Opera fathers
Garrett Harris 12:36 a.m., June 19
Of Note
Red Wanting Blue
They can make a whole song out of two major chords. This means that something very entertaining must also be going on simultaneously. Not that it happens all the time in the Red Wanting Blue ...
The PettyBreakers go after Superstorm Sandy
“We’ve all got friends on the East Coast.” Guitarist John McAllister talks about the benefit gig to help the Red Cross effort for Hurricane Sandy victims that he and his band, the PettyBreakers, are spearheading. ...
San Pedro el Cortez — cooking without a recipe
They were new last year: the San Pedro el Cortez band, home-based in Tijuana, where there is currently a resurgence of rock bands that follow different camps: shoegaze, psych, British mod, American garage. SPeC fit ...
Brit-punk in the Blood
Colin Smith emails from London that when the Blood plays San Diego, they plan to open with “Megalomania.” That was the band’s first single, a short little blast that ridiculed the Pope. It almost sounds ...
Soft Moon rising
The video for “Into the Depths” by the Soft Moon is filmed in grainy black-and-white, with claustrophobia-inducing camera work. It shows a woman who keeps looking over her shoulder in fear as she runs through ...
The atomic weight of the Mountain Goats
My phone conversation with Mountain Goats mastermind John Darnielle gets off to a bad start when I ask him about his love of black metal. He corrects me: he is a fan of death metal, ...
Chris Robinson Brotherhood: where Southern twang meets rock and roll decadence
My favorite Chris Robinson story takes place in a beach bar, back when the Black Crowes was playing small venues. Someone in the audience had bounced a lime wedge off his brother’s dome. He stopped ...
The Kopecky Family Band has not one Kopecky!
If you had heard nothing about the Kopecky Family Band except their name, you would be forgiven for not having high hopes about this Nashville six-piece. It doesn’t help much to learn that none of ...
Yellowcard — still popular in soccer towns
Sean Mackin checks in by phone from Albuquerque to talk about the Yellowcard tour. “We’re killing time right now,” he says. “We’ll probably do some go-carting before sound check. Team-building activities. Stuff like that.” How ...
Nena Anderson's full of surprises
We talk by phone, Nena Anderson and I, about her winter vegetable garden. She’s been working in her yard, getting ready for the coming cold front. A single mother, Anderson works as a designer, a ...
The oddball aesthetic of Delicate Steve
Delicate Steve’s song “Redeemer,” from the new Positive Force, is an original, but it sounds like an oddball cover version of the instrumental theme song from some forgotten 1980s TV drama (I’m thinking Hill Street ...
