A death in the family is the reason behind the sporadic updates. Please bear with me of the next few days. Things hopefully will be back to normal next week. In fact, this week's column on Coyote Bones won't run until next Wednesday.

Bright Eyes' current tour is coming off as hit-and-miss with the critics, judging by reviews like this one in the East Bay Express, which goes out of its way to highlight the show's failings (not selling out their Berkeley date, disliking the visuals, etc.). Still, for every negative review, there's a positive one (or two), like this Reuters report (actually, it's from The Hollywood Reporter) of the last Sunday's Disney Concert Hall gig, with the headline "Bright Eyes too good to remain a cult act," and this one (with a few pics) from LAist.com that declares that "he truly has come of age." Bright Eyes (and Oberst) will always be either liked (or loved) or hated. I find that people who hate his music dislike it almost on a personal level that goes beyond merely commenting on its quality, tending to focus on the personality behind the art. And that's too bad. My personal take is that when his music isn't boring (which is about half the time), it's pretty good, and lyrically can be downright remarkable.

By the way, if you haven't seen this yet -- they did a giant mural on the side of a Brooklyn building using the Cassadaga artwork to pimp the upcoming seven nights of sold-out shows at Town Hall. Take a look.

What else. I missed Dick Dale last night. Let me take this opportunity to recall my one and only interview with Dale back in '98 -- actually, just go ahead and read it here. In addition to being one of the fastest guitarists in the world, Dale's one of the fastest talkers, speaking in a stream of consciousness that-lacks-punctuation-like-a-giant-run-on-sentence-from-the-mind-of-a-madman. He can play a helluva soundtrack for a surf movie. Unfortunately, I don't know how to swim.

Lastly, Terrence Moore passed away last week at the age of 58. The LJS has the story here. I'm glad that I had a chance to talk to Terrence before he passed away (for this column). He had a big impact on the local music scene and will be missed.

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