Steff and the Articles embarked on a three week tour up and down the west coast at the beginning of the year. Steff Koeppen, Tom Beech, Chris Pierce, and Alex Tuggle are performing a free show with Ex-Cowboy and Captain Squeegee at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22, at Hotel Congress, 311 East Congress Street. The "Why It Was So" Tour ends in this Saturday. Here's a brief glimpse of their adventure in the words of Steff Koeppen:

The "Why It Was So" Tour has been a great success so far! There were so many wonderful people, places and things. I'm so proud of my Nissan for making it all the way up the coast and back. It would be cool to have a van next time. Finding parking with a trailer attached in crowded cities took us through many obstacle courses.

We kicked things off in Phoenix at one of our favorite downtown spots, the Lost Leaf. Lots of familiar faces showed up to sing along and wish us well on our journey.

We played the next night in San Diego at The Griffin. Cool venue. It was exciting to hear that a good handful of people came specifically for our set in a city we had never played before. We stayed with our friend Jerome and his playful little kitten, then spent the next afternoon downtown. We found some delicious paninis at Cafe Zucchero in Little Italy and then hung out down by the water.



That Saturday night was spend in Los Angeles at Room 5 — a classy little upstairs lounge in the Beverly Hills area. We didn't get free drinks, but that's okay. We played for a packed venue with some fantastic L.A. acts. Good vibes. We had the next day off and spent it walking along the beach. I can't believe we enjoyed a warm day at the beach in January. Our friend Kelsey has a cozy little apartment in Long Beach where she so graciously welcomed us for a couple nights. On the way out of town, we had to make a stop at Amoeba Music — the world's largest independent record store.

Looking for new local music before it's cool so you can be "over it" before your friends even find out it exists?

Clay Dudash debut his first EP Keep You Company on Bandcamp today.

I first heard Dudash perform at Topaz, then 91.3 KXCI and at the SUPER RAD AWESOME STUFF show at Plush. Don't be surprised if you see and hear more of this 21 year old squirrely, singer song/song writer.

Listen to the full album right here on The Range (after the break):

CoLab Workspace, formerly known as Gangplank Tucson, is still absorbing the new-sign smell from their recent rebranding, and they'd like Tucson's young professionals and entrepreneurs to come down and celebrate with them. Good news: There'll be networking! Better news: There'll be drinks! 

The party tomorrow, Jan. 21, is part of Startup Tucson's ongoing monthly Startup Drinks events, which brings entrepreneurs, investors and techno-folks together to hang out, shoot the breeze and fill up their contact lists with people who might want to work on new ventures/give them money to work on new ventures/buy new ventures from them. They'll also be a "Startup Standup" segment as well, where entrepreneurs will be firing off one-minute elevator pitches to share what they're working on with the group.

If you're interested, head down to CoLab tomorrow night; the event is from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and it's free. RSVP at StartupTucson.com.

Education was a major part of Dr. King’s vision. He looked forward to a time when children of all races had equal opportunity to pursue their educational goals, through high school, past high school, as far as their dreams and their abilities could carry them.

Rep. John Kavanagh, on the other hand, is pushing for a “Hey, idiot, if you’re going to be a salesman, you shouldn’t waste our money by going to university” mentality in Arizona. I wrote about his jaw-dropping pronouncement Sunday, and I haven't been able to shake my disgust with his statement since. It's especially rankling on a day honoring the memory of Martin Luther King.

So I want to try a thought experiment, looking at the consequences of Kavanagh’s vision of restricting university education to people who will, in his view, make proper use of it.

Let’s imagine a group of 100 students at Catalina Foothills High, where 77% of the students are white or Asian and 6% are on free or reduced lunch. Next, imagine another group of 100 students at Pueblo High, where 95% of the students are Hispanic, Native American or Black and 79% are on free or reduced lunch. Let’s also imagine the 100 students at both schools are an identical mix of intellectual ability. To the extent that DNA determines intellect, the genetic makeup of the two groups covers the full gamut in equal proportions.

In other words, both groups have the same biological chance of being successful students at UA. They're separated by geography, family income and ethnicity, not by native ability.

Now, imagine John Kavanagh is giving separate talks to both groups. Which of them is most likely to hear this speech?

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day and while some folks volunteered or marched, some must be shopping, judging from all the MLK Day deals we've noticed at Weekly World Central. Yep, seems MLK Day is now a good excuse to offer a deal, a special, that all-American excuse to have a sale. But the latest sighting will provide you with your very own WTF moment.

The Global Village store in Duluth, Minn., announced on its Facebook page that it was having an annual MLK Day Black Sale—everything black in the store is 25 percent off.

The comments bring home some sanity into this tasteless consumer moment:

Democratic Party precinct leaders in Legislative District 2 have picked three names to submit to the Pima County Board of Supervisors to replace state Sen. Linda Lopez, who stepped down earlier this month to commit herself full-time to a new job.

The candidates are state Rep. Andrea Dalessandro, historic preservation champion Demion Clinco and Annabel Nuñez, who works as an associate librarian with the Arizona Health Sciences Library.

The supes are scheduled to make a final decision at their meeting tomorrow morning.

If we had to make a prediction, we'd guess that the supervisors will want to pick a woman to replace Lopez. And given that elevating Dalessandro would mean they'd have to go through the appointment process all over again in a few weeks, we'd say that the odds are in Nuñez's favor.

When it comes to appointment to the Arizona Legislature, we are reminded of something that Mr. Spock once said on the surface of Vulcan: "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman became the Stone Cold Steve Austin of football after the win against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.

Sherman deflected a pass to Niner wide receiver Michael Crabtree that resulted to a game winning interception. I saw it at Che's Lounge with a bunch of instant Seahawk fans, alright, not everyone, but I was one of them. They turned off the game and put on some live Nirvana show I have never seen before, so I missed the brilliant post-game interviews with one of the League of Boom members.

I love watching shit talkers make fools of themselves on national television. Instead of talking about what happen on the field with Fox Sport's Erin Andrews, Sherman decided to bash Crabtree and the sorry attempt to get past him and the best defense in the NFL. I found it enjoyable, but did he go to far? Sherman repeated himself with ESPN and called the ending to this before the game even started.

Sherman's anger was better explained on MMQB:

But that’s not why I don’t like the man. It goes back to something he said to me this offseason in Arizona, but you’d have to ask him about that. A lot of what I said to Andrews was adrenaline talking, and some of that was Crabtree. I just don’t like him.

I ran over to Crabtree to shake his hand but he ignored me. I patted him, stuck out my hand and said, “Good game, good game.” That’s when he shoved my face, and that’s when I went off.

I threw a choking sign at 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Why? Because he decided he was going to try the guy he was avoiding all game, because, I don’t know, he’s probably not paying attention for the game-winning play. C’mon, you’re better than that.

Hopefully, Sherman will repeat this magic at the Super Bowl against Peyton Manning and all the other Denver Bronco squad members.

Spanish-language e-books are flourishing, which is wonderful. The LA Times article says we have 38 millions Spanish speakers in the U.S., and their access to books in Spanish has been limited until recently. It's hard for a bookstore to stock a selection wide enough to satisfy people's reading appetites — libraries have the same problem — and the books for sale tend to be much more expensive than English-language books. Now, courtesy of Kindle and other e-readers, people all over the world can access online books no matter their points of origin. The number of available titles has skyrocketed, and costs tend to be far lower than printed versions. The trends extend to languages other than Spanish, of course.

From 2011 to 2012, the number of Hispanics owning some kind of e-reader has jumped from 1 in 20 to 1 in 5, according to the article. There's a hunger out there for written material in the Hispanic population, in Spanish and, I'm sure, in English. I'm for anything that encourages literacy in general and reading in particular. It's great for the readers themselves, and it's good for the children who are surrounded by people with their noses buried in physical or virtual books. Children who see adults reading tend to pick up the habit themselves.

I'm sure if I lived in a different country, even if I developed fluency in its language, I'd want to read books in my mother tongue. Those words I grew up with, the phrasings, the idioms have the comfort of home cooking. They defy translation. Now those books can fly across borders at internet speed.

LET THE FIRE BURN official theatrical trailer. from Jason Osder on Vimeo.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, Jan. 20, get to the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., to see Let the Fire Burn, a powerful award-winning documentary on the racist maneuvering, shooting and bombing of a Philadelphia neighborhood block by police in an attempt to end the existence of the organization MOVE. The film starts at 5 p.m. and is FREE.

From filmmakers:

In the astonishingly gripping Let the Fire Burn, director Jason Osder has crafted that rarest of cinematic objects: a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated—and resulted in the tragic deaths of eleven people (including five children) and the destruction of 61 homes. It was only later discovered that authorities decided to “...let the fire burn.” Using only archival news coverage and interviews, first-time filmmaker Osder has brought to life one of the most tumultuous and largely forgotten clashes between government and citizens in modern American history.

On this week's AZ Illustrated Politics: Congressman Ron Barber (D-Dist. 2) discussed the cuts to benefits for veterans in the federal budget deal; why he voted alongside Republicans to delay the penalty for people who don't buy health insurance this year; the future of the A-10; the latest on immigration reform; and more. Then state Reps. Ethan Orr (R-Dist. 9) and Bruce Wheeler (D-Dist. 10) looked ahead to what we can expect in this year's legislative session.