I just wanted to express my interest and appreciation in the cause behind Por Vida (“Wear It for Life,” May 7). I think this young woman, Emily Chavez, is one of the few youth of this generation who make it a priority to stay informed. I would love to hear more about this organization.
Amber Lloyd
Rio Nido
A very thoughtful article, and heartbreaking (). The body of law rationalizing police violence and murder must be changed. Every killing by police, it seems, is because the police are afraid for their lives. I submit that if their job is so terrifying, even though it’s listed low on the list of dangerous jobs, that they seek other employment. Our communities, and especially our families, can’t afford and should not tolerate this casual violence. When we see such behavior in other countries, the violent ones are characterized as criminal government thugs. Here, for some reason, the same violent types are labeled as “trained professional public safety officers.”
Most citizens just aren’t very violent and need to rely on civil rights suits and the initiative process. We need very public, punishing lawsuits and legislation to regain control of rogue government officials and employees. Police gunning down people, including children, is not acceptable. The use of the tired old defense that they were “afraid for their lives” is an insult. We want educated, ethical people to work in the public safety role, not semiliterate thugs.
Richard Wales
Penryn
When police misconduct has risen to the level of shooting and killing women and children, we can be sure this is the tip of the iceberg. For some years now, law enforcement has been living and promulgating a culture of violence and domination without regard for civil rights. Lying and false pretense have become the norm and are justified in the name of police work.
It is time for a policy of zero tolerance for any police improprieties, however slight, with serious economic consequences to their employers. Blaming the cops for doing what they have been taught is ridiculous; the cities and counties who have coddled and condoned this violent culture are to blame.
A successful lawsuit for every infraction would bring these evil trends to a screeching halt.
John Bechtol
Via email
I applaud the editor’s powerful and artful response to the autopsy report of young Jeremiah Chass, killed by two Sonoma County sheriffs as he was in the midst of a crisis in his parents’ vehicle. Through the power of detail, Gretchen Giles turns a cold and clinical description of the taking of a human life into harrowing poetry.
Brian Boldt
Santa Rosa
The Redwood Empire Food Bank thanks The Bohemian for sponsoring Petaluma Mystic Theatre’s “Battle of the Bands Food Drive.” This phenomenal effort, in the capable and inspired hands of the Mystic’s Shennon O’Donnell, brings together Sonoma County’s best local musical talent for a worthy cause. The Mystic’s goal is to collect 5,000 cans of food for the REFB. Come out to the Mystic Theatre every Sunday in May, enjoy hot local talent and help feed the over 50,000 local people who depend on the REFB for basic nutritious food every month.
Miriam Hodgman
Food Drive and Event Coordinator, Redwood Empire Food Bank
Please know that Jewel Mathieson and Ken Brown were not, as reported in these pages (“It’s High Time,” April 30), the driving force behind establishing a medical marijuana dispensary in Sonoma; one Dona Ruth Frank of Creekside Medicinal Organics, LLC, takes that mantle. We apologize for the error.
Back to Us Food writers, put down that fork and pick up that mouse! We need you. We’re beginning to suspect that no one wants to read as much about likker as we evidently want to print about likker, but food-writing freelancers are needed, necessary and in woefully short supply.
Please send a short, graceful note to ed****@******an.com introducing yourself and explaining why you should be able to chew not only on, but for, the Bohemian. Clips, links and other past expressions of the written word that reflect kindly upon your talents are hugely welcomed.
The Ed.
Drunk ‘n’ hungry
&–&–>
Low-Carb(on) Cuisine
I‘ve started to live a double life. Or at least my stomach has. Half of the week I’m an omnivore, eating tacos, sashimi and barbecue, often all before dinner. But the rest of the time, I’m a vegetarian with serious vegan inclinations. It didn’t used to be this way.
As a food journalist, I eat out for upcoming restaurant reviews. I eat out to familiarize myself with new cuisines. I eat out and write about it on my blog (www.metrosiliconvalley.com/livefeed). I eat because I’m hungry. I eat a lot.
I once read a spy novel about some terrorists who, in order to pass as Japanese citizens, studiously ate Japanese food before a big operation in case they were killed and inquisitive minds wanted to examine the contents of their stomachs to find out who they were and where they came from. If someone were to examine my insides on my days at the office, they’d be thoroughly confused about my identity. It’s a United Nations of food in there, although sometimes the bun bo hue doesn’t get along with the clam chowder and it takes a few Tums to calm things down.
I used to eat with the same abandon at home, but instead of going out to eat, I’d cook the food myself. While my wife handles the occasional dessert, I cook everything else, and I was eating as promiscuously at home as at work. But over the past few weeks, I’ve felt the need to lighten up. Short ribs, skirt steak, roast chicken and roast pork are out. Salads, roasted cauliflower and veggie burgers are in. Part of my change in diet was due to high cholesterol, an occupational hazard. Part of it, too, was that it just feels better to eat less meat. My body needed a break. But what really sealed the deal was learning about the environmental costs of profligate eating.
I’ve long known about the evils of factory farming and the human and environmental damage caused by pesticides and herbicides used in food production. But I didn’t know the extent to which some of my favorite foods—beef, cheese, fish—contributed to global warming. Food production in America creates more greenhouse gases than driving. While you may drive a Prius, eating the equivalent of a Hummer is no longer tenable. Livestock emit 18 percent of greenhouse gases worldwide. I learned these and other disturbing facts by going to EatLowCarbon.org, a new website that calculates the carbon footprint of what you eat.
On the website, you simply drag and drop food items into a skillet, and it calculates the carbon dioxide equivalent. A cheeseburger racks up 1,855 points, while a falafel only has 300. Each point is the equivalent of one gram of greenhouse gasses. The food calculator is the work of Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the food service company that feeds Yahoo, eBay, Oracle and 400 institutional clients around the country. The foundation seeks to educate people about how food choices affect the environment. The carbon calculator does that in spades. Play with the calculator for a few minutes, and you get the picture. “What we’d like people to do is take away some big messages,” says Helene York, director of the foundation.
Eating large animals like cows contributes to global warming because of the amount of methane cattle emits. Cow flatulence is 23 times more potent than CO2. Producing grain and corn to feed animals is also carbon-intensive. And shipping the beef to market further adds to the carbon load of that double bacon cheeseburger. And, oh yeah, cheese is bad news too, especially imported cheese that flies in on a jet. Sorry, all you cheese-eating vegetarians. You don’t get a pass. And the typical sushi bar with all that air-freighted fresh fish? An environmental nightmare.
Even if you eat food with a lower carbon footprint, tossing out uneaten or spoiled food is a “dead loss” for the environment, because not only will the carbon that went into producing the food be for nothing, food that sits in a landfill can then emit methane, adding more heat-trapping gasses to the atmosphere. “It’s the old argument: eat all your rice, because there are people starving in Africa,” York says. “That still holds true, now more than ever.”
While eating is a carbon-intensive activity, the good news is that it’s possible to change what you eat. Collectively, that can make a real difference. As a restaurant critic and food lover, I’m not ready to give up meat and cheese and other carbon-intensive foods yet. But when I’m not on the clock, you can bet I’ll be paying closer attention to the impact of what I eat, and eating a lot more vegetable soup and salad made from lettuce picked from my backyard.
Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.
Winery news and reviews.
Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.
Recipes for food that you can actually make.
First Bite
Editor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they—informed, intelligent eaters like yourselves—have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do.
The aroma of spices and garlic that wafts from Chinois Asian Bistro in downtown Windsor entices visitors through the door—and down the Silk Road. The ancient and renowned trading route influenced the cuisine of Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Cambodia, the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and is reflected in Chinois’ large and varied menu.
After being seated at the black lacquered table, our hungry party of four started with the menu’s small plates, ordering the Thai-influenced fried calamari with lemongrass and mint-citrus dip ($8), lemongrass crab cakes with seven-spice aioli ($7) and our favorite, crunchy Japanese panko prawns with wasabi-honey mayo ($12). Fresh shredded beets served as the garnish for each dish.
From China, we selected dim sum, a snack originally served in the roadside teahouses for travelers. The daybreak radish cakes ($5) are made from daikon that has been boiled, mashed and formed into squares that are then fried. The nicely crisped outside hid the bland white interior that slightly tasted of horse-radish. The sweet soy dipping sauce served with it was flavorful, and we liked it so much we ended up ordering it two more times, since it was repeatedly whisked away after the small plates were emptied.
The dim sum sampler ($14) features two shrimp and leek dumplings, three pork shu mai and two barbecued pork buns. The dumplings were bursting with fresh leeks and shrimp, and the soft but slightly chewy steamed pork buns were generously stuffed with shredded meat. Shu mai, small dumplings with a flavorful ground pork filling, were another table pleaser, and it was difficult to share two among all of us.
From the large plates, we went back to China for the flank steak with organic snow peas ($16), and to Taiwan for the short rib egg noodle soup in Chinese five-spice broth ($17). The slow-braised meat and soft noodles complemented each other well, and the broth was highly spicy, even for those of us who like to break a gastronomic sweat. We moved on to Hong Kong with barbecued pork char su with egg noodles ($17), wok-fried and served with baby shitake mushrooms. Both the pork slices and noodles were chewy, which the men loved but the women considered dry.
We ended our travels in Malaysia, with a huge bowl of Kuala Lumpur sambal mussels ($16) tossed in a spicy ginger sauce. The coconut rice accompanying it never arrived, so we ate it with the jasmine rice that came with the other dishes. The owner gave us a container of the missing rice to take home, and it was sweet and delicious even a day later.
Chinois, just six months old, also serves dessert (we were too full), and hosts $5 happy hour tapas and cocktails from 5pm to 6:30pm on weekdays. It’s worth hitting the road for.
Chinois Asian Bistro, 186 Windsor River Road, Windsor. Open daily for dinner; lunch, Monday-Friday. 707.838.4667.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
Obama’s Clarifying Win
Barack Obama’s May 6 triumph was a victory over a wall that pretends to be a fly on the wall.
For a long time, the nation’s body politic has been shoved up against that wall. It’s known as the news media.
Despite all its cracks and gaps, what cements the wall is mostly a series of repetition-compulsion disorders. Whether the media attention is on Pastor Wright, the words “bitter” and “cling,” or an absent flag lapel pin, the wall’s surfaces are more rigid when they’re less relevant to common human needs and shared dreams.
“We’ve already seen it,” Obama said during his victory speech in North Carolina. “The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along.”
And oh, how they’ve played along. From the front pages of “quality” dailies to the reportage of NPR’s drive-time news to the blather-driven handicapping on cable television, the ways that media structures have functioned in recent weeks tell us—yet again—how fleeting any media attention to substance can be.
News outlets spun out—”pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy”—as media Obama-mania about a long shot candidate morphed into Obama-phobia toward the candidate most likely to become the Democratic presidential nominee. The man who could do little wrong became a man who could do little right. The lines of attack were spurious and protracted enough to be jaw-dropping.
But how often can we be truly shocked by such media patterns? Perennial corporate structures are reinforcing the narrow boundaries.
If this sounds like an old complaint, it is. Institutional dynamics—fueled and steered by ownership, advertising, underwriting and undue government influence—repeat themselves with endless permutations. Dominant media routinely focus on counterfeit issues, often ignoring or trashing progressive options in the process.
From George McGovern to Gary Hart to Michael Dukakis to Al Gore to Howard Dean to John Kerry, a long line of Democratic contenders with a chance to become president have been whipsawed by cartoonish images or bogus “issues,” incubated by the right wing and fully hatched by the mass media. The slightest progressive wrinkles of even the starchiest corporate Democrats have been ironed out by media steamrollers.
In recent months, as Barack Obama went from underdog to frontrunner, the news media became stainless-steel accessories to the “kitchen sink” politics of smear and fear.
The media pretense of being a fly on the wall has often been preposterous. In the real world of politics, where power brokers and manipulators proceed with the cynical axiom that perception is reality, the fly on the wall is the wall. The political press corps is not observing reality as much as redefining it while obstructing outlooks and constraining public perceptions.
Yet in North Carolina and Indiana, voters had more votes than all the pundits did. Pundits lost. Voters came out ahead. So did Obama. And so did the body politic.
We’re still up against the media wall. But when dawn broke on Wednesday, that wall wasn’t quite as high or mighty. And the nation might be able to see a little more clearly beyond it.
West Marin writer Norman Solomon is an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. His books include ‘War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.’
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Anywhere She Lays Her Head
Scarlett Johansson is a lucky woman when it comes to Anywhere I Lay My Head, her debut album out next week. It’s hard to go wrong with songs written by one of the most brilliant songwriters of the age, Tom Waits, and add to the mix the production team of Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio) and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), with backing vocals by David Bowie, and there’s a recipe for brilliance. But the right ingredients don’t always add up. Opening track “Fawn” is the song a lonely organist in a Midwest mall might play while awaiting customers who will never arrive. “Falling Down,” the first single—a pretty, My Bloody Valentine&–esque track—highlights Johansson’s smoky vocals and would have been right at home on the Lost in Translation soundtrack; on “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” the actress emulates the tremolo vocal styling of Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. But on “Fannin Street,” Johansson sounds like she was drugged before the recording session and then forced to sing through a broken vacuum cleaner tube, and the disco-infused vibe of “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” would work as the opening theme to a bad German variety show. If you pretend it’s not Johansson singing, and just some unknown lovely girl singer, it’s better.—Leilani Clark
Johansson cannot sing in tune at all. It’s intriguing. One, she didn’t autotune her vocals, instead doubling them up to constantly clash with each other in pitch. Two, it sounds like Sinéad O’Connor or This Mortal Coil or some other early 4AD stuff where the singers purr like witches luring you into their vat of human flesh. And three, if it wasn’t Tom Waits’ material, the album would actually be better. Johansson doesn’t “get into” the feeling of the songs; it’s like she learned them five minutes before recording them and delivered a cold reading with no passion at all. She’s gotten a lot of cred for this project, but overwhelmingly, she comes off as not an actual Tom Waits fan at all. Too bad.—Gabe Meline
In her films, Johansson is often cast as a muse for middle-aged men—she’s the Viagra of filmdom. As a singer, however, excusing the metaphor, she falls flat. The ingénue and her producers have chosen songs from throughout Waits’ career, making it a little disconcerting to hear a 24-year-old sing “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.” The songs Waits writes are gems of lyrical brilliance, so why are Scarlett’s vocals so awash in reverb? Sitek has said he was trying for a “Tinkerbell on cough syrup” vibe, but we love our neighbor’s voice—why would we want cough syrup?—Brian Griffith
Anywhere I Lay My Head is out in stores next Tuesday. Tom Waits is touring this summer, hell yeah; for dates, see www.tomwaits.com.
The Slackers at the Mystic Theatre
Vic Ruggiero, what a guy.
“Hey, howya likin’ the movie so far? Ya know those movies, right, where they got the guy who keeps talkin’ about stuff, an’ it goes on an’ on, an’ then you figure out there’s no plot or thread? You ever seen those movies? Like those Woody Allen movies, y’know, ‘So I was waitin’ for the bus. . ‘ An’ he keeps on talkin’ and talkin’ without makin’ no sense. Or like, whaddya call it, the French New Wave? Where there’s just a bunch of stuff an’ we’re supposed t’think it’s art?”
“Is this like that? Is this art, what we’re doin’ up here?”
The Slackers are a great band who know six zillion songs, and therefore, if you go see ’em, they’ll play 12 songs you don’t know until they finally play one song you love. It’s worth the wait, and Ruggiero’s string of deep-Bronx nonsequitur banter is hilarious.
“Nice t’ be playin’ some of those tough-guy songs, y’know. For a long time everyone was out to kick our ass for bein’ the best band in New York. We were always playin’ Nightingale’s. ‘Member that place? Held about 25 people. It bred only the best! Blues Traveler. Spin Doctors. Tha’s why people were wantin’ to kick our ass, t’make sure of no more Blues Traveler!”
The show was fantastic. Everyone in the place was dancing. Only half-full, though, which is really too bad—I can think of two dozen people off the top of my head who would have loved it. Don’t miss ’em next time they come around.
Trace Adkins at Konocti Harbor
As I walked from the parking lot up to the entrance of the amphitheater last Friday night, I overheard two employees—a shuttle driver and a kid directing traffic—chatting about the evening’s crowd. “It’s gonna get worse when people start drinkin’,” one said. “Yeah,” the guy replied, “there’s a whole lotta stupid goin’ on.”
I was, for the first time in my life, at Konocti Harbor, a place that’s been the punchline to many jokes about toothless women and shirtless men made by us big city Santa Rosa types. But I can now say with authority that these jokes are mostly unfounded; after a long, winding drive, I found out that Konocti Harbor wasn’t at all the chintzy Las Vegas atmosphere I’d always assumed it to be but a serene hamlet of beauty and fresh air. In fact, strolling past the trees, tennis courts and rustic cottages with a quaint view of Clear Lake, it recalled more the summer resort from Dirty Dancing, and thus every girl in high-rise jeans made me think of Jennifer Grey. There were a lot of ‘em, too—this was, after all, a country show.
I’ve been listening to a lot of country radio lately. Most of it’s terrible, but alongside all the bullshit like Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney and Dierks Bentley, there’s this guy from Louisiana, Trace Adkins, that I’m a huge fan of. Those who know me might find this incredibly out of character—believe me, I was pretty surprised to find it out myself—but after immersing myself thoroughly in the subject, I can say that Trace Adkins has one of the most penetrating and compelling voices in country music today.
During his hour and a half-long set at Konocti, Adkins played hit after hit, demonstrating the versatility of style in his output. The lightshow-laden opener “I Got My Game On” kicked things off promising that “it’s gonna be a hell of a ride,” and from the tender moments of “I Came Here To Live” and “Every Light in the House” to the good ol’ boys romp of “Rough and Ready” and “Ladies Love Country Boys,” Adkins was clearly having a great time. “We’ll try to do some songs that we know pretty good,” he joked to the crowd early on, “so they won’t suck too bad.”
Adkins has a natural ability to be both serious and stupid, oftentimes in the same sentence. For example, the “American Man” tour, which hits casinos, state fairs and football fields, is named after a song that Adkins told the crowd was inspired by his dad: “He’s basically at the top of my hero list,” he said, speaking from the heart. “Real hard-noser, though. Someone said to me the other day, ‘Your old man reminds me of John Wayne.’ I said, ‘Hell, my old man makes John Wayne look gay.’”
When Adkins finds a song in the direct middle of these two extremes—the pensiveness of “You’re Gonna Miss This” and the crass yahooism in “Chrome,” say—he’s at his best. “I Wanna Feel Something,” one man’s plea to experience emotion in a numbing modern world, was one of the set’s highlights on Friday night. Occupying similar emotional ground was “Arlington,” which Adkins went out of his way to introduce with “nothing but the utmost of respect and honor.”
In the country world, “Arlington” sparked controversy when it was released as a single, probably because it doesn’t conform to the simpleminded let’s-fuckin’-kick-their-asses narrative of all the remedial Toby Keith fans in the world. Instead, it explores the complex point of view of a dead soldier sent back home from war who finds at least a small, final solace in being buried in the hallowed ground of Arlington Cemetery. The verses, in particular, represent some of Adkins’ richest singing, and at the end of the song, Adkins was visibly choked up.
“I gotta be honest with you, it’s hard to keep my mind on things, singing that song,” he said afterwards, explaining that his manager’s son was over in Afghanistan; two days ago, there’d been an attack which had killed at least two soldiers, and they still hadn’t heard from him. “We’re goin’ over there in September, though,” Adkins announced. “Funny thing is, we go over there to make them feel good, and you know what? They make us feel good! Now, I don’t give a damn if you support the war or not, but we gotta support the boys in the fields!”
(Of course, the crowd went crazy at this, but for as hot as Adkins is on soldiers’ issues, not all of his fans seem to share his concern. During the show, two women—a mother and a daughter trashily dressed in matching tube tops and pumps—walked next to me and stood directly in front of an aisle full of WWII veterans, blocking their view and blatantly ignoring their repeated requests to move. I went up and pointed out that their tickets were for a different section, and that they were upsetting a row full of old people, but they absolutely did not care at all; it was only when security came along that they haughtily strutted back to their seats. So much for war heroes, I guess.)
“Hot Mama” marked an end to the “wholesome part of the concert,” and Adkins talked a little bit about the song’s steamy video (“it was the first time since I got a record deal,” he said, “that my mamma was very disappointed in me”) and then went into a weird thing about the Bible and Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. This all came back around to his big closer, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” which prompted everyone in the crowd, who had been standing the whole time, to completely get on down. I decided to walk around and watch all of Lake County’s finest—including, yes, a girl missing some teeth and an overweight guy wearing no shirt—shake their back-country asses to the most totally stupid and completely enjoyable country hit of the last few years.
The band vamped the song at the end, with Adkins finally delivering his send-off line.
“Lemme tell you,” he said, while the band played, “I didn’t get in this business for the fame, or the money—I got in this business for one reason and one reason only. . .”
The music stopped. Adkins threw his arms open wide.
“Badonkadonk, motherfucker!”
Like the man said: a whole lotta stupid goin’ on. But when no one’s takin’ it too seriously, and when an amphitheater full of people on the lake are having a hell of a good time, it’s hard to do anything but laugh your ass off and join in.
Media Moments: The P.D. and the KRSH
It’s just one of those days when tidbits fall from the sky into one’s lazy lap. And so it was that a man called our offices this morning, wanting to talk about the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. A former staffer since laid off by the PD, our chap is a smart fellow with an interesting story to tell about how our own particular slice of modern day mass media is committing suicide by accident.
Outsourcing ad production and editorial layout to India (as seen above), anyone?
Later this afternoon, an email came in from the KRSH 95.9-FM, where I spend about 10 minutes every Wednesday morning nattering needlessly on about ahrt and the Bohemian. Seems top management at the KRSH are concerned that the morning “talent” talk too much. Ziggy Eschliman is on for 30 minutes on Wednesdays; Frank Hayhurst for an hour on Fridays. Theater, film and the occasional other round the week out. Now each of us will have three entire minutes. While I’m just as glad to have to either focus my words or quit the gig, I suspect that Ziggy and Frank might feel otherwise.
Not To Reason Why at the 600 House; J-Boogie at the Hopmonk
It was the fucking awesomest one-song set.
It was 11pm. Three bands had already played. I was planning on taking off to Sebastopol, had already said my goodbyes, and was literally halfway out the front door of the 600 House when Not To Reason Why started playing. Awww, shit. After the first couple notes, I was lured, like a magnet, back into the living room. How could I leave? When it comes to Not To Reason Why, you can’t even pretend like there’s an option. Just give in.
The Carlo Rossi was flowing. Fools were juiced. And if you’ve never heard them, Not To Reason Why are on some heavy-ass, pulsing, move-your-body epic-type tip. The song: “Zeitgeist.” The living room heaved, hands shot into the air, and the band played intensely, furiously, like it was the end of the world. Howls of joy. Heads shook in disbelief. Jessie Mae jumped up on top of an amplifier. For six sweet minutes, miracles came true.
Then the cops came.
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People are always talking about how there’s nothing to do around here, but tonight was a pretty good example of why that’s untrue. Here it was, Thursday night of all nights, there’s a killer house party that gets busted by the cops and yet there’s still more to do. Juke Joint with J-Boogie. I headed west.
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I pulled up to the Hopmonk Tavern a little before midnight and saw, I kid you not, a guy and a girl, standing and squatting next to each other in the parking lot, both talking to each other and pissing on the asphalt, simultaneously. Love works in incredible ways.
Inside, J-Boogie had just started his set with a megamix of Stevie Wonder songs—it being Stevie’s birthday—and the place was hopping like mad. Bodies on the floor, busting some serious moves. Breakdancers in the corner. Girls dancing on the stage. Again, the magnetic pull erased any choice other than to get down. Even the wallflowers were dancing in their shoes.
Out in the beer garden, I ran into a buddy of mine and asked him how, in his opinion, a small town like Sebastopol was able to so overwhelmingly support a night like Juke Joint. “It’s new,” he said, citing that everything fresh and hip has its initial glory period. Having worked at now-defunct Barcode in Santa Rosa, he could be said to speak from experience. “It’ll die down,” he predicted.
He could be right. But judging from last night’s huge crowd, and judging from the hypnotic spell J-Boogie had over everyone, it was hard to imagine an impending lull on the near horizon.
I’ve dug J-Boogie for almost ten years now, and the bulk of his set—after the Stevie Wonder tracks, and before the Motown / Atlantic megamix at the end—was a slick reminder of why he’s so great. Crazy, rhythmic grooves from all around the world; none of them recognizable, all of them dope. Also, J-Boogie’s one of the few DJs who can drop a long three-minute drum break with intros on the upbeat and full-on long paces of total silence and still keep the crowd not only moving but hollering with excitement. Hell yeah!
More photos after the jump.
What the Hell’s Wrong with Neil Young?
For what has literally been decades of anticipation, Neil Young fans have been waiting for the ultimate Neil Young box set. Years have rolled by. All of his comrades and co-workers released box sets. Even Buffalo Springfield released a box set. Nothing from Neil.
This week, Neil Young announced that he’s finally satiating the thirst for his massive treasure trove of old recordings by releasing a huge 10-disc set this fall—hell yes, finally!
Here’s what sucks: the Neil Young Archive, as it’s called, is only coming out on Blu-ray.
Do you own a Blu-ray player? Yeah, me neither. They’re $400.
The set, announced as the first of five volumes, will contain 128 tracks, 500 photos, letters, old papers, and additional material designed to be viewed on the screen while listening to the music. In his press conference, Young encouraged his mostly middle-aged fans to buy a Sony Playstation 3 in order to be able to “experience” the box set. “We want people to spend the same hours on it like a video game,” he said.
You know what? Neil Young has been beating this misguided audiophile horse for far too long. He’s latched onto DVD audio like it was the second coming of Christ and saturated the market with awkwardly-shaped and utterly confusing versions of his albums—many of which get returned by customers who can’t listen to them, and which go back to collect dust on warehouse shelves or clog up landfills. His belligerence with the technology is a waste, and the world is not going to get in step with him on the idea. It’s expensive, it’s ego-driven, it’s elitist, and I think it’s pretty much the last straw.
Conscious clothing
Low-Carb(on) Cuisine
Obama’s Clarifying Win
Anywhere She Lays Her Head
