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BY XAVIER JOHNSON Rick Wakeman has explored Mars before, in 1971 playing piano on David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?,” and in 2020 making the trip himself with the instrumental album The Red Planet. Now, with Return to the Red Planet, he heads back, saying there was still much left to …

BY XAVIER JOHNSON What is it like after the lights come back on and the party is over? How does it feel to come home at 2:00 a.m. and catch yourself in the mirror? These questions are central to modern pop’s current movement. Today’s pop stars are in direct conversation …

BY HELEN LAME’ The Golden State Valkyries, fresh off a sweep of the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, used their stifling defense after trailing most of the game to score a 68-64 win over the Atlanta Dream in the first game of the WNBA Finals Saturday afternoon at Chase Center. …

BY XAVIER JOHNSON At 80 years old and 50 albums deep, Neil Young continues to sound inspired and sharp, but he’s also so, so tired. On Second Song, that weariness turns out to be the point. The last time we reviewed Young’s music was 2022’s World Record, an outing with …

About 138,400 adults in Contra Costa County say their mental health was not good on at least 14 of the past 30 days, according to the newest county estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 15.3% of the county’s adults, up from 11.5% in the CDC’s estimates …

BY TYLER HENSON Two movies about uncanny creatures opened this weekend. Other Mommy features a family battling a supernatural entity invading their home while The Social Reckoning has journalists going up against the powers of Mark Zuckerberg. The fantasy scares of Other Mommy drew some audience attention, while few turned …

BY TYLER HENSON Digger (129mins) Trailers for Digger would have us believe this film is a rollicking, larger than life comedy starring Tom Cruise, decked out in old age prosthetics and swaggering broadly with a Texas accent as the world collapses around him in environmental disaster. That is only partly …

BY TYLER HENSON It would normally be cause for surprise when a Tom Cruise movie opens as low as Digger, but Digger is no ordinary Tom Cruise movie. It’s been obvious for a while that this movie was going to be a tough sell. Now that this critic has seen …

The Martinez Tribune is looking for both established and aspiring journalists to come join our team and help keep the Tribune one of Contra Costa county’s leading independent community newspapers. We’re looking for writers interested in covering local news in Martinez in addition to both Bay Area sports and music, …

Martinez resident Matt Sieger, whose previous book, The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978 has come out with a new book, In My Humble Opinion: Musings of a Sports Columnist. Sieger, now retired, worked as a sportswriter and columnist for The Vacaville Reporter and The Cortland Standard …