Music – Page 11 – Ted Mills

Music is the Healer – Ian Franklin’s musical journey comes to Lompoc Flower Festival

June 18, 2010June 1, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

There’s another annual event to look out for at this Wednesday’s Flower Festival in Lompoc, and that’s the return of Ian Franklin. This Bay Area musician with the Central Coast connections appeared last year at the Festival and returns for the second time for a rock and folk infusion of his songwriting skills.

“Lompoc is my second home,” says Franklin, who spent many a summer there with his father, a local chiropractor. The Flower Festival was always a main attraction during those visits, and it took some encouraging from dear ol’ dad to finally submit his CD to the festival organizers. “He kept egging me on to perform there,” he says.

Fiddle-Dee-Dee – Fourth Annual FiddleFest pours wines and bluegrass tunes for a good cause

June 18, 2010June 1, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Fiddlehead Cellars never took its name from the actual instrument or from its owners’ interest in music. Instead, the winery takes its name from the curly tip of a fern, which some cultures even pickle as a food. And Fiddlestix, the name of the vineyard, is a gosh darn ol’ swear word. But none of that matters in the fourth year of the FiddleFest, one of the Lompoc area’s favorite fundraisers, as wine tasting and bluegrass music will go hand in hand.

“Just as I started getting everybody that this was about the plant, then I went and added the twist of the fiddle music,” says Kathy Joseph, who owns Fiddlehead along with her husband

Sublime’s new singer Rome carried on Nowell’s tradition at KJEE’s Summer Round Up

June 14, 2010May 19, 2022 tedmills Leave a comment

When Rome Ramirez was about 6 years old, Bradley Nowell, lead singer of Sublime, died from a drug overdose. That was 1996. Now it’s 2010 and the 22-year-old finds himself stepping into Nowell’s shoes as the frontman of a resuscitated Sublime (with the appendage “with Rome” added after Nowell’s family complained).

A Sublime fan since he was a kid, Mr. Ramirez is now playing in front of crowds like the one that gathered at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, most of whom probably never saw Sublime play when Nowell was alive. As a capper to the day-long KJEE Summer Round Up, it was a fine enough way to see the sun set.

The Glory That Is Rome – After 14 years, Sublime returns with a new singer, and a caveat

June 11, 2010June 1, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Call it the ultimate fan’s dream. Rome Ramirez, just about to turn 22, grew up worshipping the band Sublime from his Fremont, Calif., home. He decorated his room with their posters, and when he picked up a guitar at age 11, the first song he learned to play was “Wrong Way.” Fate, luck and talent had their way with Ramirez, despite his leaving home at 14. He’s now the new lead singer of Sublime and about to headline KJEE’s Summer Round Up, stepping onstage with bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, who are both twice his age.

The shoes he fills are those of lead singer Bradley Nowell, who died of a heroin overdose just as the band released its third album in 1996. A life was cut short, and the band’s success was, too. Their singles “Santeria,” “Wrong Way” and “What I Got” became hits, and the videos showed Gaugh and Wilson gamely doing their best, trying to incorporate Nowell’s ghost into the proceedings (sometimes, through computer graphics, literally).

Join in the Chant – Yoga Soup’s Kirtan series keeps getting bigger and bigger

June 11, 2010December 16, 2020 tedmills Leave a comment

Sarah Garney likes to quote a close friend who summed up the musical genre of Kirtan better than she feels she can: “Kirtan fulfills the promise of rock ‘n’ roll, because it’s participatory and uplifting.”

This “rock ‘n’ roll Sanskrit chanting” music has slowly been growing as a West Coast favorite, and with Santa Barbara as one of the definite stops on any musician’s tour. Garney has been one of the major promoters in the area and has managed some of the genre’s stars, such as Dave Stringer, and has programmed this summer series of concerts at Yoga Soup, ground zero for Kirtan, which starts tonight.

Extravaganza Festival

May 18, 2010May 26, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

UCSB’s Harder Stadium rocked and swayed to the six-band day-long festival Extravaganza this last Saturday. According to unofficial estimates out of the Associated Student Board, 13,000 students and music fans attended this free concert that has been put on by the Board since 1979. Winners of the local Battle of the Bands competiton, Soul Minded, opened the show, followed by the Super Mash Brothers, who DJ’d a set of contemporary hip-hop mixed in with classic pop and rock. L.A.-based cult act Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes returned to Santa Barbara once again ahead of a July gig in town and serenaded the audience with their huge, Spector-ish wall of sound. The final two acts both hailed from Canada: Montreal’s Chromeo conjured the ’80s electro-funk of a Dazz or Gap Band with just a guitar and a keyboard, pre-recorded beats and a well-used vocoder, and the crowd swelled for closing Toronto-born hip-hop artist Drake, who brought on surprise guest Birdman to spit rhymes alongside. Drake performed with a band as well as a DJ. In the beginning, the lines to get into Extravaganza were long even for a free event, yet after a few hours, access in and out was easy. The lines for the various food stalls inside, however, remained deep for the entire festival.

Elvis Costello fulfills his musical promise in vital Arlington solo show

April 17, 2010May 20, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

At Elvis Costello's solo show at the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday night, his first visit in 16 years, Mr. Costello showed why he is still a vital artist. Out of the 24 songs played in his 90-minute concert, only four were from his classic early years, the rest coming from his last couple of albums and albums yet-to-come. DAVIDBAZEMORE.COM PHOTO — At Elvis Costello’s solo show at the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday night, his first visit in 16 years, Mr. Costello showed why he is still a vital artist. Out of the 24 songs played in his 90-minute concert, only four were from his classic early years, the rest coming from his last couple of albums and albums yet-to-come.
DAVIDBAZEMORE.COM PHOTO

“My father, who was the real singer in the family, told me never to sing up to a note. Sing down to it.” This was Elvis Costello on Tuesday night at the Arlington Theatre, and he paused after this quote to gather in bemused giggles. “No, I don’t know what it means either.”

Mr. Costello has spent his 33 years in rock neither up nor down in relationship to notes, but instead fearless in the face of them.

Same as it Never Was – Art-pop-folk-etc. group Yo La Tengo make a post-Coachella stop at Velvet

April 16, 2010May 20, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Famous UK DJ John Peel once explained why he counted The Fall as his favorite group: “They are always different; they are always the same.” Much could be said of the 25 (that’s right, hipsters, twenty-flippin’-five) year career of Yo La Tengo, whose unmalicious but complete avoidance of our town ends this Monday night.

The husband and wife team of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, along with bassist James McNew, formed in 1984 (McNew joined in 1991) and they have been with Matador Records since 1993’s “Painful,” which the group and critics agree was the turning point after five albums into its current mature sound. Those earlier records were good, of course, but the ones that came after were fantastic, displaying an encyclopedic knowledge of music and history, blending Velvet Underground simplicity, Krautrock dronage, bucolic alt-folk and whatever strikes their fancy.

The Costello Show – Though he’s never stopped working, Elvis Costello returns to S.B. after 16 years

April 9, 2010May 22, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Elvis Costello at 55: his face still framed by black plastic specs, this season he has turned to a late-period-Dylan moustache and a series of wide-brimmed hats. In his albums, concerts and Sundance Channel chat-and-music show “Spectacle,” he continues to indulge, celebrate and expand his encyclopedic knowledge of music. He’s the Englishman who knows more about America’s musical culture than we do. In interview, he seizes the question and tussles with it for minutes, though at the end, he admits to being distracted. Costello had just got off the phone, having heard that John Ciambotti, the bass player from Clover — who backed Costello on his 1977 debut LP — had passed away. The interview went ahead, with Costello covering everything from his show and resurrecting old tunes to his thoughts on the latest “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie.

There have now been two seasons of “Spectacle.” Did being the interviewee for so many years help in becoming an interviewer?

No, I think it helped to be truthful, to be in the same location as the subjects. I really think that the success or otherwise of the conversations hinged largely on the fact that the people had a degree of trust simply because they knew that I knew what they do, even if our methodologies turned out to be different. The other (thing about the show is) they are not set up to really promote a new product the way a chat show is. Because the host in this case is not a comedian but somebody who … I mean, I can appreciate the humor in certain situations as much as the next person; but it doesn’t matter to me if the conversation becomes serious or reflective or emotional. And we get to also speak for a fairly long period of time and then try and edit the best bits into something like an hour. And all of those things put us, I would say, at some advantage to most of the discourse on television. So I don’t put too much thought into my own technique.

Candy Flips and Bunny Hops : With a new release waiting in the wings, Gram Rabbit returns to S.B.

March 26, 2010May 14, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

“Party in the desert, party in the desert/Everybody wants to party in the desert.”

The chorus of Gram Rabbit’s new single/video “Candy Flip,” full of disco and distorto guitars, says it all about the Joshua Tree-based band. They have the good stuff and they know you want it, that psychedelic nugget, and their domicile is the only place it makes sense. They are the musical equivalent of the opening paragraph of “Fear and Loathing.” But sometimes, they venture outside the Rabbit Ranch and come visiting, which they will this coming Thursday, to SOhO Restaurant and Music Club.