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Mike Huguenor on June 9, 2021
Ah, Willow Den, how we’ve missed your subtle charm this last year. Though dim and dark, you are warm and welcome, and always contain at least a few surprises within. Since rebranding as Willow Den Public House in 2019, the Den has been making a push towards music, though that was quickly…
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Mike Huguenor on June 9, 2021
AC Myles has it bad and, buddy, there ain’t no cure. Morning, noon and night, it’s there with him. The blues. On new album With These Blues, the Central Valley-born guitarist charts one man’s descent into the azure hue note by note, and fret by fret. Once described as “perhaps the only…
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Mike Huguenor on June 9, 2021
It’s been more than 50 years since we first heard the mean, mean stride of Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, and Geddy Lee, and Rush’s influence on rock in that time has been incalculable. In a livestream from Art Boutiki, R50, “The Premiere Rush Tribute Band,” pay homage to that heavy half-century, promising…
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Mike Huguenor on June 9, 2021
A staple of the modern music industry, Record Store Day returns to the Bay this year with a raft of options for any self-respecting music lover. There’s rarities from Miles Davis and Richard Hell, a 1,000-copy yellow pressing the Lemonheads’ debut Hate Your Friends, and a complete reprinting of the early works…
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Mike Huguenor on June 9, 2021
With his massive 6-string bass, eyeball-assaulting outfits, and interstellar falsetto, Thundercat is a force to behold. One of the most distinctive bassists on the scene (any scene, really), Stephen Lee Bruner (aka Thundercat) played in thrash group Suicidal Tendencies, tours with modern jazz titan Kamasi Washington, and was a frequent collaborator with…
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Mike Huguenor on June 4, 2021
Jazz vocalist Rebekah Victoria is done listening to her analyst. “He said I was the type that was most inclined, outside of his sight, to be out of my mind,” she sings on “Twisted,” the tongue-in-cheek cocktail-number from last year’s Songs of the Decades. Within about ten seconds she’s already moved on,…
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Mike Huguenor on June 4, 2021
How about some good news from 2020? Last summer, a parent from the Peninsula-based Ragazzi Boys Chorus invented a new device that finally allows musicians to perform together over the internet without lag time. Now a regular part of the 200+ person chorus’ A/V setup, the “Virtual Studio” allows the massive choral…
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Mike Huguenor on June 4, 2021
Local presenter (((folkYEAH!))) has long been bringing far-flung music to far-flung places around the Bay, but this event might just be the furthest out yet. Presented in conjunction with the freaky Austin psych festival Levitation, heavy French trio Slift perform in front of a disused particle microscope at the CEMES laboratory in…
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Mike Huguenor on June 4, 2021
San Jose rapper Trauma Fresh, “the Human Typhoon,” has been promising a lot from new album Crime Spree, and based on lead single “What About You,” it sounds like he might be right. Released in April, the track bounces to the post-hyphy production of legendary local Traxamillion, bobbing with an audible Bay…
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Mike Huguenor on June 4, 2021
So far there is exactly one great San Jose anthem of the new millennium: “The Hometown” by Rey Resurreccion. Spitting on top of a heartstring-tugging banda beat from DJ Cutso, Rey makes the case for all the golden grains of the Valley of the Heart’s Delight: “Barbeques, fairgrounds, go karts, taquerias /…
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