Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the trick-or-treat B9:
➤ It’s Halloween, y’all. And, at this point, surely you have a plan for a costume, a destination and a game plan. But don’t forget the main stage — downtown Santa Cruz. Pacific Avenue is never more lively than on Oct. 31 each year, as the closed-off-to-cars main drag is transformed into an enormous runway show for costumes, from inspired to thrown-together to any shade in between. From the skimpy to the colorful to the macabre to the pop-culture savvy, the human parade of downtown’s Halloween never fails to be memorable. The party gets started in the daylight hours as more than 50 downtown merchants hand out candy to young trick-or-treaters. Then comes the nighttime and the more adult-oriented show-and-tell. What’s so cool about Halloween downtown is its lack of programming. There’s no “performance” per se, except for the obvious hey-look-at-me show in which everyone is a star. And this year, my friend Jana Marcus, one of Santa Cruz’s finest portrait photographers, will be on the corner of Pacific Avenue and Church Street shooting photos, beginning around 8 p.m. Come out and show the world a side of you nobody would expect!
➤ Ever since the Clinton years, Antsy McClain and his band of misfits, the Trailer Park Troubadours, have visited Santa Cruz, though it’s quite far from their Tennessee home. Why? Because Antsy’s sly, witty, always daffy songs consistently hit a sweet spot with locals. On Sunday, the Troubs once again pop up on stage at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, playing old favorites and perhaps a few new nuggets from their latest recording, “Deep Clean Your Spleen.”
➤ Gustav Holst’s century-old composition “The Planets” brings together astronomy, astrology and mythology in one masterwork that serves as a musical tour of the solar system. It’s the featured program this weekend at the Santa Cruz Symphony, with featured artists violist Emad Zolfaghari and composer Benjamin Goodwin, at the Santa Cruz Civic on Saturday and the Mello Center in Watsonville on Sunday afternoon.
➤ A product of the rich musical melange of Los Angeles, Ariel Marcus Rosenberg popped up out of Beverly Hills High as Ariel Pink. Since then, he’s created a genre of indie pop all his own, a chilled-out, hazy sound that finds a sweet spot between ’60s/’70s pop and the avant-garde. With a new album out in the world, Ariel Pink arrives at Felton Music Hall on Sunday.
➤ Yes, the great guitarist John Scofield, who first emerged into the consciousness of jazz fans from his work alongside Miles Davis, is still chasing the muse and still touring. Scofield, with a pedigree as a collaborator of Chet Baker, Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock and countless others, has the star power to assemble a magnificent band, and he’s done exactly that with his latest group, Combo 73. See them live at Kuumbwa next Wednesday, Nov. 5.
➤ Onetime radio nerd Jesse Thorn got into the podcasting thing super early, and has since built an empire on smart, funny and always pertinent interviews in his popular show “Bullseye” and his network of podcasts, Maximum Fun. He comes to the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Saturday to return where it all began for him as an ambitious young UC Santa Cruz student, with guests that include actor Adam Scott and surf band The Mermen.
➤ If you have kids who love books, you might already be fully aware of the popular graphic novel series “The First Cat in Space.” For fans of the series, there are two pieces of good news: (1) There’s a new book in the series, the fourth overall, and (2) authors Shawn Harris and Mac Barnett are visiting Santa Cruz High School on Sunday afternoon with a multimedia performance launching “The First Cat in Space and the Baby Pirate’s Revenge.”
➤ Anything having to do with the late great John Prine is going to get my attention, and on Sunday, Santa Cruz musicians Jim Rosenberg and Paul Logan are performing as Diamonds in the Rough at The Ugly Mug in Soquel as a gift for us Prine fans, playing many of the great man’s greatest songs.
➤ Writer David Litt landed the job of a lifetime when he became a speechwriter for Barack Obama. But these days, the best-selling author’s mind is on surfing. Litt’s hilarious new memoir, “It’s Only Drowning,” chronicles his attempts to learn surfing in middle age. (Hint: It doesn’t go smoothly.) He comes to Bookshop Santa Cruz on Nov. 6, where he’ll chat with former Santa Cruz mayor Hilary Bryant about his misadventures.
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