Left of the Dial Archives — Page 2 of 2 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Sweet, psyched-out, and dirty

Steven T. Jones

April 1, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL Setting aside the darkly ear-wormy melodies, haunting vocals, and refreshingly crisp grunge-pop that goes into Everyone Is Dirty‘s sound, it’s singer Sivan Gur-Arieh’s violin — slicing sweetly above the chaos of a final chorus, adding a heightened sense of gothic romance to a bridge — that sets the Oakland art-rock quartet apart from the current fuzzy, grungey masses.

Good thing Gur-Arieh’s come to peace with the fact that she plays it.

“I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my violin since I was a kid,” says the singer, an Oakland native whose father taught her play when she was in elementary school. “I mean, growing up, you don’t always want to be staying home standing in front of a music stand, playing scales for two hours at a time. I’ve definitely put my violin under the bed and not played it…but it always came back out.

“I’m at a point where I realize it’s a tool, and it’s a tool I know how to use, and you don’t always get to choose that,” she says, earnestly, like someone speaking about a handicap. “Now, I’m just at, I play the violin. Whether it’s a nerdy instrument or not, I do it and it’s a part of me.”

It’s also a big part of the band’s charisma, an invitingness coming through music that technically should feel cold — sure, Gur-Arieh’s distinctive whisper-wail would be at home providing the soundtrack to an artsy vampire flick, but you also trust her, and the weirdness, in the same way you trust the Pixies‘ or Sonic Youth‘s weirdness; it doesn’t seem to be an affectation.

Then there’s a very ’90s sensibility about pop’s borders, reminiscent of SF’s own Imperial Teen, maybe Sleater-Kinney, and I want to say a more jagged Veruca Salt but maybe I’m just ridiculously excited that they’re reuniting so I’m hearing them everywhere? Regardless: Add in psyched-out guitar riffs from Christopher Daddio, a super warm, strong rhythm section courtesy of Tony Sales on drums and Tyler English on bass, and you start to understand why the four-piece, at just a year and a few months old, has earned serious devotees around the Bay Area as well as highly coveted free studio time at Different Fur via Converse’s Rubber Tracks pop-up — all before releasing a full-length record.

That’s in the works, Gur-Arieh assures me. This January marked both the band’s one-year anniversary (its first show as a four-piece rocked Cafe Du Nord, sigh) and another major milestone: They signed with Breakup Records, the husband-and-wife-run label, formerly out of Oakland (now out of Portland but with a heavy bias toward bands from their former hometown); the label will be producing EID’s first full-length at the end of May.

In the meantime, the band has been releasing teasers of what we can expect, like “California” — a full psych-rock sprint that gets undeniably reminiscent of the Dead Kennedys‘ “California Uber Alles” in its chorus, when the layers of sci-fi guitar drop out for Gur-Arieh to admonish “California, put your pants on/you’ve had too much to drink.” They just re-recorded that one for the full-length, at Daddio’s home studio, where they do most of their recording. “He’s an engineer, and he’s a perfectionist,” says the singer. “The fact that he’s able to make everything sound so good just using mic placement…it’s incredible to me.” On “Mama, No!!!” things take a turn for the Nirvana-esque, though the band keeps it dynamic by playing expertly with contrasts — the sing-song of Gur-Arieh’s voice with unrestrained drum crashes, the urgent peal of violin over fuzzed-out guitar.

She and Daddio, who met when Gur-Arieh was in film school in Chicago and New York (he did sound design for her thesis film), share primary songwriting duties; when the singer moved back to the Bay Area, they started seeking out the band’s rhythm section. Film still plays a big part in how the singer thinks about music, she says. “I make our videos for the most part,” she says. “They’re very connected to me. I’ve always been a musician, but I’ve also always been painting, writing poetry&ldots;film is kind of an extension of music, to me.”

Everyone Is Dirty will be sharing a bill on April 5 with a pair of similarly dramatic, cinematic, female-fronted bands: Rich Girls, the new(ish) gothy garage project from Luisa Black (formerly of The Blacks) opens, and Happy Fangs, whose contrasting male-female vocal dynamic, courtesy of Rebecca Bortman and Mike Cobra, has just been supplemented by the addition of Sacramento drummer Jess Gowrie. It’s the kind of lineup that has the potential to kick your ass, then wrap it up and hand it back to you with a sweet smile as an experimental art project. I mean this in an entirely positive way.

“I’ve been really into this violin player from Chicago named Leroy Jenkins lately,” says Gur-Arieh, when asked what she’s been listening to. “If you look him up on YouTube, his playing was so weird and messy and imperfect, and that’s super inspirational to me. That’s unique especially for violin players, because they tend to be so focused on perfection, on playing other peoples’ music perfectly, and he was an emotional player — not afraid to make the violin sound piercing,” she says, “and dirty.”

Happy Fangs w/ Everyone Is Dirty and Rich Girls
Sat/5, 8pm, $10
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

While we’re riding high on the female-fronted band kick, a few other kick-ass ladies to look out for this month:

Given the current classic funk-soul revival — see Sharon Jones‘ sold-out stint at the Fillmore last week — there’s just no good reason why Wicked Mercies hasn’t blown up yet. Fronted by three seriously talented female vocalists, with a brass section that culls from the best of the old-school San Francisco soul scene, the band – which bills itself as “working class talent” that brings “the sound of San Francisco street soul to the people” — has been a dance party-starting staple at funk-friendly venues like the Boom Boom Room for a few years now, so there’s little doubt that a room as small as Amnesia is going to get sweaty very quickly. Remember to drink water.

Wicked Mercies
With the Go Ahead
Sat/5, 9pm, $8-$10
Amnesia
853 Valencia, SF
www.amnesiathebar.com

Forming a band when you’re in middle school that actually goes on to critical praise and some commercial success before you’ve graduated from high school means a few things. For The She’s, which the Bay Guardian ever-so-aptly identified as a band On the Rise in 2013, one thing it means is giving interviews about your upcoming second EP that involves quotes like this one, from singer-guitarist Hannah Valente in a recent Bay Bridged interview: “It’s going to sound a lot different. On our first album, there are songs that we wrote in eighth grade.”

All good-natured (and, let’s be real, envious) ribbing aside, there’s no question that The She’s have pretty much won the hearts of any red-blooded San Franciscan with an affinity for summery dream-pop; they’re also entering a stage of band-life reserved for artists who achieve a certain level of success while so young that their age becomes part of the shtick. This next stage is when they’re going to have to prove that they’re talented songwriters and performers, period, as opposed to being really, really good for a band made up of high school kids. For the record, I think the former is true, but their sophomore EP, Dreamers, due out April 15, will have to do the talking. Catch ’em for free at Amoeba on April 12, or the official (all ages!) release show at the Rickshaw Stop.

The She’s
With TV Girl, Lemme Adams, and Cocktails
April 18, 9pm, $10-$12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com

Wigging out with Stephen Malkmus

Steven T. Jones

March 25, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL Stephen Malkmus’ 17-year-old cat, Juanita, has been peeing outside the catbox lately.

He’s been assuming it’s just stress from the new additions to the household — two kittens recently joined the Portland home Malkmus shares with his wife, artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, and their two young daughters. But he took her (the cat) to the vet today, and it turns out she needed a couple of back teeth extracted, plus they did blood work, the whole nine yards, he says, by way of explanation about why we’re starting this phone interview with him sitting in a veterinary office waiting room, and why, beginning about five minutes later, as they leave, the guttural moans of which only an unhappy cat is capable will serve as the soundtrack for the bulk of our conversation.

“That’s really terrible, isn’t it?” says the Stockton native, thoughtfully, of Juanita’s misery, before insisting that he’s perfectly happy to talk with her wailing in the background. “Got some Exorcist, Linda Blair sounds going on.”

As a guy who’s still best known as a touchstone for (if not the founder of) mid-’90s indie slacker-rock — Pavement’s mainstream breakthrough Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which came out 20 years ago last month, and which got the deluxe reissue treatment 10 years later, was arguably one of the defining albums of that decade — Stephen Malkmus seems to understand that it’s tough for people to reconcile the skinny, casually bratty, frozen-in-time Pavement frontman with the current Stephen Malkmus: A 47-year-old suburban dad who cares a lot about his fantasy basketball league, and who’s currently trying to figure out if his sick cat is capable of eating yet.

And yet: His solo career, at the helm of Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, has actually outlasted Pavement’s at this point. The band’s sixth album, Wig Out at Jagbags, out this January, is full of the wry, observational comedy and narrative wordplay that have come to constitute the Malkmus trademark. (The band’s tour for the album brings them to Slim’s this Thursday, March 27.) And while it’s easy to romanticize the golden days of lo-fi lullabies about young love and record label angst and being so drunk in the August sun — hell, those songs sounded nostalgic about those days while they were happening — the truth is that it was in the years that followed, with the Jicks’ more simplified and twang-ified tunes increasingly showing his ’70s classic rock influences and allowing the lyrics to come front and center, that Malkmus went and became one of the best songwriters we have right now.

Maybe even more sneakily: He seems like he’s figured out how to (gasp) have fun.

“Come and join us in this punk rock tomb, come slam dancing with some ancient dudes/We are returning, returning to our roots, no new material, just cowboy boots,” begins Malkmus, through a nearly audible smirk, on an upbeat ditty called “Rumble at the Rainbo”; at one point, the song devolves goofily into a full-on ska breakdown.

“I was thinking about somewhere like [924] Gilman, full of people skanking, but with old people, because it’s just funny to see senior citizens doing anything that youthful,” says Malkmus of the track. “But it’s also bit of commentary about how, if you go so far as to really be into a subculture of music, whatever it is, heavy metal, or punk, or reggae, you always have a home there, and that’s nice. It doesn’t matter if you’re depressed, or way overweight, or you’ve been divorced five times; you can go to the show and feel safe and see your people and get lost in the music.”

If he’s at his best as a songwriter when he takes on the point of view of other characters — I fell hard for this tendency with his first post-Pavement album, a Jicks record on which he sings story-songs from the perspectives of, among others, a bloodthirsty pirate, an Alaskan dog sled driver, and Yul Brynner — then part of what makes Wig Out such an enjoyable in-joke is the sense that Malkmus is writing songs while “in character as” an aging rock star who’s looking back on his career with a mix of sentimentality and cynicism, fondness and detachment, á la Don Henley circa The End of the Innocence.

“That [Pavement reunion] tour was kind of like reliving an old play, or something,” says Malkmus of the cross-country jaunt his old band took in 2010, to the fever-pitch-level delight of virtually everyone who came of age listening to indie rock in the ’90s. “It was fun being back with the same dudes, and there were some really cool shows — especially playing hometown shows in Berkeley, Stockton, meeting people my age who were road-tripping to see Pavement twice.”

The songs don’t quite feel like him anymore, he says, though The Jicks are known to play a handful of Pavement songs during some sets — toward the end, when they’re playing other covers. “We mix them in like they’re part of some canon, which is a little cheeky,” he says. “You know, play a Steve Miller song, some Roxy Music, Pavement, then Wire. And yeah, it’s my song, I wrote it, but it’s mostly just feels like we’re playing a song.”

After that reunion tour, something started to feel a little claustrophobic upon returning to Portland. “There was a neurotic, kind of fishbowl feeling,” is how he puts it. So in 2011, the family picked up and moved to Berlin for two years, (“a big giant place where no one cares about you too much”), put the girls in an international school, and reveled in the apparently productive anonymity — Malkmus proceeded to write most of Wig Out there.

The family moved back to Portland in 2013, but the expat’s sense of liberation comes through in free-wheeling tracks like the Billy Joel-ish, Steely Dan-esque rocker “Chartjunk,” complete with horns, shout-along choruses, and a buttery guitar riff, over which Malkmus channels the singing style of the sun-bleached, coked-out ’70s guitar gods he grew up with. “In one ear and out of the other, if you feel the urge to share/think again cause you’re not my mother, actually I’m not contractually obliged to care,” he cautions, happily, but also sounding like he means it. (Acknowledging its Joel-like sonic landscape, Malkmus recently told a Detroit publication that the track, in which he plays both roles of a mentor/mentee dispute, was inspired by the relationship between Detroit Pistons point guard Brandon Jennings and his coach Scott Skiles, back when Jennings played for the Milwaukee Bucks. Dude’s serious about basketball.)

The only thing that will seem, to Pavement fans, to be conspicuously missing from the record: That old Malkmus sneer (or full on flipped-bird) in the direction of the record industry, and the accompanying, all-too-self-aware ambivalence about his role in it. This, from the former frontman of a band whose biggest mainstream radio single called out the entire record industry for, more or less, the concept behind mainstream radio singles.

“We were coming from a DIY scene, and we wanted to control our own destiny, start our own label, be our own boss. We were about artists’ rights,” he says, while noting that he doesn’t begrudge anyone who goes the corporate route. “I mean, Beck [recently] signed to Capitol, but I’m sure he just did it because he was taking advantage of them as much as he could, because he’s in a position of power. A lot of bands weren’t back then.”

In terms of newer music, Malkmus names SF “neo-psychedelia” bands like Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall as recent favorites, as well as Oakland’s own tUnE-yArDs, Sic Alps, Purling Hiss, Kurt Vile, and The War on Drugs. He thinks a minute. “I like Beyoncé,” he says, like it’s a challenge. “And Jay-Z. And Justin Timberlake; the kids really like him. We listen to a lot of Justin Timberlake in the car.”

Looking back, I ask him — in the minute before he has to go, some other dude is supposed to be calling him soon, and he’s trying to get Juanita to eat some food — can he imagine being 20, and starting a band right now? With the way the record industry is, with everything he knows about what happens after you “make it” — or even if you never do? He sounds relatively at peace on this album, to be sure, but it’s taken long enough.

“Sure!” he replies, without hesitation. “I mean, I think everyone should start a band. It’s really low-stakes, and it’s fun. If you like music, start a band, and just mess around with your friends. It’s better than a lot of things you could be doing, like wasting time on Facebook. Or playing video games. Or…what are kids even doing these days? Snapchat? Sexting on Snapchat?

“Stop sexting on Snapchat and start a band.”

Stephen Malkmus
With Speedy Ortiz
Thu/27, 8pm, $21
Slim’s
333 11th St, SF
www.slimspresents.com

Stayin’ put

Steven T. Jones

March 11, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL Is there any problem more thoroughly modern, more reflective of the way we currently measure the value of our experiences, more completely indicative of a charmed First-World life than that of FOMO?

The fear of missing out on a good time is, of course, hardly generational. If all our grandmothers had, at age 16, discovered their friends were throwing a giant party without them, they’d likely be a little hurt — but then they’d be like, “Wait a minute, I’m a garment worker and I make three cents an hour in terrible conditions and women still don’t have the right to vote, maybe I have bigger things to worry about.” More importantly, they never would have known said party took place unless one of their coworkers at the garment factory said something directly to them about it — which, what gives, bitchy garment factory coworker?

Now, of course, we have The Internet. And in the prevailing social economy of the times — under whose rules it didn’t happen if you didn’t Instagram it — an event like South by Southwest has all the right conditions for a perfect FOMO-inducing storm.

Yes, we’re bringing you SXSW coverage this week on our website — and so will roughly one-third to half your friends on Facebook. Yes, those breakfast tacos look delicious. Hey, cool, that’s you and Lena Dunham taking a selfie together, with Edward Snowden in the background making bunny ears via satellite. Of course we’re incredibly jealous that you’re seeing [insert band that will be considered cool for the next two years and then become “too mainstream” and then you can tell everyone you saw them way back when at SXSW].

You know what else is cool? Staying in San Francisco. At the risk of sounding like the least-fun person in the world, it’s tough for me not to wonder during events like this — weeks when half the young white-collar people in town defect from the Bay Area en masse — what would happen if half these folks were to spend even half of what they’re spending elsewhere on the arts scene in San Francisco.

With that in mind, here’s a handy guide to musical happenings for those of who are staying in the Bay Area this week. And remember: Staying home is the new hitting the road.

Oakland’s moonbell makes heady, moody, psyched-out shoegaze that doesn’t skimp on the requisite wall-of-reverb. There are obvious nods to My Bloody Valentine, but there’s also a modern, melodic sensibility here, in no small part thanks to the guitar fireworks layered over floaty vocals that don’t sound disaffected so much as they seem to be transmitting emotions — or the soundtrack to a hazy afternoon bender of some kind — from outer space. The band’s new LP drops April 1, but it’ll have some cassette copies available at this show, as bands that record at Tiny Telephone are wont to have.

Barbecue pairing: A slab of ribs from Everett & Jones. Alternatively, one too many greyhounds at Cafe Van Kleef.

Wed/12
With That Ghost and White Cloud
8pm, $8
New Parish
579 18th St, Oakland
www.thenewparish.com

The Kenyan-born, longtime SF-based singer-songwriter-producer Sila Mutungi uses the term Afrofunk to define his music, but the list of influences that announce themselves on his new record, SuperAfrican, is an impressively long one: There’s Sly Stone-esque funk, to be sure, but there’s also jazz, more than a little R&B, Latin-infused guitar, bright, big band horns, almost maniacally shouted choruses, and a vibe that pays homage to the country of his birth. This record release show will also mark the release of a comic book by the same name, written by Eric K. Arnold, that “focuses on a young African superhero who takes on villains in African settings, from refugee camps to diamond mines” — African kids should have a superhero that looks like them, Mutungi explains. All proceeds from the comic book sales will go to onemama.org, a non-profit funding a self-sustaining medical clinic in Uganda.

Barbecue pairing: Rotisserie chicken, Pete’s BBQ.

Fri/14
With Sambaxé
9pm, $17
The Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
www.thechapelsf.com

The Record Swap at the Knockout has, one would like to imagine, a vibe that would have been in place at the first few SXSW festivals: that of a room full of people who really want to nerd out about music, and have a found a tiny little corner of the world to do it in. Unlike the current state of SXSW, you probably won’t find any tech talks or marketing gurus; it’s not known for inciting social media mayhem. (They have a Facebook page, but that’s about it; if anyone wants to start hashtagging things #rsatk with me next week, you’re more than welcome.) This pseudo-monthly party is completely free, and comes with the benefit of Taqueria Cancun next door. Say what you will about breakfast tacos; I’ll take San Francisco Mexican food any day of the week (and at any time of day).

Barbecue pairing: Nope. See previous sentence. Super veggie burrito, black beans, extra hot sauce, please.

Sat/15
5pm, free
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
www.theknockoutsf.com

We Became Owls is the name for the musical output of Oakland’s Andrew Blair and Ross Warner, Orinda natives and guitarists who’ve been writing songs together since middle school, plus a cast of rotating supporting characters on the banjo, cello, upright bass, piano and drums, with lap-steel and sing-along, sit-around-the-campfire-with-a-bottle-of-whiskey choruses front and center. Call it alt-folk, Americana, what have you — these kids have listened to their Bob Dylan, and there’s a depth to their songwriting, a level of genuine soul in their sound that’s not just easy on the ears; they mean it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Barbecue pairing: Why, the kitchen at BOTH of course. A cheeseburger, plus copious amounts of PBR.

Sat/15
With decker., TaughtMe8:30pm, $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

If you’re among the brave souls who will actually be venturing into North Beach during this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day tomfoolery (socially-sanctioned, Jameson-fueled screaming in large groups), you could do a lot worse than to catch the lineup at O’Reilly’s annual block party. The Quiet Men is an eight-piece that takes the structure of traditional Irish folk music and adds elements of rough-hewn, forward-charging punk rock, with half the members taking turns on the writing and lead vocals. Think The Pogues, sure, but with less-shitfaced vocals (singer Erin Vogel’s clear voice, in particular, sounds like it can rise above a lot of chaos), plus members who have clearly taken more of their cues from the Against Me! side of the spectrum. Still darn good drinking music.

Barbecue pairing: I really have to tell you what thematically appropriate foods and beverages to put in your body at a St. Patrick’s day block party? Didn’t think so.

Sat/15
With Fergus & Michael, The Hooks, The Guverment, more
1pm, $10
O’Reilly’s Irish Pub & Restaurant
622 Green, SF
www.sforeillys.com

The Parmesans are a string trio that somehow, over the course of the last year, became the secret favorite local band of every musician I know. It’s not hard to see why: Their sense of showmanship is matched by a game-for-anything, lyrical sense of humor, but they’re all too damn good at their instruments for any of it to actually be a joke. Throw in tight vocal harmonies layered over mandolin, acoustic guitar, and trumpet, and you get a live band experience that somehow manages to seem like far more than just three dudes on a stage. Their debut LP last year was a bright moment on the SF musical landscape, but we also hear they’ve been in the studio recently, so this show should have some newly-birthed gems.

Barbecue pairing: Think about how much money you saved by not going to SXSW — not to mention this show being free. Now try to eat that amount of tater tots and consume that amount of whiskey and beer on the back patio, in the sunshine, surrounded by zero celebrities and, accordingly, zero gawkers, with nary a VIP pass nor a viral marketing scheme in sight. Later (if you are not dead from attempting this — YMMV), go sleep it off in the sunshine at Jackson Park.

Fear of missing what, now?

Sun/16
With Sunny Jim Brown, Hay Babes
4pm, free
Thee Parkside
1600 17th St, SF
www.theeparkside.com

The magic of Mark J. Mulcahy

Steven T. Jones

February 25, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL To an ’80s baby, at this point, calling Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete a cult favorite is a little like thinking your childhood love of The Labyrinth or The Neverending Story is somehow quirky or unique — it goes without saying that they’re excellent, but we’re gonna need a lot of Kool-Aid: These are some pretty big cults we’re dealing with.

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that there wasn’t an air of “giant secret club meeting” at the Sketchfest Pete & Pete reunion that took place at the packed Marines Memorial Theater in 2013. That live show marked, I will admit, the first time I realized how crucial a role music had played in constructing the show’s singularly surreal, hilarious, kid-centered universe. I’d had the show’s jangly, irreverent theme song, “Hey Sandy,” on my iPod for years, and had read about how Polaris — the show’s own house band — was a sort of one-off project for members of the early-R.E.M.-era college-rock band Miracle Legion, which dissolved under a heated label dispute; the show’s creators were simply fans of that band and asked lead singer Mark Mulcahy to chime in. I knew both acts were driven by bright, breezy guitar riffs and Mulcahy’s distinctive, sometimes erratic, Lou Reed-esque vocals.

But it wasn’t until hearing Mulcahy sing a few songs from Polaris’ oeuvre live that — enamored, nostalgic, weirdly emotional — I went home and promptly dove headfirst into his solo work, of which there are four complete albums. If you want to work backward, Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You, released in July of last year after a nearly eight-year hiatus, is a beautiful starting point. It’s a moody, introspective, but clear-thinking and meticulously arranged record, stamped all over with the Mulcahy trademark: Lyrics that veer toward magical realism, the intonation of a less-goofy Jonathan Richman, gently dark witticisms that don’t quite make sense but you understand their feeling in your bones, bleak stories that don’t really seem autobiographical, but then — who can be sure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggi_2Vy8KOw

Mulcahy can, but he doesn’t owe us an explanation. The gentlest, happiest track on the record, “The Rabbit,” — on which the songwriter sweetly confesses “I’m a sucker for magic/where’s the rabbit?” — is punctuated with sleigh bells; it’s the sound of an artist almost surprising himself with how much hope and curiosity he still has for the world. That’s followed by “Where’s the Indifference Now?,” a bitingly cynical guitar opus about the media’s vulture-like coverage of Heath Ledger’s death. (“You could apply it to Philip Seymour Hoffman now, I guess,” says Mulcahy.) If he often deals in surrealism, his gift is in the human honesty of that contrast, the recognizable sense of home base in the space between those moods.

“I was home most of the day, it’s a snow day,” is the first thing he says, however, when, after a bit of phone tag, I finally reach him at the Massachusetts home he shares with his two young twin daughters. “I’m looking out the window right now at snow, just as far as you can see…so it’s a bit strange to be thinking about playing in San Francisco [for Noise Pop].”

One reason for the extended hiatus: In 2008, Mulcahy’s wife passed away quite suddenly, and he’s been raising the kids on his own ever since. A tribute album to help raise money for the family, Ciao My Shining Star (named for a line in the obituary Mulcahy wrote her), was arranged almost entirely without his knowledge and released in 2009, with artists who happen to be Mulcahy fans — folks like Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, Dinosaur Jr., Frank Black, The National, Elvis Perkins, and Juliana Hatfield — performing Mulcahy’s songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB74TOPiIr4

It didn’t make sense to be away from home for long, explains Mulcahy of the break; since the most recent record (which draws its title from a note someone gave him) came out last summer, he’s been navigating the balance between touring and his home life with kids who, he says, are still too young to really understand much about what he does.

“I hadn’t played in such a long time, when I first started again I almost couldn’t believe I was doing it. But it’s felt really nice,” he says of touring so far. “I don’t know how I would do with a month-long thing, but so far it’s just great and really surprising that [the record] has done as well as it has. When I was in Miracle Legion, we always did pretty well, and I kind of assumed I would do that well on my own…I didn’t really put it together until later that it wasn’t a built-in success story. This album, I’m playing shows that are crowded, and it’s just a pleasant surprise to be feeling like I’m back to a point where I was before.” He’s done short stints in Ireland and England, and opened for fellow Bay Staters the Pixies on their tour warm-up in Northampton, MA.

As for the record, which Pitchfork (among others) has called his best solo work yet, the distinct moods of the tracks are at least in part the result of Mulcahy’s studio process: He recorded each song in entirety on its own day, then thought carefully about order and narrative. “I definitely don’t think of anything I write as one song, and I’m not really a big fan of ‘shuffle,'” he says. “I guess I come from the old school of sequencing.” He’s old-school in other ways, he will admit; he doesn’t pay too much attention to what’s currently on the radio. Lou Reed and the ’90s Connecticut indie band Butterflies of Love are first on his tongue when asked what he’s been listening to as of late. He’s no snob, though: “I go easy on guys like him,” is his comment on Bruno Mars. “Pop music…I mean, you take Miley Cyrus. I really thought she was terrible for a long time, I just didn’t get it. And then I really listened to ‘Wrecking Ball,’ and that’s a great song! I’m not gonna hate her just because I’m supposed to.”

And if people still wind up knee-deep in his catalogue because of his most mainstream, cable-televised work, as I did — well, that’s OK too.

“Polaris was a really unexpected twist in my musical career, but it was just a band that existed in your TV,” he says. “We never really played any gigs, which was probably a mistake. To the point where, when we did the Pete & Pete reunion in LA and played with a full band, it was surprising to realize, ‘Wow, we could play shows!’ And it’s funny, I haven’t really found anywhere that wants to book us since then, but we definitely want to do it. I absolutely still enjoy playing those songs.”

Hear that, Bay Area bookers? You could make a lot of ’80s babies very, very happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9pFcUof7c

Mark Mulcahy
With Mark Eitzel, Vikesh Kapoor, and Whiskerman
Thu/27, 8pm, $14
Brick & Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
www.noisepop.com

A very Indy decade

Steven T. Jones

February 11, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL If there’s one thing Allen Scott remembers from opening the Independent 10 years ago, it’s the rush. Not the emotional high (though surely that was a factor too), but the literal rushing around that was necessary to open a state-of-the-art live concert space with a capacity of 500 “on a shoestring budget.”

“We barely got open on time,” recalls Scott, the managing owner of the venue at 628 Divisadero — the latest in a long line of storied San Francisco clubs that have shared that address. “We had friends painting it right up until about the day before we opened. We’d moved the sound system in but didn’t have alarms set up, so we were taking turns sleeping on the stage overnight. People would come by and say ‘When are you opening?’ and we’d say ‘In a couple days,’ and they’d laugh, like ‘Good luck with that.’ The night we opened, the fire department signing everything off while the band was sound-checking.”

That band was I Am Spoonbender, and that show was the first of more than 2,500 that have taken place within the Independent’s walls since February 2004. If the space feels like it has a deeper history than that, it’s for good reason: In the late 1960s, it was home to the Half Note, a popular jazz club that saw the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk; the house band featured George Duke and a young Al Jarreau. In the early ’80s it became the VIS Club, and served as a hub for local punk, new wave, and experimental bands; by the late ’80s it was the Kennel Club, and hosted up-and-comers like Nirvana and Janes Addiction. In the mid-’90s, it was reborn as the Justice League, nurturing burgeoning electronic and hip-hop acts — Fat Boy Slim, Jurassic 5, the Roots, and plenty others all found enthusiastic crowds. To put it mildly, if those walls could talk, they’d tell a lot of good party stories. Next week’s lineup of shows will only add to the vault: From Feb. 19 through Feb. 26, the Independent will host Allen Stone, John Butler Trio, Beats Antique, DJ Shadow, Two Gallants (below), Rebelution, and Girl Talk in a series of special performances to celebrate the club’s 10th anniversary.

As the club has changed, San Francisco — as it is wont to do — changed around it. The formerly gritty Western Addition is now shiny NoPa (at least according to real estate agents); what was once a bustling center for the city’s African-American population and jazz scene is now more of a bustling dining destination for the upper-middle-class. Regardless, says Scott, there’s no question that the Independent is “in the heart of the city…being part of this neighborhood, this community, is so important to us.”

Scott was just a young San Francisco promoter with an impressive track record when he was approached in 2003 by Gregg Perloff and Sherry Wasserman — proteges of Bill Graham and owners of the scrappy, barely-year-old concert promotion/marketing team Another Planet Entertainment — to run booking and promotions at the unopened venue.

“The name ‘The Independent’ came up through some discussions with music industry friends,” Scott told SF Weekly at the time of the club’s opening. “The whole idea of the Wal-Marting of America applies to the music industry as well. We wanted to stand alone: independent thinking, independent music. We’re an independent company. Of course, it was also an elbow in the side of the corporate giant out there.” (Perloff had just parted ways with Clear Channel under less-than-friendly circumstances.)

A decade later, of course, APE runs a couple of the biggest festivals in Northern California, and functions as the exclusive promoter for Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, Oakland’s Fox Theater, and the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, among others. And Scott’s now the vice president of APE. But The Independent, now the smallest APE operation, is still his baby.

“We wanted a utilitarian room that had great sound, great lights, and perfect sight lines,” he says. “And because it’s a box, the sight lines there really are perfect — no matter where you’re standing in the room, you can make eye contact with the performers and vice-versa. I think it’s the best-sounding room in the city. And I’d say it has the best lights of any venue underneath the size of the Fillmore.”

Nicki Bluhm is among the local artists who now regularly pack larger venues (see: her sold-out Fillmore show Jan. 25) but maintain a soft spot for the Independent. “[The club] treats their artists with so much respect,” she says, adding that the atmosphere there has led to some of her band’s most memorable shows. Also memorable, says Scott: Obama’s first presidential win, when the club held a free results-viewing party with live music. “When he won, the place erupted, and everyone spilled out into the streets…so there was a band playing inside and people just raging outside,” he recalls. “Very San Francisco.”

What does a quintessentially Brooklyn-loft-party-post-punk band sound like when two of its principal members relocate to LA? Judging by VoyAager, the lush, layered, immersively and epically spacey new album from experimental stalwarts Aa (“big A, little a”), it sounds like someone sent an assortment of synthesizers, samplers, and drum sets into the future, and the future is an industrial cityscape full of curiously advanced life forms who don’t communicate in a narrative sense, but they sure have lots of energy, and they like writing melodies (though not the kind you’ll likely hear on the radio anytime soon). Life sounds rough around the edges on this planet, but you kinda don’t ever want to leave. (Give the first track a listen at the end of this story.)

John Atkinson, the drummer-heavy band’s main vocalist and one of said members who relocated to the West Coast about three years ago, said the album — the band’s first in seven years — is actually the culmination of nearly seven years of recording. “We all work on songs together even when we’re not in the same place,” explains Atkinson, who lived (and recorded some of his parts) in France in the mid-aughts. Though Aa’s lineup and instrumentation seem to be constantly in flux (at this point, says Atkinson, there’s something of an East Coast lineup and a West Coast one), the band’s sound is distinctly more cohesive and melodic than on its 2007 debut, gAame.

“We don’t want to be making straight-ahead pop songs, but at the same time, I’d say the sounds of pop music have broadened our palette, while sticking to the way we like to put songs together,” says Atkinson. The changing lineup has helped the band’s sound evolve, as well: “Everyone listens to different music…dark industrial heavy stuff, electronic stuff, metal, punk, another drummer is into Samba, world music and jazz…everyone brings something different, so it’s great to watch that kind of stew congeal into something that still sounds like us.”

Playing the Hemlock on Feb. 15 will be the second stop on a weeklong West Coast tour that will take the guys up to Seattle, after which Atkinson will be making a point to stop at every basketball stadium he can on the way back down — the Jersey native is a fairly new appreciator (not a bandwagon fan, he wants to be clear) of California basketball.

As for the NYC/LA transition in general: “New York’s always gonna be home to me, but every time I go back, so much has changed about Brooklyn — all these condos, cookie-cutter new restaurants, and the vibe of the city is just not what it used to be,” he says, “LA is a really hard city to get to know, but that also means there’s a ton of interesting new stuff to discover all the time. It’s starting to feel like home.”

Last but definitely not least: Don’t forget to check out the first Bay Area Record Label Fair, (or B.A.R.F., which is funny whether or not you are 12, admit it), at Thee Parkside on Feb. 15, the brainchild of SF promoters Professional Fans and the city’s own Father/Daughter Records. Some 18 different labels will be represented at the daylong affair, plus live performances from Cocktails, Dog Party, and others TBD. Oh yeah, and it’s free — so bite your tongue the next time you find yourself saying that everything in this city has gotten too expensive.

The Independent’s 10th Anniversary Celebration
Feb. 19 – Feb. 26, show times and prices vary
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
www.theindependentsf.com

Aa
With Alan Watts, Wand, and Violent Vickie
Saturday, Feb. 15 9pm, $8
Hemlock Tavern 1131 Polk, SF
www.hemlocktavern.com

B.A.R.F.
Saturday, Feb. 15 12pm – 5pm, free
Thee Parkside
1600 17th Street, SF
www.theeparkside.com

The return of Pyno Man

Steven T. Jones

February 4, 2014

LEFT OF THE DIAL As legend has it, there was a time when you couldn’t walk the streets of Berkeley without running into him. He accosted you from posters adorning bar bathroom doors; he lurked around corners, plastered to telephone poles. He was mischievous, sometimes foul-mouthed, usually up to no good, but he always meant well. He wanted you to rock out. He was Pyno Man, and he was everywhere.

“Pyno Man was basically just the dream anybody has of being great, but instead of working a regular job and having fantasies about doing crazy rockstar things, he’s actually trying it all the time and failing. So he’s out there on the street acting like a rockstar, but everyone just thinks he’s crazy,” explains John Seabury, artist, creator of Pyno Man, and bass player for the relatively short-lived but locally legendary East Bay garage-punk outfit Psycotic Pineapple, for which the wild-eyed, mohawked, anthropomorphized pineapple served as mascot. “To me, that was logical.”

A staple of the East Bay punk club scene of the late ’70s, Psycotic Pineapple held court at the Keystone in Berkeley, sometimes playing SF’s fabled Mabuhay Gardens with friend bands, like the (underrated) power-pop maestros the Rubinoos. PP songs were about youth and drugs and sex, and you could count on them for an insane live show. But something in the band’s demeanor set them apart from the prevailing punk attitudes of the time: There wasn’t much they took seriously — least of all themselves.

“We didn’t really call them punks at that time, because that just wasn’t what we would call people who played music like them. They were just outlaws in a way, because they brought this sort of pop aesthetic to punk music. They were thumbing their nose at it and wrapping their arms around it at the same time,” says John Cuniberti, a producer, mastering engineer, and longtime friend of the band who helped the guys finally re-issue Psycotic Pineapple’s sole album, Where’s the Party?, on CD in 2012 — something that led to the band playing its first live show in more than two decades, which inspired Cuniberti to make a documentary about the band in the process.

There was something determinedly fun about Psycotic Pineapple, says Cuniberti. “I was working with the Dead Kennedys at the same time [’70s], and it was political, straight-up social commentary, songs about death and war and all these things. These guys played pop songs about relationships — really well-written pop songs, the songwriting was always very compelling to me — but they were rowdy, and they did it with an ‘I don’t care if you like us or not’ kind of attitude. There was an outrageousness to it.”

The band put out its lone record 1980, packed with 11 gleefully irreverent tracks that ran just over 25 minutes altogether. In 1981, something happened that no one could have predicted: Guitar player Henricus Holtman suffered a brain aneurysm, hindering his dexterity on his right side. The band stopped playing live. While most members remained involved in the local music scene — Seabury’s art adorns posters and t-shirts for a ton of other bands — Psycotic Pineapple mostly became the stuff of Bay Area folklore. But the fans were still out there. More than 30 years after PP disbanded, about a year after the band’s official reunion show at Bottom of the Hill, the music somehow doesn’t sound dated at all. They’ll headline the Gilman this week for the first time, with Pinole’s own Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits (whom could be said to follow in PP’s footsteps in terms of ethos, if not sound) opening.

“I don’t think the music feels old, but I’ve always thought that,” says Seabury, whose art fills a booklet that accompanies the re-issue CD. “By the time we broke up a lot of bands were starting to imitate that kind of attitude — Camper Van Beethoven, some others. I think we would have fit right into the alternative rock scene. We were kind of like these New Wave clowns making fun of punkers&ldots;which, as far as bands we gigged with go, their fans didn’t really like it. I remember opening for 999 and the Dickies, and both of their fans just hated us. They were booing us already, so we decided to close the set with ‘We’re an American Band,’ and that’s when the bottles started flying.”

They haven’t gotten to play together too often since the official reunion — for one, keyboard player Alexi Karlinski lives in Eastern Europe for most of the year. But while he’s back in the Bay for this stint, the guys plan to record a few new songs.

Maybe don’t call it a comeback just yet, says Cuniberti. But “I think they’re worth listening to, and there’s a lot of music being made that I can’t say that about. The songwriting is so good, and it’s timely, it still sounds fresh. You can hear in this record that they really love what they’re doing.”

While we’re immersed in the warm glow of East Bay punk history: 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, the independent record store, label, and all-ages venue housed in a deceptively small couple of rooms on 40th Street in Oakland, is expanding into the recently vacated space next door. From their crowdfunding campaign:

“A few weeks ago we were told our next door neighbors would be leaving and we could take a section of their space for an expansion. The catch is that we need to take the space by February 1st or it would go to someone else. As a small business with employees to take care of and regular bills to pay we don’t tend to have a lot of extra expansion capital on hand, especially on short notice. So we come to you, the good people who have supported us all these years and ask for you to join us in bringing the store to this next level and to continue to offer the great music and art we have been in our venue space.

In order to complete this expansion we need to do the following;

Knock out the adjoining wall.

Paint the interior and exterior to match our existing space

All new lighting that will stretch the length of both spaces.

Build additional custom fixtures; record bins, shelving etc.

Purchase new product; Records, books, supplies, turntables etc.

Purchase new Mic’s, Cords and Stands for the venue.

Close the store for 7 to 14 days (oof!)

Our plan is to have our Grand Re-Opening on March 15th to coincide with our 6th anniversary. We will have a sale during the day and a private event from 7pm to 10pm with food, drinks and music for supporters who come in at the $50 and above level who RSVP.”

As of this writing they have just under a week to go and still need to raise about $7,000. Want your as-of-yet unborn kids to know what actual record stores are? You know what to do: 1234gorecords.com.

Back here on this side of the Bay, A Million Billion Dying Suns — the psych-rock project of busy guitar virtuoso Nate Mercereau, who tours with Sheila E., among others (last week he was backing Dave Chappelle at the SFJazz Center) — have embarked on a mini-residency of sorts at the Knockout, starting with a Feb. 11 show. They recently had a song featured in a GoPro commercial, accompanying Shaun White as he blasts through snow-covered hills, but the band’s had my attention for about a year now, especially since the arrival last November’s Strawberry EP, with its slow-building, expertly crafted wall of spaced-out guitar fuzz, particularly on “Strawberry Letter 23,” a cover/homage to Shuggie Otis.

“I record a lot of stuff by myself, and Shuggie Otis has been a huge inspiration in that respect,” says Mercereau, who recently moved to LA, though he finds himself back in SF “every two weeks or so” — the band’s studio is still here. “Though it was also for our friend [manager and friend to many an SF musician] Steve Brodsky, who passed away last year. He really loved that song, and it felt like a way to do something for him.”

The Knockout feels a little small for the seriously powerful five-piece, Mercereau will acknowledge, but he wanted a residency at “a place our friends can walk to, a down-home punk rock spot that’s in the neighborhood.” If all goes well, he says, AMBDS will have another few shows here shortly, regardless of his new home base. “It’s easier than you might think,” he says. “We just live on Highway 5.”

PSYCOTIC PINEAPPLE
With Rock N’ Roll Adventure Kids, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, and the Gregors
Friday, Feb. 7, 7:30pm, $10
924 Gilman Street
924 Gilman, Berkeley
www.924gilman.org

A MILLION BILLION DYING SUNS
With What Fun Life Was and Lemme Adams
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 8:30pm, $6
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
www.theknockout.com

Young at heart

Steven T. Jones

January 28, 2014

LEFT OF THE DIAL “Why are some songs so perfect in a way that never happens again in our lives? What is it about music and being older than 12 but younger than 20?”

Those are the lines of narration capping the final panel of one of my favorite Lynda Barry comic strips, an autobiographical story in her collection One Hundred Demons. In it, our teenage protagonist is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the radio in a manner immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever been a teenager. The mood is: I am surely feeling feelings and thinking thoughts no one ever has before. As I recall, this is what being a teenager is. Every emotion, positive or negative, however fleeting, is all-consuming, and often you have no choice but to lie in your room, crushed by the weight of it, headphones drowning out the world. The idea that “this too shall pass” is impossible to understand, because you can’t even see past the econ test you’re surely going to flunk tomorrow, or that guy in biology who barely knows your name. This is why teenagers always seem so sluggish: That shit’s exhausting.

Ask any teenager what helps them get through it — and here I realize I’m starting to sound like adolescence is an inevitable six-year-long disease of sorts, or perhaps a heroin detox you just have to sweat through, but whatever, it kind of is — and near the top of the list, I bet you’ll find music.

“I would have ended up as a drug dealer, no question,” says John Vanderslice, the musician-producer-owner of SF’s storied Tiny Telephone studios, of what he might have become without music as a young person. “I would currently be residing in prison.”

Lucky for him, “My mother forced me by gunpoint to take piano lessons,” he says. “And this was the dirty South. I was in public schools, where the arts meant, you know, coloring. But I got really interested in music, and that became a huge open door for me. I think it would have been a lot tougher to do what I do now if I hadn’t had that music theory kind of shoved in to my brain when I was seven, eight, nine years old, even if I didn’t know it was happening at the time.”

Vanderslice is just one in a who’s who of Bay Area artists who were invited to think about what music meant to them when they were young — how and when and which music shaped their formative years — in preparation for a Friday, Jan. 31 show celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Magik*Magik Orchestra at the Fox Theater in Oakland. The orchestra, a group of more than 50 musicians who have provided “made-to-order” support on records and tours with Death Cab for Cutie, Zola Jesus, How to Dress Well, and Nick Cave, to name a few, is raising money for Magik For Kids, their nonprofit arm that throws hands-on music education events for school-aged kids in the Bay Area.

“When We Were Young,” presented by Noise Pop, will showcase bands — Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, the Dodos, Geographer, and a dozen others — collaborating with a 30-piece orchestra and the 30-piece Pacific Boychoir on songs that the artists themselves selected. The prompt: Pick a tune from your childhood that’s close to your heart.

“It was really interesting to see what people chose — I was expecting more ’80s given the age range, but you realize you’re not always listening to what’s new when you’re little,” says arranger, conductor and Magik*Magik founder Minna Choi, a Berkeley-born, classically trained 32-year-old colleagues refer to as a dynamo. (Vanderslice — who will be performing a Simon and Garfunkel song — agreed to Magik*Magik becoming the house band at Tiny Telephone after Choi cold-emailed him five years ago: “Minna’s the kind of person who can and will do absolutely anything she wants to do.”) Choi will conduct most of the show, with Michael Morgan, conductor of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, appearing on a couple pieces.

In designing music programming for children, says Choi, “We’re trying to create ways to expose younger kids not only to music, but to a music career and what that looks like.” The orchestra has organized instrument “petting zoos,” taught kids to build their own string instruments, and run a summer camp where children learn to conduct.

Many players in the orchestra also teach private music lessons, and some had to cancel a few lessons in order to rehearse for the show. “But the point of this show is music education,” says Choi. “So we came up with a kind of ‘Bring your student to Magik work’ day and had them reach back out to parents saying ‘I can’t do a traditional violin lesson Tuesday, but you’re welcome to bring your son or daughter to the studio, we’ll have it set up for them’…there’s so much to learn there, whether it’s rehearsal technique, or just how to communicate when you’re working with 40 other people.”

Diana Gameros, a staple of the Mission’s indie-folk scene — she’s been called “the Latin Feist” — chose an original song from her most recent album, a song she wrote for her hometown of Juárez, Mexico.

“I grew up listening to very traditional Mexican songs, because my grandparents lived on a little farm and that was what there was,” she recalls. “And I didn’t like it when I was young. I wanted to be hip, I wanted to be cool. I liked really poppy songs, which you could hear on the radio because we were so close to the border. What was that band that sang ‘I Saw the Sign’? That’s what I wanted.”

She moved to the States as a teenager, and began writing songs as a young adult. And that’s when she realized that the traditional Mexican music she’d disliked as a child “was embedded in me…it’s in my blood.” She chose “En Juárez” for this show in part because it’s written from a mother’s perspective: “If I had children, this is a song for them — explaining the realities of Juárez, the violence, but also talking to them about what’s possible, about dreams and the hope we should have regardless of problems,” she says.

“I was just honored to be asked to be part of this show, honestly. It’s going to be a magical night.”

—

A handful of scattered thoughts, while we’re on the topic of music that helped when you needed to lie on your bed blasting music through a Walkman:

Green Day’s Dookie was released Feb. 1, 1994 — 20 years ago this Saturday.

I’ve listened to that album from start to finish more recently and more frequently as an adult than I should probably admit. If “When I Come Around” starts on the radio when I’m driving, I will turn it all the way up.

Miley Cyrus. Skrillex.

My grandfather, in the last stages of Alzheimer’s at age 95 and unable to keep family members’ names straight, would sing along if you brought him tapes of Big Band songs from the 1930s.

Sherman Alexie: “Your generation’s music isn’t better than any others. It’s just inextricably linked to your youth.”

When We Were Young
With Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers, The Dodos, Diana Gameros, Geographer, How To Dress Well, Zoe Keating, The Lonely Forest, Maestro Michael Morgan, The Pacific Boychoir, Rogue Wave, Two Gallants, and John Vanderslice

Fri/31, 8pm, $29.50 – $45
The Fox Theater
1807 Telegraph, Oakland
www.thefoxoakland.com

The good witches of music tech

Steven T. Jones

January 21, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL When MTV debuted “Video Killed the Radio Star” at 12:01am on Aug. 1, 1981 — the first music video to air on the brand-new, much-buzzed-about network — producers knew exactly what they were doing. Amid all the excitement about the possibilities video technology presented to the music industry, there was an ambivalence, tinged with apprehension from musicians, about what the sea change would mean for artists. The song perfectly captured the current climate, a combination of brave-new-world optimism and flat-out fear of the future.

Two decades later, a scrappy little Redwood City-based file-sharing startup called Napster would be ordered shut down in federal court. ”It’s time for Napster to stand down and build their business the old-fashioned way — they must get permission first,” said Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, told the New York Times, speaking on behalf of five major record labels that sued the company. And, as everyone knows, that sealed it: Music was never obtained for free on the Internet ever again, all artists were paid fairly for their work, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Funny thing about technological advancement — it only goes one way. The collapse of the record industry over the past decade has given way to a sort of Wild West atmosphere when it comes to the ways musicians, fans, producers, etc. can interact, make art, and do commerce. It has been something of an economic equalizer: Anyone with a Wi-fi connection can throw his latest dubstep/witchhouse cover of “Under the Sea” up on Soundcloud one night, and wake up to a bevy of fans. But most musicians I know would agree that the availability of free or very cheap streaming and downloading services has made it difficult, if not impossible, to make a living from their work the way they might have 30 years ago.

And yet: There are those who would argue that the tech world has more to offer musicians than it might initially seem. In the spirit of our “good tech” issue, I reached out to some local techies who aren’t using their powers for evil.

On the vast playing field of websites and apps that promise to help musicians get their work out into the world — without, ideally, anyone going bankrupt — Bandcamp may have built the most trust among artists, using a straightforward revenue-share model: The company takes 15 percent of sales on digital purchases; 10 percent on merch. Of course, it didn’t hurt when Amanda Palmer decided to forego the traditional album-release route in 2010, releasing her ukulele Radiohead covers album solely on Bandcamp, bringing in $15,000 inside three minutes.

When founder Ethan Diamond launched the site in 2007 — after trying to buy a favorite band’s digital album directly from its website and having “every single technical problem that could go wrong, go wrong” — people were saying “music sales are dead,” recalls the SF resident, a programmer who previously co-founded the webmail service that would become Yahoo! mail. “Within a year or two of the business, you could see that wasn’t true: Even in the digital era, fans actually want to support the artists they love. Right now fans are giving artists $2.8 million every month [through Bandcamp]. We have 50,000 unique artists communicating and marketing directly to their fans…our entire goal is to help artists be successful. That’s really it.”

And no, he doesn’t want to name the band whose technical difficulties inspired the company a few years back — the band members don’t know who they are. And they’re not on Bandcamp yet.

At Zoo Labs, a less-than-year-old nonprofit based out of a recording studio in West Oakland, a handful of heavy hitters from the tech and design worlds asked the question: What happens when you apply a business incubator model — like the well-founded training grounds that typically nurture Silicon Valley startups — to a band? The Zoo Labs Residency, a two-week, all-expenses-paid program for musicians, offers practical skill-building workshops, marketing training, mentorship, and studio time to bands who have a vision but haven’t yet achieved a widespread reach.

“We started talking to musicians about their experiences and how they were managing their careers and accomplishing their projects, and it was really interesting to find that a lot of musicians and producers working in music are having very similar experiences to entrepreneurs in the startup world,” says Anna Acquistapace, a designer who founded the program with Vinitha Watson, an ex-Googler (she opened Google’s first satellite office in India) after the two met in California College of the Arts’ Design Strategy MBA program. Music producer Dan Lawrence (whom — full disclosure — I’ve known since elementary school, at which time he wanted to be a music producer) brought his working knowledge of the local music industry to the team.

“With all of these changes in the [music] industry over the last 10 years, musicians have been forced to take way more control over their marketing channels,” says Acquistapace. “They need to get their own fans, they need to bootstrap their own products in a similar to way to what startups do, whether that means funding albums or demos to pitch to a record label, reaching out to the media…they have to become entrepreneurs, out of necessity. From that, the idea of this artists’ residency-meets-business-incubator or accelerator was born.”

Thus far only one band, an Americana/roots four-piece called the Boston Boys, has completed the residency, participating in a series of workshops and recording sessions tailored specifically to their needs: They took a “sonic branding” class from Oakland producer Jumbo (whose credits include work with Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and others), learned about music law, met with design professionals and leadership coaches. Meanwhile, recording engineer/producer Damien Lewis recorded the band live in the studio most days in sessions that ran from 2 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning; the two-week period culminates in a live show at the studio.

In total, the program costs about $20,000 per session to run, with much of it underwritten by private investors from Silicon Valley who are simply interested in developing new models for the music industry. “If there’s one thing that people are passionate across the board, it’s music,” says Acquistapace.'”I haven’t really seen any other art form that crosses groups the same way.”

(The application period for its March residency just closed, but look for new programming to launch in February; the Beat Lab, which will open next month, aims to be a combination recording studio/coworking space for musicians of all kinds: www.zoolabs.org)

And in, er, music/tech news of a much lower-tech variety: Tom Temprano, co-owner of Virgil’s Sea Room in the Mission, announced this week that the bar, which occupies the space Nap’s III left behind (both physically and in our hearts), will be bringing back the grand Nap’s tradition of sloppy, gleeful karaoke around the glow of a two-tone screen. Starting Jan. 23, every Thursday night at 9pm will find Nap himself back at home base, MCing the action, with songbooks and harmonicas in tow. Because technology will march forward — video may have killed the radio star — but drunken renditions of Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s “Shoop”? Karaoke, my friends, is forever.

Slice of local soul

Steven T. Jones

January 14, 2014

LEFT OF THE DIAL Looking back with the sense of perspective that four and a half decades can provide, the year 1969 seems almost implausibly momentous. The US government instated the draft for Vietnam. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. John and Yoko got in bed and stayed there; Jimi shred the Star-Spangled Banner. And the Mets were really, really good.

In San Francisco, Sly and the Family Stone went into the studio — Pacific High Recording, on a tiny street near the 101 between Market and Mission, to be specific—and emerged with a record that would change the course of funk and soul music forever. Stand! was the fourth album from the Vallejo-bred seven-piece, catapulting into the mainstream a band the likes of which popular music had never seen: Two white folks and five black folks, both men and women, who sang about racism, poverty, peace and violence, sex, and other provocative topics in an honest yet irresistably danceable way. At the wheel was Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart), a charismatic sometime-soul DJ for SF radio stations and a musical prodigy of sorts who played the keyboard, guitar, bass and drums by age 11.

The record sold more than 3 million copies, propelled by singles like the title track, “Everyday People,” and “I Want to Take You Higher.” It was the apex of the band’s success. Three months later, they would give one of the best performances of their career at Woodstock, at 3:30am on a Sunday. By the end of 1969, after a move to LA, Sly and other Family Stone members were addicted to cocaine; by 1970, tensions were brewing in the studio and on the road. Despite producing a handful of other critically acclaimed records, drug problems and personal rifts grew steadily, and the band dissolved in 1975.

Still: “There are two types of black music,” wrote Joel Selvin in Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History. “Black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone.”

Of the 100-plus Bay Area musicians participating in “UnderCover Presents: Sly and the Family Stone’s Stand!” Jan. 17-19, it’s safe to say most came of age in the latter era — regardless of ethnicity — with popular music that bore Stone’s influence. For three consecutive nights at the Independent, nine artists from diverse genres will recreate the iconic album from start to finish, with each band performing its own unique arrangement of the track they were assigned. A record of all the performances was produced at San Francisco’s Faultline Studios in the weeks leading up to the show.

UnderCover has been producing large-scale shows like this every few months for the a little over three years, each time honoring an influential album with a different bill of Bay Area bands and a different guest musical director: Past shows have included reinterpretations of Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, and Radiohead’s Kid A. But Stand! represents new ground for a couple reasons: From a technical standpoint, the sheer quantity of musicians participating is daunting, thanks to guest director David Möschler’s 50-person Awesöme Orchestra, a Berkeley-based collective that holds monthly orchestral rehearsals that are free and open to anyone who wants to play.

Perhaps more importantly, this will be the first show honoring a local musician — one whose legacy still commands so much local respect. Recruiting bands who were excited about the chance to honor Sly and the Family Stone, says Möschler, was the easy part.

“If you’re talking innovation, if you’re talking community, if you’re talking Bay Area, that’s Sly,” says Möschler, a Berkeley-based musical director and conductor who comes from the world of orchestra and musical theater. “It was a natural choice.” He pitched Lyz Luke, UnderCover’s director, after being “blown away” by the Joni Mitchell show last January. Möschler said it was time for an Undercover show highlighting an artist of color — and that, while tribute nights to Michael Jackson, Prince and even Stevie Wonder are in no short supply, Sly’s oeuvre seemed to be under-trodden territory.

Why Stand!? “Every song is so powerful and yet so economical. There are these huge political statements — ‘Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey,’ ‘Everyday People,’ ‘You Can Make It If You Try’ — but it’s also just extremely good songwriting. And then there’s this 13-minute jam with ‘Sex Machine,'” says Möschler with a laugh. “You can hear that they were at the height of their creative powers as a band.”

Möschler reached out to Bay Area artists that felt like family bands, as Sly’s was. Seemingly impossibly, every artist, from the acclaimed jazz composer/bassist Marcus Shelby to the hip-hop/funk/Latin 10-piece Bayonics, listed a different first choice of song to cover.

“I think we said yes within two minutes,” says Daniel Blum, drummer for the Tumbleweed Wanderers, a folky soul-rock outfit who’ll be performing “Everyday People.” “We were huge fans of the band, but we didn’t want to fall into just covering the song. We played with harmonies, added some signatures of our sound.” Aside from the thrill of reinterpreting Stone’s music, UnderCover presented a rare opportunity to work with a slew of other artists the band respected, said Blum.

“Every show we do, we have artists tell us that they made connections they might never have otherwise, saying ‘You have to keep doing this,'” says Luke. She had the idea for UnderCover late one night three years ago, over drinks at the Latin American Club with Jazz Mafia founder Adam Theis and Classical Revolution’s Charith Premawardhana, then stayed up until morning crafting a dream-team lineup. “Our very first show [a Velvet Underground and Nico night in which Liz Phair and Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins took part], there were musicians running out from backstage just to see the next band, exchanging numbers afterward — they were in awe of each other.”

Theis has since watched the shows evolve as both an organizer and a musician. Though it hasn’t been the case with this show, “More than one previous UnderCover artist has told me that they actually didn’t really dig the song they ended up with at first, but that it brought them to a place where they had to dig and search for what the song meant to them,” says Theis, whose ensemble will be performing “You Can Make It If You Try.” “For me, that’s brought me to new musical places that I never would have gotten to just by staying in my comfort zone.”

Speaking of comfort zones: Nothing’s official, but this may be the first UnderCover show featuring members of the band being honored. Sly Stone famously fell on hard times in the early ’80s, suffering from addiction, financial problems and alleged mental illness; the musician, who is believed to live in Vallejo again, has made public appearances only sporadically since. But at least a few other original members have happily said they’ll be there. And Sly definitely knows about the show, thanks to Jeff Kaliss, a former Chronicle entertainment reporter who in 2008 penned the only authorized biography of the band, including the first in-depth interview with the elusive musician in over two decades. The verdict: Sly supposedly thinks it sounds “very cool.”

“The number of people from Sly’s community who have reached out has been truly amazing,” says Luke. “We’re talking major, famous funk guys going ‘We’re on board, we’ll help you. I think the community was waiting for this. I don’t think I realized what he means to the Bay Area.”

UnderCover Presents Sly & the Family Stone’s “Stand!”

Fri/17 – Sun/19

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com/

Enter the void

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

January 25, 2011

arts@sfbg.com

NEWS/MUSIC/CULTURE Anyone who entered University of San Francisco’s Presentation Hall the night of Jan.19 was confronted by the signs — literal and figurative — of a participatory approach to media. A sizable number of the almost 500 people packed into the site for a public meeting to discuss the abrupt sale of KUSF were carrying cameras. Other brandished signs, with slogans running the gamut from pointedly angry (“KUSF is Our Radio”; “Shame on USF”) to comic (“Suck It”).

The scene was a public meeting to discuss KUSF. In a matter of hours the previous morning, the station had gone from a left-of-the-dial college station of 34 years with deep and numerous local community connections, to an online-only operation, its frequency now owned by the USC-affiliated Classical Public Radio Network.

The atmosphere itself was contemporary political — and perhaps religious — theater brought to life, a loud embodiment of scripted and spontaneous dissent regarding education, the changing face and nature of radio and media, and cultural shifts in San Francisco. Before the event got underway, chants of “Community” broke out, and KUSF music director Irwin Swirnoff addressed the crowd in an attempt to ensure the venue’s balcony was opened up to people still left outside. As USF faculty arranged a pair of podiums on stage, a call-of-response of “What do we want? Noise rock! When do we want it? Now!” briefly went up from the back of the hall.

Father Stephen A. Privett, the president of the Jesuit university,soon stepped into view, taking a place behind a stage-right podium at some distance from the audience. “Thank you for being here with me this evening,” Privett began, before leading those assembled (or some of them) in prayer. “It’s very clear to me that there is justifiable anger with the decision I made. I don’t anticipate or expect you to agree with me.”

The decision Privett referred to and sometimes took full responsibility for was the choice to sell KUSF to CPRN, a move that, brokered by Greg Guy of Patrick Communications, came cloaked in a nondisclosure agreement. He was correct to not expect approval. Privett’s initial statement contextualized the $3.8 million sale of the station within his responsibility to provide a “quality education” for USF’s students, only a small percentage of which he felt were engaged with the station. “We teach broadcasting, we aren’t fundamentally a radio station,” Privett said of USF, in one of many assertions that drew jeers from some of the crowd.

The floor was then opened to questions from those assembled, as a school representative kept hold of the microphone. Linda Champagne, a KUSF DJ, was first to speak, holding back emotion as she told Privett that the sale of the station “should have been handled better.” Dorothy Kidd, a media studies professor, wanted to know why the decision took place while USF was on break, and the school’s faculty and students weren’t notified. “If the station is to be a teaching facility, why is the first time I learned about this decision last night?,” she asked Privett to roaring applause. “I am a teacher, [and] there are a lot of faculty members who are angry you made that agreement.”

LEFT IN THE DARK

KUSF’s sudden disappearance from the airwaves has left a void in its wake, and a wide variety of questions and contradictions swirl within it. It’s clear that Classical Public Radio Network is “flipping” KUSF’s former frequency, 90.3, to the classical music station KDFC (formerly on 102.1 FM), shifting KDFC to noncommercial status. But while USF’s Privett claimed that he accepted “the first offer that came across [his] desk” and had not actively put KUSF on the market, on the Jan. 19 installment of KQED’s Forum, CPRN Managing Director Brenda Barnes asserted that the company only solicited radio stations that were for sale.

One avenue for those protesting the sale of KUSF is to take their case to the FCC, while another is to increase scrutiny of USC’s role. Nikk Fell, a DJ on KUSF’s “Liquid Konspiracy,” sees hope in the fact that the FCC has not yet approved KUSF’s sale. “The FCC has not received the contract yet,” he says. “We think we have a chance to change the decision, and that’s one of our plans right now.”

“I was on a street law program the other day and there was talk about pursuing an injunction,” says attorney and former Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. “Jello Biafra also had an interesting idea — he thought the pressure should be put on USC.”

USC’s involvement in the purchase of KUSF is one of a number of recent acquisition moves by USC within the radio marketplace. It left KUSF a casualty of a growing related trend, in which commercial classical musical stations are being shifted to nonprofit public radio status — thanks in part to USC, a college station that broadcast many languages and musical genres (including classical) and foregrounded local music was booted off the dial and replaced by KDFC’s uniformly classical programming. “Every major city has at least one college station,” observes Krystal Chambers, who co-DJed “Liquid Konspiracy” with Fell. “Cleveland has four college stations and L.A. has three. For San Francisco to have no station is a travesty. We felt the voice of San Francisco was sold to a Southern California conglomerate. They have four other stations — why do they need us?”

The sudden erasure of KUSF — which had strong ties to the local music scene and related venues and businesses, as well as sponsored events such as Rock ‘n’ Swap — has cultural repercussions on a local and broader scale. “It’s going to have a huge impact,” Carolyn Keddy, who DJed at KUSF and volunteered for the station for 20 years, says. “So many voices were silenced. It isn’t just about the change of format and the loss of programming.” According to Keddy, who managed KUSF’s website until she was suddenly denied access to it on the morning of Jan. 18, the university’s abrupt sale and closure of the on-campus station was akin to saying, “Thanks for making us look good and doing all that work for us. Now get the hell out of here.”

LEFT OF THE DIAL

Of course, KUSF’s former staff and volunteers are not going away quietly. Initially, Privett had not planned on attending the Jan. 19 meeting regarding KUSF’s sale, but the immediate media response and subsequent public outcry changed at least that decision on his part. The sale of KUSF cuts to the heart of disputes about outside corporate influences on the local media landscape, and more directly about San Francisco itself: what the city represents, and its changing — more generic and corporate? — public identity. Three of its call letters may have been shared with the university, but KUSF didn’t have that name for nothing. It was a musical nexus for the city, and in the musician community, a bridge to and from San Francisco and the rest of the world.

“Takeovers like this seem all too common in our greedy little country, but I can’t accept the fact that they’re trying to do this in San Francisco,” says Howard Ryan, a.k.a. DJ Schmeejay, who was kicked off the air without an opportunity to sign off when the station was locked down by campus police on Jan. 18. “This city sets the example. This city doesn’t take shit lying down. I’m trusting that the citizens, the Board of Supervisors, and support from the international community will stop the sale from going through and we can return [the station] to the airwaves where it belongs.”

Ryan, Keddy, Hardwick, Edna Barron, and others who had volunteered at KUSF agree that the online-only version of KUSF will bear little resemblance to the station that had been on the radio. “I want to clear up the myth about the online fate of the station,” says Barron, a.k.a dj nobody. “It will not include any aspect of the community. Father Privett made it abundantly clear during the [Jan. 19] meeting that the online station will only be open to training students.”

SILENCE, THEN LOUDER

A week after KUSF went off the airwaves, it’s fair to say that the covert way in which the change went down has resulted in an overt and spreading reaction. Besides local and national media coverage in mainstream and independent outlets, as of Jan. 24, close to 6,000 people had joined a “Save KUSF” page on Facebook. Other sites, including www.savekusf.org, have also been started in response to the sale.

One of the more interesting and in-depth responses is an open letter to Privett published by the veteran East Coast-based music magazine and website The Big Takeover. The author of the letter, local musician Chris Stroffolino, begins by praising Privett’s and USF’s rescue efforts during the Salvadorean war, before delving into questions regarding USF possible redistribution of funds from the sale. “Even in 2010,” Stroffolino writes, “the medium of radio has a power that cannot be denied, a power in bringing people together even when apart.”

It’s one irony of recent times that the actual sale of KUSF made this power physically tangible, in events such as the Jan. 19 meeting. Stroffolino’s letter looks to a 1932 essay by Bertolt Brecht to illustrate what distinguished KUSF’s public, participatory nature from that of ordinary radio stations, and the dilemma those involved in the station face today. “Radio is one-sided when it should be two,” Brecht wrote. “It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. [Radio should] step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by radio to give a truly public character to public occasions is a step in the right direction.”

In talking with some of KUSF’s DJs for this piece, it seemed worthwhile to ask what song they would have signed off with to comment on the sale, had they been given the opportunity. Barron chose “The Boiler” by the Specials, while Hardwick and Fell mentioned “Generika,” a song by their space rock band Galaxy Chamber. “I would play Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum”,” Keddy said, going on to recite a lyric: “And all of this time, with just our minds, we soon will find, what’s left behind.”

Ryan, who was in the studio when KUSF was taken off the air, had another perspective. “My last two songs were Bobby Goldsboro’s “Danny is a Mirror to Me” — he turned 70 that day — and Vangelis Papathanissiou’s “Apocalypse des Animaux,” he said. “Maybe two of the saddest songs I’ve ever played on [the program] Radiodrome. I’ve thought a lot about what I would have played had I known what was happening. I don’t think I’d want to change a thing.”

Addititional writing and reporting by Carly Nairn.

www.facebook.com/SaveKUSF

www.ipetitions.com/savekusf/

www.savekusf.org

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