Viva Los Chicos!

Still haunted by a lingering cough, I found myself time traveling Saturday night in Chico. As I turned south on Broadway at First, I realized that I was entering the Little Las Vegas part of town. The whole street now glows in hues of neon. Between the Smokin’ Mo’s BBQ sign, the Dungeon’s eerie incandescent windows, Chevy’s’ tower and all the other bits of neon, one gets a surreal feeling of being in Nevada. Now if I could only get some support for my idea of having slot machines in all the stores on that street, we might have a real tourist attraction. For 10 years I’ve been preaching that if nonprofits were allowed to have all the proceeds of downtown slots, we would have a more viable way of keeping community organizations afloat. Of course, the city would get its percentage.

In articles past I have mentioned that local musicians need to get out of Chico to grow as bands. A recent Chico expatriate begs to differ, but he does say this about now being in L.A.: “Chico is a wonderful place, but it seems like the dark ages compared to what I see here. The caliber of everything is 100 percent higher here: the venues, the agents, the players, the music, the opportunities, and the money. So … for these reasons I plan to stay for some time. I really like it here, but I will always credit my experiences with you and the rest of Chico for helping me to get ready to be a guitar player in the guitar player capital of the world. When I say the word ‘Chico’ people look at me like I crawled out from under some rock somewhere, but hopefully when they hear the licks, they’ll change their mind.” Indeed, my friend, indeed!

Well, the only thing that stays the same is the Three Stooges, and with that in mind, I would like to reverse what I said a few weeks ago. NXN2002 (May 2-5) will not be just at the Senator. Bands will be found at Moxie’s, Stormy’s, LaSalles, Tower Records, outdoors at CSU, the Red Room and more added soon. Stay in tune with that coming explosion at www.nowherexnowhere.com.