The first island fox birth of the season occurred in captivity last week on San Miguel Island, coinciding with an announcement by professional hunters that more than 4,800 feral pigs on nearby Santa Cruz Island have been killed since last April.
Despite the wet weather Monday night, UCLA fans crowded local bars and restaurants as the Bruins led by Santa Barbara native Coach Ben Howland battled the Florida Gators for the 2006 NCAA men’s basketball championship.
Remember that beer and cheese tasting I’m obsessed with? It’s back.
Santa Barbara Zoo’s famous bent-necked resident
Text by Charles Donelan – Photos by Tamer El-Shakhs
In the 21 years since Winter Music Conference began, contemporary dance music has changed and spread more rapidly than any other form of music in history. As the record industry faces profound challenges to its fundamental business models, the juggernaut that is dance music consistently outpaces all other genres in its appetite for innovation, not only in terms of content, but also in the ways in which it is created, listened to, disseminated, bought, and sold. The WMC, held annually in South Beach Miami, is where all the players in the grand international web of dance music come together to do what they care about most, which is get down and share music.
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.
