Deeper cuts

A film I really dug

Dispatch, founded in the ‘90s, disbanded in the early aughts, and back for more in 2011, takes pride in self-sufficiency as they travel the world without major label money. They bring it to the Cal …

As the oldest son of singer/songwriter/bandleader/mystic/political agitator/polygamist Fela Kuti, Mr. Femi Kuti, now 56, knew from an early age that he had some big shoes to fill. But he toughened up while playing in his …

Sharon Katz travels around the world with her band, the Peace Train, putting on musical events to promote peace and cross-cultural understanding. The South Africans “Transcending Barriers” program, scheduled for July 21, starts at the …

San Diego native Alex Lievanos, 21, sings, writes songs, and plays several instruments. In advance of coming back to SOMA on July 7 (opening for the Grove Collective), he took questions over email. Where in …

San Diego native Danny Green studied classical piano as a child, but flipped over to jazz, built up a base of local fans, and earlier this year released One Day It Will, mating his jazz …

Library sink tableau two pages hardcore porn small sunscreen tube The bride and the groom and a little brown-haired girl sticking out her tongue Fourteen hours waiting for this train hello again, wink the stars …

Born in New York City but raised in Mexico and Brazil, Bebel Gilberto springs from a musical family — her father the bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto, her mother the singer Miúcha — and she’s …

Grossmont College professor Raul Sandelin premiered his new music documentary Throttle the Sun on September 14th as part of the college’s Fall Concert Series. In the film, he’s interrogating the history of, and the changing …

Here comes Buzz Osborne, leader of the Melvins, back with drummer Dale Crover and Redd Kross’ Steven McDonald on bass. On July 5th they hit the Casbah, far enough from the beach for Osborne, who …

He may not be a native, but Gary Wilson — singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, collector of alien sunglasses, secret-agent lounge musician fetishist of flour and paint — must rank at the top of San Diego music …

Tinariwen’s founder, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, watched the execution of his father, a rebel in the 1963 Mali uprising. A few years later he found musical inspiration in a film, The Fastest Guitar Alive, starring Roy …

Modern English will always be “I Melt with You” to America — an essential ’80s love song that singer Robbie Grey once admitted is about sex during nuclear war. They’re back with a new album, …

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) lived whenever possible in Providence, Rhode Island (although a short-lived marriage dragged him scraping and screeching to NYC for a jaunt). He grated through poverty, obscurity, frustration, nursing his personal obsessions …

They’re too young to hold office and at least two of them can’t vote, but the Regrettes, four teens pushing back against conventional notions of beauty, status, and worth, have a Warner Brothers recording contract, …

Back to work on Ratt and related projects, singer Stephen Pearcy celebrates the release of a new solo album, Smash, on January 27. The former San Diegan took some questions from L.A. Been back to …

“Over the Rainbow” would be the last piece he’d play in public for a few years. As he remarks in his liner notes, he was already sick when he did these concerts. He didn’t know …

Ex–Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson brings the Chris Robinson Brotherhood to the Observatory North Park on December 16. In between the phone signal cutting out in Appalachia, he took some questions. Where am I reaching …

Out-and-proud punk-poppers Pansy Division hit Soda Bar November 4. Co-founder Chris Freeman took some email queries. What are the band’s most memorable San Diego gigs? “Opening for Green Day at the Sports Arena on Halloween …

Drummer Terry Bozzio’s survived playing with Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, and a slew of prog-rock lineups. He brings a concert-length solo performance on “the world’s largest tuned drum and percussion” set to Dizzy’s on October …

Cyndi Lauper’s sung R&B, electronica, classics, obscurities, and picked up a Grammy and a Tony for writing the Kinky Boots musical. She brings her new country album, Detour, to Humphreys by the Bay October 3 …

Still catchy, still creepy, still obsessive, still (mostly) masked, still rocking the white-framed cat’s-eye sunglasses he’s favored for decades, longtime San Diego resident Gary Wilson has a new album out, Friday Night with Gary Wilson, …

Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, having spent many years with the psychedelic hiphop team Shabazz Palaces, reunited with his earlier band, Digable Planets, for their first tour since 2005. They land at Belly Up on August 20. …

Guitarist/singer Julia Shapiro, guitarist Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm formed Chastity Belt mostly for laughs at Whitman College, then moved to Seattle and got serious. They visit the Casbah on Wednesday, …

We won’t have the new Meat Loaf until the kids go back to school this September, so lucky for us the Suede decided to carry on in the face of lineup changes and, dare I …

Duran Duran, still Duranimal after all these years, brings their new multimedia blitz and their new album, Paper Gods, to the Sleep Train Amphitheatre Tuesday, August 2. From his home near Hammersmith, London, drummer Roger …

When not writing, singing, sharing one-act plays or investigating psychic phenomena (see below), Sonny Smith from Sonny & the Sunsets stumps for his new album Moods Baby Moods. The band hits Soda Bar on the …

Coltrane was dead. And flautist Herbie Mann's band didn't boast the jaw-dropping hive mind of Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet. What Mann had was a splendid band of creative misfits. Among others: incendiary guitarist Sonny …

From the streets of Jersey City came guitarist Al Di Meola, who toiled in the fusion group Return to Forever, at age 20, and eventually went solo, combining rock, jazz, classical, and electronic approaches. He …

It might have been fate, it might have been celestial machinations, it might have been the two bands’ mutual love, but Earthless and Harsh Toke, two of the heaviest, THC-est bands on the San Diego …

In 1987, R. Budd Dwyer, state treasurer of Pennsylvania, climaxed a press conference by killing himself with a revolver. Filter’s signature tune, the facetious-but-still-regretful “Hey Man Nice Shot,” released in 1995, is about Dwyer, who …

Two key points about the Residents: nobody knows who they are after 40-plus years (though they’ve taken to calling the three people on stage “Randy, Chuck, and Bob”), and they always employ masks, costumes, and …

“You’re not my friend/ and that is fine,” croak-warbles David Thomas for starters. Circa 35 years ago, longtime Thomas-watcher Greil Marcus summed up the then-new music of Thomas’s Pere Ubu band, as someone who’d been …

Heavier, and, I must say, humbler than ever, San Diego’s own Joy comes fulminating back with their latest platter, Ride Along! Originator Zachary Oakley took some queries via email. The new album’s out on 4/29. …

Third Eye Blind took six years between their last album, Ursa Major, and their new platter, Dopamine, owing in large part to leader Stephan Jenkins’s struggles with writer’s block, a problem he tried to cure, …

Even the most conceptually aggregated rock bands usually stop short of creating their own language. Call them prog, call them avant-garde, call them way out, but Magma founder Christian Vander took that plunge decades ago, …

Eleanor Friedberger first went around the world as half of the Fiery Furnaces, which cut nine albums covering almost every base of Western music. The band went on hiatus in 2011. Friedberger comes to the …

“He lost his arm in an arm accident,” as the noted futurist Mike Hamrick noted about Def Leppard’s drummer Rick Allen — but that’s left Allen stronger. Given pedals to cover his missing left appendage, …

From the residue of Seattle band Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Cave Singers arose in 2007. Now they’re touring their fifth album and first crowd-sourced recording project, Banshee. They play the Casbah on Sunday, February …

From the Ben Folds Five through solo projects and rubbing shoulders with William Shatner, Regina Spektor, and Weird Al Yankovic, pianist/composer Ben Folds likes to keep folks head-scratching. In concert with the San Diego Symphony, …

Singer, songwriter, keyboardist Vanessa Carlton brings her new stark tunes from her album Liberman to the Casbah on Sunday, January 24. She took questions over email on working with producer Steve Osborne (New Order, U2), …

They’re missing Peter Hook. Without his bass leading the charge or waiting to, everyone lays back. Cool lapsing into cold. Heatless — but seamless — groove slipping between disco, disco with electronica synth touches, razor-chop …

Seattle’s Tacocat — singer Emily Nokes, guitarist Eric Randall, bassist Bree McKenna, and drummer Lelah Maupin — brings their surf/pop/throb/costume riot to the Casbah on December 7. Ms. Nokes sat for some email questions. Which …

Art Alexakis, leader of Everclear, brings the band to the Music Box on Saturday, November 21. Alexakis took time out from hunting down a Starbucks in Greensboro, North Carolina, to take a few phoner questions. …

L7, the loud and raunchy female quartet featuring guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner, bassist Jennifer Finch, and drummer Dee Plakas, formed in 1985, broke big in 1992, broke up in 2001, and reunited last …

The Cult, fronted by Ian Astbury, invades House of Blues on November 19, stumping for their new album Hidden City, the final installment in a three-album trilogy. Astbury took questions over the phone — and …

Won’t say the guy’s name, but he was a drug dealer with a name fitting that occupation. He held down an all-nighter DJ slot at the campus station, and I sat up with him once …

Shirley Manson’s back together with her Garbage bandmates Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker. They hit Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on October 6. She took some trans-Atlantic phone questions from the Reader. What …

"A truly good friend. He was truthful to the point of it being painful. A tremendous amount of fun, and up for anything. He would tell anyone anything, often to his own detriment.”