Funk mined from the best days of funk, meaning the music that was made during the ’80s R&B revival days by the likes of alto saxist Maceo Parker and bigger horn-band acts like Cameo. Jelly …
September 4, 2013
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Stories by Dave Good
Jelly Bread
How San Diego Unified music programs do so much with so little
Beleaguered San Diego Unified music programs — jamming on tin whistles and plastic trombones — win a national Music Education Award. Teachers ask, "What the…?"
August 28, 2013
Johnny Mox's nursery rhymes from hell
Nursery rhymes from hell: Johnny Mox brings us doom and dread disguised as something carefree and childish. Imagine “Row Row Row Your Boat” but recorded by the people who brought us the Blair Witch Project: …
August 28, 2013
Invaded by hippies
Blues guitarists Michael Stone and Lafayette Falquay start playing live again. Each was on hiatus for different reasons.
August 21, 2013
Wheeler Brothers roll into town
The Wheeler Brothers, from Austin, Texas, are not a poor man’s Fleet Foxes. Nor are they an imitation Avett Brothers, even though, stylistically, they all sit pretty much at the same table with the larger …
August 21, 2013
Black Angels descend on Belly Up
The Black Angels, from Austin, Texas, are known as a psychedelic rock band. That’s a kind of music that dates back to the golden era of garage bands. The Angels owe much to the 1960s, …
August 14, 2013
Rockin' and rollin' all night long
Winstons A slice of history in the midst of Ocean Beach, Winstons dates back to 1986 and retains that wonderful sense of all things hippie. That means Dead tributes and jam bands and reggae groups …
August 7, 2013
Consider Alejandro Escovedo's family tree
In 1998, No Depression magazine named Alejandro Escovedo their Artist of the Decade, and they were right. Escovedo is a direct pipeline to something that is bigger than rock and roll. First, consider the man’s …
August 7, 2013
All shook down
Shakedown club booker Josh Barnes goes independent because new owner Anilee Griffin has changed the way things are done too much.
July 31, 2013
Shakey Graves
Alejandro Rose-Garcia, from Austin, Texas, goes by the stage name Shakey Graves. If this makes him sound like an itinerant Delta bluesman, in the design of his performance, he is — partly. Graves is a …
July 24, 2013
Vinyl addiction
Former M Theory record store founder Eric Howarth thins his record collection while at the same time staging “Vinyl Junkies” record swaps.
July 24, 2013
Grand Tarantula
Grand Tarantula: it’s a name that comes up in conversations about bands in town that are good to go and check out. The band has a lot of friends and admirers, and for good reason. …
July 17, 2013
San Diego saves Scott Tournet's soul
Better than music is sex, says Nocturnals guitarist Scott Tournet, who recently released a solo album recorded at Earthling Studios.
July 10, 2013
All I need is a car and a kit
Former City Serene drummer Mike Buxbaum recounts the devastating tour-bus accident in 2009 that short-circuited his music career.
July 10, 2013
Nico Vega's not in Nico Vega
Nico Vega (it’s the band’s name, not an actual member) broke out after “Beast” got licensed for use on the trailer of a video game called BioShock Infinite. “That’s so weird,” says Aja Volkman, the …
July 10, 2013
Palms, where a Deftone meets Isis
By the time Palms plays the first of their tour dates in San Diego, their delayed self-titled CD will finally have been released. Palms is one-fifth Deftones and three-fifths Isis, an L.A.-based quartet consisting of …
July 3, 2013
Sound off on a T
Erin Goss, a publicist by trade, and Louis XIV drummer Mark Maigaard start Sound Off Tees, which will enable featured bands to direct 40 percent of profits to their desired charity.
July 3, 2013
Hard to breathe in Barrio Logan
Barrio Logan’s mixture of residential and industrial use has taken its toll on the citizenry, who have higher rates of asthma than people in other San Diego neighborhoods.
June 26, 2013
Pepperin' O'side
The Hawaiian transplants in Pepper describe their beginnings in North County, where they moved about four years ago from Hawaii.
June 26, 2013
Great White Buffalo roams into town
What is it about Great White Buffalo? It’s the kind of music that acts like the perfect tonic for rabid politics and sour television news. GWB is an L.A.-based indie band that is very much …
June 26, 2013
Shakeup at the Shakedown
Anilee Griffin, new owner of the Shakedown bar in the Midway District, says nothing is going to change.
June 19, 2013
Bart Mendoza and True Stories
“It’s very keyboard-driven music,” says Bart Mendoza. Possibly this explains why he was trawling about Facebook one afternoon in search of a Farfisa electric organ and an amplifier, the desire for which in turn defines …
June 19, 2013
Social Club
Social Club, of North Park, has invented a new genre they call “pull.” “It’s a really bad name,” says John Levan. He fronts the band, writes most of the lyrics, and sings most of the …
June 12, 2013
Nekromantix
“Murder for Breakfast?” Oh, hell yes. The Nekromantix are making the rounds, still touring behind 2011’s What Happens in Hell Stays in Hell, and they have a stopover planned for San Diego. The Danish-American psychobilly …
June 5, 2013
Parquet Courts
Light Up Gold could very well land in the stack of contemporary records that we will be listening to, and drawing inspiration from, in the coming decades. That’s a hot topic of late on social …
May 29, 2013
Brothers Gow
I came away from my first Brothers Gow experience with no clear idea what manner of band I was listening to. There is no defining sound here. The music seems to be the end result …
May 22, 2013
San Diegans who refuse to modernize
The Printer “My buddy in San Francisco got his finger smashed in an old printing press. It actually turned the bone to powder. He had no phone in his warehouse to call for help, so …
May 15, 2013
Super Water Sympathy
A busy year ahead for Super Water Sympathy: the band is hitting the road in support of their second full-length, Hydrogen Child, and then picking up a couple months of Warped Tour road work that …
May 15, 2013
Heavy-hitters from the peace-and-love generation
Slightly Stoopid enlists Bob Weir, a couple Neville Brothers, Tommy Chong, and Karl Denson for their new live CD/DVD, Slightly Stoopid & Friends: Live at Roberto’s TRI Studios.
May 15, 2013
Music critic snobbery
Local tribute Rushed is a band in demand now that Rush is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
May 15, 2013
Bill Payne, last man standing
Bill Payne’s on the phone from his home in Montana — “It’s a good place to land up” — to talk about his present tour with a character named Dennis McNally (and Gabe Ford on …
May 8, 2013
Helado Negro
Sometimes I hear music that is so far outside the realm of possibilities that I want to know who likes it and who dances to it. I want to meet the kinds of people that …
May 1, 2013
VietNam out of Texas
Those bands worth a listen because they are so different, but not so far out there that you can’t get a grip on the music — I hate it when that happens. VietNam is from …
April 24, 2013
The Revival Tour: white punks on folk
The sixth Revival Tour kicked off in Texas on March 15. The group rolls into San Diego April 21 propelled, as its promoters say, by “an innate need to tell a story in its naked …
April 17, 2013
SD Music TV suspects in the crosshairs
SD Music TV’s studios were burglarized on the last weekend of March. Unreplaceable recordings were stolen.
April 17, 2013
East of Sweden
A great little indie-rock band with a strange name that had a cello-playing drummer last year. I had a chance to talk to Jeffrey O’Brien about both. The cello thing, he explained, was for their …
April 10, 2013
Hip to shop
“What did they used to call that, the kind of music that used to be playing in supermarkets?” Well, whatever the proper term is, Ex-Dragon frontman Mario Escovedo says that’s a new direction Requiemme, his …
April 10, 2013
Bury the past with an axe
On May 28, Finding the Sacred Heart — Live in Philly, 1986 will be released for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray. The concert was filmed at the Spectrum in Philadelphia during the second …
April 10, 2013
Thrashed
“Every single day I get emails from people who still tune in.” Ed Duke shuttered his long-running web radio station Thrash Unlimited recently. “Technically, it’s still on the air,” he says by phone, “on [Internet …
April 3, 2013
The plaintive croon of Angel Olsen
Not the voice of an angel, which is not to say that Angel Olsen’s singing voice is not good, it’s just that it’s not particularly angelic. Intricate is a word I’d use in its place. …
April 3, 2013
Stacy Antonel once paralyzed by fear
Stacy Antonel of Ocean Beach won the $10,000 grand prize at the conclusion of the first season of 3 Minutes to Stardom, a local singing competition.
March 27, 2013
Bluesman Bill Magee turns 70
“You gotta have a passion for it. That’s got to be number one. Number two? You got to be willing to pay your dues by practicing day and night.” We meet up for lunch, Bill …
March 27, 2013
Writer feels sorry for Lake Murray bunny
Author Dave Good writes about the rabbit he found (and now owns) and the San Diego bunny scene.
March 20, 2013
Horse sense
‘In December, we changed the name to Stone Horse.” I tell Danielle Spade the new name rings of Linda Ronstadt. She giggles: “Yeah. Stone Ponys. But my sister said our other name was too long. …
March 20, 2013
Jeff Mangum
In their short lifetime as a band, Neutral Milk Hotel could have been described as late bloomers. It took them almost a decade to become overnight successes, and even then, the love was delayed. In …
March 20, 2013
Natasha Kozaily dreamt beyond the horizon
On May 14, Natasha Kozaily will release her second CD, Serenading Renegades. She intends dual release parties, both in San Diego and back home on Cayman Island. The Caymanian has lived here since 2010, lured …
March 20, 2013