Rare, unexplainable phenomena always seem to catch me with my pants down. I’m not referring to stuff like that sudden, unforseen flood that nearly drowned me and my favorite goat Trudy on the family farm during my adolescence. I’m speaking figuratively here and goldarnit, I’m right sure I ain’t never gonna figger it out. Bad […]
Back in 1786 Daniel Shay and a few other ne’er do wells in central Massachusetts caused a ruckus. Shay, along with many of his countrymen, had fought or been conscripted to fight in the Revolutionary War, only to find themselves, after the war, saddled with debt and sometimes thrown into debtors’ prison. Grabbing their muskets, […]
Chris Acquavella is one of the most accomplished musicians in San Diego, and his first solo album, Praeludium, recorded locally at Studio West, displays astonishing virtuosity, but chances are good that you have never heard of either. Nor, to be honest, had this reviewer until the disc arrived in the mail. I was surprised to […]
When I was in sixth grade, my family moved from San Diego’s suburbs into the untamed wilds of East County (specifically, Spring Valley). It was my second school change in as many years and for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been located on the moon. Without so much as a heads-up, […]
Although it’s not unusual for a local musician to hit the charts these days, for the first 40 years of the rock ‘n’ roll era — roughly the 1950s through the 1980s — very few local artists made any sort of impact outside the county line. One of the most successful was Gary Puckett, who […]
Traditional folk (or “old-time”) music is an important part of our American culture and history. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the explorers, fur traders, hunters, and homesteaders who settled the North American continent entertained themselves in camp and at social gatherings by playing folk songs and sea chanteys with basic instrumentation, usually consisting […]
Up until 1966 my connections with old time blues had been mostly in collecting blues records and going to concerts and festivals. In the ’50s and ’60s I managed to see live a good many important treasures of that music including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip […]
