Trying to explain what música ranchera is to non-Mexicans reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to–take your pick–Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington, when someone asked what jazz is. Ranchera ...

It’s no secret that heavy metal music can be a bit morbid and macabre. Heavy metal artists have never been afraid to musically confront mortality, pain, suffering and other grim topics by creating ...

In the weeks since Beach Goth left thousands of pissed off festival goers with a bad taste in their mouths, people have looked for something or someone to blame for their experience. The fifth year of ...

At the end of October, The Orange County Register did what any Southern California media outlet looking for an easy Halloween story does: send a reporter to Black Star Canyon. The remote site, reached ...

To properly orient infamous talk-show host Wally George within the history of Orange County, it's best to paraphrase the introduction of a fellow pop-culture icon with a cult following. So, with ...

In 1952 or 1954 (depending on who’s telling the tale), Bert Grimm bought a business located at 22 Chestnut Place in Long Beach, on the corner of Chestnut and Ocean Boulevard. The small square space on ...

Talk to some people (we guess), and they'll tell you that '90s nostalgia is the only kind of nostalgia that matters. But let's be honest: Within the '90s-rock spectrum, as far as quality is concerned, ...

There's lots of bizarre lore surrounding the legend of Walt Disney. Just off the top of our heads, we've heard he's a Communist (despite him being a founding member of the anti-communist Motion ...

Disneyland custodian Al Ramos came back from vacation in September 1984 with no work to return to, save for walking the picket line outside his job. The company wanted a two-year wage freeze, no ...

The caravan of Klansmen crept to a stop around midnight in front of the home of David and Lizzie Milder on Nov. 17, 1932. Their quaint bungalow in the Carroll Park neighborhood of Long Beach had just ...

Dwight Manley: The Brea King? Illustration by Paul Nagel. Photo by Federico Medina. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, once a young apprentice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who later ran “Rainbow ...

Go ahead, call us a bunch of culture-less, lily-white suburbanites with a partiality to flip-flops and right-wing politics. Those kind of labels never cease to amuse us. Because one thing that ...