Author: Matt Kettmann

Reggae Reissue

Sometime during college, I fell deep into a Bob Marley phase, listening almost solely to the reggae legend while I studied his life with monkish dedication and searched like a pilgrim to uncover the rarities of his work. One day, that search led me to Amoeba Music on Haight Street in San Francisco, where amid thousands of CDs and cassette tapes, I located Bob Marley and the Wailer’s double disc One Love at Studio One 1964-1966. It was like nothing I’d ever heard, with Marley’s whiney voice lingering over rocksteady rhythms, occasionally breaking into slow ballads or flipping the other way into rapid ska beats.

Jam It Up

A Conversation With T.C. Boyle

In the wide, wild world of contemporary fiction, there are few names higher on the list of literary superstars than our town’s very own T. Coraghessan Boyle. For the last 25 years, T.C. Boyle – the 57-year-old New York native who emerged with constant creativity and prolific grace from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the late 1970s – has bombarded readers around the world with characters as colorful as any in the history of literature.

Stripped Down & Chorally Cool

Naked Voices, UCSB’s Contemporary A Cappella Group, Drops a CD

Last February, on the Film Festival’s closing night, a dozen or so college students meandered onto the Arlington’s stage amidst an announcement about a cappella music. “Oh great, a cappella,” I grumbled, in chorus with my equally dismayed friends, figuring we’d be treated to an unbearably boring – if not plain embarrassing – set before the movie screened. To me, a cappella meant slow, beat-lacking love songs and show-offish vocal acrobatics, a style that hadn’t appealed to me since my Boyz II Men days back in junior high (which I admit sheepishly).

How Old Is 80?

B.B. King’s 80th Birthday Celebration Tour

At the Arlington Theatre, Tuesday, May 16.
The life of a musical legend goes through many acts, but the last act is the one by which people will remember him. So, when B.B. King rolled in on his 80th birthday celebration tour last week, there was some trepidation in the crowd at the Arlington. Devout fans wondered, had King passed his prime, or was he still the lyric-belting, guitar-picking bluesman they’d come to love over the decades?

Boyle’s Bunch

Speaking of T.C. Boyle

At the Lobero Theatre, Monday, May 22.
Old-time storytelling tradition blended with biting pop culturalism-what could be better fodder for a Speaking of Stories evening? And who’s a more fitting author than our very own T.C. Boyle, the master of weaving modern life’s quirks and extravagances into otherwise timeless yarns? Monday night’s spoken story buffet spanned Boyle’s illustrious, short story-laced career, from 1977’s “The Champ” and 1988’s “Zapatos” to “Swept Away,” from 2005’s Tooth and Claw, “La Conchita,” his meditation on the mudslide that appeared last December in The New Yorker, and the unpublished “Hands On.”