kim Deal’s melodic bass lines and sweet, child-like vocals. As you started to feel safe, though ...
Fantasy and Reality
Christopher Paolini mixes legend with fact at Steinbeck Festival talk.
Once upon a time, there was a young man with a magical gift. Even though he had grown up in a verdant valley, which was surrounded by a mountain range that rose above the land ...
Thunder Road
Dead Meadow, Sleepy Sun heat up the stage at Henry Miller Library.
Back in March of 2007, Dead Meadow rolled into Fernwood Bar like a thundercloud. Encased in clouds of fog spouted from an active smoke machine, the band veered from spaced out jams to thundering riffage ...
Pounding Pavement
Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks steer their tour to Big Sur.
Pavement is the quintessential indie rock band. From their exceptional debut album, 1992’s Slanted & Enchanted, to their breakup in 1999, Pavement made rock music with their own distinct thumbprint on it. Guitarist and vocalist ...
Cool Cats
Doubling down at the Monterey Bay Cougar Mixer.
Last year we sent this tandem of writers to the Monterey Bay Singles Convention. One was committed to find love, the other the courage to engage in conversation. Ultimately both found a rich experience to ...
Back in the Saddle
Creedence Clearwater Revisited rides into Salinas for the rodeo.
In one year, Creedence Clearwater Revival created more albums and hit singles than most acts do over the course of an entire career. During 1969, CCR bandleader and songwriter John Fogerty pushed his group to ...
Poco Loco
The still-going country rockers take to Monterey’s Golden State.
Rusty Young would like to take this time to clear up a few things about his music career and his long running country rock band Poco. First, he is not a brother, distant cousin or ...
Tight ‘n’ Bright
Blues at Eleven keep it real at Sly McFly’s.
Drummer Jamey DeMaria, bassist Joe Vallaire and keyboardist Tom Lawson have played music with one another on and off for more than 20 years. The three local musicians grinded out rock covers during the ’80s ...
Young Folkie
Britt Govea is building a music empire by doing his own thing, in Big Sur and beyond.
On a stage built within Big Sur’s Fernwood Campground, a topless woman wearing an expressionless silver mask writhes her body like an agitated snake while The Entrance Band plays the pummeling riffs of their “Grim ...
Heaven, Hell and Texas
Scott H. Biram is still rowdy, but seeking redemption.
It’s hard to tell if Scott H. Biram is going to heaven or hell. Digging deep into his brilliant 2006 CD Graveyard Shift – a one man romp through gritty blues, lonesome country, fiery punk ...
Sun Thing
Animal Collective goes from Letterman show to Henry Miller Library.
The sound you heard when Animal Collective performed their tune “Summertime Clothes” on the Late Show with David Letterman on May 7 was that of a highly creative underground band crashing into the mainstream. After ...
Duking It Out
Third annual tribute to Mr. Ellington.
Imagine throwing 10 musicians onstage who haven’t rehearsed together and getting them to dig deep into the repertoire of one of America’s finest composers. It sounds like a recipe for disaster—unless you’ve assembled the best ...
Nice TAT
Student film festival channels artfully crafted shorts.
Barbed wire bristles around the edges. A long institutional hallway looms ahead. Doors slowly close. A heavy feeling of confinement permeates the artfully made documentary Letters From Within, which debuts at CSUMB’s Teledramatic Arts and ...
Sound Waves
The strong shows will extend through August.
Extra Golden is just one of the many impressive acts the Big Sur Spirit Garden has secured for the upcoming spring, summer and fall seasons. Jayson Fann, the founder and director of the Spirit Garden, ...
Spirited Effort
Extra Golden leads a robust upcoming schedule at Big Sur Spirit Garden.
After Ian Eagleston traveled over to Africa to document the Benga music of Kenya, the musician returned home with something more than his doctoral thesis: a new group called Extra Golden. Eagleston was living in ...
The New Truth
Surging L.A. band with Southern roots hits Monterey Live.
A little more than a month ago, on a Friday night at Monterey Live, a group of Los Angeles musicians calling themselves Truth & Salvage Co. held the audience’s full attention. The six men, who ...
Heady Stuff
Ostrich Head grinds out clubbable beats.
Formerly based in Monterey, the five man hip-hop outfit Ostrich Head is a wildly ambitious group. Their latest CD, I Love Head, is an 18-song release that dives into underground hip-hop, clubby dance music, rock ...
Bull Bearing
James Hurley found his career with the help of a Salinas rodeo accident.
After sifting through ample biographical data and conducting an in-depth interview, I’ve determined that there were two instances in James Hurley’s life that led him towards his career as a popular Los Angeles based singer/songwriter. ...
Beck’s Back
Mike Beck regularly returns to join the Bohemian Saints at P.G.’s Pelican.
These days, Mike Beck lives two lives. Most of his days and nights are spent in the tiny Montana town of Willow Creek (population: 200). There, he lends his guitar playing to a band called ...
Fiery Cracker
David Lowery and Cracker unleash their clever-saucy rock on Monterey.
Richmond, Va.-based musician David Lowery is lucky enough to have two great outlets for his quirky, irony-laden rock songs. There’s Camper Van Beethoven, the eclectic ’80s band that incorporated world music elements, ska and lots ...
