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1915: It Was a Very Good Year

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By John Lawrence

1915 was a very good year because three giants of twentieth century music were born that year: Frank Sinatra, Billie Holliday and Billy Strayhorn. This year is the hundredth anniversary of their births.

By far the best known is Frank Sinatra, born in Hoboken, NJ to a middle class Italian family. His mother, Dolly, was a real go getter who became a political force in Hoboken. She secured Frank his first real job as a singer with the Hoboken Four, and got her husband hired by the Fire Department. When they told her they didn’t have any openings, she told them, “Make one.” They did.

Frank’s stories of growing up poor were so much BS. The Sinatra family moved into a $13,400. house in Hoboken in the middle of the Depression, an astronomical sum in those days. She had befriended so many people in Hoboken that, when the Democratic machine needed votes, Dolly could deliver them. She also had a thriving business as a midwife and an abortionist. Unfortunately, she died in a plane crash, a plane that Frank had chartered to bring her from Palm Springs to Las Vegas for his opening at Caesar’s Palace.   [Read more…]

Natalie Cressman and Band a Hit at Dizzy’s Jazz Club

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By John Lawrence

Singer-songwriter-trombonist Natalie Cressman brought her quintet to Dizzy’s Jazz Club Saturday, July 11. Natalie has been creating quite a stir lately with her 8th place finish in the trombone category of the Down Beat Critics poll, Rising Star division.. Her band has a very contemporary sound, sort of a jazz-rock groove. And groove they did.

Natalie wrote most of the songs. I’m assuming she did the arrangements too which were fantastic. She made the most out of two horns – trumpet and trombone – and a killer rhythm section consisting of Mike Bono on guitar, Michael Mitchell on drums and Adam Goldman on bass. I particularly enjoyed the drummer although he stayed in the background the whole time. There was an energy to this band especially when they cut loose on the last number.   [Read more…]

Film Review: ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’

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By Alex Demyanenko / Capital & Main

The first shot of What Happened, Miss Simone? shows a crowd applauding the appearance of a singer. After years of a self-imposed hiatus, Nina Simone walks onstage, and with one hand on a piano, bows. For a full 10 seconds. She then looks up and out at the rapturous audience. But she is not smiling. Her stare is intense. Some will see fear in her eyes. Others will see indifference. Others might even see loathing. Or all of it.

Once Simone sits at the piano and the applause ends, she does nothing for half a minute. The uncomfortable silence is finally broken by her softy saying “Hello” into the mic, only to be greeted by a fan shouting, “Hi. We are ready!” But is Simone? After seeing Liz Garbus’ documentary, an even better question is, “Was she ever?”

Not everyone who is thrust into stardom is ready for it or even desirous of it. There is no doubt that part of Simone loved being famous, but the juxtaposed moods in this opening scene are palpable and unnerving for a reason. The moment is not only a metaphor for Simone’s fascinating journey as the most compelling and provocative diva of her time, but also a harbinger of what is to come for the next 100 minutes, a document of a life full of contradiction that poses almost as many questions as it answers.   [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles #2: That Music You Are Hearing

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By Jim Miller

Gary Snyder is a courage teacher. His fine new book of poems, This Present Moment, is a meditation on wonder and impermanence. In it, for instance, we learn to value our laptops “Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted/and vanish in the flash at ‘delete,’/so it teaches of impermanence and pain.”

And it’s true, the miracle of creation that comes out of “a formless face/which is our Original Face,” but as soon as the words are formed the self who made them is no longer there.

Still there is beauty, and moments of grace are there to be found and cherished in “the morning and night coming together,” the “glacier scrapes across the bedrock,” and “the deep dense woods.” You just need to follow “the shining way of the wild” and “hang in, work it out, watch for the moment.”   [Read more…]

The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: 1950s Social Clubs–Los Gallos

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Social clubs have been a noteworthy part of Logan Height’s history. After WWII, Leonard Fierro, Frank Peñuelas, Mike Negrete and Armando Rodriguez were reunited and started a new Toltec Club based on Frank’s 1930s prototype at Neighborhood House. Girls participated in the Lucky 13 Club. The 1950s brought a revived interest in social clubs for the young people in Logan Heights. Los Gallos was one of the first of these clubs.
   [Read more…]

Lena Horne: A Great Lady Who Broke the Color Line

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Lena Horne was the first black woman to get a contract with a major Hollywood Studio

By John Lawrence

Born into a black bourgeoisie family in 1917, Lena Horne was signed up in the NAACP by her grandmother, Cora Calhoun Horne, a college graduate, at the age of two. The Hornes owned a four-story residence in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.

The distinguished Horne family included teachers, activists and a Harlem Renaissance poet. Lena’s uncle became dean of a black college. According to James Gavin’s biography of Lena, Stormy Weather, the black bourgeoisie were descendants of favored slaves “privileged blacks who, by virtue of their brains or their sexual allure to their masters, had worked in the house, not in the field. During the decade-long heyday of Reconstruction, they’d used their cachet to start businesses and gain social standing.”

Lena’s grandmother drilled into her respectability at all costs. She was to use proper diction, no dialect allowed, and always present herself as a lady. Cora was a determined fighter for black causes, and, despite her disdain for whites, she married a white man. According to Gavin, Cora’s cafe au lait skin, thin lips and delicate nose betrayed generations of intermingling with whites. Her maiden name, Calhoun, came from her father’s slavemaster in Georgia, Dr. Andrew Bonaparte Calhoun. His uncle was Senator John C Calhoun who championed slavery as God’s will.   [Read more…]

Celebrations of César E. Chávez Span Six Weeks Around San Diego

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“The legacy of the United Farm Workers union in its first decade provides us with key lessons for the present and future. It reminds us that grass-roots power organized and deployed by ‘disposable’ workers, fearlessness in the face of corporate exploitation, and the political uses of music, theater, and ritual can change history. In 2015, in a society based on greed and personal ambition, we ignore these lessons at own peril.” –Jorge Mariscal, Professor, UC San Diego

While Monday, March 31st is the official César E. Chávez day, activities celebrating his legacy as a labor and civil rights leader will continue into May. The day is commemorated to promote service to the community in honor of his life and work. The ongoing activities are about continuing that legacy.

Thanks to the UCSD Blink, produced by the faculty and staff of that fine institution, for providing us with a list of activities over the next six weeks honoring the life and achievements of César E. Chávez.   [Read more…]

National City’s Mariachi Festival Set for March 14th

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By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

It’s time for the Third Annual Mariachi Festival! National City expects between 10-15,000 people to join in the fun. Last year they had 11,000 people, making it one of the largest mariachi events in San Diego County.

This year, National City has invited mariachi students from throughout the United States and Mexico. At least 10 groups will compete and professional judges will hand out awards based on their stiff rubric.

The festival — which is free to the public — will also include ballet folklorico, a live Latin Band, carnival game booths, a beer garden and food.   [Read more…]

Plastic Handgun: Experimental Dream Pop with a Rock Blasting Cap

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By Layla Marino

Plastic Handgun is a solo project dreamed up by Toronto artist Mark Di Giovanni, with the emphasis on “dream.”

The impression most listeners will have upon first listen is of a heavy dream pop vibe, but there is much more going on in Plastic Handgun’s sonic world. Somewhat like Mogwai smashed into Ratatat but with a sound all its own, Plastic Handgun may be the new thing in 2015 that hipsters crave.

Involuntary Memories is the name of the most recent Plastic Handgun album, self-released by Di Giovanni in early January. Not much is known yet about this project, nor its creator but the music says quite a bit on its own.   [Read more…]

Chargers’ Point Man Calls Out Mayor’s Malarkey On Stadium Task Force

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By Doug Porter 

Chargers’ special counsel Mark Fabiani has done San Diego a huge favor by pointing out the obvious. He’s single-handedly challenged the existing political narrative about the politics of the process being used in deciding on the advisability of building a new stadium.

You won’t find me among those pining away for the possibility of a new football stadium in America’s Finest City, even though I sometimes wonder if I’m addicted to watching games. 

First, there’s the silliness of taxpayers being expected to subsidize a rich man’s game in return for the possibility of an endorphin rush at some future time. And then there’s my sense that the long-term prospects for the sport aren’t very good, what with players’ health issues, spousal abuse scandals, and anything having to do with Patriots’ coach Bill Belechick.

(Malarkey was the best synonym I could come up with for “bullshit,” a word that’s too easy to use when describing the goings on at San Diego’s city hall.)    [Read more…]

Pop Artist Mark Maze is a One-Man Electronic Dance Music Scene

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By Layla Marino

Collaborations rule the landscape nowadays in pop music. Since the cusp of the 21st century, there has been a growing emphasis on the producers and writers of pop songs as well as the performing singers. This trend began largely in hip hop with characters like Lil’ John and Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes, but quickly spread to include other genres.

Along a similar timeline, EDM grew out of the underground rave scene, where producers were the only stars. As EDM and pop combined, famous singers and famous producers joined forces to create tracks which have the wild beats and danceability of rave music, but the verse-chorus-verse song structure and iconic singers of the classic pop song.

Today it’s not at all unusual to see rave producers like Tiesto and Steve Aoki teaming up with the likes of Nelly Furtado and Iggy Azalea. In fact these collaborations may be more common than not in 2015. London singer/songwriter Mark Maze has become an exception in pop and EDM, as he both writes and performs all of his music and vocals.   [Read more…]

Singer Liz Graham Folks It Up On Her Upcoming Album

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By Layla Marino

Liz Graham is a well-established folk singer and songwriter from Nyack, New York. With her operatic voice and the slightly unconventional key in which she normally writes her music, she found success with her self-titled album in 1998.

Her first album in 17 years, entitled Colorful and Piercing, releases on mp3 any day now, with the first single available on her Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages.

Graham began her folk career at a young age, starting in a band called Tracking Buddha in 1996, and even before that she was appearing on radio and in small clubs.   [Read more…]

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