Volume 43 Number 03 Archives — Page 2 of 2 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Writing on the Wallpaper

October 14, 2008

SONIC REDUCER Everyone knows sex sells. But who knew, so many years ago, when hip-hop was still reporting from the streets and dance music revolved round the love and stardust thrown off those glittering mirrored balls, that overt consumption itself would sell just as well? So much of today’s mainstream pop and hip-hop continues to hobble along on the crutch of an all-glam, imagination-free, Benjamin-flaunting, daydream-stoking, showroom/showoff mentality, which masquerades as genuine energy and originality. Check, for instance, T.I.’s Cinderella-fantasy "Whatever You Like" video. Still, is Britney Spears ushering in a recession-era pop backlash against gimme-gimme materialism with her recent "Womanizer" clip? Its up-to-the-millisecond, dashed-off put-down of Wall Street traders ‘n’ traitors is delivered nekkid from a detoxing, rehab-ready sauna.

And you know the East Bay’s dance-pop provocateur Wallpaper is on that tip — with his own ironic-hip-cat zazu. The Wallpaper project itself, says mastermind Eric Frederic, is "a device to critique pop music but also popular culture, and I think things are getting exponentially worse — as far as consumer culture, cell phone culture, the culture of me goes. Even for those of us who think we understand it and are separate from it."

Take, for example, texting — my least favorite thing to watch in a dark movie theater and the subject of Wallpaper’s "Txt Me Yr Love" off its T Rex EP (Eenie Meenie). "That song is obviously a knock on text-obsessed people," Frederic continues. "But I probably send 100 text messages a day. I do it way more than I want to and way more than I’m comfortable with, and that represents, again, an inner struggle with this kind of stuff."

Fighting, thought-provoking words from a sharp, very funny mind. I first caught Wallpaper a while back at Bottom of the Hill, and Frederic’s uncanny pop hooks and cheesy-hilarious way of styling his performance — delivered in character, from a vinyl La-Z-Boy, as the egocentric would-be-superstar Ricky Reed, alongside drummer Arjun Singh — made me bookmark him for better or worse. Whether you catch the two live or Frederic in one of his wittily clueless video blog entries, you’ll find that Wallpaper brings that sense of humor so sorely missing from local pop, dance, and indie rock scenes.

And rest assured, the tousled-haired songwriter, who just graduated with a degree in composition from UC Berkeley, is nothing like his satirical persona.

"The character is a real jerk, and I don’t want to be anything like him or embody him in my daily life at all," says the Bay Area native while tackling a turkey sandwich at Brainwash Cafe. "He’s arrogant, and he’s chauvinistic, and he’s material-obsessed. He just represents everything that bums me out." Frederic laughs. "He’s not very bright. He doesn’t really get it, and he doesn’t realize that the joke’s on him half the time." Hence the surprised reactions from fans — apparently Wallpaper blew minds during their ’08 Brooklyn and Philadelphia shows — when they approach Frederic. "Usually the first response is, ‘I didn’t think you were going to be so nice to me!’"

He’s nice and hard-working apparently: Frederic toiled on the EP, played alongside party-starters like Dan Deacon, and did some requisite remixes while completing work on his degree, and now he’s deep into making an album, a form that he’s studying intently.

"It’s definitely hard because with today’s music culture or climate, you have to do remixes and video blogs and stuff just to keep people’s attention. Making a really intensive, really smart full-length record while doing all that stuff with a short period of time is really challenging," he says. Frederic’s happy with what he has, but "I put a lot of pressure on myself," says the songwriter who, in one hilarious video blog, threatened to quit the biz if Wallpaper’s EP was outsold by Grand Theft Audio IV. "I’ve been listening to Thriller about every other day. If you don’t set your goals to be the best, what are you going to do? Just be mediocre or halfway to the median? There’s no reason why anybody should not be trying to make timeless records." And who would get the last laugh if this semi-joke band made one of those? *

WALLPAPER

Fri/17, 10 p.m., $10–$15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

www.rickshawstop.com

BARACK OUT OR …

LAIKA AND THE COSMONAUTS
Wipe…out! The Finnish surf combo bids, "Aloha," with this farewell tour. With Pollo Del Mar and the Go Going Gone Girls. Thurs/16, 8 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop.

GRUPO FANTASMA
Austin’s funky jamkins meld reggae, cumbia, and salsa grooves to a great din of buzz. With Boca Do Rio. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com

MARY J. BLIGE
More drama, puleeze. With Robin Thicke. Sat/18, 7:30 p.m., $33.75–$119.75. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass, Concord. www.livenation.com

TINA TURNER
Love’s got everything to do with it when it came to adding another show to the leggy legend’s San Jose stand. Sun/19-Mon/20, 7 p.m., $59.50–$150. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. www.apeconcerts.com
KILLERS
Will the upcoming Day and Age (Island) be another Bruce’s — I mean —Sam’s Town (Island, 2006)? Tues/21, 8 p.m., $37.50. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. www.goldenvoice.com

San Francisco Trolley Dances

October 14, 2008

PREVIEW How many more 38s do I have to look at when I really need the 5? And how come the 35 is always empty, while you can’t find a spot to put your feet, not to mention a seat, on the 22? Muni manages to infuriate just about everybody — from the latte-clutching N-Judah riders to the grocery bag-shlepping "Chinatown Express" shoppers.

Still, I’ve never lived in a city where people did not vociferously complain about their public transportation system. That’s why San Francisco Trolley Dances is such a neat idea. No, they are not another Muni pacification plan, but the brainchild of local choreographer Kim Epifano. If you are a stickler for accuracy, the idea came from Jean Isaacs Dance Theater in San Diego where they do have trolleys. For this year’s San Francisco Trolley Dances you board the new T-Third Street line anywhere between Mission Bay and Bayview-Hunters Point. Besides taking you through vastly varied cityscapes, you can watch performances on the street as you ride by or get off at designated spots. Scott Wells and his high-flying acrobat/dancers will send you off at Fourth and Berry streets, and Joanna Haigood’s community dancers will welcome you in front of the Bayview Opera House. All that for $1.50.

SAN FRANCISCO TROLLEY DANCES Sat/18-Sun/19, 11 a.m.–2:45 p.m. (rides start every 45 minutes from Fourth and Berry streets), $1.50 or Fast Pass. (415) 226-1139, www.epiphanydance.org

Stereolab

October 14, 2008

PREVIEW Eighteen years, nine studio albums, and dozens of singles and EPs along, Stereolab just might have been misnamed. Are the Europa-spanning pop-history-conscious groove alchemists better dubbed Stereogame? After all, founder-guitarist-keyboardist-songwriter Tim Gane describes the band’s music-making process as more akin to intelligent child’s play than anything strictly scientific. "I tend to look at it like a puzzle," he said by the phone during a tour stop in Detroit. "I’m the opposite of a classic songwriter — someone who contrives to write songs to convey something. To me, it’s the opposite thing. I have nothing to say, but I want to find out …"

Stereolab’s latest full-length, Chemical Chords (4AD), teems with archetypal melodicism along with a certain age-old genre restriction: more often than not, the songs unfold their brilliant petals, blossom seductively, then recede around the three-minute mark. Longer tracks like "Nous Vous Demandons Pardon" play friskily bright snare, plonky vibes, and bell-like keys off a familiar Motown bounce. The music of Hitsville USA as well as the Brill Building provided a kind of rulebook for Stereolab’s fun and games this time around. To add an element of uncertainty, he worked out the chords to the songs on guitar, then applied them randomly over four rhythms the band had already recorded with drum loops. As a result, he said, "you seem to listen to it for the first time."

That strategy of recontextualizing somewhat worn rock ‘n’ roll touchstones evokes filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964) soundtrack, which Gane references. And what is the wildest use for Stereolab’s pop? "It was," Gane said, "used for a toilet advert in Italy."

STEREOLAB With Richards Swift. Tue/21, 8 p.m., $27.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com>.

Heavy Heavy Low Low

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October 14, 2008
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PREVIEW Things could have been so easy for the Bay Area’s best young group. After building a buzz with their uncompromising, spastic EP, Courtside Seats (self-released, 2005), San Jose’s Heavy Heavy Low Low signed to Ferret Music, the metalcore equivalent to mid-1990s Death Row Records. Ferret brought new exposure and high expectations, which the lads lived up to on their stunning 2006 debut, Everything’s Watched, Everyone’s Watching. EWEW was the sound of a band breaking out of the metalcore scene they grew up in by building a battering ram of noisy fuzz. Though they shunned many of the genre’s hackneyed clichés (screamed verse/sung chorus, asymmetrical haircuts that double as eye patches), they embraced their roots with punishing breakdowns, abrasive guitar gashes, and vocalist Robert Smith’s brutal, distinctive ramblings.

Though EWEW was a critical and commercial success, the guys had no intention of rehashing it when they went into Oakland’s Panda Studios to record what would become their new LP, Turtle Nipple and the Toxic Shock (Ferret/New Weatherman). According to Smith, "We didn’t really have any goals or anything like that. We just wanted to make a weird album that wasn’t as affiliated with, I guess, metal or how Heavy used to be." While most hardcore/metal bands shun their heavy roots for crossover appeal under the guise of experimentation, Turtle Nipple is actually less accessible than their previous recordings. While this has turned off the average lazy scenester, the astute fan will rejoice in the disc’s depth and variation: this time jazz, surf rock, and psychedelia are juxtaposed with the brutal breakdowns and blast beats.

HEAVY HEAVY LOW LOW With Fear Before. Fri/17, 7 p.m., $12. 418 Project, 418 Front, Santa Cruz. (831) 466-9770, www.the418.org

The Infinite Operation Iraqi Freedom

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October 14, 2008
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REVIEW It has been seven years since W. launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, and in that time enough documentaries about the war have been made to warrant a Wikipedia page on the subgenre. From its explosive opening sequence, in which an Iraqi village endures a surprise attack from insurgents, Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’ documentary Full Battle Rattle could be placed alongside Gunner Palace (2004) or The Ground Truth (2006) as another vérité-style portrait of daily life "on the ground." It’s when the smoke clears and an ice cream truck pulls up that we realize something’s amiss. This isn’t Iraq, but Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, and what we’ve just seen is part of a three-week long, intensive simulation meant to prepare US soldiers for conditions overseas.

Gerber and Moss follow one unit, led by the even-handed Col. McLaughlin, through the entirety of a training session as they attempt to win the hearts and cooperation of the fractious village of Medina Wasl. The villagers are actual Iraqi refugees, who despite their Shia, Sunni, and Christian backgrounds, have formed a genuine communal bond. As the deputy mayor, who used to be a Baghdad playboy in the ’70s, says: "I can’t even tell my wife, but after three years this feels more like home." The insurgents, on the other hand, are played by fellow American soldiers, and contribute to some of the most surreal moments in the film when they speak of taking out McLaughlin’s unit with unrestrained glee. The topsy-turvy world of Fort Irwin is further underscored by a commanding officer’s seemingly-contradictory comment that he hopes "the soldiers get lost in the reality of the simulation." Indeed, Gerber and Moss happen upon some unexpectedly candid moments amid all the play-acting: the tears shed at a mock funeral service for "fallen" comrades are real. Unfortunately, reality truly hits when the soldiers have to board an Iraq-bound plane at the end of the training. For some it will be a return trip. In the strange feedback loop between Iraq and the Iraq of Fort Irwin, Full Battle Rattle captures the seeming endlessness of the war.

FULL BATTLE RATTLE Fri/17, 7:30 p.m., $12.50. Premiere Theatre, Letterman Digital Arts Center, Presidio, SF. www.sffs.org

“SF Open Studios: Weekend 3”

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October 14, 2008
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STUDY 3, 2003 BY DAVID KING

PREVIEW The third weekend of Open Studios focuses on spaces in Bernal Heights, Duboce Triangle, Glen Park, Eureka Valley, Noe Valley, and the Castro and Mission districts. Here’s a lucky-seven list of artists worth seeking out.

Matt Sarconi Spatial clarity is a major aspect of Sarconi’s photography; his use of frames within frames elevates images that might be pretty as a greeting card into something more contemplative. His settings span from the Bay Area to Spain and Croatia.

A.J. Oishi There’s at least a bit of the late Sol Lewitt in Oishi’s low-key commercial acrylic-on-canvas paintings. She patterns circles within circles (or conversely uses smaller circles to form larger ones) while experimenting with muted versions of appetizing colors such as chocolate, orange, and cherry.

David King The gallery owner Jack Fischer first showed me some of King’s collages, which commingle camp and metaphysical imagery in a manner that never neglects visual pleasure. King’s most recent work veers away from blue-hued dreamland into darker, microscopic images. His sharp-eyed use of found material means an upcoming residency at the San Francisco Dump holds promise.

Lauren Kohne A mixed-media piece that mines musicality from the grids, strips, and numbers on Muni bus transfers demonstrates Kohne’s interest in foregrounding societal habit and patterns.

Victor Cartagena Artist and teacher Cartagena had a stark solo exhibition at Galeria de la Raza earlier this year — a visit to his busy studio is bound to reveal different facets of (and relationships between) his mixed media works, painting, and printmaking.

Bill Basquin This is a busy time for Basquin: you can find his collected films for sale at Needles and Pens, see at least one of them projected by kino21 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this week, and check out photos from his urban garden series "SOILED" at Mission Pie. He’ll show photos and installation work at Open Studios.

Robert H. Garrett Garrett’s photo in the Open Studios guide suggests a color version of Henry Wessel’s droll, laconic, crisp images of the suburban landscape.

SF OPEN STUDIOS: WEEKEND 3 Various neighborhoods, SF. (415) 861-9838. www.artspan.org

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