Local Hate
“Times have changed, but we haven’t changed,” said Local Hate bass player Gunnar Engstrand in underscoring his band’s commitment to the Hermosa punk scene. The band will have a “split CD” release party with Special C Friday night at Brixton, a show that also features the first appearance by the legendary Smut Peddlers in almost two years.
Local Hate has been a stalwart presence in the local punk scene since forming in 2005. The band cites such influences as Pennywise, TSOL, Descendents, diverse musical affinities for Motorhead, Misfits, and Metallica and personal interests in surfing, drinking, fighting, jiu jitsu (not necessarily in that order), construction, friends, motorcycles, and Taco Tuesday.
–Kevin Cody
Funky Breakestra
The late ‘60s and early ‘70s gave us Funk. Raw, sweet, Funk. As the ‘70s dragged on, Funk drifted to Disco, before becoming Boogie in the ‘80s and Chico DeBarge by 1990. Still, starting in the ‘80s, a select group of cats in New York were discovering the grooves of a bygone era and deconstructing it for a new art form called Hip-Hop. “Sampling”, as it was called, stripped James Brown and Meter’s classics down to a simple 4-bar (if that) drum break and put them on repeat, laying a backdrop for the spoken artist’s storytelling. The birth of the break.
Recent years have seen the birth of the newest Funk phenomenon: a white-dude revival of the classic Funk sound. The Daptone label out of New York and Stones Throw and its affiliated label, Now Again, out of LA have both contributed heavily to this resurgence, with acts The Budos Band, The Poets of Rhythm, The Heliocentrics and, of, course, Breakestra.
At its core the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Miles Tackett, Los Angeles outfit Breakestra garnered acclaim in 1999 for its album, “The Live Mix, Part 1” and again in 2000 for its (more easily found) “The Live Mix, Part 2”, both on Stones Throw. Both were continuously-recorded sessions by Tackett and his band intended to emulate the well-worn party mixtapes of yesteryear and featuring covers of Sly and The Family Stone, The Meters, and James Brown, as well as many other seminal, well-sampled and artists.
The group has since recorded two albums, for Ubiquity and Strut respectively, and performed with artists ranging from Jurassic 5, Dilated Peoples and DJ Shadow to gods of the dusty-fingered masses, Bernard Purdie and Galt McDermot,
The late Weldon Irvine remarked of Tackett and his crew, “The Breakestra is really my kind of vibe!” Let it be your vibe, too. Breakestra will perform at Saint Rocke on Friday with Flowbis and Seefor Yourself. Doors at 8. $15
–James Whitely
Beachbilly bluegrass
Slightly against the run of the mill grain of punk and reggae, some local artists have trended toward hanging up their electric guitars and distortion pedals for fiddles and banjos. Strap on your boots and practice your yodel, ain’t no mosh pits here. Local “beachbilly bluegrass” outfit Green Blossom String Band performs Saturday, Dec. 3 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Art Sense fundraiser and auction in Redondo Beach (2301 Artesia Blvd Unit 3, next door to The Seventh Sense art gallery).
Art Sense offers an array of multimedia art classes and workshops with professional artists for children age 4-18. Saturday’s event runs from 5-9 p.m., and will include kids’ activities, raffle, and silent auction for pieces produced by previous workshops as well as several works from W. Woodward, Ahlee, and famed French artist Guy Buffet; and of course there’ll be food n’ drink, and live music!
–Jeff Vincent
Off to see the wizard
It is no exaggeration to say that David Lindley is one of the great players of stringed instruments on the planet.
He started plucking at the bottom of a piano at the age of three, moved up to ukulele a year later, and by first grade shocked his teacher when he climbed up on a stool and commanded a stand-up bass during “show and tell” time. As a 20-year-old in the mid ‘60s, he took the bluegrass world by storm, winning the Topanga Banjo Contest with a flamenco-infused version of “John Henry.” By the late ‘60s, his genre-shattering band Kaleidoscope was hailed by none other than Jimmy Page as “my favorite band of all time.”
He grew famous (at least within musical circles) as a guitar player, particularly for his decades-long collaborations with Jackson Browne and Ry Cooder and session work with, among others, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, and Dolly Parton. Along the way, he led his own band, El Rayo-X (one of Dylan’s favorite bands), became one of the first white men to legitimately play reggae, and went on musical forays far afield with his friend Harry Kaiser to Madagascar and northern Europe that produced World Music before it was considered a genre.
But the story is really much simpler and more wondrous than that. You must see Lindley – who was nominated for a Grammy this year for his “Love Is Strange” live album with Browne – to believe what you are hearing is really being produced by one man and his arsenal of instruments. His solo shows have acquired a near fanatical following who sit on the floor at his gigs as if attending the church of “Mr. Dave,” as he is sometimes known. In the course of a single set, Lindley is likely to play a Middle Eastern instrumental, an Appalachian dirge, a lilting Calypso-like reggae tune, some dirty rock n’ roll, some astonishingly inventive, philosophical and fucking weird blues, maybe a Celtic air, and most definitely a Turkish romp or two. He’ll do any of the songs on any of an array of instruments that include a Hawaiian lap steel guitar, an oud, a bouzouki, a saz, a 12-string guitar, or maybe just a good old six string. His keening voice is not technically a beautiful instrument, but somehow he also manages to use it to lovely effect.
He’s been called a string-wielding ninja. Lindley, ever the man of mystery, doesn’t quite own up to it, but doesn’t deny it, either.
“Who is the guy running along the roof at the Holiday Inn?” Lindley asked in a 2009 Easy Reader interview. “Who is that guy?”
David Lindley plays Saint Rocke Sunday night at 8:30 p.m., with special guest Tim Matson opening up at 7:15.
–Mark McDermott
