The Santa Monica music shop has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and will be the subject of a Thanksgiving program from 9 a.m. to noon on KCRW (89.9 FM), hosted by the Pico Boulevard shop's concert promoter, Lincoln Myerson. The New Yorker's Goings On blog says today of McCabe's, "In the late sixties, it began a concert series, and many notable acts, including Jackson Browne (a then unknown artist who opened the first official concert, in 1969), the Sun Ra Arkestra, Charlie Haden, the Minutemen, John Hiatt, Bruce Springsteen, and Bill Monroe, have played its little back room." The blog also provides this clip of Elizabeth Cotten, the first musician to play McCabe’s thirty-nine years ago, performing her signature song, “Freight Train.”
KCRW-related: Judith Owen and her spouse, Harry Shearer, are putting on a Holiday Sing-Along at the Steve Allen Theater on Dec. 5 and 6. "Both reverent and irreverent," they say.