Who drunkenly referred to New Zealand band the Bats as the “Hobbit’s Go-Betweens?” Were they cracked out on ethereal pop?
Judge for yourself when the Bats attempt to cement last year’s comeback long-player, At the National Grid, in your consciousness — with, of course, a tour. They stop at Amoeba Music, SF today at 6 p.m. for a free show, then wing over to Rickshaw Stop at 8 p.m. (then on to the Starry Plough March 23). Essential for NZ popsters — you know who you are. You love the guano.
It was, as housing activist Calvin Welch explained to the Planning Commission March 16, the “canary in the coal mine.” A decision by the Board of Supervisors demanding further environmental review of new market-rate housing projects has thrown the future of development on the eastern side of the city into doubt
The air of unreality in Washington, DC, is, well, unreal. On Face the Nation March 19, Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed that the war in Iraq is going well, that the insurgency had reached "a stage of desperation" — and that the prediction that Americans would be greeted as liberators was "basically accurate." There’s no civil war, the administration insists, no catastrophic political failure, no evidence that the war is well on its way to becoming the new Vietnam. No, Cheney insists, the problem is just the overcritical news media.
For the record, more than 2,300 United States soldiers are dead. So are as many as 37,000 Iraqis. Countless more have been maimed, lost limbs, seen their lives destroyed. And three years after the invasion, there is no end in sight. More than 130,000 US troops are still fighting in Iraq, and they are utterly unable to keep the peace. The Iraqi forces are poorly trained and can do little to help.
Ayad Allawi, former acting prime minister and a man Bush used to see as a key ally, isn’t mincing words: "If this is not civil war," he told the BBC, "then God knows what civil war is."
To say the Bush administration lied about the invasion is a severe understatement. Bush and his team are lying every day. And at this rate, the US death toll could be in the tens of thousands by the time the nation extricates itself from this morass.
And yet the Democratic Party leadership is still way too tentative about making this the defining issue of the midterm elections. That’s crazy: Even in the red states, the war is increasingly unpopular. And Bush’s insistence on staying the course is starting to sound like Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War.
The truth is, Iraq is an artificial construct, a nation pieced together from three ethnic and religious groups that have never gotten along. If it weren’t for the oil (ah, it’s always the oil), Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis might each have their own states.
Perhaps a working government can still be created with all three parties involved. But the presence of huge numbers of US troops isn’t, and won’t, help that process.
The Democrats need to get behind Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and demand a timetable for withdrawal of all troops. That might even lead to a Democratic Congress. *
It still boggles my mind: One of the most significant development issues in years came to a head last week at the City Planning Commission — and none of the news media seem to have noticed. G.W. Schulz describes the situation in depth on page 18, but here’s the short version: City planners have acknowledged they can’t allow any more market-rate housing in the eastern neighborhoods for the indefinite future.
At least they seem to have acknowledged that. The real test is still to come, when the next development comes along, but either way this is pretty big news — and I haven’t read a word about it in the Chron or the Ex.
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.
Now this: The San Francisco Democratic Party is in a bit of a tizzy over something that ought to be basic common sense.
Sup. Chris Daly has put a measure on the June 6 ballot, Prop. C, that would make the Transbay Joint Powers Authority more directly accountable to voters. The TJPA is pretty important: It controls the Transbay Terminal project, which will determine the city’s transit future for many years to come. But right now, two of the city’s three representatives are basically bureaucrats (one from the Mayor’s Office, one from Muni) who answer (it often seems) to nobody.
Daly wants to make the mayor, the city’s representative to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (currently Sup. Tom Ammiano), and the supervisor from District 6 (Daly, who’s already on the TJPA) serve on the panel.
Sounds like alphabet soup and nothing to make a fuss over — except that the mayor would suddenly have to focus on this project because he’d be on the board. He might even have to go to a meeting or two. And everyone on that key panel would have to answer directly to the voters.
And for some reason (perhaps the thought of actually sitting through a TJPA meeting) this has Gavin Newsom up in arms. The Democratic County Central Committee, which makes policy for the local party, was set to endorse Prop. C last week until Newsom began twisting arms. Then a bunch of people (including state assemblymember Mark Leno and state senator Carole Migden) couldn’t be counted in the yes camp, so the whole thing was postponed until March 21, when Daly, the Sierra Club, and all of the city’s transit activists were set to square off against Newsom and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).
It will be a nice test: Can the County Committee stand up to the mayor? Will Migden and Leno?
And this: Caroline Grannan, a normally well-meaning and hardworking advocate for the public schools, is having a strange fit of indignation over our articles on school board expenses. The stories focused mostly on how former superintendent Arlene Ackerman pissed away public money on posh dining and accommodations, but Grannan is mad that we even mentioned board member Jill Wynns, who also spends district money on travel (but has run up nowhere near the sort of tab that Ackerman did).
Her complaint is on page 7, and I think she’s way overreacting here, but she makes one valid point: The school board members are essentially volunteers who earn all of $500 a month. That’s silly. A school board member ought to be a full-time job with full-time pay.
And board members’ salaries and expenses should be very much the public’s business. *
So much has happened and so little blogging has gotten done. Could there be a connection? Yep. So here’s a little more on SXSW, the final days, revolving around what photos I could take before my camera died a horrible death –like all the other electronic devices around me.
The Nice Boys from Portland, Ore., tapped a fun Cheap Trick/Faces vein of pure ’70s-era gold. Rawk at the Birdman Records Showcase.
Power rock with extreme volume and lots of melody — all from a lil’ ole threepiece called the Evangelicals. Very fun — and worth checking into when not studying Bay Area DJ Mike Relm’s DVD scratch technique next door at the Blind Pig.
Shows at houses, record stores, boutiques, garages — one thing you gotta love about SXSW is the way the entire city seems filled with music. Music is oozing out of every corner of its mouth, dripping sloppily all over its chin and into its crotch. And it doesn’t care! (Though of course it does care, deeply, about music) These shows were strictly for locals on South First Street — I came to see Palaxy Tracks.
Ran into John Vanderslice, who only wanted to talk about how much he wanted to get back to SF after touring Europe with Death Cab for Cuties (where they were treated, if not like kings, then well-regarded “court jesters,” he chuckled). He performed with Matt from Nada Surf and Rocky Votolato, fellow Barsuk artists, at End of the Ear, a cool vinyl store on South First.
Palaxy Track’s guitar player’s other project, Octopus Project, headlined in the backyard of Bella Blue boutique nearby. Boys in tights and hot pants played basketball in the driveway.
The music just couldn’t stop — it didn’t matter if you couldn’t play an instrument and just wanted to play 7-inches on your battery-powered turntables. “Sit and spin” takes on yet another meaning.
Stealth “special” appearances by Jane’s Addiction/Perry Farrell, Norah Jones, and Flaming Lips? Those SXSW events were one-upped by a spontaneous session of the itty bitty titty club (and prominent potbelly chapter) when Peaches teamed with Dave Allen of Gang of Four for a DJ set at Friday night’s V2/Dim Mak party, charmingly titled “Clusterfuck.” That was sort of the vibe as Peaches and Allen spun Suicide-like beats, hard-edge dance numbers, and the Rezillos — the most screwy aspect was all the endless Camel advertising/product placement going on. (And what was with all the cigarette giveaways at this year’s fest?)
In any case, I confess I like Mistress P’s style: She basically yelled at the crowd, ordered them to dance, and then jumped into the audience and moshed into me. It was like bouncing into a big, fluffy cinnamon bun — Peaches smells just fine! And that’s enough to make anyone dance.
Later a slew of burlesque dancers got onstage and shook it like a Polaroid land camera. Entertaining — too bad it seemed to drive half the crowd away. Maybe Suicide Girl-style go-go schtick’s moment has passed. Or perhaps the culture vultures would have stuck around if the ladies stripped and threw Camels… Now that would be a sight to see.
That’s a line from Protokol’s “Moving Forward”, who played at the I Heart Comix party at the Beauty Bar. They remind me a lot of the Killers and the Bravery. Let’s see if there’s room for them on ever shifting fickleness of pop.
Wolfmother also played at the same party, and I’m so glad they’re playing a lot of shows at this festival ’cause they F*ing rock! They’re an energetic 3-piece with the keyboard player holding down bass duties on a porta- Hammond.
Bransen was OK. They played at Red 7.
Helio’s Creed was OK. Their brand of psychedelia was too heavy for me. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Check ’em out: http://www.helios-creed.com
The Like were likeable. They played a packed house at Elysium.
The Gossip was fantastic! The lead singer had authority, and she had no qualms telling the audience she had to correct some wedgie issues. That rules. I still don’t know how they did bass lines with no bassist. I guess the guitarist was handling it.
I missed Ian McLagan but met him afterward and some friends in front of the Whisky bar where he played. I heard it was a great show. He lives in Austin, and I hear he plays here often, so I’ll see ya’ next time I’m in town, Mac.
I decided to save my energy for the next day and not go to any after parties, but I still managed to stay out ’till 4:00 AM.
Wednesday night, I checked out the Death and Taxes party at Austin’s new Beauty Bar, owned by Trail of the Dead’s Jason and open all of three days, he told me. He seemed to be coping well with his anarchic new life as a bar owner (the fiancee ran up to tell him he shouldn’t treat people to multiple rounds of drinks). This place used to be a car repair joint — above the conversation pit, former Bay Area- and now NYC-based rapper and Stanford grad MC Lars was playing old school hip-hop.
MC Lars stoops to DJ.
Z is for “zany”: The costumed, manic Japanese punk combo Peelander-Z drummed up an audience outside their show on packed Sixth Street. Can I get some ham with my band?
Darlington, UK, art-punk group We Start Fires got some fellahs hot under the collar — all while making ragged but right-on Fall-like rock. “You’re sexy!” someone yelled. “American men are so nice,” the keyboardist said demurely.
Thursday afternoon, at the Kill Rock Stars/5RC day party, Panther broke out the nasty now-I-lay-me-down dance steps for the small but psyched crowd. And there was no KFC from KRS! Just plenty of that SXSW party staple: BBQ pork and chicken, beans, cole slaw, and white bread. Can’t forget the sliced white bread.
Spider and the Webs also performed at the KRS/5RC soiree. Maggie Vail of the Bangs, who works for KRS, jumped up to sing backup vocals.
Thursday night, I slipped into the secret Beastie Boys 7 pm show at Stubb’s. Kewl to see the three without costumes, close up. But you’re going to have to trust me on this: My digital camera pooped out far too soon. Ask me to show you my cell phone camcorder “short films.”
SXSW gets it up for Ad-Rock.
About a thousand were said to be turned away from the capacity SXSW Neil Young and Jonathan Demme keynote talk/interview yesterday. Bay Area veteran music writer Jaan Uhelszki did a great job drawing out the insights and animal metaphors from Shakey.
The creative process was on Young’s mind. “You have to stay in the rhythm till it drys up. Commitments are the worst thing for musicians!” Even romantic commitments? asked Uhelszki. “All commitments.” Big laugh.
Demme said he saw Young’s movie, Greendale, as a challenge to all American filmmakers.
On the terror of presenting Greendale as musical theater to Young arena fans, the songwriter claimed, “If you’re terrified then you know you’re on the right track. It’s good to be scared.”
On the arrival of the Crazy Horse’s muse, Young said, “It starts with a feeling that something’s changing. I hear this massive, distorted, crunching, hideous noise. And it makes me feel like I’m going home.” When he performs with Crazy Horse, he said, “it’s like being in subzero temperatures. It’s when you’re transcending.”
Damn. It’s only Thursday and I have a hangover the size of Texas. It’s a warm, humid afternoon here in Austin, and Amy, my host just handed me her remedy: a vodka and carrot juice. I’ll piece together what happened yesterday. I ran into Oscar and Lars of the Gris Gris with Brian Glaze while wandering on 6th Street in downtown Austin. We went to Mr. Natural for yummy veggie chalupa before they went to Club DeVille to load in their equipment. Gris Gris is chillin’ in Texas until their tour next month. We won’t see them back in Oakland until May. They just played four shows in California with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who asked Gris Gris to tour with them ‘cause dig this: the Gris Gris is Karen O’s favorite band! Crazy.
I met some kids in line who came from Arizona to see Belle and Sebastian at Stubbs, a big outdoor venue, which was packed for the show. Nice harmonies. They did one song with melodica.
I had a $2 fajita, which was worth about 50 cents, at at Colorado River on 6th that would go out of business in two days if it were in the mission. They got Yelp.com in Austin? That’s my review. To be fair there are lots of great mexican food joints in Austin; even the taco truck on Red River is great. A couple next to me was figuring out who to see in the next two hours. I suggested they see Friends of Dean Martinez at Oslo. The guy said, “We just came from Oslo, so we don’t need to go back.” I found out he plays in We, described on their flyer as “cosmic biker rock from Oslo”. They’re playing at Emo’s on Saturday at 8:00PM. I’m so there (if I remember, and don’t get distracted). I felt justified in recommending Gris Gris to them instead, who were starting that very minute, so I rushed them off and finished what was edible of my snack.
I ran into Shane and Joe of Night after Night and was promptly handed the Rambler schedule. From the literature: “The Rambler is a 1980 Chevy Box van that transforms into a sound stage complete with backline and P.A. to make every band sound their best…” It’s parked at Ms. Beas for the likes of Erase Errata, Von Iva, ZZZ, and DMBQ.
Anyway, I got roped into going to Emo’s Annex with them to see an Oakland band called WHY? The first thing I noticed was there was no drummer and no bassist. Who then was playing the drums and bass? I walked up to the stage and saw that the three piece had all their limbs hard at work with one member playing bass drum with a trigger, snare, and xylophone at the same time—while singing harmonies. The guy in the middle was singing lead and playing a synth, sharing the cymbal duty with the xylophonist. The guy on the right was playing a Fender Rhodes and bass with pedals. I got respect for people who play bass with pedals. They had been together for four years and recently lost a member. I asked if it was the drummer. Answer: no, a guitarist. I highly recommend seeing them next time they play in the bay area. WHY? Because I like ‘em,
I ran into my band mate, Jason, in front of Exodus with a couple of girls from Austin. He had just seen the Plimsouls and raved about what a great set they played. They did a Creation song and a Kinks song, playing a 60’s rock and roll/garage set—a far cry from “A Million Miles Away.” If they play again this weekend, I’ll try and catch ‘em, otherwise, I’ll have to be happy with a CD of their live tapes.
I squeezed into Exodus to see the Go! Team, from England, and thought about leaving because their set up was taking so long, but no one else was leaving the packed house. Man, was I glad I stayed, because their set was awesome. With samples which included horns, bass, and other indescribable sounds, they used the best elements of hip-hop, disco and rock to captivate the audience with an infectious groove that made us dance. They had two drummers, and members switched up to play different instruments on certain songs. This was the best show yet. I’m gonna see ’em again on Friday. I highly recommend this band.
Afterward, I met up with the Cuts/Drunk horse entourage to go to an outdoor party on 1st and Red River. It was drizzly, kinda like Portland, but warm. We arrived right as the cops pulled the plug on the music and broke up the party, but not before I got my beer. Everyone I met there was really nice. We went to the Nervous Exits house and partied until about 5:00 in the morning, hence, the hangover. I missed their gig at Emo;s today at 1:00PM (sorry fellas), but I’ll be at the North Loop block party Friday at 1:00PM.
Tonight, the plan is to see Wolfmother, Peaches, She Wants Revenge, Giant Drag, and the Lashes at the Beauty Bar, then the Like at Elysium, and the Gossip at Emo’s Annex.
Everything is subject to change.
tali@sfbg.com
In the transgender community, to have full-time work is to be in the minority. In fact, a new survey of 194 trans people conducted by the Transgender Law Center (TLC), with support from the Guardian, found that only one out of every four respondents has a full-time job. Another 16 percent work part-time.
What’s more, 59 percent of respondents reported an annual salary of less than $15,333. Only 4 percent reported making more than $61,200, which is about the median income in the Bay Area.
In other words, more than half of local transgender people live in poverty, and 96 percent earn less than the median income. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that 40 percent of those surveyed don’t even have a bank account.
TLC doesn’t claim the study is strictly scientific — all respondents were identified through trans organizations or outreach workers. But the data give a fairly good picture of how hard it is for transgender people to find and keep decent jobs, even in the city that is supposed to be most accepting of them.
It’s been more than a decade since San Francisco expanded local nondiscrimination laws to cover trans people, but transphobic discrimination remains rampant. Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents said they’ve experienced some form of employment discrimination.
And interviews show that job woes are hardly straightforward.
Navigating the job-application process after a gender transition can be extraordinarily difficult. Trans people run up against fairly entrenched biases about what kind of work they’re suited for. Sometimes those who are lucky enough to find work can’t tolerate insensitive, or even abusive, coworkers.
Marilyn Robinson turned tricks for almost 20 years before she decided to look for legal employment. She got her GED and, eventually, a job at an insurance company. The first six months went OK, but then a supervisor "thought he had the right to call me RuPaul," she told us. "And I look nothing like RuPaul." Suddenly the women in the office refused to use the bathroom if Robinson was around. She left within a month.
Once again, Robinson was on the job hunt. She interviewed for a receptionist position, and thought it went well. But on her way out, she saw the interviewer toss her application into the trash with a giggle.
"The reality is, even a hoagie shop in the Castro — they might not hire you," she said.
Still, many activists say the increased attention being paid to trans employment issues is promising.
Cecelia Chung from the Transgender Law Center told us there’s a "silver lining" in the effort the "community is putting into really changing the playing field. We’re in a really different place than we were five years ago."
Activists say true progress will require broad education efforts and the cooperation of business owners throughout the Bay Area. But the project is well under way, with San Francisco Transgender Empowerment, Advocacy and Mentorship, a trans collaborative, hosting its second annual Transgender Job Fair March 22. More than a dozen employers have signed up for the fair, including UCSF, Goodwill Industries, and Bank of America.
Imagine trying to find a job with no references from previous employers. Now envision how it might feel to have interviewer after interviewer look at you askance — or even ask if you’ve had surgery on a fairly private part of your body.
These are just a couple of the predicaments trans job-seekers face.
Kenneth Stram runs the Economic Development Office at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. "In San Francisco there are the best intentions," he told us. "But when you scratch the surface, there are all these procedural hurdles that need to be addressed." As examples, he pointed to job-training classes where fellow students may act hostile, or arduous application processes.
Giving a prospective employer a reference may seem like a fairly straightforward task, but what if your old employer knew an employee of a different gender? Do you call the old boss and announce your new identity? Even if he or she is supportive, experience can be hard to erase. Will the manager who worked with Jim be able to speak convincingly about Jeanine? And what about your work history — should you eliminate the jobs where you were known as a different gender?
Most trans people can’t make it through the application process without either outing themselves or lying.
Marcus Arana decided to face this issue head-on and wrote about his transition from living as a woman to living as a man in his cover letter.
"It became a matter of curiosity," Arana told us. "I would have employers ask about my surgical status."
It took him a year and a half to find a job. Fortunately, it’s one he loves. Arana investigates most complaints of gender identity–related discrimination that are made to San Francisco’s city government. (Another investigator handles housing-oriented complaints.)
When he started his job, in 2000, about three quarters of the complaints Arana saw were related to public accommodations — a transwoman had been refused service at a restaurant, say, or a bank employee had given a cross-dressing man grief about the gender listed on his driver’s license.
Today, Arana told us, at least half of the cases he looks into are work-related — something he attributes to both progress in accommodations issues and stagnation on the job front.
TG workers, he said, confront two common problems: resistance to a changed name or pronoun preference and controversy over which bathroom they use.
The name and pronoun problems can often be addressed through sensitivity training, though Arana said that even in the Bay Area, it’s not unheard of for some coworkers to simply refuse to alter how they refer to a trans colleague.
Nine out of ten bathroom issues concern male-to-female trans folk — despite the fact that the police department has never gotten a single report of a transwoman harassing another person in a bathroom. One complaint Arana investigated involved a woman sticking a compact mirror under a bathroom stall in an effort to see her trans coworker’s genitalia.
But a hostile workplace is more often made up of dozens of subtle discomforts rather than a single drama-filled incident.
Robinson told us the constant whispering of "is that a man?" can make an otherwise decent job intolerable: "It’s why most of the girls — and I will speak for myself — are prostitutes. Because it’s easier."
The second and third most common forms of work-related discrimination cited by respondents in the TLC survey were sexual harassment and verbal harassment.
But only 12 percent of those who reported discrimination also filed some kind of formal complaint. That may be because of the widespread feeling that doing so can make it that much harder to keep a job — or find another one. Mara Keisling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in Washington, DC, said that "it’s a common understanding within the transgender community that when you lose your job, you generally lose your career."
Most of the trans people we spoke to expressed resentment at being tracked into certain jobs — usually related to health care or government.
Part of that is because public entities have been quicker to adopt nondiscriminatory policies. San Francisco city government created a splash in 2001 when it granted trans employees access to full health benefits, including sex-reassignment surgery. The University of California followed suit last year.
But it’s also because of deeply ingrained prejudices about what kind of work transgender people are suited to.
Claudia Cabrera was born in Guatemala but fled to the Bay Area in 2000 to get away from the constant insults and occasional violence that befell her. Despite her education in electrical engineering and business and 13 years of tech work, it was difficult for her to find a job — even after she was granted political asylum. In 2002 a local nonprofit she had originally turned to for help offered her a position doing outreach within the queer community.
Cabrera doesn’t make much money, and she sends some of it back to her two kids in Guatemala. But that’s not the only reason she would like another job. She wants to have broader responsibilities and to employ her tech savvy.
"There is a stereotype here in San Francisco [that] transgender folk are only good for doing HIV work — or just outreach in general," she said.
Whenever she’s gotten an interview for another kind of job, she’s been told she is overqualified. Does she believe that’s why she hasn’t been hired? "No," she laughed. But she also acknowledged, "Even though there is discrimination going on here, this is the safest city for me to be in."
Cabrera is now on the board of TLC and is working to create more job opportunities for herself and others in the trans community. She often repeats this mantra: "As a transsexual woman, I am not asking for anything that doesn’t belong to me. I am demanding my rights to live as a human being." *
TRANSGENDER JOB FAIR
March 22
1–4 p.m.
SF LGBT Community Center, Ceremonial Room
1800 Market, SF
(415) 865-5555
This blog schtuff is truly wicky wack because you feel like you can’t stop. And you don’t stop.
Speaking of which, here’s your update on the Beastie Boys conference at the SXSW HQ in downtown Austin — minutes, nay, seconds after it got out. There was a lot to love:
(1) The running jokes about Prince’s Purple Rain, Dolly Parton getting robbed at the Oscars (Mike D: “Someone was clearly the victim”), and corporate sponsorship (D: “We don’t use Reason anymore because it conflicts with our Pampers endorsement”).
(2) Their take on New Times/Clear Channel convergences, particularly between advertising and editorial and in terms of booking (they’re against it, by the way — and on a larger level, against the disappearance of mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar operations everywhere, with Ad-Rock going on a serious tangent wondering whether Clear Channel had anything to do with Scientology — “They’re very clear, right?”)
(3) The riffs on the furniture — “This is real Actors Studio type shit,” said D. “And what was with that intro music? The same person who picked out the music at the Oscars is probably the same person who picked out our intro music and picked out the chairs.”
(4) Sample clearances were a “bee-yatch” for the new movie because Mixmaster Mike was playing all kinds of great stuff live that weren’t on record.
(5) In answer to the question “What can a label do for the artists to help them and to make the artists work harder?”: “Toiletry kits,” sayeth D. “If you can give them a bullshit folding bicycle for Christmas that really does it,” MCA joked.
(6) What did they learn from Russell Simmons? “We learned how to order drinks properly,” said Ad-Rock. “How to get drinks in a timely fashion.”
(7) The line they wished they wrote themselves? “Big Daddy Kane said, ‘Put a quarter in your ass because you played yourself,'” offered MCA, who looked like Moses with his beard. In a big daddy sleazy chair.
Make my day, scenester: Lines like this make me want to shoot myself.
The queue in front of the Matador Records showcase (with Mogwai,
Belle & Sebastian, the New Pornographers, Brightblack Morning Light,
and Jennifer O’Connor) at Stubb’s on Wednesday night.
If it’s Wednesday, this must be SXSW… sorta. IMHO, the affair is off to a slow start though peeps at the last party I sloshed through were bemoaning missing the interactive part of the conference from March 10-14. Another theory floated around out there: The humongoid, pricey official SXSW dinner that all the industry titans attend is tonight and nothing must detract from the rubber chicken. Ahem.
But that’s OK — we’ll start slow, too. All the better to catch the 1,300 or so artists and bands that are performing at this year’s event. Efficiency geeks out there will be pleased to know that the speed of registration has greatly improved — gone are the long langorous lines that snaked through the second floor of the Austin Convention Center in years past. You got to know your neighbors, but the joint feels a lot more together, organizationally, in 2006, and the mood is catching. Last heard in the press room from a local radio reporter: “Do you want to interact with me or just talk?” Glad there’s a clear option.
At 1 pm, I was still bleary-eyed from the three-hour layover in Phoenix. It always seems like the SXSW air ferries will turn into party jets/soul planes any sec — what with the many musicians, writers, industry-types aboard — but the layover bit didn’t improve anyone’s mood. Nonetheless I dropped into the Riverboat Gamblers/Thrasher/Volcom Party but nada was going on — just the faraway music of a distant jukebox. So I moved on down the street to IUMA’s bash at Emo’s Annex (it’s like restaurant-going in SF; if everything’s quiet or too crowded on one front, just stroll to the next joint). Tim Mitchell of the Decoration (and IUMA, where he works with Noise Pop founder Kevin Arnold) knows how to throw a party! Empenadas, drink ticks, and music by the Herms (singing brainy songs and rocking a noisome organ; they’re ready for the release of their upcoming debut LP) and Phosphorescent (who were doing the zany, mile-long horn section thang as the singer sported strings of holiday lights). All lit up and it’s not even 2 pm.
Note to self: Folks seem psyched about the Beastie Boys’ press conference for their upcoming concert doc, Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That! And yo yo yo, the Beasties are giving a press conference shortly. An antidote to the doodness might be Pick Up the Mix, the doc on gay, lesbian, and transgendered hip-hop featuring the Deep Dickollective.
Otherwise, tonight, my untrained eye is roving over and considering Houston hip-hop showcases including sole Oaklandish type Balance; the Birdman Records showcase; Kris Kristofferson and Jessi Colter at the Austin Music Awards; Lesbians on Ecstasy with the Metrosexuals; the Castenets with Wooden Wand; Octopus Project; Field Music with Serena Maneesh and Of Montreal; Jose Gonzalez with Annie, the Presets, and Wolfmother (the hype was turned on full blast for them, with lonnnng-ass infomercials on cable last night); Absolutely Kosher showcase; Cut Chemist with Jean Grae; Austin’s Weird Weeds; Matador Showcase; Immortal Technique; King of France; the excellent Envelopes with the Ponys, the Grates, and standout non-“s” band Art Brut.
What does it all mean to you? I have no idea. But it sure sounds like I’ll be busy.
Here, my deer: This comes with your chicken-fried steak
at the Broken Spoke honky-tonk in Austin.
C’mon into the San Francisco Bay Guardian‘s new music blog. Yeah, we’re doing this now, and all the middle-aged journalists around the office are getting real jumpy. It may be the end of their careers as they know it. Yee-pee!
Anyway, expect very strange and perhaps wonderful things from this blog: pop, rock, rap, Turkish protest psych, gossip, mud-slinging, trash-talking, odes to Ali Farka Toure, block-rocking beats, oblique references to Santa Cruz noise-dealers like Zdrastvootie (last seen opening for Breezy Days Band at Hemlock Tavern and out with relatively new CD on Holy Mountain, cryptically titled 2), and even possibly news. Lots of sleepless nights. ‘Tis the season because SXSW is right around the corner, and guess who’s going to be there?
Yours truly, the blogging fools at the Guardian.
Get a room — or a hospital bed: Reluctant to miss a minute at the Gossip show at last fall’s CMJ Music Marathon.
DEADBOY AND THE ELEPHANTMEN
No, they’re not a black-and-white duo that’s read all over, like the White Stripes: Dax Riggs wears floppy T-shirts, emotes vocally, and thrashes away at the guitar. Tessie Brunet bashes the drums. Together they have slain critics throughout the land. Ex-Boyfriends, Rum Diary, and Stephen Fretwell also perform. 9 p.m. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $10. (415) 861-5016. (Kimberly Chun)
FEIST
Feist’s lilting hit “Mushaboom” (from 2004’s Let It Die) has been stuck in my head for days. It’s easy to see why
Nonetheless, it was a revelation to finally get a looky-loo at the recently released Hot Chick Hot Rod Stoner BBQ DVD (Stroker Productions, www.stonerrock.com), the straight-to-DVD-in-all-its-glorioski sequel to Hot Chick Stoner BBQ. Both projects star Hot Rod Honey — the charismatic, witty, and much more likeable rock ’n’ roll alternative to Rachael Ray.
The latest disc picks you up, throws you in the backseat, and gives you a smokin’ ride to Ace Junkyard in SF, where HRH gently but firmly takes you through the gutbucket basics of barbecuing, from starting a flame to cooking some beer can chicken, while hep, cute, but grittily real-looking metal and stoner rock chicks mill about, show off their shh-weet hot rods, chow down, and get buzzed. HRH lays down the grillable wisdom, urging hot-rodders to "put some time into your ride and some time into your food" before quipping that she’s making her food mild for the party because "I know some folks here have a bad case of honky mouth, so I don’t want anyone’s asshole to blow out."
Between barbecue tips, hip chicks (one, Vicki, works as a mechanic at Oakland Ford and is said to be married to a Drunk Horse) show you how to do elementary work on your machine, like changing the spark plugs. An added bonus: a solid soundtrack by local heavies like Om, Hightower, High on Fire, Acid King, and Dirty Power and cameos of familiar Bay faces and their rides, including Leslie Mah of Tribe 8, Meg of Totimoshi, and Windy Chien, former owner of Aquarius Records (showing off her now-departed Porsche). Toss in some shots of hot girls hot-boxing it and a recipe for "potcorn" with "pot butter," and you can imagine rock kids in Peoria drooling over the high times, good eats, and hip crew in SF.
Hot Chick Hot Rod Stoner BBQ looks that cool, as conceived and directed by Tina "Tankdog" Gordon, drummer of onetime Guardian Goldies winner Lost Goat. The video production teacher, who now drums in Night after Night, found the impetus for the series in Hot Rod Honey herself. "Hot Rod Honey is an old friend of mine. She’s been cooking for rockers for years," says Gordon over the phone. "In fact, she was the reason I stopped being a vegetarian. My old band was playing at Pondathon [in Mendocino County], and she was sitting at the edge of the pond surrounded by a pack of dogs. I said, ‘What are you cooking?’ And she said, ‘Beer Boat Sausage. It’s good. You should try some.’ It was like she put a spell on me. I said, ‘OK,’ and I ate it, and then I ate rattlesnake and steak."
The project took form because, Gordon says, Hot Rod Honey (who apparently not only works on her hot rods but also rides horses, shoots guns, bartends, and barbecues like a bad ass) "needed to be appreciated and kind of honored. I see all these cooking shows, but none of them are interesting to me, y’know. So I wanted to do something I was interested in, in this genre. In general, the stuff I like to document are things that aren’t generally documented. I’m not excited by most of what I see in TV and popular culture; so when you don’t like what you see and you’re someone who makes stuff, you gotta make the stuff you want to see. It’s just like music."
For the Hot Rod shoot in fall 2004, Gordon assembled pals who could understand the project and the vibe "and are down with barbecue." Even her vegan hot chick friends could get with the spirit of the series. "The love of hard rock is a huge thing," Gordon says. "There’s a cross section in there who can appreciate hard rock and who are hungry for that right now." Chomp chomp, there go those crunchy guitars.
Gordon tells me the next DVD will be titled Hot Chick Backwoods Stoner BBQ, and I’m probably not outta line to make a wise crack about seeing a pattern here. But after that, who knows? Gordon and HRH have been invited to film in Mississippi in May with the boys of Yokel, a Jackass-related redneck hipster pride TV series on the Turner South network. Nashville Pussy lovin’—Nascar Nationals meet NorCal hottie headbangers? Bring it on.
‘Neo-Benshi Night: Move Over, Big Screen’
POETIC CINEMA
Cribbing from Japanese cinema’s early days, last year Konrad Steiner and San Francisco Cinematheque introduced neo-benshi – live narration by local poets of movie scenes. One entertaining highlight of the debut installment was David Larsen’s swaggering oratory for Troy, which proved just how easily, not to mention cheaply, a megamillion dud can be rescued by one person’s wit. Neo-benshi gets another go-round tonight, as (in conjunction with the Poets Theater Jamboree) American Psycho, West Side Story, and early Bette Davis get on-the-spot verbal reinterpretations. Joined by Colter Jacobsen, local lit wonders Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian take on William Wellman’s proto-disaster pic The High and the Mighty, while Leslie Scalapino faces down a chapter from the Lone Wolf and Cub series. (Johnny Ray Huston)
NEO-BENSHI NIGHT: MOVE OVER, BIG SCREEN California College of the Arts, Fri/20, 7:30 p.m.
1111 Eighth St., SF. $5-$8. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org
‘A Searing Lesson Every Girl Should Know’
ART
Love is the object of Tami Demaree’s devotion, the axis at which everything spins, the departure point and the destination, to be won and lost and won back again. "A Searing Lesson Every Girl Should Know," the LA artist’s first major solo exhibition, gently prods love at every angle and from the point of view of the forsaken girl who is equally perplexed by, and hopeful about, love’s possibilities. Demaree teases out its attendant emotions to absurd effect using an array of materials (acrylic, glitter, neon, contact paper, googly eyes, and so on) that are often accompanied by sly and sweet slogans and puns such as "I love you like ping loves pong" and "You’re my favorite kiss of my whole life." The overall feeling is that of a nose tweak and a wink punctuated with a smirk and the occasional sucker punch that’s wrapped in a rainbow ever aching with the possibility of finding and holding on to true-blue die-for-you love. Although many artists attempt it, combining text and image is difficult to pull off and very few have the facility or intelligence to do it well. Not so Demaree. Her sincere visual and textual puns have just the right amount of irony and stop just short of being too coy. One example is painted directly on a gallery wall: "On the phone you said your love was flaming, and in my head I cheered go Flaming GO!!!" It takes a few beats before you notice the neon pink flamingo plugged into the wall next to it. If, as Cervantes wrote, love is "the greatest god and greatest pain," Demaree keeps love in the realm of greatest great, however transitory it may be. (Katie Kurtz)
A SEARING LESSON EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW
Steven Wolf Fine Arts, through Jan 28, Mon.-Sat., noon-6 p.m.
49 Geary, Ste. 411, SF. (415) 263-3677, www.stevenwolffinearts.co
Future jazz farmers Jazzanova have finally gotten around to issuing volume two of their remixes, appropriately titled The Remixes 2002-2005 (Sonar Kollektiv). With re-rubs of tracks by Masters at Work and Nu Spirit Helsinki, the collection aptly captures J-nova’s move toward a harder, more electronic sound. In an appropriately forward-thinking touch, the CD also comes with a blank CD-R, which buyers can use to burn a copy for friends or record downloaded mixes from the Sonar Kollektiv site. One-sixth of the Berlin-based collective of DJs, producers, and engineers is in the Bay to get down with those wacky Culprits, Eug, Tokyo Component, and Hakobo. (Peter Nicholson)
JAZZANOVA
Pink, Fri/20, 9 p.m.-4 a.m.
2925 16th St., SF. $20. (415) 431-8889 www.pinksf.com
For proof – as if any is needed – that television is overwhelmingly a right-wing medium, one need only contemplate the manner in which DNA evidence is cited in the glut of true crime shows that crowd A&E, CourtTV, and other networks. Almost without fail, DNA is shown being used to convict the guilty. It is presented as proof that the legal system – with scientific help – is just and right.
Jessica Sanders’s new film, After Innocence, is devoted to the kind of true-life stories you probably won’t find on Cold Case Files. The DNA evidence here exonerates men who have been sentenced to life, men who’ve already spent decades in prison on false charges. With this type of subject matter, Sanders can’t help making an emotionally affecting movie.
But After Innocence also looks beyond the entwined grief and relief in these men’s lives to the bullheadedness of the system that put them there. For example, in the case of at least one of the film’s subjects, a prosecutor continually refutes seemingly irrefutable evidence because he can’t face up to the fact that he made a – knowing, not innocent – mistake at trial.
I’ve read reviews of After Innocence that complain that Sanders doesn’t stick to her theme – that her dedication to these men’s lives after imprisonment wavers, giving way to an advert-like portrait of prisoner’s-aid group the Innocence Project. These complaints from a too-literal view of Sanders’s title. After Innocence is by no means perfect, but its name refers not only to the lives of those exonerated but also – and just as crucially – to the actions of the criminal justice system. How will it treat a prisoner after his (or her) innocence has been established?
The answer isn’t a satisfying or inspiring one – it’s maddening. Quite often robbed of more than half their lives, the men of After Innocence are expected to be grateful that they’re "free" today. Compensation? Not a chance. Rather like a certain commander in chief, the legal and criminal-justice forces at play here consider themselves above even having to make an apology. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Most teen starlets are probably satisfied to look their hottest on press junkets and don the cutest duds they can find at Fred Segal. But at 15, Q’Orianka Kilcher isn’t your average Teen Vogue pinup. Perhaps it’s indicative of the added expectations – and attendant ambitions – that come with playing Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s The New World, but Kilcher seemed to be firing on all cylinders, in terms of accomplishments, when she showed up at San Francisco’s Ritz-Carlton in gorgeous multiskinned boots and a covetable leather jacket, both of which she made herself.
A dancer, musician, and singer, yet relatively untried in the movies, with only a small part in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas to her name, Kilcher – the daughter of a native Peruvian Quecha/Huachapaeri father and a Swiss-Alaskan mother – rose above the iconic demands of playing the metaphorically loaded yet still mysterious Indian princess with considerable charm, unstudied poise, and sweet naturalism on film. Bringing modern-dance moves and a watchful (and watchable) lightness to the first half of The New World, she holds her own when the stifling star power and narrative filter of Colin Farrell as John Smith falls away and Pocahontas and her sadly all-too-familiar story of a native woman’s tragic encounter with "old-world" colonizers move closer to the center of The New World.
Petite, simultaneously softer and rawer than Malick’s other girlish innocents (Sissy Spacek in Badlands and Linda Manz in Days of Heaven), and just as graceful in person as she is in front of the lens (except when she is later startled in the women’s room and then resembles a frightened doe in her buckskins), Kilcher seems to be handling the weighty burdens of representing a legendary figure (which included getting her first kiss, from Farrell) well, although a body can obviously only take so much. "Omigod, my back just … cracked!" she yelped, rising from her gilded nest of a settee.
SFBG: I found the Pocahontas story extremely moving because it reminded me of the sad stories of native Hawaiian royalty I’d hear growing up.
Q’Orianka Kilcher: I grew up in Hawaii! I lived there for six and a half years. We lived on the North Shore, Oahu, Kailua, Waikiki – omigod I’m forgetting the names – Wailua? I remember surfing, being at the beach every day, catching beautiful, tropical-looking fish.
SFBG: What were your impressions of Pocahontas before you took the role?
QK: I just knew the cartoon like everyone else. But when I went to Virginia, I did so much research. I learned her native language, Algonquian, and I can even speak it today. I immersed myself. The sets that Jack Fisk designed, as well as the clothing Jackie West made, really helped me to get lost in the 1600s and how life kind of was back then – the purity and delight and simplicity.
SFBG: The clothing conveys the character’s physical changes.
QK: It really does. When she’s in Virginia in her traditional tribal clothes, she holds the spirit of freedom and is able to move freely around, and when she moves to London and has the corset on, she’s very constricted. I went home and cried the first time I tried on my corset and my shoes. I had them put on my corset extra-too-tight and my shoes a size too small.
SFBG: What was the audition process like? Did you know who Terrence Malick was?
QK: I didn’t. I didn’t know who Colin Farrell was; Christian Bale, not too much. I must have done 15 to 20 auditions. I never knew what to expect, because they’d tell me to suddenly do a traditional feather dance or play my Native American flute. They would put all these obstacles in my path to see if I would withstand them and overcome them.
SFBG: What was the shoot like?
QK: It was an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes I would be crying for four or five hours straight – those were my favorite scenes to film, because I was able to throw my whole heart and soul into it and I wasn’t honestly sure in the beginning that I was able to pull those scenes off. So I’d kind of ask the spirit of Pocahontas to guide me and help me show her story as best as I could to the world.
SFBG: Did you feel any added pressure playing Pocahontas because she is such a symbol of …
QK: Peace.
SFBG: … and …
QK: Betrayal.
SFBG: And America.
QK: People have so many different views. Being a young girl myself – Pocahontas seeing a white person for the first time, with their armor and their white skin, never seeing them before, I think she would have perceived John Smith in a way like a god or spirit. So there was a little bit of a crush and [a] naïveté. Were she given the foresight to see what devastating consequences her actions and beliefs in the hopes for peace would have brought upon her own people, I think she would have gone away from [him]. I wanted to show Pocahontas’s story as best I could to the world and really do her justice because I fell in love with who she was. I thought she was an amazing, strong woman who wasn’t afraid to dream.
The John Smith-Pocahontas romance has long been a cornerstone of America’s mythical landscape. He being the original Man Who Knows Indians (an archetype sealed by James Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans), and she standing in for the land itself: Embodying equal parts purity and promise, Pocahontas represents an ideal, a paradise. The myth of their doomed love speaks to how this paradise was won and then lost. It is a story that Terrence Malick – a writer-director whose work has always sloped toward myth and, in The Thin Red Line, epic poetry – has wanted to tap for decades and finally does in his strange new film, The New World.
The New World is the departure and even, perhaps, the failure that many critics were expecting from Malick’s comeback film, The Thin Red Line. Despite Line’s 170-minute running time, the writer-director’s take on James Jones’s panoramic World War II novel was every bit as entrancing as his revered earlier films (Badlands, Days of Heaven). The New World runs 135 minutes (the version I saw was actually 150 minutes: The movie was recut after already screening across the country), and, this time, Malick does seem to have sacrificed clarity and control for the sake of spectacle. Still, the movie is certainly an important addition to a powerfully coherent filmography. He retains his formidable talent for grounding his characters in a specific geography, and he remains refreshingly concerned with their interiority: Few movie characters have souls as deep as Malick’s.
The writer-director’s movies are all marked by a stark tension between hyperrealism and voice-over-laden stylization (a muted style being no less a style than a flashy one). Much has been made of Malick’s heavily researched, no-artificial-lighting depiction of Jonestown, and, indeed, the naturalistic, cinema verité rendering of America’s first colony is reminiscent of Werner Herzog’s lightning-bolt Aguirre: The Wrath of God (though Colin Farrell’s John Smith doesn’t have a hundredth the intensity of Klaus Kinski’s Aguirre). The film’s opening, which conveys the initial landing with Wagner-fueled bombast, is suitably revelatory and exemplary of Malick’s talent for lyricism.
With that said, there can, of course, be too much of a good thing. The depiction of Pocahontas and Smith’s courtship is almost insane in its unrelenting camera movements, flashes of elegiac sunlight, and impressionistic footage of plants – the scenes almost seem a parody of lyricism. The real problem here is that Malick’s aesthetic isn’t reigned in by a tight narrative construction (despite its expansive running time, The Thin Red Line never erred from a carefully plotted narrative mechanism). This Pocahontas is more human than her Disney counterpart (both because of Q’Orianka Kilcher’s performance and because the character receives a voice-over), but not enough to direct Malick’s labored gaze. By the time the story moves her to England with eventual husband John Rolfe (Christian Bale) and picks up some melodramatic heft from the heroine’s tragic arc, our attention has wavered too far for too long; the film’s many digressive passages fail to materialize into a whole.
Given how slippery The New World is, the film is set to solicit strong critical reactions. It’s indulgent and difficult to classify and will therefore push critics to extremes. In actuality, The New World really is what it seems: a fascinating failure with brilliant flourishes weighing against strained seriousness and muddled lyricism. As far as mythic American lovers in recent movies go, I think I’ll take Johnny and June over John and Pocahontas, but Malick’s vision still makes The New World worth a trip to the big screen. If the writer-director has finally stumbled, it proves what one might have guessed all along: that a Terrence Malick failure is many times more interesting than an average filmmaker’s success. While Malick might be misguided in trying to coax poetry out of a form – prestige Hollywood filmmaking – hardly known for being uncompromised, it’s difficult not to admire the ambition.
THE NEW WORLD Opens Fri/20 Selected Bay Area theaters For theater and show time info, go to www.sfbg.com www.thenewworldmovie.com
