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Easy Star All-Stars bring their reggae sound to live oak festival

June 19, 2015July 14, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

The Easy Star All-Stars perform at the Live Oak Music Festival tonight. Josue Rivas photo — The Easy Star All-Stars perform at the Live Oak Music Festival tonight.
Josue Rivas photo

Michael Goldwasser, the producer behind the Easy Star All-Stars, has helped bring classic, ’70s-style roots reggae back to a level of popularity alongside another band he produced, Rebelution. Part of that was his returning to the source, using old analog instruments and machines and immersing himself for years in the sounds of King Tubby, Augustus Pablo and the other legends of reggae. The main reason was his one big idea: reggae covers of classic rock albums. Starting in 2003, with their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” – retitled “Dub Side of the Moon” – Easy Star All-Stars have taken on Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The All-Stars are an offshoot of Easy Star Records house band, and a constant revolving lineup of musicians, one incarnation of which will be playing Live Oak Fest.

Regular visitors to Santa Barbara, this year’s gig is a greatest hits of sorts, playing songs from all four albums. Mr. Goldwasser occasionally joins them on tour, but now with the record label busier than ever before, he’s staying in New York.

Timmy Curran headlines benefit show and screening for cancer non-profit

June 19, 2015July 14, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Locally based surfer and musician Timmy Curran performs music with a few good friends in a benefit for the Young and Brave Foundation, an organization that helps kids diagnosed with cancer. Courtesy photo — Locally based surfer and musician Timmy Curran performs music with a few good friends in a benefit for the Young and Brave Foundation, an organization that helps kids diagnosed with cancer.
Courtesy photo

On Saturday night, The Young and Brave Foundation, a non-profit that helps children with cancer, will throw a benefit evening at Carpinteria’s Plaza Playhouse Theater, offering both an evening of music and a Santa Barbara/Carpinteria premiere screening of a special surf documentary.

The evening is being put on by Steve and Polly Hoganson, former owners of Zoey’s in Ventura, who have been friends with Timmy Curran for years, having hosted several of his gigs. And so it is Timmy Curran, and his friends, are headlining the concert part of the evening that also hosts a raffle and a photography exhibit, both curated by the retired surfer and musician. Mr. Curran will perform with Jesse Taylor and Jesse Carmichael, his former backing band that went on to become Wildcat! Wildcat! Mr. Curran has two young kids, so he can’t tour like those two can.

The wages of art: Selah Dance Collective premieres first work

June 12, 2015July 16, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Alannah Pique, a UCSB alumni, is one of the founders of the SELAH Contemporary Dance Collective.

The SELAH Contemporary Dance Collective may sound familiar to those who have attended numerous showcases in Santa Barbara like Nectar, Fusion, Dance Alliance or Nebula’s HH11, but they have not had a full show to themselves until now. On Saturday, they will premiere “Wages,” a 40-minute work that they’ve been performing in excerpts since last year.

The evening will be preceded by two works from Montecito School of Ballet, where Meredith Cabaniss, one of SELAH’s founders, teaches contemporary dance.

Santa Barbara’s The Reignsmen play an EP release party at SOhO

June 12, 2015July 16, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

The Reignsmen feel right at home on the SOhO stage. Courtesy photo — The Reignsmen feel right at home on the SOhO stage.
Courtesy photo

The Reignsmen may be the first rock band to be formed at a shoe store, specifically the Vans store on lower State Street. Seven years later, they’re no longer selling Chukka Boots, but are set to release their first, self-titled EP tonight at SOhO, with Dad’s Clothes and Yancellor Chang opening.

The band consists of Tommy Trujillo on bass guitar and vocals, Daniel Vasquez on lead guitar and vocals, Adam Duffin on rhythm guitar and vocals and Matthew Drake on drums. In their music you’ll hear the punk-country rumble of drunken brawls in the desert, nervous Bo Diddley beats, ’90s emo-rock, and even a bit of the Clash, Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters and the Strokes, among a hundred other shuffle-play hits colliding.

Film Three-Quarterly: Stranger by the Lake (2013)

June 11, 2015June 11, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie’s hypnotic, dreamlike thriller set at a cruising spot for gays sometime vaguely in the early ‘90s, made many best-of lists for 2014, including Film Comment. It’s now on Netflix, where I watched it one lunchtime (not the best time to watch a mysterious thriller, I admit).

Anyway, the question for us is: does a French, experimental, gay serial killer film follow the three-quarters rule of structure? Oui bien sûr! Read More

Film Three-Quarterly: Fargo (1996)

June 7, 2015June 8, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Before Picasso went Cubist, he knew the techniques of the old masters. Before the Coen Brothers became one of the more adventurous commercial filmmakers out there, they knew their genre and structure. Blood Simple is tight as a drum when it comes to plotting. But as they got more confident, they began to experiment with form, character, and structure.

Let’s take their Oscar-winning Fargo from 1996. Like their first film, it’s a crime story where a plan goes terribly awry. But in terms of structure, we are a long way from classic noir. This is the first film we’ve looked at that refutes the three quarter structure that so many films follow. How and why it does that is what we’ll get into.
Read More

American Sign Language and rap music

June 5, 2015June 7, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

My recent post for Open Culture is about the viral video of Eminem performed in ASL (American Sign Language) and the subculture of ASL music videos.

Ensemble closes season with ‘Venus in Fur’

June 5, 2015July 16, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Bruce Turk, new to Ensemble Theatre, plays writer-director Thomas and Annie Abrams plays Vanda in the two-character play "Venus in Fur." Bruce Burr photo — Bruce Turk, new to Ensemble Theatre, plays writer-director Thomas and Annie Abrams plays Vanda in the two-character play “Venus in Fur.”
Bruce Burr photo

Ensemble Theatre finishes this season with “Venus in Fur,” the David Ives-penned hothouse of a play that joyously blurs the line between actor and role playing, befitting a story that takes as its inspiration the 1870 novel of the same name (minus the plural letter s) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. (Yes, that’s where we get the word Masochism.)

After the large cast and inventive sets of “Woyzeck,” Ensemble is seeing out the season with that most modern of set-ups: two people in a room, and a relationship that changes completely over the course of its runtime.

‘Force’ of comic nature: Eddie Izzard returns to Santa Barbara

June 5, 2015July 16, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

English stand-up comedian, actor and writer Eddie Izzard brings his stream-of-consciousness comedic style to the Granada Theatre. Amanda Searle photo — English stand-up comedian, actor and writer Eddie Izzard brings his stream-of-consciousness comedic style to the Granada Theatre.
Amanda Searle photo

When Eddie Izzard first came to town in 2012, he was working material out for his tour. Three years later, he’s still on that tour, called “Force Majeure,” which has taken him “from Moscow to St. Petersburg to Cape Town, 27 countries, and the show is in a very good space,” as the comedian puts it.

He returns to Santa Barbara tonight at the Granada.

UCSB students mount ‘The Tempest’ outdoors in Isla Vista

June 5, 2015July 16, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Performing in "The Tempest" are, from left, Ami Shimada, Scarlett Jia and Kassidy Klinesmith as Ariel and Danielle De La O as Prospera. Gerry Hansen photo — Performing in “The Tempest” are, from left, Ami Shimada, Scarlett Jia and Kassidy Klinesmith as Ariel and Danielle De La O as Prospera.
Gerry Hansen photo

A year ago, the shadow of the Isla Vista shootings hung over that June’s Shakespeare in the Park performance, which laughed in the face of tragedy with

“Twelfth Night.” Now with an all-new cast, the all-student company has nothing so sad hanging over their production, the culmination of their UCSB theater course. This Saturday and Sunday they return to the Anisq’Oyo’ Park amphitheater in Isla Vista with “The Tempest.”