A product of the 1950s Tiki culture“Special Tables for Spies, Espionage Agents to View the U.S. Fleet — Binoculars furnished to U.S. Citizens only,” said a 1950s advertisement for the restaurant. Dressed in one of …

Citizen pot bustI thought about the spring day my two hiking buddies and I were off-trail, crashing through dense thickets of tangled brush. It was growing dark, and the three of us had gotten separated. …

Original Artists Work to Restore Chicano Park MuralsArmando Nuñez is touching up a skeleton. He and I are standing amid blue scaffolding beside the wall of an I-5 ramp to the San Diego–Coronado Bridge on …

Oakley Hll explains The Corpus of Joe Bailey In San Diego, Corpus of Joe Bailey also made a noteworthy entrance. The book was denounced from San Diego pulpits for being too sexy and provoked Mission …

The Only Way to Walk Across the Border in Five Minutes It is with some reluctance that I write about my recent acquisition of the SENTRI border-crossing card because, well, I got a good thing …

Deadly Mosquitoes Breed in Our Urban Drool Of the 40 “sentinel chickens” used for early detection, 13 have converted to West Nile, including all 10 in Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, 2 in Oceanside, and 1 in …

Spruce Street suspension bridge brings out demented thoughts It’s early, the marine layer still a veneer over the city, when we park the car just shy of the suspension bridge. The day promises to be …

Udo was gone Despite the occasional car and North County bus whizzing by, they rode in perfect harmony, each rider knowing when it was time to pick up the pace or leapfrog to the front. …

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney roots deep and wide in San Diego It is Matt Romney who takes public credit for calling his part of the Romney clan to San Diego County. “My wife and I …

Jack's island: jewel of Barrio Logan Sometime this year, the city council is expected to decide whether to accept a low-ball $30,000 offer for the nearest thing Barrio Logan has to a flat iron building, …

Book-lovers chew the fat at the Mission Hills Library His watch tells him 6:45. This Mission Hills branch stays open tonight — it’s Monday. He slaps the book closed, reshelves it, glances to his left. …

“I hear them screeching” Frank Arredondo has seen them, romping down his La Mesa street as if they owned it: coyotes. “I sit out on the front porch, and I smoke and drink coffee. Usually …

“After I graduated from high school, I went to Honduras. I stayed for a year in a little neighborhood where I developed relationships with teenagers, and moms at home taking care of their kids. These …

Guitar bands spotted in the wild Here’s a fun-fact: contrary to popular opinion, guitar-based bands aren’t on the endangered species list. They may not generate the national coverage they once did, but if you venture …

“If you want, I’ll give you a hug,” a tall man with silver hair says to a seated congregant. “I give man hugs,” the silver-haired man says after the two have bro-hugged. It’s noon on …

Sugaray Rayford is a heavyweight of the electric blues. Born in Texas, the 6’5” Rayford has said that by the age of four, he was in church seven days a week, singing in choirs. His …

“Brings forth a new vitality to classic funk.” That say-nothing dash of corporate-speak was lifted from the Lettuce band’s own bio. Try this instead: Lettuce the band sets classic funk on fire, and from the …

It’s like the Holy Grail, the search for one’s own musical identity. Then again, if individuality is even possible in this era of over-saturation, does it matter? Blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa is huge box office …

Good plain rock and roll. And that’s no small achievement, considering that by now, every possible note and chord combination has likely been played. Nothing new to be done. And yet, somehow, Pedro the Lion …

Canada: some of our better rock and rollers from over the years have come from up north. Joni Mitchell, Barenaked Ladies, Neil Young, Rush, Tokyo Police Club, Arcade Fire, and Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, to …

“Dirty funk” is how one critic described the Turkuaz package. Some might call them blue-eyed funk, which is not meant as a pejorative statement. Unlike funk’s originators, Turkuaz inherited, rather than politicized a rarefied kind …

“There’s a lot of good shit happening right now.” Whitey Morgan says this in answer to my question about the present-day state of traditional country music. “Sometimes, I see three generations of families at our …

They’re not a spot-on imitation of their namesake band, but was that ever the idea? Judas Priestess is plain heavy-metal fun — five gifted women metal-heads who deliver a shot of club-sized Judas Priest. Priestess …

It’s all true, Charlie Rae says, the story about how a random passerby recorded her one day while she was busking, uploaded the performance to YouTube, and 500,000 hits later, she was a social media …

Les Claypool: unless you were a diehard Primus geek, I doubt you can remember the names of the other two guys who were in that band. Claypool is another thing entirely. As Sting was to …

Stephen Bruner, from Watts, California, grew up in a musical home. Both his father and his brother are heavy hitters who earned their reputations performing as sidemen with frontline jazz artists. But Bruner’s childhood is …

Even though the calendar proves otherwise, the members of Fu Manchu, a San Clemente band that dates back to the 1980s, seem not to have aged much. Still sporting the Vans skater gear and way-long …

Chris Robinson is long of beard and graying, but still in possession of the skills that pushed his old band the Black Crowes to another level entirely. Back then, in front of the Crowes, Robinson …

Blues music is appreciated even in the most un-blues-like corners of the world. North Dakota, for example. It may be possible to trace the radiation of that music into such desolate territory back to a …

By the time Chan Marshall reaches San Diego as her alter ego Cat Power, she will have released Wanderer, her first album of new music in six years. The reviewers at Pitchfork gave it a …

Right around the Millennium, it was a good time for rock and roll music. The early 2000’s saw a trend of hybrid bands that mixed hardcore, punk, hip hop, and grunge. Nu Metal, or Rapcore …

Some have tried it with two and made big noise, but trios are the foundation of rock and roll. Consider the Wombats, Cream, Nirvana, Motorhead, the Beastie Boys, ZZ Top, Green Day, the Black Rebel …

William Clark Green from Flint, Texas is a country music band leader with a rock-and-roll heart. Not recycled Top 40 rock made into country music with a violin and a string of clichés for words. …

I’m guessing it’s not easy to be the Reverend Peyton. His particular apple fell from the Charley Patton tree of the blues, and though it may have bounced, it did not bounce far. Patton, who …

It’s a familiar face, albeit one decorated from ear to ear in fright makeup. Some of you may remember Michale Graves from the Misfits. Graves, from New Jersey, won the audition for lead singer in …

Some of the best rock music has been made in California. The Growlers are the present-day sum of that Golden state legacy. Imagine the Heartbreakers, but with random hints of surf rock, garage rock, British …

So many years, so much Ozzy. He’s the guy who famously chomped a bat on stage, a story that’s been told and re-told so many times now over the years that it’s become myth. Then …

50 years of East L.A. blues-rock

“Six. Four. Seven,” the man at the microphone shouts like a preacher. He holds a red raffle ticket up in the air. Proud Mary’s is a Kearny Mesa restaurant, and tonight it’s loud and packed …

Dean Ween's high school heat and weirdness

Too offensive for print

Who pays attention to the bass player?

Feels just like home

“They tried to bury us / But they didn’t know we were seeds.” Hometown Latin-American rockers Jarabe Mexicano re-worked the old Bob Marley protest song “Get Up, Stand Up” and released their version of it …

Joachim Cooder released Fuchsia Machu Picchu earlier this year. It’s an EP he says was inspired by his daughter, who is now three years old. The songs layer instrumental sounds, some recognizable and some not. …

“I don’t want to try to explain my songs,” Lemuria’s Sheena Ozzella sings. Dark, but not hardcore – that’s Lemuria. “Omitting you, I get to brood in Diogenes’ tub,” Diogenes being the ancient Greek cynic …

Buyepongo is about as multi- everything as you can get: multi-lingual, multi-instrumental, multi-cultural, multi-genre. It boils down to the music and rhythms of Central America, but by way of Long Beach. Cool jazz meets merengue, …

“It sounded like they were in a complete other zone from the rest of music.” Neil Young wrote these words in his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream. He wrote them about Givers, a …

“There are more people playing jazz music at a higher level than ever before in the history of jazz.” That’s Ian Buss’s answer when I ask him about choosing a career playing straight-ahead jazz music …

Lilyhammer was a Netflix series about an American mobster who chose Norway when he entered the witness protection program. There, the mobster (played by Steven Van Zandt of The Sopranos and E Street Band fame) …