Arts & Culture Newsletter: Flogging Molly brings road show to San Diego

Flogging Molly performs Friday at Harrah's Southern California Resort in Valley Center.
(Katie Hovland)

This week, Impressionist masterpieces at the San Diego Museum of Art, David Spade at the Balboa, an eclectic new jazz show on KSDS and more

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Good morning, and welcome to the U-T Arts & Culture Newsletter.

I’m David L. Coddon, and here’s your guide to all things essential in San Diego’s arts and culture this week.

The Dublin-based Celtic punk band Flogging Molly’s first album in five years is due this summer. In the meantime, front man Dave King and company have released a single, “These Times Have Got Me Drinking/Tripping Up The Stairs,” and they’re happily touring as if every day was St. Patrick’s Day.

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The Flogging Molly road show comes to Harrah’s Resort Southern California in Valley Center at 8 p.m. March 18.

Flogging Molly’s new single is a reflection on the past two years when the band was unable to play live gigs.

“The lyrics aren’t exactly celebrating that these times have got me drinking,” King clarified. “It’s just that in Bridge’s (wife and bandmate Bridget Regan) and my house there were a lot of summer days where we were just drinking in the garden with a neighbor.”

Being back on tour has sparked the creativity that has produced the upcoming album. “I have to write of the times that I’m writing in,” philosophized King. “I have to feel that energy of the present to be able to write about the past.”

Besides regular touring, Flogging Molly is going aquatic again. The band’s sixth Salty Dog Cruise will take fans from Miami to Nassau and Grand Bahama Island March 28-April 1. Others performing on board include SoCal punk outfits X, Agent Orange and the Descendents.

“It’s the people who go on the cruise that make us want to do it,” said King. “For four days they’re forgetting about their troubles. It’s just a bubble to take us away from the everyday routine.”

"The Loing Canal" by Alfred Sisley (1884, oil on canvas)
(Bemberg Foundation)

Visual art

The Impressionist Movement of the 1870s had art critics “up in arms,” recounts Michael Brown of the San Diego Museum of Art, which on Saturday opens its exhibition “Monet to Matissse: Impressionist Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation.” Painters such as Pissarro, Morisot and Monet dared to create works that were “non-academic.”

This collection on loan from its home in Toulouse, France, also spotlights the multiple Post-Impressionist movements that emerged in the 1880s and continued well into the 20th century. This SDMA exhibition includes paintings by Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne.

Read more about the show in my Union-Tribune feature story and here’s a complete video interview about “Monet to Matisse” with SDMA’s Brown, curator of European Art.

David Spade
David Spade
(Craig Sjodin/ABC)

Comedy

To my mind, David Spade has always been funnier as a standup than in the scripted confines of a sitcom, whether it was “Rules of Engagement” or the superior “Just Shoot Me!” The spontaneity he honed in improv and on “Saturday Night Live” is his stock in trade.

Spade brings his standup act “Catch Me Inside,” to the Balboa Theatre downtown Saturday at 7 p.m. The Balboa is just the right size for these kinds of shows — small enough to see the performer and, in this case, large enough to hold Spade’s heavy helpings of sarcasm.

Radio

How does Claudia Russell classify her new evening show on KSDS-FM, “Bohemia After Dark?” “The word,” she says, “is eclectic.”

Spoken-word jazz is just one of the musical realms Russell explores on the program, which airs weekdays from 7 to 10 p.m. “For me,” she said, “this is a chance to branch out and showcase all of the other music that’s connected to jazz in addition to the straight bebop I’m playing.”

A sampling of what you might hear from Russell, the longtime afternoon host who’s been at Jazz 88.3 for 21 years: the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock; beat poet Allen Ginsberg; vocalese trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. “I’m playing Frank Zappa and Tom Waits,” says Russell. “You can’t do that in the middle of the afternoon.”

Whether in the afternoon or now at night. Russell is devoted to her medium: “In radio, you have an intimate relationship with your audience. It’s you and me, kid.”

Theater

In Coronado Playhouse’s San Diego premiere of Ken Ludwig’s stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” female-identifying actors will portray three of the story’s principal characters, including the famous Christie detective Hercule Poirot. This production opens tomorrow and runs through April 16.

This play may well be a blast, but as an avid Agatha Christie reader, I have to say that “Murder on the Orient Express” the novel, for all its popularity, is among the weaker Poirot mysteries. It’s slow and claustrophobic. It’s been filmed several times, and the only screen version worth your time is the 2010 TV movie that was part of the “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” series. It starred the best Poirot ever, David Suchet. You can catch it on BritBox.

UCTV

University of California Television invites you to enjoy this special selection of programs from throughout the University of California. Descriptions courtesy of and text written by UCTV staff:

“Building Linguistic Knowledge: The Surprising Amount You Can Pick Up By Listening”: What does it mean to know a language? There’s explicit knowledge of language — knowing what words and phrases mean and using them to communicate. But there’s also implicit knowledge, which is typically where children begin and involves understanding what words look and sound like — such as when we recognize a word as “English,” but have no idea what it means. Simon Todd, assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara, discusses what you can learn simply by listening. His research focuses on the incredible power of passive listening for developing and accessing knowledge about language varieties and the people who speak them.

“Taking the Fork in the Road: Adventures in the Origins of Biodiversity”: The diversity of life is simply amazing at all levels of biological organization. There are 1.5 million species of beetles. The rice plant has 50,000 genes. The jellyfish has 24 different eyes and eight of these have lenses, like our own eyes. And everything — the beetles, the rice plant, and you and I — share a common ancestry. Hear more from Todd Oakley, evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara, as he discusses his research on the evolutionary origins of complex features, like eyes, bioluminescence and nervous systems.

“Resilience and Emotional Well-being”: These are stressful times. Are you feeling extreme emotions? Having a tough time managing your children and establishing routines? Have you been too hard on yourself, eating unhealthy foods in order to cope? If so, researchers and experts from UC San Francisco are here to help. In this series of short videos, you’ll find tips and techniques to ease stress and anxiety, make healthier food choices, establish expectations for children, breathe mindfully, and — perhaps most importantly — be your own best friend.

Coddon is a freelance writer.