Preview: Larry and His Flask at Moe’s Alley

Larry and his Flask came up in a time when punk rockers were grabbing banjos to find the common ground between the sweat and fury of punk and the raw, heart-on-the-sleeve emotion of folk music.

They got lumped in with the folk-punk movement, but there’s much more to them than tattooed fiddle players and moshing hoedowns. It’s a manic hodgepodge of every style they can possibly cram into a song.

“We used to try to use all of our influences,” says mandolin and trumpet player Kirk Skatvold. “Like a few of us love metal—just shreddy guitars, upside down beats, whatever. We would try to incorporate that into our music.”

That’s what makes last year’s This Remedy, the band’s first album in five years, so unique. It’s a diverse album with probably as many influences as anything the group has ever put out. But not only do they try to keep each song to just a few styles, they have some downright sane-sounding tracks in there too, like the almost traditional rock ’n’ roll vibe of the title track.

“We were always trying to one-up what we did last, like, ‘Did we really need to squeeze that stompy section in there? Most of the time it didn’t come across well,” Skatvold says. “This time the thought was to push it more straightforward and get something that’s easy listening.”

The members had some time to reflect on This Remedy before recording it. Most of the five years between the release of previous album By The Lamplight and recording This Remedy were spent on hiatus as the members dealt with other areas in their personal life that needed to be prioritized.

They originally came together 20 years ago as a straight-up punk band, but then reformed about a decade ago as a wild sort-of-bluegrass, sort-of-Mr. Bungle 12-piece ensemble that would busk streets as though they were basement hardcore shows. In no time they became road dogs, playing 200 shows a year and releasing several albums. The energy never let up, and the music only got more out there.

“We jumped in and tried to play where we could play. We just kind of chased the party the whole time and went for it,” Skatvold says.

The goal with the records was always to try to capture the energy of their live show. This time around they approached it differently, and even took their time recording it, giving themselves as long as they needed.

“It gave everyone time to step back,” says Skatvold. “I think if we had tried to put out an album when we were in the depth of the grind, we might have taken the easy route, and made the songs that were kind of like the last one.”

While the band was on a hiatus, the group did play the occasional show, but nothing beyond that. It was an offer in 2016 to play on the Salty Dog Cruise (Flogging Molly’s annual cruise) that kickstarted the group again. While on that cruise, members started writing new material, which eventually led to writing this new record.

It came out sounding different in another way, too—like it’s busting at the seams with joy.  

“Looking back on it [By the Lamplight], we thought it was kind of dark. We were hitting it so hard at the time, just kind of tired. You start to feel a grind. Maybe that’s a reflection of it,” Skatvold says. “The happy-joy stuff that we got out this time could just be a reflection of our attitudes coming into this time.”

Emotionally, the record is still all over the place. Closing song “Three Manhattans” is about singer Ian Cook’s parents’ divorce. But even within that, the overall tone is one of sheer happiness to play and a cathartic release of feelings.

It’s not a complete departure for the band. And at their shows, fans can expect a lot of spazzy folk-punk, genre-smashing chaos. But maybe a few of the slower songs will find their way into the set.

“We definitely try to hold ourselves back and make sure that our performance is on. Take it more serious than we used to,” Skatvold says. “But we felt the obligation to play the ones that have that energy, and we go for it. We still try to make our lives show come at it hard.”

Larry and his Flask performs at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 31 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $15 adv/$20 door. 479-1854.

Baroque Festival Brings Back Bach

We tend to think of a genius like Johann Sebastian Bach as having emerged from his mother’s womb already fully formed and throwing lightning bolts of blinding musical creativity from day one.

In fact, like the rest of us, Bach was once young, impressionable and subject to the cultural influences of his time. He was but a mortal human and, even as an artist, a product of the musical environment in which he matured.

You could even imagine Bach as a fanboy. In 1705, at the age of 20, he left his post as a church organist in the German town of Arnstadt to go see a performance of the famed German organist Dietrich Buxtehude in Lubeck, 235 miles to the north—on foot. Then, he walked back (and faced a reckoning from his cheesed-off superiors at work). If anyone builds a Fanboy Hall of Fame, J.S. Bach has to be in the inaugural class.

This year, the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival (SCBF) turns its gaze to the cultural milieu that made Bach into Bach. Under the guidance of Artistic Director Linda Burman-Hall, the festival tackles its 46th season with The Roots of Bach—a series of five concerts, beginning Feb. 9, that seeks to bring to life the world Bach came to know, love and draw upon to create music.

From the instruments widely used in performances during Bach’s youth to musical rituals of the age and the thriving coffeehouse culture that spawned Europe’s Enlightenment, this year’s Baroque Fest attempts to paint the color of the era that would inspire Bach to, for instance, walk almost 500 miles to see live music.

Bach has, of course, been a preoccupation for the SCBF before in its nearly half-century history. But Burman-Hall, a celebrated harpsichordist and faculty member at UCSC, says that the festival has never focused exactly on this aspect of Bach’s career. She credits the idea to a recent interest in the Asian art of bonsai, cultivating tiny trees that mimic full-grown trees.

“I have not deliberately focused on the roots of Bach,” she says. “But, you might say, since I’ve been a bonsai-ist for three years now, I’ve looked closer at trees in general, looking at big trees and thinking about small ones, looking at leaves and thinking about roots.”

The season looks at many of the older composers that fired Bach’s imagination, including Italians Arcangelo Corelli and Giralamo Frescobaldi, and Frenchman Francois Couperin. The festival’s first concert (Feb. 9, UCSC Recital Hall) explores the lute, the dominant string instrument of the Baroque period, with lutenist John Schneiderman, whom Burman-Hall unabashedly refers to as one of “the best lutenists in North America.”

In a later concert, the Baroque Festival will take on the organ music of Buxtehude to show audiences exactly what young J.S. Bach walked across Germany to hear. That concert focuses on the tradition of “Abendmusik,” popular in the 17th century, which featured evening performances of organ music. The March 23 concert at Santa Cruz’s Peace United Church will be lit, as it was in Bach’s day, by candle.

In May, the festival will dive into the coffeehouse culture of the era, specifically Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse in Leipzig, known for its free-wheeling informal concerts and its fertile literary scene. Among the pieces to be performed will be Bach’s Coffee Cantata, a comic operetta about a caffeine-addicted young woman and her battles with her father, who insists she give up coffee.

From fanboy obsession to coffee addiction, this year’s Baroque Festival is presenting a convincing illustration that the world in which J.S. Bach came of age 300 years ago is not so different from the one we all inhabit today.

“I saw something in an archaeology magazine just the other day,” says Burman-Hall, “where they were exploring the ruins of an old English coffeehouse and found all these mismatched cups and saucers. That caused them to realize that people were individuating themselves by their coffee drinks, just as we do today.”

‘The King of Instruments in the Age of Bach,’ the opening concert of the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival’s ‘The Roots of Bach,’ will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 9, at the UC Santa Cruz Recital Hall. $25 general/$22 senior/$10 students. scbaroque.org.

Film Review: ‘Cold War’

Every shot is thrilling in Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski’s follow up to Ida. Like Roma, Cold War is a testimony to the power of black and white cinema.

This lean, fast film concerns the paradox of mid-20th century discontentment. Example: At great cost to yourself, you escape the workers’ paradise of the Soviet empire, an Eden where they tie your hands. You then arrive in capitalist heaven to face what Joni Mitchell termed “the crazy you get from too much choice.” It’s the perplexity summed up by that famous shot of the mile-long supermarket aisle in The Hurt Locker. Trauma makes it hard to appreciate bounty.

The protagonist, Joanna Kulig’s lovely and infuriating Zula, is one of those Slavic types who can never really get comfortable with the frivolousness of the West. The easy morals of Paris disgust her; this movie is sort of an anti-Ninotchka. Cold War is also a study of the problem of authenticity in art—whether something pure can survive when it’s touched, either as propaganda in the East, or as material to be bought and sold in the West.

Most of all, Cold War is a lustrous romance between a Michael Fassbinder-ish pianist, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), and the younger singer Zula, whose life is clouded by a crime she committed when she was a girl.

In 1949 Poland, Wiktor and his team are out in a tin-sided van—song-hunting in the muddy snows, searching for authentic folkloric sounds. They put up a mic in front of a toothless shouter, a woman pumping a foot-powered accordion, and a grubby little girl in a patched sweater. (His driver grumbles, “In my village, every drunk sings like this.”) After this, Wiktor’s newest job is turning a mansion the Communists seized into a music school. He decides to accept one potential rural student, a blonde girl with a big if aimless voice. It’s not the voice that interests him, it’s her look of self-amused sullenness.

Wiktor starts seeing Zula, but there’s trouble from the beginning. On her back in the summer grass, she tells Wiktor, “I’ll be with you until the end of the world.” Beat. “I’m ratting on you.”

Zula’s forced tattling to the Communist higher-ups is the first sign of trouble in an affair that lasts more than a decade. There’s one missed chance for them after another, all over Europe. First, there’s an attempted defection in Berlin, and then, years later, an encounter in the walled medieval town of Split. This seaside city is in the allegedly unaligned nation of Yugoslavia, but Wiktor finds out he’s still within the grasp of the political goons.

With every passing year, Zula is more worn away by vodka and the mediocrity of the music she has to perform, not to mention the company of the oaf infatuated with her—the commissar Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc). She’s not moving like a young girl anymore.

The true lovers get a bit of freedom in Paris, but there Zula seeks out hurt, proof of love and evidence of betrayal. It should be annoying to watch her acting out, but the excellent Kulig makes you understand Zula’s fury, and her loathing of any compromise.

As in Ida, Pawlikowski excels at summing up the Communist empire. He shows us the way that “the lever of love”—to borrow a phrase from Nabokov—was used to manipulate rebels into compliance, as well as the Soviets’ kitschy diversions and vicious punishments. Here he contrasts it with the nocturnal Paris of the existentialist days. Certainly this Paris is alluring, but it also looks dirty. (Considering the bugs, Henry Miller had asked decades before, “How can you get lousy in a beautiful place like this?”) Cold War has the heart of an epic, a smart one, burrowing into its settings and describing the bitter flavor of two different brands of moral crumble.

It’s ironic that we perceive something romantic in that Iron Curtain—as romantic as the wall in the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe. Here’s something that’s been making people tear up since Bowie’s Heroes or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. (Some people love walls on their own, hence our current “national emergency.”)

In Cold War there’s everything the best spy films had of cynical distrust, and of love that’s a matter of life and death. On a level of entertainment alone, it’s the smart version of A Star is Born.

Cold War

Written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Starring Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot and Borys Szyc. R; 88 minutes.

Opinion: January 29, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

Back when I was editor of Metro Santa Cruz in the early-to-mid 2000s, we had a columnist called Nuz. No one outside of the office knew the real identity of Nuz—not even Nuz’s gender. (Which, weirdly enough, people used to ask me about fairly often. I’ll use the “they” pronoun here to avoid giving anything away.) No one was even totally sure how to pronounce Nuz’s name—when it started out, it was supposed to be pronounced “Nooz” (to rhyme with “Cruz,” obviously), and there was even a helpful little line over the “u” to make that clear. But popular opinion that it was actually pronounced like “Nuhz” eventually won out. Nuz was known for sometimes sharp, sometimes extremely blunt insights into local politics, and they sunk their teeth into that watchdog role.

Nuz quit writing sometime after I left the paper, and I never did hear what happened. But recently our news editor Jacob Pierce heard through the grapevine that Nuz had had it up to here with the state of local politics and was chomping at the bit to come out of retirement. I thought it was probably like all those other rumors we’ve heard about Nuz—Nuz lurks in the shadows (what a drama queen), Nuz eats dirt for breakfast (no), Nuz has no friends (okay, probably true)—but what do you know? It was true. After a few phone calls, it was all arranged, and those oh-so Nuz emails I remember from back in the day started coming in again. So, ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to page 14 for the return of Nuz.

In other news, it’s our Health and Fitness issue this week, and we welcome back our former managing editor Maria Grusauskas—who is still living it up in the sunny Baja California climes she ditched us for—with an article on the healing frontiers of biodynamic farming. Meanwhile, Hugh McCormick slips and slides into the world of hot fitness, with entertaining results.

Finally, this is the last week to vote for your favorites in the Best of Santa Cruz 2019 Awards. So go to bestofsantacruz2019.com and do it today!


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Read the latest letters to the editor here.

Legalized Solutions

I appreciated and celebrate your article on MAPS projects to use MDMA to treat PTSD via MDMA-assisted therapy (GT, Jan. 9). It seems an easy leap to imagine MDMA could be used for so many of what are now labeled as disorders or mental illnesses by the DSM.

Many years back, I wrote an article (“Club Meds”) that described the experience of one older gentleman who had been depressed for years. But then he took LSD with therapeutic assistance as part of a program at Stanford. His depression lifted as he saw from a “higher” perspective the unjustified weight in thought he was giving to the past and to his domineering father.

I wrote that article for Metro and Metro Santa Cruz because of my own experience with depression in my 20s, and the tremendous amount of compassion it generated in me for those who cling to life on a day-by-day basis because of anxiety and depression. Their internal realities are almost completely negative and past-fear or ego-based. In fact, writing the article changed my life, and I went quickly from journalism to studying and then teaching and sharing a spiritually based psychology in order to be of help.

What the MDMA article does not mention—no fault of Mr. Baine’s—is the tremendous psychiatric and spiritual/psychological benefit of what I would describe as the most mild of psychedelics, marijuana.

Through speaking with Valerie Corral and a caring doctor at the Wo/Mens Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM—now with a new home at 815 Almar St., Ste. 2), I learned that since recreational legalization, the tremendous stampede to commodify pot has rushed blithely past the most important uses for THC—mental and physical health and well-being. While dispensaries are becoming increasingly well stocked, employees are not qualified to provide advice concerning marijuana for medical or psychiatric use.

This is also an area that begs for increased exploration, research and funding. Socrates Rosenfeld, founder of the local pot company IHeartJane, has described his experience in treating his own anxiety from PTSD with cannabis and the outcome, his company, which dispenses widely to veterans.

With suicide on the rise in the U.S., and considering its continued epidemic proportions amongst veterans, the urgency of these matters cannot be overstated. Many will die by their own hands—shattering families and friend groups—as we wait for federal regulators to loosen up, and for the medical community to take a serious look the benefits of MDMA, other plant-based psychedelics and marijuana.

Interestingly enough, I am now compelled to put my journalistic hat back on to write about what may be one of the greatest and most beneficial psychiatric developments in centuries.

Ami Chen Mills
Santa Cruz

Highway 1 History

I enjoyed the article “Ever Green” (GT, 1/16). I have been to the original part of Purissima Cemetery numerous times. It is so nice to hear that it is being restored. My great-great uncle Henry Dobbel founded the town of Purissima. He also farmed potatoes on land he owned on the ocean side of Highway 1, later selling the land to Henry Cowell. My great-great grandfather John Dobbel (Henry’s brother) and his wife Gaschen Bruns owned a market in San Francisco after arriving in the U.S. They later settled in Hayward.

Nancy Dobbel Kaping

Santa Cruz


PHOTO CONTEST WINNER

Submit to [email protected]. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.


GOOD IDEA

The Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency has been organizing educational seminars about managing the groundwater below Scotts Valley and the San Lorenzo Valley. The next event, “Water Budgets: How Do We Balance All Needs?” will be Saturday, Feb. 9, at 1 p.m. at the Felton Community Hall. Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley) will speak. The series, which began in January, has been engaging those who rely on water from the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin. For more information, visit https://smgwa.org.


GOOD WORK

The Santa Cruz and Golden State Warriors teams aren’t the only ones racking up big wins this season. The undefeated Mission Hill Mavericks 8th grade basketball team won the 2019 Ed Kelly Classic Tournament hosted at Notre Dame Middle School in Watsonville. The Mavericks prevailed in triple overtime against the New Brighton Vikings with a score of 49-47 behind Aden Cury’s 17 points. Preston Pillsbury clinched the game with two free throws.


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.”

-Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

No Horsing Around For Comanche Cellars

I love the story behind the label on Comanche Cellars’ wines. Michael Simons, owner and winemaker, had a trusted steed called Comanche from the age of 10—a big part of his life, his paper route and his rodeo circuit. In memory of this beautiful horse, he named his winery Comanche.

Comanche’s horseshoes are now depicted on the label of each hand-crafted bottle. But we know it’s always the contents that count, and ex-contractor Simons is turning out some very good wines. His 2011 Calaveras County Tempranillo ($28) is a standout.

“This big-boned beauty is bursting with savory sausage, caraway, sun-dried tomato, grilled figs with balsamic, soy-roasted nuts, white pepper, and roasted cherry peppers,” says Simons. “A spirited wine built for ultimate enjoyment with food, you’ll love the grippy tannins and the relentless finish. It’s a sheer joy to drink.”

After going from making wine as a hobby to producing hundreds of cases, Simons’ wines now include Pinot Noir, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay, and a red blend called Maverick. The good news is that Simons recently opened a tasting room to showcase his excellent wines. He’s even started another brand called Dog & Pony—what else would it be called!— featuring several old-world “forgotten wines.”

Comanche Cellars Wine Room, 412 Alvarado St., Monterey. 747-2244, comanchecellars.com.

Burrell School

Burrell School Vineyards will be celebrating everybody’s favorite crustacean with a Wine & Crab Feed featuring Chef Kyle Davis—and at the same time, releasing their 2017 Chardonnay. We can also look forward to tasting more of Burrell School’s wonderful wines, including a “surprise tasting” of cellar wines and an unreleased varietal.

Fresh local crab, homemade clam chowder, fresh sourdough, mixed green salad and—wait for it—crab-themed cupcakes. Bring out your finery because a bottle of wine will be given to the best dressed.

2-5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26, and Sunday, Jan. 27. Burrell School Vineyards, 24060 Summit Rd., Los Gatos. $55, cash requested for gratuity. [email protected] for tickets.

The Santa Cruz Sisters Behind Wild Poppies Olive Oil

Last year, sisters-in-law Jamie de Sieyes and Kim Null took over an 8-acre olive orchard in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the hope of continuing a long olive oil legacy.

The orchard belonged to Chris Banthien, who imported 100 Italian olive trees 25 years ago, and has since grown the orchard to 2,000 trees of various varieties—the majority of which are Italian.

In November, the whole family joined in for a three-week olive harvest to bottle up the perfect tin of local extra virgin olive oil. Every night during the harvest, Wild Poppies moved 4,000 pounds of olives to San Ardo to be pressed, yielding hundreds of pounds of oil that they are selling at the farmers market and the newly opened Companion Bakeshop in Aptos.

Your olive oil is green!

Jamie De Sieyes: Oh yeah! You want that, that’s where all of the antioxidants come from. The greener, the better. As it ages, it turns more golden, but right off the press it’s really green. It’s so exciting for us to see it come off the press—it’s super green, and some of them smell like cinnamon.

Wow, I feel like I know absolutely nothing about olive oil.

Kim Null: We didn’t know anything a year ago, either! It’s definitely been a learning curve.

What’s changed since you took over?

De Sieyes: We have more separate varietals of oil. Chris used to blend all of the olives into one big Tuscan blend oil, which we have, too. But we were just really excited to try different kinds. We have five oils this year, including three blends: the Olio Nuovo, Tuscan Blend and the Banthien named after our mentor. Then we have the single varietals, Taggiasca and Ascolano.

You’ve probably learned so much in the last year.

Null: It’s been amazing to see how helpful the community has been. There are so many individuals who helped us along the way, and they really made a difference in us having a successful year. It was also a great opportunity. We both have young kids, and I looked at it as an opportunity to share with our children. The orchard is close to our houses, so it seemed like too good to be true to pass up.

De Sieyes: Our kids love going to the orchard to climb the trees. Every time we drive by now, my daughter is like, ‘Hi, olives!’

wildpoppiesoliveoil.com.

5 Things to Do This Week in Santa Cruz: January 23-29

A weekly guide to what’s happening.

Green Fix

Laura Hecox Day

Honor the Museum of Natural History’s founder with a day of activities, including geological exploration and a beach cleanup. Hecox was the first Santa Cruz lightkeeper and a naturalist who shared her profound love of the environment and marine life with the world through her curated exhibits. Before passing away in 1916, Hecox donated her collections to the city; they became part of Santa Cruz’s first public museum. Celebrate Hecox’s legacy while enjoying the beauty of our own rocky coast.

INFO: Saturday, Jan. 26. Lighthouse Field beach cleanup 9-11 a.m., Rockin’ Geology Pop-Up 10 a.m.-noon, Mobile Museum 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Lighthouse Point. 700 W. Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz. santacruzmuseum.org. $10 general/$5 members/children free.

Art Seen

Cabrillo’s ‘Continuum & Flux’

Natalya Burd and Kirk Maxson use images of nature to comment on the shifting conditions of humans moving through time and space. Burd paints scenes of human activity in natural landscapes on tinted Plexiglass panels, her images amplified by mirrored backgrounds. Maxson creates hundreds of small, hand-cut and formed metal leaves clustered in large-scale installations. His work has been featured in Victoria’s Secret fashion shows. Each artist creates technically striking, otherworldly artworks that are both sublimely beautiful and provoking.

INFO: Show runs Monday, Jan. 28-Friday, March 1. Reception and artists talk Saturday, Feb. 9, 4-6 p.m. Cabrillo Gallery, 6500 Soquel Drive Room 1002, Aptos. 479-6308. Free.

Tuesday 1/29

‘Questions That Matter: Data and Democracy’

Technology increasingly shapes our habits and defines our access to information. As our society navigates shifting sources of news, targeted advertising and polarizing online rhetoric, it is essential that we work to understand the complex and often-obscured relationship between data and democracy. A conversation between UCSC Associate Professor of Linguistics Pranav Anand and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Lise Getoor, the event is part of the “Questions That Matter” humanities series.

INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz Center. 320 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. thi.ucsc.edu. $15.

Thursday 1/24

‘Legally Speaking’

The Santa Cruz Public Library System has partnered with the Santa Cruz County Bar Association to offer a free monthly series of discussions on various legal and financial life event topics. The series answers questions about the most frequently experienced legal issues faced by people in our community. These discussions will take place at various locations throughout the county. This evening in particular focuses on immigration law, led by local immigration attorney Jeraline Singh Edwards. The presentation will encompass “Know your Rights,” immigration law fundamental principles—such as ways to get a green card and the process of naturalization—and the truths and myths about current immigration law and policies.

INFO: 6-7 p.m. Santa Cruz Downtown Library, 224 Church St., Santa Cruz. 427-7707, santacruzpl.org. Free.

Saturday 1/26

Women’s Adventure Film Tour

This is the first time that the Women’s Adventure Film Tour is touching down in the U.S. This tour is a celebration of the fantastic women around us who are doing extraordinary things in the otherwise male-dominated adventure industry. Join Patagonia in an evening of short films highlighting the world’s greatest female athletes. Subjects vary from extreme skiing and snowboarding to surfing and rock climbing. The show benefits the Changing Tides Foundation, whose mission includes educating others on how to adventure and live in a conscious way, protecting our oceans and earth, and empowering women through the outdoors.

INFO: 7-10 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. riotheatre.com. $18.

Opinion: January 23, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

There’s been so much to talk about for the last few weeks that I haven’t mentioned that voting in the Best of Santa Cruz awards is in full swing. So get over to goodtimes.sc and vote for your favorite local businesses, groups and individuals now! Voting ends Feb. 1, and our always-show-stopping Best of Santa Cruz issue comes out on March 27. Make sure your picks are in it!

Meanwhile, I’ve wrapped up another agenda item in this issue with a story on the final results of the Santa Cruz Gives campaign. Getting to go to the final Gives event where all the nonprofits get their checks and talk about their experiences is maybe the best part for me, and if you read the story, I think you’ll find that the things they got up to in the name of raising money were pretty entertaining, and maybe even inspiring.

Also inspiring is the no-nonsense approach of Madeleine Albright to the subject of her newest book, Fascism: A Warning. Our writer Steve Kettmann was in Washington D.C. last week and spoke with Albright in advance of her event in Santa Cruz on Feb. 5. Not that it’s a timely subject or anything ….


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Read the latest letters to the editor here.

Re: “Agenda Pack-It” (GT, 1/16):

Having dealt with Mr. Krohn and his cabal for more than 20 years, I’m not surprised that he is trying to stack the Charter Amendment Committee. This attempted power play should be viewed in light of the election results. His Measure M was defeated by more than 62 percent of city voters and his candidates received just 46 percent of the city council votes. This situation is similar to Mr. Trump’s “winning” the presidency while losing the popular vote—neither Trump nor Krohn can claim a mandate. The California director of Common Cause says that, “he has never heard of a city considering such a change to a special committee that has already been seated.” Given that the council will have the final say—not the committee itself—why not let this group complete its work? Changing the rules in the middle of game is both unfair and unethical.

Thanks to Jacob Pierce for his thorough reporting on this issue: good journalism!  

Robert deFreitas
Santa Cruz

On the MAPS

Bless you for your recent MAPS and psychedelics research coverage (GT, 1/9)! There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there, and GT, when you’re good, you’re good!

Please stay on the forefront of important journalism and forego the powerful and elite message that burdens the working people and harasses the vulnerable. We now have an ever-growing homeless population, and governments prosper from those hit the hardest—whether drug-addicted or just falling through the cracks, these humans need better shelter and living conditions.

Please write your governor, mayor or representative—this is part and parcel their job!

Any Anderson
Nevada City, California

Last Beat Standing

I just wanted to send out a big huge thanks to Geoffrey Dunn for his wonderful and unexpected article on one of the most chill, laid-back Southern Pacific railroad hipsters of 20th century America, Al Hinkle (GT, 1/9). I was so surprised that he just passed away to the Other Side of the Cosmic Road at age 92 last month. Wow!

Every day for the last four years, I have not only been reading, but studying all of Jack Kerouac’s 44 published volumes of genius writing, including his literary journals and letters. As a newly minted local expert on Beat literature and its dramatis personae, I have pretty much read/heard all the numerous stories of this crew, including some from Carolyn Cassady in 1996, when I and several friends had dinner with her at Vesuvio’s in SF. So it was interesting to read Mr. Dunn’s article and learn new things about Al Hinkle I was unaware of, such as his dad playing minor league baseball, his mother dying when he was only 8, and that he had such a long and stable career with Southern Pacific.

Hinkle’s mentioning of Kerouac sometimes getting “mean” under the influence of too much alcohol is evident from some of his angry letters written in a wasted state (usually followed by sober apologies). Allen G. always advised him “more weed and less juice”—and one of Kerouac’s finest novels, Dr. Sax, was written in William Burroughs’ pad in Mexico City wholly under the influence of one of Santa Cruz’s favorite herbs, so Allen’s advice was apt. Our hearts go out to the ol’ railroad man on his new journey and to his surviving family. Peace!

Professor Ell
Santa Cruz


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GOOD IDEA

State Senator Bill Monning (D-Carmel) has been appointed to the California Air Resources Board. It’s a new honor for Monning, who already serves on six Senate committees. Meanwhile, over in Washington D.C., where Democrats have a new congressional majority, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) has been appointed to the House Committee on Agriculture. In notoriously polarized Washington, the sophomore congressman can say goodbye to the days of watching all his bills die in the House—he can now watch them die in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate instead.


GOOD WORK

Santa Cruz County’s Homeless Action Partnership has released a request for proposals aimed at addressing the rising crisis of homelessness. California’s homeless population soared to 134,000 residents in 2018, a quarter of the nation’s estimated homeless population. The state legislature recently passed emergency funding for local communities to address the problem. The Homeless Action Partnership will distribute more than $10 million to local programs, services and facilities. Grant funds must be spent within two years. For more information, visit santacruzcounty.us.


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from fools … people have the power.”

-Patti Smith

Love Your Local Band: 3upfront

Local skate-punk band 3upfront has been “defending a nation of ears from the evils of emo” since ’98, or so says their biography. Makes sense. Emo is pretty much the exact opposite of what the band is about.

“Nothing officially against it, just the fact that is unacceptable,” says bassist Josh “Fish” Fisher. “I can respect the talent. It just feels whiny to me. Everybody has hard times, a rough day. I think you stay positive, get a little crazy, run in circles, do a couple cartwheels.”

The group, which includes Fisher, Dave “D$$” Montanari on guitar, Adam “Mr. Pierce” Pierce on vocals and Mason “The Beast” Mitchell on drums, plays a mix of hardcore, pop-punk, funky alt-rock and some ska, but one thing that ties it all together is its nonstop energy. It’s not the kind of music to sit in your car and cry over. It’s fun and irreverent. (Songs “Boobies” and “Whoa Bundy,” for instance). Even the songs that are serious aren’t overly dramatic.

“It’s stuff you can drive fast, go skate or snowboard to—extreme sports, skydive. Do things like that,” says Fisher.

The band’s latest album, 2018’s Puppets & Psychiatrists, is their first studio record in a decade. It was a work several years in the making, and endured four drummers, three studio engineers, two hard drive crashes, and one divorce.

The result is an 18-track album that finds the band with renewed energy that is pure, old-school punk rock at its core.

“It’s the most powerful material that we’ve ever put out on one single album,” says Pierce. 

INFO: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25. Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $5. 423-7117.

Music Picks: January 23-29

Live music highlights for the week of Jan. 23, 2019

WEDNESDAY 1/23

POWER POP

THE POSIES

A little more than three decades ago, two melodically inclined students were in the audience at a funk concert thinking, “We could be a better band than them.” Soon after that, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow began playing shows as the Posies. Before long, they evolved into a full-fledged band, complete with a major label deal and a string of hit singles (one of which was even covered by Ringo Starr). Now celebrating 30 years of power pop, the Posies return to their duo roots, coming to Santa Cruz for an intimate acoustic performance at Flynn’s. MIKE HUGUENOR

INFO: 8:30 p.m. Flynn’s Cabaret & Steakhouse, 6275 Hwy 9., Felton. $20 adv/$25 door. 335-2800.

 

THURSDAY 1/24

ROCK

YAWPERS

A dark soul weaves its way through the Yawpers blend of psychobilly and truckstop blues. This trio from Denver delves deep into the maniacal and grotesque with thudding grooves, screeching, raspy vocals and foreboding, gothic literary aspirations. Their 2017 album Boy In A Well is about exactly what the title states. At once haunting and morbid, the Yawpers take the old notion of a concept album and give it a second wind with a complete and concise exploration of a melancholy life lived in a well. Concept albums aren’t dead—far from it. But the boy in the well probably is. AMY BEE

INFO: 9 p.m. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $8. 429-6994.  

 

FRIDAY 1/25

HIP-HOP

WIFISFUNERAL

The moment the beat drops in nearly any Wifisfuneral track, the Palm Beach rapper jumps in with a mile-a-minute, rapid-fire flow and doesn’t quit. His beats are tailor-made to pump you up like audio steroids. Lyrics about drug benders and a day in the life of a rap star take front stage in his verses, which might sound like typical hip-hop braggadocio. But within all the nonstop, turn-up energy is a subtle inherent sadness in everything Wifisfuneral is rapping about. AARON CARNES

INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $15. 423-1338.

EXPERIMENTAL

BILL FRISELL

Guitarist Bill Frisell is a protean creative force who’s wandered down countless musical paths. He’s been a thrasher and a bluegrass acolyte, a post-bop explorer and a Delta blues rambler. Drawing on material from 2016’s When You Wish Upon a Star, Frisell applies his bittersweet tone to his arrangements of themes written for Hollywood films and television, exploring everything from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho to Johnny Mandel’s “The Shadow of Your Smile” to the Evans/Livingston theme song for Bonanza. He’s joined by violist Eyvind Kang, bassist Thomas Morgan, drummer extraordinaire Rudy Royston, and vocalist Petra Haden. ANDREW GILBERT

INFO: 7 and 9 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $31.50-$47.25. 427-2227.

 

SATURDAY 1/26

CELTIC

TEMPEST

Though their band photos suggest otherwise, Tempest is not a gang of swashbuckling pirates on the hunt for buried treasure. At its core, this is Celtic-influenced rock ’n’ roll. But the group also mixes in music from all over the high seas: Scandinavian, Middle Eastern, African, Irish. It’s all in there because they’ve all been there (allegedly). Your urge to swing back a drink and sing along in a drunken slur will surely be high if you dare test the waters of a Tempest show. AC

INFO: 8 p.m. Michael’s on Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $15. 479-9777.

METAL

MYTHRAEUM

Deep from the bowels of sunny San Diego comes the aural void of black metal quartet Mythraeum. Ok, so maybe San Diego doesn’t sound like the darkest, most evil place for a black metal band to hail from, but don’t let that fool you. Their music is as brutal as anything from a pagan forest, and my guess is their live show is just as relentless. Rounding out the night in a fury of hellfire and sound is Oakland’s Dearth, with Cult Graves and Slege from San Jose. MAT WEIR

INFO: 9 p.m. Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $5. 423-7117.

ELECTRONIC

CHROME SPARKS

The world of electronic music is a colorful, wild and muddied place. There are thousands of DJs constantly putting out new music, trying to find a new sound while keeping one step ahead of the competition. But there are some names that stand out from the rest, and Chrome Sparks is one of them. Since 2012, he has continued to expand the realm of Futurebeats, mixing original sounds into danceable moments. MW

INFO: 8:30 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $18 adv/$20 door. 423-1338.

 

MONDAY 1/28

FOLK

JAKE SHIMABUKURO

Jake Shimabukuro travels the musical landscapes with his trusty ukulele, turning beloved (and often overplayed) iconic singles into something strangely poignant and new because, you know, he’s doing it on a ukulele. One might think this is a gimmick, until one hears Shimabukuro shred solos, trade sparring riffs with guitarists, or give a rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that makes even the most hardened prog-rocker soften up and take notice. With a mixture of covers and originals, Shimabukuro validates the ukulele and proves that it’s not just a tiny island guitar to play at bonfires. AB

INFO: 8 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $35. 423-8209.

 

TUES 1/29

REGGAE

THE GLADIATORS

Starting out as a rocksteady vocal group in the mid-60s, the Gladiators were playing roots reggae at the time when reggae was still laying its roots. In 2014, longtime singer Albert Griffiths retired from touring, but the band carried on, replacing him with up-and-comer Droop Lion (note: not Snoop Lion), whose soulful and gravelly voice had already become famous around Jamaica for his hit “Freeway.” Now made up of the four original Gladiators along with Droop Lion on the mic (and Griffiths’s son Anthony on drums), the Gladiators are still essential to the story of reggae music. MH

INFO: 9 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Drive, Santa Cruz. $15 adv/$20 door. 479-1854.

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EDITOR'S NOTE ...

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Cabrillo Gallery
Plus letters to the editor

Love Your Local Band: 3upfront

3upfront
3upfront plays the Blue Lagoon on Friday, Jan. 25

Music Picks: January 23-29

The Posies
Live music highlights for the week of Jan. 23, 2019
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