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Since 1985, KUVO has provided a rare blend of music & news. We broadcast the best in Jazz, Latin Jazz & Blues in addition to 17 locally produced, culturally diverse programs.

Santa Monica News

MUSIC IS WORTH IT Music: Laissez Les BON TEMPS ROULER. Courtesy image VAX, LAX, ERSKINE A magician’s wand might look like drumsticks, if in the hands of Santa Monica’s shaman of the skins, Peter Erskine. I’ll go way out of my way any time to see him stroke finely-drawn rhythms out of every small surface of his drum kit, not to show off — he is always understated on his instrument, and seems to move his hands and arms in the smallest space possible — but because that is exactly what is called for. To make the song breathe, and swim, and move like a dancer. He spends more time on cymb...

THE WORLD CAN SING AGAIN May. 27, 2021 at 11:00 am WITH MUSIC IN THE AIR SAM FIRST — “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” (“Jabberwocky,” Carroll), “HUZZAH!” (Albert Alligator, or mebbe Howland Owl, from the uniquely precious Pogo cartoon strips by Walt Kelly), “Great googly-moogly!” (Willie Dixon, F. Zappa) — I had to call out all the great orators to express my elation that Sam First is back in the saddle. They were pretty much the last club to wave the white flag, as the pandemic forced venues to shutter like falling dominoes, so this is fitting. Many of you still don’t...

This digging up of the great shows I saw in the last year of it, 2019? Maybe. Nostalgia for the long-ago world of a year ago, when we were still able to hear live music and mostly took that for granted? Well, who could have known? Live music has been around for millenia. Hmmm — I wonder if Caruso stopped performing during the great flu pandemic? He died in 1921, so, probably. Before that, black plague and so on, they didn’t know much about disease transmission so kept going to the theater and gathering for wandering minstrels, and so, died happy with a song in their hearts.