There have been many great multi artist events in San Diego’s music history, but it’s pretty certain that nothing quite tops the evening of October 12, 1957, when the Biggest Show of Stars tour stopped in at 3,000 capacity venue, the Mission Beach Ballroom, located right on the boardwalk in Mission Beach, for a sold-out […]
The complaint this time has to do with lists, specifically ones that use the word Best or Greatest in their names. The Best Songs of the Eighties. The Best American Cities to Live in (I guess In Which to Live is too confusing to Americans). Rolling Stone’s The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time. TV […]
Summergrass celebrated its 15th birthday with a bang last month, over the weekend of August 18-20. The weather was perfect, the music was stellar, the jamming was non-stop, and the smiles were everywhere. Headliner Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass delivered with super strong traditional bluegrass. For those who follow bluegrass closely, we know there […]
Ever the versatile and prodigious musician, jazz guitarist Peter Sprague has been on a strong creative streak, with the relatively recent release of his fine collaboration with vocalist/ percussionist Leonard Patton Dream Walking (2016) and the 2017 issue of his collaboration with singer Rebecca Jade, the superlative Planet Cole Porter. The respective releases reveal again […]
The longest running Jazz Festival in the world celebrates its 60th birthday this month in beautiful Monterey, California. If you love live music and especially jazz, the Monterey Jazz Festival should be near the top of your bucket list. For three long days some of the best jazz musicians from around the world gather at […]
Imagine waking up every morning knowing that there are people who hate you and want you dead just because you exist. Imagine if the most beloved elements of your family’s culture were held up to ridicule–evidence of your inferiority. Imagine internalizing all of this from the moment of your birth–knowing you were the other, that […]
Slide guitars are seductive. The rough-edged sound of glass or metal in contact with a guitar string is both unworldly and oh so human. A good slide player can make his guitar sound like the utterances of aliens exiting from their mother ship or a blues singer growling in the depths of his despair over […]
There is an easy slide into darkness that is captured on Gillian Welch’s now-classic album–perhaps her best–created with her musical partner, David Rawlings: 2011’s The Harrow and the Harvest. It can be heard in the retro-traditional Appalachian themes that run through the album from the opening “Scarlett Town” to the final ironic love song, “The […]
American artists, composers, and musicians have traditionally shied away from delving into the mysterious. The makers of our popular music–jazz, folk, rock, etc.–have felt comfortable in the world of the apparent. It wasn’t until the progressive rockers of the sixties that mystery became a component of popular music. Taking their cues from the Beatles, bands […]
