Everybody's a star
There certainly have been a lot of celebrity sightings on the Marin music scene recently. Dave Chappelle was spotted at Fairfax's 19 Broadway checking out good friend Talib Kweli. (Thursday, May 3, 2012, 2:09 PM)

Some kind of Montrose
The Bay Area band Montrose—named after its axe-slinging leader Ronnie Montrose—became "one of the first American-bred hard-rock groups to challenge British supremacy in the early '70s," the All Music Guide has opined. (Thursday, April 26, 2012, 11:44 AM)

Into the groove
"Before I became a record store owner, I had a stressful job in San Francisco and was trying to think of the opposite business in stress level in which I could make a living," says Barry Lazarus, owner of Red Devil Records in downtown San Rafael. (Thursday, April 19, 2012, 11:52 AM)

Tell 'em Willie's boy is here...
"When I wrote this record, I was completely wasted," says Lukas Nelson, the 23-year-old son of country legend Willie Nelson, speaking of his newly released album, Wasted. (Thursday, April 12, 2012, 11:43 AM)

Sweet Honey in the Throck
Can jazz be saved?
Directors Michael Rivoira, Lars Larson and Peter J. Vogt posed that provocative question in their 2009 documentary, Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense, which debuted at the Mill Valley Festival and has since spawned a vibrant discussion forum on Facebook. (Thursday, April 5, 2012, 11:49 AM)

Hungry hungry hippocampal
Doors singer Jim Morrison, aka the Lizard King, had it right: There's just something about music that adds fire to the tribal stomp. (Thursday, March 22, 2012, 11:47 AM)

The color of money
Fifteen years and $120 million after its groundbreaking, the controversial Green Music Center on the Sonoma State University campus has announced a superstar lineup for the inaugural 2012-13 season. (Thursday, March 15, 2012, 11:30 AM)

Mrs. Soul
Ask Pegi Young what she's working on these days and she laughs: "Which hat should I put on?" quips Young, a singer/songwriter, wife of legendary rock musician Neil Young, and president of the board of directors of the organization that stages the annual all-star Bridge School benefit concert.
(Thursday, March 8, 2012, 10:13 AM)

Bob Dylan, he is a-changin'
In Nat Hentoff's revealing 1966 Playboy interview with Bob Dylan, the journalist confronted the singer/songwriter about his efforts to shun the public perception of him as a spokesman for his generation. (Thursday, March 1, 2012, 10:12 AM)

Price grouping
He's performed at square dances and jammed with blues bands. But next month, Mill Valley jazz violinist Evan Price, an ex-member of the groundbreaking Turtle Island Quartet, will be in the spotlight with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless string ensemble under the direction of superstar violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.
(Thursday, February 23, 2012, 11:48 AM)

The Bern identity
He's a troubadour known for poetic, poignant, sometimes topical, often daring songs—like "Jerusalem" and "God Said No"—which earlier in his career earned him the sobriquet the Next Dylan. But Iowa native Dan Bern has another side that even many of his fans are unaware of: He helped give voice to comedian Russell Brand's self-destructive rock star character Aldous Snow in the raunchy 2010 hit comedy Get Him to the Greek.
(Thursday, February 16, 2012, 11:41 AM)

All the emotion in the universe
Music is the shorthand of emotion, the Russian philosopher and author Leo Tolstoy, a free-love advocate and proto-hippie, once penned.
I thought of that quote listening to the Santana band's evocative Caravanserai during what I guess you'd call a peak experience. (Thursday, February 9, 2012, 11:54 AM)

'Phonic boom!
This month we focus on one of the brightest lights currently coming out of the Bay Area music scene, the funk-soul juggernaut known as Monophonics.
(Thursday, February 2, 2012, 12:15 PM)

Head above Sweetwater
After months of delays, and considerable anticipation, the latest nightclub to bear the Sweetwater moniker takes its place with a soft opening this week on the suddenly resurgent Marin club scene.
(Thursday, January 26, 2012, 12:07 PM)

'Terrapin' finds its shell
The Jan. 4 announcement that Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh had purchased the Seafood Peddler restaurant in San Rafael—with plans to transform the venerable Canal district eatery into a nightclub—lit up the social media and Internet news feeds.
(Thursday, January 19, 2012, 11:55 AM)

'Movement' marches on
"I'm so very proud of my ancestors here in the United States who came before me and made the opportunities I have now possible. Within the history of our ancestors are wonderful and powerful stories of courage, honor, human dignity, struggle, triumph, humor, love and hope," says Marcus Shelby, 46, an Oakland-based double bassist, music educator, arranger and jazz composer whose original works often focus on historic African-American figures.
(Thursday, January 12, 2012, 11:58 AM)

Champine supernovas!
Happy New Year music fans! The year ended with a goodbye to the short-lived Southern Pacific Smokehouse in Novato. It is always sad to see a live music venue close, but especially so suddenly, with so many bands booked on the calendar for the next several months. An unfortunate fact of the music business is that venues come and go. (Thursday, January 5, 2012, 12:25 PM)

Rock lang syne!
Long before fans of the seminal R&B and doo-wop group the Orioles rang in 1949 with their sentimental hit single "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?," which featured much pleading by lead vocalist Sonny Til, folks had been celebrating the only holiday dedicated to the turning of a calendar page.
(Thursday, December 29, 2011, 12:17 PM)

Kickstarting the arts
Guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andrew Meyerson—aka the Living Earth Show—are men on a mission. The San Francisco-based avant-classical duo has launched Adventures in Quartertones, a chamber-music project designed to provide a platform for cutting-edge composers working in 24-tone systems, rather than the standard 12-tone scheme heard in most Western classical music.
(Thursday, December 22, 2011, 11:38 AM)

Meaty, beaty, big and pricey
U.S. consumers are moving through the fourth year of the economic downturn, but even in the twilight years of the CD format, record labels are pumping out big, pricey box sets that, well, 99 percent of us would be hard-pressed to afford.
(Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 4:53 PM)

And the picks just keep on comin'...
Dick Latvala was the architect of what you might call the afterlife of the Grateful Dead, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in a 1998 article about the then-newly released, mail-order-only Dick's Picks series of concert CDs.
(Thursday, December 8, 2011, 10:05 AM)

The Dan Thompson project
In the midst of another hurried holiday season, the Beat would like to take a moment to acknowledge an especially talented member of our music community. Drummer Dan Thompson, a local... (Thursday, December 1, 2011, 10:08 AM)

Wass' up, rockers?
Sara Wasserman grew up in the glow of great music created by some of the most celebrated players in rock, jazz and roots music. "One of my earliest musical memories... (Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 3:55 PM)

Over the Edge
Jimmy Dillon and Lorin Rowan ascending once again as San Francisco Music Club. (Thursday, November 17, 2011, 11:15 AM)

Music from Large Pink
Getting the call to fill in for vocalist China Forbes of Pink Martini—the uber-cool, genre-jumping, neo-cabaret act—seems like a singer's dream.
So what did Storm Large say this summer when she was asked to cover for Forbes while the sophisticated chanteuse recovered from throat surgery?
"I said absolutely not," says Large, juggling a cell phone and a dog leash while walking her husband's yellow Labrador through the San Rafael hills. "They were going to be performing four sold-out shows at the Kennedy Center in four days. China said, 'You'd be doing us all a really big favor.'
(Thursday, November 10, 2011, 10:18 AM)

And justice for jah
The 2011 holiday season rolls into the North Bay chock-full of great live shows for every musical taste. But first, The Beat would like to report that vocalist Judge Murphy (Zero, Lansdale Station) is recovering well 48 days after his liver transplant. "I am getting stronger by the day and want to thank my tireless wife, Lauren, as well as the [organ donor, and all of our extended musical family for their boundless love and support. This was definitely a team effort and nothing short of miraculous," he writes. We look forward to your continued physical and musical health in the new year!
(Thursday, November 3, 2011, 12:50 PM)

This must be the place
Call it the good house-rockin' seal of approval.
Danny Click, a tall and lanky Indiana-born axeslinger who honed his chops on the beer-soaked stages of Austin, has been plying his Texas roadhouse blues locally since moving to San Rafael just over a decade ago.

His SRO shows at the Sleeping Lady in Fairfax have had fans lining up on the sidewalk.
(Thursday, October 27, 2011, 12:34 PM)

Don't Tom around here no more
"The desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most legitimate—passion nature has bred into us," the Marquis de Sade once wrote, "and, without doubt, the most agreeable one."
The members of Petty Theft, a local Tom Petty tribute band, might agree and add that the Florida rocker's songs are a treasure ripe for picking.
"Tom Petty's songbook is so deep and varied. We can play for three hours and every song is basically a hit that the audience knows and loves," says Petty Theft guitarist and singer Monroe Grisman. "That's pretty amazing, and very few other artists can claim that besides maybe the Beatles."
(Thursday, October 20, 2011, 1:17 PM)

Call waiting
It's one of the catchiest songs in rock history and one of the most famous--and sought-after--phone numbers around. The classic-rock hit "867-5309/Jenny," written by Marin songwriter Alex Call, and popularized in 1982 by the band Tommy TuTone, still has a certain cache.
Or is that cash, hey?
In 2007, a Verizon customer in New York City put the number up for auction on eBay--within just two hours the bidding had reached $80,000 before Verizon told him to shut it down.
(Thursday, October 13, 2011, 11:53 AM)

• Head above Sweetwater (Thursday, January 26, 2012, 12:01 PM)
• Wass' up, rockers? (Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 4:16 PM)

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