The Hoagland Conspiracy, starring singer/songwriter Ted Hoagland, performs all over town: at SOhO, The Creekside Inn, Legends Lounge, and more, including shows tonight-April 6-at Alcazar on the Mesa; Saturday, April 8, at Isla Vista’s Earth Day Festival in Anisq’oyo Park; and on May 12 at Cold Spring Tavern. I asked the ubiquitous Hoagland about this whirlwind of musical activity and he responded with typical good humor.
NERF HERDER GO BROADWAY: You heard it here first. Parry Gripp, of the aforementioned herders of nerf, has been busy in the theater arts, producing the musical score for the latest and greatest play to come out of our beloved theater scene in weeks, Center Stage Theater‘s production of Far Away. Parry’s influences for the play’s score stemmed in part from the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins classic “I Put A Spell on You,” cumulating in an atmospheric soundtrack that suits this dark intellectual play, which shows Thursday through Saturday at the Center Stage Theater until April 1. And that’s the night that Nerf Herder is playing a triumphant show later at The Mercury Lounge – this is not an April Fools joke! Theater then rock? Thank you, ye gods!!
– Brier Random
POP ART & EXILES: The Community Arts Music Association (CAMA) is bringing the beloved mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and the noted bass Samuel Ramey to the Arlington for a recital at 8 p.m. this Saturday, April 1. Pianist Martin Katz will accompany. The program will consist of songs by Pauline Viardot, Jacques Ibert, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Stephen Sondheim, and Irving Berlin. Your guess is as good as mine as to how this concert took this shape, so pointedly leaning toward Tin Pan Alley. Nevertheless, with such stellar performers and so many delicious tunes, the evening is bound to please and charm. For tickets and information about CAMA, call 966-4324; for tickets only, call 963-4408.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day at the Wildcat. A band from L.A. called Poets and Pornstars is playing its brand of Rolling Stones-meets-Guns N’ Roses rock. The lead singer is a British man in tight pants. The guitarist, keyboardist, and drummer also are men.
And then there’s the bassist: A girl. Sexy. Tight tank top, mini skirt, cat eyes, and Joan Jett hair. She pouts like Mick Jagger, then looks sidelong at someone in the crowd with her lips slightly parted.
You probably know Senior Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley more as a subject of news stories than a spinner of fictional yarns, but it’s true: This month Dudley the crime/mystery author released her second self-published novel, a tale of arson, rape, murder, and mountain hideaways called Intoxicating Agent. It’s a follow-up to her debut Justice Served, and again stars Jordon Danner, whom Dudley admits is a pumped-up version of herself. Here are five reasons why you should pick it up from dudleybook.com or bookstores around town.
STORIED POP-SMART BOMBS: It’s tempting to view Donald Fagen‘s upcoming show at the Arlington on Friday as a poetically-just matchup of artist/venue. With its faux Spanish village interior, our beloved kitschy theater seems to house untold stories, ghosts, and imagined characters, lurking in those bogus rooms and lairs behind the facade. And so it goes with the unique songspinning of Fagen, half of the braintrust behind Steely Dan. The work of a former literature student, Fagen’s fab new solo album, Morph the Cat, is richly populated by characters and elliptical narrative threads, like unfinished short stories cleverly tucked into pop song structures.
Some people don’t like to face conflict, but the students at the Brooks Institute of Photography aren’t afraid to snap
I’ve always been a fan of the underdog. I blame my parents for this utterly unfortunate condition: The pair of Catholic bleeding-heart liberals instilled this value in me from the time I was young, favoring as they did the poor, the disenfranchised, Dukakis, Mondale, the San Francisco Giants.
Single and hungry? Check out Restaurant Nu’s singles cooking series. Spend each Tuesday in April learning cooking techniques, from sauce basics to advanced meat and seafood preparations, designing menus, shopping at the farmers’ market, exploring food and wine pairings, and making new foodie-minded friends. Classes begin April 4; call 965-1500.
Opponents of the proposed county split — on the countywide ballot this June as Measure H — have raised nearly $25,000, while advocates of
