Performance

The Delegate Zero factor

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MEXICO CITY — The Marcos Factor has unexpectedly become a wild card in Mexico’s closely fought July 2nd presidential election. 
 
While out of earshot plying the back roads of provincial Mexico with his "Other Campaign," an anti-electoral crusade designed to weld underclass struggle groups into a new left alliance, the ski-masked Zapatista rebel mouthpiece once known as Subcomandante Marcos, now doing business as Delegate Zero, stayed aloof from the electoral mainstream, although he attacked it relentlessly. But Marcos’s arrival in the capital at the end of April has propelled him back into the national spotlight with less than 50 days to go until Election Day.
 
Poll results are brazenly for sale in the run up to Mexican elections and all are equally untrustworthy.  For almost 30 months, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the former Mexico City mayor and candidate of the leftish Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) led the preferences, sometimes by as much as 18 points. 
 
But by April, under an unanswered barrage of attack commercials labeling him a danger to the nation in big block letters across the television screen, AMLO’s lead had frittered away into a virtual tie with rightwing National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderon. Polls paid for by the PAN even give Calderon a ten-point advantage.  On the other hand, Mitofsky Associates, contracted to produce monthly polls by the television giant Televisa, which tilts towards Calderon, gives the PANista just a one point edge with a two-point margin of error.  All pollsters have the once-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party’s Roberto Madrazo running a distant third with 23-28%of voter preferences.
 
 
AMLO’s diminished numbers were further complicated by Marcos’s arrival in the capitol.  Delegate Zero has blasted the PRD and its candidate unceasingly in stump speech after stump speech across much of Mexico for the past five months.  Although the Other Campaign focuses on the deficiencies of the electoral process and the political parties to meet the needs of the people, Marcos always reserves special invective for Lopez Obrador and the PRD — the Other Campaign is, after all, a battle for the hearts and minds of the Mexican left. 
 
But perhaps the cruelest blow that Delegate Zero has yet struck against his rival on the left came when he declared under the heat of national TV cameras that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be the winner of the July 2nd election.  Marcos’s "endorsement" is seen in some quarters as being akin to Osama Bin Laden’s 2004 U.S. election eve TV appearance that frightened millions of voters into re-electing George Bush.
 
In truth, Marcos’s appearance in Mexico City at the end of April generated little press interest and numbers at marches and rallies were embarrassingly small.  But two days of bloody fighting between farmers affiliated with the Other Campaign and state and federal security forces at San Salvador Atenco just outside the capitol, which resulted in hundreds of arrests, rampant violations of human rights, the rape of women prisoners, and the most stomach-wrenching footage of police brutality ever shown on Mexican television, put Marcos back in the media spotlight. 
 
Leading marches in defense of the imprisoned farmers and vowing to encamp in Mexico City until they are released, Delegate Zero broke a five-year self-imposed ban on interviews with the commercial media (coverage of the Other Campaign has been limited to the alternative press.)  A three part exclusive interview in La Jornada — the paper is both favorable to the Zapatista struggle and Lopez Obrador — revealed the ex-Sub’s thinking as the EZLN transitions into the larger world beyond the indigenous mountains and jungle of their autonomous communities in southeastern Chiapas.  After the Jornada interviews began running, dozens of national and international reporters lined up for more.
 
Then on May 8th, Marcos startled Mexico’s political class by striding into a studio of Televisa, an enterprise he has scorned and lampooned for the past 12 years and which that very morning in La Jornada he denounced as being Mexico’s real government, and sat down for the first time ever with a star network anchor for a far-ranging chat on the state of the nation and the coming elections that effectively re-established the ex-Subcomandante’s credibility as a national political figure in this TV-obsessed videocracy. 
 
Among Delegate Zero’s more pertinent observations: all three candidates were "mediocrities" who would administrate Mexico for the benefit of the transnationals, but Lopez Obrador had a distinct style of dealing with the crisis down below, and would emerge the winner on July 2nd. 
 
Although observers differ about whether Marcos’s "endorsement" was the kiss of death for AMLO’s candidacy or just a peck on the cheek, Lopez Obrador’s reaction was of the deer-caught-in-the-headlights variety, emphasizing the prolonged animosity between the PRD and the EZLN to disassociate himself from the Zapatista leader. 
 
It was too late.  Calderon, one of whose key advisors is right-wing Washington insider Dick Morris (the PANista is Washington’s man), immediately lashed out at Marcos as "a PRD militant", clained AMLO was under Marcos’s ski-mask, and accused Lopez Obrador and Delegate Zero of being in cahoots to destabilize Mexico. The TV spots were running within 24 hours of Marcos’s Televisa interview.  In the background, the PRI’s Madrazo called for the "mano duro" (hard hand) to control such subversive elements, tagging the farmers of Atenco whose broad field knives are the symbol of their struggle, AMLO’s  "yellow machetes" (yellow is the PRD’s color).
 
Lopez Obrador’s only defense against this latest onslaught was to affirm that the mayor of Texcoco, who had been the first to send police to confront the farmers of Atenco, was a member of the PRD.  Party members who are usually quick to denounce human rights violations here have stayed away from the police rampage in Atenco for fear that speaking out will further taint Lopez Obrador.
 
There are some who question Delegate Zero’s assessment that AMLO will be Mexico’s next president as disingenuous.  After all, calling the election for Calderon after the Other Campaign has done its damndest to convince voters not to cast a ballot for AMLO could only arouse the ire of PRD bases along the route of the Other Campaign.    
 
Even as Calderon uses Marcos to raise the fear flag, Marcos argues that voter fear of instability does not alter electoral results. Nonetheless, in 1994, Ernesto Zedillo parleyed fears triggered by the Zapatista rebellion and the assassination of PRI heir-apparent Luis Donaldo Colosio into big numbers to walk off with the Mexican presidency.
 
Although Delegate Zero equates all three political parties, the conventional wisdom is that a return to power by the PRI would animate elements in the Mexican military who still want to stamp out the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and incite the lust of the PRI-affiliated paramilitaries for Zapatista blood.  On the other hand, repeated violence against EZLN bases in Chiapas by PRD-affiliated farmers’ groups, are not a harbinger of better times for the rebels under AMLO’s rule.
 
Enfrented as the PRD and the EZLN remain, the only avenue of convergence could be in post-electoral protest.  As the close race goes down to the wire, one good bet is that the July 2nd margin between Calderon and Lopez Obrador will be less than 100,000 out of a potential 72,000.000 voters.  If Calderon is declared the victor by challengeable numbers, the PRD, invoking the stealing of the 1988 election from Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, is apt not to accept results issued by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) which AMLO’s rank and file already considers partisan to the PAN, and the PRD will go into the streets — most noticeably in Mexico City, where it concentrates great numbers and where the IFE is located. 
 
How embarrassed Roberto Madrazo is by the PRI’s performance July 2nd could determine his party’s participation in mobilizations denouncing the results as well. Madrazo has thus far balked at signing a "pact of civility" being promoted by the IFE.
 
The EZLN has historically been more drawn to post-electoral protest than elections themselves.  In 1994, convinced that Cuauhtemoc Cardenas would not take protests into the streets if he were once again cheated out of victory, the Zapatistas sought to inspire such protest themselves (they were successful only in Chiapas.) 
 
The best bet is that given a generalized perception of a stolen election, the EZLN will put its animosity aside as it did last year when the PRI and the PAN tried to bar AMLO from the ballot, the "desafuero."  But the Zapatistas will join the post-electoral fray calcuutf8g that AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, will seek to channel voters’ anger into political acceptable constraints.
 
The return of Marcos to the national spotlight is an unintended consequence of the Other Campaign.  Determined to use the electoral calendar to unmask the electoral process and the political class that runs it, Marcos’s posture as an anti-candidate has made him as much of a candidate as AMLO, Calderon, and Madrazo.  Indeed, Delegate Zero’s primetime Televisa appearance has inducted him, voluntarily or not, into the very political class that the Other Campaign detests.
 
John Ross is on his way to California to watch basketball.  His new opus "Making Another World Possible:  Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" is in New York being inspected by editors.  Ross will return to Mexico in early June to cover both the final spasms of the presidential race and the continued twitchings of the Other Campaign.  
 
  

   
 

Oh, behave!

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SUPER EGO  

Where’s my babymama! I want my babymama!
 
That’s what I planned to shriek at the Be Nice Party. I was gonna strut myself right up to the bar at Catalyst, the party’s venue, and politely order a babymama cocktail (strawberry vodka, banana liqueur, and pineapple juice, spiked with a flash of grenadine claw, strained and served on the rocks. Britney Spears in a short glass, darling). Then, without warning, I would flip a total schizo switch and attempt a full-on, foaming Whitney-Houston-out-of-butane meltdown, exclaiming the above, appalling every pleasantry-spewing goody-two-socks within earshot. I even intended to strew a few glass pipe shards and fling stray weaves about during my one-queen crackhead kabuki act (visuals). And maybe toss around a couple stained toddler jumpers or a threadbare bib with a faded Little Mermaid on it (poignancy). Britney, Whitney, and Disney — that’ll teach ’em to try to “be nice” at me.

But intentionally getting 86’d from something called Be Nice was far too obvious a reaction, like snarking Madonna at Coachella or shooting Phish in an alley. Me? I’m all about subtlety. I try to keep my scars behind my ears, thank you. So I hit up Be Nice with an openish mind and, instead of babymamas, got soused on redheaded sluts (Jägermeister, peach schnapps, and an ample screech of cran, shaken and quickly poured out — Kathy Griffin in a shot glass, darling). If there’s one thing I’ve learned on life’s Naugahyde stool, it’s that liquor’s the best revenge. And sluts are fun. And Tyra Banks is an alien pterodactyl.

Wow, I sound super gay this week.

So what’s Be Nice about? Once a month, a diverse group of randoms meet in a space “where you can make eye contact without it being ‘cruisy,’” with “music just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough to easily talk over,” to “say hello to someone new (or old)” but not to “impress people with how cool you may want them to think you are.” (“And … it’s early!”) Somewhat contradictorily, this “low-key public event” aims to bring the spirit of Burning Man’s Black Rock City to the heart of San Francisco. But the promoters mean in the sense of BRC’s ethic of PLUR and kindness (BRC PLURK?) not in the sense of “Oh god, it sounds like Burning Man on a stalled elevator — why not just throw in Whoopi Goldberg and call it German expressionist mime kill me now?”

But yes, I expected a cult. What I found was about 40 hip-but-nonhuggy characters sprawled across Catalyst’s booths, nary a silver Nike among them. The first thing that hits you when you enter a club whose music is pitched to pin drop is the odd, nostalgic staccato of conversation. I’m usually surrounded by jibber-jabberers aplenty — hello, mirror — and music can make a great escape pod. Hell, half the time I’m not even sure what I’m saying myself at the club, but that could just be my thick Vicodinian accent. Seriously, though, when was the last time you walked into a roomful of people talking and could hear both sides? It was fuckin’ spooky, Scooby. Waves of mutual exchanges washed over me as I leapt in, latching on to a couple groovy goth chicks and a freelance programmer in golf pants. Soon I was gabbing away, natch. I must have had fun because here are my notes: “Internetz … herpes scarf … deep-fried diet pill.” Oh yes, and Ramsa Murtha Begwagewan is the Anointed One, all praise him.

That there can be a successful club whose hook is friendly conversation may say more about technology’s limits than it does about a possible resurgence of Moose Lodges or canasta parties — although bingo is definitely in. Nightlife, this business we call tipsy, took a sucker punch from its former friend the Interweb, of course. (Why go out when you can get drunk online?) And we’re pretty much used to thinking of clubs at this point as either struggling to imitate the ethernet with hyper-adverbial interactive “concepts” or fetishizing things that computers cannot touch yet. Face-to-face give-and-take now joins classic cruising, live performance, art exhibits, sculptural environments, oxygen bars, professional mixology, vinyl archaeology, sweaty bodies, and chocolate syrup wrestling (www.chocolatesyrupwrestling.com) in clubland’s Museum of the Mostly Mouse-Free.

Clubs. Is there no index they can’t gloss?

One other nightlife experience that can never be truly virtualized: that predawn abandoned bus ride home, muffled sounds of the club still ringing in your ears. I like to think of Muni in those moments as my personal stretch Hummer; the driver is my handsome Israeli chauffeur/bodyguard/secret paramour who will someday betray me, and I’m a (kind of smelly) target of salivating paparazzi. Then I start to feel a tad snobbish and base and also possibly paranoid. But then I have a Snickers and I’m OK.   — Marke B. (superego@sfbg.com)

Be Nice Party

Second Wednesdays, 6–11 p.m.

Catalyst Cocktails

312 Harrison, SF

Free

(415) 621-1722

www.catalystcocktails.com

www.beniceparty.com

Brilliant corners

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› johnny@sfbg.com In the last year of the 20th century, Kodwo Eshun charted musical forms of Afrofuturism in the book More Brilliant than the Sun. Six years into the 21st century, I wonder what Eshun would think of Chelonis R. Jones.

"Camera! Lights! Action!" The words at the very beginning of Jones’s debut Dislocated Genius herald an ambivalent performance. "I didn’t want to burn it now, burn cork to dance and sing," he soon recites with lack of affect over a marching beat. The detached attitude and robotic melody outdo Pete Shelley’s "Homosapien." In the company of this lyric, and Jones’s cover painting for Dislocated Genius, the first utterance in the next song — "Life is hardly ever fair," probably sung by New York–to–Europe voyager Jones, but treated to sound like a sample from an old record player — arrives with vital irony.

The eight-minute track that follows, "Middle Finger Music," moves through menaced verses and curses over the type of automaton beat that Kraftwerk would factory stamp with approval before being overtaken by abstract daydreams and nightmares. Crying gulls and King Tubby–like dub motifs flicker through the song’s lonely, vast inner and outer space as Jones near-whispers the titular words to himself, his voice multitracked into a self-harassing chorus. Here, and on the gloomily humorous next song, "Vultures" (sample lines: "They circle-dive inside my dome … They never leave my ass alone"), paranoia pervades the atmosphere, which Jones renders like the imaginative painter he happens to be when he isn’t making music.

As a writer and singer, Jones possesses many voices, and if on "Middle Finger Music" he both listens to them and claims they’ll lead him to his doom, there and elsewhere on Dislocated Genius they yield extraordinary results. This recording’s avant-reaches have bewildered some club music writers who know of Jones strictly as the name behind a pair of sublime and relatively straightforward — if poetic — soulful house-inflected singles, "I Don’t Know" and "One and One." On those tracks (as well as another mathematics-of-love number, "49 Percent," recorded with Röyksopp), Jones’s voice trembles and swoons like that of Off the Wall–era Michael Jackson — that is, when he isn’t more freely vamping like a diva. Describing a movie-ready tearful good-bye by train tracks, "I Don’t Know”’s vocal outdoes some of the sensational male testifying of early Chicago house: Jones laughs bitterly to himself and seems to cradle his own pain while reaching deep into his chest for low notes as he feels a — that word again — "burn" in describing his crushed passion. He can also do butch swagger — witness the quarrelsome and smart (rather than daft) punk of "L.A. Mattress."

Jones’s talent is exciting because it reaches from pop melody to stranger realms; time and time again, the unique perspective of his songs dissolves into embattled technological chatter. The chorus of "The Hair" is as memorable as the one to Wire’s "I Am the Fly," and even more layered in its critique of a certain greed, and yet it’s sung in a tone that’s a sly update on Smokey Robinson. In More Brilliant than the Sun, Eshun explored "Myth Science" through written or typed words; Jones’s "Mythologies (Myths I and II)" does so in sound, with skepticism — his voice is processed in a way that brings the sweet but stinging theoretical distance of Scritti Politti’s honeybee R&B to mind. A motif from "Mythologies" returns in "Deer in the Headlights," further proving the formidable post-Baldwin, post-Basquiat methods within his fractured madness.

By the end of Dislocated Genius, as "Debaser" forms an abstract contemporary take on the stripped-down funk of very early Prince, Jones has made it clear that blackface is only the surface and the start of a defiant creative imagination just as comfortable being mauve, olive green, or "ho-ish pink." In the final minutes of this extraordinary album, he’s turned Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat” into a love song dedicated to someone who "defecate(s) words like Molly Bloom," and managed to make the vocal melody float like a spectral ship on an ocean at night.

He may be a "laughingstock since the age of 13," but this self-described "gaudy cross of Streisand and Curtis Mayfield" is still traveling. Where is he headed next? A place I’d like to hear. SFBG

“Dance/Screen: Innovative International Dance Films”

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PREVIEW Dance on film looks flat, distorted, and without nuances, right? Yes and no. In general, dance does not take kindly to the screen. Good enough for documenting or teaching, films simply don’t convey the effervescent presence of a live performance. But in some cases the medium goes beyond simply recording and actually partners with the choreography in a way that can be every bit as exciting as a live performance. As a genre, dance films are fairly new and, often, still don’t get no respect. Charlotte Shoemaker, who curates San Francisco Performances’ "Dance/Screen" series, is doing her best to change that perception. Every May she packs a collection of what she can find internationally into a one-evening program. This year that includes the 60-minute CounterPhrases, by Flemish filmmaker and composer Thierry de Mey, Anna Teresa de Keersmaker’s longtime collaborator. De Keersmaker is one of Europe’s most influential, rigorous, and imaginative choreographers, and CounterPhrases is based on 10 of her dances, each set to a different piece of contemporary music. The program also includes Miranda Pennell’s British homage to Wild West fights, Fisticuff, and Arcus, a short directed by Alla Kogan and Jeff Silva and choreographed by Nicola Hawkins. (Rita Felciano)

DANCE/SCREEN: INNOVATIVE INTERNATIONAL DANCE FILMS Tues/23, 7 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Screening Room, 701 Mission, SF

$7. (415) 392-2545, www.ybca.org

Measuring stick

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

It’s easy to find reliable stats on penis size, but is there anything out there on average vaginal width and depth? I know: The vagina isn’t a constant size, it expands with arousal, etc., but the same could be said of penises, and lab-coated experts have managed to measure them. I’ve tried to measure with a dildo, and been surprised to notice that even at my most aroused, I can only get it about five inches in. Is this unusually shallow?

Also, does it make a difference to most men? If a guy’s got a long dick and the woman is (anatomically) shallow, does that substantially decrease the fun? Or is it analogous to the vagina having almost all its nerves in the first third, so that many women don’t care all that much about length? Can you ask around, even if there are no concrete facts?

Love,

Shallow Girl

Dear Girl:

Running your letter here counts as "asking around," doesn’t it? Is anyone interested in marking off a seven- or eight-inch dildo (is there anything a Sharpie cannot do?) and sending me the results? (Do not send me the dildo itself, thanks.) Numbers will be crunched. Maybe I’ll make a chart.

It’s much harder to measure vaginal depth than penile length, and that (along with the fact that fewer women than men actually give a crap about this issue) is the probable explanation for the dearth of info. Not only does the vagina constantly shape-shift, as you noted, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus on what we’d be measuring if we did bother to measure. Many of the sites I checked out, for instance, cite distance to cervix as the measurement of interest, and anyone who’s spent much time up anybody’s hoo-ha ought to know that there’s a little fractal fillip of space like the tail on whatever you’d call a single paisley (a paisle?) extending under and behind the cervix, even when the hoo-ha in question is at rest. At play, when the vagina widens and loosens, and especially as the uterus begins to lift up and out of the way, taking the cervix with it, this space may become capacious enough to stash any number of interesting objects. A fist, say, or one of those bananas an emergency room doctor told me he was always fishing out of college girls who’d hygienically, if ill-advisedly, peeled their fruit before deploying it. So what are we measuring? And how are we determining where, exactly, the vagina begins, let alone ends? Are we including the vulva, some of which are bony while others are plush? And what about position? Have you tried measuring while kneeling, as well as while supine or prone? Rear-entry as well as from the front?

Men generally do enjoy the feeling of being completely engulfed during intercourse, and inconveniently for us but happily for them, the base of the penis is not substantially less sensitive than the front half (although most men do have more feeling in the head, or glans). Most couples, however, can pretty easily achieve that "all the way in" feeling by adjusting positions, propping things on pillows, and so on. If that doesn’t work, a hand, yours or his, can be put to good use here, but you know, I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with you, and why solve a problem you don’t even have?

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I think your response to "I Wanna Be Great," the girl whose boyfriend kept (unfavorably) comparing her with his ex, was on point. What I find strange is that women always want to know "how good" they are in comparison to past partners. I always respond that I cannot compare sex partners because each partner means different things to me. I have no desire to know how I compare with past partners. Is there some gene in women that makes them want to know this? I do usually tell them that they are the best and that is why I’m with them (hey, a little white lie for the sake of the relationship can’t be that bad). Why do women want this information?

Love,

Confounded

Dear Con:

I assume your only experience has been with women, so I suppose it’s natural to go looking for the "rate me!" trait on the X chromosome, but let me tell you, you won’t find it there. In my fairly vast experience (answering questions! I’m not talking about the other kind here), it is, if anyone, men who fret the most about performance and worry that a partner’s former partners will somehow outshine them. But I can’t prove it’s mostly guys who annoy in this very particular fashion, and it doesn’t really even matter. The truth is, everybody does it; you just haven’t done it with everybody.

And by the way, your little white lie sounds a bit cheesy — and don’t think the girls haven’t noticed. Flatter, but don’t blow smoke. It isn’t nice.

Love,

Andrea

{Empty title}

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(Hip-O/Universal)

PRESS PLAY Extreme emotional response is never quite as simple as stroking an erogenous zone or pressing a few buttons keyed to childhood memory, but like select performances in The Last Waltz, Marvin Gaye — The Real Thing in Performance reduced — or rather, elevated — me to tears.

This "first official" Motown-approved DVD anthology of TV performances comes freighted with expectations as large and moss-lined as a certain label head’s ego — and as baroque and biblical as the Gaye story itself (the very stuff of Shakespearean tragedies/Hollywood biopics, with the singer finding musical succor in his father’s church and later death at Marvin Sr.’s hands). Nonetheless, the execution is — mercifully — graceful, with performances drawn from biggies like American Bandstand and lesser-known programs such as Hollywood A Go-Go, intercut with mostly Dinah Shore interviews. Extras include a cappella studio vocal tracks of Gaye hits.

Invaluable is concert footage of Gaye on piano playing off a conga player on "What’s Going On" in 1972 (pulled from Save the Children) and a groovily camp "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" from a 1969 Hollywood show. These excerpts remind you that — yes, you heard right — Gaye was the genuine article (ever the son of a preacher man, he reveals in a talk with the doting Shore that he doesn’t remember writing What’s Going On and thus regards it as "divine"). Radiating an easy sexuality and often distractingly surrounded by wildly frugging go-go girls and later Solid Gold–style strutters, Gaye finds his true, sublime fit with Tammi Terrell, dueting on "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough" in mod street togs at Montreal’s Expo ’67, in one of only two known TV appearances by the pair. The duo manages to project a sheer joy that encapsulates the heartbreaking promise of an era on the precipice. Even the obvious lip-synching — emphasized by the fact that Motown stereo masters replace the mono TV audio — can’t hide Gaye’s heaven-sent powers as a performer, with a riptide of feeling and grace pulling close to the surface of his always handsome, often sleek image. (Kimberly Chun)

NOISE: Have another slab of John Vanderslice

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Duncan Scott Davidson interviewed Tiny Telephone honcho and Barsuk artist John Vanderslice for a piece in the May 3 issue of the Guardian. Here’s more from his interview with the SF singer-songwriter, who performs tonight, May 12, at the Independent.

jvsm.jpg
Bright lights, big city, and Mr. Vanderslice.

On running Tiny Telephone, during an interview at the studio sometime in January

John Vanderslice: Basically, I keep my rates under market, so [the engineers] are always busy. I kind of use that leverage with them to have them be undermarket, too. So we’re affordable enough for a band. Every band has access to computers now, so you have to be. My whole goal was just to be sold out all the time. My business model was to, without question, have a waitlist every month. You have a client base where, if someone drops a day, it doesn’t matter. We just send out one e-mail to another band that’s on the list, you know what I mean? We’d just rather be generating 30 days of income at a much lower price.

When I started the studio, the reason I did it is that, another studio that we loved that we were working at, Dancing Dog in Oakland, closed. So we toured all the other studios, and they all had these sliding rates. It’s all bullshit. The typical studio business model is retarded. You know what it reminds me of, is the airline kind of model of wildly sliding rates based on the desperation of the client, you know?

[Vanderslice talks about JT Leroy at length before realizing he’s strayed off topic.]

JV: I don’t care if we talk about the studio at all. I mean, this has been central to my life for maybe the past eight and a half years and it’s starting to be an organism. It’s like a child, and all the sudden this kid is like a 12, 13 years old and I can now leave the house and not get a babysitter.

BG: Are you afraid you might come back and find the flowerpot broken, Brady Bunch style?

JV: Or I might come back and the kid’s huffing paint or something? There are things that happen when I’m not paying attention in the studio, but the crew down here…

BG: Do bands get loaded up in here? I mean, not like…in a bad, non-professional, non-rock ‘n’ roll way…

JV: I would say the insight I have into working bands is fascinating. I would say that the more successful the band is, both creatively and financially, the more they’re like an office. There’s laptops, wireless. There’s like organic Columbia Gorge lemonade, and there’s no alcohol. The more it’s like a weekend-warrior project, the more it’s a band that’s frustrated or trying to generate energy like they’re having a career, the more there’s cocaine and pot and alcohol.

BG: Yeah! We’re fuckin’ it up!

JV: “We’re gettin’ it goin’!” Sometimes it’ll be 4 p.m., and they’ll be kind of a little bit out of control. And what you want to say is, “You’re, like, at a construction site right now. You should be really mindful.”

BG: Well, they’re fucking paying $400 a day.

JV: They’re paying $600 dollars a day. Plus the tape.

BG: And if they want to fuck it off, more power to ‘em.

JV: The thing is you want to remind them, “Dude, you’re going to be in here for 12, 14 hours.” Tons of bands come in here and make a record in three or four days. Some bands are so efficient in the studio, it’s like a marvel. I’m not nearly as efficient. I don’t necessarily have to be as efficient, but it is expensive for me to book time in here. Like everybody else, when I book time in here, because it’s sold out all the time, it costs me $400 a day. I pay engineers what they charge. I pay rates to engineers.

What studios try to do is they try to be booked between 10 and 15 days a month, and they try to charge a fucking shitload of money. And what they do is that they have a lot of open days that are those days…because people call all the time, “Hey, are you open tomorrow? Are you open next week?” They’re always the worst clients. The least prepared, they always have a problem. They always have a story. Like, they tried to save money in some other studio, and they went there and it was fucked up.

The kind of clients I like — we’ll get a band that calls us up, like when we did Transatlanticism here, Death Cab called us like seven months before the dates and they’re like, “We want May 1 to June 20.” Those days never moved. It was like, booked. The deposit was in. Then seven months later, they show up, make a record, and leave. And not one day was ever shifted. The bands that are like that, those are the bands you want to have in your studio.

And there’s tons of bands that are not really… they’re making music for themselves or to put on their Myspace page, but they’re just as deliberate and they’re just as farsighted. That’s how this studio runs smoothly. I’ve cleared out a lot of the time for those bands.

BG: Any band that you thought was just totally not getting it and selling millions. Not the fact that they were selling, but that they were lame. Would you not record them?

JV: No. I think that we’re like a hospital. We’re like a responsible hospital with good gear that can only meet the patient in the middle somewhere. Like if you come in here and you’re a meth addict and you’ve been working the street for 15 years, we can only help you up to a point. But if you’re a healthy person and you need a heart operation, well, we have great equipment, right? We have good doctors. They’re not going to cut you open and leave shit in your body. We have sterile equipment. I tell engineers this metaphor and they’re like, “Dude, whatever. You’re overthinking.” But I really do think there’s something here. You know, we can’t save anyone’s life, all we can do is kind of not make mistakes. And also not provide gear that’s either dangerous or is out of date or is poorly maintained, poorly calibrated…

BG: You’re like a halfway house.

JV: Yeah. I’m a halfway house. Or a restaurant. Or a dry cleaners. The things that excite me are when we get things out of genre. When someone comes in and they say, “I’m going to make a 40-minute concept record that’s based on a sea shanty that’s about being on a whaling ship.”

BG: With their bouzouki.

JV: Yeah, with their bouzouki. And they get on ladders, and they have pails of water—I’m not kidding you, they do — and they do a concept album. And there’s no electric guitars, there’s all these weird instruments, it’s very obtuse, and it’s interesting. It’s anti-genre. It’s anti-rock ‘n’ roll. That’s fascinating to me.

Guitars or no guitars?

BG: When you saw the dude’s bouzouki, you said, “Anything but an electric guitar excites me.” You have old guitar amps…

JV: I love guitars.

BG: And you play guitar…

JV: I love guitars.

BG: Was guitar your first instrument?

JV: I love guitar. It’s just that, the thing is, it’s like, when you’re building a house, a guitar is like a hammer. It’s very useful. But if you’re putting in windows, there are other things that need to be there to balance out. There’s some sonic space that is not available when electric guitars are everywhere.

BG: In your own records, the last three, you seem to be going away from guitars.

JV: Yeah, going away from guitars, but the interesting thing is, the other day, I was thinking, “You know what? The next record, I need to make a guitar record.” Maybe it is because I’m collecting all these amps. And I do love guitar, but I think that for me, it’s more likely that I will deconstruct music when I see people stepping back from rock ‘n’ roll, you know, strictures, if guitars are not part of the equation. And they’re forced to build up melodic elements with keyboards, with rhythmic instruments, with strings, horns — things that are outside of the realm. I was listening to Otis Redding on the way over here. There’s some guitar in that. There’s a lot of other things going on in that. There are background voices used as harmonic, you know, shifting agents — things that pull you from key to key, that bring you into the bridge, that provide counterpoint to the vocal melody and the horns.

[JV starts to talk about the tug between digital and analog technology.]

On one side I do think that the Internet is the best thing that’s ever happened. Also, I live on the internet. Like, I’m surfing all the time. This studio was put together by the information I learned on the Internet. Most of my communication is through e-mail. The Web site is a very important part of my creative output. You know there’s like a thousand photos on the site? There’s tons of music that’s never been pressed that’s on the site. Tour diaries. That’s very important to me.

But, on the other side, the craft of making albums: I’m a purist. I’m an old, hard core recording purist. And the standards, and the quality of recording have been in a freefall since… Listen, the good and bad thing about consumer audio is that everyone can afford it and everyone can own it. I think that’s great. I think that’s actually better than the downside. The downside is that the quality of everything goes downhill. I don’t gripe about other people’s recording because I think that, if you’re going to complain, the proof is in the pudding: What the fuck are you doing? Sometimes people come up to me and they’re like, “I like this album, but I don’t like this album.” I don’t say anything, but I want to say, like, “Dude, I don’t care either way. Make your own record.” It doesn’t matter to me whether you like my record or you don’t like my record, and it’s OK either way. But the thing is, you need to make your own shit regardless of whether you like something or don’t like it.

BG: There’s the analog/digital tension, but it seems like you do stuff with analog that’s sort of like a sampling, a deconstruction, like you take a digital technique and analog-ize it.

JV: Absolutely. Well, I have been heavily influenced in the way that certain people make records. The Books. Four Tet. Radiohead is probably the most influential band for me of the past five or six years. I mean, I’m totally obsessed with Radiohead. Everything that they’ve done, really from OK Computer to Hail to the Thief. I think Hail to the Thief is one of my favorite records of all time. It kind of actually flew under the radar, but from an idea point of view: You can hear the process of six smart people in a room thinking about music. It’s fascinating on that level.

All things being equal, A and B, analog sounds so much better to me than digital. And it’s not that I’m just some Luddite in the studio. We have Pro Tools HD in here every other day. We have installed a Pro Tools rig, we have Radar, we have Sonic Solutions, we have every high end converter in here all the time. To me it sounds awful. Still. And I advise people all the time, like, “Listen, we’ll make more money off you if you record digitally. That’s all there is to it. You’ll take longer — even though you think it’s faster. You’ll edit everything, you’ll obsess.

I don’t care about the editing. It’s not the “cheating” thing that bugs me. Scott and I will be recording and flying back tapes on the reel — Scott Solter’s my engineer — and like, we’ll think, “God, if we could only just do this on a hard drive.” We don’t like to do things by hand — it’s just that they sound so much better. It’s like a hand-fashioned piece of furniture versus something that comes out of a machine. We can’t get the detail, the nuance, the taper, the finish right unless we do it by hand.

BG: And the whole digital thing just seems like a cultural, reactionary…you know, “it’s newer, it’s faster, it’s easier.” And I think artists seem to overestimate that. It’s like when microwave ovens came out, and everyone’s like, “You can cook a Thanksgiving dinner in it!” And a year later they were like, “You can heat coffee in it.”

JV: Yeah. Unlike the hospital metaphor, which is like a cart that has one wheel on it, the microwave metaphor’s perfect. It’d be better if I just didn’t tell bands anything. Use whatever format you want. But what I always tell bands is, “Listen. A good analog tape deck, properly calibrated, is like a fucking Viking stove, or a wood oven at Chez Panisse, where they put in the pizzas and the crostini or whatever, and your Pro Tools system—and believe me, I’m telling you this because I own the system. I paid a lot of money for it. People when they buy gear, their ears turn off. Because they don’t want the truth, you know what I mean? It’s like a fucking microwave! That’s all there is to it. It’s faster…

BG: A big, fancy microwave.

JV: Yeah, it’s a really fancy microwave with 50,000 adjustments. “Bread Crustener,” you know what I mean? It’s worthless.

[JV focuses on conspiracy theories and politics.]

JV: The stuff that interests me is Iran-Contra, Total Information Awareness. I’m much more into ground level, you know, stuff that’s happening right now. What did we do in Columbia? You know, what are we doing with the FARC? You know, why are we there?

I’m fascinated by politics. I’m interested in the most mundane things. Like, for instance, we found Saddam Hussein in a foxhole. One of the Marines on that team comes out a couple months later and says, “Listen, we fuckin’ found him in a house. We put him in that thing, covered it, got the film crews there…” That’s where I’m interested in. I’m interested in Guantanamo.

In other words, I’m interested in mainstream stuff. It’s not Area 51.

Later, John Vanderslice meets for another interview at Martha and Bros. on 24th Street.

BG: Do you realize that whatever you say is going to be completely overruled by Enya, or whatever is going on there.

JV: Should we check to make sure it’s not too loud? I can have them turn it down.

D: You’ve got that kind of pull?

JV: Oh yeah. I used to live down the street. I’ve been here, like, 9,000 times.

[JV asks them to turn it down, saying, “I really appreciate it. That’s great. Thank you.” Then he talks about coffee and tea.]

JV: Well, for me, I’m a tea guy. I actually drink coffee every two weeks. For me, the cleanest way to get caffeine is through really thick black tea.

BG: I get stomach aches from that.

JV: I know, you have to get used to it. It’s like hash or pot. It’s just different. You how you’re like, “Well, pot is kind of superior,” you know?

BG: Are you a big pothead?

JV: No. I don’t do any drugs. I barely drink. I mean, I like the idea of doing drugs. I have no moral quandary with drugs whatsoever. It’s impossible… because of singing…

[Coffee grinding noise.]

BG: Can you tell them not to grind any coffee?

JV: Yeah, totally. I’ll just unplug…no, I’ll trip the breaker. Singers get neurotic for a reason. I used to look at other singers and think, “Wow,” you know? Like, you’d read an interview with someone, and they would have these rituals. They’d have like steam machines or all these bizarre contraptions I thought totally unnecessary. But the thing is, the more shows you play, the more volatile your livelihood is. You’re tied to your health and your body. You know, anything that messes with my mojo. Alcohol. Never drink alcohol on tour. Never.

BG: You don’t drink it to “take the edge off” or whatever?

JV: I wish I could. But alcohol for me, it does something to my vocal chords that — I lose a little bit of control. I lose some resonance in my voice. So I never drink alcohol on tour. And then, there are times when you’re at the Mercury in New York and they give you 25 drink tickets and they’re like, “You can have whatever you want.” They’ve got all these single malts. I’m totally into single malt scotch. If they’ve got some weird shit I’ve never heard about, I want to drink it. So yeah, it’s a bummer, definitely.

BG: Do you do it after the set?

JV: I never drink after. It affects my voice the next day. Alcohol dries out your vocal chords. Like, if you put rubbing alcohol on your hand, you’ll immediately feel what it does to your skin.

BG: It dehydrates you.

JV: It dehydrates you, but because you’re passing it over your vocal chords, you’re a little bit more susceptible. Also cigarette smoke. It’s a problem.

Spy vs. spy

BG: What about this domestic spying bit? That sounds like a Vanderslice song.

JV: Yeah, that’s a hard one. I haven’t really felt the need to write about Total Information Awareness, yet.

BG: What’s Total Information Awareness? Is that the NSA’s acronym or something?

JV: That was the program that John Poindexter, from Iran Contra, was in charge of. It was like, basically, “we’re going to data-mine everything.” Of course, all the civil-libertarians on both sides of the fence go crazy when that stuff’s happening. Did you see the paper today? Grover Norquist, the anti-tax guy, basically the guy who spearheaded the repeal of Proposition 13 in California — the anti-tax California guy — is coming out now saying that he’s totally opposed to data mining. This is a hardcore, right wing constituency that Bush has tapped for a long time, and this guy is now coming after him.

BG: Well, now it’s without a warrant.

JV: Yeah. And that presses all their buttons, you know? That, hardcore, right wing, civil libertarian branch, which is fine with me. It’s great.

BG: OK, here it is. This is kind of random. “I’d harbored hope that the intelligence that once inhabited novels or films would ingest rock. I was, perhaps, wrong.” That’s Lou Reed. You seem to have a novelistic…

JV: There’s a lot of great lyricists working in music. I mean, you could look at the new Destroyer record. You could look at The Sunset Tree. You could look the new Silver Jews record. I mean, there are a lot of very literate, very verbally adept and complex albums coming out. I’ve spent a lot of time with those records. I think they’re rich, and interesting, and well-written enough to stand up on their own from a language point of view.

And you get into hip-hop — all the verbal inventions, most of it is in hip-hop. It’s not necessarily in indie rock.

There’s a lot of people operating on different levels. You could say, there’s a lot of arty stuff, purely political — Immortal Technique. He’s the farthest thing from a gangsta that you could get. Or MF Doom. Murs. There’s a lot of these guys that are super arty. Any Def Jux things or Anticon stuff, all that stuff is far away from “thug life.”

BG: Do you listen to a lot of hip-hop?

JV: Yeah. Like tons. The other thing is, you can even see people like 50 Cent or the Game on a different level. I think that when you understand that there’s a coded humor that’s going on in hip-hop. Like when 50 Cent says, “We drive around town with guns the size of Lil’ Bow Wow,” now, is that a threat, or is that a joke? I’m sorry, I laugh when I hear that. There’s so much humor in 50 Cent. C’mon, he lives in a $20 million dollar mansion in Connecticut. There’s a comedy side of the stuff.

And then there’s other mainstream people like Nas. Incredible lyricist, very complicated. He’s like a sentimentalist. I wouldn’t even say he’s a thug. He’s just always writing about memory. He’s so sentimental.

[I hip JV to Andre Nickatina.]

BG: The latest album [Pixel Revolt] is more straightforward. Before, you’ve done cut and paste stuff. It’s more linear. I mean, if you’re talking about hip-hop, there’s sampling. What do you think about that?

JV: Well, it’s hard for me. At some moments I would agree with you that the record is more linear. I mean, you’re saying that the new album is more linear, maybe orchesterally more simple, and more placid, more patient. But we’re doing remixes right now — Scott Solter is remixing the records. And we’re going in and listening to individual tracks.

It doesn’t seem that way to me, for better or for worse. It seems like there’s a lot of textures and a lot of very understated stuff that’s more complicated than on other records. There’s a brute force element that’s missing from that record on purpose. A couple weeks ago, before we started doing the remixes, I would’ve agreed with you, but now when I go back and I hear all these individual tracks, and I hear the textures that are underneath the vocals and some of the main harmonic instruments, to me there’s a lot of cross-rhythms. There’s a lot of harmonic shifts. There’s a lot of dissonance. It’s maybe more varied. It’s more of a relief. Like, Cellar Door has a lot of distortion, has a lot of compression, it’s all forward. Those impulses I have to over-orchestrate, and to, you know, over overdub, have been buried, but they’re still there.

BG: Why the remixes? You did a remix of Cellar Door.

JV: Yeah, called MGM Endings. One reason is that I put it out myself. I can sell them and make money off of them.

BG: You would love Nickatina. Basically, his big underground album that you can’t find is Cocaine Raps Vol. I. There’s this big thing about comparing selling tapes out of the trunk to selling coke.

[Talk turns to Tom Waits, recording at Prairie Sun, and then vocal chord damage and those who have used it in their music.]

BG: Being drawn to that Radiohead thing: You don’t use effects on your voice. Your sound guy doesn’t flip a lot of…

JV: And on records, I have these militant rules about what we can and can’t do as far as using effects. My rule for a long time has been, if we want an effect on an instrument, we have to record it that way. It’s all analog, we don’t use digital recording whatsoever.

[Death Cab for Cutie’s Grammy nomination is discussed and JV mentions that he was part of the committee that chose nominees for Best Engineered Album.]

JV: I was part of a group of people that met in the Bay Area. There were four of us that met at the Plant, and we voted on, for the National Committee, who we thought should be moved into the five spots, right? Then you can vote, as a Grammy member, you can vote on the next round. So basically we were like, pre-voting for the pool of five albums.

It’s interesting, because you have a lot of good albums that are in the pool. The pool is pretty huge. I mean that year there was some very good classical stuff, some really good jazz stuff, Elvis Costello…

BG: That’s apples and oranges.

JV: It’s retarded. What is this, a race? I did it because, when I got invited, I was kind of like, “Wow.” I was honored to be even — to even sit in a room with engineers that I really liked and get to talk about albums was fantastic for me. But, after the process, I thought, this is polluted.

BG: The engineering standards, or what you’re going for, your aesthetics, are totally different.

JV: And people in the room are pretty savvy. They have mixed feelings about the process. So they weren’t all gung ho, pro-Grammy, but I think that they felt that if they weren’t involved, then there would be decisions made… They wanted to be part of the decisions made to push good-sounding records up to the next level.

Tweaking in the studio

BG: Okay, so you’re interested in fucking around with your voice, as long as it fits into the rules of doing it live.

JV: I like using the analog instruments of the studio, meaning analog compressors and mic pre’s and effects as instruments. The great thing for me is, when you start combining all these things — the keyboard into some mic pre you found in a pawn shop into some weird compressor into delay. You get some almost unknowable reaction between these pieces of gear that were made in different decades, for different reasons, for different specs, for the BBC or for an airline company. And chasing down that kind of shit is fascinating for me. That’s part of the reason why I got into the craft of recording.

BG: Back to the studio—you’re annoying people, plugging in all these different things…

JV: It goes beyond that. To me, there is no sacredness to me of someone’s performance. People come in and spend a day recording something and then we erase it immediately. With them right there, like, “none of this is working, we’re going to erase it and move on.” I do it to myself all the time. I erase my own performances all the time. It’s not a feel-good session. You have to have a flamethrower mentality when you’re making records.

BG: So with Spoon and Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle…

JV: Well, those are different. You have to be more conservative working with other bands. It’s not appropriate. John’s singing a song about avoiding family trauma by playing his stereo loud and listening to dance music. It’s a beautiful narrative; it’s a wonderful song. It’s not necessary that you play a vibraphone through an old Federal military tape rack.

BG: The Spoon album’s sort of a deconstructed album.

JV: I would say that they’re more appropriate…

BG: Everyone’s recorded at Tiny Telephone, but you’ve only recorded a couple of people yourself. Like for instance, Steve Albini, another analog master, sought after everywhere. Everyone goes to him to get the “Albini sound” — they want it recorded like that, in that studio, sounding like that. And then, half the time, people come away with, “Well, he’s a dogmatic asshole. That’s not how we wanted it to sound.” But they did want it to sound like that.

JV: Well, the engineer in the equation is Scott Solter. He’s the guy I always work with. I mean, Albini’s a recordist. Albini is not there to become editorially involved with production decisions or with performance decisions. He is there simply as a recordist. In many ways, he’s an old school engineer. And once you understand that philosophy, you shouldn’t have any beefs with it, or you’re in the wrong place. You should understand that he’s going to set up microphones that he likes and understands, in a room that he likes and understands, and use gear that he thinks accurately describes what’s happening from a sonic perspective, and that’s it. That’s his end of the bargain.

BG: Well, there’s always the “the drums are too loud; the vocals are too low.” I love his records…

JV: I think he’s a total genius. I think you could listen to Rallying the Dominoes, the Danielson Family record, and well, you couldn’t necessarily say anything about the balance of that record compared to like, Jesus Lizard. It’s a totally different recording. He may perceive that, you know, the drums are loud in the Jesus Lizard, so they should be placed loudly in the mix. Because that’s what’s happening to them when you play in a room, you know?

But the thing is, Scott and I work tag team. Tiny Telephone is very separate from us working as a team in production and engineering, because the only people that I’ve ever worked with has been Spoon, and I was relatively a small part of that new Spoon record. Like basically, I recorded with them for eight days. They probably spent 60 days on that record. So I would imagine that they had a lot of other decision makers, you know, Mike McCarthy. Jim Eno, the drummer, is a great engineer in his own right. The Darnielle stuff is different because I feel that I understand where he’s coming from and where he wants to go in the studio and I can translate his narratives into a different setting from him sitting in front of his Sony boombox, you know, six inches away.

BG: Going back to the whole thing about rock as literature. I think Cellar Door sort of plays itself out like that, even though they’re not necessarily the same characters. It’s very novelistic. Most rock bands are very first person. Do you get a lot of misunderstanding on that?

JV: Oh, yeah. Someone asked me about my two sons the other day. I mean, yes, people either infer that I’m almost unglued psychologically or they infer that I’ve had a family history and a romantic history that’s really dangerous and fucked up.

BG: John Darnielle has a lot of that stuff, right? But he still does a lot of fictional stuff.

JV: He does a lot of fictional stuff. I think he does more fictional stuff that people realize. He lives in a nice house. He has a wonderful wife. Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have demons the size of Detroit in his brain.

BG: I think he does. “I dreamt of a house / Haunted by all you tweakers with your hands out.” I love that line.

JV: Dude, I played with the Mountain Goats. I did a West Coast and an East Coast tour, and I sang that song with John every night. That’s probably one of my top three songs of all time.

BG: With your stuff, though, how much of it is…? I might be totally wrong on this, but you can tell with a song like “Speed Lab.”

JV: But “Speed Lab” is a metaphor for starting a band or starting a studio, and having those things implode. So “Speed Lab” is, while it’s not about a speed lab, a meth lab…

First off, I have a great sympathy toward a lot of different people. I have sympathy for people who work in methamphetamine labs. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who work in meth labs, they might have been backed into it, it might be a family business. Who knows? And, to me, you know…[sings] “Recording Studio, brr nanna nanna…” You know what I mean? Speed lab…let’s put a finer point on it. What’s interesting about writing about stuff is that you sharpen the blade, that you exaggerate, that you explode personal experience. And become so super egocentric that every slight becomes this great, damning. Listen, if you really write down Morrissey’s gripes on a piece of paper. OK: “Lonely, sad…”

BG: “Horny.”

JV: Yeah, “horny.” Maybe, yeah—“would die in a car wreck.” That’s not the beauty of writing. Like “Up Above the Sea” on Cellar Door. That song, I mean, do I really have a bluebird that haunts me? But is it about depression? Maybe. Is it about Saddam Hussein? Maybe.

BG: Do you think that you’re constantly looking to metaphor-ize your own experience?

JV: Yeah, definitely. Because, part of it is that it’s an allegory. I feel saner. I feel more human and I feel more normal and more cope with stuff if I write music. So evidently, this is very important that I translate something that’s going on up here onto the page. But my own aesthetics dictate that narrative is interesting or it’s egregious.

BG: Some people are naturally diarists. Andre Gide, Jim Carroll…that’s what they’re known for. Do you think that there’s something in you that’s naturally, in music writing? That’s a fictionalist?

JV: Yeah. Absolutely. I would’ve been comfortable if I’d had the skills to be a novelist. And I would’ve been comfortable if I’d had the connections and the wherewithal to do it all again, to be in movies. What I’d really like to do is make movies. I mean, I would never do it. I think people who switch crafts, I mean — good luck. It would take me 20 years to figure out cameras. I would like to be a cinematographer.

BG: Do you ever write?

JV: I stopped. I did a couple of interviews for DIW, I interviewed Grandaddy, I did a Radiohead Hail to the Thief review, I did an article about Pro Tools, and that was it. I was like, “Man, it takes so much. Writing is hard.” It took me forever to edit myself, to finish a piece. I’m very wary of anything that takes me away from writing music. It really is hard enough. Touring is, like, you put walls up.

BG: Do you do a lot of in-stores and stuff like that?

JV: I came up with this idea that on the day Pixel Revolt came out, that I was going to play a bunch of free shows around the country. And that it was all going to be non-transactional, all ages. Doesn’t matter where it was. Acoustic guitar and voice, that’s all it was going to be. And it could be anywhere. So I played in, like, a bake sale. I played tons of record stores. I played an art gallery. A house party. I played a backyard. I played tons of on-airs. Between the shows, I probably played 35 times that month. And they were all open free shows.

I was able to rent a car, drive from place to place, and just show up with a guitar and play. We would have contests. Like I played at Amoeba in LA, and I invited everyone at the show to bowling that night. We had enough people for seven lanes of bowling. So then we have this contest: Whatever lane had the highest score would get into my next show for free.

Anything that’s like, getting out of a dark club with a bunch of graffiti. That’s fine, but when you do that every fucking night. It’s like, anything to get you away from that is great.

Dishin

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For a complete schedule of the 10th annual Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival shows and events (May 14–22), go to www.mcmf.org. Check Noise, the Guardian‘s music blog, at www.sfbg.com/blogs/music, for more Mission Creek festival coverage.

Ane Brun

This Scandinavian neofolkie — it’s probably safe to say — is the only musician at Mission Creek who’s also had the pleasure of performing alongside Annie Lennox. Fittingly, sweet dreams are indeed made of the beautifully understated hymns on her putf8um-selling (overseas, at least) second album, A Temporary Dive (DetErMine/V2). The recording radiates so much warmth that even its bleakest lyrics — e.g., "I’m crawling on your floor, vomiting and defeated" — can’t help but sound strangely comforting. With Volunteer Pioneer, Tingsek, Ben and Barbara, and Fiji Mermaid. Sun/14, 8 p.m., Argus Lounge, 3187 Mission, SF. Call for price. (415) 824-1447 (Jimmy Draper)

Cloud Cult

Cult leader Craig Minowa suffered the loss of his two-year-old son in 2002 and has since used the tragedy to become an obsessively prolific writer and eco-activist. Hailing from Minneapolis, Cloud Cult offers a tie-dyed indie with the slightest hint of trip-hop and includes multimedia, such as live painters, as part of its stage show. With Hijack the Disco, Ebb and Flow, and Radius. Tues/16, 8 p.m. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. $8–$10. (415) 647-2888 (Izquierdo)

Edmund Welles Bass Clarinet Quartet

The bass clarinet is the granddaddy of all woodwinds, with a deep, warm tone and a punch, if used the right way. No one does it better than "the world’s only composing group of four bass clarinets." This foursome tackles Radiohead’s "Creep," original compositions with a metal sensibility, and even the Knight Rider theme with skill, humor, and a taste for the experimental. Tues/16, 9 p.m. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. $6. (415) 970-9777 (Eliana Fiore)

Ettrick

With 6/6/06 so rapidly approaching, it’s comforting to know that we’ve got hell’s house band right here in our own city. Enter Ettrick, a sax and drums duo that offers up a bludgeoning amalgam of black metal and skronk sure to summon the apocalypse. Jacob Felix Huele and Jay Korber rotate instruments to create an excruciating free jazz that feels like being trapped in a metal shed during a thunderstorm. Noise fans have no business missing this show. With Moe! Staiano, Tussle, Jackie O-Motherfucker, and Weasel Walter Quartet. May 20, 8 p.m., The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. Call for price. (415) 864-8855 (Kate Izquierdo)

Hello Fever

The LA gothic garage-rock trio shows us how good an unholy alliance between Blonde Redhead and Joy Division can sound. Comb your hair over your eyes, stare at your shoes, and think very angry thoughts — this is the soundtrack to your angst. With Hey Willpower, Anna Oxygen, and Flaming Fire. May 17, 9 p.m. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. $8–$10. (415) 970-9777 (Izquierdo)

Joules

Technical without being contrived, and lush without being wimps, this Seattle post-math trio takes unduutf8g guitars and peppers them with beats of varying persuasions. Check out Joules’s MySpace page for "Hole Ole," a flamenco send-up with hand claps that morphs into a crashing sonic expedition. With Crime in Choir, Modular Se, and Madelia. Tues/16, 8 p.m. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. Call for price. (415) 550-6994 (Izquierdo)

Sunburned Hand of the Man

The band jams folk-drone psychedelia without all the hippie baggage — awesome! For almost a decade this Boston collective of improvisers has cut its teeth in the experimental-noise circle on distortion-charged blowouts, backbiting electronics, and tribal-chanting powwows. With the Alps, the Cheapest and Best, and Effi Briest. Tues/16, 9:30 p.m. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $8. (415) 923-0923 (Sabbath)

Vincent Gallo

Actor, musician, and painter extraordinaire Vincent Gallo is no stranger to controversy. After the online sperm auctions and the fire-eater scene with a certain deep-throater, it should come as to no surprise that the Republican-happy, onetime break-dancing b-boy and ex–Calvin Klein model is the talk of the town. Though the Buffalo, NY, native’s narcissistic reputation might not earn him any brownie points, his musical contributions are something of another world — he has a sharp know-how for fabricating song structures seeded somewhere between the modestly stark, incredibly warm, and overtly depressive. He’s the sole producer and performer on his recordings in the same way that he’s the singular auteur behind Buffalo 66 and Brown Bunny, and like those absorbing films, his short, penetrating songs leave you salivating for more. You can only hope Gallo’s debut musical performance in the Bay Area will leave you with the same afterglow his movies do. With Sean Lennon and Carla Azar. May 19, 9 p.m., Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. $20. (415) 474-0365 (Chris Sabbath)

When the lights go up

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"I wanted to make something that was really grand and epic, that was really composed, and maybe kind of mythic, in the way that a lot of those protometal bands were trying to do," Ezra Feinberg of Citay says, his postpsychedelic, postmetal outfit. Feinberg is inspired by hard rock–metal bands of the late 1960s and 1970s, such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, whose used power chords as the basis for their grand, jazz-inspired, narrative song structures. Favoring melodies interwoven with narratives over power chords, Feinberg has turned Citay into a kinder, gentler incarnation of the archetypal headbanging unit. "I wasn’t writing the songs with a drummer, you know, where it’s about power chords and physical energy," he explains. "Instead, it was more melody-driven composition and harmony."

Anyone who has listened to Citay’s carefully crafted, self-titled debut will tell you that composition is clearly Feinberg’s modus operandi. Each song is knit tightly around melodies that aren’t so much meandering as on a journey with a distinct destination. Though Feinberg is admittedly obsessed with Led Zeppelin, and Citay’s emphasis on instrumentation wears its classic rock–metal influences on its sleeve, it is the disciplined melodies and more nuanced harmonies, à la the Beach Boys and the Byrds, combined with a scampering mandolin and lackadaisical tambourine, that make Citay’s music accessible and original. Citay’s forthcoming Mission Creek performance and upcoming summer tour with Vetiver might make a comparison to the psych-folk movement an apt one, even though Feinberg is quick to distance Citay from any such categories.

The 29-year-old Boston native wrote and composed the album using a cache of instruments and a multitrack computer program in his Excelsior apartment, the results of which he brought to Louder Studios to collaborate with Tim Green (the Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), with whom Feinberg had worked previously in Brooklyn when Green produced the album by Feinberg’s "sludge metal" band, Feast.

Feinberg credits Green with much of the Citay sound and with adding another dimension to his music. "If the record is any good, a lot of it is because of Tim," he says. "I had the songs, which were written — the parts and the melodies were already there — but he added so much." Tim Soete, of the Fucking Champs, also contributed backing vocals and guitar.

Not only is Green’s Louder Studios the home of Citay the band, but it was also the home of Feinberg for about a month after he moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco in 2004. Having spent four years in Brooklyn working with Feast and a few other musical endeavors, Feinberg felt as though he was "done" with the Brooklyn music scene and considered moving to be an opportunity to focus on writing music for himself, outside of a collaborative band environment. "I felt that I needed to musically be alone for a little while, which sounds really juvey and dramatic, but I had just been doing the band thing for so long. I knew that I wanted to keep writing music, but I knew that I wanted to do it in another way."

Now that the Citay album has been released, on Important Records, to largely glowing reviews, the challenge for Feinberg has been transutf8g that sound in performance, a process that has always evolved the other way around for the songwriter. He’s still solidifying Citay’s live lineup, which currently includes eight friends drawn from Crime in Choir, the Dry Spells, Ascended Master, By Land and Sea, Skygreen Leopards, and Tussle. "It’s the first time that I’ve ever gone from the studio to the stage," he says. SFBG

Citay

With Silver Sunshine, Persephone’s Bees, the Winter Flowers, and Willow Willow

May 20

7 p.m.

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

$10 advance, $12 door

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Can’t, she said

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It would be hard to imagine a more painfully ironic moniker than Can’t. It’s a name of self-negation, self-defense, and self-defiance. A name that instantly speaks of limitation and deprivation, it revels in its view of the personal-as-political prisoner. The social constraints of gender, sex, love, genre, freedom, and artistic and financial success all hang off of that name like handcuffs on a policeman’s belt. Yet instead of binding Can’t, otherwise known as Jessica Rylan, in self-defeat, she takes the bite out of her critics and detractors, as though she is reclaiming years of doubt and dismissal.

Can’t make noise because she’s a girl

When you peer into the sweaty, black-shirted boy zone of America’s noise underground, you do find women, both as participants and voyeurs, but you won’t find them given much mind. Hypermasculinity is so common among the legions of teen hellions and the ranks of the old guard (both of whom are sex-obsessed and at times sexist) that you could almost mistake it for homoerotic homogeneity. What makes Can’t an anomaly isn’t that she’s a woman but that she is so fearlessly feminine, in the traditional sense. The sounds breathed from her homemade modular synths don’t come off as ladylike — they’re as monstrous and violent at the appropriate volumes as the harshest noise. It’s her gentle intimacy with her instrument, the lightness of her voice as it passes through her bent circuits, and the passivity of her gestures as she moves the chaotic parameters of the machine in front of her that imbue her performance with femininity.

Can’t sing about sex and love with sincerity

In the context of her adopted music community, sex is a tool that channels or expresses anger, frustration, and occasionally ecstatic peace. Yet when Can’t sings about it, moving her body like a six-year-old girl and dancing in a faux-Broadway sway, she is vocalizing honest heartbreak. She’s singing about ordinary love, and it’s so disarming, if not necessarily naïve, that you’re left a little embarrassed and a little bit more endeared.

Can’t be a noise musician if her set consists of nursery-rhyme melodies

If, in fact, she is, then you find yourself debating with others about what the hell "noise" is, anyway. Isn’t noise anything that is unclassifiable as music? Isn’t "noise music" about transgression and ambiguity? Doesn’t "noise" reject containment and clarification? What, if anything, shows more of an anarchic disregard for the rules than a noisician who sings folk songs and calls it "noise"?

Can’t be that free

On some level, there is a contradiction here. A cake-and-eat-it-too sort of feeling. She’s been to Bard, she’s traveled the world with some of the most respected noise artists around (Joe Colley, John Wiese, Emil Beaulieau), and she’s released albums titled Can’t Prepares to Fail Again and Can’t vs. the World. Which means she knows exactly what she’s doing and exactly what buttons she’s pushing. She’s on to us. Which means she’ll have the perfect response if you try to dismiss her.

Can’t be a success, yet she is

She is a charismatic and beguiling performer. Her music is mysterious and engaging. The importance and popularity of Can’t in this new age of music will only grow with time. All the harshies and PE enthusiasts in black shirts and camo pants love her, so why don’t the rest of you? SFBG

Can’t

With Skullcaster, Evil Wikkid Warrior, Gang Wizard, Joel Murach, Joe Rut, and the Great Auk

May 19

The Lab

2948 16th St., SF

Call for time and price.

(415) 864-8855

Brass in pocket

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Considering its bodacious flag team and its players’ general inclination to treat every day like birthday-suit day, Extra Action Marching Band has boasted its share of fleshy, fantastic, and extra-weird gigs, though none quite so intimate as the time they were hired by a would-be groom to crash his marriage proposal. Let into their client’s abode by a friend, about 20 members of the drum corps, horn section, and flag team stomped into the couple’s bedroom just after the "act." "His girlfriend was naked, jumping up and down on the bed, going, ‘Yaaarrr!’" modified-bullhorn manipulator Mateo remembers. "She was totally psyched."

Sit down with whichever members of the 30-odd, proudly odd members of the Bay Area troupe you can rustle up, and you’ll get an earful of many similar stories. There was the time they transformed a school bus into a 60-foot-long, 50-foot-tall Spanish galleon, a.k.a. La Contessa, to drive around Burning Man. "But they started to get really strict and created a five-mile-an-hour speed limit," trombone player Chad Castillo explains after a recent practice in seven-year vet Mateo’s cavernous Oakland warehouse space, the Meltdown. "We were always going faster because we always had been going faster and never had problems. So they finally banned us from Burning Man."

As with most tales, the exact events are in question, and Castillo and Mateo argue good-naturedly about whether their school-bus-run-amok was actually, er, expelled, before the trombonist continues: "The point is, they banned us, and we brought it back, and we took it on a maiden voyage and crashed it," putting a four-foot-high hole in La Contessa’s side.

Hunter Thompson’s wake and East Bay Rats soirees aside, performance highlights include opening for David Byrne on his 2005 SoCal tour, stopping at the Hollywood Bowl and later careening through a pelvic thrust–heavy version of Beyoncé’s "Crazy in Love." And then there was a Mardi Gras tour that re-created Black Sabbath’s heavy metal debut classic, with plain ole heavy eXtreme Elvis on vocals, and special, sexy rifle and fan-dance routines, flag team dancer and original member Kelek Stevenson relates.

The band upped themselves two years ago, when they played the Balkan Brass Bands Festival in Guca, Serbia, deep in the heart of gypsy horn country, one of the inspirations for Extra Action’s cosmopolitan mosh pit of Sousa, Latin, and New Orleans second-line sounds. A recent DVD by Emmy-winning nature documentarian and Extra Action flag girl Anna Fitch supports the stories and catches the combo in action as villagers cheer, fall to their knees, and hug the ensemble as they blow through the streets. One grandmotherly onlooker even gets some extra, extra action, copping a feel of a manly member’s bare chest.

But with the anarchic joys come the passionate battles, such as the recent knockdown blowout over the possibility of doing a Coke commercial, one of many battles regularly undergone in the collective, which has only one CD to its name, last year’s self-released Live on Stubnitz. "There was this huge firestorm between those who wanted to take the gig and use the money to further social change in the world and show that we don’t support Coke and its policies," Mateo explains.

"And a bunch of people threatened to quit the band," Castillo adds. "This band is so big — you’ve got homeowners and you’ve got people who are basically living in their campers — and when it came to doing the Coke commercial, there were a lot of people who just don’t like the big multinational corporations."

It’s remarkable that such an unruly, perpetually shifting, shiftless bunch has managed to hold it together for all of seven or eight years with few agreed-upon "leaders" (although Castillo asserts, "the original members always walk around like aristocracy"). The wireless, untethered energy they bring to the trad rock lineup is impressive. When they marched onto the stage at Shoreline Amphitheatre to join Arcade Fire (after crashing the women’s room) at last year’s Download Festival — ragtag horn and drum corps ripping through a few numbers as the flag girls and boy bumped and grinded in blond wigs and glittery G-strings — you realized what was really missing from indie at this performance, at so many performances: sex appeal. Theater. A drunken mastery of performance and the dark arts of showmanship, along with the sense of team spirit linked to so much marching band imagery bandied about in today’s pop.

As Castillo quips, "Record companies are interested in having us play with their bands because their bands are so boring onstage. People pay big money to go to these concerts because the music is all great and produced, and then they go to these shows, and these guys are sitting there bent over their Game Boys. Oh, that’s really exciting. Where’s the show?"

This show emerged from the ashes of Crash Worship, the legendary SoCal "cult, paganistic drum corps," as Castillo describes it, "where people would just strip naked and writhe in orgiastic piles." Extra Action was the processional that would cut through the heaps, eventually marching north to a Fruitvale warehouse, at the behest of ex-Crash Worshipper Simon Cheffins.

"I’ve been pretty much kicked out of every band I’ve been in," Castillo says, who has played with the group for five years. Members — many of the sculptor, performance artist, or "computer geek" persuasion — come and go, sometimes after a few practices, spinning off into combos like the As Is Brass Band. But it’s a family of sorts — a band-geek gang cognizant of the Bay Area’s countercultural/subcultural performance traditions and the unchartable wildness extending from the Diggers to the Cacophony Society. And only "one thing seems to be a requirement," Castrillo continues. "People have to have some problem that needs to be expressed. Everybody’s an exhibitionist. We like to take off our clothes." Those are family values we can get behind. SFBG

Extra Action Marching Band

With Death of a Party, Sugar and Gold, and Hank IV

May 18, 8 p.m. door

Eagle Tavern

398 12th St., SF

Call for price.

(415) 626-0880

Business ethics 101

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Marcoa Publishing seems to be at the top of its game. The San Diego–based company bills itself as the "nation’s largest publisher of advertising-supported, local business publications."

It rarely misses an opportunity to remind prospective advertising clients and employees alike about its exclusive contract to print industry-specific guides and an annual membership directory for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, of which it is also a member and business partner.

In fact, Marcoa’s San Francisco offices are located just four floors below the Chamber in the heart of the Financial District, at 235 Montgomery St. But what the oldest Chamber of Commerce in the western United States may not have known is that its "exclusive publisher" is being investigated by the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) for possible violations of the state’s labor code.

And now the question is: Does the business community’s biggest booster have a blind spot for dubious ethics?

Paula Ceder went to work as an ad sales specialist for Marcoa’s SF office from her home in November 2004. But despite the fact that she quickly became the San Francisco office’s top seller, she realized that Marcoa had no interest in reimbursing her for business expenses. High-end salespeople regularly spend thousands of dollars a year making personal contact with their clients — money that employers generally reimburse.

It’s perfectly common, and in fact legally required, for employers to reimburse workers for such expenses. And Marcoa has even promoted the claim that it offers expense reimbursements in its job postings on Monster.com.

But by the time Ceder left Marcoa, in August 2005 — having worked much longer than many former Marcoa employees — she told the Guardian she had accrued $2,500 in reimbursable business expenses. Over that nine-month period, she didn’t meet another employee who’d received reimbursed expenses, meaning former Marcoa employees could still be awaiting thousands of dollars in compensation. Marcoa did, however, claim to offer a taxable $10 "parking bonus" for each ad contract that the sales specialists managed to sell. But even then it took her four months to get the "bonus," Ceder said. Some ad buyers can commit as much as $12,000 to a two-page spread.

"As soon as I went to work for Marcoa, it became clear that there was no program for expense reimbursement, and I was aware that that was against the law," Ceder said recently. "That was entirely different than any experience I had ever had. Had I known I was going to have that experience, I would have never gone to work for them."

Section 2802 of the state’s labor code reads: "An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer."

Believing she’d never see the money, she approached the California Labor Commission, which ruled in her favor and granted her $1,693 of the expenses in January. At the hearing, Marcoa CEO Stewart Robertson told the administrative judge he would produce the company’s policy regarding expenses. He never did.

During her tenure, Ceder had managed to squeeze a substantial raise out of Marcoa, due mostly, she said, to her top performance. But she said others weren’t so lucky.

Ceder said she concluded that the company not only failed to maintain any sort of policy regarding expenses but also seemed to systematically shortchange workers, from declining to pay simple business expenses to withholding commission payments for months on end or never making the payments at all. Salespeople often earn a percentage of each ad contract in the form of commission as an incentive to sell, which Marcoa portrayed as a significant part of its compensation package.

"My entire point for pursuing a claim for myself was not to receive my expense reimbursement back, although it’s always nice to get the money you put out," Ceder said. "My aim was twofold: One, to have the state investigate and prosecute Marcoa, so that the result of that investigation and prosecution would be an across-the-board change in Marcoa’s current noncompetitive business practices. And second, to get the Marcoa story out into the public."

Former Marcoa workers we interviewed appeared to corroborate Ceder’s claims.

Mario Sarafraz worked as a salesman at Marcoa for 13 months, but he’s worked elsewhere in sales for 17 years. He said he only "tolerated" Marcoa for so long because he liked working closely with the hotel and restaurant industries for the company’s semiannual Business Meetings and More publication.

"Everything else was a nightmare from the beginning," he said. Sarafraz claimed he never received a single commission check, and added that even in a profession where workers move on quickly, Marcoa "had an extremely high turnover rate."

Virtually everyone we talked to said the sales staff had to share two old computers and the company didn’t allow them access to the database of businesses that had purchased ads. Repeated phone calls to businesses that had already grown disenchanted with Marcoa were common, they complained.

A former office manager who asked not to be identified said she believed the Chamber was largely kept in the dark about annoyed advertisers waiting for sometimes long-delayed publication dates and embittered former Marcoa employees.

Carol Piasente, the Chamber’s vice president of communications, said the group had no comment and that the issue was a "personnel matter between Marcoa and their employees." Steve Falk, the Chamber’s CEO and a former publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in an e-mail that he "had not heard any complaints about Marcoa" but failed to respond to follow-up questions. No one at the Chamber would confirm whether the group received annual fees from Marcoa for revenue generated from ads placed in Chamber publications.

"It was by far the most shady company I’ve ever worked for," one saleswoman, who also requested anonymity, said. "They turn and burn employees like you would not believe."

Although she too became a top seller for the company, she said she never received commission and never saw her last paycheck.

Dean Fryer, a spokesperson for the DIR’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, told us that agency officials pursue an investigation based on the case’s merit.

"On all cases that involve wages due employees, we’ll move forward to collect those wages," he said. "Our primary goal is to collect money due employees."

In Marcoa’s San Francisco office of 10 or so employees, sales can reach anywhere between $1 million and $3 million annually. The company also publishes industry, relocation, and real estate guides in at least four other major cities, including San Jose, Dallas, Austin, and Houston. Elsewhere, Marcoa publishes local resource guides for new trainees at 80 of the nation’s military installations, according to the company’s Web site.

Marcoa’s San Francisco publisher Bart Lally and CEO Robertson declined to respond to a series of detailed e-mail questions.

"Marcoa absolutely believes that it is in compliance with all relevant labor laws," Robertson wrote in an e-mail. "However, we are not going to provide specific responses to any of your questions."

Sarafraz insisted it’s not his nature to complain.

"As far as training and having a working system, I’ve never heard of an organization so out of place," he said. "Every organization has shortcomings. But these people just didn’t care." SFBG

NOISE: Coachella cracked open?

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Guardian intern Jonathan Knapp checked out Coachella last week and lived to tell the tale:

amigossml.jpg
Jose Luis Pardo of Los Amigos Invisibles
holds forth Sunday at Coachella.
Photo: Mirissa Neff.

As someone who has lost his once-vigorous passion for indie rock and large music festivals, I approached my trip to Coachella with caution and confusion. Why the hell was I driving 500 miles to spend two days in the brutally hot desert sun to see a bunch of bands that I had, at best, an intermittent interest in? All right, my girlfriend really wanted me to, and our companion — a good friend and a guitarist from local post-hardcore outfit And a Few to Break — was the perfect guide: He’d been before and has been largely responsible for turning me on to the little new music that excites me.

It’s not as if I now hate indie rock — I’ve just become preoccupied with the music of the past. I’d much rather, for instance, discover nearly forgotten gems like O.V. Wright’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry” and Wanda Jackson’s “Fujiyama Mama” than be the first to herald the Bloc Party or Clap Your Hands. There were definitely some newer bands at Coachella that had already easily won me over — Animal Collective, TV on the Radio — and some holdovers from my indie rock youth: Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power. Additionally, Madonna was playing; though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the height of my Drag City- and Merge-fuelled ecstasy, this was unquestionably exciting.

To a relatively recent East Coast transplant, Coachella’s setting is nothing short of alien. Set aside the heat (which is consuming and oppressive) and what remains is a beautiful, if stark and bleak, atmosphere: palm trees, miles of flat, bush-littered sand, and — when the Los Angeles smog recedes — snow-capped mountains. This year’s fest brought a mostly predictable mix of inappropriately black-clad SF/LA hipsters, shirtless/bikini-topped OC trust-funders/frat types, Arizona college hippies, and — given that this was Tool’s first show in five years — metalheadz. Though people-watching is certainly fruitful and entertaining, Coachella does not provide as much craziness as one might expect — but it certainly does exist.

The festival, held over Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30, on the incongruously green and groomed Empire Polo Fields, is a whirlwind of simultaneous activity and overstimulation. If you’re really only there to see one act (like Depeche Mode), it’s no problem. But for those whose interests are a bit more catholic, the prospect of navigating five separate stages that feature virtually nonstop, and eclectic, music from noon till midnight is daunting.

Do you choose Kanye West or My Morning Jacket? Wolf Parade or Jamie Lidell? In my case, both these choices proved easy, if not fully satisfying. For the former: With tickets on Kanye’s late-2005 tour being at least $45, the relatively reasonable one-day Coachella pass of $85 (about $190 for both days, including service charges) makes it
the best opportunity to see him.

West’s set was entertaining, if not transcendent. Mindful of the temperature (he played a still-blistering 6 p.m. slot), West substituted the angel-winged getup he’s favored recently for a white Miles Davis T-shirt and jeans. Backed by live drums, turntables, backup singers, and a string section, he offered a respectable but awkward approximation of his increasingly ornate recordings (no Jon Brion in sight). The highlight: West inexplicably announced his DJ would play a few of his biggest influences, moving from Al Green and Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson to a-ha’s “Take on Me,” dancing around the stage with a goofiness that, though obviously calculated, seemed charmingly unselfconscious.

Following West on the main stage, Sigur Ros created one of the festival’s moments of impossible beauty, bringing their ethereal noise to day one’s lofty sunset slot (7:00-7:50 p.m.). Admittedly, I’ve been a bit hesitant to embrace the beloved Icelandic group. Though I’ve enjoyed much of their work, I’ve been turned off by what I’ve interpreted as delusions of grandeur: a made-up language (there’s already one Magma), bullshit declarations of “creating a new type of music,” and the hushed reverence with which they’re frequently discussed. However, I can’t think of a better band to accompany a desert dusk, or a better setting for the band — apart from a glacier, perhaps. Backed by a mini-string section, they played a set that, at that time and in that place, was astonishing. My gratitude goes to the man and woman who danced behind the netting just immediately off stage right: Their undulating silhouettes would have brought me to tears, had dehydration and hours of standing not already beaten them to it.

My other day one highlight was Animal Collective, a band whose aesthetic of psych-pop, tribalism, and general weirdness was perfectly suited to the surreal setting. Though I’ve adored many of their recordings (they’re one of the few current bands that I’m genuinely excited to watch evolve), I’d heard that their propensity for wandering and wanking can be their downfall live. I found that they kept this mostly in check, grounding their less accessible and more abrasive experimentations with hypnotic rhythms and a convincing feeling that this was, in fact, going somewhere. Much of the crowd didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Too bad: To my ears, few artists approach their inventiveness, live or recorded.

That day I also caught some of Deerhoof (appropriately erratic, with some fantastic moments), Cat Power (as expected, the Memphis Rhythm Band has given her a new sense of confidence and composure, and they sound fucking great), Wolfmother (energetic, but dull), White Rose Movement (I’ll stick to my Pulp records, thank you), the New Amsterdams (nothing new about them), and the Walkmen (solid).

After returning to the grounds Sunday (we fortunately camped at the much-less-populated Salton Sea, about 20 minutes away), we immediately went to catch Mates of State (adorable and infectious), who closed with a decent version of Nico’s “Time of the Season,” and Ted Leo, who was reliably engaging. To try to get close for Wolf Parade, we headed to the medium-sized tent (there were three) and watched Metric. I’d been intrigued by their Broken Social Scene connections, but their set of dancey agit-pop left me cold and bored (my companions disagreed).

I separated from my friends to stand in the back for Wolf Parade, so I could head to the main stage for Sleater-Kinney. After starting late, Wolf Parade apologized for technical issues (“Everything’s fucked”) and began a set that, from my perch hundreds of feet away, sounded slight and thin. Disappointed, I left after three songs. I’ve been told that the experience up-front, however, was quite different, and among the best of the festival.

I fell in love with the women of Sleater-Kinney about a decade ago when I was 16. I’ve tried to see them a number of times over the years, but something always fell through: sold-out, unbreakable engagements, etc. I usually don’t think about them, except when they release a new album and, maybe once or twice a year, when I put on Call the Doctor or Dig Me Out — briefly reminding myself why they once meant so much to me.

Clearly, this has been a huge mistake: Focusing mostly on songs from the past couple albums, the trio played a fierce, powerful set that all the years of hearing about their live show hadn’t prepared me for. At a festival that celebrated scenes that I’ve mostly abandoned, this became my essential moment. Mses. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss reminded me not only why I loved them, but why I loved going to shows in the first place — for the sheer raw, sweaty energy. These women deserve to fill stadiums.

After watching a bit of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who impressed me more than I expected, I headed to the dance tent, joining an apparent majority of festivalgoers in an attempt to see Madonna. Unable to get anywhere near the stage, we settled for a spot outside it, where our view was of a large screen and, when we were lucky enough to be able to peek through the massive throng at a distant stage.

Several minutes before the set (which unsurprisingly started late), a line of people carrying parasols and decked out in lingerie bondage gear made their way through the crowd on stilts. Managing the seemingly impossible feat of reaching the front of the stage, they were easily the festival’s smartest and most inventive attendees.

When Madonna finally took the stage, all hell broke loose — an appropriate response, perhaps, but not one that the performance itself warranted. Predictable and short, Madonna’s set started with the superb “Hung Up,” then moved on to “Ray of Light” and four more songs, most of them newer material. Most surprising was her guitar playing (or at least the appearance of it) and the rock-like arrangements of all the tunes. She occasionally provoked the audience (“Don’t throw water on my stage, motherfuckers,” “Do you want me to take my pants off?”), but nothing here was shocking. That said, the woman looks fantastic and commands a stage in a way that few could. After six songs, she left abruptly. It was anticlimactic, yet still somehow thrilling. It was, after all, fucking Madonna.

Immediately after, we ran into Andy Dick, who stood talking to a pair of starstruck 13-year-old girls. Far more behaved than the blogs have reported he later would be, Dick seemed as amused with the girls as they were with him. Though he claimed to have to go meet his “girlfriend,” he talked to them for several minutes: “Oh, I love Madonna too. Hey — how are you even here? Aren’t people, like, drinking? Where are your parents?”

After catching a fantastic, fun set from the Go! Team (who had Mike Watt guesting on bass), we attempted to see Tool. Unable to get anywhere close to the stage (this seemed by far to be the most crowded show, though Madonna was close), we sat down, expecting to watch the band on the giant screens on either side of the stage. While the band played, however, their videos (you know: internal organs and jittery, alien-looking people doing painful things) were projected on the screens. Bored and wary of the inevitable hours of traffic that we’d hit if we stayed for the set, we bid Coachella adieu.

Acts I wished I had caught, but couldn’t for various reasons: Lady Sovereign, Jamie Lidell, Gnarls Barkley, Seu Jorge, My Morning Jacket, Phoenix, Mogwai, Depeche Mode, Coldcut, and TV on the Radio. Biggest regret (by far): missing Daft Punk. Word of their closing Saturday night set hovered all day Sunday, discussed in whispered, but rhapsodic tones.

I left the festival exhausted, anxious to return to San Francisco, and — most importantly — reminded why I devoted so many years to indie rock. Will I stop seeking out New Orleans R&B, rockabilly, and Southern soul? No, but that doesn’t mean I have to ignore this wave of postpunk, does it? That said, I’ll take Gang of Four, Wire, and Pere Ubu over Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand any day.

But, right now, I just want to listen to Sleater-Kinney.

“Fab Mab Reunion”

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

April 8, Fillmore

LOCAL LIVE "Typical Flipper," Flipper frontperson Bruce Loose quipped at one point during the band’s set at the recent "Fab Mab Reunion." Not to suggest that Flipper don’t know what they’re doing — they do. But dotting is never were top priorities for them. Their improbable, ragged, and yet ultimately triumphant return to the Fillmore April 8 was a case in point, featuring its share of false starts, wrong notes, and out-of-sync vocals, along with a bass amp on the verge of crapping out throughout their approximately 40-minute set. "Know your history," Loose added at another point in the show.

Speaking of history, fellow showgoers who had actually experienced the legendary Mabuhay Gardens back in its late-’70s/early-’80s heyday remarked that the most authentic part of the show was MC Dirk Dirksen. His rambling, semicoherent monologues, which included a roll call of the dead that made reference to deceased Flipper member "Will Shatner [sic]," drew groans and heckles, as well as a bona fide noogie from Loose at one point.

On the other side of the coin, in terms of historical accuracy, were the Avengers and the Jeff Penalty–fronted Dead Kennedys. The Avengers’ set had a decidedly mall-punk feel to it, sounding more like third-generation MTV punks than a class of old-school ’77 graduates. As for the controversial DKs, at least Penalty brought a touch of surreal ridiculousness as he bounded onstage, manically hopped around, and even went so far as to slyly beckon applause with a "come on, come on" hand gesture. One might have expected him to be dodging beer bottles instead.

But with all due respect to the Mutants — we walked in with just a couple of songs left in their set of solid-sounding, if somewhat quaint, set of Sex Pistols–ish punk — Flipper were the highlight of the evening. Just over a year ago, the remaining members from the band’s classic early-’80s lineup — Loose, drummer Steve DePace, and guitarist Ted Falconi — were barely on speaking terms, so to see them onstage together and clearly enjoying themselves was great in itself; the fact that they sounded like themselves, not like a slick facsimile, was even better. Filling in for Shatter was unofficial fifth member and longtime utility player Steve DeMartis, who turned in an intense vocal performance on "Shine." Elsewhere, Loose — who dyed his hair bright blond for the occasion — handled the mic with his trademark sarcasm and lovable obnoxiousness, tossing off trademark lines like "Forget it, you wouldn’t understand anyway."

They opened with unlikely sing-along "Ha Ha Ha," stumbled through the Shatter anthem "Life," and played zero songs from their Shatter-less 1993 Warner Bros. album, American Grafishy. The set closed with a barely recognizable rendition of "Flipper Blues" and a sped-up, runaway-train version of "Sex Bomb" with original session-player Ward Abronski of Polkacide on tenor sax.

Yes, there were rough edges, but as far as their sense of humor, focused sloppiness, and don’t-give-a-damn attitude went, it was indeed typical Flipper. And that’s a good thing.  SFBG

Devil times four

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Campo Santo’s Haze slips comfortably into the 10th anniversary season of a company that’s built its rep (repertoire and reputation) on close collaborations with leading American fiction writers. This lean, shrewd, and forceful staging of stories by Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson, and Vendela Vida turns a literary buffet into a raw and atmospheric performance piece. Call it tragicomic episodes loitering at the brink — on the vaporous edges of an otherwise solid sense of self — or just a rambling confession addressed, "Dear Satan …"

In Vida’s What Happens When These Things Happen (the first chapter of her novel And Now You Can Go), the narrator (Catherine Castellanos) recounts the day her 21-year-old self was accosted by a man with a gun in New York’s Riverside Park. Eggers’s piece, Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance, takes a hilarious road trip to Bakersfield with the slightly unhinged Fish (Danny Wolohan), who is obligated to visit his pathetic cousin (Donald E. Lacy Jr.), a veritable suicide manqué, hospitalized after yet another bungled attempt on his own life. Then Lacy gets into the driver’s seat for Diaz’s high-spirited tale, The Sun, The Moon, The Stars, playing a guilty two-timer intent on salvaging his deteriorating relationship with the perfect girl, Magdalena (Luera), by taking her on a vacation to the Dominican Republic, his (and the author’s) home country, where he may have to settle for an uncomfortable moment of enlightenment in some sacred cave.

The carefully arranged stories flow smoothly into one another. Words are passed like batons between storyteller-protagonists, while a few mysterious lines from that letter to Lucifer wend their way through the evening in lonely and darkly comical reverie before finally roosting in the Starlight Recovery Center, temporary home to manic letter-writer Mark Cassandra (Wolohan) in Johnson’s Starlight on Idaho. Despite another devilishly sharp and boisterous performance by Wolohan, this thematic pulse actually loses some strength by the end, ironically, in Johnson’s funny and beautifully written but more episodic narrative, along with some of the focus and cohesion of the play as a whole.

Still, Haze‘s blend of text and mise-en-scène succeeds throughout in fresh and winning ways (perhaps nowhere as effectively as in Vida’s opening story). Director Sean San José, who concentrates more on tone than on the baroque inventiveness of a Word for Word–style approach to the verbatim staging of literature, garners bold and enjoyable performances from his four actors and skillfully manages the spaces, onstage and between the words, left open for the play of imagination. To this end, Joshua McDermott’s spare stage comes partially illuminated by shifting centers of light pitched onto the floor out of large four-sided shades overhead. When not actively participating in a scene, members of the ensemble often slump in half-shadow against the exposed brick at either side. Meanwhile, Victor Cartagena’s video installation loops a few select images on a screen at the back or projects them onto the walls left and right, and David Molina’s delicate soundscape adds still another moody dimension in which to roam.

Small Tragedy: Now and then

Tragedy seemed like such a simple, straightforward thing to the ancient Greeks. Why is it so hard for us to grasp? All that emphasis on hubris, pity, and terror, nobody seems to know exactly what they’re really talking about. So why bother? Aurora Theatre inaugurates its new Global Age Project — an initiative centered on work exploring life in the 21st century and beyond — with the West Coast premiere of Small Tragedy, by Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul), a play that slyly approaches the horrors of the war-torn modern age through the seemingly incongruous fumblings of a comically amateur production of Oedipus Rex.

It’s a great beginning to a lively backstage comedy that steadily becomes an engrossing reflection on tragedy in a time of ethnic cleansing. But one gets the sense, somewhere after the second act’s startling turn of events, that the playwright may have been less certain how to end his work. Moreover, the second act raises the dramatic ante considerably, but its refocusing on two of the six characters also leaves it a bit thinner by comparison. If not a perfect play, however, Small Tragedy — especially as fueled by director Kent Nicholson’s fine and thoroughly enjoyable cast — is a sharp and intriguing one. SFBG

HAZE

Through Sat/29

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.

Intersection for the Arts

446 Valencia, SF

$9–$20

(415) 626-3311

www.theintersection.org

SMALL TRAGEDY

Through May 14

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.

Aurora Theatre

2081 Addison, Berk

$28–$45

(510) 843-4822

www.auroratheatre.org

The 49er

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› johnny@sfbg.com

All it took was one great glass elevator ride to know that the San Francisco International Film Festival had changed — a ride up to the top floor of a downtown hotel, where the press conference for the 49th SFIFF took place. In recent years, the nation’s oldest film festival put on conferences that had the stultifying air of the type of garden country club lecture presented as a grotesquerie in the original Manchurian Candidate. This year, new executive director Graham Leggat surveyed the room and a 360-degree view of the city while announcing the arrival of a new film-focused Web site, www.sf360.org. If the lofty heights of the setting and Leggat’s many ambitions could be said to induce vertigo, his pep talk showed he’s considerably more connected with the film community in San Francisco than those who’d recently come before him.

Landing just before Cannes on the calendar, SFIFF has long had to glean the best from the festivals of the previous 12-plus months. The 49th SFIFF has done a better than usual job of shopping for nonstodgy items at Toronto, Sundance, and other fests, landing films such as The Descent, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, James Longley’s unembedded doc Iraq in Fragments, and Half Nelson, which features a Ryan Gosling performance that will probably figure in the Oscars next spring. Recently snubbed by the Academy, the oft-brilliant Werner Herzog more than deserves the Film Society Directing Award, and it’s great to have Guy Maddin in town. Deerhoof and Heaven and Earth Magic seem like an inspired pairing. The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros and A Short Film about the Indio Nacional may be the tip of a fresh, unconventional wave of Filipino cinema, or they may be the wave itself. The Bridge and Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple are dialogue-sparking films about suicide that belong to the Bay Area, even if the rival Tribeca Film Festival seems to have swooped in and landed them as premieres just a few days earlier.

This year’s fest could be accused of being overly besotted with gadgetry. Only time will tell whether the festival’s Kinotek section, devoted to "new platforms, new work, new audiences" honors gimmicks over content. Yes, it’s great that Tilda Swinton is an actor with intelligence. But the idea of projecting a Big Tilda upon the city seems more than a bit silly. And I wonder about a selection of seven Japanese films that includes some painful conceits while leaving out the latest film by Akihiko Shiota, and Shunichi Nagasaki’s sequel to his own Heart, Beating in the Dark.

The SFIFF has gotten a bum rap lately — scrape away the public image of a fest like last year’s and you’d find an excellent, deep, if sometimes overly solemn, array of movies. San Francisco suffers from no shortage of film festivals, but it’s oldest still has a depth and breadth others can scarcely match, and Leggat’s arrival gives SFIFF a much-needed boost of energetic, idea-driven intelligence. Now, when it turns 50, perhaps it can go toe-to-toe with the near simultaneous Tribeca fest helmed by ex–SFIFF executive director Peter Scarlet. Programming wars ain’t pretty, but they’re sure to yield some drama. SFBG

Un certain regard

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Like Bresson and Renoir did before them, the Dardenne brothers tend to inspire reviews using vaguely Christian words like transcendence from critics trying to describe the way a transparent film style can result in such fully formed, singular movies. At least one such reviewer has already referred to their newest masterpiece, L’Enfant, as a miracle, but, alas, it is not so. Like the Dardennes’ previous pinnacles — La Promesse, Rosetta, and The Son — L’Enfant handles weighty themes like guilt and redemption with awesome grace. But to liken the film to an act of God surely takes something from the technical precision and artistic concentration that so informs cinema Dardenne.

While their breakthrough may have come on the stage at Cannes, Luc and his brother Jean-Pierre cut their teeth on a decade of vérité-style documentary work before making their first fiction film, 1987’s Falsch. Much has been made of the way the fly-on-the-wall documentary technique has informed the Dardennes’ fiction work, and, indeed, it’s hard to think of anyone exploring the tension between realism and reality as fruitfully. L’Enfant‘s camera isn’t as doggedly shaky as in the earlier films, but the general long-take style is still present: Conversations and characterizations are mediated by constant reframing instead of by cuts. The Dardennes’ ability to narrate with single takes, conveying information and drama via performance, framing, and an impeccable, Bressonian use of sound, means the brothers belong in any discussion of cinema’s long-take masters (a table that many, including Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater, wish to eat at). Had he been alive to see L’Enfant, celebrated French critic and letting-the-camera-run aficionado André Bazin would surely have turned in a sparkling review.

Described as a sketch, L’Enfant‘s story is the stuff of melodrama. A penniless teenage mother (Déborah Francois) wanders with her baby in search of the father. Played by a ravaged Jérémie Renier (La Promesse), père Bruno is a decidedly small-time crook. Always looking for a score, he sells the newborn to back-alley adoption agents when mother Sonia isn’t around. As with all Dardenne stories, though, there is redemption: The baby is recovered, and Bruno ends up assuming responsibility for an unrelated theft to spare an underage accomplice.

If this sounds like a nail-biting character study, though, the story plays more mutedly than one might expect. Like much art cinema, the Dardennes use an oblique film style to distance us from characters and de-emphasize narrative spectacle. For the brothers, this strategy isn’t used for the sake of vague artiness but rather to convey their filmed stories as moral parables. One of the key sequences of L’Enfant is the one in which Bruno sells his baby. There is a sort of tension that builds as he rides the bus toward a rendezvous point in a single long take, but it’s of an infinitely quieter and more reflective sort than the kind produced by a comparable scene in Oscar-winner Tsotsi. A couple of cuts and a few rings of Bruno’s cell phone later, our protagonist is waiting in a barren apartment while the baby’s “adopter” operates next door — a climax narrated entirely by offscreen sound. The scene conveys an outrageous misdeed, but any judgment or repulsion has been sucked out by the Dardennes’ removed perspective; as such, Bruno’s betrayal seems less a crime against humanity than an action, an inevitable result of his role as the thief.

In the end, the Dardennes aren’t concerned with why their characters do what they do (the thing that occupies the vast majority of narrative filmmakers) but rather are taken with charting the moral implications and consequences of their characters’ actions. Someday a wise DVD distributor is going to package the Dardennes’ fiction films as a set, and the result will rival Kafka’s collected short stories in its parabolic riches. L’Enfant‘s protagonist thief may spend much of the film running to stand still, but the Dardenne brothers are nothing if not directed — toward greatness, that is.

L’ENFANT

Opens Fri/7 in Bay Area theaters.

For showtimes go to www.sfbg.com.

www.sonyclassics.com/thechild

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all right already

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SONIC REDUCER In the best of all music fans’ worlds, an album will grow on you — like lichen, excessive body hair, or a parasite à la guinea worm, only with more pleasure and less arterial spray, I pray. You like it more and more as you play-repeat-play. It starts with an ear-catching opening track or appetite-whetting overture, as that well-worn pop recipe goes, and builds momentum until track three or four. That one should sink its little tenterhooks into you and refuse to let go until you listen to it once again or upload it to your iPod or whatever musical delivery system serves the addiction.

That analyzed, it’s amazing how some bands, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, can go from compulsively listenable to annoying with one album, Show Your Bones (Interscope). Too bad because the YYYs still stand out, like a slash of smeared red lipstick, as one of the few female-fronted groups to emerge from that much hyped, new-rock New York music scene of the early ’00s. That barely sublimated burden of representation, the YYYs’ association with the Liars and the more artistically ambitious NYC crew, as well as the heightened critical expectations after the strength of 2003’s Fever to Tell hasn’t helped Show. Once the flurry of screeching, obscuring noise and rockabilly riffs are stripped away and the songs are spruced up in the studio, the poppier YYYs sound deathly similar to peers like the Strokes at their most singsong (“Dudley,” “Mysteries”). O’s slight lyrics are exposed as the slender vehicles they are — her piercing tone, which cut through the distortion in the past, simply seems affected.

Even when O toys with teasing double entendre on “Cheating Hearts,” confutf8g the act of taking off a ring with a sexed-up strip (“Well I’m / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And she’s / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And he’s / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And we’re / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off”), the story doesn’t go anywhere beyond the (again, repeated) lines “Sometimes / I think that I’m bigger / Than the sound.” The entire enterprise gives up the reheated, ego-stroking aroma of Zep knockoffs like Heart. That wouldn’t necessarily be bad, if those commercial rock invocations seemed to serve more than an ego that seems “something like a phenomena, baby” (see the key fourth track, “Phenomena”). This album feels like a grandiose, strident, ultimately airheaded mess — all Show, no go.

“Fab Mab” flap

I was a humongoid Flipper fan back in the day, but, truthfully, I wasn’t thinking too hard about the imminent “Fab Mab Reunion” show featuring the SF dadaist-punk legends and Mabuhay Gardens regulars the Dead Kennedys, the Avengers, and the Mutants. The reunion part of the show’s name brought out ex-DK vocalist Jello Biafra, who issued the statement, “No, it is not a Dead Kennedys reunion. Yes, I am boycotting the whole scam. These are the same greedmongers who ran to corporate lawyers and sued me for over six years in a dispute sparked by my not wanting ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ sold into a Levi’s commercial. They now pimp Dead Kennedys in the same spirit as Mike Love suing Brian Wilson over and over again, then turning around and playing shows as the Beach Boys.”

I was curious about the pimping notion. The idea can’t help but cross one’s mind with the crowded pit of punk reunion shows (including the Flesh Eaters; see “Zombies Are Back!” page 35), all within spittin’ distance of each other in the past few years. So I spoke to Flipper drummer Steve DePace, who put together the “reunion” after the band’s first performance after a “10-year hiatus” (Bruno DeMartis sitting in for the late Will Shatter) at a CBGB’s benefit last year. Following that, they answered a request to play LA’s closing Olympic Auditorium. “I thought to myself, in the spirit of the funnest days of my career back in the late ’70s and early ’80s at the Mabuhay Gardens — when that scene was flourishing and that club served as the hub to the punk rock scene that developed in SF — what if we were to do a show with that vibe?” says the 49-year-old ex–animation industry project manager, who now lives in LA. “What are the bands around that are still playing from back in those days?

“Listen, Flipper is not making a ton of money,” he continues, adding that Flipper has reformed because they still have a passionate audience. To DePace, the most famous of those Flipper fans was likely Kurt Cobain, who wore his homemade Flipper T-shirt on TV and magazine covers. Of course, there were no official Flipper shirts, he says. “Back in those days we were not into the commerce,” he explains. “No one thought about selling merchandise — nowadays it’s the biggest thing. People gobble it up.” Just keep feeding.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

April 28 and 29

Warfield

982 Market, SF

Call for time and price.

(415) 775-7722

“Fab Mab Reunion”

Sat/8, 9 p.m.

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

$25

(415) 346-6000

GET A LOAD OF HIS DOWNLOAD

After supporting his buddies the Shins and finding inspiration on Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games (Reprise, 1971), ex-Califone side guy Eric Johnson made one of the loveliest, most underrated indie pop LPs of 2005, Spelled in Bones (Sub Pop). Images of blood injury (the legacy of cutting his head open as a five-year-old and, later, one auto accident too many) crop up, as does a ref to that distinctively northern Midwestern “land of sky blue waters” from the old Hamm’s beer commercial. Johnson’s obviously comfortable listening in the past, judging from these items in the iTunes library on his new computer:

•Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (Bizarre/Straight/EMI)

•Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde (Columbia)

•Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies (Rhino/WEA)

•Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy (WEA)

•Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II (SST/Rykodisc)

•Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story (Polygram)

•Kelley Stoltz, Below the Branches (Sub Pop); “Favorite thing I’ve heard this year so far.”

•T. Rex, The Slider (Rhino/WEA); “I listen to it when I clean house.”

Fruit Bats play Mon/10, 8 p.m., the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. $10–$12. (415) 771-1421

MORE, MORE, MORE

Dada Swing

Italy’s punky musical absurdists swing through town once more, after last year’s power-packed Hemlock and Cookie Factory dates. SF experimentalists the Molecules also reunite. Fri/7, 9:30 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $7. (415) 923-0923

Levi Fuller

The Seattle musician makes moody folk songs with a bleeding edge; check his second album, This Murder Is a Peaceful Gathering (Denimclature). Jean Marie, the Blank Tapes, and 60 Watt Kid also play. Thurs/6, 8:30 p.m., Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St., SF. $6. (415) 546-6300

Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani

The Trieste trumpet-player and Bollani back up their recent album, Tati (ECM), while collaborator, drummer Paul Motian, remains in NYC. Enrico Pieranunzi fills out this il Jazz Italiano bill. Fri/7, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. $25–$51. (415) 621-6600, www.sfjazz.org

Latter daze

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In playwright Dominic Orlando’s Juan Gelion Dances for the Sun, Latin American peasant Juan Gelion (a charismatic Johnny Moreno) abandons a promising career in the church to found a new one — or is it the old one reborn? Even Juan doesn’t seem sure. But he renounces material wealth, goes about healing the sick — beginning with beloved cousin Mariana (Juliet Tanner), who lies dying from a botched abortion — and collects a band of unlikely followers, including his cranky atheist brother (Hector Osorio) and a chipper but mentally unstable American (Alexandra Creighton).

Following a half-understood inner voice, Orlando’s hesitant messiah takes his band to the United States. Once landed in Florida, they go toe to toe with America’s military-industrial Christ complex, personified by a secretive rapture-hastening group of three Beltway fundamentalist power brokers and their golden boy, up-and-second-coming governor of Arizona Arn Darby (Nick Sholley). These four asses of the apocalypse, convinced their rich, war-making selves constitute God’s chosen, latch onto Juan Gelion as the false messiah, or adversary, prophesied in Revelations. They arrest and interrogate him, leading to a showdown of supernatural proportions and a surprising denouement. Along the way, more mundane and metaphysical concerns get an airing, along with a smattering of songs from, or accompanied by, the story’s narrator-chorus, a sardonic guitarrista played by composer Deborah Pardes.

Unlike the millennial millionaires it lambastes, Crowded Fire’s world premiere has both style and soul. Artistic director Rebecca Novick’s crisp pacing and appealing cast make it relatively easy to forgive the story’s thinner patches and loose ends, and the production strikes a fine balance of humor and drama throughout. Moreover, its fanciful story line contains both a well-grounded critique and a sincere spiritual question at its core. James J. Fenton’s lovely scenic design, meanwhile, with its graceful parabolic arches and delicate branches (combined with Heather Basarab’s lambent arboreal lighting) makes compellingly manifest Juan Gelion’s antiauthoritarian "church without walls." Delivering sass to the sanctimonious carries a bit of its own presumption, especially if your own thoughts on religion tend towards HL Mencken’s. But bucking the budding American theocracy is a timely subject. These people really are the living end.

MAKING HAY

Last Planet Theatre, never a company to shrink from a challenge (or to foist one on its audience), has pulled off a startling production of Franz Xavier Kroetz’s Farmyard, a difficult but quietly compelling exploration of love and suffering amid a bleak, isoutf8g landscape of rural poverty. The unflinching and idiosyncratic Kroetz, who not long ago was Germany’s most performed living playwright, may be far less well-known here, but his work finds kindred spirits in artistic director John Wilkins and his cast.

The story unfolds with a kind of aggressively stylized naturalism on a humble American family farm, where Beppi (Heidi Wolff), the retarded teenage daughter of the farmer (Richard Aiello) and his wife (Emma Victoria Glauthier), falls in love with an aging, randy farmhand named Sepp (Garth Petal), who has seduced her with stories. When Beppi becomes pregnant, the farmer takes retribution on Sepp’s beloved black shadow of a dog (Hilde Susan Jaegtnes, effectively swaddled in rags and shoe polish) before turning to his wife for help in solving the problem of their daughter.

The plot is bone simple, but its reverberations are subtle, strange, and unsettling — just as Kroetz’s stunted characters prove remarkably present while rarely managing more than a few brusque words or phrases. Whole scenes come wrapped in silences, long pauses measuring the distance between characters while binding them together. In a way, silence is the play’s principal subject: the silence of moral judgment, the absence (despite the swift trade here in the Commandments and the passing of sentences) of any voice or say beyond the inexorable force of life itself.

In that emptiness opened up so effectively in Farmyard — and echoed in the gentle bleakness of the surrounding country (beautifully evoked in James Flair and Paul Rasmussen’s scenic design, as well as Alex Lopez’s radiant lighting scheme) — it’s life that finally defines and bridges the void. And life converges in Beppi, whose name seems to mark her perpetual child status even in the midst of sexual awakening and motherhood, with all the innocent and anarchic force any farmyard could hope to contain. Wolff’s supple, perfectly assured performance is the natural standout in a cast composed of strong, focused portrayals all around.

Wilkins’s sharp staging adds a unique contribution to the play’s unsettling ambiguity by disrupting its heavy silences with a jarringly lush, sophisticated set of Shirley Horn torch songs. For all its in-your-face effect, the music makes a subtle point in the precise way it both works and doesn’t work: We can’t help aligning the words and ambience with the action, even while recognizing the absurdity of the match. But then what exactly is so absurd? In the end the songs perfectly measure, manipulate, and throw back our own programming, and still — it’s impossible not to add — how fitting that out of absolute darkness comes this beautiful, seemingly otherworldly paean to life. *

JUAN GELION DANCES FOR THE SUN

Through April 8

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.

Traveling Jewish Theatre

470 Florida, SF

$18–$30

(415) 255-7846

www.crowdedfire.org

FARMYWARD

Through April 1

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.

Last Planet Theatre

351 Turk, SF

$10–$18

(415) 440-3050

www.lastplanettheatre.com

Deerhoof tracks…Harry Smith

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This morning, I went to the press conference for the San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20-May 4) — wunderbar to hear the appreciation for the “avant-pop” Deerhoof, who have been enlisted to score beat filmmaker Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic for the fest, live, one time only (though that Yo La Tengo score a few years back took on a life of its own, didn’t it?).

deerhoof02sml3.JPG

You can hem and haw, huff and puff, kvetch and moan about how this fest isn’t up to that fest or how women, Latinos, Africans, and African Americans aren’t represented — and you can be satisfied that those concerns were definitely the focus of the questions at the press conference — but this Deerhoof event is guaranteed awesome. Innovative filmmaking — a band at the top of their freakin’ game. The SF-Oakland Runners Four are supposedly trying to utilize Castro Theatre’s impressive pipe organ, too. I’d get your tickets now for the April 27 performance. Visit www.sffs.org or call (925) 866-9559. You’ve been warned.

Further music-related coolness at the fest: Brothers of the Head, Favela Rising, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, “Not so Quiet Silents with Alloy Orchestra” — not counting outright musicals like psych-noir-film legend Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon and actor John Turturro’s Centerpiece.


OTHER MUSIC-RELATED FILMNESS

Guardian film intern Jonathan Knapp wants to wax positive about Noise Pop’s film program this year. Here’s what he wrote:

Bookended by a pair of docs about American musical icons both thriving (Flaming Lips-trailing The Fearless Freaks ) and enduring (Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley), the Noise Pop Film Festival, like the festival itself, spans the indie rock landscape. Of particular historical significance are Borderline: The Heavenly States and The M-80 Project.

The former finds local power-poppers the Heavenly States documenting their 2005 tour of Libya, the first by any Western band since Qadaffi came to power 35 years earlier. Long discussed in the sort of anxious whisper reserved for artifacts considered lost, the footage comprising The M-80 Project captures new wave culture before it became a marketable sound, fashion, and eventual retro touchstone. Minneapolis, 1979: future MTV darlings Devo meet no wave upstarts the Contortions and Judy Nylon and other post-punk experimentalists at a local art center. They play music, young Midwestern lives are changed, and, years later, the legendary video resurfaces.

For doc deets, visit www.noisepop.com/2006/films.php.

Noise: The Guardian’s new music blog

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March 24, 2006

Tapes ‘N Horses ‘N Ladyhawks ‘N more

Weekend’s here and I’m hoping to keep it hail-free this time around. There are some heated hip-hop shows this weekend: Ghostface with M1 from Dead Prez at Mezzanine tonight and that massive Andre Nickatina and Equipto at Studio Z Saturday. Arab Strap are strapping the groovy boys on tonight and tomorrow at Cafe du Nord — with much excitement about His Name Is Alive. I’m psyched to see Islands with Metric at the Fillmore (along with the Strokes and Eagles of Death Metal at the Concourse) — and that’s all tonight. My ears are already starting to smart.

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Whoa, it’s Band of Horses.
Credit: Robin Laananen

And Sub Pop breakout beasts Band of Horses are playing with Earlimart tonight at the Independent (and if you miss them, the Horseys also play a free show at Amoeba Music in SF on — fooled ya — April 1, 2 p.m.). Remember these guys from onetime Bay Area indie rock band Carissa’s Wierd? Very wierd how what comes around goes around — and gets reincarnated as equine musicmakers. Nice beards, dudes. Couldn’t bother to shave, could you? S’OK — I didn’t either!

And then it’s open season on Noise Pop starting Monday. Yeehaw.

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Whoa, it’s Tapes ‘N Tapes at Cafe du Nord

Last night I went to du Nord to see Minneapolis band Tapes ‘N Tapes play their hearts out and praise SF (and diss LA, complaining about the dreary cold down south — we got lucky, I think). They rocked, all over the place — still forming their sound, no doubt. Twas a strong one.

OBLIGATORY MP3-RELATED QUASI-NEWS TIDBIT

Your pals at Jagjaguwar (www.jagjaguwar.com) e-mailed, ever so personally, to say they signed Vancouver band Ladyhawk, who are touring with Magnolia Electric Co. Wasn’t that also the title of a cheesy Mists of Avon Ladies-style fantasy flick in the ’80s? Anyway, said band’s self-titled CD/LP debut is due June 6.

The label writes that the band’s album is "a stomping and sweaty ride through the Vancouver streets that they all know well, as viewed from the seats of a bruised and doorless Astro Van. In this ride, you can’t help but feel that you will fall out and you will fall down, and your joints will all be sore at the end of the trip. Ladyhawk’s core is bracing rock. Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night is the hailstorm on the hood of the Replacement’s Let It Be, while distorted guitars invoke the thread and swerve of Silkworm and Dinosaur Jr."

I write that the ’90s are back and there’s nothing you can about it. Except to bury your combat boots in a small hole in the backyard and then pile dog manure gathered from Dolores Park trash cans all over it. It — the ’90s, that is — will probably still come back — but at least you tried.

If you embrace the grunge revivalism, listen to the MP3 for "The Dugout" from Ladyhawk’s debut at www.scjag.com/mp3/jag/dugout.mp3

Posted by Kimberly Chun at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

NOISE: SXSW, fantasy softball, part 3

OK, I swear, this is it. Enough SXSW, already. We gotta move on. So let’s get it out of our system, down on blog, and tricycle out to greener, sunnier pastures.

First off, the homo-happenin’ Ark may not have as good a name as their fellow Malmo, Sweden, rockers Quit Your Dayjob, but they managed to evoke the gods of candy-colored pop-rock good times not witnessed since Andrew WK headlined Bottom of the Hill. These guys work hard for their money. So hard for it, honey.

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Manic vocalist Salo was shaking that sheckel-maker, telling the SXSW sloggers they embodied his song title, "Rock City Wankers," and leading the crowd in a chant of "Tonight, one of us is gonna die young." Someday the sassy singer is gonna be a "Father of a Son," indeed — as long as those white hot pants don’t cramp his style. "It’s Saturday and no one wants to hear any more music!" he yelled, echoing the thoughts of so many wandering Austin like zombies with a blood hangover. This superfun Emo’s IV day showcase with the Gossip, Wooden Wand, and the Giraffes was one of my faves at SXSW.

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Most sighted celebrity, according to Akimbo (who I bunked down with in the Alternative Tentacles flophouse, a.k.a. George Chen’s Super 8 motel room): J. Mascis. "He was everywhere."

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Not J. Mascis’s ass

Oh look, wait, that’s Andy Gill in the middle, doing a crotch-block dance move, with fellow Gang of Four member Dave Allen and Peaches. This party happened earlier in the week at a smoke-filled, Camel-sponsored V2/Dim Mak thing. Weirdest moment: Peaches shakes a Dos Equis and hands it to Gill to spray on the audience, and he, looking befuddled, opens the can and pours it all over her CDs.

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I didn’t get to catch nearly as many SXSW panels as I wanted to, but the ones I did were incisive and low on bull dookie.

Best quips from the conference panel “Rolling Down the River: Revenue Streams Artists Should Know About”: International Artist Agency’s Stephen Brush on album sales: “Fuck the record. It helps. But at the end of the day, you’re building the audience one day at a time.” JSR Merchandising’s Brad Hudson on merch: “In the 26 years I’ve been doing this, the black T-shirt has been the staple. A lot of artists come up with great ideas but you’ll find the majority of the revenue coming from that T-shirt. Three T-shirts and a hoodie.”

Most Guardian-friendly soundbyte from Damian Kulash of OK Go at the surprisingly well-attended “Ten Things You Can Do to Change the World” panel: “It’s easy to say ‘Everyone vote!’ onstage. It’s hard to say, ‘There’s a media consolidation problem in this country, especially if you’re trying to get your single on Clear Channel station.”

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Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, Steve Earle, and Jenny Toomey at the "Ten Things You Can Do to Change the World" panel. Earle: "How many Republicans are here?"

Word had it that the city of Austin was cracking down on singer-songwriter and former Kurt Cobain squeeze (and focus of mad Courtney jealousy) Mary Lou Lord, according to Austinist. She called them to say that the cops shut her down for busking in the street "citing a new law banning "amplification."

Yeesh, this after attending and playing on Sixth Street during SXSW for 11 fucking years. Anyway, she managed to hold this spot next to a late-night convenience store, across the posh, supposedly haunted Driscoll Hotel. Her pal Jason and his gorgeous falsetto deserve to be snapped up by some lucky label.

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SF’s Boyskout got the rock out at a Lava Lounge Patio show with IMA, Faceless Werewolves, Knife Skills, Happy Flowers, Skullening, and Die! Die! Die! Tight.

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The lady — namely Lady Sovereign — looks scary. Here she is at La Zona Rosa. (After losing my way to the Anti- Hoot with Billy Bragg and Jolie Holland, I managed to catch her, as well as Bauhaus-soundalikes She Wants Revenge and the snarksome We Are Scientists down the street at Fox and Hound.) LS’s beats were harsh, and the vibe was, yes, brattay. (She likes to throw down…that microphone.)

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Ghostface made a Wu-Tang face right after the Lady — very fun. GK commanded the stage, the crowd went nuts over the Wu tunes, and I appreciated the sound of gunfire that gently segued between the songs. Whoo.

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The official SXSW-closer softball game/barbecue was called for rain. But hadn’t we had enough white bread by then?

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 22, 2006

Noise: SXSW, too many bands

Dennis Cabuco of the Guardian and Harold Ray Live in Concert!, signing in for a final SXSW posting. I had a blast during the final days of SXSW, so here’s a quick account of my wanderings through Austin, Texas:

Friday afternoon

The North Loop Block Party took place in North Austin with three stages set up in parking lots between vintage shops, a record store, and a kink boutique. I had a few beers with friends and saw the following bands:

The Time Flys — I see these guys often, but they definitely have tightened up since the time we all got drunk for a Cereal Factory show together.

The Cuts — I also see these guys often. Gotta say, they still remind me a lot of the Cars. Yeah, I could see these guys and the Time Flys in SF, but there were a lot of other good bands (whose names I didn’t get) at the block party as well, and with three stages, there was no wait between bands. The audience was composed of nice, well-dressed people. I took some time out to check out all the cool shops and relax from the frantic urgency of seeing bands downtown.

The Nice Boys — I didn’t know they were from Portland, and I didn’t know that one of the guys was in the Exploding Hearts either.

Dazzling King Solomon — This band has a couple of members from the Nervous Exits. Awesome ’60s rock. Crunchy.

I had lunch at Stubbs where I saw We Are Scientists, a threepiece that sounds a lot like the Killers.

Friday night

Ponderosa Stomp — I went to the Continental Club, which was packed, to see Barbara Lynn tearing it up on guitar, playing a leftie strat. She is amazing player, and sings with a soul-stirring voice. I was very moved by her performance. Afterward, I saw Eddie Bo. I say again, Eddie Bo! No, he didn’t do “Check Your Bucket” or “the Thang”, perhaps because they didn’t have the original band to do it, but it was cool to hear him backed bt Little Band of Gold anyway. Archie Bell came up to school us on how to do the “Tighten Up”, which I never know how to do.

OK Go — I watched most of their set on the big screen from outside of the Dirty Dog. It was at capacity, and they weren’t letting anyone else in. If only the industry dorks drinking by the window would leave so the fans could get in. They were oblivious to the amazing show taking place right behind them. I got in just before the last song and the “encore,” the "Million Ways" dance. If you wanna know what that is, you can watch the video on the OK Go website.

On my way up to the Fox and Hound to see Animal Collective, I took Fourth Street, which was blocked off for a St. Patty’s spring-break meat-market hoedown — a block party packed with homogenous, drunken college folks. The good that came of that jaunt: I found out Brandi Carlile was playing at Cedar St. Courtyard, an outdoor patio with good sound. I’ll get back to that.

I made it to the Fox and Hound, which had a long line for Animal Collective. I was still in line when they started their set. The first number lasted about 10 minutes and went nowhere. It was the kind of music I’d hear at a club — a beat, some record scratching, and no discernable melody. I just couldn’t get into it, so I took off in the middle of their second song, out to seek something with melody and harmony.

I fought the St. Patty’s revelers once more to get to the patio where Carlile was playing. She was getting a lot of praise from a pop music station in Austin, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. With a new album just out, she kicks off her first major tour with SXSW in Austin, and if the crowd was any indication of the response she’ll get on tour, it will be a success. It took a while to get the sound worked out as the crowd grew anxious, but we were rewarded with a professional show, and the sound was the best anywhere that evening. She did a couple of songs with a cello player. The bass and guitar players are twins. Brandi is a natural on stage and sings with a sweet sincerity that you can’t help but love. Her songs have universal themes with broad appeal, and it’s a pleasure to watch her perform.

When I left the Courtyard at about 2:00 a.m., the college crew had disappeared, leaving only the canopies, bad leprechaun decorations, and plastic cups littering the street. I walked along Sixth Street to find that the spring-breakers had spilled out to mix with the SXSW crowd, and it was mayhem. People were yelling into their cell phones looking for parties. I witnessed some groping, some drama, and a girl sporting red flashing LEDs on her nips, highlighting her 38D bustline. She should meet up with the guy who had a scrolling LED belt buckle.

Saturday afternoon

I went to Cream Vintage for a show in their back parking lot. The fans were undaunted by the rain as petite blonde Annie Kramer played her set. She was joined by A FirJu Well, who backed her up for a few songs. We sang along to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” as the PA cut out because of the rain. If the Grateful Dead kept playing ’60s stuff throughout their career, they might’ve sounded like this. These guys obviously hang out and play music all the time — they were so comfortable backing others and improvising through technical difficulties.

Saturday night

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I got to Zona Rosa to see Morningwood midset, and they were excellent. See them live if you get a chance. I was convinced to stay and see the Stills by a fan named Rene. She gave me a quick rundown on the band’s background and their songs as they played. They had great energy, keyboards, harmonies, and danceable songs. I couldn’t tell what was old or new, but I liked it all. Emily from Metric made an appearance to do a new song with them, which she had just learned in their tour bus on the way fom Canada.

I took a cab over to the Continental Club to see Andre Williams. It was nice to see him, but most of the good tunes, like "Rib Tips," are practically instumentals. For this, the band makes all the difference. The Continental Club was packed, and it had a party atmosphere, but the music was nothing like what I heard on the recordings. I know Williams is also a good keyboardist, so I was disappointed that he didn’t strut his stuff on organ. I left after about five songs and took a cab back to Red River Road.

I ran into my new friend Rene while at at Emo’s Annex to see a fun indie band called I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. One song, “Your Worst Is the Best” reminded me a bit of Death Cab for Cutie. I went to the Velvet Spade for a drink and to say hi to the Nervous Exits (whom I had missed at 10 p.m.). I went upstairs to see the stage where my band played our first SXSW two years ago. They had a tent around the outdoor patio this time. I heard some good R&B and looked up to see a guy who looked like he should be in a ’70s rock band singing and shaking his head while hammering a Hammond XB2 and a Fender Rhodes. John and the drummer Van make up the Black Diamond Heavies from Nashville belting out some heavy blues rock with no guitarist!

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I left on my way to Stubbs to see the Pretenders, but was distracted by some good music coming from Club DeVille. The doorperson told me it was the Cribs. I walked up to the stage and ended up staying for their whole set, riveted by their performance. Hailing from England, this threepiece reminds me of the Jam and early Green Day. It’s refreshing to see a young band so into their music. They were also tight and well-rehearsed. The guitarist knocked over his Orange amp during their final song, the drummer knocked over his set, and the bassist left his amp oin to feedback as they exited the stage. I missed the Pretenders, but heard it was a great show.

My last hoorah was the super-exclusive, invite only, no-getting-in-without-a-special-pass, Vice Magazine Party, attended by hundreds. I arrived at the Blue Genie in East Austin just in time to see Wolfmother, who were amazing. Where do they get all that energy after playing (at least) four shows at SXSW? I stood right in front of the keyboard player to watch him use all his effects, which were duct-taped to the top of his XB-2, which of course had to be duct-taped to the stand for all that dancing around. This show was way loud, and they ended with the keyboard player leaving his rig sideways, effects looping with his amp on.

Probably the coolest people I met there were Sara Liss from Now magazine http://www.nowtoronto.com/minisites/sxsw/2006/
and her friend Melanie. We compared notes of our SXSW experiences while we sipped mixed drinks made with Phillips vanilla whiskey. Wierd! Yummy though.

My last, last hoorah was Fuzz club for a pcyched out 60’s night at Beerland on Sunday night where the Mojo Filters played a tight set.

Sunday evening, I saw a much more subdued Austin, catching its breath from the biggest party of the year. Besides SXSW, there were also roller derbies and a rodeo. This is the most hectic week Austin experiences, and I’m sure a lot of the natives are glad it’s over. It was raining as a thunderstorm pulled in, but still relatively warm. I will miss Austin and will likely come back next year.

With an overwhelming number of bands playing at the same time, it was inevitable that I would not get to see everyone I wanted to see, so here’s a partial list of other bands I wish I saw:

The Noisettes
Mates of State
Of Montreal
Metric
Film School
Allen Toussaint
Rock and Roll Soldiers
Persephone’s Bees
DMBQ
Seventeen Evergreen
The Nervous Exits
Gris Gris
Drunk Horse
Morrisey
the Pretenders
the Charlatans

Thanks, Amy for being such a gracious host, and for taking me to the best Mexican restaurant in Austin.

Posted by Dennis Cabuco at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NOISE: SXSW, the final fantasy, part 2

SXSW — oh, that old thing? That was sooo…last Saturday. Before it fades from memory, only to be replaced by the latest whiskey bar, here are a few more toasts.

On Friday, we swung by the Band of Gold (featuring Archie Bell, DJ Fontana, and Barbara Lynn) but drove on by Club De Ville, daunted by the early line-formations. We saw the chalk outlines of a very long wait and checked in on Bettye LaVette at La Zona Rosa to see she cancelled. Oh well, Fatcat Records, Pawtracks, Bubblecore, and Motormouthmedia.com hosted an avant-art-hippie-core hoedown right down the street at Fox and Hound, featuring the Mutts, Tom Brosseau, and headliners Animal Collective. That brought out the girls with dyed black hair in tiered skirts and, natch, the boys with beards. I was wondering where they all were. Great merch table, by the way — a righteous free CD with every purchase.

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The lady-centric First Nation disappointed with their low energy musicmaking, but man, Storsveit Nix Noltes from Reykjavik, Iceland, worked those accordions, trumpets, cellos with lovely Eastern European folksong abandon. "Dance, dance!" yelped the cellist leader. We hear and try to obey — but the beards are screwed on too tightly. I hate when that happens.

Earlier Friday eve, I stepped into Yard Dogs, near Club De Ville, to glimpse the finale of the Bloodshot Records party. Nice music-related folk art inside, including Mekon Jon Langford’s faux-weathered works in tribute to Hank Williams and other country and American idols and icons (he was throwing down an opening the next night), and Jad Fair’s whimsical, colorful ink and paint pieces. "Folk" art here means art by music folk or about music folk — got it? Get it. The best buy had to be Rev. Howard Finster’s wood cutouts of musical legends (I know I was tempted by a Merle Haggard piece with very defined teeth).

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Stepped into Ba Da Bing/Leaf’s showcase at Blender Balcony at the Ritz (just had to fight the lines for Brakes, the Kooks, Editors, KT Tunstall, and the Feeling for the Blender Bar space at street level). Early on, Utrillo Kushner of Comets on Fire played songs in the key of "solo project" alongside Garrett Goddard of the Cuts on drums. Dig the ironic Magnum PI shirt!

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The Ba Da Bing showcase closed with a rare show by London’s Th’ Faith Healers, one of my pre-grunge post-punk faves from back in the early ’90s day. Thrilling. Regained faith. Was healed. Went home and fondled the flannel.

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Another awesome, somewhat unappreciated aspect of the SXSW music conference (which Guardian contributor Kurt Wolff had to remind me about): Flatstock Poster Convention, usually held simultaneously on the groundfloor of the Austin Convention Center. The denizens of one booth silkscreened T-shirts as you waited, and most artists also designed a poster for the exhibit. Drool over the splashy graphics. Be pleasantly surprised by the reasonable prices. Reach for your wallet. Shield your precious new piece of art from the rain.

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Philadelphia’s Pushmepullyou Design boss lady Eleanor Grosch; www.pushmepullyoudesign.com

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Boss Construction from Nashville, TN; www.bossconstruct.com

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Matt Daly of the Bird Machine, Inc., Chicago; www.thebirdmachine.com

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The Decoder Ring Design Concern, Austin, TX; www.thedecoderring.com

Posted by Kimberly Chun at 02:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NOISE: Go Bats

Who drunkenly referred to New Zealand band the Bats as the "Hobbit’s Go-Betweens?" Were they cracked out on ethereal pop?

Judge for yourself when the Bats attempt to cement last year’s comeback long-player, At the National Grid, in your consciousness — with, of course, a tour. They stop at Amoeba Music, SF today at 6 p.m. for a free show, then wing over to Rickshaw Stop at 8 p.m. (then on to the Starry Plough March 23). Essential for NZ popsters — you know who you are. You love the guano.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 01:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 20, 2006

NOISE: SXSW, the final days, part 1

So much has happened and so little blogging has gotten done. Could there be a connection? Yep. So here’s a little more on SXSW, the final days, revolving around what photos I could take before my camera died a horrible death –like all the other electronic devices around me.

The Nice Boys from Portland, Ore., tapped a fun Cheap Trick/Faces vein of pure ’70s-era gold. Rawk at the Birdman Records Showcase.

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Power rock with extreme volume and lots of melody — all from a lil’ ole threepiece called the Evangelicals. Very fun — and worth checking into when not studying Bay Area DJ Mike Relm’s DVD scratch technique next door at the Blind Pig.

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Shows at houses, record stores, boutiques, garages — one thing you gotta love about SXSW is the way the entire city seems filled with music. Music is oozing out of every corner of its mouth, dripping sloppily all over its chin and into its crotch. And it doesn’t care! (Though of course it does care, deeply, about music) These shows were strictly for locals on South First Street — I came to see Palaxy Tracks.

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Ran into John Vanderslice, who only wanted to talk about how much he wanted to get back to SF after touring Europe with Death Cab for Cuties (where they were treated, if not like kings, then well-regarded "court jesters," he chuckled). He performed with Matt from Nada Surf and Rocky Votolato, fellow Barsuk artists, at End of the Ear, a cool vinyl store on South First.

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Palaxy Track’s guitar player’s other project, Octopus Project, headlined in the backyard of Bella Blue boutique nearby. Boys in tights and hot pants played basketball in the driveway.

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The music just couldn’t stop — it didn’t matter if you couldn’t play an instrument and just wanted to play 7-inches on your battery-powered turntables. "Sit and spin" takes on yet another meaning.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 18, 2006

NOISE: SXSW’s Peach-y keen naked ladies

Stealth "special" appearances by Jane’s Addiction/Perry Farrell, Norah Jones, and Flaming Lips? Those SXSW events were one-upped by a spontaneous session of the itty bitty titty club (and prominent potbelly chapter) when Peaches teamed with Dave Allen of Gang of Four for a DJ set at Friday night’s V2/Dim Mak party, charmingly titled "Clusterfuck." That was sort of the vibe as Peaches and Allen spun Suicide-like beats, hard-edge dance numbers, and the Rezillos — the most screwy aspect was all the endless Camel advertising/product placement going on. (And what was with all the cigarette giveaways at this year’s fest?)

In any case, I confess I like Mistress P’s style: She basically yelled at the crowd, ordered them to dance, and then jumped into the audience and moshed into me. It was like bouncing into a big, fluffy cinnamon bun — Peaches smells just fine! And that’s enough to make anyone dance.

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Later a slew of burlesque dancers got onstage and shook it like a Polaroid land camera. Entertaining — too bad it seemed to drive half the crowd away. Maybe Suicide Girl-style go-go schtick’s moment has passed. Or perhaps the culture vultures would have stuck around if the ladies stripped and threw Camels… Now that would be a sight to see.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 03:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Noise: SXSW, too many bands

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Dennis Cabuco of the Guardian and Harold Ray Live in Concert!, signing in for a final SXSW posting. I had a blast during the final days of SXSW, so here’s a quick account of my wanderings through Austin, Texas:

Friday afternoon

The North Loop Block Party took place in North Austin with three stages set up in parking lots between vintage shops, a record store, and a kink boutique. I had a few beers with friends and saw the following bands:

The Time Flys — I see these guys often, but they definitely have tightened up since the time we all got drunk for a Cereal Factory show together.

The Cuts — I also see these guys often. Gotta say, they still remind me a lot of the Cars. Yeah, I could see these guys and the Time Flys in SF, but there were a lot of other good bands (whose names I didn’t get) at the block party as well, and with three stages, there was no wait between bands. The audience was composed of nice, well-dressed people. I took some time out to check out all the cool shops and relax from the frantic urgency of seeing bands downtown.

The Nice Boys — I didn’t know they were from Portland, and I didn’t know that one of the guys was in the Exploding Hearts either.

Dazzling King Solomon — This band has a couple of members from the Nervous Exits. Awesome ’60s rock. Crunchy.

I had lunch at Stubbs where I saw We Are Scientists, a threepiece that sounds a lot like the Killers.

Friday night

Ponderosa Stomp — I went to the Continental Club, which was packed, to see Barbara Lynn tearing it up on guitar, playing a leftie strat. She is amazing player, and sings with a soul-stirring voice. I was very moved by her performance. Afterward, I saw Eddie Bo. I say again, Eddie Bo! No, he didn’t do “Check Your Bucket” or “the Thang”, perhaps because they didn’t have the original band to do it, but it was cool to hear him backed bt Little Band of Gold anyway. Archie Bell came up to school us on how to do the “Tighten Up”, which I never know how to do.

OK Go — I watched most of their set on the big screen from outside of the Dirty Dog. It was at capacity, and they weren’t letting anyone else in. If only the industry dorks drinking by the window would leave so the fans could get in. They were oblivious to the amazing show taking place right behind them. I got in just before the last song and the “encore,” the “Million Ways” dance. If you wanna know what that is, you can watch the video on the OK Go website.

On my way up to the Fox and Hound to see Animal Collective, I took Fourth Street, which was blocked off for a St. Patty’s spring-break meat-market hoedown — a block party packed with homogenous, drunken college folks. The good that came of that jaunt: I found out Brandi Carlile was playing at Cedar St. Courtyard, an outdoor patio with good sound. I’ll get back to that.

I made it to the Fox and Hound, which had a long line for Animal Collective. I was still in line when they started their set. The first number lasted about 10 minutes and went nowhere. It was the kind of music I’d hear at a club — a beat, some record scratching, and no discernable melody. I just couldn’t get into it, so I took off in the middle of their second song, out to seek something with melody and harmony.

I fought the St. Patty’s revelers once more to get to the patio where Carlile was playing. She was getting a lot of praise from a pop music station in Austin, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. With a new album just out, she kicks off her first major tour with SXSW in Austin, and if the crowd was any indication of the response she’ll get on tour, it will be a success. It took a while to get the sound worked out as the crowd grew anxious, but we were rewarded with a professional show, and the sound was the best anywhere that evening. She did a couple of songs with a cello player. The bass and guitar players are twins. Brandi is a natural on stage and sings with a sweet sincerity that you can’t help but love. Her songs have universal themes with broad appeal, and it’s a pleasure to watch her perform.

When I left the Courtyard at about 2:00 a.m., the college crew had disappeared, leaving only the canopies, bad leprechaun decorations, and plastic cups littering the street. I walked along Sixth Street to find that the spring-breakers had spilled out to mix with the SXSW crowd, and it was mayhem. People were yelling into their cell phones looking for parties. I witnessed some groping, some drama, and a girl sporting red flashing LEDs on her nips, highlighting her 38D bustline. She should meet up with the guy who had a scrolling LED belt buckle.

Saturday afternoon

I went to Cream Vintage for a show in their back parking lot. The fans were undaunted by the rain as petite blonde Annie Kramer played her set. She was joined by A FirJu Well, who backed her up for a few songs. We sang along to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” as the PA cut out because of the rain. If the Grateful Dead kept playing ’60s stuff throughout their career, they might’ve sounded like this. These guys obviously hang out and play music all the time — they were so comfortable backing others and improvising through technical difficulties.

Saturday night

Morningwood.jpg
I got to Zona Rosa to see Morningwood midset, and they were excellent. See them live if you get a chance. I was convinced to stay and see the Stills by a fan named Rene. She gave me a quick rundown on the band’s background and their songs as they played. They had great energy, keyboards, harmonies, and danceable songs. I couldn’t tell what was old or new, but I liked it all. Emily from Metric made an appearance to do a new song with them, which she had just learned in their tour bus on the way fom Canada.

I took a cab over to the Continental Club to see Andre Williams. It was nice to see him, but most of the good tunes, like “Rib Tips,” are practically instumentals. For this, the band makes all the difference. The Continental Club was packed, and it had a party atmosphere, but the music was nothing like what I heard on the recordings. I know Williams is also a good keyboardist, so I was disappointed that he didn’t strut his stuff on organ. I left after about five songs and took a cab back to Red River Road.

I ran into my new friend Rene while at at Emo’s Annex to see a fun indie band called I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. One song, “Your Worst Is the Best” reminded me a bit of Death Cab for Cutie. I went to the Velvet Spade for a drink and to say hi to the Nervous Exits (whom I had missed at 10 p.m.). I went upstairs to see the stage where my band played our first SXSW two years ago. They had a tent around the outdoor patio this time. I heard some good R&B and looked up to see a guy who looked like he should be in a ’70s rock band singing and shaking his head while hammering a Hammond XB2 and a Fender Rhodes. John and the drummer Van make up the Black Diamond Heavies from Nashville belting out some heavy blues rock with no guitarist!

cribs.jpg
I left on my way to Stubbs to see the Pretenders, but was distracted by some good music coming from Club DeVille. The doorperson told me it was the Cribs. I walked up to the stage and ended up staying for their whole set, riveted by their performance. Hailing from England, this threepiece reminds me of the Jam and early Green Day. It’s refreshing to see a young band so into their music. They were also tight and well-rehearsed. The guitarist knocked over his Orange amp during their final song, the drummer knocked over his set, and the bassist left his amp oin to feedback as they exited the stage. I missed the Pretenders, but heard it was a great show.

My last hoorah was the super-exclusive, invite only, no-getting-in-without-a-special-pass, Vice Magazine Party, attended by hundreds. I arrived at the Blue Genie in East Austin just in time to see Wolfmother, who were amazing. Where do they get all that energy after playing (at least) four shows at SXSW? I stood right in front of the keyboard player to watch him use all his effects, which were duct-taped to the top of his XB-2, which of course had to be duct-taped to the stand for all that dancing around. This show was way loud, and they ended with the keyboard player leaving his rig sideways, effects looping with his amp on.

Probably the coolest people I met there were Sara Liss from Now magazine http://www.nowtoronto.com/minisites/sxsw/2006/
and her friend Melanie. We compared notes of our SXSW experiences while we sipped mixed drinks made with Phillips vanilla whiskey. Wierd! Yummy though.

My last, last hoorah was Fuzz club for a pcyched out 60’s night at Beerland on Sunday night where the Mojo Filters played a tight set.

Sunday evening, I saw a much more subdued Austin, catching its breath from the biggest party of the year. Besides SXSW, there were also roller derbies and a rodeo. This is the most hectic week Austin experiences, and I’m sure a lot of the natives are glad it’s over. It was raining as a thunderstorm pulled in, but still relatively warm. I will miss Austin and will likely come back next year.

With an overwhelming number of bands playing at the same time, it was inevitable that I would not get to see everyone I wanted to see, so here’s a partial list of other bands I wish I saw:

The Noisettes
Mates of State
Of Montreal
Metric
Film School
Allen Toussaint
Rock and Roll Soldiers
Persephone’s Bees
DMBQ
Seventeen Evergreen
The Nervous Exits
Gris Gris
Drunk Horse
Morrisey
the Pretenders
the Charlatans

Thanks, Amy for being such a gracious host, and for taking me to the best Mexican restaurant in Austin.

Native son

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The John Smith-Pocahontas romance has long been a cornerstone of America’s mythical landscape. He being the original Man Who Knows Indians (an archetype sealed by James Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans), and she standing in for the land itself: Embodying equal parts purity and promise, Pocahontas represents an ideal, a paradise. The myth of their doomed love speaks to how this paradise was won and then lost. It is a story that Terrence Malick – a writer-director whose work has always sloped toward myth and, in The Thin Red Line, epic poetry – has wanted to tap for decades and finally does in his strange new film, The New World.

The New World is the departure and even, perhaps, the failure that many critics were expecting from Malick’s comeback film, The Thin Red Line. Despite Line’s 170-minute running time, the writer-director’s take on James Jones’s panoramic World War II novel was every bit as entrancing as his revered earlier films (Badlands, Days of Heaven). The New World runs 135 minutes (the version I saw was actually 150 minutes: The movie was recut after already screening across the country), and, this time, Malick does seem to have sacrificed clarity and control for the sake of spectacle. Still, the movie is certainly an important addition to a powerfully coherent filmography. He retains his formidable talent for grounding his characters in a specific geography, and he remains refreshingly concerned with their interiority: Few movie characters have souls as deep as Malick’s.

The writer-director’s movies are all marked by a stark tension between hyperrealism and voice-over-laden stylization (a muted style being no less a style than a flashy one). Much has been made of Malick’s heavily researched, no-artificial-lighting depiction of Jonestown, and, indeed, the naturalistic, cinema verité rendering of America’s first colony is reminiscent of Werner Herzog’s lightning-bolt Aguirre: The Wrath of God (though Colin Farrell’s John Smith doesn’t have a hundredth the intensity of Klaus Kinski’s Aguirre). The film’s opening, which conveys the initial landing with Wagner-fueled bombast, is suitably revelatory and exemplary of Malick’s talent for lyricism.

With that said, there can, of course, be too much of a good thing. The depiction of Pocahontas and Smith’s courtship is almost insane in its unrelenting camera movements, flashes of elegiac sunlight, and impressionistic footage of plants – the scenes almost seem a parody of lyricism. The real problem here is that Malick’s aesthetic isn’t reigned in by a tight narrative construction (despite its expansive running time, The Thin Red Line never erred from a carefully plotted narrative mechanism). This Pocahontas is more human than her Disney counterpart (both because of Q’Orianka Kilcher’s performance and because the character receives a voice-over), but not enough to direct Malick’s labored gaze. By the time the story moves her to England with eventual husband John Rolfe (Christian Bale) and picks up some melodramatic heft from the heroine’s tragic arc, our attention has wavered too far for too long; the film’s many digressive passages fail to materialize into a whole.

Given how slippery The New World is, the film is set to solicit strong critical reactions. It’s indulgent and difficult to classify and will therefore push critics to extremes. In actuality, The New World really is what it seems: a fascinating failure with brilliant flourishes weighing against strained seriousness and muddled lyricism. As far as mythic American lovers in recent movies go, I think I’ll take Johnny and June over John and Pocahontas, but Malick’s vision still makes The New World worth a trip to the big screen. If the writer-director has finally stumbled, it proves what one might have guessed all along: that a Terrence Malick failure is many times more interesting than an average filmmaker’s success. While Malick might be misguided in trying to coax poetry out of a form – prestige Hollywood filmmaking – hardly known for being uncompromised, it’s difficult not to admire the ambition.

THE NEW WORLD  Opens Fri/20  Selected Bay Area theaters  For theater and show time info, go to www.sfbg.com www.thenewworldmovie.com

Making a splash

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"One, two, three, four – squeeze your butt, Paul! – seven, eight," coach Suzanne Baker says into the microphone, pacing the poolside deck and counting the beats to a techno remix of "Another One Bites the Dust."

The members of Tsunami Tsynchro are in the water doing leg splits in the air. The first time they try it, legs bash into heads. "OK, OK, I can fix this," says Baker. She has them add more space by pushing off each other’s shoulders with their feet. They practice the new move repeatedly. "Again. Under. Again. Under," Baker commands.

Tsunami Tsynchro is the country’s first – and right now, only – male synchronized swimming team. It grew out of the Tsunami Swim Team, a gay and lesbian masters team, started two years ago as a synchro team for gay men (though it now includes several women).

They practice twice a week, today holding their underwater positions with the help of empty milk containers. "The bottles force you to find your body mass," Baker explains as they work to mobilize their bodies. The team is preparing its technical routine, a 90-second display of its most difficult moves that will be performed at this summer’s Gay Games in Chicago, where Tsunami Tsynchro will compete for the first time, alongside all-women’s teams.

It will be a big summer for the team, but it could’ve been bigger. In August the XI Fédération Internationale de Natation World Masters Championships are coming to the United States for the second time ever, but the Tsunami team isn’t allowed to compete. When the Bay Area hosts the FINA Championships at the Stanford Aquatic Center, the nation’s first male synchro team will be just a Caltrain ride away from the bleachers, but a lot farther from being permitted into the pool.
Image problems

Synchronized swimming combines rigorous physical exertion with the demands of polished performance. During routines, swimmers can’t touch the pool’s walls or bottom at any time. They spend a good portion of each routine with their heads underwater and bodies vertical, being judged on how high their legs reach. Coach Baker compares performing a synchro routine to "having to race a 400 individual medley in swimming, holding your breath every third lap, and smiling the entire time."

Stephen Houghton comes to the team with a history of Iron Man competitions and a seven-day stage race across the Sahara desert. He says synchro is tougher, and credits his one advantage not to his years of endurance sports but rather to his ballet training as a kid. "It gave me flexibility, and the ability to count to eight. You’d be surprised how many men can’t count to eight."

Underwater, the swimmers have to do more than count and hold their breath; they also have to control their heart rate. "If you’re pumped up and excited, you burn up all your oxygen," says Stuart Hills, a brown belt in tae kwon do and a former competitive swimmer. "You have to get into a relaxation state."

Pool time can be perilous too. Complicated lifts can lead to injury – bloody and broken noses, for example, and one bad incident involving a knee splintering a set of goggles. But during the routines, the difficulty of the sport has to melt away from the performance. "It’s tough," Hills says, "but you’re supposed to make it look easy."

Image is key to synchro – in a couple of ways. On the one hand, swimmers are judged by the attitude they project during routines; on the other, they must fight the image problem that has hindered their sport’s mainstream acceptance.

Synchronized swimming is a sport almost defined by the mockeries made of it, including the classic Saturday Night Live skits involving a pair of male synchronized swimmers, one wearing floaties. You’re more likely to find synchro on Comedy Central – in movies ranging from Austin Powers to Mel Brooks’s History of the World: Part I – than on ESPN. That’s made Tsunami Tsynchro’s quest for acceptance all the more difficult.

"This is really the last area men haven’t been able to compete [in]," says Bob Wheeler, one of the team’s founding members. Unlike female-dominated sports such as figure skating and gymnastics, synchronized swimming has no male or mixed category. "You don’t have many young boys doing synchro," Baker notes, "so they don’t see a need to make a category yet."

Beyond gender bias, there are other barriers to creating male synchro teams. In general, new synchro teams are not started very often because it’s an expensive sport. The underwater speaker system cost the Tsunami team $3,000. Synchro teams also have fewer swimmers than most swim teams, yet they need more attention and more pool time to hone their routines, so each member must pay more in coaching and pool fees. And in order to develop and practice routines, all the team members must be present.

"This is in no way an individual sport," says Baker.

If new synchro teams are rare, new male synchro teams are even more elusive, the white tiger of aquatic sports. It’s not a sport in which men find it easy to participate. When Wheeler created his Match.com profile, he debated whether or not to put down synchronized swimming as one of his hobbies. As it turned out, Wheeler began dating Kurt Kleespies, a longtime swimmer, who’s now the newest member of the team.

Officially, men aren’t welcome under the sport’s highest guidelines. Though they are allowed to compete domestically under US Synchro rules, FINA, the worldwide governing body of aquatic sports, doesn’t allow men to compete at an international level.

"In theory," Baker admits, "women shouldn’t compete directly with men." At the Olympic level, she says, the rule makes sense since men have the capacity for greater strength. But at the masters level, she argues, the genders are much more evenly matched. Most women competing at the masters level have been longtime synchro swimmers. The men are almost all beginners. And when they’re starting out, she says, men face several significant barriers: "Women tend to be more flexible. Men are denser and therefore less buoyant. These guys are all trained swimmers…. They were sinkers from the get-go."
No men allowed

More than 8,000 international masters athletes will hit the Bay Area in August for the FINA championships in swimming, diving, water polo, and – for women only – synchronized swimming.

Because of the FINA rule, the World Masters Championships can’t allow men to compete. "We are all for people competing in whatever sport they want to compete," says Anne Cribbs, chair of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee and executive director of the FINA championships. She supports male participation in the sport if approved by FINA, but can’t permit it in international competition until it’s officially accepted.

Not so long ago, the rule seemed poised for change. "In 2000 I thought it might happen," says Don Kane, competition director for synchronized swimming at the World Masters. Five years ago a proposal was brought before the FINA General Conference to allow men to compete. It was passed by the FINA Congress, but then overruled by FINA president Mustapha Larfaoui, from Algeria, and FINA executive director Cornell Marculescu, from Romania, who cited a lack of male teams. Or, as Kane suggests, concerns by "male-dominated cultures."

The prospects for men competing internationally are not bright in the immediate future, Kane surmises. At the Athens Olympics, Larfaoui had the FINA rules changed so he could run for office again, and Kane doesn’t foresee the synchro rules changing under his command.

As for the Tsunamis, "we thought about registering as a female team and trying to pass as women," coach Baker jokes. She turns serious, though, saying, "These guys are doing a lot of hard work. They should be allowed to compete."

The team is hoping to put on an exhibition routine, though they’ll need FINA permission even for that. But Tsunami board member Brad Hise is optimistic about their chances, saying, "This is the Bay Area; men do things here that people don’t typically associate with us."

Synchro is a sport of physical challenge, artistic movement, jazzy music, gender conflict, and international cultural clashes. And one more thing, says Stevens: It’s also a sport of total surprise. "People disappear underwater, and you think, what will they do when they come up?"

www.basoc.org/pr_032405.html  www.sftsunami.org

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