Natural State, Eve of Eden’s forthcoming album, is a polished Americana-pop record that seems way beyond anything you’d expect from a band at the local level. In fact, leader Aliza Hava has been working on this record for a couple of years with three Grammy-winning producers (Toby Wright, Stephen George, Ron Zabrocki), a feat she managed after having released a solid solo record a decade ago, and getting to know folks in the industry ever since.
“I put the team together from relationships that I built over the years, people who’ve really enjoyed my voice, my songs, believing in what I have to offer,” Hava says.
The bulk of the record was recorded before she formed the band Eve of Eden, and the process began right after she moved to Santa Cruz (she’s originally from New York). During the process of working on this album, she decided that she didn’t want to put out another solo record.
“Being in a band is more fun than being a solo singer-songwriter,” Hava says. “I had been performing as myself for a long time. I just had this epiphany that that was only what I was doing because of circumstance, not necessarily because that’s what’s in my heart.”
The name Eve of Eden came to her while meditating. The people that she met for the group clicked perfectly, and now feel like family to her, she says. The group officially formed in July, and is preparing for the release of Natural State sometime in 2016.
“I wanted to approach this project in a way that the music would have the capacity to reach the widest possible audience, which I think is important in terms of really setting up a foundation for being able to tour and have a long career as a professional musician, which I think is every artist’s goal eventually, to just do your music and not have to have a fallback.”
Santa Cruz Mountains-grown Syrah, plus a weeknight revelry Sipping on wines from Burrell School Vineyards & Winery on a warm fall night under the stars is a splendid experience, especially when you have winemaker Dave Moulton in full-throttle mode, capturing everybody’s attention with his vivid tales of producing wine for 50 years, and eliciting much laughter from the merry throng of diners. Along with Dave’s wife Anne Moulton, who has also been involved with their winery for just as many decades, an entertaining night was had by all at a winemaker’s dinner on Casa Nostra Ristorante’s cozy outdoor patio. Participants enjoyed five courses of delicious Italian food paired with five superb wines from Burrell School Vineyards. A canopy provides shelter at these regularly held dinners, and plenty of heaters keep folks warm and toasty.
Moulton’s wines are a force to be reckoned with, and the 2010 Syrah ($30)—a deep and concentrated Syrah with lush berry flavors and mineral accents—is no exception. Grapes are from the Estate Pichon Vineyard, located on the slopes of Mount Umunhum above Lexington Reservoir in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where this Syrah was ripened to perfection. All of Moulton’s wines have a “school” theme, in honor of the 1890 school house where he nurtures his estate vines and handcrafts distinctive wine. This Syrah is called “Spring Break.”
When you visit Burrell School’s tasting room, walk around the property and take in the historic red school house that appears on their labels. It’s absolutely charming. Burrell School Vineyards, 24060 Summit Road, Los Gatos, 408-353-6290. burrellschool.com.
Wine Wednesdays
Wine Wednesdays at Seascape Beach Resort start up again for the winter/spring season on Jan. 6. Featured every week from 5:30-7 p.m. is a flight of wine from a different winery, and the $18 cost includes a delicious plate of tapas. Info: seascaperesort.com.
SCHOOLHOUSE STOCK The iconic Burrell School, which appears on the wine labels of Burrell School Winery and Vineyards, was built in 1890. PHOTO: BURRELLSCHOOL.COM
Local author Thad Nodine takes on guns and dope in his second novel ‘Grow’ The ocean shimmers through one window in Thad Nodine’s second-story Westside studio. Embraced by books, files, artwork, and invisible literary mentors, Nodine is finishing up the second draft of Grow, the story of a washed-up Tea Partier who finds a second life growing medical marijuana. “Guns and dope play a central role in this book,” the lanky writer says with a grin. “And it’s a toxic mix.” Sounds perfect, given the 21st century context and West Coast political ecology.
Nodine—who works on a variety of writing projects, from novels to educational policy reports—seems to thrive on a steady diet of words. Born and raised in Florida, he started writing speeches for a senator in Washington, D.C. after graduating from Oberlin College. Turning his back on a law career, he came West and took up journalism. Santa Cruz suited Nodine, who raised two sons here with his photographer wife Shelby Graham. Completing a Ph.D. in American literature at UCSC, he started technical writing for several agencies in education policy, and now coordinates field research in competency-based education. “It involves a lot of interviews with teachers, students, and administrators,” he says.
The policy wonk in Nodine finds that “American policy in general is engaged in three hypocritical areas; education, drug policy—specifically marijuana—and firearms.” His novel-in-progress cross-pollinates those political strands.
Working daily on two computer screens, Nodine is close to the finish of his second book. “I used to think art was self-indulgent and that it didn’t address the public good,” he says. But Nodine has reconsidered. “Humans need that different depth that art provides. That’s how we empathize with each other,” he says.
Manuscript development requires tenacity—and patience. “Grow has five parts,” Nodine explains. “I spent a year on the first part. Several people read it, it went through multiple drafts. Once I felt it was on the right track I kept writing through the rest of it. First I sketch it through completely, so I have a sense of where it’s going. I write out complete bios of each character. I hope to finish the second draft in January. My agent is waiting for it!”
Process? “In the morning I work on what I wrote the day before, then in the afternoon I do original writing, figure out dialogue, timing, that kind of thing. Edit, then write. Edit then write,” says Nodine.
Nodine’s award-winning first book, Touch and Go, involves an unlikely road trip through the hurricane Katrina landscape. The protagonist is a young blind man with a sketchy past and a colorful cast of companions. “I enter the book through the characters—I have to know their stories,” says the author. “The characters contain a bit of me. With the book I’m writing now the plot structure involves 50 years of one family. And a marijuana harvest.”
Nodine begins working from the “little details” to the big ones. “Then I think of the characters in relation to each other, conflict, resolution—that’s why I think my best attribute as a writer is showing how characters interact with each other, and how they change over time,” he says. The novelist picks up a pile of yellow legal pads—“I write lots of notes,” he says with a grin. “When I have a chunk of it done, I give it to a colleague to read.” And he points to a neat shelf of folders. “I do a lot of research—on cannabis, guns, the Salinas River location, and, of course, online. The Internet is great for research,” he says.
Nodine even talks his book ideas into a tape recorder during commutes to education policy gigs. “I ask questions about what should happen at a certain point in the story, or what a character was doing. Often I wouldn’t even listen to them again, but verbalizing is important. It focuses the work,” he says.
Still interested in politics, such as the high-tech skills analysis he conducts with students in the Central Valley’s ag industry, Nodine long ago decided that a writer’s life was for him. “There are good days and bad days. There are days when the writing process is frustrating, slow, tedious, isolating, overwhelming, confusing, and full of distractions,” he says. “Writing a novel is like nothing else. It’s incredibly difficult to do well. In the challenge is the love.”
An uncommon truffle from Santa Cruz chocolatier Health-conscious chocolate lovers have lots of artisanal dark chocolate bars to choose from, but what about truffles? Santa Cruz local Becky Potter hopes to fill that niche with her new company, Pure Heart Chocolate, which she started in July with the help of a successful GoFundMe campaign. Her truffles are raw, dairy-free, gluten-free and low in sugar—but they are still quite decadent (and delicious). Her chocolates are available at New Leaf and through her website. Owner and one-woman-operation Potter reveals all. Is it common for truffles to be made from raw ingredients?
No. Most truffles contain cream in the ganache and preservatives and sugar. You’ll be able to find them on shelves and they’ll be good for a couple of years. These are different. They’re fresh, raw, perishable chocolates that are best eaten anywhere from immediately to two weeks. They don’t contain any preservatives. Do they taste different?
You can really taste the cacao. They’re not too sweet, which is different. They’re more about the other ingredients. I have a lemon ginger flavor that, instead of lemon oil or flavoring, has lots of lemon zest, lemon juice and fresh ginger. It’s an uplifting flavor. It’s really nice with the chocolate shell. It’s all about the experience—it’s something that you’re not expecting. And it kind of melts in your mouth. You almost don’t have to chew once you bite into it. What’s your cacao percentage?
I haven’t done the math, per se, but it’s in the 90s. It’s mostly cacao powder and cacao butter. And I just add the slightest amount of sweetener to that. The main ingredient is cacao. I’m getting my cacao powder and butter from Ecuador. It’s organic and [employs] sustainable farming methods. How many varieties do you have?
I’ve got seasonal flavors that I’m working with. I have a couple of standbys: The Bittersweet Triple Chocolate, and the Verve Espresso. Those I can make year-round. There’s the Rose Cardamom, which I’m still working on. There’s a Strawberry Pink Peppercorn, that’s more of a summer flavor. It’s a cashew butter base, super creamy on the inside, and I use fresh whole strawberries. So it’s a very familiar flavor. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. The Pink Peppercorn is just a little bit of perfect spice. It’s one of my favorite flavors. A lot of people were asking for it this last event. They’re going to have to wait for summer. pureheartchocolate.com.
UM, YES PLEASE Local chocolatier Becky Potter in her kitchen with a batch of her raw, dairy-free truffles. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER
A look at the year in scientific research around Santa Cruz From the faraway icy surface of Pluto to the depths of Antarctica’s frozen tundra, Santa Cruz scientists had their fingerprints all over this year’s most interesting findings. There were possible breakthroughs at UCSC in the search for an AIDS vaccine and better ways to test for Ebola, and important research into bat fungi and the sounds of elephant seals. Here are five key takeaways from Santa Cruz’s year in science. 1. Mercurial Findings
For over a decade now, health-conscious people worried about mercury have known what they could do to minimize their risk of getting contaminated—namely, reduce servings of certain kinds of fish, like tuna. But in the past year, scientists have discovered that methylmercury, the element in its toxic form, might be closer to us than we ever thought before.1.
First came reports from UCSC researchers like Peter Weiss-Penzias, an atmospheric chemist, that the elemental compound consistently shows up in fog. Next was the revelation from UCSC biologists that methylmercury was showing up in the molted top-layer fur of elephant seals. Researchers estimate that each individual seal sheds about half a pound of methylmercury each year.
More alarming yet was a report this month from the Puma Project on campus, which has been consistently testing and finding mercury in the whiskers of pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains. More than one-third of Santa Cruz-area mountain lions had mercury levels above the human-health threshold, and fog seems to be the culprit, as it disrupts the food chain. Experts also found higher-than-expected mercury levels in pine needles and some spiders. Generally speaking, mercury is a toxin that can cause problems for children and pregnant women, even stopping brain growth in fetuses. It’s too early to say, though, if and how mercury is affecting the animals that the researchers are testing. 2. Plastic Fantastic
Jim “Homer” Holm, executive director for Clean Oceans International in Santa Cruz, has long been a supporter of cleaning up the Pacific and getting plastics out of the sea. This past October, his group paid to bring the prototype of a plastic-to-fuel machine to Cabrillo College for a demonstration and give some sharp college kids the opportunity to test it out themselves. Weighing in at 500 pounds, the PTF 100, which was built in Michigan, can turn small pieces of plastic into valuable fuel. “What’s in it for me?” Holm told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Clean oceans are in it for me.” 3. Toxins in Bloom
UCSC scientists were warning about the massive toxic algae bloom coming to the West Coast back in early June. It has all been part of the the trending warmer El Niño waters in the past year that has venomous, tropical sea snakes washing ashore in Huntington Beach and young sea lion pups starving. On top of that, local biologists announced this month that domoic acid, an algal toxin, is leaving some sea lions brain damaged, with impaired spatial memory. That deficit, biologists say, would probably make it harder for the sea mammals to find food and avoid getting lost at sea. 4. Map Making
One of the most exciting things happening up on the hill is not necessarily a discovery that happened this year—but rather a series of developments that might lead to something over the next several years. Over the past decade and a half, UCSC researchers have done pioneering work mapping the human genome to better understand the blueprints our bodies are built with.
But like people, all genomes are different, creating an overwhelming body of information—each human genome has over 3 billion base pairs. This past year, the UCSC Genomics Institute received a $1 million grant from the Simons Foundation, a charitable group supporting research, to map this genetic variation to get a better sense of what different individuals have and don’t have in common, and where that variation is. This past September, the institute announced a partnership with Microsoft that will allow for faster calculations. It also received a couple of big grants, including $2 million from the Keck Foundation. 5. Light Fixture
UCSC’s astronomy department is regarded as one of the nation’s best, and this year astronomer Francis Nimmo was part of a mission to send the first-ever satellite 3 billion miles to Pluto, while Professor Garth Illingworth was part of a project that examined light from billions of years ago.
Illingworth has long been an expert in the early days of the universe. Using the Hubble Telescope, he has studied light that is 13 billion years old and looked at galaxies in the early days of the universe, literally peering across space and time. This year, he teamed up with Yale University astronomers to look at 13-billion-year-old light from the 10-meter telescope at University of California’s Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Combined with images from Hubble and the Spitzer Telescope, these new images reveal secrets of the universe’s toddler years. “One of the most dramatic discoveries from Hubble and Spitzer in recent years is the unexpected number of these very bright galaxies at early times close to when the first galaxies formed,” Illingworth said in May. “We still don’t fully understand what they are and how they relate to the very numerous fainter galaxies.”
UPWARD-FACING SEAL It was a big year at UCSC for elephant seals. Some researchers learned about the sea mammals’ ability to recognize the bark of their rivals, while others made troubling discoveries about mercury in their skin. PHOTO: CLAYTON ANDERSON, NMFS 19108
A look at the race to replace Sam Farr in Congress in 2016 Voters have come to accept sharply partisan politics in the U.S. Congress, with talking heads more interested in battle than compromise, and occasionally even threatening a government shutdown.
But reasonable discussions do sometimes prevail. That’s what’s refreshing about the race to replace retiring Congressman Sam Farr, (D-Carmel), of District 20 of the U.S. House of Representatives, which has yet to show those laughable extremes often seen in Washington.
Two candidates from Monterey County, both of them Navy veterans, have emerged in the quest to represent the Monterey Bay. And although they come from different parties, their political views are more remarkable for what they share than what they don’t.
Jimmy Panetta, a Democratic deputy district attorney for Monterey County, talks about the need to compromise and aggressively seek common ground, even if it means traveling across the aisle. His opponent Casey Lucius, a Pacific Grove city councilmember, positions herself as an avowedly temperate Republican. Lucius embraces certain conservative tenets like fiscal responsibility in an era of enormous deficits, and a more muscular approach to foreign policy.
At the same time, she balks at the mention of construction projects at the border, and she believes in the need for work visas for undocumented workers. Lucius is pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, acknowledges climate-change science, and wants to bring more affordable housing to the tri-county area. “I think I’ve thrown the Republican Party for a loop,” Lucius says. “My husband and I are vegetarians, animal advocates and environmentalists. When I say I’m a Republican, it throws people off.”
Panetta, out of Carmel Valley, touts interpersonal skills and the experience of growing up in a political household, as opposed to any strict adherence to party dogma. He learned from watching his father Leon Panetta serve the region as a congressman from 1977 to 1993 and later as director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama.
“Policy is important. But this game is about people,” Panetta says.
When it comes to foreign affairs, Panetta diverges from the Democratic Party, at least as it relates to Democratic President Barack Obama’s current approach to ISIS and unrest in the Middle East.
“The U.S. Government and U.S. military can be doing more to confront the terror this country faces every day,” Panetta says. “More determination needs to be shown to tackle this issue.”
Panetta says the government should work more closely with allies in the region and increase special operation tactics. He stops short, however, of wanting to put boots on the ground, saying there should be a “lighter footprint to tackle and solve that problem.”
In what amounts to one of the few points of departure between the two candidates, Lucius called for a “multilateral strategy with a coalition” made up of U.S. allies. “But it has to be on the ground, because air strikes are not cutting it,” she says.
Immigration reform is another national issue with significant implications for local economic policy. Although they differ on the scope of reforms, both Panetta and Lucius say the current visa program is in need of an overhaul.
“This area relies on immigrant labor, and there has to be a road map for undocumented workers,” Panetta says, adding that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and, as such, must realize that it needs to tackle comprehensive immigration reform.
Lucius called a comprehensive approach a cop-out, saying it will only sow division and delay progress in areas ripe for compromise, like agriculture.
“You end up doing nothing due to a lack of agreement,” she says. “The agriculture industry needs about 3.2 million workers. Nationwide, we distribute 140,000 visas.”
Both Panetta and Lucius served in the U.S. Navy, and the two use their service to burnish their foreign policy credentials.
Lucius served as a Navy intelligence officer for seven years, during some of which she was stationed outside of Iraq helping to ensure cargo ships were abiding by global sanctions on the embattled country.
Panetta also served as an intelligence officer for a special operations task force after being deployed to Afghanistan in 2007, earning a Bronze Star for his work tracking top Al-Qaeda targets.
Lucius says the number one local issue for Monterey Bay’s representative will be the area’s water supply. The congressional candidate says she would try to remove bureaucratic burdens that get in the way of permitting for water infrastructure projects.
“If I were elected congresswoman, I would pursue funding for water projects, so such projects would not be totally dependent on ratepayers,” Lucius says. “Santa Cruz County needs to address its aging water infrastructure, and I know this is true in Monterey and San Benito counties as well.”
Panetta wants the country to put more federal money into research and development of water projects. That way, he says, the Central Coast can ensure desalinization plants function akin to those in Israel, where they’ve addressed a severe dearth of water, and less like Australia, where they’ve mothballed many of their desal plants.
Panetta says the main area requiring federal representation, though, is the system of new flight paths that have airplanes flying over the Central Coast into San Francisco International Airport. The noise pollution is rankling many Monterey Bay residents.
“This is a demonstration of why people rely on federal reps to intercede on their behalf,” Panetta says, adding that outgoing Congressman Sam Farr was able to serve as a conduit between outraged citizens and the Federal Aviation Administration in attempting to address community concerns.
So far, Panetta and Lucius are the only two candidates to announce. However, potential candidates have until March 11, 2016, according to the Santa Cruz County Elections Department.
Should other candidates enter the fray as either a Democrat or Republican, a primary election would be held on June 7. The general election is slated for Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Lucius says the biggest difference between the two candidates is not policy related, but is deeply ingrained in their personal histories.
“My personal experience growing up in Ohio, we moved around a lot, lived in apartments, survived paycheck to paycheck,” Lucius says. “Because of this, I appreciate affordable housing, what the American Dream means to the people I want to represent. That is the biggest difference between Jimmy and I.”
Panetta does not shy away from his upbringing as the son of a successful politician, saying his firsthand experience of Washington, D.C. will help him seamlessly transition into the role of U.S. representative for the Central Coast, a task he believes he already understands well.
“You serve as the bridge from our home to the federal government and back,” he says. “I saw this growing up, and I see it as a prosecutor. Every day, I serve as the bridge from the community to the courts and ultimately justice. It is a similar type of job that a representative in Congress must do.”
CHOSEN SON Jimmy Panetta, whose father Leon Panetta represented Santa Cruz 20 years ago, is now running for the same spot in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Eating healthy in the new year just got more confusing One bit of commonly dispensed dietary advice is to eat small, frequent meals throughout the day. Or, in other words, be a grazer not a glutton. While most of us probably did a little bit of both this December (no judgment, holidays are hell on one’s diet), does a healthier, glutton-free 2016 really mean eating small, frequent meals?
Perhaps not, according to a 2014 study published in the research journal Diabetologia, which examined patients with Type 2 diabetes. For 12 weeks, 54 participants followed both a “grazer’s” diet regimen of six small meals a day, and a “glutton” regimen of two large meals a day—each with the same amount of calories. The study results showed that the two-large-meals diet was better for health, leading to more weight loss, lower fasting blood sugar and better oral glucose insulin sensitivity.
Although small, frequent meals may benefit some, there are some logical reasons why larger, less frequent meals may be a healthy option. From a psychological perspective, eating fewer meals decreases a person’s chances of falling off the wagon and overeating during a given meal. And even when we think we’re eating less, researchers have found that when people self-report, they drastically underestimate the amount of calories they actually consume. Large, nutritious and satiating meals also keep us from getting hungry and craving a snack again in an hour or two.
Biologically, another factor to consider when weighing portion size is the thermic effect of feeding, or the calories that the body burns in order to digest and metabolize a meal. Thermic effect of feeding accounts for roughly 10 percent of a person’s total energy expenditure, although this number varies. Interestingly, the larger the meal the body has to digest, the larger the burn. A 1991 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study even found that multiple small meals containing the same amount of calories will not create as much of a thermic effect as the same amount of calories consumed in one larger meal. And a 2004 review published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition concluded that higher protein meals create a larger thermic effect—about 25 percent, compared to both fat and carbohydrates, which give back 5 percent and 5-15 percent respectively.
So what about the growing trend of intermittent fasting? While most diets are about what you eat, intermittent fasting is all about when you eat. Though it’s executed in many different ways, it usually involves eating little or nothing during multiple 12-plus hour periods per week. A mounting body of evidence suggests it may benefit health in several ways.
When a person eats frequently, insulin (an anabolic growth-encouraging hormone), which promotes fat storage, is more often present in the blood stream. But during fasting, the body’s hormones change in a way that increases metabolism and fat burning—especially the dreaded and dangerous belly variety of fat—and may accelerate weight loss.
A 2009 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that intermittent fasting may also improve cholesterol, blood pressure, and triglyceride levels, and a 2007 study in Free Radical Biology & Medicine found it may reduce inflammation and help prevent oxidative damage from free radicals. Short-term fasting has also been shown to increase autophagy, a sort of cellular waste-removal process that may have positive effects with respect to many aspects of health. And many studies, including one published in 1982 in Gerontology, show that intermittently fasted rats age much slower and live much longer than their non-fasted counterparts.
Perhaps the easiest and most popular method of fasting is known as 16/8. Followers of this diet eat only within an eight-hour period (usually skipping breakfast and eating only between, say, noon and 8 p.m.), and fasting the other 16 hours. There is also the 5:2 method, where fasters restrict their calorie intake to approximately 500 or fewer calories on two non-consecutive days per week, and then eat normally on the other five days. Another simple method is known as alternate day fasting, or ADF, and involves fasting and normal eating every other day.
Though there is some evidence that men respond better to intermittent fasting than women, and it is also not recommended for underweight individuals or those with a history of eating disorders, intermittent fasting may be an especially legitimate option to consider if you’ve tried and failed traditional calorie-restriction diets.
PLATE CHANGER A couple large nutritious meals may be healthier than small frequent meals. Oh, and fasting is good for you.
Bay Area’s Beats Antique set to bend minds with their new electronic freak show ‘Creature Caravan’ at the Catalyst on Dec. 30 and New Year’s Eve As the lights dim, a gypsy-style violin plays a slow mournful tune. From out of the darkness emerges a woman wearing a full, eight-point buck rack. As she makes mysterious, elegant gestures, reaching out her arms and swirling her hands under the black light, the energy of the audience builds. Holding off the inevitable ecstatic release, she seduces the crowd for a painfully long time until, finally, the beat drops and a cross-cultural musical frenzy ensues. We’ve just entered the world of Beats Antique.
A glance around the crowd finds that the audience is not as much spectating as they are participating—swirling their own hands, moving to the rhythm, and embracing the role of collaborator. One audience member is wearing a unicorn head mask, another is dressed like a vaudeville ringleader with a long handlebar moustache, a vest with no shirt and a top hat. The woman next to him twirls circles in her long skirt while a wild display of lights dances across the stage and audience. And that’s just one number—the night is still young, and it may include giant inflatable creatures, a cape-wearing bicyclist suspended high overhead, cabaret-style costumes, and carnival-esque theatrics from the performers and audience alike.
“It’s very commonplace for people to decide that they’re a performer as well,” says the Bay Area group’s drummer and beatmaker Tommy Cappel. “They show up like they’re getting ready to perform, and they are. They’re performing for us. We’re on stage performing our music, but we’re looking at them.”
In fact, says Cappel, their audience is the reason they do what they do.
“We could sit here and make music in our studio all day,” he says. “But if there’s no one supporting it and listening to it, we have to do it on our time off from doing other jobs.”
Multi-instrumentalist David Satori, dancer/choreographer Zoe Jakes, and Cappel, the trio that makes up Beats Antique, believe that the more they can involve a crowd in the performance, the better. Far from being simple concerts, Beats Antique shows are full-sensory affairs that are as much performance art as they are musical events. The group blends lights, stage sets and elaborate props with electronic beats, world fusion grooves, samples, strings, tribal-inspired percussion, Afro-beat sounds, experimental composition, hip-hop, and Middle Eastern belly-dance-inspired styles to create something truly extraordinary.
The group members design a world where past, future and fantasy drift like wisps of smoke around, and through, each other. Jakes choreographs transfixing stage shows—which include, among other skills, balancing a brass vase on her head while belly dancing—Satori pulls other-worldly sounds out of his violin, and Cappel drops rhythms that align hundreds of strangers into a common movement. Together, they aim to create an experience with “crazies everywhere.” A great audience, says Cappel, is one where people scream when it’s time to scream, they put their hands up when it’s time to put their hands up, and they pay attention when it’s time to pay attention.
BURNING FROM THE INSIDE
The group’s collaborative, all-in ethos may spring from its roots in Burning Man. Cappel has been 17 times. For him, Burning Man is pure expression—a “vehicle for human expression through many, many, many different ways—almost unlimited ways.”
The members of Beats Antique go to the annual event to see how other artists are expressing themselves, which Cappel says feeds their own creativity. It also gives them a chance to share new music. Where a Beats Antique production may generally take 10 or 11 people to pull off, with sounds and setup and production duties, at Burning Man the group has an opportunity to get back to its roots as a DJ project. When he’s at Burning Man, Cappel puts his DJ gear in his backpack and just takes off exploring, embracing opportunities to play and share his music.
“Our home audience is there,” he says, “so it’s a great time to show a lot of people what we’re up to. Sure, you’re spending a lot of money to go, but it’s a fun way to just give back. That’s how we look at it.”
While Beats Antique is now a big name in underground music circles, the trio has roots in a humble project. In 2007, the three artists collaborated to make music for Jakes’ belly dance performances. When Jakes approached her manager, Miles Copeland, brother of Stewart Copeland (of the rock band the Police) about making a record, Copeland agreed and released the group’s debut album, Tribal Derivations, on his CIA record label.
“[Copeland] wanted tribal belly dance music,” says Cappel. “We tried to figure out what that was and then just kept going after that.”
From there, the group started DJing around, aware that they couldn’t pull off live what they had created in the studio. With dozens of instruments and artists, electronic textures, cut and remixed samples, and intertwining melodies and grooves, it’s far more than three people can handle performing live.
“We thought there was no way to do that,” says Cappel “We cut [the songs] up so much that a human can’t really play those parts the way they sound.”
Because of this, the group was forced to make a distinction between its electronic side and its live band side. Eventually, however, they knew they had to see if they could find a way to combine the two—and they did.
In the recording stage, the group brings in all the artists that will record, and puts together lots of variations for each track, including the live instruments. They then slice and dice, remix and rework the tracks, giving them the Beats Antique treatment. For performances, the group members decide which instruments they’ll play on each track, and pull them out of the recording. Then, when they perform, they fill those parts back in live. They also add additional parts that aren’t on the recordings.
What they end up with are choreographed performance art pieces with a foundation of electronic textures and musical samples that are accompanied and enhanced with live music. It’s a truly 21st century musical experience that bridges the past and the future, and celebrates what it is to be human.
Rooted in world music styles and one-love sensibilities, Beats Antique takes a global perspective to making music, pulling in sounds and influences from a variety of eras and cultures—including blending traditions and styles from cultures that “maybe don’t appreciate each other too much.”
“As people, and as individuals, we’re concerned and aware of the global problems,” says Cappel. “And, on the other hand, we’re aware of the global beauty that’s out there. We have a lot of respect and love for pretty much everything.”
Cappel adds that here in the U.S., cultural issues can be divisive, but at the same time we have freedoms that we sometimes take for granted. He’s also acutely aware of all the extraordinary and diverse creative people there are in the world. The group’s aim is to harness both domestic and imported creative energy for the good of everyone.
“When it comes down to it,” he says, “you look around the world and realize that there are a lot of different people that we should pay attention to and celebrate. There’s the global view from America’s eyes, and then just the global view of how do we get to the love, how do we get to the sweetness with each other?”
THE CREATURE CARAVAN
The group’s current show is Creature Caravan, which Cappel describes as a “combination of all of our music from all of the years.” There’s a particular emphasis on crowd participation and creating a fun atmosphere. Keeping true to form, Beats Antique promises to wow new fans with the elaborate show, and reconnect longtime fans with some of the old favorite songs and styles.
On Dec. 30 and 31, they bring Creature Caravan to the Catalyst, where they’ll perform two different sets on back-to-back nights. The band members are looking forward to coming down to Santa Cruz to take a break and enjoy a couple of days in a “nice city that’s close to home.” As Cappel puts it, “We know that the people of Santa Cruz love us.”
The last time Beats Antique was in town was several years ago for a Halloween show at the Cocoanut Grove. The trio is looking forward to revisiting older material that people haven’t heard in a while, as well as sharing new songs.
“We’re going to celebrate all of the things that we need to remember about this year, and that we need to bring forward for next year,” says Cappel. “It will be a good time for people to come and keep that on their minds.”
To encourage a participatory, collaborative event, the group has masks available to download and print out at choose.creaturecarnival.net/choose. When asked who makes up the Beats Antique audience, who it is that dons costumes and takes up the role of unofficial performer, Cappel describes it as a crowd of people of all ages, sizes, shapes, and styles.
“It’s just people who are living their life the way they want,” he says. “We celebrate that.”
Beats Antique will perform at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 30 and Thursday, Dec. 31 at the Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $25-$95. 423-1338. For more New Year’s events, see pages 33 and 38.
Patti Smith and the ecstasy of the unexpected A few years ago, Patti Smith did one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen at a rock show. It was Oct. 20, 2008, at the Fillmore in San Francisco, on the tour for her covers record, Twelve. She was in-between songs, and doing that thing that most musicians do at least once at every gig when they’re in-between songs: talking about how much they like the city, how great it is to be back, etc. As I’d seen hundreds of musicians do before at hundreds of shows, she started talking about the sightseeing she’d done that day. But then, in an instant, she turned the decades-old rock ’n’ roll cliché into something mind-blowing, as she described returning from her walk through Union Square or Fisherman’s Wharf or wherever it was, back into her hotel, and how as she climbed to her room, the stairs started sticking to her shoes, attaching to her feet, stretching up with each step she took.
She didn’t change her nonchalant tone at all, but now people in the audience were looking at each other in disbelief, like one huge collective “What?” In the 30 feet or so of physical space she had left to describe, from the stairway to her hotel room, the story turned increasingly hallucinatory, until the bottom dropped out entirely, the band came in, and without missing a beat she launched into her cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.”
When I got the chance to meet Smith a couple of weeks ago at the Rio in Santa Cruz, before her book reading, I finally got to tell her how much that small, unexpected moment had stuck with me. And to my surprise, she not only remembered it, she also got a chuckle out of the fact that it had made such an impression on me.
“I’m glad you liked that,” she said, smiling. “That San Francisco show was the first time I did that. I didn’t tell the band I was going to do it.”
Wait, I said, the band didn’t even know? How could they possibly have realized they were supposed to come in with that song? She’d dropped a couple of key phrases from the lyrics as hints, she said, but mostly it was because “they’re used to me doing stuff like that.”
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TWIST?
The rest of us are used to it too, because Smith has been doing the unexpected for her entire career, starting with her very first single in 1974. The A-side, “Hey Joe,” remains one of the most bizarre and powerful cover songs in the history of rock ’n’ roll. Somehow, it weaves the song of lust, jealousy and murderous intent that Jimi Hendrix had famously recorded eight years earlier into a spoken-word poem about the revolutionary and possibly sexual misadventures of Stockholm syndrome poster girl Patty Hearst. Her voice jumps instantly out of nowhere, against stark silence: “Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so, makes me feel so … masochistic.” She’s been on record for a total of seven seconds and she’s already praying to the rock gods, though Hendrix goes unnamed. Then it’s straight into a Hearst fantasy that is still startling now—I can’t even imagine what it was like to hear it 40 years ago. “I was wondering were you gettin’ it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women, or were you really dead?” she asks an imaginary Hearst, before slipping in a second rock tribute in the form of a Velvet Underground lyric: “Now that you’re on the run, what goes on in your mind?”
The single’s flip side, “Piss Factory,” was the first original song she recorded, and just as loaded with the unexpected and the taboo. Another example of poetry mixed with rock music as only she has ever really been able to mix them, it tells a story of the ultimate hostile work environment, drawing from her own time on an assembly line. But it also reaches back into rock history again, imagining a boss telling her “get off your mustang, Sally … shake it up, baby. Twist and shout.” In the next few lines, she also manages to namecheck James Brown, the doo-wop group the Jesters, and the Jamaican ska band the Paragons—whose song “The Tide is High” Smith’s CBGBs contemporary Blondie would take to the top of the charts six years later.
These callbacks to the touchstones of rock music via poetry solidified her blending of the art forms. She’d do it again a year later to even greater effect on her debut album, Horses, which Smith and her band will perform in its entirety at their show on Saturday at the Rio. On the nine-minute-plus “Land,” she swirls “Land of a Thousand Dances” (written by Chris Kenner, but made iconic by Wilson Pickett’s recording) into her story of how the boy looked at Johnny, or maybe it was only Johnny alone in the hallway the whole time. Cutting his own throat? Longing for someone’s touch?
At the Rio, I asked Smith about what’s really happening in “Land,” and all she could tell me was it’s about how hard it is to grow up, and that she was reading a lot of William Burroughs’ cut-up stuff at the time she wrote it. Fair enough; it’s unlikely that any close reading could account for the power of that song.
Smith’s cover songs are some of the best ever done, often because of the way she tangles a rock classic in her own poetry, and completely transforms it in the process. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” a line from her poem “Oath” that she used to open her cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” is only the most famous example. With the same poetic subterfuge, she’s turned Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” into a battle hymn for the exploited children of the third world, the Rolling Stones’ “Time is on My Side” into an angry protest against the very existence of time, and the Velvet Underground’s mindless “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together” into a song about heroin in Harlem.
DOWN FOR YOU IS UP
When I found out I’d be meeting Smith before her Rio reading, I assumed it’d just be for a couple of minutes. But when we went up to the green room, she was sitting and signing books—and as cool and down to earth as anyone could hope. Not wanting to intrude or be otherwise obnoxious, I suggested, “Tell me how many questions I can ask before it will get annoying.” She simply gestured to a spot on the couch next to her and said, “Sit down. Ask them all.”
She wasn’t kidding. For half an hour or so, I got the chance to ask every nerdy question I could think of, mostly about her cover songs and what inspired her to re-invent them the way she did. Maybe she enjoyed the insane specificity of the questions, or maybe signing books is just really boring, but we got so into it that when I lagged on questions she said, “Come on, you’ve got to have more.”
I did. But of all her answers to the overly self-indulgent questions I got to ask, one in particular has stuck with me, to the point that I’ve thought about it every day since. One of my favorites of her covers is “Pale Blue Eyes,” a song that originally featured some of Lou Reed’s most passive-aggressive lyrics, opening with “Sometimes I feel so happy/Sometimes I feel so sad/Sometimes I feel just about everything/But mostly you just make me mad.” Smith changed the latter line (to “lately I’m just feeling bad”) and some other lyrics that soured the sweet heart of the song. In terms of rock history, it’s significant because when Michael Stipe covered “Pale Blue Eyes” with R.E.M., turning a lot of 1980s kids on to it for the first time, he used her version instead of Reed’s original words. But on a personal level, I always liked that she snatched a gorgeous love song from the jaws of cynicism. So I asked her what inspired that.
“Fred had pale blue eyes,” she said, referring to her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5, whom she married in 1980, and who died in 1994. “I sang it like that for him.”
As Smith’s music and poetry continue to endure and inspire (as the Horses 40th anniversary tribute show that Courtney Barnett and others performed in Melbourne in October proved once again), that answer reminded me that they do so not just because of the way they surprise, but also because their surprises are grounded in real emotion and a delivery that comes straight from her soul. Not unlike the end of “Land,” at the core of Patti Smith’s art there is just a woman dancing around to a simple rock ’n’ roll song.
ROCK’S POET LAUREATE Patti Smith performs on Saturday, Jan. 2 at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz.
I’m going to travel the world and floss every day. Ann Stadler, Santa Cruz, Registered Nurse I’m going to be happy, healthy and wise. Jill Simmons, Santa Cruz, Stylist Exercise. I’ve got my Fitbit. And start my MBA. Megan Metz, Santa Cruz, Executive Director ...
Natural State, Eve of Eden’s forthcoming album, is a polished Americana-pop record that seems way beyond anything you’d expect from a band at the local level. In fact, leader Aliza Hava has been working on this record for a couple of years with three Grammy-winning producers (Toby Wright, Stephen George, Ron Zabrocki), a feat she managed after having released a solid solo record a decade ago, and getting to know folks in the industry ever since.
I’m going to travel the world and floss every day.
Santa Cruz Mountains-grown Syrah, plus a weeknight revelry
Local author Thad Nodine takes on guns and dope in his second novel ‘Grow’
An uncommon truffle from Santa Cruz chocolatier
A look at the year in scientific research around Santa Cruz
A look at the race to replace Sam Farr in Congress in 2016
Eating healthy in the new year just got more confusing
Bay Area’s Beats Antique set to bend minds with their new electronic freak show ‘Creature Caravan’ at the Catalyst on Dec. 30 and New Year’s Eve
Patti Smith and the ecstasy of the unexpected
