Best of the Bay 2024 – Editor’s Choice: Skip the Needle

As part of our 50th Best of the Bay contest, 48 Hills editors and writers reveal their favorite Bay Area stories. Find more editorial recommendations here. Tell us what you like best in the Best of the Bay 2024 reader poll!

I never really understood Beatlemania until I came across Skip the Needle. Videos from the Fab Four’s first visit to the United States in 1964 show hordes of mostly young, white women gnashing their teeth and sobbing hysterically at the sight of the Livermore boys. For me, that was a laugh. To use a word that is trendy in 2024, I thought it was strange.

That’s not to say I didn’t recognize and respect the Beatles’ obvious musical talents and brand, or that I wasn’t passionate about their music and that of other artists. I listened voraciously to a wide range of artists: from Beethoven to Billy Joel to Kiss, Cardi B, Beyoncé, the incomparable Nina Simone, and many more.

But they never made me fantasize about it, Be them.

Now I dream of giving up journalism and becoming a drummer in an all-queer rock band. Really weird, but not a nightmare. In my dreams, I have what it takes.

Oakland-based band Skip the Needle consists of Shelley Doty (guitar), Kofy Brown (drums), Katie Cash (guitar), and Vicki Randle on bass. They are all queer and, except for Cash, all black. More importantly, they are all incredibly talented. Attuned to infectious exuberance, they are skilled and nuanced songwriters, and uniquely connected on each project. Rehearsals, I’m told, often dissolve into laughter, even though the topics they address and their focus on technical and artistic excellence are heavy, charged, and unwavering. Brown once told me that rocking out as a drummer is a mental and physical workout and “pure bliss” when you’re surrounded by people who love music. I hear bliss along with the boldness in each of their pieces and at each concert.

On the band’s first album We never go back, Influences of rock, funk and soul can be found. The lyrics are intense and speak of black lives that are overlooked but also liberated through strength, love, perseverance and truth. Their latest album Octavia of Earth, Volume 2 was released in 2023. Its six tracks are part of a larger documentary-musical project inspired by the life of feminist and science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Positioned as the founder of Afrofuturism, Butler is the springboard for an album about black women and the ways in which their lives and spirits prove immortal, despite the many forces throughout history and in the present that seek to suppress, tarnish or distort them.

Sounds harsh, and it is. But remarkably, Skip the Needle have the most uplifting energy in the world. It’s their constant inventiveness, their spirit and soul, and the synergistic flow of four musicians at the peak of their careers. Reviews often call them “fearless” and “entertaining.” I call them four rockers who make me dream free of drums and a great, upbeat rocker.

SKIP THE NEEDLE Further information can be found here.