Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

On the Rael

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superego@sfbg.com

failed teleportation with a microwave is painful

at least my small intestine reemerges during rainfall

watch where u put those feet —

I have a fetish for on-the-crotch antihistamine — Odynophagia

I first caught 23-year-old native transdimensional rapper Odynophagia (www.myspace.com/odynophagia) at a freestyle night at El Rincon. He materialized onstage with his hyperactively dazed hype man King Eljen, flamboyantly brandishing a koi in a little plastic baggie. The atmosphere was immediately tweaked off-center, the inverted rhymes delivered with supersonic giddiness, and the fate of the poor fish in doubt from the get-go. (It survived.)

Earlier, I’d been transfixed by the boob-blackening video for “The Container is Pervasive” from Odynophagia’s mind-twisting first album Social Masque, put out this year by his music-film-art distribution and production company Millipede Handjob (www.millipedehandjob.com). MF Doom on shrooms meets meta-fractured art star Ryan Trecartin? Sure, but Odyn, whose name means “painful swallowing” and whose rickets-rocked flow opens a quaking quark-hole in indie hip-hop’s current unholy oatmeal, has limned the freakin’ tesseract, man.

Social Masque was made “half in channel with unconscious, half coping with altered chemistry from bad acid,” he told me. “I call it ‘chemical jaw.’ I do the art of living Sudarshan Kriya every day, and consider myself a mystic surrealist (the 100-year-old French kind), letting anything come through from the nether regions.” Right now he’s getting ready to direct his first film, Struggled Reagans, a semi-pornographic deconstruction of Power Rangers, featuring aborted quintuplets and a traumatically dripping sink nozzle. “One of the characters is Evie from the sitcom Out of This World,” he says. “It’s about nine percent sex. I’m still casting.”

He’s also recording his second album, Collage Fossil, due out in December, which he promises will marry U.K. grime style to “slower, more accessible U.S. commercial rap structures, with a more overtly sexual plotline than Social Masque mixed with apocalyptic urgency. Scared about 2012, so making a collage fossil time capsule with an “only certain are invited in” substory. Also, more of an subcultural satire.”

SFBG Sitcoms, sci fi, crotch fungus, sex sweat — what, exactly, are you?

Odynophagia I’m Odynophagia, the rapping plasticization of the pathogenic presence, looming in the host body of Gregg Golding. He’s a pretty choice mulatto specimen with nice genitals. The nigga just has too many rest-stop asphyxiation rashes. Blame the pressure of hip-hop fame and the Japanese corporation, Tanaka Inc., hot on his trail. (Let’s just say he has eels from Spanish sitcoms lodged in a glass vial in his stomach)

Here I float, in the chemical jaw of scarred spirituality. I move my abacus as a disease routing agent. The powerful Mr. Tanaka drags blue-braid weave from his Segway i2. Upon observing me route cholera to a Wale mixtape listening party, he suggests syndication. Next thing you know, I’m in human form on this toxic plane of samsara, exuding pathogenic spores through my verbal flows in warehouse performances. A big booty white girl with a split-tongue body modification tells me she vibes to my constructivist cumshot rap. Can I fuck her mouth and asshole before Lou Gehrig disease sets in???

I tell her and her crew of needle exchange anarchists to buy my album Social Masque at Amoeba or Rasputin (or online if she handicaps and loses friends). But not Aquarius, cuz I was caught vaginally invading the owner’s housemate with a Jon Moritsugu DVD.

Can’t talk long, Im txtng u frm a dinner party. To my right is Mr. Tanaka, to my left, the head of Raëlianism. Raël compliments designs of Tanaka Inc.’s bright orange metallic clit rings and cybernetic love dolls. Five of the exposed circuit units, for the spring line, round out our guest list. (Including the K-5, which lactates heated donor sperm out its foam nipples, for lesbians with tit fetishes, ready to start a family.) Oh no it’s a trap …

The love dolls hold my pressure points and flip me on the table, a fork pierces my thigh. Bone marrow squirts on Georgia O’Keefe flower folds. Raël says the Odynophagia energy is the key to mankind’s salvation, and was in fact the router of a Moebius syndrome to their extraterrestrial creators. So catch me later, he’s about to reclaim the eel and cut open my stomach with plastic Crayola scissors.

Sound of vertigo

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Music can teleport you to far-off lands and spark nostalgia for distant times. It might elicit lost memories or even summon illusions. You may have never visited Istanbul or São Paulo or lived in the 1960s, but music infects the imagination with a visceral experience of the unknown. The effect is uncanny, mesmerizing, beautiful, and even therapeutic.

But what happens when music pushes its ability to displace to an extreme? When music annihilates your familiar sense of space and warp holes your usual expectations of time? Can listening to music transform you? Los Angeles-based beatsmith and DJ the Gaslamp Killer certainly thinks so. "The music I’m looking for is the stuff that will cut through your brain and just make you feel … almost overwhelmed," Gaslamp slowly explains whether arranging cosmic abyss mixtapes like I Spit On Your Grave (Obey, 2008) or crafting his own twisted productions, including his just-released debut solo EP My Troubled Mind (Brainfeeder), Gaslamp displays a developing genius for charting hallucinatory odysseys into vertigo. His haunted, cinematic music unhinges the listener, approaching a surreal dissociation and restoration of the self.

William Benjamin Bensussen didn’t identify as the Gaslamp Killer until some time after moving to Los Angeles three years back. He grew up in another troubled Southern California paradise cloaked in its own rusted mythology: San Diego. There, a restless Bensussen was already broadening his musical horizons in the fifth grade, listening to Too Short, Jimmy Hendrix, and Dre. A few years later he attempted to satiate his curious, nearly frantic energy by freestyle dancing at raves and in b-boy circles — to electronic and hip-hop music respectively. But it was DJ Shadow who bridged those fractured worlds for Bensussen and ignited a desire to dig into jazz, funk, and psychedelic crates. "I started on this frenzy trying to find all the originals. And then I realized that Shadow had sampled half of his stuff, and he wasn’t as much of a genius as I thought he was," Gaslamp recalls, laughing. "That’s when I started looking for older records and thinking, well, maybe I could do this."

Bensussen’s dark nom de plume is a bittersweet tribute to his unlikely origins. As a 19-year-old college dropout, he flipped wax in San Diego’s glittery Gaslamp District to a sometimes hostile crowd. Bensussen remembers bitterly a particular confrontation with a vindictive listener. A strikingly beautiful woman — who intimidated the then-teenage DJ — queried him angrily why he wanted to ruin her time with his fucked up music. Why? Dumbfounded, wounded, and angry, Bensussen drew sadistic nourishment from the provocation. It helped inspire his first mixtape project, the circa-2000 Gaslamp Killers, a lo-fi guzzling of psychotic drums and horror sonic bits. Recently, Bensussen decided to rename himself in light of this original labor of love.

Gaslamp has yet to settle down. He helped found L.A.’s monolithic weekly showcase for uncut beat-driven tracks, the Low End Theory, in the fall of 2006. And he’s secured a close affiliation with Flying Lotus’ bubbling imprint, Brainfeeder. But Bensussen’s troubled mind still wanders, like his music and his words, in perpetual hunger for the rawness of life. "[My music] comes from more of a vicious area," Gaslamp explains, searching for the right words. "Not angry, just passion — but a passion that can’t be sugar-coated."

This unmediated passion takes Gaslamp into many dangerous and strangely ethereal caverns. It also jettisons him to the homes of foreign musicians marked by the same shattered pathos. My Troubled Mind gathers its influences from all over the globe — Turkey, India, Russia, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. But the way Gaslamp employs samples from these regions defies their idiosyncratic place of origin. He has a rare skill for extracting universal otherworldliness from regional sounds. And he implements their fiercely destructive yet uplifting spirituality into his mind-melting compositions. His music and DJ sets become performances, elusive experiences leaving you charred and fiending for more of their ineffable allure. "I’m glad people can’t describe it," Gaslamp says, nearly yelling into the speakerphone. "Once they are able to describe it, that’s when they chew it up, spit it out, and leave it behind. The more indescribable and amazing it is, the more you’ll hold on to your people, your listeners."

Split decisions

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Sexo y Violencia. It’s a fitting tag for the L.A.-born spectacle known as Lucha VaVoom. Combining the traditional Mexican art form of lucha libre with a titilutf8g burlesque show, this unique blend of entertainment has definitely found its niche audience.

The marriage of sex and violence (in varying degrees) has always found its way into the squared-circle’s storyline, whether it be Hulk Hogan’s alleged lusting after Miss Elizabeth in the 1980s, or the more suggestive eye candy that the WWF/E (World Wrestling Federation and World Wrestling Entertainment) began parading around when the "Divas Campaign" kicked off in the 1990s.

Pro wrestling has always found a way to reflect mainstream and pop culture, even if its fans are considered to be on the fringe of society. The sport’s two major peaks in late 20th century popularity are defined and clear-cut. In the 1980s, rock ‘n roll, notions of good vs. evil, and the onslaught of mass consumerism ushered in the era of Hulkamania. In the 1990s, as the lines that defined heroes became more blurry and edginess and exaggerated sexuality took hold, cable television’s Monday Night Wars and Austin 3:16 catered to the era of the intelligent fan.

Jan. 20, 1984: during the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State Charles Shultz designates Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism. Three days later, Hulk Hogan beats the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden to claim his first WWF world title. This was no coincidence. In fact it was destiny.

Vince McMahon, arguably wrestling’s most savvy promoter, had been aggressively buying out smaller independent and regional promotions, building the monster that would become the WWF/E. With his tanned Venice Beach body-builder’s physique and peroxide blond locks (and presumably with steroids coursing through his veins), Hogan was touted as the all-American hero. It totally made sense to play up current events by having the Sheik, with his curl-toed boots (somehow implying that he’s Arab or evil) drop the title to Hogan, a symbol of our patriotic righteousness.

By no means was this a new formula. But never before had pro wrestling marketed it so successfully. The battle lines were drawn, and much like in neoconservative propaganda, any Russian or Arab in wrestling was clearly the bad guy.

In the 1980s, wrestling had a facade of innocence — the fans knew whom to root for, despite darker dealings behind the scenes with the steroid scandal about to explode. But fast-forward to wrestling’s peak years in the 1990s, and things didn’t exactly read as "family entertainment" anymore.

Midway into the ’90s, the Monday Night Wars were in full swing. WCW (World Championship Wrestling), a rival promotion, had begun to give Vince McMahon a run for his money. WWE’s Raw and WCW’s Nitro were consistently cable’s two top-rated shows, and they played off each other competitively, giving way to a more adult product. Wrestling had become cool again. Storylines became intricate and good guys played bad.

During the Clinton era, Hogan’s real American image wasn’t cutting it anymore. Wrestlers jumped ship between promotions in dramatic fashion, depending on where the better deal was or simply because they’d burned a bridge. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin’s beer-drinking common man persona as the quintessential badass provided an opportunity for universal identification with someone who rails against authority, gives his boss the middle finger, and basically lives the dream by kicking ass and taking names.

Wrestling’s popularity comes in waves, and like politics, it vacillates between conservatism and unbridled, graphic mayhem. At the moment, McMahon’s WWE is experiencing a "family entertainment" renaissance — he’s trying to steer away from blood and sexual innuendo, keeping things PG. It might not have the same type of exposure as the big leagues, but Lucha VaVoom keeps wrestling’s sex and violence solidly intact. No heroes necessary.

Mad women

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TV DAMES I’m sure you’ve heard: the critically lauded Mad Men‘s characterizations are subtle and layered. Its insights into contemporary society, as viewed through the prism of 1960s-era domestic and professional life, are at once nuanced and precisely rendered. Its dialogue is rich in subtext and dramatic allusion. In short, it’s, you know, deep.

But, also, the outfits really rock. And so do the fabulously messed-up women who wear them. Take vixen head-secretary Joan Holloway, as portrayed by flame-haired siren Christina Hendricks. While Joan — a sex kitten who’s all business — bumps her sculptural up-do on the proverbial glass ceiling, the men in the Manhattan offices of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency ogle her "valentine’s heart" rear end. Joanie lives for the attention. Brimming with confidence, smarts, and curvaceous sass, this formidable gal wields her sexuality like a fleshy weapon; 40 years in the future, she could have toppled corrupt government administrations without smearing her lipstick. Instead, she makes the coffee, taunts Serious Career Girl Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) about her weight, and brushes off getting raped by her fiancé in the boss’s office with a terse, ladylike smile. Let’s hope in 1963 her color-coordinated pumps trip over a copy of The Feminine Mystique.

If working city-girl Joan is the show’s sugar-voiced femme fatale, then Betty Draper (lead ad exec Don Draper’s icy, model-perfect wife) is its luridly soapy secret weapon. A young Grace Kelly type trapped in the suburban wastelands of upstate New York, Betty (January Jones) is equally as confused — and formidable — as her urban sex goddess counterpart. It’s hard to believe, for instance, that the Princess of Monaco would slap a neighbor in a grocery store after being accused of an inappropriate relationship with a 12-year-old boy. Or reprimand her cheating husband for his choice of mistress ("How could you, Don? She’s so old.")

Betty’s uptight, provincial-princess façade is also the source for some martini-dry comedy. When a foppish younger man tries to seduce her, she sets him straight. "You’re so deeply sad," he coos. "No, I’m happy," she replies. "It’s just my people are Nordic." Joan stretched out luxuriously on a streamlined chartreuse sofa in a purple shift dress might represent the apex of the show’s downtown aesthetic, but Betty’s delicate upstate hausfrau is its hypocritical, bourgeois soul. When the new season premieres Aug. 16, I’ll be glued to the flat-screen with highball glass in hand, enjoying all the scandals ’60s-era Manhattan and Westchester County have to offer. Like Don Draper, I feel no need to have to choose just one woman, especially when they all offer such distinct, guilty-pleasure charms.

www.amctv.com/originals/madmen

Time travelers

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"I thought it would be funny to do a total stereo split, as if the past and the present were trying to have a conversation with each other," says Scott Ryser, describing "East West," a track on the compilation History of the Units: The Early Years, 1977-1983 (Community Library). "I like the idea that these radically different sounds can share a ‘present’ time together."

That idea is the motivation behind this article’s collection of short profiles. Recently singled out for a rave by Pitchfork, Ryser’s synth-punk group the Units is one of four innovative or fierce Bay Area musical forces currently experiencing a contemporary renaissance. Sugar Pie DeSanto’s soul, the Pyramids’ free jazz, and San Francisco Express’s fusion have also inspired reissues or archival compilations. The message is loud and clear: old is new and radical in this era of free-floating sound. (Johnny Ray Huston)

SUGAR PIE DESANTO It’s no surprise that New Yorkers called Sugar Pie DeSanto the female James Brown. Like a woman possessed, she pantomimed her petite frame across the stage almost comedically, gyrating to the doo-wop, soul, and R&B that dominated Chicago’s famed Chess record label. In fact, De Santo sang with Soul Brother No. 1 in the early 1960s, and her presence made a competitive impression upon the hardest-working man in showbiz. "James was cool with Sugar," De Santo says over the phone, her voice husky and distinctive. "He was a fanatic about his music."

Now in her 70s, the San Francisco-born Oakland resident has seen much during her 57 years in the music industry. DeSanto’s list of contemporaries includes Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James. She may not perform live quite as often as she once did, but she’s as risqué now as ever. The new compilation Go Go Power: The Complete Chess Singles 1961-1966 (Ace/Kent) is a great starting point if you aren’t familiar with her work. The package includes a dynamic photo of her scissor-locking an unassuming Londoner with her thighs during a performance. Lyrically, "Use What You Got" deals with notions of natural beauty, superficiality and what it was like to grow up African American and Filipino in SF’s Fillmore District. "There was a lot of jealousy," DeSanto remembers. "I had long Filipino hair. It [being multi-racial] wasn’t as common or as easy as it is today. Girls would talk crap in the neighborhood."

With 100 original songs under her belt, DeSanto still receives residuals for compositions penned for Fontella Bass and Minnie Ripperton. A producer at Chess heard a similarity between DeSanto and James, and a few of their subsequent duets are included on Go Go Power. "We recorded in the studio together [in Chicago]," says DeSanto. "We didn’t go on the road together." Today, the Queen of the West Coast Blues likes to ride her bike. She’s looking forward to performing at Oakland’s Jack London Square on September 12th. (Andre Torrez)

THE PYRAMIDS Bad seeds can accidentally generate something good — you can thank an exploitative imposter for contributing to a new surge of interest in the free jazz of the Pyramids. According to the group’s Idris Ackamoor, "someone masquerading as a Pyramid" gave the blessing for the respected Japanese label EM to reissue the group’s 1976 album Birth Speed Merging on CD. Shortly after Ackamoor discovered this ruse, EM embarked on a more expansive — and legit — collection of his music, Music of Idris Ackamoor, 1971-2004. Now, Birth Speed Merging and two earlier Pyramids albums — 1973’s Lalibela and 1974’s King of Kings — are alive again on vinyl, thanks in part to Dawson Prater’s Ikef label.

"I’ve lost a lot of things in my life, but for all these years, I’ve managed to hold on to all of the masters of the Pyramids," says Ackamoor, who is busier than ever today due to Cultural Odyssey, his multi-faceted collaboration with Rhodessa Jones. (Before a new set of Bay Area performances next year, a trip to Russia is on the horizon.) Ackamoor was right to hold on to his barely-tapped treasure trove of Pyramids material, because the group’s music is built to last. Birth Speed Merging scorches ears with proto-noise. Accompanied by Ted Joans’ written ideas about Afro-Surrealism, King of Kings astounds (the bass runs of "Nsorama") and hypnotizes ("Queen of the Spirits"), in turn.

Such sounds will be a revelation to young listeners, even — or perhaps especially — those whose sensibilities have been shaped by the journeying spirit of the late Alice Coltrane. To paraphrase a credo, the Pyramids played music to make fire and make souls burst out from bodies. "They’ve tried to snuff out that avant-garde energy," Ackamoor notes, when discussing then and now. "This music wasn’t meant to sell drinks. When I listen to it, it even inspires me. I listen to how I sounded, and the freedom with which I played when I was so young — 19, 20, 21. The intensity is so refreshing. I didn’t realize I could play so long." (Huston)

SAN FRANCISCO EXPRESS In the 1970s, San Francisco churned out quality music like nobody’s business. But many of those recordings — despite their innovation or solidity — never saw the light of the day. And so today preservationists abound, seeking to revive the lost treasures discarded in the wake of this music renaissance. Recently, the one and only effort of jazz-funk outfit San Francisco Express, Getting It Together (Reynolds/ Family Groove, 1979), hit the shelves for a new generation. The album embodies the lush cosmic spirit of free form jazz grounded seamlessly in deep pocket funk.

Little is known about Getting It Together. Daniel Borine, Family Groove label owner and source of the reissue, says that the set was recorded circa 1975 at Dr. Patrick Gleeson’s infamous Different Fur studios in SF’s Mission District. Gleeson, who played Moog synthesizer for the arrangement, doesn’t remember the album by name. But oddly enough, Getting It Together recalls Gleeson’s monumental direction for Herbie Hancock on the visionary, electrified jazz of Crossings (Warner, 1971) and Sextant (Sony, 1972) as well as Charles Earland’s epic odyssey, Leaving This Planet (Prestige, 1973). Even though Getting It Together was recorded just after these groundbreaking works, the small independent label Reynolds postponed its release until ’79, possibly due to in-house quarrels. The original pressing provided no substantive information on the recording. And, seemingly outdated amid the burgeoning new sounds of modern soul and disco, it quickly faded into dusty record bins across the country.

Despite Getting It Together‘s unfortunate reception, few jazz-funk records of the mid-1970s sound as cohesive. The sonic landscape shifts effortlessly between conventional melodies and spacey grooves without losing a consistent magnetism. Virtuoso trumpeter Woody Shaw carries the powerhouse horn section, bursting with psychedelic warmth over heavy hitting drum breaks courtesy of Afro-inspired drummer E.W. Wainwright. Gleeson’s keys evoke a sensual intelligence and informed taste for adventure. A remarkable synthesis of the lively experimental jazz era, Getting It Together still feels as inspired and fresh as ever. (Michael Krimper)

THE UNITS Fate and a bond with the musician Bill Nelson once led them to share three squares a day with Robert Plant, but the Units were a punk or post-punk band. And like any great punk or post-punk band, they lived for confrontation. They played in JC Penney storefront windows and even performed the national anthem at a boxing match.

Still, when the Units invoked the smashing of guitars, they did so as a gesture of contempt towards that six-string signifier of readymade rebellion as much as a protest against traditional authority. Whether singing about burritos and how "the Mission is bitchin’" or adapting Gregory Corso’s poetry to song, the Units, you see, wielded keyboards as sonic weapons.

The group’s Scott Ryser has some primarily fond and often very specific memories of the keyboards in question. The Arps, the Octigans, the Roland Junos, and various Korgs and Casios. The Sequential Circuits 800 Sequencer, "without question the most promising and at the same time most belligerent" of the group’s many "unruly kids." And his "sweetheart," the Minimoog, an invention "better than the automobile and the electric dildo combined." For Ryser, "the Minimoog sounds like god and the devil singing in harmony."

God and the devil sing in harmony throughout History of the Units: The Early Years, 1977-1983 (Community Library) — that is, when they aren’t breaking down gloriously. Or colliding against the live drumming that distinguishes the Units from just about any other synth group. ("I just don’t see how a synth band can kick ass without real drums," opines Ryser.) Nervy narratives like "Bugboy" and "High Pressure Days" reflect Ryser’s background writing stories and novels, while the sprawling, gorgeous instrumental "Zombo," inspired by Walter/Wendy Carlos, sounds contemporary today. Unlike many retrospective collections, History of the Units avoids nostalgia — in fact, Ryser adds a blitz of contemporary images to the sleeve art. "To me, the best thing about our band was just the idea of it," he says. Maybe so, but the reality of the Units will trigger more fine ideas. (Huston)

The ring

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

COVER STORY Going to the DNA Lounge during the middle of the day is a strange proposition. But on a Saturday afternoon in late June, the San Francisco bar is filled with a hundred or so people, including, strangely enough, Kris Kristofferson, whose son Jody is trying out a different kind of public career. There’s a smattering of people hanging out on the balcony level, but most of us are pressed against metal guard rails that surround a ring set up in the center of the dance floor. Professional wrestling has, ahem, put a stranglehold on venue, and it’s the middle of the show.

A newcomer with a spiny bi-hawk and spiked shoulder pad named Nate Graves — a muscle-bound cross between a Mad Max 2: Road Warrior extra and the guy from Prodigy — is set to fight "the Mexican Werewolf," El Chupacabra, a local favorite who wrestles in multicolored face paint and prosthetic fangs. Even when entering the ring, both wrestlers’ movements tell a story; the newcomer is stiff and deliberate, a menacing behemoth, while the significantly smaller El Chupacabra darts around in unpredictable bursts.

The bell rings, and the two exchange some preliminary holds and throws before drubbing one another with loud, theatrical strikes. I’m sandwiched between a stylish young woman in her early 20s, noticeably buzzed, and an average looking dude in a Giants shirt. They spend most of the fight leaning over me to hassle each other. The young woman really has it out for Chupy. As the newcomer hoists our protagonist into the air, she screams for the larger man to "drop him on his fucking head."

Wrestling’s harshest critics tend to view it as a theater of violent, regressive, antisocial posturing. But a decidedly gleeful atmosphere permeates the venue. El Chupacabra wriggles out of the precarious position, and the two adversaries call for an impromptu toast in the spirit of the nameless unifying energy that takes hold during a wrestling event.

FOUND IN THE FOG


Fog City Wrestling is a year-old promotion based out of San Francisco. Relatively unknown in the grand scheme of indie wrestling — most of the larger promotions are based on the East Coast — FCW has nevertheless carved out a comfortable niche in the Bay Area, already home to several smaller federations. The promotion may be relatively new, but professional wrestling in San Francisco has a lengthy — if often ignored — history. Fans who grew up in the era of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) CEO Vince McMahon Jr.’s homogenized "sports entertainment" empire may be surprised to learn that Northern California as a whole was once home to one of the hottest wrestling promotions in the country.

Throughout the pre-WWE (then the World Wide Wrestling Federation) 1960s and 1970s, promoter Roy Shire’s Big Time Wrestling, a Bay Area extension of the once powerful National Wrestling Alliance, regularly showcased some of wrestling’s big-name stars and future legends, such as local hero Pat Patterson, Superstar Billy Graham, and Rocky Johnson, whose son Dwayne briefly dabbled in the sport of kings as The Rock. Though Shire’s mini-empire extended all the way to Sacramento, the Bay Area was the promotion’s home base. Selling out the Cow Palace on a regular basis, Big Time Wrestling exemplified a halcyon period when pro wrestling was vibrant, gritty, and regional.

Big Time Wrestling owed part of its success to the territorial wrestling industry it existed in, a system where local feds dominated the markets of their particular region. In contrast to the major performers of today, most wrestlers weren’t beholden to a specific promoter, leaving them free to travel the country. But Shire’s own ingenuity was key to his fed’s notoriety.

According to long-time wrestling photographer, columnist, and all-around avid fan Mike Lano, the promoter — a former wrestler — was regarded by his wrestling business contemporaries as a promotional genius. For Shire, personality and a dynamic, athletic wrestling style were paramount. "[He] demanded excellence from his wrestlers," Lano says. "Matches had to be excellent or he would yell and chew the guys out." This democratic booking philosophy, which favored talent and originality over marketability, is closer to the indie wrestling scene of today than to the monolithic WWE.

The Bay Area’s diversity played a major role in Shire’s booking strategy. He promoted wrestlers of color as some of Big Time Wrestling’s top stars, a savvy move that allowed the multifaceted Bay Area to see itself represented heroically in the ring. Afa Anoa’i Sr., better known to wrestling fans as Afa the Wild Samoan, followed in the footsteps of his legendary uncle, "High Chief" Peter Maivia (Rocky Johnson’s father-In-law), who commanded a massive Pacific Islander fan base. Though he was a journeyman by nature, returning to the Bay to wrestle for Shire’s promotion was always a special experience for the Wild Samoan. "Because we [had] a lot of my Samoan population there, sometime[s] [the] fans [would] get out of control and a riot [would] break out in the crowd," he remembers via e-mail. "But it was all good."

This story demonstrates a common truth in wrestling: when the drama in the ring speaks to one’s own experiences and sensibilities, the event as a whole is that much more fun and engaging.

THE POLITICS OF WRESTLING


Fog City Wrestling promoter/cofounder Dominick Jerry started out as a Humboldt County concert promoter before relocating to San Francisco with his wife in 2003. Booking FCW’s matches and storylines, he tells me, gives him the opportunity to play around with the politics of mainstream wrestling, a compelling provisional touch I suspect won’t be on WWE’s agenda any time soon.

Mainstream wrestling is often criticized for its socially conservative slant, a turn-off for many fans whose personal beliefs are less "kill the evil foreigner." But Jerry feels that in a town as singular as San Francisco, a promotion needs to cater to local sensibilities to survive. He cites, among other regional overtures, a handful of appearances by Differ’nt Strokes star Todd Bridges (no doubt drawing from his experiences battling the Gooch) as an appeal to ’80s nostalgia.

Jerry is also interested in the reinvention of character types that a small SF-based promotion would allow for, and quite possibly necessitate. "Wrestling is not a sport that’s very sensitive to race," he tells me over the phone. "But at the same time, it plays on race and it knows it. I see that I have a chance to change things and do things a little different."

He expresses pride in a recent storyline that saw a Middle Eastern wrestler named Sheik Khan Abadi become the promotion’s most popular wrestler, genie pants and all. (Abadi recently relocated to Florida. When I interviewed the East Bay-born wrestler, he fondly recalled his experience wrestling in SF: "They cheered me ’cause they thought I wrestled well and [because] I was wrestling for them. That was one of the greatest feelings ever — to be respected for what I do, and not just typecast for being Middle Eastern.")

The opening match on Fog City Wrestling’s Saturday afternoon card sees your standard square-jawed tough guy face up against longtime California indie star Angel the Hardcore Homo. On the one hand, the persona borders on minstrelsy — it’s a sort of hybrid between the implicit button-pushing of Gorgeous George and lucha libre’s rodeo clown-like "exotico" type. But the match itself tells a less straightforward story. Angel is clearly the hero in the contest, reconfiguring some of the mainstream’s predictable gay panic tropes into a slapstick offensive that plays off his opponent’s increasingly comical discomfort. Toward the end of the match, two teenage-looking guys standing across from me start an "Angel" chant.

On the surface, San Francisco doesn’t seem like the kind of community that goes in for (nonironic) professional wrestling. But scanning the crowd, I notice a sizeable number of bohemian types — an Unknown Pleasures shirt even made an appearance a few shows back. Outside the venue, would they readily admit to their fandom, or at least to their interest in wrestling? Perhaps this insecurity is on its way out.

For a true believer, self-consciousness isn’t a problem. Fog City Wrestling’s Jerry doesn’t see indie wrestling strictly as a subculture. "Everybody knows pro wrestling," he gushes. "Everybody might not admit they like pro wrestling, but everybody does. If it’s on TV, as opposed to Regis and Kelly, you’ll probably put on pro wrestling."

WE NOW RETURN TO THE EVENT, ALREADY IN PROGRESS


When I ask wrestleophile Mike Lano what the Bay Area has to offer that is missing from mainstream wrestling today, he responds with a common sentiment. "They [pro wrestling territories] were all unique. The television was unique, the talent was unique. Guys were not reading promos off a teleprompter or being told what to say by script writers." Fans today may not be getting an entirely comparable experience to the glory days — the DNA Lounge is a long way from the Cow Palace, for one thing. But the spirit of originality Lano remembers from the Shire days has carried over, bringing with it the simple pleasure of watching two colorful characters go at it on a Saturday afternoon.

The main event of Fog City Wrestling’s Saturday bill is a slice of unadulterated pro wrestling traditionalism. Dylan Drake is one of FCW’s marquee stars. He’s a dapper-looking guy with floppy brown hair of a non-threatening length. His name is an alliteration, like Clark Kent. His hirsute opponent has the biblically sinister moniker Malachai, and sports an enormous beard — wrestling shorthand for pure evil.

During a main event bout, there’s a feeling of conclusiveness to everything, like the ghost of Howard Cosell is narrating the action in the crowd’s collective mind. Each punch or hold becomes an ultimate moment that all preceding punches and holds of the show have foreshadowed. This is one of the last vestiges of Big Fight atmosphere, the Ali-and-Frazier effect, or, in keeping with the wrestling aesthetic, Rocky Balboa and Thunderlips. Sure enough, ironic detachment and snarky asides die an undistinguished death amidst the consecrated buzz.

Whether or not the majority of the audience are wrestling diehards, prodigal childhood fans, or just looking for an excuse to drink during the middle of the day, some dormant instinct takes hold as the fight commences. In true wrestling fashion, the match ends in a massive donnybrook of interference and conveniently bad refereeing, postponing the inevitable denouement for another month or two. This is pro wrestling, after all. We head home to a Sunday morning coming down.

Dead heat

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

TREND Summer’s not over, but it might not be too soon to identify Michael Jackson’s passing as the touchstone cultural event of season. Icons and paradigms have been crumbling at a remarkable clip: California narrowly avoided a financial abyss, stalwart businesses folded, major pop and art figures died. New Langton Arts, a venerable San Francisco alternative gallery, may not survive the season.

Art museums are inherently rigid institutions. As much as they’ve been loosening up with livelier programs, they exist to present, collect, and protect the ever-fracturing canon. It’s difficult not to survey San Francisco’s big-ticket summer shows without considering recessionary measures. As endowments shrank, it was widely reported that museums would be tightening their belts by concentrating on their collections rather than on creating expensive new shows, and by presenting exhibitions for longer stretches of time. These shifts seem more like retrenchment than exciting revisions.

The de Young Museum’s current "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition is perhaps more interesting as a barometer than as a well-designed (albeit to resemble a deluxe burial chamber) state-of-the-art showcase of ancient artifacts. It is, first and foremost, a return to proven formulas. Tut was the subject of the first museum blockbuster, and it worked like gangbusters for the de Young in 1979. Back then the boy king seemed to compete with a vibrant Farrah Fawcett for poster space on teen walls, but currently, evidence of him outside of banners on SF light poles seems scant. The pharaoh’s not the media darling he once was, but apparently the Fine Arts Museums, of which the de Young is a part, is banking on him. (Ironically, Tut is organized by a subsidiary of AEG Live, which also produced the ill-fated Michael Jackson tour.)

Tut is firmly placed as a multiseason blockbuster, a cash cow to be milked into spring. He’ll be followed by an Impressionism show, another safe bet the de Young has made before. The Legion of Honor’s print retrospective devoted to John Baldessari — an uncharacteristically contemporary artist for the space — will be followed in December by a Cartier jewelry show.

The Tut exhibition’s press preview was bolstered by official optimism and ample refreshments. There was a spread of Middle Eastern nibbles and pyramid-shaped servings of custard, and media reps left with gift bags containing a catalog and chocolates. It seemed like the old days, before endowments took their Madoff hits. There was a panel of speakers in the theater. Fundraiser socialite Dede Wilsey said she wished her sons were as successful as the king. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, spoke of Tut discoveries with entertaining bluster. Gavin Newsom worked the civic booster angle, touting a power trio of summer museum shows: "Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities" at SFMOMA ("Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004" had yet to open), "Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Tut at the de Young. Although each of these exhibitions puts forth a specific viewpoint on its subject — the Chagall show is driven by the fascinating sweep of political and theatrical history while "Natural Affinities" probes an artistic dialog — the list of names sounded emphatically conservative, even for summer blockbuster season. There’s not a living artist in the bunch.

This isn’t so strange — after all, big institutions follow Hollywood models by packing the houses with mainstream fare and saving the more thoughtful offerings for fall. Both SFMOMA and the de Young exceeded audience expectations last summer with their Frida Kahlo and Dale Chihuly shows, respectively. The de Young take was reportedly bumped up by brisk sales of pricey pint-size Chihuly sculptures. And due to the practice of sometimes booking shows years in advance, these offerings were in place before the downturn. How are they faring?

The de Young won’t release attendance figures until a show has closed — in the case of Tut, that means after March 28, 2010. A museum publicist could offer a cagey comment that "response from visitors has been phenomenal." (This despite the steep nonmember ticket price of $27.50.) SFMOMA is more forthcoming. It unofficially stated that Adams/O’Keefe held steady but admissions spiked when Avedon opened, almost recalling Kahlo crowds. (These exhibitions have a $5 surcharge.)

The Avedon show is handsome, with images of the famous in crisp black and white. So many of the subjects, though, are emphatically of another era — iconic celebrities and political figures who have passed. Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, César Chávez, and various Kennedys, among others, are figures that continue to embody their cultural power in Avedon’s pictures. And Tut more than maintains his royal allure — gold holds its value. But finance gurus also tout making more unusual investments in times like these, and one hopes that our institutions will use this moment to engage in some portfolio diversification. *

CHAGALL AND THE ARTISTS OF THE RUSSIAN JEWISH THEATER, 1919-1949

Through Sept. 7

Contemporary jewish Museum

www.thecjm.org

GEORGIA O’KEEFE AND ANSEL ADAMS: NATURAL AFFINITIES

Through Sept. 7

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

www.sfmoma.org

TUTANKHAMUN AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE PHAROAHS

Through March 28, 2010

De Young Museum

www.famsf.org

Bowie Ball

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PREVIEW Not much can stop Swing Goth. Not the misperception that the biweekly dance class and party is strictly swing or goth (it’s all types of partner dancing, to all types of post-punk music). Not a cross-town venue change earlier this year (from Fat City to El Rio). Nothing, it seems, except a big ass flippin’ fire. In June, Swing Goth was all set to host the Bowie Ball, its biggest event yet, when an explosion in a man hole (remember that one?) shut down the Great American Music Hall. But even fire could only delay SG founder Brian Gardner for so long. Now, the Bowie Ball is back, and promising to be even better than the planned original. Five Cent Coffee (neo-skiffle junkyard blues) and Barry Syska’s Fantasy Orchestra (what would happen if Tom Waits did swing) joins DJ Skip of New Wave City, DJ MzSamantha of Clockwork, and MC Psychokitty for a celebration of Bowie’s many faces, styles, and sounds. The event will start, of course, with lessons in swing, waltz, and blues dance and culminate in a full night of cutting a rug (OK, a gorgeous hardwood floor) to everything from Joy Division to Nirvana.

BOWIE BALL Fri/14, 8 p.m. $15–$20. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.swinggoth.com/bowieball09

Zardoz

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REVIEW The Pacific Film Archive’s current series "Eccentric Cinema: Overlooked Oddities and Ecstasies, 1963-82" contains such notorious curios as Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971). But maybe the oddest oddity (and most ecstatic ecstasy) of the bunch is writer-director John Boorman’s Zardoz (1974). Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) scored big; presumably, its success was the reason he was able to do whatever the fuck he wanted next. Lucky for fans of strange and wonderful cinema, he chose Zardoz — a tale "full of mystery and intrigue, rich in irony, and most satirical," according to opening-scene narrator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy), who first appears as a floating head with drawn-on facial hair. To summarize Zardoz would ruin some of its peculiar charm, but, briefly: it’s set in the year 2293, in a futuristic yet strangely primitive land where immortal, supremely bored "eternals" live inside protected, idyllic "vortexes." Meanwhile, the outside world is patrolled by "brutals," who prevent everyone else from reproducing and worship a floating head (ahem) that intones lessons like "The gun is good. The penis is evil!" When brutal Zed (a spectacularly loinclothed, recently post-Bond Sean Connery) busts into a Vortex (residents include Charlotte Rampling), the world becomes an even more baffling place. What more can I say? It’s Zardoz. To miss it, in the words of the film’s mysterious Tabernacle, is "not permitted."

ZARDOZ screens Thurs/13, 6:30 p.m., $5.50–$9.50, Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

“San Francisco’s Doomed”

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PREVIEW Fred Schrunk sips his coffee as he mans the counter on a recent afternoon at Thrillhouse, the nonprofit punk record store he oversees on Mission Street, and discusses the genesis of this week’s San Francisco’s Doomed Fest. It’s a series of shows benefiting two causes dear to him and the local music community: the all-ages venue project for San Francisco that he and several forward-thinking locals are spearheading, as well as Maximum Rock’n’Roll, the long-running, SF-based punk monthly fanzine that, like many print publications today, is struggling to meet operation costs.

"Seeing [MRR] struggle for a little while made me really concerned," explains Schrunk, who is involved with the zine and its radio show. "It’s fucking scary seeing them in a compromising situation." The staff of MRR, likewise a nonprofit, consists of volunteer "shitworkers," and the zine’s content is reader-contributed, inspiring and informing both bands and enthusiasts worldwide since its inception in 1982.

"I think there’s a place for what we do," says MRR content coordinator Layla Gibbon over the phone from the zine’s office. "It’s just a difficult time." About four months ago, Schrunk and MRR‘s coordinators decided to put together a fundraiser for both the debt-burdened magazine and Thrillhouse’s goal of opening an all-ages venue in the city.

This venue project stems from San Francisco’s lack of a dedicated all-ages show space — a lamentable situation that leaves local youngsters with few options for seeing and performing live music. The success of the project’s small fundraising shows so far, as well as that of last year’s Thrillhouse-sanctioned Thrillfest, paved the way for this new, ramped-up effort to raise funds for opening a space. Where Thrillfest was structured around touring bands, Doomed features mostly local acts, all of whom have an obvious stake in seeing these two scene-uniting efforts succeed.

The event’s name comes from Crime, SF’s self-proclaimed "first and only rock ‘n’ roll band," which formed in 1976, cranking out early punk classics such as 1977’s "Hot Wire My Heart" and "Frustration." They’ll be headlining the festival, where the lineup ranges from the heavy, stoned sounds of Flood to the Messthetics-style post-punk of Rank/Xerox. More established local acts like good-times popsters Nodzzz and renowned Sacramento garage-rockers the Bananas are also on hand. As Gibbon exclaims, the fest not only benefits good causes, it also promises to be "a representation of what punk is … the sense of possibility!"

SAN FRANCISCO’S DOOMED Wed/12 through Sun/16, various venues. www.myspace.com/sanfranciscosdoomed, www.maximumrocknroll.com

“Good Boys and True”

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PREVIEW According to St. Joseph’s, an all-boys prep school, its students are expected "to be good boys and true. To strive towards competence, courage, and compassion always." Well — easier said than done, right? In Good Boys and True, scandal erupts at the Washington, D.C. prep school when a violent sex tape is discovered circuutf8g campus grounds. When Brandon, captain of the football team, is accused of being the faceless figure in the tape, his life and the lives of those closest to him are changed forever. Taking place in 1988 (long before sex vids became commonplace), the rumors of Brandon’s crime spread like wildfire and send ripples throughout the very rich, very white, and very proper community.

Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a writer for HBO’s Big Love, the play explores the themes of wealth, privilege, and power. It follows the relationship between Brandon and his mother as she tries to reconcile with the heinous crime her son is accused of, as well as Brandon’s relationship with his best friend Justin, which is more than just platonic. What will become of the Dartmouth-bound football all-star as his life spirals out of control? What dirty secrets will be revealed about those around him? Good Boys and True makes its West Coast debut at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, where it is one in a collection of LGBT-themed plays featured during NCTC’s Pride season.

GOOD BOYS AND TRUE Aug. 14–Sept. 20. Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., $18–$40. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF. (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org

Crocodiles

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PREVIEW A long line of lo-fi troubadours have come crawling over the horizon these past few years. Crocodiles fit right in, but also stand out in more ways than one. The San Diego duo’s got its tight, tattered jeans and Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons, its vocals that sound like they were recorded through blankets, and plenty of attitude.

Just like many of the duo’s garage-rat contemporaries, Crocodiles’ music is a tangle of all things hipper-than-thou. But there’s a menacing intrigue bubbling up from beneath the scaly synth rhythms and claustrophobic distortion — scrub away the requisite hazy feedback and you ‘ll find a pair of sardonic scowls.

The meticulously crafted set of songs on Crocodiles’ debut album Summer of Hate (Fat Possum) prove that frontman and beat programmer Brandon Welchez and guitarist Charles Rowell are junkies for juxtaposition. Diamond-cut hooks and Welchez’ defiant wails weave in and out of electronic drones, resulting in a seamless summer LP.

Both Welchez and Rowell were once part of the SoCal punk outfit The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. After lineup metamorphoses and the death of a band member, the two found themselves writing shoegaze-punk songs tinged with glee and gloom. Ready-made for living room dance parties, "Refuse Angels" finds the Crocs slithering to a furious, acidic electro beat and sneering that they feel "just like Leon Trotsky." "Here Comes the Sky" is a lonely, sun-baked ballad with arpeggios straight out of a latter-day Beach Boys recording.

Crocodiles aren’t just riding the fuzzy, noisy wave that’s so very in vogue and au courant — they’re surfing it with attention to every pulsating beat and damaged guitar note.

CROCODILES With Pens, Graffiti Island. Wed/19, 7:30 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, (415) 861-2011. www.rickshawstop.com

Music listings

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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Barcelona, Meese, Seabird, Last Ambassadors Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Better Than Ezra, 16 Frames Independent. 8pm, $25.

Honey Knockout. 9pm.

Illness, My Revolver, Dammit! El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Kegels, Party Fouls, Jokes For Feelings Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Lions, Black Robot, Flexx Bronco Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

OG Rhythm and Blues Band Rasselas Jazz. 8pm, free.

Kevin Russell Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

BAY AREA

Depeche Mode, Peter, Bjorn and John Shoreline Amphitheater, One Amphitheater Pkwy, Mtn View; www.livenation.com. 7:30pm, $35.50-99.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays feat. Amendola vs. Blades" Coda. 9pm, $7.

Diana Krall Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $79.50-125.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

"Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam" Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

*"All-Star Tribute to the King of Bakersfield: Buck Owens Birthday Bash" Elbo Room. 8pm, $10. With members of Red Meat, 77 El Deora, B Stars plus Mississipi Mike Wolf, Doug Blumer, and more.

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Dan Reed, Manda Mosher Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Carlos Reyes Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; 1-866-468-3399. 8pm, $30.

Unwed Fathers Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Fame Bar on Church. 9pm. With rotating DJs.

Fringe Madrone Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie rock and new wave music videos.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Open Mic Night 330 Ritch. 9pm, $7.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Lonestar Sound, Young Fyah, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Buttercream Gang, Raised By Robots, M. Bison Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Commisure, Room for a Ghost, An Isotope Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $6.

Dramarama Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $20.

Tinsley Ellis Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $18.

Glenn Labs, Greening, Johnny Walnut Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Photons, X-Ray Press, Huff This!, Chasing Shapes Kimo’s. 9pm.

Skin Like Iron, Young Offenders, Never Healed, Airfix Kits, Dirty Cupcakes Knockout. 9:30pm, $5.

Slowfinger, Orchid, Nylon Heart Attack Slim’s. 9pm, $13.

Society of Rockets, Dominique Leone, Reptiel Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Solillaquists of Sound, 40Love, Zutra Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Trainwreck Riders, Fucking Buckaroos, Pretty Boy Thorson and Fallen Angels Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Kenny Brooks Coda. 9pm, $7.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Musicians Respond to Wallworks" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 6pm, free with gallery admission ($5-7). With Lisa Mezzacappa and Nightshade/Shimomitsu.

Karen Segal Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brazil Vox Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Jesse DeNatale, Indiana Hale, Petracovich Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

Flamenco Thursday Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $12. With Carola Zertuche and Company.

High Country Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Gregory Isaacs, Native Elements Independent. 9pm, $28.

Shannon Céilí Band Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Summer in the City: Meet MoAD Museum of African Diaspora, 685 Mission, SF; (415) 358-7200. 6pm, $10. Featuring live Cuban music and dancing.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

DJ John Lynch Infusion Lounge. 9pm, free.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Kissing Booth Make Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bad Friends, Complaints, Keeners Annie’s Social Club. 5pm, $5.

"Bowie Ball: Celebrating All Things Bowie!" Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $20. With Barry Syska’s Fantasy Orchestra, 5 Cent Coffee, and DJs MzSamantha and Skip.

Burnt, Simpkin Project Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Conquest for Death, N.N., Acephalix, Ruidos Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

*Down, Melvins, Danava, Weedeater Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

Fling, Moller, Nightgowns, Facts on File Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Khi Darag!, Brian Kenney Fresno, DJ K-Tel Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10. With Last Night’s Fling All-Star Burlesque.

Inspired Flight Otis Lounge, 25 Maiden Lane, SF; (415) 298-4826. 9pm, free.

Larry McCray Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

*New Thrill Parade, Al Qaeda, Dalmacio Von Diamond and the Enochian Keys, Droughter Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Quantic and His Combo Barbaro Slim’s. 9pm, $20.

Jonahs Reinhardt, Tussle, Windsurf Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10. With Okay-Hole on the records.

BAY AREA

Vienna Teng TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. 8pm, $35.

Wendy Darling, Pinstripe Rebellion, Refunds, Loudmouth Yank Fox Theater. 7pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Larry Carlton Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.therrazzroom.com. 8pm, $47.50.

8 Legged Monster Coda. 10pm, $10.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Jack Jones Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Tin Cup Serenade Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm, $15. Latin dancing Buena Vista style with Fito Reinoso, and Eddy and Gabriel Navia.

Georges Lammam Ensemble Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 10:30pm, $15.

JimBo Trout and the Fishpeople, Misisipi Rider Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sekouba Bambino Diabate Independent. 9pm, $25.

Sila and the Afro Funk Experience Fillmore Center, Fillmore at O’Farrell, SF; (415) 921-1969. 6pm, free.

Spring Creek Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; (415) 545-5238. 8pm, $15-17.

Zej Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Fo’ Sho! Fridays Madrone. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris, Makossa, and Quickie Mart spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

Free Funk Friday Elbo Room. 10pm, free. With DJs Vinnie Esparza, B-Cause, and guest Asti Spumanti.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin St; (415) 346-2025. 10pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Eddy Bauer, Flight, Nicky B., Sergio and more.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Lovebuzz Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $5. Rock, classic punk, and 90s with DJs Jawa and Melanie Nelson.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

VSL Friday Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9pm. With DJ Eve Salvail.

SATURDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Elin Jr, Minks, Claire El Rio. 4pm, $10-15.

50 Million, Shellshag, Screaming Females, Kreamy Lectric Santa, Reaction Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

Fighting Supaks, Paleface, Ledbetter and His Best Bet, Justin Gordon and the Wrecking Ball Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Git Some, Secret Wars, Olehole Bender’s Bar, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Havespecialpower, Midnight Strangers, Girl With the Violent Arts Li Po Lounge. 8:30pm, $7.

Iron Maidens, Oreo, Sticks and Stones Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $15.

Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Eric Krasno and Chapter 2 Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

Leopold and His Fiction, Spyrals, Candy Apple Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

N.A.S.A. Independent. 9pm, $18.

Octopus Project, Birds and Batteries, Don’ts Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Earl Thomas Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Wild Child Slim’s. 9pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Alphabet Soup Coda. 10pm, $10.

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Larry Carlton Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.therrazzroom.com. 7 and 9:30pm, $47.50.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Jack Jones Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Next Wave of Global Landscape" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 8pm, $25. With Tanya Tagaq/KIHNOUA.

Mary Redente Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Ember Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Evening with Accordions Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 8pm, free. Featuring Rob Reich and Marie Abe.

Here Comes a Big Black Cloud, Fast Love Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Lucas Revolution Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Matt Morris Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Orquesta Rumba Café The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Tanya Tagaq with Kihnoua Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787. 8pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Booty-shaking hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $6. Locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm and hostess Felicia Fellatio.

Fred Everything and Olivier Desmet Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; (415) 433-8585. 10pm, $10.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Industry Mighty. 10pm, $25. With DJs Jamie J Sanchez, James Torres, Russ Rich, and more.

Saturday Night Live Fat City, 314 11th St; selfmade2c@yahoo.com. 10:30pm.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. With DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

SUNDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Half Handed Cloud, Red Pony Clock, Boat Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Loop! Station, Jill Tracy, Nicki Jaine Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Love is Chemicals, Aim Low Kid, Solar Powered People Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Larry Carlton Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.therrazzroom.com. 7pm, $47.50.

Lucid Lovers Harris’ Restaurant, 2100 Van Ness, SF; (415) 673-1888. 6:30pm.

Stanley Coda. 9pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Emily Anne, Devine;s Jug Band, East River String Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Mindia Devi Klein St. John Coltrane Church, 1286 Fillmore, SF; (415) 673-7144. 7pm, $10-25.

Marla Fibish, Erin Shrader, Richard Mandel and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $12. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Grooming the Crow, Lariats of Fire Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Rolando Morales Quintet The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Salsa Sundays El Rio. 4:15pm, $8. With Julio Bravo.

BAY AREA

Toby Keith, Trace Adkins Shoreline Amphitheater, One Amphitheater Pkwy, Mtn View; www.livenation.com. 7:30pm, $20-74.

DANCE CLUBS

August T-Dance Ruby Skye. 5pm, $25. With the Perry Twins.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and guest Ross Hogg.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Can’t Find a Villain, King Robot, Construct Existence Crew, Paulie Rhyme, Beta Central, Monica Ramos Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Dicky Betts and Great Southern Slim’s. 8pm, $30.

Stereo Freakout, Drunken Hu?, Serenity Now! Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

BAY AREA

Third Eye Blind Fox Theater. 8pm, $29.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Yellowjackets with Mike Stern Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Free Bluegrass Monday Amnesia. 6:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Arcade Lookout SF, 2600 16th St., SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 8pm, free. With DJs Jory and Johnny B spinning alt. 80’s and new wave.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Mainroom Mondays Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Live the dream: karaoke on Annie’s stage and pretend you’re Jello Biafra.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Antioquia, Sex With No Hands Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Pissed Jeans, Mi Ami, How to Make Swords Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Scrabbel, Pregnant, Imra Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $6.

Emiliana Torrini, Anya Marina Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Max Tundra Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Euliptian Quartet Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Shotgun Wedding Quintet.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

Yellowjackets with Mike Stern Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Misterioso Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Slow Session with Vince Keehan and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. With DJ Blackstone.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

*

Psychic Dream Astrology

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ARIES

March 21-April 19

You have some secret desire you may not even be admitting to yourself, and it’s motivating you to be a tad shady with folks. When you’re not being true to yourself, you can only be so real with others. Look at what you are feeling — even if you don’t like it — so you can get those feet of yours back on the ground.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Hoarding never makes people happy. There’s no room for the new if you don’t let go of the old. As shitty as it may be to get rid of things, attitudes, or relationships, that’s just what you have to do, Taurus. There is all of this amazing potential in front of you, but you’ve got to let go of all those strings you have attaching you to your past.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

We are all just animals: messy, instinct-based beasts. This week, channel your inner beastliness into all you do with the wisdom and foresight of your human potential. Frig whatever role you’ve been playing and find what’s most true for you. Don’t hide behind habit. Get up your courage and be a smarty-pants wild thing instead.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

When you get emotionally blocked, life stagnates quickly. Fears about love are coming up for you: there’s no way around it. If you’re not getting your needs met, ask yourself why. Do folks know what you need but don’t want to put out? Do you need to be clearer? Figure it out so you can move on.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

You’re such a creative person — why is it so hard for you to bust through your relationship patterns and be real? Try to be more loving as you assert your limits with others. The more direct you are about your needs, the more flexible you can be about others’ needs. Integrate your internal opposites for a more authentic you.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Admit it: you are putting all that careful energy into being painstaking with things so that you can build up to the Earth’s biggest worrygasm. You get a little thrill of accomplishment from having a really good problem to stress over. Now your secret is out! Outgrow this broken love and develop a new relationship to getting things dealt with.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Everybody’s changing, and if you don’t start change too, your same-old, same-old will be out of step, when once it was just right. In your efforts to hold your own, you run the risk of being inflexible, and that shit’ll backfire on you. Never forget to be receptive when you stand tall, lest you alienate others.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

You can’t build a time machine. No matter how much you lament what ails you in the present, it won’t change things. This is a real cut-your-losses kind of moment, where you can make the best of your situation by accepting it and working with what you’ve got in this reality.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Your home life needs care and attention, Sag. You deserve a spot that you are happy to be in, a place that serves as a sanctuary from the rushing and buzzing of your life. Carve yourself a piece of peace in your dwelling, even if it means leaving your over-crowded apartment and finding a café where you can sit and regroup.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

Pick your battles wisely. You are so worried about so many things you are missing out on the opportunities in front of you. Avoid the deadly lure of FOMOs (fear of missing out), and make some damn decisions. Consider your own well-being and what you know of your self so you can improve your life, not just react to it.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Not knowing the answers is really hard on a Know-It-All, and can induce panic where once there was a smooth operator. You are not supposed to have the answers right now; it’s just time to watch things unfold around you. Rushing and pushing will backfire.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

It looks like you are caught up in some serious stress. It may feel like the mountain in front of you is so high, you’d rather turn back than climb it. Look at your own conflicts about what you want, because your ambiguities are adding to the mess you’re in. Be open to letting something new enter your life. *

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 15 years. Check out her Web site at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com.

On location

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

PHOTO ISSUE The ghost of Cindy Sherman is everywhere these days. In Untitled Film Stills (1977 onward), Sherman pictured archetypal B-movie versions of herself in emotionally-charged fake film stills. The project remains a salient commentary on self-imagining and imposed, gendered narratives. Yet Sherman’s influence can be seen most dramatically these days in photos where people are simply afterthoughts, either insulated or not present at all. Accessible digital video technologies have partially relieved photographs of the burden of "truth." Built and destructed environments are revealed as character actors and elegiac voyeurs.

This is felt even at current exhibitions of work from past decades, pictures that used to mean something quite different. Jerry Burchard’s nocturnal shots have long offered commentary on the medium’s innate capacity for revelation. But seeing them alongside Debbie Fleming Caffery’s knowing depictions of Mexican prostitutes and Linda Foard Roberts’s oval photos of almost-knowable materials at Robert Koch Gallery, they abandon a previous film-narrative sensibility (the blurry shots akin to 1970s horror film aesthetics, the celestial long exposures like being at the drive-in) and move closer to the subjects themselves: the game-like design of a park in Morocco, the cleavage of skeletal trees. What was caricatured emotionality for Sherman is silent theatricality for Burchard, the black-box-theatre intimacy of it all. His Casablanca, Morocco (1973-76) doesn’t demand that you want to know what it’s portraying. I initially saw the white streak as a mattress, something angelic and domestic that would be at home in a Tony Kushner play, but I was ultimately content with the mystery.

Nearby at Rena Bransten Gallery, photographs in the group show "Decline and Fall" move the empty stage further into ghostliness. Doug Hall’s Helena, Wife of Constantine, Museo Capitalino, Rome (1996/97) reads like Thomas Struth having an exorcism. Light speaks first, statues second. Light holds court. The oval molding appears flattened, invoking airport baggage carts. Next to Hall’s in-transit humans, Candida Höfer’s 2004 depiction of frozen palatial elegance and Martin Klimas’ 2003 picture of shattering ceramics against a white background appear increasingly compassionate.

For the San Francisco Arts Commission and PhotoAlliance’s "10 x 10 x 10" at City Hall, 10 local curators invited 10 photographers to submit 10 works each. Stacen Berg chose John Harding for his careful compositions of people who are "entirely distanced from their public environment." In one hallway, Harding’s analog captures of San Francisco street scenes face off with the late Ken Botto’s urban shots, constructed from miniatures and morphs. It’s as if the buildings and slabs, not the people, are shooting the movies of our lives. Heather Snider chose Solstice Fires, Lucy Goodhart’s "reverential but not sentimental" pictures of last summer’s Big Sur fires. In dialogue with Jesse Schlesinger’s varied but participatory outdoor exposures, picked by Joyce Grimm, and Chris McCaw’s stunning paper negatives, chosen by Linda Connor, Goodhart’s photographs speak to a world that is listening even when no one is there. *

10 X 10 X 10

Through Sept. 18

San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

(415) 554-6080

www.sfacgallery.org

DECLINE AND FALL

Through Sat/8

Rena Bransten Gallery

77 Geary, SF

(415) 982-3292

www.renabranstengallery.com

JERRY BURCHARD, DEBBIE FLEMING CAFFERY, AND LINDA FOARD ROBERTS
Through Aug. 22

Robert Koch Gallery

49 Geary, fifth floor, SF

(415) 421-0122

www.kochgallery.com

Saved!

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

PHOTO ISSUE Take Me to the Water (Dust-to-Digital, 96 pages, $32.50) is an eccentric archive, under the same bewildering sign as Harry Smith’s epochal Anthology of American Folk Music (1952). It comprises both a book (75 sepia plates of full immersion baptism scenes performed in nature) and accompanying CD in the same vein as Dust-to-Digital’s earlier ark of covenants, Goodbye, Babylon (2003). But the beautifully reproduced photographs are what make it worthwhile.

They were made at a time when photography was reserved for occasion (one shudders to think of the contemporaneous rage for photographs of lynching scenes). A photograph, like a baptism, was something you dressed up for. In many images here, figures stare down the camera, distracted from the spectacle at hand. One atypical shot looks as if it was snapped under cover of trees: we peer through shrubs at a minister and convert, rippling the water alone.

There is always a danger of mystifying the past with ephemeral evidence this gorgeous, but it would be foolhardy to think the invocatory power of these photographs is purely the invention of contemporary eyes — if anything, the images restore the spiritual sense in which photography is called a medium. The believers are transfigured by God’s light, the photograph by the world’s.

The cameraperson typically shoots from an opposite bank, offering a broad scene. Crowds are in the dozens, if not hundreds, draping bridges and packing every jut of land. The principle pictorial advantage of this framing is the emphasis it places on the water’s reflection. The reverse image coasting the water’s surface rhymes with the one produced by the camera’s lens. More immediately, this reflection gives the impression of ghosts. In his introduction, Luc Sante makes the point that many of these sites were so used for generations, and therefore "accrued layers of association and sentiment." Ghosts were to be expected.

Because the scope of the photographs frequently exceed the camera’s depth of field, surrounding space buckles to the distant baptism’s sharp focus. Time itself seems to bend around this point of clarity and calm. The person being baptized is most deeply submerged, making their reflections the clearest ones. Much of what the photographs communicate, then, is the way these baptisms were both public events and private passages. The individual is simultaneously a part of and apart from the community, in the same way death is to life.

Nearly all those pictured in Take Me to the Water have since crossed to the other side — the passage of time is there in the splotches and creases. The poignancy of these imperfections is that they remind us that the photographs belonged to people, as mementos. In one, a pen marking indicates one of many figures in the water — someone’s relation. Beauty balancing the ordinary and sublime is a strange gift indeed. The wonder isn’t that these photographs survived, but that they existed in the first place.

Hex appeal

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CULT MOVIES ONLINE I remember sitting on the floor of a scrappy Las Vegas hotel room, my five-year-old eyes glued to the television. A fuzzy film played from a far-gone era, filled with uncensored violence, sex, and drugged out debauchery. I was horrified, but possessed euphorically by that horror, unable to turn away from the moving screen. To this day I am still looking for that movie’s title. And nearly every film freak who shares a similar story of initiation still seeks out some unknown title. But lucky for us weirdos, the San Francisco collective Cosmic Hex is committed to finding, archiving, and digitally preserving just those forgotten treasures of underground exploitation film.

"We just have fun with the whole underground, sort of lost exploitation movie scene," says Dan Simpson, head organizer of the Cosmic Hex Internet archive. Together with fellow aficionados Scott Moffett and Serge Vladimiroff, Simpson started the digital archive six years ago initially as a way to show the collective’s giant stockpile of 16mm and 35mm films. But the costs of such a feat grew exponentially, and so the project veered instead to the whimsical. "We got to the point where we pay the bills and we do whatever we want. I get to explore my id and go down whatever avenues open up to me that week," Simpson explains. His id currently spirals him into ’70s made-for-television bizarrities like the Western/satanic cult mashup, Black Noon (1971). But Simpson also enjoys fulfilling requests, no matter their obscurity. A film with a single VHS release that died with the mom and pop stores? Only eight copies in the world? The Citizen Kane of "asteroid possessed bulldozer films," Killdozer (1974)? Simpson is game for the challenge.

Besides building their growing digital archive of nearly 300 films, Cosmic Hex also screens some select 16mm choices in its clubhouse speakeasy, the Vortex Room (1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom). The terrestrial SoMa location transports visitors into a whole ‘nother world of the weird, showcasing some of the finest trash and psychedelic madness ever captured on reel. August’s calendar totes the classic psycho-thriller Race With The Devil (1975) and the enigmatic Divine Emanuelle Love Cult (1983) among many other juicy titles. "Somebody has to take charge and make this stuff available, or it never will," Simpson says. "And it will end up burning in some vault at some point and never be seen again." But these films do not engage strictly on an ironic or nostalgic level. Many of them genuinely hold up as quality pieces of work. "I end up finding more genius in some of these films that people would write off without even watching the first 10 minutes," Simpson insists. "The trashier, the weirder, the better it is." (Michael Krimper)
www.cosmichex.com

Rocked and rolled

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Musical theater separates the men from the boys, and the gritty urban musical is especially tough to pull off. Hardcore violence, seedy city underbellies, bare midriffs, and a sprinkling of angel dust might make me or you want to burst into song, but it’s still pretty jarring to witness. Nonetheless, the GUM as a subgenre is well established. Many would call Rent its quintessential expression. Others might go for Urinetown, if only to take the piss out of the Rent faction. But these are the ones that help sell the form, and they can make it look misleadingly easy.

Boxcar Theatre’s new urban rock musical, Rent Boy Ave.: A "Fairy’s" Tale, has some of the genre’s virtues and many of its faults, with a title already evoking at least two of the aforementioned Broadway precedents (though how intentionally I can’t say; thematically the play’s emphasis falls more on the subtitle, with snaking references to Pinocchio et al.). You have to hand it to Boxcar; as other companies scale back and tighten belts, it steps forward and belts out scales. It’s an ambitious capstone to the company’s current season. It’s also bursting with neighborhood spirit: Rent Boy Ave. is about sleazy back-alley prostitution and drug dealing among underage hustlers in the feral alleyways of SoMa, conveniently located right outside the door.

While there are actually relatively few people to be sighted, let alone tricks turned, in the street immediately adjacent to the theater, director Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky does his best to play up any symmetry, having actors panhandle and proposition the audience as they take their seats, arrayed around chain-link and vibrant graffiti (courtesy of Lily Black and Mr. Fingers) in Don Cate’s enveloping urban jungle décor. The cheekiness simultaneously erases the distinction between theater and street and calls knowing attention to it.

But ambition and local flavor notwithstanding, the musical is rather shaky. The story begins with the arrival of fresh-meat street urchin David (a nicely bold and comically dry, if musically uneven, Bobby Bryce), exiled from his Midwestern home (yes, he’s from Kansas) for being gay. Accomplished hustler Mark (Bradly Mena), already long in the tooth at 17, takes him in hand, while insisting he’s straight despite his male clientele. David is not prepared to prostitute himself, but likes Mark, who introduces him to the Pimp (a dramatically flat but resonantly voiced Anthony Rollins-Mullens), who gets him dealing drugs in the meantime. David befriends another of the Pimp’s properties, junkie thrasher Jackie, whose opening number, "Punk Rock Slut," establishes actor Danelle Medeiros’ conviction and vocal control in the role despite some less than compelling choreography. The streets are haunted, meanwhile, by a psychopathic Dirty Old Man (a bright, enjoyably nasty Donald Currie, with some of the better lyrics) and patrolled by a foul-mouthed soup-kitchen saint, Sister Mercy (an able Michelle Ianiro).

Performances here are mixed, the staging only fitfully compelling. More crucially, book and lyrics (by artistic director Nick A. Olivero) deliver a patchy plot and characters of thin or questionable merit. There’s humor and punch in some songs, but too many lines are poetically strained to the point of hemorrhaging — especially in the generally egregious "rhyme"-busting of the Pimp: "I’ve got apples to pick /And fingers to lick /And money to kick." The rock score (by Michael Mohammed), at times effectively driving or wistful, can also be dully formulaic or ponderously proggy. Rent Boy Ave.‘s moral has an unfortunate double edge to it: among this world’s fleshy but spiritually empty transactions — "Life don’t mean a thing /Living in a prostitution ring" — it’s the soul that counts.

RENT BOY AVE.: A "FAIRY’S" TALE

Through Aug. 9

Wed–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m., $18–$34

Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF

(415) 776-1747

www.boxcartheatre.org

YACHT rocks

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER The path of true love — even the healing, heartfelt, pathologically curious, perpetually vision-seeking path of Newest Age, dance-punk, pop-mantra true love — is never smooth. Nor bruise-free, when reality — and task of where exactly to place those four feet — meets calamity.

"There were kinks to work out when Claire joined the band," says YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt on the inclusion of kindred spirit and soul mate (and writer, artist, and musician) Claire L. Evans in his once one-man project. "We didn’t know how to work in each other’s space."

"We still don’t," Evans cheerfully interjects.

"I stepped on Claire the other night!" exclaims Bechtolt, 28. But like so many other things in the curiouser-and-curiouser whirl of YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology), what might seem like an issue — or grounds for a major band or couple’s squabble — is actually a point of modest, optimistic pride.

"We are incredibly paranoid," he continues. The couple first met four years ago while playing the same basement noise show in Los Angeles. "We don’t want to play the same show twice. I’ve played in countless rock bands before, so I know what it’s like to play the same memorized parts again and again. That sort of thing doesn’t work for me as a human being, though I’m not putting those bands down at all. We want to provide an alternative to rock performance, using PowerPoint, video screens …"

"We want to make it a two-way performance where the audience is a part of it," adds Evans, 24.

"We want to break the rules of honoring personal space," Bechtolt says, laughing. "We want to enter people’s personal space physically and emotionally and visually!"

To that end, YACHT wants to take its performance to the audience floor, through the crowd itself, into caves and high schools, or onto a barge boasting a sustainable geodesic dome and drifting down the Hudson River — just as they did the other night under the aegis of WFMU. Space and all the physical and psychic mysteries, conspiracy theories, and belief systems, within and without, are a preoccupation for the pair, who, over the phone from NYC, come across like wonderfully wise, fresh-headed, and all-American enthusiasts — wild-child music ‘n’ art makers in a persistent state of evangelical high energy.

Marfa, Texas’ mystery lights made their way, for sure, onto YACHT’s new album, See Mystery Lights (DFA): the otherwise-Portland, Ore.-based couple relocated to the town for an unofficial residency to study the phenomenon and expand on the seeds of the LP: eight minute-long mantras. "We gave the first version of the record to DFA and asked them for notes, and they were like, ‘Whoa, this is really weird.’ It was eight minutes long," says Bechtolt. "They were freaked out and said, ‘It’s really good, but how do we put it out?’ They gave us the challenge to turn those mantras in pop songs."

(Though never fear, those mantras aren’t lost to the ages: the pair plans to release them on 100 lathe-cut copper discs, as well as a slew of companion works including a "bible" of sorts and software that will allow followers to keep tabs on YACHT. "We’re really into objects right now," confesses Bechtolt.)

And what pop. Lights twinkles then zigzags with all the frenetic future-boogie ("Summer Song," "It’s Boring /You Can Live Anywhere You Want") and raw pop hooks ("I’m in Love with a Ripper") of a so-called DFA combo, as well as nuggets of life-and-death wisdom ("Ring the Bell," "The Afterlife"). YACHT appears to be making music that harks to less than widely referenced sources like Art of Noise, Malcolm McLaren, and other awkward yet insinuating, conceptually-minded pop experimentalists of the ’80s — and those final seconds when the pop charts seemed to skeptically embrace the musical musings of so many art school refugees.

"There’s a repetitive nature built into pop and dance music, so for these atonal mantras we were working on, it turned out to be a better way to disseminate our message," Evans explains. "We’re excited that you can hide a lot in pop music. You can appreciate it on two levels." Two true. *

YACHT

Fri/7, 8:30 p.m., $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

rickshawstop.com

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GRIS GRIS

The crafty psych magicians are dormant no more. With Spindrift and Ty Segall. Fri/7, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

LA PLEBE AND HIGHTOWER

Party with us, punkers, for la causa. With Bar Feeders and Fucking Buckeroos. Sat/8, 4 p.m., $8–$20 sliding scale donation for the SF Tenants Union. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.elriosf.com

TECUMSEH

Sunn O))) worshipers might appreciate the Portland, Ore., foursome’s black atmospherics, anarchic electronics, and love o’ the heavy. With Barn Owl, Squim, and Oaxacan. Sun/9, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

Lords of drift and discovery

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The drift. In 2006, Scott Walker used that phrase as an album title. It’s an apt tag for music of the electronic and digital eras. As inferred by another idiosyncratic singer and surfer of the vanguard, Chelonis R. Jones, electronic sound is dislocated sound. And only through its drift — the drift — does one happen upon a discovery.

Here are some lords of drift and discovery. These five electronic musicians are innovators, even inventors. They’ve been around for decades, but like sound waves echoing back from deep space, their older recordings have returned to reach new listeners. Monoton is a Kraftwerk the masses don’t know about. The meditative sounds of J.D. Emmanuel are inspiring musicians who weren’t even born when he was creating tape loops. Time is only just now catching up with Bernard Szajner’s conceptual and compositional talent. Cluster continues to unite and fragment in studios and on stereos and stages. And like a ghost from a pop memory that never quite formed, Riechmann floats into this past-haunted present moment to deliver a chilly kiss.

The drift? Catch it. (Johnny Ray Huston)

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MONOTON Modern music has its share of accidental holy grails — the heretofore-undiscovered missing artistic link; the crate-digger’s trade secret; the record that launched a thousand unknowing imitators. Somehow these records make the most overworked clichés seem like fresh descriptors. So I am willing to stand by my hyperbolic claim that the records Austrian multimedia theorist, researcher, and artist Konrad Becker released in the early 1980s as Monoton are some of the best electronic music albums you’ve probably never heard.

Such was the consensus of British canon-building screed The Wire almost 10 years ago when they nominated Monoton’s 1982 limited release album Monotonprodukt 07 as one of its "100 records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)." Now, thanks to a steady stream of reissues on Canadian experimental electronic imprint Oral — starting with Monotonprodukt 07 in 2003 — it is easier to hear why.

Like the glistening streets in a film noir, there is an aura of mystery — even menace — to the song-sketches Becker crafts from his relatively simple palette of dubbed-out drum machines, five note arpegiated bass lines, and reedy synth drones, all slicked with reverb. Monoton’s sound is wholly self-contained, yet it is not hard to hear strains of electronic music’s divergent future paths — Basic Channel’s heroin techno, Raster Norton’s tonal asceticism, Pole’s digital dub washes — even as it slips in air kisses to contemporaries like Throbbing Gristle, Cluster, and Brian Eno.

As with many other great musical experiments, Monoton was born from frustration: "Nobody else was doing this kind of thing," Becker explains via e-mail, "So if I wanted to spin something like that on a record player, I would have to do it myself." Working with admittedly "low-end equipment" — borrowed synths and a 4-track — Becker started making music that was "not ‘composed,’ but deciphered from nature, like Fibonacci numbers, pi, Feigenbaum, etc. [These are] embedded physical or natural constants with values and proportions that can be expressed in frequencies." The titles of many Monoton tracks ("Soundsequence," "Squared Roots", "p") are matter-of-fact explanations for their stochastic origins.

But the records were only one part of Becker’s larger project researching synesthetic experiences and the psychoacoustic properties of music. He’s put together several site-specific multimedia installations in spaces like underground medieval chapels and blackened tunnels covered in fluorescent paint. It’s a testament to his preternaturally prescient aesthetic that his decades-old comments about "building acoustic spaces" and "treating sound in an architectural way" could have been pulled from any number of recent interviews with drone-metal act Sunn O))).

Becker’s tireless curiosity continues to yield interdisciplinary projects that look and listen to the future. As the current director of the Orwellian-sounding "cultural intelligence providers" Institute for New Culture Technologies and the World-Information Institute, he has less time for sound-based performances. But the remastering and reissuing of his early, quietly pioneering musical work ensures that Monoton will keep setting the world ablaze, one listener at a time. (Matt Sussman)

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J.D. EMMANUEL Over the course of 40 years, the sun has risen and set and risen again within the music of J.D. Emmanuel. "I was talking to a buddy before Christmas," the man says on the phone from Houston, where he lives. "I realized that I started making music in August of 1979, and my last piece of music that I ever created was in August of 1999. I don’t know why there is a 20-year cycle."

Now, in August 2009, adventurous listeners can bask in the slo-mo beauty and consistent warmth of Solid Dawn: Electronic Works 1979-1982 (Kvist), a collection of Emmanuel tracks accompanied by gorgeous sunrise and sunset photos, another one of his specialties. Over the course of a few decades, customer service workshop gigs kept Emmanuel on the road and in the air — he estimates he has logged 1.5 million miles. "If I was seated by a window, I’d take out my camera and see if I could find something fun," he says, with characteristic lack of pretense. "I was very fortunate to see a lot of beautiful things from six, seven, (laughs) eight miles high."

And we are fortunate that he took pictures, and even more lucky that he’s created the sonic equivalent of natural wonders — songs like Solid Dawn‘s "Sunrise Over Galveston Bay," a water-swept and windblown chime dream that makes reference to Emmanuel’s childhood surroundings in its title. Personal and universal wonder is at the core of Emmenuel’s meditative outlook. "For whatever reason, when I was a little kid, around eight or nine, I discovered how fun it was to put myself into an altered or dream state," he remembers. "I would go into my grandmother’s bedroom, close the curtains to make the room as dark as possible, turn on the air conditioner and just lay down. I’d take these one hour naps that were just delightful — little trips."

The second sunrise of Emmenuel’s musical career began when his second LP and favorite recording, 1982’s Wizards, was reissued a few years ago. It’s already out of print and rare once again, but Solid Dawn offers more than a glimmer of its powerfully elemental and yet understated pull, a magnetism that has influenced the sound of recent artists such as White Rainbow. The ingredients can be reduced to instrumental gear: a Crumar Traveler 1 organ, an Echoplex, a Pro-One and Yamaha K-20 synthesizers, and a Tascam 40-4 reel deck. They can be traced to influences ranging from "Gomper" off the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request (Decca, 1967) to Roedelius and Tangerine Dream tracks heard on a radio show by Houston radio DJ Margie Glaser. But ultimately, the source is Emmanuel. His music has a unique sense of being. It’s also warmer than German electronic music of the era. Must be that Texas sun. (Johnny Ray Huston)

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BERNARD SZAJNER Somewhere between Brian Eno and Marcel Duchamp rests Bernard Szajner (pronounced shy-nerr). The elusive French electronic sound innovator and visual artist has always been living in the future. After creating a Syeringe or laser harp (an instrument where light triggers sound) in the 1970s, he put out five albums between 1979 and 1983, then left the music scene unexpectedly. Now two of those albums — 1980’s Some Deaths Take Forever and 1981’s Superficial Music — have been digitally remastered and reissued (with bonus tracks) by James Nice’s legendary U.K.-based label, LTM Recordings.

"I never left the music scene," Szajner says via e-mail from Paris, where he’s been getting very little sleep while preparing for a solo exhibition "Back to the cave" at Galerie Taiss. "I just decided that I had to become ‘invisible.’ In the same way, I never left the visual art scene. I just felt that I had to work for a few years … before reappearing."

The installations at Taiss will start with a huge sculpture, Mother, that begins visitors’ ascent from light on the first floor into darkness on the third. The overlapping M’s could be seen as an experimental musical score for light. Whether working in sound or vision (he sees the two "forces" creating a "third force that is stronger than any one of the two"), Szajner’s genius is in making the act of storytelling as relevant as the story itself. The reissues both present journeys. Some Deaths Take Forever‘s layers of synths and distortion eventually reach a celestial, radio-frequency climax. Superficial Music is literally a half-speed, backward journey through his first album, Visions of Dune , followed by a metallic triptych called Oswiecim, the Polish name for Auschwitz. Szajner’s parents were Polish Jews who came to France via Germany, and Superficial Music was partly an effort to evoke the "impressions and sensations of my parents’ storytelling."

When these albums were first heard, Szajner notes, "they appeared strange to most listeners. It took some 20 years to discover that my music might be of interest." Was it hard to come back to a musical landscape where digital music-making software had proliferated? "My opinion is irrelevant because the proliferation is inevitable," he writes. "When I became visible again, I had to cope with an entirely new problem: how does a ‘cult musician’ — like I am supposed to be — get in touch with labels when they receive about 500 demos a week?"

Szajner donated his old synths to an art school some time ago, and he now uses computers just like everybody else (although he claims not to listen to music: "I never, really never, listen to any music, not even my own once it is finished"). Labels eventually started contacting him, asking about reissues. "I chose LTM because it is the most serious proponent of my genre," he says.

An argument for the abolition of torture and the death penalty, Some Deaths Take Forever slowly coheres in the mind. As Szajner puts it in the liner notes/art: "Terms of reality /New body form /The difference is not all that great." Life, after all, is not essentially political. How can you argue with emptiness? (Ari Messer)

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CLUSTER Cluster is known to the German state as Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. Roedelius, 74, and Moebius, 65, are elder statesmen of electronic music and appropriately dignified in their old age. When I saw them at the Great American Music Hall in May 2008, they performed behind glasses of white wine, much as I imagine they’ve always done. But the whooshing, cartilage-shaking sounds emanating from the sound system bore only a passing resemblance to the intricately sequenced music they are best known for. Whether you hear prime-era records like Zuckerzeit (Brain, 1974) or Soweisoso (Sky, 1976) as krautrock, protoambient, kosmische, or plain electronic, the duo knew how to build bridges. Thirty-eight years after their beginnings as Cluster — an early incarnation of the band, spelled with a "K," included Conrad Schnitzler and formed two years earlier — the band has just released Qua (Nepenthe), a record whose surface strangeness reveals a band plunging again into the primordial waters they tested with their debut.

Pioneer status is always shaky — krautrock reissues in particular seem to be coming fast and thick. Still, Cluster (Philips, titled Cluster ‘71 for Water’s 2006 reissue) is more than an assemblage of cleverly processed sounds (few synthesizers were used), it’s a successful stab at a new language — one that incorporates academic experiments and pop music textures but doesn’t really belong in the company of other records. From their sophomore album, Cluster II (Brain, 1972) through 1979’s Grosses Wasser (Sky) Moebius and Roedelius structured their early experimentation by splitting the difference between the former’s ambient washes of sound and the latter’s baroque and whimsical sense of melody. Counting contemporary releases in collaboration with Neu!’s Michael Rother (as Harmonia) and Brian Eno, these dudes broke a lot of ground in their first decade of existence.

Zuckerzeit‘s "Hollywood" is a good summary of what synth/loop questers like Arp or White Rainbow draw from the band’s working methods: percussion is built around an unquantized loop, giving the woody guitar burps that ride above a tumbling momentum and the icy euro synths that bleed down from higher frequencies a strange tilt. Look close enough and you can’t miss the gaps that let the warmth in. Despite the obvious futurism of their work, Cluster were also secret classicists — Michael Rother’s solo work of the same period, or the Berlin techno that followed in its wake, appear like cold, rationalized Le Corbusier edifices compared to Cluster’s rambling sense of space.
What Qua drives home is the sense that while Cluster never comes across as mechanized, neither does it come across as particularly hospitable. The straight lines of Rother’s music or the subperceptual, soft contours of Eno’s still give a sense of movement toward a better, more human world — naturally so, considering these were some of the principals of early new age. With the exception of album closer "Imtrerion," billowy and warm like the coda to some forgotten shoegaze record, most of Qua is made up of sketches that skew toward the dark and circular — the downtempo time-warp of "Na Ernel" is more Bristol than Berlin. Although the album is filled with miniatures, it’s probably the closest in feel to the formless expanses of their debut. Possibly, the band’s returning to where it started because few of the people it has influenced have done the same. Just as likely, they’re far enough ahead of the competition to be standing behind them. (Brandon Bussolini)

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RIECHMANN When he powdered his face a morbid, ghostly white for the cover of his debut solo album Wunderbar (Sky, 1978), how could Wolfgang Riechmann know that he would soon be dead, the victim of a knife attack? This tragic irony is at the core of Riechmann’s story, a little-known one that may attain cult status thanks to Wunderbar‘s reissue 31 years later.
Riechmann the solo artist deserves a cult following for Wunderbar‘s title track alone, a stately and slightly mischievous instrumental track for a movie never made. Somewhere between Ennio Morricone’s whistling spaghetti western rallying calls and Joe Meek’s merry and slightly maniacal anthems for satellites and new worlds of the imagination, "Wunderbar" gallops and lopes, and then floats — better yet, drifts — into orbit. It is glacial, yet seductive.
Listening to Riechmann’s sole solo effort, it’s impossible not to ponder what might have been. If his suave corpse pallor seems to arrive in the wake of Kraftwerk’s automaton image, right down to similarly slicked-back hair, it also prefigures Gary Numan’s android routine. A peer of Michael Rother’s, Riechmann possessed Rother’s gift for instrumental grace. A series of green glowing transmissions from an alien planet, alternately alluring and slightly sinister, Wunderbar calls to mind Rother’s Fernwarme (Water, 1982) — except it arrived four years earlier.
Who was Wolfgang Riechmann, and what exactly happened to him one fatal night? These questions lurk behind the photo of Riechmann’s painted face on Wunderbar‘s cover, with a dearth of text providing any solid answers. Perhaps we’ll know more as the album’s reputation is revived, and canny journalists ask the likes of Rother about a one-time peer. Lords of drift and discovery float in from the past and float out toward the future. (Huston)

Variety lights

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

If Jean-Luc Godard is right that film history is the history of the 20th century, the film preservationist surely occupies a privileged seat of knowledge. Steve Erickson implied as much in 2007’s Zeroville, his surrealist novel centering on a "cineautistic" film editor who gives new meaning to Freud’s concept of "screen memories." But by and large the preservationist’s labor is beyond public view. UCLA’s prestigious moving image archive is trying to change that with a touring program of highlights from its biannual Festival of Preservation. In an e-mail exchange with Jan-Christopher Horak, the archive director wrote that "When I became director 19 months ago, it seemed that all the work was wasted if we only showed the films in our theatre in Los Angeles."

The Pacific Film Archive screens 14 of these restorations during August, one of which showed at the Castro Theatre in May. Head archivist Ross Lipman reintroduced the eager crowd to John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), veering comfortably between technological details and dishy anecdotes. Several of Cassavetes’ original collaborators were in attendance, and it was clear that Lipman had joined their ranks in his material intimacy with the film. I was fully expecting to be wowed by seeing Mabel and Nick Longhetti’s tumult splayed across the big screen, but the revelation was in the soundtrack: the dynamic see-sawing between nonsense whispers and splitting screams made the film a physical experience.

Restorations can bring our attention to previously unseen (or unheard) aspects of a film, making it more complex than we first realized. Dial the formal elements up too much, though, and you have the aesthetic equivalent of a juiced ballplayer — many critics felt this line was crossed in the brightening of R.W. Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and the soundtrack facelift performed on Orson Welles’s Othello (1952). Nitrate is time-sensitive and costly to preserve, and since the number of titles is so great, the choice of which film to preserve is bound to be polemical.

"While UCLA has traditionally focused on Hollywood films, given our geographic location, we have become increasingly interested in independent and avant-garde work," Horak explained. This shift has resulted in its tremendous success with restorations of Killer of Sheep (1977), The Exiles (1961) and the early films of Kenneth Anger — a set of work that, when taken together, brings wider attention to Los Angeles’ rich tradition of what scholar David E. James calls "minor cinemas."

The PFA picks are delightfully eclectic, but the common thread of this mostly American set is independence. From early avatars like Edward Curtis (1914’s In the Land of the Head Hunters) to Poverty Row auteurs like Edgar Ulmer (1948’s Ruthless), political outliers like Joseph Losey (1951’s The Prowler) to those filmmakers who gave indie cinema a name of its own (Cassavetes and John Sayles), "Secrets Beyond the Door" weaves a multitude of independent traditions. *

SECRETS BEYOND THE DOOR: TREASURES FROM THE UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION

Aug. 7–30, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Summer of ’69

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When Dylan wrote "Forever Young," he surely didn’t reckon on something that would make even the most yoga-limbered original hippie feel old: Easy Rider turning 40. But it just did, an occasion commemorated by the restored print playing the Red Vic this week. Disregarding the tragic social-commentary ending, one can ponder "Where would Captain America and Billy be now?" — then watch 2007’s Wild Hogs for one depressing possible answer.

Easy Rider has been lionized and analyzed as the single film that most changed — or eroded — old-school Hollywood. It was made well under the radar for a pittance, by the blind leading the naked — Peter Fonda had never produced a film, and Dennis Hopper had never directed one. Real rednecks hired as bit players really did want to beat up the longhaired crew, who really were frequently on the drugs ingested on-screen. Hopper dithered for a year before delivering a three-hour edit. (Surprisingly, he approved of the 95-minute final version others hastily cut.)

By the time Rider finally came out, some thought the biker genre was already finished. Despite all that, it became a phenomenon, "defining the sixties" and inducing the studios to chase that elusive magic by green-lighting innumerable other first-time filmmakers’ equally loose, indulgent features.

Looking at Easy Rider now is like rereading Hermann Hesse or Carlos Castaneda 40 years later — do it at your own peril, because what seemed so profound then might be revealed as pretentious, vague, and awfully dated. The mystique transcended the movie long ago. But this tale of two hippie dudes smuggling coke (scored from Phil Spector as "the Connection"!) cross-country only to discover they "blew it," has innumerable parts greater than its sum: it gave us Jack Nicholson (who was about to quit acting before being asked to replace Rip Torn), cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, all-rock soundtracks, the inimitable Karen Black, and many more. As phrase and symbol, Easy Rider still evokes a dream.

EASY RIDER

Wed/5–Sat/8, check Web site for times, $6–$9

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

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