Coachella

Nick Cave, Rancid, Eagles of Death Metal, Ledisi, Dandy Warholds to launch reopened Warfield

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Fly, Eagles of Death Metal, fly.

Save your tears for the gym-ed up Alcazar and other grand old venues and theaters that have been made over as enormous drug stores. The Warfield reopens soon, under the aegis of Goldenvoice, the production company that puts on Coachella, and a slew of shows are set to go on sale via Ticketmaster on June 22.

Sept. 15 – George Lopez. Third show on sale Sunday, June 22 (third show added).

Sept. 18 – Musiq Soulchild and Ledisi. On Sale Sunday, June 22.

Sept. 20 – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. On Sale Sunday, June 22.

Sept. 23 – the Hives/Eagles of Death Metal. On sale soon.

Sept. 24 – Bootsy Collins “Tribute to the Godfather of Soul.” On sale soon.

Sept. 25 – Bullet for My Valentine. On sale Sunday, June 22.

Sept. 26-27- Rancid.

Oct. 4 – Dandy Warhols. On sale Sunday, June 22.

Oct. 11 – Julieta Venegas. On sale Sunday, June 22.

Oct. 25 – the Kooks. On sale soon.

Oct. 30 – Cassandra Wilson. On Sale Sunday, June 22.

Nov. 7 – Jim Gaffigan. Late Show added; on sale Sunday, June 22.

Dec. 6 – Frank Caliendo. On sale soon.

Dec. 21- Brian Setzer Orchestra. On sale soon.

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Nick Cave, eyeball rolling back in the day.

Pics: Reliving Coachella — That Pig! And more

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Fab photog Tommy Brockert‘s Coachella photos keep streaming in …

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The light side of the pig — from Roger Waters’ Pink Floyd flashback set

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Future indie addicts

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London DJ Erol Alkan’s first West Coast appearance blew the crowd away

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The lights at night

A tale of two burgers

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The road goes ever on and on, often past fast-food stands. A two-hour toddle from LAX to the Coachella Valley took us across the belly of the beast, South Central Los Angeles, where traffic is as horrible as rumor has it despite the $4-per-gallon gasoline prices thoughtfully delivered by Bush & Co. When gas is $40 a gallon, I wondered (by Labor Day?), will it make a difference? The consensus view in the cabin of Zippy, our Wonder Dodge, was No. When I gunned Zippy’s brave little four-cylinder engine, I heard the sound of someone with a hand mixer whipping egg whites into a meringue under the hood.

Fast food may be a distinctively American evil, but I retain an affection for the southland’s Del Taco chain nonetheless, mostly because of the fish tacos, which are excellent. Why, then, did I order a cheeseburger when we pulled over for a spell to let a surge of road fatigue (perhaps tending toward rage) subside? Was the 99-cent price a factor? Even in fast-food places, you get what you pay for; the Del Taco burger is about 95 percent bun — the Bun Burger! — with a layer of grim gray beef, about the thickness of bresaolo, tucked deep inside, cowering under a slice of pickle.

You get what you pay for, I should say, except if you are eating at Daniel Boulud’s DB Bistro Moderne in midtown Manhattan, as we were a few weeks ago. There, the burger costs $32 — that’s dollars, not cents — and is made from ground sirloin and presented on a parmesan bun with some foie gras. Notwithstanding all this splendor, the burger was dry. We consoled ourselves with an ice cream sundae, which turned out to be $16. New York has plainly identified dollar-bearers as losers and is casting its lot with visitors from euro-land. To people whose currency is actually worth something, Manhattan prices wouldn’t seem too out of the ordinary.

If the Boulud-burger was a bust, the restaurant’s choucroute was marvelous. (DB Bistro Moderne’s chef is Alsatian and gets to put on a small show Monday evenings.) Choucroute — let alone good choucroute — is a dish you rarely see on restaurant menus, and at $34 it gives incomparably better value than the burger. I am not, however, hoping that a 99-cent version shows up at Del Taco.

Paul Reidinger

› paulr@sfbg.com

Pics: Reliving Coachella — Chromeo, Fatboy Slim, A-Trak

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Hell yeah we’re still hungover and sunburnt. That’s why this is a week late. Fab photog Tommy Brockert captured the sites and moods of Coachella 2008. This is part one. Rawk.

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Burning Man fave Big Rig Jig centered the fest

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The boys of Chromeo slice the backhand

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Oakland/Sacramento natives Wallpaper made their own lineup in the parking lot

Sonic Reducer Overage: Her Space Holiday, KUSF, Raconteurs, Pre, Basia Bulat, Night Marchers, Man Man, and so much more

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Man Man, oh, man.

Man, there’s too much to do – you can blame it on Coachella for luring so many interesting acts westward.

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Beards, stuffed animals, and the sound of Philadelphia – this is what Man Man shows are made of. Man Man’s new album, Rabbit Habits (Anti-), has also been touched by facial hair. Count on much instrument passing, a palpable sense of humor, and fever dreams revolving round cheesetofu sandwiches. With Yeasayer. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750.

RACONTEURS
A pretty fun rockin’ time was had by all at the supergroup’s last show at the Warfield. Consolers of the Lonely sound like the combo are up to their mad, sad old tricks. With Birds of Avalon. Wed/23, 8 p.m., sold out. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

HER SPACE HOLIDAY
San Mateo rising! Suburban savant Marc Bianchi is back from holiday with a new album to come on Mush Records – and his first children’s book, The Telescope, which was released in Japan. With Lymbyc System and Head Like a Kite. Thurs/24, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

CO2 stew

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER It’s not easy being green, music lover. Because I’ve tried to shove my big fat cultural consumption hoof into a smaller carbon footprint, but I can’t dance around the numbers.

I’ve ponied up the green stuff for nonprofits, come correct at the composting and recycling bins, and threatened to finally get the crusty Schwinn into shape despite the near-death horror stories from bike messenger chums back in the day. But what can a music-gobbling gal do when faced with the hard if rough facts spat out by, for instance, the free online Carbon Footprint Calculator? After selecting "I often go out to places like movies, bars, and restaurants," I watched my print soar to Bigfoot proportions — thanks to my nightlife habit I supposedly generate around the US average of 11 tons of CO2 per person — rather than the mere 8.5 tons if I indulged in only "zero carbon activities, e.g. walk and cycle." Even if this out-late culcha vulcha flies on zero-emission wings to each show, I’m still feeding a machine that will prove the undoing of the planet, since the Calculator estimates that hard-partying humanoids need to reduce their CO2 production to 2 tons to combat climate change. We won’t even get into the acres of paper, publications, and CDs surrounding this red-faced, would-be greenster. I’m downloading as fast as I can, but I wonder whether my hard drive can keep up: hells, even MP3s — and the studios and servers that eke them out — add to my huge, honking footprint. Must I resign myself to daytime acoustic throw-downs within a walkable radius from my berth? Can I get a hand-crank laptop? Just how green can my music get?

Well, it does my eco good to know that a local venue like the Greek Theatre has gone green all year round: Another Planet has offset an entire season’s 113 tons of CO2 emissions; composted over two tons of cups, plates, and utensils; used recycled paper and soy-based ink on all their printed materials; and offered a $1 opt-in to ticket-buyers to offset their environmental impact. I can feel my tonnage shrinking just staring at the numbers. And while gatherings such as last year’s Treasure Island Music Festival sported zero-emission shuttles and biodiesel generators and this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will team with Amtrak to provide a free train that will move campers from Los Angeles’ Union Station to Empire Polo Field sans smog-spewing traffic jams, artists like José González have embarked on green tours, adding 50 cents to tickets to support nonprofits. Yet such efforts might prove more consciousness-raising than anything else, González concedes: "For me, playing mostly solo and touring with a small crew, I feel like the actual cut down on emissions is marginal comparing it to major artists, so it’s more about the symbolic value of it, and the ripple effect it might bring."

Still, CO2 spendthrifts like me need a swift kick in our waste-line. Lining up to deliver are such music-fueled events as the free South Lake Tahoe Earth Day Festival April 19 and the Digital Be-In 16 April 25 at Temple nightclub, organized by the Cyberset label with an "ecocity" theme aimed at sustainable communities. Green practices, Be-In founder Michael Gosney says, "may not be huge in of themselves, but they set an example for communities to take these practices back into their own lives." One such community-oriented musician is String Cheese Incident mandolin player Michael Kang, who’ll perform at the Digital Be-In and appear with Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks at the free Green Apple Festival concert April 20 in Golden Gate Park.

Organizing seven other free outdoor Earth Day shows throughout the country on April 20 as well as assorted San Francisco shows that weekend, the Green Apple Festival is going further to educate artists and venues — the usual suspects that inspire me to make my carbon footprint that much bigger — by distributing to participating performers and clubs helpful Music Matters artist and venue riders: the former encourages artists to make composting, recycling, and offsets a requirement of performances; the latter suggesting that nightspots consider reusable stainless-steel bottles of water and donating organic, local, fair-trade and/or in-season food leftovers to local food banks or shelters.

But how green are the sounds? Musicians like Brett Dennen, who also performs at SF’s Green Apple event, may have grown up recycling and composting, but he confesses that environmentalism has never spurred him to craft a tune: "Things as big as global warming have never moved me to write about it, even though I’m doing what I can." And Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett, who plays April 17 at the Design Center Concourse, may describe himself as a "recycling animal — I love it! I go through trash at other people’s houses!", yet even he was unable to push the rest of the his group to make their latest CD, Under the Blacklight (Warner Bros., 2007) carbon neutral.

So maybe it comes down to supporting those leafy green rooms, forests, and grasslands we otherwise take for granted. Parks are the spark for ex–Rum Diary member Jon Fee’s Parks and Records green label in Fairfax, which wears its love of albums on its hand-printed, all-recycled-content sleeves and plans to donate a percentage of all its low-priced CD sales to arboreal-minded groups like Friends of the Urban Forest. Fee and his spouse Mimi aren’t claiming to have all the answers in terms of running a low-carbon-footprint imprint, but they are pragmatic ("In order to support bands, labels need to give them something they can sell to get gas money," Fee says) and know their love of the outdoors segues with many musicians. "You develop that camping mentality from touring," he offers. "You’re not showering, and you’re hanging out for long periods of time. Everyone loves to be outside." That’s the notion even those too cheap to buy offsets can connect with — until the weird weather is at their doorstep.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Mocheeba, Hercules and Love Affair, Enon, David Banner, and mo’

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Reflections on Enon. Photo by Emily Wilson.

So much to do and see, Lee. And Prince headlining Coachella on Saturday, April 26, doesn’t make the schedule any easier. Check out all these worthy shows that were fit for print but simply didn’t make the trim this week.


KING BROTHERS AND THE FLAKES
Kawaii-cute Japanese distorto-rockers meet Bay Area garage first-schoolers. With Shellshag and Bananas. Thurs/10, 8:30 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.



HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR
“I cannot hold / a half a life / I cannot be / at half a wife.” So goes “Time Will” off Hercules and Love Affair’s new self-titled DFA/EMI album. Dulcet warbles care of Antony of Antony and the Johnsons meet cool synthetics with keys by Andrew Butler and drum programming by DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy. Instant love affair, for sure. With Timo Maas and Honey Soundsystem. Fri/11, 10 p.m. doors, $15-$30. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.

Careers & Ed: Photo pro

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› culture@sfbg.com

A line snakes down Fell Street on a Friday evening in front of the Rickshaw Stop, where Meleksah Jurgenson cradles a large camera and surveys the over- and underdressed revelers in Hayes Valley. A man in bright sneakers and slouchy jeans calls her over: "Dude, Meleksah! You gotta take a photo of this!" He gleefully points to a poor shlub on the curb resting a weary head on his knees. The guy’s been there, immobile, for at least 20 minutes.

Jurgenson smiles apologetically. With her long brown hair pulled back and bangs cut straight across her forehead, her face is girl-next-door lovely: sweet, a little sly, and essentially nonthreatening. Like the sidewalk lush, her camera remains fixed in her hands. She doesn’t shoot.

"I want everyone to look back at the pictures and be just as excited [to see them] as I was to take them," she explains later. A native of Washington, DC — her mother is a photographer at the White House — Jurgenson is now a resident cameraperson at Mezzanine, as well as at the weekly Frisco Disco and Blow Up parties cohosted by her husband, Jeffrey Fare, at the Transfer and the Rickshaw Stop. (Fare, a former member of postpunk dance purveyors the Rapture, DJs at these parties under the names DJ Jefrodisiac and Jeffrey Paradise.)

A rigorously spontaneous career track — "I never make plans for the future," she says — found Jurgenson working as both a model and a party planner. "So it was a natural progression to move from booking and throwing parties to [hosting] nightclubs," she says. "And to move from shooting fashion editorials to being on the other side of the camera. I just fell into it."

As she walks around the Rickshaw Stop, the regular disco kids light up. Hugs and air kisses are exchanged; everyone poses, happily and extravagantly. The photos, tagged with a hot-pink stripe signed "Lady Meleksah," then pop up on the various outlets where she serves as contributor or founder: Blow Up’s official Web site, Jurgenson’s makeshift party-photo outlet friscodiscofever.blogspot.com, and electro-music blog Missingtoof.com, in addition to her personal MySpace and Flickr accounts.

But Jurgenson isn’t on the typical photographer career track. These days, young arts professionals are pushed to consolidate their work online, have extensive multimedia experience at their fingertips, and create profiles on sites such as LinkedIn to attract employers. So there’s something old school about what Jurgenson does: take photos, make friends, and get hired. The ease of social-networking sites comes along with random and uneven exposure, so she figures if you’re not being seen around town having a legitimately good time, then maybe you’re not the right person for the job.

In fact, Jurgenson, who only began shooting professionally two years ago, doesn’t even — gasp! — have an online portfolio. Despite this, she’s done some band shoots and magazine work. But her bread and butter is the nightclub scene. "I love the people, I love the music, I love the sex. I love the dancing. I love everything about it," she says. "Having the camera is almost secondary. I come home after these parties with bruises and beer spilled all over me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way." And the parties keep getting bigger: she shot the Winter Music Conference in Miami last month and will shoot at Coachella.

Perhaps one reason Jurgenson is so successful is that she has a slightly different take on club photography from the norm. For example, sites such as Los Angeles’s Cobra Snake or New York’s Last Night’s Party often court controversy for their photographers, who are criticized for taking advantage of the subjects’ inebriated states as much as for their photos. Visually, the images feature the short-range flash that briefly illuminates bleary-eyed faces and exposed bodies. Every so often, these bodies are shown lying next to a pool of their own vomit. But Jurgenson wants to capture people looking good and having a great time.

She also manages to get more intimate photos of people — and receives less criticism about her photos exploiting women — than most photographers (typically male) can get.

"I’m not an imposing guy shoving a camera in somebody’s face," she says. "I don’t think people are as threatened by me."

The people in her nightclub work appear as radiant as they must have felt at that very moment. Instead of featuring closed house parties and backstage antics with celebrities, her photos, laced with dazzling lights and brilliant colors, mostly take place on the open dance floor. Rather than exploiting blotto hipsters, Jurgenson shoots buoyant clubhoppers and exhibitionists unlikely to regret the posturing. "I don’t particularly like Cobra Snake or any of the other party photographers out there," she says. "I don’t want to capture pictures of a girl standing there making a silly face."

Jurgenson doesn’t bother photographing the aftereffects of the parties — the three-day hangover or the sore throat and lungs. Her work puts the most exuberant parts of the night on display — the parts that evoke carefree and careless times. It’s gloriously unapologetic and unabashedly playful. "Look, stop worrying about the ‘misspent youth,’" the faces seem to shout. "Just dance with us!"

"I think that’s what separates me from a lot of photographers," Jurgenson says. "I immerse myself in the festivities and shoot. To capture a party like I do, you have to be a part of it, not a photographer."

But when you’re a consummate hostess connecting and socializing with everyone around you, there’s no doubt that observing and participating in the environment changes it. But Jurgenson isn’t concerned with keeping photojournalistic distance. She likes to shake things up.

Other photographers are "sort of like birdwatchers," Jurgenson says. "But I’m on safari."

South By Culture: Home again … and advice for next year

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Culture editor Molly Freedenberg hits SXSW for the first time to explore the festival’s extracurricular aspects. For Music Editor Kimberly Chun’s take on SXSW’s tunes, click here.

I’m finally back from South by Southwest. And by “back” I don’t only mean “in San Francisco.” The latter happened early Sunday morning. But I only recovered, brushed my teeth, got out of bed, and unpacked last night. Yes, it was that much fun, and that exhausting. (Yes, I also have a habit of squeezing every bit of fun out of every moment I can, which often leads to days of bed rest, but that’s another story…)

Now that I have some time to reflect, I can say deciding to go was one of the best ideas I ever had. (Way better than paying $180 to see Buffy the Musical.) First off, Austin’s rad. Now I completely understand why everyone I know is moving there. Rent is cheap. People are interesting. It’s got the politics, art, music, and culture of Portland and San Francisco but without the rain and gloom of either; and it’s got the weather of Los Angeles, but without the smog, the sprawl, or the especially high ratio of douche-bags to cool people our sister to the South has got.

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The unofficial SXSW (female) uniform: summer dresses and cowboy boots.

And second, the festival itself. How do I explain this? It isn’t simply that there’s music everywhere. It’s that everyone is there because they love being there. This is summer camp for music geeks. Or Sturgis. Or (don’t kill me for saying this) Burning Man. Southby isn’t just a big, spread-out Coachella or Bonnaroo – both of which are contained, commercial festivals in the traditional sense. This is more of a temporary culture – where every venue is dedicated to playing music from morning to night, and where every person there is so dedicated to music they want to spend several days immersed in it.

In fact, I found the experience of being at Southby much the same as being at Burning Man: intending to go one place and ending up at another, running into people I never expected to see, leaving the house at 11 a.m. with the intention of coming home for dinner and not seeing my bed until 4 a.m. Drinking early, forgetting to eat, thinking I’d found the most inspiring thing I’d ever seen and then, two blocks later, finding something even more inspiring. Sure, at Burning Man it’s guerrilla art or random performance or the joy of seeing Barbie Death Camp for the first time – at Southby, it’s rock bands that sound like Led Zeppelin (Parlour Mob) or discovering the punk band I’m listening to actually sings one my favorite song on an old, unlabelled mix tape (Meat Men) or finding my way into the Perez Hilton party (not as exciting as it sounds) with a writer friend from L.A. But the fundamental feeling is the same: riding the wave of the unexpected. I bet you could even draw parallels between relationships at Burning Man – how some are formed and how some are ruined – and those at Southby.

And just like Burning Man, Southby isn’t for everyone. The pace is breakneck. The beer is unlimited. And if you don’t like crowds, walking, or loud noise, it could be your biggest nightmare. But for people like me, it’s an absolute fantasy.

Which is to say, yes, of course, I’m going to go again. But I’ll do a few things differently. Here’s my advice for other Southby virgins, based on what I learned this year:

Kewl Tun3: Santogold gets LES Artistic

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I’ve made no secret of my audiolust for Brooklyn grime-pop chanteuse (and former punk band Stiffed frontwoman) Santogold, but the new vid for her “LES Artistes,” directed by Nima Nourizadeh, is blowing me away:

Santogold’s heavily related to the stripper-loving Spank Rock scene, sharing some producers, remixers, track appearances, and party bills, although on a much higher intel tip (everyone kind of over “bitches and ho’s” DJ Assault circa 2002 ripoffs say “He-eyyy!”) — and look for many, many tired comparisons to MIA to follow in the wake of the release of her self-titled album Santogold (Downtown), which drops on April 22, and her performance at Coachella this year — because, you know, freaky women artists of color sure are similar. Still, her already-legendary bass-heavy ragga crawler club jam “Creator” has swept people onto the same global-hop dancehall dancefloors as Ms. MIA, and the more like that (and the above) the merrier, say I …

And this quote from a recent NYT article on her is priceless: “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”

Santogold, “Creator” (live at Fader 51 party)

Madonna, Wilde, and bears — oh my!

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW The International Bear Rendezvous has come and gone, but a few stragglers searching for a good time can still be found in "Bear Hunting," James Gobel’s series of lush and faintly melancholy portraits. Attired in flannels, suspenders, and trendy band T-shirts, Gobel’s burly and bearded imagined subjects might appear uncannily familiar to regulars of the Eagle or the Lone Star, or to certain segments of BUTT magazine’s readership.

But while their clothing scans along contemporary gay subcultural lines — which these days seems to overlap with the dress sense of male hipsters — Gobel poses them in the mannered body language of the 19th-century aesthete. Eyes slyly cocked, paused by some combination of antique architectural details — a velvet curtain, a divan, a newel post, flocked wallpaper — each bear holds aloft a flickering candle, as if he’s studied Cindy Sherman’s anonymous, imperiled heroines alongside Oscar Wilde’s famously photographed languid contrapposto.

Not that the supersaturated royal purples, peacock blues, and John Deere greens or the acrylic, yarn, and wool felt textures of Gobel’s marquetry need more illumination. His canvases almost pop off the wall. But the bears appear to remain oblivious to their rainbow-colored surroundings. Like Ingrid Bergman in Gas Light (1944) or Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940), they seem trapped in a haunted house in which something isn’t quite right and the past lingers on like a killer hangover. In Holding Tenderly to What Remains, the subject reveals a "Madonna Live at Coachella" T-shirt beneath his Pendleton. The title, in combination with the shirt, immediately underscores the nostalgia industry driven by and marketed to the pink dollar, in which subcultures — yes, even bears — become marketing demographics.

The question that Gobel’s portraits stop short of answering is, what happens when the flame goes out? *

JAMES GOBEL: "BEAR HUNTING"

Through March 29

Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Marx Zavattero Gallery

77 Geary, SF

(415) 627-9111

www.marxzav.com

Les Razilles Denudes laid bare

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By Matt Sussman

Should bands just stick to their guns and stay broken up? Now that the seemingly impossible has happened and the formerly estranged members of My Bloody Valentine have caught the reunion fever – along with fellow British shut-ins Portishead, who follow on last year’s much ballyhooed reunion of Scottish depressives the Jesus and Mary Chain – what’s to stop other fantasy reformations from coming true? Every other week Pitchfork’s news feed seems to include word of some impending resurrection. Sure, Marr and Morrisey won’t take the stage together until hell freezes over, but honestly, concerts these days really seem like a buyer’s market where any number of groups whose flame was once considered snuffed – whether the Pixies or the Stooges or the Fire Engines – can be seen playing alongside younger bands who openly ape their sound and cite them as formative influences.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate wish fulfillment as much as the next music nerd. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the new cross-generational formation of ESG and shaking my ass to “The Beat” played live on a loud sound-system. But I know it’s a far, far cry from hearing the Skroggins sisters and cousin Tito funk up the Paradise Garage’s last party ever. And my friends who saw the Stooges – yeah, I really missed the boat there – couldn’t stop effusing over how much it fucking rocked, despite the fact that Iggy qualifies for the Grand Slam at Denny’s. (At least art punks Wire were being frank when they said that their live dips into their classic first two albums Pink Flag and Chairs Missing were convenient means to get back into proper physical shape. I wish the Spice Girls were as forthcoming since, clearly, this last reunion didn’t exactly turn into the sisterhood of the traveling Cavalli, girl-powered slumber party it was hyped as).

But all griping and throat-clearing aside, if I had the kind of dough that Coachella and All Tommorow’s Parties regularly wave under the noses of some their more resistant would-be reformed headliners, I would send an offer, pronto, to Mizutani Takahashi and his partners in crime in ‘70s underground legends Les Razilles Denudes, who ceased activity around 1996 (even though their first official CD wasn’t released until 1991).

Coachella lite: where are the Valentines?

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Which is the real Coachella?


By Erik Morse

Last Monday’s announcement from Mexico City of the lineup for the upcoming Coachella Festival in Indio had more than a few prospective ticket buyers flummoxed. Where were all the celebrity headliners Goldenvoice had so skillfully assembled in years past? Where were the electro hipsters and indie-rock stalwarts whose appearances had succeeded in making Coachella the American Glastonbury?

After all the behind-the-scenes campaigning and Internet rumor-mongering that promised everyone from the Smiths to Gang of Four to Aphex Twin to Leonard Cohen, the unveiling was an extraordinary exercise in bathos. Thank goodness for Portishead. The biggest omission was the newly reunited My Bloody Valentine, who performs for the first time in over 15 years beginning this summer in the UK. After the major coup that brought the Jesus and Mary Chain to Indio last year, hopes were high that a second miracle might find Kevin Shields and co. headlining over the likes of Jack Johnson or Roger Waters.

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My, my: My Bloody Valentine.

There will be blood

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› Kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Bay Area, puh-leeze: can you get up, pull your shirt back over your treasured chest, trot your bad ‘elf over to the bar, and fetch me another New Year’s Eve teeny pomegranatini? I like them wet and wild and deliciously unsettling, like an extrabratty, ultraseasonal, El Nino–style holiday storm, or like the $1.99 drugstore silver glitter paint I dab on Bay-bee’s claws. And while you’re on your hind legs, kick those ugly Xmas sweaters to the curb along with those faded concert memories of souped-up Daft Punk, daffy Hannah Montana, and residencies by everyone from the Smashing Pumpkins to Morrissey. That heat rash from Coachella has healed nicely, so prepare to hoof with me over those white-watery storm drains toward this year’s choice musical New Year’s Eve entertainments. Yes, Mr. Area, you have to keep your pants on — though you’re allowed to doff the hoodie for the hangover-slung, hard-nippled, underwear-only touch-football game in honor of the first day of ’08. In the meantime, read it and reap.

ROCK OUT TILL A COCK’S OUT


Blowing up your punkoid politico consciousness for more years — and fixed gears — than we can count, This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb explode with post–Buy Nothing Day charm alongside zany Sacto melodikins Bananas at the Hemlock Tavern (www.hemlocktavern.com). Fruit rules! Shades of Josie Cotton: singer-songwriter starlet Katy Perry debuts her "Ur So Gay" laters to an ex in San Francisco at Live 105’s bash at Mezzanine (www.mezzaninesf.com), with Capitol Records kin Blaqk Audio, ever-popular popsters Moving Units, and a Junior Boys DJ set. The mind-blowing antics continue — lovin’ you big time and a long time — as the Mars Volta bust out the electrified and acoustic jams during a seven-hour splashdown at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (www.livenation.com). Betcha those guys never, never sleep alone. The Eternals, DJ sets by Peanut Butter Wolf and Nobody, and an old-school light show are a few of the big eve’s diversions. Also kicking out the post-punk heavy rawk weather is Alternative Tentacles’ newest Bay band, Triclops!, matching ecstatic earache bouts with the Melvins and wailin’ faves Comets on Fire at Slim’s (www.slims-sf.com). Raising consciousness in bigger rooms for longer than the Internet: Cake take it and bake it at the Warfield (www.livenation.com) alongside the Lovemakers’ dark delights.

BA needs some hair on his pretty pecs, so we’ll ask Old Grandad to put the grizzle in the shizzle and the metal in our muddle at the revived and reopened Bender’s Bar and Grill (www.bendersbar.com). Yet all that hair just won’t do for spunky Scissors for Lefty, who spit-shine and cuten up well-scruffed indie rock at Bottom of the Hill (www.bottomofthehill.com). It’s all about the brothel creepers and rockabilly jeepsters at Big Sandy and His Fly Rite Boys’ showdown at Bimbo’s 365 Club (www.bimbos365club.com) and then the debauched hard rock horseplay at Drunk Horse’s rendezvous at the Stork Club (www.storkcluboakland.com). Got a case of the Jam-a-lamas? Les Claypool’s third annual NYE Hatters Ball Extravaganza can take care of that for you at the Fillmore (www.livenation.com), as can ALO, Animal Liberation Orchestra (www.theindependentsf.com), applying a suave, boogie-based touch. Expect the dudes in untucked striped shirts in force.

Cover me, kid, when Fat Wreck Chords supergroup Me First and the Gimme Gimmes put the punk rock spin on the AM-FM radio dial at Thee Parkside (www.theeparkside.com), whereas Wonderbread 5 yuk it up with oldies at Red Devil Lounge (www.reddevillounge.com). And for the real thing — sorta — old-schooly hardcores with refreshed Germs burns might want to catch the Germs and the Adolescents at the Uptown in Oakland (www.uptownnightclub.com). Still got hair in dire need of a band? Well, if you missed Y&T last NYE at the Avalon in Santa Clara (www.nightclubavalon.com), you can make up for lost time — if not lost locks — with the SF retro metalists and ex–Rainbow howler Graham Bonnet’s Alcatrazz. No escape from the rock, indeedy-do.

SWANKIN’ BEATS


Massive is as massive does: True Skool, Dee Cee’s Soul Shakedown, and Daddy Rollo dreamed up a doozy with "Champions of the Arena 3: Clash of the Titans" downtown at Club Six, though there’s no CGI on dancehall star Shinehead or the Bay’s hip-hop ensemble Crown City Rockers. Expect everything from electro to reggaetón, hip-hop to breaks from DJs like Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, Apollo, and DJ Sake 1. Uptown, those nice men in Crystal Method make you believe it’s the tweekend once again at Ruby Sky (www.rubyskye.com), lording over — say, what? — Trapezeworld (if the opening night of Kooza was any indicator, this could also be Almost-Slipped-and-Fell-to-the-Death World). School’s out, but Berkeley’s Lyrics Born is in at the Shattuck Down Low (www.shattuckdownlow.com). San Franthizzgo’s electronic new-schoolers Futuristic Prince, Lazer Sword, and Ghosts on Tape gather at Hotel Utah (thehotelutahsaloon.com). Brazilian Girls and Kinky strut sexed-up beats at "Sea of Dreams: Metamorphoseas" at the Concourse Exhibition Center (www.seaofdreamsnye.com). On the bluesier side of the street, expect award-snagging son of a big gun John Lee Hooker Jr. to turn up the temp at Biscuits and Blues (www.biscuitsandblues.com). Creole codgers the Radiators sonically spice BA’s Brut at Cafe du Nord (www.cafedunord), while Topaz cooks up a soul-funk-blues goulash at the Boom Boom Room (www.boomboomblues.com). And throw those jazz hands in the air at the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, ringing it in at Yoshi’s in Oakland, or at local soul songbird Ledisi’s stand with the Count Basie Orchestra at Yoshi’s SF (www.yoshis.com).

So there you have it — don’t Tase me, bro Area — a brief menu of all the flavas of NYE love, with plenty of ear and eye candy for the senses, lots of places to watch the ball drop, and oodles of alleys to toss ye olde cookies in. What more can you want, Bayz? A "decadent breakfast buffet" to go with your $50-plus cover? Just remember, you can stand under my umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh. Under my umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh … [Fade from consciousness] *

Bubblegum and barbed wire kisses

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Somehow it seems morbidly appropriate that a band like the Jesus and Mary Chain would reappear in a year that has witnessed the sad demise of country tunesmith and pop maverick Lee Hazlewood and the grisly murder trial of überproducer and pop maverick Phil Spector. Siblings straight from a David Cronenberg film, William and Jim Reid had an obsession with classic pop music matched only bya lugubrious death drive. From their earliest three-song sets in Tottenham Court clubs to their studio squabbles at the aptly titled Drugstore to their final onstage collapse in 1998, the Reids always closely chased the black shroud of Thanatos.

"The Mary Chain used to regularly get their heads kicked in at that time," Creation impresario Alan McGee recalled, half boasting and half lamenting the group in a recent Q magazine interview. The JAMC "just brought out the violence in people." Whether with the premature effects of Vox guitar feedback or the cheap lager and drugs overrunning their native East Kilbride, the Mary Chain seemed almost religiously intent on martyring themselves like their titular messiah.

To paraphrase the Nicene Creed, the brothers Reid suffered, died, and were buried in 1998, but at Coachella 2007 they rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures and ascended onto the desert stage. They were seated at the right hand of nubile starlet Scarlett Johansson, who sang backup vocals on "Just like Honey." Thence they shall come again, with glory, to judge the noisy and the acoustic. And their distortion shall have no end.

But enough of the requisite Catholic allusions. Though the barbed wire–and–bubblegum magnum opus that was 1985’s Psychocandy (Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.) may well have ossified their legendary status in the underground pantheon, the JAMC released a half-dozen albums’ worth of blistering pop — some absolutely classic (1987’s Darklands, 1992’s Honey’s Dead, 1994’s Stoned and Dethroned [all Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.]) and others of lesser beauty (1989’s Automatic [Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.] and 1998’s Munki [Sub Pop]). Their sonic palette grew more nuanced than that of the screeching distortion of their debut. It was as rich and varied as those of forebears Spector and Hazlewood, metamorphosing from the girl-group rhythms on "Just like Honey" into the brittle balladeering of "Almost Gold" and the stoned country bliss of "Sometimes Always." Their evocation of ’60s psychedelia, twisted with an insouciant outlaw pose, launched as many garage-punk imitators as did the Velvet Underground. Along the way the Reids incited onstage riots and nearly killed each other in countless drunken scraps, but the notoriety only increased their popularity in the press, bankrolling the fledgling Creation label and inventing the quintessential ’80s genre of shoegaze.

Most critics cite the end of the band as the effect of a fraternal enmity equaled by the brothers Davies or Gallagher. But all of the excesses born of the ’80s — stormy collaborations with shady promoters, narcotized scenesters, and the maddest label bosses — seem immaterial compared to the ’90s alternative rock takeover that finally relegated the Mary Chain to a side-walking anachronism.

A cynic might wonder if the sudden reconciliation between the brothers might not have money as the bottom line. Neither Jim’s solo work as Freeheat nor William’s as Lazycame has garnered much critical or commercial attention, and in the intervening decade both men have settled down to marry and raise families. The new Mary Chain appears to be a matured set of blokes, complete with receding hairlines and bloat, not given to the temptations of lager binges or pissing matches — possibly a reason that Primal Scream hell-raiser Bobby Gillespie wasn’t redrafted on the snare. According to early word, set lists have included tracks from the band’s 21 Singles collection (Rhino, 2002), which seems equally sensational and innocuous. Is the Mary Chain cashing in on the latest wave of rock nostalgia or is there still a violence simmering in the Reids that snakes like the whine of William’s fuzz box? If they promise to dust off "Kill Surf City," all will be forgiven. Amen. *

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN

Fri/26–Sat/27, 9 p.m., $40

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

Treasure Island was just right

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By Molly Freedenberg
miabothJPG.jpg

Imagine a concert held in your college quad, add a gorgeous view of the Bay, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what the Treasure Island Music Festival was like this weekend. Organizers were smart enough not to be overly ambitious, either with the space or the lineup, so that the fledgling fest fit just right inside its britches: two stages appropriately far apart so you never felt crowded nor lonely, enough vendors and bathrooms so no line was ever very long, and just enough musical acts to fill two whole days without overlapping each other (which, by the way, is the Number One Best Thing about TIMF. And after five years of Coachella I’m-missing-something anxiety, I should know).

Highlights of Saturday’s hip-hop and electronica heavy lineup:
*Zion I’s high-energy freestyling, which continued through a brief blackout, and their DJ manipulating a Playstation controller like a turntable.
*The moments when Honeycut sounded like an American version of Kinky.
*Everything about Kid Beyond’s U2-meets-Nine Inch Nails beatboxing.
*The gold lame pants only M.I.A. could pull off.

It’s really too bad if you missed it, because this one was so successful, next year’s is bound to be a zoo.

Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for more photos and commentary.

Talkin’ bout their generation

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>> Justin Juul’s Summer of Love 40th Anniversary photos

When I got wind of the 40th anniversary Summer of Love Free Concert, I thought about the many ways I could torment all the burnouts, grandmas, and reggae fans who I knew would be smoking pot and flashing their titties in Golden Gate Park. My best idea involved dressing like an FBI agent and waiting for old rich dudes to stealthily bust out their hash pipes; I’d let them get a couple of good hits, then jump out of the bushes, flash a fake badge, and demand to know who sold them the stuff. Pretty clever, right?

I had fun daydreaming about that scenario as I waded through the drug-addled, spotty-faced teenagers who had gathered on the trail leading into the heart of the park, where 50,000 other people were grooving to the eclectic and authentic sounds of the ’60s.

The random bits of conversation I overheard as I neared Speedway Meadow made me laugh even more. "Don’t eat the brown acid!" someone kept joking in his best Tommy Chong voice. "Hey, honey, I gotta go," I heard a man say into his cell phone. "I think Dan Hicks is starting." "Fucking perfect," I thought, and I congratulated myself and my entire generation for being more self-aware, fashionably astute, and cynical than the people gathered here.

But something was wrong: unlike the people at the festivals I normally attend, these folks were actually enjoying themselves, and they seemed to be enjoying one another’s company as well.

The music was great. I was having a good time. It was a really good show.

Maybe it was the combination of sun and beer. Maybe it was the smile I saw on everyone’s face. Who knows? The truth is, I suddenly realized that the only reason I ever attend music festivals is so I can more accurately think smug thoughts about others.

And as I looked around at all the happy souls, I realized that I, the cynical twentysomething, was seething with jealousy. "What are these people so happy about?" I thought. "Can’t they see that the world sucks?"

I began to wonder about the differences between my generation and the one that left its undeniable mark not only on Haight-Ashbury but also on the entire world. For all the problems of the ’60s, when these people congregated so long ago, they did it under their own steam and with purpose.

As the afternoon’s announcer put it, "Love is still better than hate, right? And isn’t peace still better than war?" Isn’t that all the hippies were trying to say? And what about my generation? What do we have to say about things? What have we ever done besides bitch and moan and ridicule and purchase? And what are we going to celebrate in 40 years? Bonnaroo, Coachella, Ozzfest, Rock the Bells, JuJu Beats? Are we really going to want to revisit this shit when we’re 60?

With the crowd growing rapidly, the sun shining brightly, and no way to escape without risking a DUI, I decided to put my misgivings aside and try to actually enjoy myself. I stuck a flower in my hair and made a beeline for the stage just as the announcer was introducing the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It took me half an hour, but I finally made it in time to catch Ray Manzarek and Rob Wasserman. As I sat and listened to what sounded like the Doors, I thought some more about the differences between the young people of now and then.

The truth is that I have never understood how the hippies did it. How did a bunch of college dropouts, artists, and poets suddenly commit to coming together in one place without having been seduced into doing so by a clever marketing campaign funded by huge corporations? Every gathering I’ve ever been to has cost me a fortune and lacked both unity and purpose. The Summer of Love was something different.

I sat for the next few hours listening to musicians like Country Joe McDonald, Taj Mahal, and members of the Steve Miller Band. They were all pretty good, but the highlight for me was hearing Lenore Kandel recite a love poem that would make Lil’ Kim blush.

As I made my way through the crowd to leave, I thought about the old joke I was going to start this piece with: How many hippies does it take to change a lightbulb? None, because hippies can’t change shit.

Well, the joke is on the joke. The people who celebrated the Summer of Love on Sept. 2 did change something — and even if they didn’t completely transform society, they were probably the last generation of young Americans to attempt to truly realize their vision of how the world should be. (Justin Juul)

Against them!

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So the members of Rage Against the Machine are having themselves a little reunion outing, eh? What a great reason for a massive flock of shirtless, chest-bumping frat boys to jump in place with middle fingers extended while screaming, "Fuck you — I won’t do what you tell me!"

It should come as no surprise that the politically charged rap-rock foursome caved in for a supposed one-off performance — their first in almost seven years — at the recent Coachella Festival. Since 2001 the festival’s organizers have been shelling out the bling for such iconic alt-rockers as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Stooges, and the Pixies to kiss and make up for one stifling day in the desert. Now Rage-oholics have a machine to rail along with again — at least until October.

So far the group has only committed to a string of scattered festival appearances around the country, including four dates headlining the "Rock the Bells" tour, the annual hip-hop festival including performances from the Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, Nas, Mos Def, and EPMD. According to RATM, there are no plans for a new album; guitarist Tom Morello stated in a May Blabbermouth.net interview that recording a follow-up to their last studio disc, Renegades (Epic, 2000), would be "a whole other ball of wax right there" and "writing and recording albums is a whole different thing than getting back on the bike and playing these songs."

But why play these songs now? Is it only a coincidence that the RATM realliance followed the dissolution of Audioslave in February? Morello confirmed this with Billboard.com in March, revealing that "the Rage rebirth occurred last fall when it was clear that there was not going to be any Audioslave touring in the immediate future." In addition, sources for the Los Angeles Times disclosed that Coachella’s quick sellout and the ticket scalping that followed factored into the band’s decision to add more dates after that appearance.

RATM, however, have spun their reunion to NME.com as a response to the "right-wing purgatory" that this country has "slid into" under the George W. Bush administration since the group’s demise in 2000. As Morello additionally told Billboard.com, "These times, I think, demand a voice like Rage Against the Machine to return" and "the seven years that Rage was away the country went to hell. So I think it’s overdue that we’re back."

So what took RATM so long, and why listen to a leftist band that’s earned its salary from a subsidiary of a corporate media conglomerate, namely Sony Records? And who’s willing to listen — the decider in chief? Efforts ranging from the worldwide protests against US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to legislation to cut off war funding crafted by the Democratic-led Congress have failed to move the Bush camp. It’s doubtful that a band known for its aversion to both the Democratic and Republican parties is going to have any impact.

Since RATM’s so-called "Dixie Chicks moment" at Coachella, corporate media has definitely scrutinized the group’s defiance of the Bush regime. During a performance of "Wake Up," Zach de la Rocha made a speech stressing that the current administration "should be hung and tried and shot." The band members quickly came under fire, and on a segment of Hannity and Colmes, Alan Colmes pegged them as "anarchists," while Sean Hannity suggested that they should be investigated by the Secret Service. Guest Ann Coulter scoffed, "They’re losers, their fans are losers, and there’s a lot of violence coming from the left wing." In rebuttal, de la Rocha deemed the three "fascist motherfuckers" and reiterated that the band believes Bush "should be brought to trial as a war criminal," then "hung and shot." Thanks for clearing that up, Zach.

RATM’s songs have more significance today then they did 10 years ago, but if RATM choose to have a voice now, will their cause be served come November should they dissolve again? It’s likely de la Rocha would retreat to the rock he’s been hiding under for the past seven years if the band decides to part ways a second time. Even if the rap-rock pioneers’ material is tagged as anarchist propaganda for the masses, they definitely have something more to offer listeners than does, say, a Smashing Pumpkins reunion. A reassembled RATM couldn’t come at a better time — and these songs are meant to be played and heard now. Perhaps this time we’re ready to listen and stand up with them. *

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Rock the Bells Tour

Sat/18, 1 p.m., $76–$151

McCovey Cove Parking Lot

24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF

(909) 971-0474

www.rockthebells.net

To the ramparts, robots

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Aside from having one of the most awesome health care systems in the world, the Louvre, and an overall sense of sophistication, France is responsible for Daft Punk’s entrance into the world and the subsequent rebirth of a limitless club culture. Sure, we’ve got R. Kelly and Slayer, both of whom are as culturally relevant as the Paris duo, but unlike the aforementioned American icons, Daft Punk have scaled an aesthetic fence, resuscitating what many considered a moribund French music scene in a dynamic way that exceeds tabloids and all things shredding.

With or without their now-infamous mystique as masked robots, Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have dominated dance floors with dynamic robohouse releases like 1997’s Homework, 2001’s Discovery, and 2005’s Human after All (all Virgin), which murdered charts in the United Kingdom and France while assaulting those in the States. But it’s not the grinding electropower of "Da Funk" that’s entirely responsible for the group’s forefront standing — it’s all about the Daft Punk vision.

In a genre brimming with predictable dance floor restrictions (i.e., the same four synth sounds and 120 bpm repetitions) and an overwhelming need to crowd-please, Daft Punk have never followed 4/4 guidelines or era-aligned clichés. After an intense bidding war, signing with Virgin, and hitting megastatus with Discovery, the duo immediately began realizing their ambitions, working with Japanese animation kingpin Leiji Matsumoto for the $4 million–<\d>budgeted operatic film Interstella 5555. Released in 2003, Interstella revolves around a "discovered" robot band taken hostage in space, with a separate episode for each Discovery track. Both MTV and Cartoon Network hosted the first few episodes, and many critics heralded the band for its satirical take on the entertainment industry.

Without supporting Human after All with a series of elaborate tour dates, the duo spent time prepping another cinematic addition to their creative canon and directed Electroma, a 70-minute silent-film opus. Based on the story of two robots driving through a desert in a 1987 Ferrari on a quest to become human, the film has already been compared to endeavors like Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. Electroma is far from a low-budget, art-school project, though: the futuristic costumes, for example, were dreamed up by Hedi Slimane.

In typical Daft Punk fashion, Bangalter and Homem-Christo maintained their sacred anonymity by choosing to direct the film and hire actors to live the robot dream. For the soundtrack, the duo also enlisted France’s psych tastemaker Sebastien Tellier and selected some moody hymns by Brian Eno and Curtis Mayfield, to name a couple. There have been several midnight screenings at clubs across the globe — one at Mezzanine is forthcoming — and the DVD will be released in August by Aztec International/Vice.

Speaking of which, Daft Punk have also earned a place in electrohouse history with their ties to the new French revolution — namely, Ed Banger Records and affiliates like the aforementioned Vice. Founded by production monolith and Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter, a.k.a. Busy P, the label has become synonymous with the gritty analog sound that Daft Punk carved into dance culture. Including many young French producers like Sebastian, Justice, Mr. Oizo, and Feadz — most of whom are barely old enough to legally get hammered at a stateside club — Ed Banger has earned its place at the top of the in-demand live-act pyramid, and its crew isn’t tied to serving out bangers exclusively either. Oizo recently directed the forthcoming film Steak, which was scored by Sebastian, Tellier, and himself.

Then there’s Kitsuné Music, another Paris label, which is nestled between Ed Banger and the Rapture on the list of Daft Punk’s top MySpace friends, a lofty position for those engaged in the cybernetworking circuit. Acts like Digitalism, Crystal Castles, and Riot in Belgium have earned near-cult status through Kitsuné and its heavily rotated compilation series.

With the exception of a few Coachella dates and one-offs, Daft Punk haven’t officially toured since supporting Homework in 1997, and now the duo are tearing through the States prior to Electroma‘s launch. Playing select arena dates, the duo are performing alongside their well-groomed legion of the new French crooners, including Kavinsky, Sebastian, and the Rapture. Most of the dates are already sold out, but in homage to Daft Punk’s legacy, the James Friedman–<\d> and the Rapture–<\d>owned Throne of Blood imprint is throwing a series of after-parties including said supporting acts — no Daft Punk, sorry — in clubs rather than in enormous amphitheaters.

Whether or not Daft Punk will eventually start building sculptures, go to medical school, or return to the realm of everyday club crushing remains unknown, but their place in dance culture is as solid as Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s impenetrable robot helmets.*

DAFT PUNK

Fri/27, 8 p.m., $48.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley, Gayley Road, Berk.

(510) 643-6707

www.ticketmaster.com

Windex music

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Swooning in the aural vortex of the last How Weird Street Faire, I lean against the central shade tower — heavens, it’s hot! — as four separate whiz-bang DJ arenas writhe at my compass points like electronic eels. Psytrance, tech house, tribal, and jeep beats overlap in a fun fuzz of dissonance: a Euterpean kaleidoscope, if you will.

A shirtless Pan in crooked BluBlockers emerges from the sonic haze and politely offers a welcome quench from his Camelback. Ah, agua … that’s better. Pan hightails it back into the neon-freaky crowds, his shadow a tongue of purple flame darting through the throng. Uh oh, the colors — they’re starting to come alive. I can see the music. I am the Lizard Queen. Goddammit, I’ve been dosed unbeknownst!

Does that mean I’m still cute enough to date-rape? Whew.

There’s no real need for chemical alteration at Burner-powered musical affairs like How Weird. The beats are gleefully conservative, locking hearts and minds into a virtual retro techno shroom step of the middle–late ’90s. You can just stop dropping and roll, Siddhartha. Close your eyes, and Smurf the vibe.

The ultimate expression of this baroque kind of bubble-icious bounce back is the continued global triumph of DJ Tiësto’s 2005 Eurotrance classical gasser Adagio for Strings (Universal France) — from Barber to Burner, via Coachella, with a $50,000 light show, a Lycra Tony Montana jersey, and a passé Jesus pose. Gord lord, lady. Tone it down a little. Tiësto’s not the lowest of the low — some trancers still work bastard Carl Orff tracks — and the high’s all the dedicated protofairies making laptop tribal in their parents’ incense-clouded basements. Whether they’ll trade in the oms for Armani once they graduate to clubland is anyone’s guess. It’s become such a thin, thin line. Still, you know if you threw on some neu-rave Klaxons at the pre-Compressions, the kids would have an air-horn breakdown and an alien breakthrough.

Yep, in these fractious times, the speakers overflow with comfort food. And there’s another retro techno movement snaking its way into the clubs, a splash of cool blue against the electroshocked Day-Glo patchwork of today’s dance music: neominimal. Incubating for the past few years in art galleries like Gray Area and Rx, underground parties like Gentlemen’s Techno and Moxie, unlikely bars like Detox, 222 Club, and the Transfer, and occasional Blasthaus and Daly City Records events, neominimal techno has lately come to the official fore, with major regular parties at the Endup and Fat City taking root and sold-out one-offs at Mezzanine fierce ruling.

The neominimal kids take their cues less from ’90s London big beat and depunked Prodigy than from ’80s acid house polychromatics and the Warp Records–Sheffield bleep scene, while paying heavy dues to laser-eared Detroit techno pioneers like Kenny Larkin and Richie Hawtin, whose classic 1999 full-length Decks Efx and 909 (Mute) kick-started the original minimal movement (he’ll be at the Mighty on June 1). Hawtin told me at the time of DE9‘s release that he wanted to "cut through the clouds of contemporary techno" to produce something more loop focused, software malleable, and dynamic in terms of live manipulation. Eight years later, neominimal’s tweeter-oriented arpeggios, atonal motifs, staticky sprezzatura, and clean, focused bass lines — plus a reliance on laptop programming and a healthy nullity of bombast and breaks — bear out his intentions to the nth. It’s unimposing, almost shy music that hooks you with its lack of superstar pretense and leads you gently by your ears to the dance floor. Not that it doesn’t have soul or humor, as anyone entranced by groundbreaking neominimal releases like "The Sad Piano," by Justin Martin (Buzzin’ Fly, 2003), and "Deep Throat," by Claude VonStroke (Dirtybird, 2005), can attest. It just doesn’t wear them on its digital sleeve.

Internationally renowned local boys Martin and VonStoke spend a lot of time touring the world these days, and both are stabled at well-respected San Francisco label Dirtybird (www.dirtybirdrecords.com), but promoters here have only recently been able to convince club owners that neominimal’s a good regular bar draw. Now some much-loved AWOL promoters from the past are rising with the neominimal boat.

"I call it Windex music," promoter Greg Bird — no relation to Dirtybird, but there sure are a lot of birds in SF techno — told me over the phone. "It’s crisp and clear and a lot more funky in a kind of grown-up way." His bangin’ Saturday monthly, Kontrol — recently relocated from Rx Gallery to bigger, all-night quarters at the Endup — celebrates two years of being head above the rest June 2 by bringing in legendary tech heads Baby Ford and DJ Zip to supplement hot-topic Kontrol residents Alland Byalo, Nikola Baytala, Sammy D., and Craig Kuna.

Bird cut through the cork-popping, lounge-heavy blahs of the Internet boom club scene in 2000 with his fascinatingly minimal Clean Plate Club monthly ("clean plate" = minimal groove). "After 9/11 and the bust, I could tell the whole club scene was headed south, so I concentrated on my personal situation. But a couple years ago me, Sammy D., and the others felt the need to bring our sound back to the clubs," he says. Bird emphasizes that Kontrol is all about mixing and making music live, in both a digital and a performance context: "We like to sound immediate." He name-checks Perlon Records, Hawtin’s Minus label, and Los Angeles’s wacky Experimental Liquor Museum collective as current influences. "There’s a ton happening right now," he says. "This summer is going to blow up big for techno in SF."

Another blast from the boom — and a delight for old-school minimal and nonorchestral house fans — is the return of the Staple crew, in this iteration composed of Fil Latorre, a.k.a. Fil Noir from the early ’00s out-of-control Staple and Refuge monthlies, and Dave Javate, a.k.a. DJ Javaight, formerly of the giant Optimal techno parties. Over e-mail, both cite scene burnout and a lack of feeling from the dance floor as reasons they closed up shop, coyly proffer "ichibana, Muay Thai, and pharmacology studies" as the reasons for their absence, and say a recent sense of receptivity to techno, the trend toward live acts, and greater technological capabilities in the form of Ableton Live and Traktor software pulled them out of early retirement. Staple just launched two monthlies at Rx and Anu and brought in Kenny Larkin in May to wow sold-out crowds. "It’s like reloading on experience and refocusing creativity once again on new output," Latorre writes.

I detest it when writers hype new movements. Indeed, almost all the DJs and promoters involved in the latest scene balk at the neominimal — and even minimal — moniker, differentiating themselves from the juggernaut with alternate adjectives like "modular," "organic," and "digital live." But all agree that they’re trying to wipe the tired commercial techno slate clean — and with it, the bad taste of overworked electronica most clubbers still have in their mouths. Many admit that the minimal tag is what’s helping them most to get their music recognized on a grand scale. And there’s definitely a local groundswell of interest in techno. (We gays have forward-looking neominimal heroes too, in DJs Kendig, Nikita, Pee Play, and Robot.Hustle, who keep one ear trained on the alternaqueer retro disco scene.) So for now neominimal’s the name of the Bay techno game. And that may be one to grow on. *

KONTROL

First Sat., 9 a.m.–6 a.m., $15

Endup

401 Sixth St., SF

(415) 646-0999

www.theendup.com

www.kontrolsf.com

MINUS RECORDS SHOWCASE

With DJs Richie Hawtin and Magda

Fri/1, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $22

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.mighty415.com

STAPLE

Second Fri., 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $10

Featuring DJ Mike Huckaby, June 8th

Rx Gallery

132 Eddy, SF

(415) 474-7973

www.rxgallery.com

www.staplemusic.net

STAPLE: SABOTAGE

Fourth Thu., 10 p.m.–2 a.m., Free

Anu

43 Sixth St., SF

(415) 543-3505

www.anu-bar.com

Show me

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER I may have gotten straight Cs in critics’ college, but I can’t tell you what works for you. You are the only one who knows what makes you put down the channel changer, sends thrills down your spine, sets your disco ball spinning, and brings that mischievous sparkle to your eye. Or do you?

When it comes to e-mail subject line come-ons, one man’s "Ciali$ CHEEEP" is another woman’s "Ever wanted a bigger penis, Kimberly?" and one stud puppy’s "Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Cum to my cam! Buy OEM software CHEEEP!" is my "I could probably make the SF show too if I drove for about the same price as taking the train to Seattle." Last week a certain server masquerading as "Blanchard Christian" fired off that latter missive, an oblique snippet of pseudocrucial poetry to my ears — who cares that ole Blanche du Blah’s masters were ready to announce their plans to bilk — whoops, I mean, "address the huge influx of immigrant workers into the US that need banking solutions that they otherwise would not qualify for"? Pavlov’s e-mail robot knows what gets me salivating — aside from those wolf beach towels on Amazon.com (wintry wolves and hot sand go together about as well as infants and live grenades): namely, live music. Drive blearily into the Mojave for Coachella, jump through hoops to get to Seattle for Bumbershoot, make the red-eye to Austin for South by Southwest, take the midnight train to Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, hock yourself for England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, hazard reindeer sashimi for Reykjavik’s Iceland Airwaves — take note of the chart; I have a history of doing anything for a life-altering show.

So I could immediately relate to the scribblers of The Show I’ll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concertgoing Experience (Da Capo). Some keep it short like notes or cockeyed haiku, punctuating eccentrically ’cause they didn’t get enough of that in grade school (Thurston Moore on Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey, and Wharton Tiers). Others find their key note on the "me-me-me-me" and skew confessional (Dani Shapiro revealing that she was beaten by Courtney Cox in the dance-off to be the archetypally lucky audience member pulled from the crowd by Brooooce Springsteen in his "Dancing in the Dark" video). And some make you want to beat them over the head with their next pretentious footnote (yes, Rick Moody, I’m looking at your Lounge Lizards essay — we too were once forced to use the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, but we recovered).

Attribute it to sheer wordsmith chops or an all-permeating passion for music, but most entries tend to tell you more about a writer, time, and place than, say, a set list. I know I felt like revisiting my own memorable shows: Iggy Pop in ’80s Hawaii; Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, Unwound, and Karp at Yo Yo a Go Go in Olympia, Wash.; Sufjan Stevens borne by butterfly wings in Berkeley. These essays’ mood music is liable to send you a bit more alertly braced for baby epiphanies into your next show. You may even be inspired to take notes.

Because I bet all those precious details are pretty sketchy at this point. Hence, some of my favorite essays were hung up on the "memorable" part of the anthology’s title. Was it the songs, the scene, my sweetheart, or my failing gray matter? We all feel vulnerable in the face of the power of music and love, art and memory loss, and in a remembrance (sort of) of all things Rush in 1985 Portland, Maine, Heidi Julavits hits a sad, clear-eyed note that embraces the factual pitfalls of a "memorable concert … about which I remember little," except for her low-life boyfriend who worshipped the sticks a certain drummer sat on. "Neil Something was a stratospherically gifted drummer," she continues, "who, if memory isn’t supplying ghoulishness to a situation that otherwise failed to interest me at all, had lost an arm. Or maybe he was blind."

Likewise Jerry Stahl’s once, twice, three times a David Bowie glance-back sails by on bad TV and reminiscences of rehab before "Rehab" was cool. After first glimpsing Bowie, departing fabulously from a Sunset Strip book shop, the "boundary-challenged" Stahl breaks down into the man who fell to earth’s arms midinterview with "I haven’t shot dope in a month." Lastly, the writer drags his teen daughter to a 2004 Los Angeles show: after embarrassing her by "waving twenties around like Spiro Agnew — a reference no one reading should rightfully comprehend," the two head in, but once Bowie appears onstage, Stahl demurs, "Hey I’m old enough to get junk mail from AARP. I can’t remember everything." He does remember, amid "Rebel Rebel," that he is alive: "My own good luck scares me. David Bowie saved my life, inspired me to scrape enough psychic ganglia off the sidewalk to still be here." Makes you want to get the old diary out and start reassembling the old memory banks — or making new memories.

WRITING WRONGS Electrelane guitarist Mia Clarke has done her share of scribbling about music for the Wire, among other pubs, but that ability to step back and assess, analyze, and appreciate didn’t help when the Brighton-born members of the all-femme band seemed to be on the verge of breaking. After the group made its excellent 2005 Axes (Too Pure) and embarked on a year of touring, Clarke said from her current home in Chicago, where Electrelane are launching their current series of US shows, "we were really sick of each other. When you spend that much time with each other, it gets a bit much, and we all have other things going on in our lives" (bassist Ros Murray, for example, is working on a graduate degree from King’s College while on the bus). Fortunately, Electrelane reconvened in vocalist-keyboardist Verity Susman’s then-home in Berlin during the World Cup and, buoyed by the welcoming vibe in the town, found it in themselves to write and record the nautically themed No Shouts, No Calls (Too Pure), a lighter take on their kraut rock of yore, embellished with ukulele, and Chamberlin keyboards, and sailors’ knots in the CD art. Some ties somehow always bind. *

ELECTRELANE

With the Arcade Fire

June 1–2, 8 p.m., $31.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley

Gayley Road, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

HEAR ‘EM OUT

PRIESTBIRD AND PIT ER PAT


Once a Tarantula AD, now a Priestbird — make up your mind, NYC drama trio. Chicago’s Pit er Pat keep working that exploratory vein. Wed/23, 9:30 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

VATICANS, BUG NASTIES,
AND COCONUT COOLOUTS


An arse-wigglin’ time emerges from the garage when the SF headliners get with the Seattle sickos. Fri/25, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ELECTRIC LOVE PARADE


Tender, bare tunes and rockin’ piano electrify the Brighton band’s No Need to Be Downhearted (Better Looking). Sun/27, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455

SAN SIERN HOLYOAKE
AND WOOD FESTIVAL


New folk forms — taking shape as Almaden, Barn Owl, Adam Snider, Misty Mountain, Mass at Dawn, and Messes — scurry from the woods. Sun/27, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

Not Coachillin’

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SONIC REDUCER “I can’t believe you slept through the police helicopter above the tent at 3 a.m. and the megaphone going, ‘Disperse immediately or you’ll all be arrested,'” tentmate Fluffy marveled the day after another ear-busting night of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s unofficial after-party scene in the campgrounds. It was only 8 a.m., though the sun was already beating down relentlessly like our heedless neighborhood drum circle.

I’ve snoozed through my share of lousy plays, bad bands, and crappy circuses, but I never thought I’d slumber through the 24-7 thrills at the Empire Polo Fields. And the chopper was just the chaser to April 28 trance headliner Tiesto, who began his loud set, pompously booming out over our not-so-fair tent city of spring breakers and Euro tourists, with “In the beginning there was the earth….”

We’re gonna have to sleep through the history of the planet, was my last thought as I drifted off.

O Coachella, don’t you cry for me, ’cause I’ve come from Alabama Street with a heat rash on my knee — and doubts about making the scene at the festival despite the fact that about 160,000 brave music fans were expected to face down the desert swelter as the event swelled to three days.

At this juncture, Coachella might be described as a music festival on steroids: it’s a carnival for 18 and overs with rides, art installations, dancers, and completely insane people wearing full-body chicken costumes in the 110-degree heat, though still boasting a comprehensive bill of today’s so-called hot bands. It’s your one-stop smorgasbord for music lovers, who will happily chat you up about the performer they deemed the most mind-blowing the previous night or the last Rage Against the Machine show they caught.

And they got what they came for: the Björk shroom headdress; the crazed buzz rising from such festival circuiteers as Amy Winehouse and Klaxons; solid pop from Jarvis Cocker and Peter Bjorn and John; show-stopping performances by DJ Shadow, CSS, Arcade Fire, and Konono No. 1; and the rattle of reunion bones by an amped and antic Rage Against the Machine, glowering and balding Jesus and Mary Chain, and, er, Crowded House. You couldn’t go amiss if you stuck to the desert to-do’s rave roots and entrenched yourself beneath the mirror ball, video screens, and pink and blue lights of the Sahara tent: the performances there by Justice and LCD Soundsystem connected with the crowd with a screw-it-all exuberance.

But the untold story lay far away from the press tent and Palm Springs love nests — in the crowded, brutal heat of the campgrounds next to the performance area. Is it possible to review a camping trip? In what seemed like a dusty, straw-strewn football field with thousands of other wake ‘n’ bakers? I spent far too much time taking refuge from the nonstop heat at the campground’s cybercafé, where hundreds of shirtless boys and bikinied girls would miserably crouch, recharging their cells at a bank of outlets, sit stunned watching the Coachella film on a loop, or lie on the ground like clammy, comatose dead fish, waiting out the morning before the acts began in early afternoon.

The southerly discomfort led most campers on a lengthy hike from the tent city, past the obscenely grassy country clubs surrounding the polo grounds, to find refrigerated refuge and 40s at Ralph’s, the nearest supermarket, where people were literally chillin’ on store lawn furniture. Coachella: the fest that inspired global warming — and a post–<\d>Earth Day longing for air-con.

Organizers Golden Voice had a clue: they gave away free water sporadically and provided campers with free Internet use and showers. But there were too few laptops, the wi-fi was too erratic, and the showers were locked down too early — and you knew there was too little shade in general when audience members broiled in the sparse shadows of lemonade stands.

The crowd — weighted with Rage Against the Machine fans eager to see the band’s first concert in more than five years — was also heavy on the testosterone. But maybe that’s just the state of Rage love: the band never really seemed too underground to me but has historically worked to surface activist subversion via modern rock radio. And their audience was still boiling — and amazingly good-natured despite the sleepless nights. As for myself, I finally woke up hours after the helicopter early April 29 to the sound of a random dude shouting, “Whoo!” and yammering loudly in Portuguese to the tentizens the next flap over. Later I was tempted to put my own spin on Zack de la Rocha’s onstage suggestion that Bush and Cheney be “tried for war crimes and shot.” I know the 12-hour roller coaster ride of quality hallucinogens can be a bitch — but then, so can I: is it so wrong to want the early morning shouters and the dude with the air horn to be tried for crimes against humanity’s sleep schedule and shot? I’d settle for finding out where they were dozing it off and delivering a special whoo-gram of my own.

BOB DYLAN STUDIED HERE That’s the rumor, anyway, at the Blue Bear School of Music, which has seen Tracy Chapman and more than 20,000 other musicians come through its doors in the past 36 years. Executive director Kevin Marlatt told me the nonprofit’s second annual fundraiser — showcasing 2007 Grammy Lifetime Achievement winner Booker T. Jones as well as Blue Bear staffer Bonnie Hayes and Sista Monica — will include an appearance by the James Lick Middle School Band, the result of the organization’s efforts in the last year to get more involved in public school music education. Since it took over the James Lick music program and brought in 30 guitars, he says, more than a dozen bands have popped up at just that school. So Stax around for a good cause. *

BOOKER T. JONES

Sat/12, 8 p.m., $45–$125

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.bluebearmusic.org

 

Coachella images twirling through the mind, chapter 2

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By Charles Russo

More ruminations on Coachella? You got it.

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Got Jah angst? Not here next to Stephen Marley. All photos by Charles Russo.

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Twilight of the costumed revelers.

Rage Against the Machine: I found it to be pretty amazing that the band, playing what was possibly the most anticipated popular musical performance in the world this year, could suffer the sort of mix problems that they went through for the first half of their set. This especially when one considers how excellent Bjork sounded two nights earlier.

Furthermore, the odd ordering of their set list put some heavyweight tracks too far up in front, and robbed them of their drama. “Bombtrack,” “Bullet in the Head,” and “Know Your Enemy” in the fourth, fifth, and sixth slots made for a somewhat anti-climactic experience. However three tracks off The Battle of Los Angeles really turned the show around: “Calm Like a Bomb,” “Sleep Now in the Fire” (especially the “TV Eye” guitar breakdown in the middle), and “Guerrilla Radio.”

That said, I thought they really salvaged their show by the second half of the set, and by the time they played “Wake Up” (which I haven’t seen them play live since 1993), the band was really living up to the hype.

Leaving the press pit after the third song was just utter pandemonium. I had to jump over various barricades to get out. Security was fighting like all hell to retain control of the situation. Further out, I was amazed how many people were packed onto that main stage field. I’ve seen a lot of headliners play over the last seven years, but never to that kind of crowd.

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O whither that elusive butterfly named Sleep?

The Nightwatchman: Tommy Morello played one of the best sets of the entire weekend in the Gobi tent on Saturday afternoon, showcasing his Woody Guthrie-meets-Bruce Springsteen-via-Bob Dylan solo acoustic material to an extremely receptive crowd. He closed the set by enlisting Perry Farrell and Boots Riley to sing Guthrie’s “This Land Is My Land.” Quite a spectacle.

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Watch this, Nightwatchman.

The three surprise performances of the weekend for me were Busdriver, Brazilian Girls, and the Klaxons. Of course, this required me to miss much of Jarvis Cocker, Interpol, and Placebo. I guess that’s the nature of the festival.

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Busdriver wants you to check out his tonsils.

Peaches: definitely one of the best sets of the festival – if for no other reason than her sense of theater. After Ron Jeremy introduced her and the band took the stage wielding light sabers and wearing space masks (?), Peaches got up on the drum kit and started with “Fuck or Kill,” getting the crowd to sing “Impeach My Bush” (though they soon leave out the “My”). She then strapped on a guitar and started into the driving riff of “Rock Show,” jumping down and running up to the center stage mic to sing.

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The common drum set cowers beneath Peaches’s boot.

Crawling through Coachella, chapter 1

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Yep, this was the year I finally stopped pooh-poohing, scoffing, scorning, and smugly hrumphing in the delightful cool of the Bay Area and caught the traffic jam heading from LA to Indio for Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, expanded to three days for the first time. Of course, lucky me, I also got to make the traffic snarl from the freeway exit to the parking lot entrance, and then the teeming mass from the entrance to the ticket taker…you get the picture.

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Spidey 3: Hazy days, much music, as Michael Christina’s three-legged I.T. overlooks it all. Photos by Charles Russo.

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Way too much going on in that headdress, dancing queen: a member of Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque.

Was it worth the cross-stage cacophony, exploding shampoo bottles, the tent city filled with philosophical quasi-frat boys and random ravers that go bump and then, “WHOOO!” at 5 in the morning? You tell me. My brain underwent a major meltdown. Here’s a free-associatin’ “review”-slash-overview of the Coachella, to be continued with more wonderful photos by Guardian contributor Charles Russo. And gripes — err, I mean, critiques — from yours truly.

Rage_8.bmp
Zacky, can you hear me? No, ’cause the Lemonheads are threatening to drown the main stage out.

Everyone was obviously there for the Rage Against the Machine reunion, a first since the band went dormant about seven years ago – which explains the major bro-down going on everywhere you looked. The final headliner on the last night, Sunday, April 29, of the three-day fest, they were definitely doing their best to power past the hype and bring the rock with such modern rock staples as “Killing in the Name” and “Bulls on Parade.” The scruffily bearded Zack de la Rocha bounded about, blissfully ignorant of the hordes heading toward the exit, hoping to get a jump on the truly terrifying traffic tangle expected on the way back to LA.

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Killing in the name of guitar hero Tom Morello.

“My mind has been completely blown!” raved one woman at the campground’s Cybercafe after Bjork, who gave everyone a good preview of her new album, Volta, backed by a womanly chorus and band in brightly hued new wave, Polyphonic Spree-goes-to-the-Acropolis Grecian gowns. Brass, strings, vibes, Lemur, the works – and some inspiring costume changes from the Bjorkly one.

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One thing we can count on: Bjork pushing the fashion envelope; here, she channels a voodoo priestess June Allyson.

Another artist that got the buzz around the polo grounds and tent city was the Bay’s own DJ Shadow. As we melted in our Tevas, we overheard kids talking up Shadow, who headlined the second largest stage the opening night, Friday, April 27. Sounded tops. Shadow would helpfully step up to the mic to remind everyone that all the tracks that night were his own – if they weren’t recognizable they were brand spankin’. Color splashed videos flickered overheard on a massive screen as Keak groused about those freaks.

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Shadow wonders if the audience would take it the wrong way if he blurted, “Talk to the finger.”

The Roots sounded tight, hitting it hard midday Sunday. We wandered away midway through a Tarantino-esque

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“Can we take quirkily punctuated names to a nutty new level?” the Roots ponder.

I do love me some Jarvis Cocker. Guess I just have a weakness for snide, brainy Brits who like to chatter on about imaginary rain storms and apologize – sorta – for their tardiness on stage. Pulling feel-good tracks from his new solo album, Jarvis, the forgotten son of Joe Cocker (not!) let the healing begin with “Fat Children” and “Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time.” Too bad we couldn’t get a little of that fabled Anglo rainy-day action, he hinted, introducing “Heavy Weather.”

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Jarvis, don’t let your fresh witticisms grow up to be dried-up curds of embittered alcholism.

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