Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

The deep end

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Lucrecia Martel’s three mischievous films scramble normal narrative hierarchies, privileging sensation to exposition, desire to explanation, and intuition to realism. Thunder-clapped fairy tales of unknowing, they have an adolescent’s sensitivity to the strangeness of the adult world. Outside of Tsai Ming-liang, it’s difficult to think of another working director with such a productive obsession with water. Martel is attracted to locations where her characters can sink, like pools and beds, and she arranges her multiplanar compositions so that these figures appear as floating heads and torsos.

The apprehensive tilt of Martel’s stories is left undefined, just on the cusp of horror, but the director’s formal coordination of sound and image is anything but imprecise. Her humid aesthetic popped out fully formed in the opening minutes of 2001’s La Ciénaga ("The Swamp"), in which the sloshing reds of blood and wine, a padded sound design, and viscous handheld camera movements conduct an atrophying bourgeois scene with the heavy-lidded amplitude of a Caravaggio. The Holy Girl (2004) further demonstrated Martel’s skill at playing for senses other than reason. Her new work, The Headless Woman, is her most expressly psychological yet, and thus entails a newly concentrated application of her unusual narration style — a kind of intimate, hooded third person in which neurosis and desire register as phenomenology.

The woman of the title (which doesn’t translate literally) is another of Martel’s dislodged bourgeoisie women. Driving home from a gabby gathering, she runs over something while absentmindedly reaching for her cell phone; after this, her mind absents her. Perhaps amnesiac, but at the least traumatized, Veronica (Maria Onetto) reenters her everyday life in a fog. Her weak smiles and mute replies will irritate some viewers, especially those who reflexively despise the withholding ambiguity of Antonioni films like 1964’s Red Desert (Martel’s characters, like Antonioni’s, often put on sunglasses at odd moments, as if to shield their wanting souls). What’s remarkable about The Headless Woman in comparison to so many art house pretenders, however, is that Martel is able to maintain this high level of uncertainty without letting the story go slack. As much as Veronica seems to drift, the film’s carefully calibrated ruptures make it so she cannot keep the world at bay.

HOLY GIRLS AND HEADLESS WOMEN: THE FILMS OF LUCRECIA MARTEL

July 14–15 and 23, 7:30 p.m. (Martel in person July 14–15), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Cold, cold hearts

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cheryl@sfbg.com

Metalheads: before you gang up on Until the Light Takes Us — a new documentary by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, who dare to admit they weren’t really into metal before starting their film — consider the sinister fact that there’s now an imdb entry for the 2010 release of Lords of Chaos. This narrative take on Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sonderlind’s 1998 book (subtitled The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground) casts Twilight vamp Jackson Rathbone as scene boogeyman Varg Vikernes.

Remember, also, the cursory attention afforded Scandinavian black metal in the sprawling doc Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). You may not recall that same year’s Metal Storm: The Scandinavian Black Metal Wars — an interesting if technically rough look at the subject — because it screened locally just once, as part of a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series on heavy metal cinema. Metal Storm featured interviews with a young (circa 2000) Vikernes. The erstwhile Count Grishnackh, late of Burzum, returns in Until the Light Takes Us, which hits YBCA for a three-night stand.

Locked up in 1993 for murdering Mayhem’s Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, Vikernes was very recently paroled. But he was still incarcerated in Until the Light Takes Us, and he doesn’t seem terribly put out, likening his time behind bars to "a stay in a monastery." He’s articulate, intelligent, and unrepentant, reflecting on his various deeds. He claims he provided the shotgun ammo used by another Mayhem member, Per Yngve Ohlin (a.k.a. "Dead"), to committ suicide. (Of course, after Euronymous discovered Dead’s body, he took a photo that was later used as Mayhem cover art. Seriously, these were spooky dudes.)

Vikernes may be a fascinating fellow — a worst-case scenario for anyone eager to believe that heavy metal is a recruitment tool for Satan worshippers — but Until the Light Takes Us isn’t centered on him. This is not a true-crime tale (though it does offer some striking footage of Norwegian churches set ablaze during black metal’s criminal zenith). Nor is it trying to teach Metal 101 (though it does touch on black metal’s eerie, atmospheric sound, pagan themes, and deliberately lo-fi production). Instead, Until the Light Takes Us attempts to show what happens when a very specific, proudly isolationist art movement becomes commercialized — to the chagrin of founding members like Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, memorable for his demon-like appearance in full corpsepaint on the cover of his band Darkthrone’s 1994 release, Transilvanian Hunger (Peaceville Records).

"I don’t want to be blamed for black metal becoming a trend," Fenriz says, some 16 years after an article in the U.K. magazine Kerrang! introduced black metal to the mainstream. Though the film interviews other players like Mayhem drummer Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg and former Emperor drummer Bård "Faust" Eithun (himself a convicted murderer who appears as a voice-altered silhouette), Fenriz is Aites and Ewell’s focus, drifting around icy Oslo, working on current music projects, and ruefully reminiscing about the movement he helped create: "I guess the sale of black lipstick went through the roof."

Rather than focusing on copycat bands, Until the Light Takes Us explores black metal’s influence on artists like Bjarne Melgaard, whose "Sons of Odin" installation earns smirks from Fenriz, and Harmony Korine, who earns smirks from the filmmakers. Not mentioned in the film: the Vice-produced 2007 internet videos series and Peter Beste’s subsequent book of photographs, True Norwegian Black Metal. Of course, Until the Light Takes Us — full of artful shots of Norway’s stark, gorgeous countryside and cityscapes, which go a long way toward illustrating what inspired the black metal guys in the first place — is also opening up the scene for curious outsiders.

"It’s out of our hands now," Fenriz shrugs. He’s bitter, but he’s got a point. Murders and mayhem and Mayhem aside, once pop culture snatches up your subculture — see: Guitar Hero‘s black-metal character, Lars Ümlaüt, or the aforementioned Lords of Chaos flick — there’s no stealing it back.

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US

Thurs–Sat, 7:30 p.m.

(also Fri–Sat, 9:30 p.m.), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Bare life

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

In one of the many oblique exchanges between potential suicide Nancy Stockwell (Maria Bello) and her killer-cum-suitor Louis Farley (Jason Patric), the sadist asks his victim how she imagines death. Staring at a nearby aquarium teeming with wandering fish, Stockwell gleefully responds that death is a release — like one of them, you can breathe underwater. Swedish music video director Johan Renck’s first feature, Downloading Nancy is largely a meditation on such metaphysical atmospheres — the suffocating air of tract homes, the cold showers of sexual dysfunction, the liquid plasma of the sickly blue computer screen — and one woman’s compulsion for escape.

After a childhood of cruel sexual abuse and 15 years of pitiless marriage to game developer Albert (Rufus Sewell), Nancy retreats from her life of desperation and sets upon a pernicious odyssey. Determined to slough off her physical body and all of its mundane accoutrements, she enlists Internet pal Louis, an S&M fetishist and videographer, to pleasure and then kill her in a cyber-sacrifice. As the unnerving danse macabre gets underway, Nancy and Louis tease death with self-mutilation and torture, using razor blades, mousetraps, and lit cigarettes to chilling, depraved effect. Nancy’s bare arms and legs contain an archive of scars and burn marks, as do other hidden cavities she will puncture before reaching orgasm. Louis, stoic and increasingly conflicted about their atrocious pact, often trades away the pleasure of his own sexual fantasy in order to question Nancy’s real motivations or persuade her back toward life. Trading roles of executioner and executed, these lost souls teeter on a threshold where the sovereignty of sacrifice fades imperceptibly into the debasement of living death. Does Nancy’s ultimatum to her new beau constitute the ultimate instance of a woman’s seduction — or the complete penetration of the digital world into a simulacrum of unsacrificable flesh?

Equally as unnerving are the scenes of Nancy’s former life with Albert, a vampirous clone of the business world. When Nancy vanishes — her depraved goal unbeknownst to Albert — he wanders through the sickly mauve interior of the house, putter in hand, desperately trying to understand where their life went astray, all the while sneaking glances at the computer that had consumed Nancy’s life.

Despite some scenes of lugubrious pretension (particularly the "therapy" sessions between Bello and Amy Brenneman as her savior-psychologist), Downloading Nancy achieves a dubious distinction: it presents a model of posthuman mortality that oscillates between the bare life of the mutilated body and the de-corporeal skin of the digital screen. Renck employed cinematographer extraordinaire Christopher Doyle to enhance the feeling of mise en abyme by coloring everything in etiolated blues and grays. The result is a dystopic recreation of the present (here there are obvious comparisons to Cronenberg’s 1996 Crash) where boredom has supplanted the titillation of apocalypse. When Louis finally agrees to participate in the penultimate encounter, what ensues is a numbing anticlimax beyond (or beneath) the meaningfulness of sacrifice.

DOWNLOADING NANCY opens July 10 in Bay Area theaters.

Miss u?

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Killer apps available soon for your iClub phone, besides the one where you can fake-snort Adderall, that epilepsy-inducing portable strobe, the virtual cigarette, and — Goddess help us all — the Paul Van Dyk BPM counter and 3-D glow stick:

Breath Blocker.

Douche Douche.

Cops Are Here (for bathroom line clearance).

Midi Jammer (to fuck with laptop DJs).

Instant Breakfast. Better Breakdown. Red Bull Unburp. Take Back What You Told Her. What’s Your Name Again? Third Ear Corrector (for trainwreck mixes). Stiletto GPS (to avoid injury). Bachelorette Banishment. Collar De-Pop. Hands In The Air (for lazies). Center Of Gravity (for twirlers). Personal Space. Interested Face. Sleep It Off. Leave The House. Get Me Home. Cocktail Scan. Dealer Dialer. Bag Locator. Eyes Uncrosser. Name-On-List. Instant Blackout. Armpit Undo. Wardrobe Wand. Singalong Stop. Conversation Erase. Invisible Walk of Shame.

Embedding Disabled By Request.

No More ’80s? Electro Silence? Trance-A-Way? Techno Buffer? Affliction Tee Annihilate? Child, you could make a million. Call me when your cell’s a mirror, and I can look myself up in it.

CLUB 1992

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times — I think. I was too busy raving with Big Bird. In 1992, "Baby Got Back," "I’m Too Sexy," and "Jump Around" fought it out on hypothetical dance floors somewhere in Mainstreamland, probably, but the most important thing you need to know about that annus horribilis (Queen Elizabeth II’s phrase, not mine) was that something called Super Typhoon Gay threatened Guam. I do the research so you don’t have to. In any case, if irony’s taught us anything, it’s that taste is now a featherless bird that will peck out your brain. And — welcome friends! Awesome hair! — for the hot new gen flooding the clubs at the moment, these songs were its older sister’s jams. I can’t say mine were any more artistically momentous, because a) I’m basically a cultural relativist and b) she blinded me with science. In an undoubtedly canny move, the kids from electro-styley bonanzas Blow-Up and L.O.W. SF are getting all JTT on the TRL, coloring 111 Minna badd with a mess of DJs. Along with the neon pop dollops, "’90s hip-hop" is promised — which I’m guessing means more "getting jiggy" than experimental Quannum mechanics. Question: when will someone do an 1892 party? Now that would be epic.

Sat/11, 10 p.m., $10. 111 Minna, SF. www.club1992.com

PRINCE VS. MICHAEL JACKSON

Alas, I think we have a winner already for the 62nd installment of this seven-year-old monthly party at Madrone. But, despite it’s unabashed gimmickry and slightly worn template — and the fact that you’ve been dancing to MJ everywhere — this DJ battle pitting Purplesaurus Rex against Sparkle Fingers is a poppy blast, if now overshadowed by tragedy. In terms of dance music influence, Prince currently holds the ruling orb (just ask precocious ’80s pinchers La Roux). Michael hasn’t really been in the game since Frankie Knuckles’ masterpiece remix of the R. Kelly-penned "You Are Not Alone" in 1995, despite Rihanna and Justin’s bland efforts and Ne-Yo’s excellent ones. But all that has now been reset, with postmortem reevaluation and exposure forced on us. This party, with its hits, rarities, and remixes, is a good start for hearing things afresh.

Sat/18, 8 p.m., $5. Madrone Art Bar, 500 Divisadero, SF. www.madronelounge.com

Beyonce bounce

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Fierce. Bad. Doth Beyonce Knowles and Michael Jackson protest too much? More than two decades separated them, along with crucial biographical details, gender, and a kind of comfort in one’s skin. Yet both drink deeply from the same well of R&B pop perfection, after emerging, solo, from the safety and suffocation of the family-like combo. Both faintly evoke Jackson’s go-to mom for Prince, Paris, and Prince II (a.k.a. Blanket), Diana Ross. Both walk that tightrope of personal vulnerability and arena-friendly theater, the real and the fantastic, artful display and emotional artifice. Both have been philanthropists, ready with a vision to heal the world, and armed with a staunch commitment to spectacle and an iron will (to entertain) encased in a sparkly or titanium robot glove.

But entertain a morbid thought: if Knowles were to crash and burn her Thierry Mugler motorcycle breastplate during her current "I Am … Tour" — said to out-razzle-dazzle all predecessors with its aerial flips and 70-some costumes — would she be revered like Jackson? She’s made her share of great, timely, and timeless singles: "Crazy in Love," "Baby Boy," "Irreplaceable." And you can easily hear Mikey within the tender whisper-to-a-scream "If I Were a Boy." But Knowles’ bifurcated self unsettles on I Am … Sasha Fierce (Sony/Music World, 2008), an album tidily separating in two, its ballads and bangers distributed between two discs, as if simuutf8g vinyl.

Sasha Fierce is a clear bid for album-like complexity, depth, and, gak, maturity. It leads with the earmarked-as-important slow dances and power ballads and disrupts the single-centered paradigm, making us wait for the champagne-bubbly, bustling "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." Surprisingly old-school in its marriage-minded sentiments for a woman who makes a point of touring with an all-female band, the track hints at the cognitive dissonance that makes Michael Jackson studies so rich. Given time, Jackson might even have wanted to tweak his beauty to mimic Knowles’ healthy naturalism, rivaled only by Rihanna’s as current pop’s beauty standard.

Sasha Fierce succeeds as a long listen, settling in likeably and ingratiatingly despite irritants like "Ave Maria" and "Video Phone," which recall the ways in which B’Day (Columbia/Music World, 2006) blustered and annoyed. Its crafty, minimalist sections hint at moments spent listening to electro remixes and MIA. As with MJ, it’s tough to separate the dancer from the dance: I can’t help but hear Beyonce singing to Jay-Z in her protests against being treated as less than one of the boys. Now declaring the "Death of Auto-Tune," he’s the talented shadow hanging over the production, another male counterpart to her executive producer and father, Matthew Knowles. Is it audacious to imagine her breaking from those intimate ties and finding her own Quincy Jones? To wonder if hipsters will be dancing to B’s songs — with nostalgia or irony or blissfully encumbered by neither — two decades from now as they do to Michael? I’m looking forward to the moment when Beyonce resolves her two B sides and merges the woman in the mirror with the woman making the music.

BEYONCE

Fri/10, 7:30 p.m., $19.75–$129.25

Oracle Arena

7000 Coliseum, Oakl.

www.livenation.com

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DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE DUSTS OFF ITS EXTRAS

I suspected Death Cab for Cutie had finally arrived while browsing the juniors’ department of Macy’s and being stopped in my tracks by the video playing on the TV monitors: it was "I Will Possess Your Heart," off Narrow Stairs (Barsuk/Atlantic, 2008), the combo’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. Judging from the attention the music was getting from random tourists and untethered men, the group had found listeners beyond the indie rock mob. Now new — and old — fans can get another dose of the Narrow Stairs sessions with the release of The Open Door EP (Barsuk/Atlantic). The disc’s five songs "were kind of poking out, in a way, so we just cut them from the album," bassist Nick Harmer says by phone. "But it was part of the experience of where we’re at as a band. So we were always hoping we’d find a cool home for them." Death Cab expects to start working on its next full-length later this year — all a far cry from the moment Harmer, Ben Gibbard, Chris Walla, and the now-gone Nathan Good first practiced together. "You just know when that spark happens," Harmer recalls. "I remember we had a big debate about making a CD — it was a big deal for us to make 1,000 copies: ‘We’ll be sitting on these things for years….’"

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

With Andrew Bird, Ra Ra Riot

Sat/July 11, 6:30 p.m., $42.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley campus, Berk

www.apeconcerts.com

We walk with a zombie

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PHENOM In our heads, in our heads: zombies, zombies, zombies.

Don’t blame me for taking a bite out of your brain and inserting an annoying tune in its place — once again, not long after the last onslaught of undead trends, our culture is totally zombie mad.

The phrase "zombie bank" is multiplying at a disturbing rate within economic circles. In music, the group Zombi — hailing from the zombie capitol Pittsburgh — is reviving the analogue electronics of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead while the British act Zomby brings dubstep to postapocalyptic dance floors. A comedy of manners possessed by ultraviolent urges, Seth Grahame-Smith’s "unmentionable" Jane Austen update Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 320 pages, $12.95) has set up camp on the trade paperback New York Times best sellers list, with S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament — currently being movie-ized by Diablo Cody — on its trail. On a smaller scale, Yusaka Hanakuma’s manga Tokyo Zombie (Last Gasp, 164 pages, $9.95) has caught a zombie plane over to the United States.

Most of all, posthumous Michael Jackson mania is bringing the corpse choreography of the 1983 video for "Thriller" to life, as the media and masses fluctuate between the worst facets of grave-robbing and best facets of revival and death celebration. A Friday, July 3 party in Seattle that aimed to top the 3,370-participant world record for largest "zombie walk" included a mass dance performance to the song.

When journalist Lev Grossman first noted the shift in bloodlust from vampirism to zombiedom in a Time trend piece this April, he ticked off some of these activities but steered clear of visual art. Zombies are around in galleries and museums, too. In Los Angeles last month, Peres Projects presented Bruce LaBruce’s "Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project" in which stills from a forthcoming movie by the director of last year’s Otto; or, Up with Dead People were blown up, framed, and hung on the space’s blood-spattered white cube walls. Here in San Francisco, Michael Rosenthal Gallery is hosting a variety of zombified works by another Canadian artist, Jillian Mcdonald.

Active revisions of cinema are central to Mcdonald, whose past projects find her staring down, mimicking and making out with male screen icons such as Billy Bob Thornton. "Monstrosities" makes room for vampires, but hunger for flesh is dominant over thirst for blood. The five-minute video Zombie Apocalypse brings the zombie back to the beach, its eerily effective primary haunting ground in Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1943 Val Lewton production I Walked with a Zombie — which, incidentally, is being remade, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre now explicitly cited as its source material. In 2006’s Horror Make-up, Mcdonald plays with the image of a woman putting on makeup in public by using her compact to turn herself into a zombie while raiding the New York subway. "Monstrosities" also includes zombie wall portraits that aren’t exactly static. Through lenticular photography, Mcdonald taps into the zombie within an acquaintance, a creature that often appears more animated than its "living" counterpart.

"Monstrosities" and much of Mcdonald’s current work mines horror as a source of catharsis. The tactic is most overt in 2007’s The Scream, where her screams scare off a variety of slasher killers and monstrous adversaries. Art world attempts at tapping into filmic horror can be dreadful in the sterile and blah sense (see Cindy Sherman’s 1997’s Office Killer — or better, don’t see it). But when Mcdonald bites zombies, she gives them love bites, borne out of and energized by genuine appreciation. (Johnny Ray Huston)

JILLIAN MCDONALD: MONSTROSITIES

Through July 22

Michael Rosenthal Gallery

365 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-1010

www.jillianmcdonald.net

www.rostenthalgallery.com

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Brain appetit: Fine reading and viewing for the discriminating zombie lover

Twilight (haven’t read it) and True Blood (haven’t seen it) are grabbing all the headlines, including a fawning New York Times story entitled "A Trend with Teeth." But fuck this newfangled passion for vampires. (Apologies to Let the Right One In: you are awesome, despite the massive English subtitle fail on your DVD.) Go back to the graveyard, sexy supernatural critters. There’s a far more terrifying and fiendishly disgusting army of coffin-rockers afoot these days. And though they’ll happily drink your blood, they’ll also help themselves to the rest of your delicious mortal flesh.

Granted, zombie movies are almost as old as cinema itself. Glenn Kay’s recent Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (Chicago Review Press, 352 pages, $25.95), which features a forward by Stuart Gordon, director of 1985’s Re-Animator, is a pretty good jumping-off point for the uninitiated — and a steal for anyone who’s shy about paying $280 on eBay for Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci (FAB Press). Generously illustrated chapters — with a full-color photo section in the book’s center — cover the genre’s history, starting with 1932’s White Zombie (fun fact: star Bela Lugosi earned $500-ish dollars for playing the sinister plantation owner improbably named "Murder.") There are spotlights on the turbulent 1960s (the era that spawned 1968’s immortal Night of the Living Dead), the insane 1970s (with an index of "the weirdest/funniest/most disturbing things" seen in zombie films, including my own personal fave: the underwater shark vs. zombie battle in 1979’s Zombie), Italy’s reign of terror in the 1980s (the decade that also brought us, lest we forget, "Thriller"), and the rise of video game zombies in the 1990s. Sprinkled throughout are interviews with horror luminaries like makeup master Tom Savini.

Zombie Movies‘ biggest chapter is devoted to the new millennium, with shout-outs to Asian entries like Versus (2000), cult hits like 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, and mainstream moneymakers — 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake brought in $59 million. Less successful (in my book, if not apparent George Romero fanatic Kay’s) was 2007’s Diary of the Dead, the least-enjoyable entry in Romero’s esteemed zombie series. Blame it on an annoying cast, and an even more annoying reliance on the hot-for-five-minutes "self-filming" technique. Aside from producing a Crazies remake (nooo!), Romero’s next project is titled simply … of the Dead, release date unknown, zombie subject matter an absolute certainty.

Still, ammo enough for walking-dead fans sick of all this fang-banging comes in two forms: the hilarious trailer for Zombieland (due in October), featuring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg as slayers of the undead, and the eagerly-anticipated arrival of Dead Snow. Currently available as an On-Demand selection for Comcast customers (in crappy dubbed form), this Norwegian import — a comedy with plenty of satisfying gore — opens July 17 at the Roxie (in presumably superior, subtitled form). Nazi zombies, y’all. Get some! (Cheryl Eddy)

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Zombie playlist: Music to eat flesh by

For whatever reason, America is possessed by a another wave of fascination with the living dead. Is increased anxiety about a devastated economy manifesting as comic book fantasy? Or do we just think zombies are kinda neat? Either way, like so many (or few) survivors barricaded inside an abandoned country home, we’re captivated by the brainless hordes. In the mood for some mood music? Here’s a brief celebration of zombiedom in the world of rock. It ain’t authoritative — no self-respecting zombie respects authority.

MISFITS

"Braineaters"

(from Walk Among Us, Slash, 1982)

Yes, Walk Among Us also features "Night of the Living Dead" and "Astro Zombies," but neither of those tracks captures the profound ennui of existence as a walking corpse. Democratically sung from a zombie’s perspective, "Braineaters" laments a repetitive diet of brains. (Why can’t a zombie have some tasty guts instead?) The Misfits actually made a primitive music video for "Braineaters" that shows the band engaged in what has to be the most disgusting food fight ever filmed. If you’ve ever wanted to see a young Glenn Danzig covered in what appear to be cow brains, have I got a YouTube link for you!

ANNIHILATION TIME

"Fast Forward to the Gore"

(from II, Six Weeks, 2005)

One of the standout tracks from II, "Fast Forward to the Gore" makes excellent use of singer Jimmy Rose’s frantic vocal delivery. Rose’s raw lyrics, belted out over the hardcore guitar assault of Graham Clise and Jamie Sanitate, celebrate the subtle artistry at play when zombie meets chainsaw. In the event of an actual zombie apocalypse, this song should serve as nostalgic reminder of simpler times, when zombies were merely a source of entertainment that didn’t leave the TV screen.

THE ZOMBIES

Entire discography

Self-explanatory.

DEATH

"Zombie Ritual"

(from Scream Bloody Gore, Combat, 1987)

The second track on the seminal Scream Bloody Gore, "Zombie Ritual" helped establish the nascent death metal scene’s predictable love affair with the titular braindead hellspawn. Chuck Schuldiner’s lyrics — as awesomely repulsive as anything the genre has to offer — deal with some sort of zombie creation ceremony, though the only discernable part is the Dylanesque chorus ("Zombie ritual!" screamed four times in succession). While Death’s later albums saw Schuldiner grow by leaps and bounds as a songwriter, "Zombie Ritual" remained a live staple up until the band’s final days. (Tony Papanikolas)

Out of the blue

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

ESSAY This is the briar patch, the place from which all funky thangs flow. On the anniversary of the death of my Afro-Algonquin Southern (re)belle mother, my bare feet are planted in the dirt. Since it’s also the last days of Black Music Month, I am out of my head, thoughts swirling across the amber waves pondering the intersections of family, flesh, and funk, questing after new sounds and cultural concepts even as I journey into my sonic past. The last time it seems I was so enmeshed and empowered by cultural renaissance was just over 21 years ago, when Neil Young first heralded his now released Archives project, and I embraced the notion that Neil Young’s work is black music.

My late mother was a restless adventurer born in Virginia — and I perceive Neil Young as the same via osmosis from his maternal grandfather, Bill Ragland, a Virginian émigré to the Great North and scion of the Southern planter class from Petersburg. The Neil Young I love most is the direct heir of aspects of Daddy Ragland’s personal lore: he had the first radio and gramophone in Winnipeg, Canada; he fiercely retained his American citizenship while big pimpin’ in Manitoba (foreshadowing his grandson’s famous Canadian retentions despite residing in California).

Daddy Ragland boasted that his grandfather had freed the enslaved Africans on the family plantation. But he was also descended from the original British invaders who established Virginia Colony, destroying my people’s lifeways and ecology in process, setting precedents for America’s current crises around violence, resources, and the environment. The glories and tensions in Young’s family fables would appear to be the benefactor of much of his catalog’s leading lights: "Southern Man," "Cortez the Killer," "After the Gold Rush," "Country Girl," "Pocahontas," "Here We Are In the Years," "Alabama," "Broken Arrow," "Powderfinger," and "Down By the River."

Young’s internal narrative of ur-Americana (literally carried on the blood) is enacted again and again and refashioned throughout Reprise’s 10-disc Neil Young Archives — Vol. 1 (1963-1972), a collection that traces his odyssey from Ventures acolyte and early earnest folkie to embryonic trickster of eco-metal. The epic nature of Young’s work, akin to a late modern, machine age substitute for Greek myth — at least for the hippie, Coastopian jet-set — was once lost on me. The voice beaming over the radio waves in "Helpless" and "Sugar Mountain" was repellent to these ears, raised in the 1970s when Mother Nature was on the run and the last universally-recognized golden era of black music abounded with diverse male songbirds (Ronnie Dyson, Carl Anderson) and badass lovemen (Teddy Pendergrass, Eddie Levert). But one day, after yet another wearisome visit to a coffeehouse festooned with Harry Chapin songs and some showoff girl’s fey rendition of "Helpless," I encountered three Neil Young masterpieces that forever altered my hearing: "Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing," "Broken Arrow," and "Cinnamon Girl." I became a Buffalo Springfield devotee for life.

What also went down? Somehow, pre-Web and locked away in the wilds with limited resources, I discovered my favorite bit of rock trivia: Neil Young was in a band with Rick James signed to Motown for a seven-year deal, the Mynah Birds. Young’s engagements with psych, punk, and grunge are well-documented — even if most shirk the challenge of unpacking his electro output — but the lurking presence of the funk in his aesthetic is often ignored. Now, I ain’t saying ole Neil could come down to my former hood and swing with a Chocolate City go-go outfit (maybe he could trouble the funk?), but on "Go Ahead and Cry," the ringing of his unleashed 1970s guitar sound is already evident. The sublime meeting of Young’s thang with "The Sound of Young America" makes one lament how differently (black) rock history might have looked had the Mynah Birds triumphed at Hitsville.

My view is that Young couldn’t have written some of his best songs, like "Cinnamon Girl" and "Mr. Soul," plus freakery I dig such as "Sea of Madness," without that brief spell at Motown. (It’s interesting to imagine former auto-line worker Berry Gordy and car enthusiast Young rapping by chance). In a weird way, the shades of Young that appeared on the pop stage and relentlessly morphed between "Clancy" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love" seem to coexist with turn-of-the-’70s Motown mavericks who also flirted with polemics, space rock, and soul yodeling: Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Eddie Kendricks.

The Mynah Birds are sadly absent from volume one of Archives, despite a fleeting citation in its chronological timeline. But a few months before the box set dropped I acquired my grail of Mynah Birds tracks, and the picture of Young as a potential R&B artist who brought some of the Motown sensibility to bear upon the aesthetics of his next band, the Buffalo Springfield, emerged tantalizingly. Alongside it was the turbulent back story of the striving front man Ricky James Matthews (a Mick Jagger acolyte who later renamed himself), who failed to gain support for his hybrid vision of black rock even as his old bandmate soared from the ashes of Woodstock Nation.

Aside from the future Super Freak, Young’s key ace boons on the funk express were Bruce Palmer (1946-2004) and Danny Whitten (1943-72) — besides Stephen Stills, the stars of this first set. Palmer, a native of Toronto who shared a deep spiritual bond with Young, had been in an all-black Canadian band led by Billy Clarkson even prior to his membership in the Mynah Birds. He subsequently brought his low-end theories to the Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (before being replaced by young Motown bassist Greg Reeves); and Young’s thwarted revolutionary electronic project Trans (Geffen, 1982). Palmer also reunited with Rick James after the Springfield’s implosion, producing the beautiful psych-jazz classic The Cycle Is Complete (Verve, 1971), a rival to Skip Spence’s Oar (Columbia, 1969).

Columbus, Ga.,-bred Whitten might still be Young’s most fabled collaborator. His premature death by heroin overdose inspired "The Needle and the Damage Done" (included amongst other Harvest tracks on disc eight of Vol. 1) and the dark and stark standout of the "Ditch Trilogy," Tonight’s the Night (Reprise, 1975), which will feature in the next Archives installment. Even before starting the Laurel Canyon-based Rockets (which became Crazy Horse), Whitten had been a live R&B dancer and seems to have restored some genuine Southern rock ‘n’ soul flava to the mix of his boy twice-removed from Dixie. Every time I hear the vainglorious funk bomb that is "Cinnamon Girl," I recognize that element is there and regret Whitten’s passing even more.

I first and foremost swear fealty to Buffalo Springfield. But for all his seemingly mercurial guises, the plaid-and-denim-clad Young who conjured Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Reprise, 1969) and the songs from the Ditch in company with Crazy Horse and other canyon pickers appears to be the most enduring direct influence on later generations. To try to make sense of Young’s legend, I consulted an amen corner: Harry Weinger, VP of A&R at Universal Motown; famed Harvest producer Elliot Mazer; and young J. Tillman.

I also saw my Alabama-bred friend Patterson Hood at the Bowery Ballroom, bringing an element of Stills and Young’s guitar duels and Young’s volume to the stage, backed by the Screwtopians. Brother Hood’s chief band, Drive-By Truckers, came to most folks’ attention with 2001’s Sept. 12 Soul Dump release Southern Rock Opera, a sprawling masterwork in two acts that dealt with — among other Southern myths — the complex relationship between Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd icon Ronnie Van Zant (see "Ronnie and Neil"). When we discussed the Archives before the gig, Patterson professed to be waiting on tenterhooks for the next volume, due to the Ditch releases: TTN, Time Fades Away (Reprise, 1973), and my favorite, On the Beach (Reprise, 1974).

Tillman — Pacific Northwest-dwelling solo artist and multi-instrumentalist member of Fleet Foxes — was illuminating on the subject of Young as artistic forebear. This year, the Foxes were summoned by Young to tour with him and perform at his annual Bridge School benefit, even as Tillman promoted Vacilando Territory Blues (Bella Union) and began to develop his next solo recording Year In the Kingdom. Kindly, he paused amid all this flurry to speak on Young’s influence when we crossed paths earlier this year:

"Neil is a figure to follow and not follow. Following him is kind of antithetical to the spirit of his music, but it’s hard to resist the mythology …

"Neil’s understanding of the technical side of the recording process, and his obsession with gear and tone, stands in total contrast to his completely intuitive approach to making records." he continued. "Each of his records has an environment that is as big a part of the record as the songs. Recording in a barn, an SIR storage space, doing honey-slides with Rusty Kershaw — he always positions himself for moments of magic."

Despite Young’s great capacity for harnessing magic, what Archives demonstrates beyond the master’s curatorial intent is the vast gulf between the violent-but-halcyon time that begat his earliest works and now, when ever more plastic reigns in our common culture. When I cited surprise at a sudden small surge in younger folk and country-rockin’ artists who profess overt adoration of and respect for Buffalo Springfield and Stills’ Manassas, Tillman voiced skepticism:

"Our generation has been told that we can buy authenticity. Advertising is so enmeshed in our thought life we’ve developed Stockholm syndrome. People buy the idea of the ’60s and ’70s like a product, like it’s something you can own by buying things, or conversely, by becoming a product fashioned in the style of the ’70s. There are plenty of people dying to make a buck off that. It’s sad how commodified music has become, how people just do it to be it, instead of doing it because they are it. Neil refused to be bought or sold or owned in his own time, like any of the greats."

As for Young followers on the blackhand side, they may not be legion but today — more than four decades after he was meant to produce Love’s masterpiece Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967) and long after his road dawgin’ with former Malibu neighbor Booker T. Jones — there are more than you might think. Richie Havens still cut what might rate as the best-ever Young cover: his desperate, electric, heavy metal "The Loner" on Mixed Bag II (Stormy Forest, 1974). The other week I attended a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and after the show, when Roots’ guitarist Kirk Douglas spotted the behemoth Archives box I was toting, he ripped a few blazing riffs from "Cinnamon Girl."

Outlaws don’t always go out in a blaze of glory. Some, like Young, abide, too ornery for entropy to overtake them. I expect him to continue restlessly exploring where he and Sudanese bluenote sound intersect in the eye of the volt. As for the native rights supporter who came off like the inscrutable brave in Buffalo Springfield’s dynamic cowboy movie — but who totes a cigar store Indian onstage? The rebel in me that thrills to Young’s peculiarly suhthuhn quixotic qualities and access to American African’s obsession with freedom wants him to account for these lyrics about my ancestral sovereign Wahunsunacock’s martyred daughter, Matoaka:

I wish I was a trapper

I would give a thousand pelts

To sleep with Pocahontas

And find out how she felt

In the mornin’ on the fields of green

In the homeland we’ve never seen.

Hey now hey … my my my. Aren’t we both, the contested bodies, still looking for America?

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

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PREVIEW According to (disputed) legend, the 1944 death of 36-year-old Lupe Velez was far from glamorous, yet had classic Hollywood form: face-down in the toilet, choked on the pills she was regurgitating in a suicide attempt that succeeded, albeit not as planned. That sad end — she was despondent over a married lover and their unborn child — provided high contrast with her live-wire persona on and off-screen. The latter included high-drama involvements with legendary hunks Gary Cooper and Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller. In movies, she both defined and transcended a "Mexican Spitfire" stereotype (the actual name of her popular B-flick comedy series) with manic comic energy reminiscent of a Latina Clara Bow on one hand and a blueprint for Charo on the other.

Two features in this year’s Silent Film Festival find her minus speaking voice, but hardly muzzled. She was just 18 (and a convent school dropout) when picked to star opposite superstar Douglas Fairbanks in 1927’s The Gaucho. As his highly temperamental, jealous sweetheart, she gave as good as she got, frequently engaging his rakish hero in knock-down fights — a rehearsal for notorious later public spats with short-term husband Weissmuller, perhaps? Two years later she’d assumed a title role herself in Lady of the Pavements, a very late silent (its added "part-talkie" sequences have been lost) and one of D.W. Griffith’s last films. She plays a 19th-century Parisian cafe dancer who gets the Pygmalion treatment by a duplicitous countess seeking to humiliate her ex-fiancée. Material better suited to Lubitsch or Von Stroheim, this sophisticated seriocomic fluff wasn’t ideal for stuffy Griffith; and he couldn’t (or didn’t want to) tap Velez’s natural rambunctiousness as Fairbanks had. But this rare antique is still worth a look.

Other festival program highlights include Josef von Sternberg’s Oscar-winning gangster tale Underworld (1927), Victor Sjostrom’s poetic melodrama The Wind (1928), Gustav Machaty’s scandalous Czech Erotikon (1929), early W.C. Fields vehicle So’s Your Old Man (1926), and delirious Russian sci-fi exercise Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924). Live music will accompany each program.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL July 10–12, free–$20. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF.

(415) 621-6120, www.silentfilm.org

Tiki Crawl 9

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EVENT Since Victor Bergeron opened the first Trader Vic’s in Oakland in 1937, the Bay Area has had a relationship with that bastion of tropical tackiness: the tiki bar. Only the second of its kind (the first was Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood), Bergeron’s Polynesian-themed watering hole is said to be the inspiration for the odd architecture of the Stanford Terrace Inn (formerly the Tiki Inn Motel) and the birthplace of the Mai Tai (which, contrary to popular belief, is not required to be sickeningly sweet, adorned with plastic toys, or served to newly-legal drinkers in aquarium-sized bowls).

So it makes sense that the world’s biggest tiki bar crawl happens here. Starting Thursday at Trad’r Sam in San Francisco, Tiki Bar Crawl 9 wends its way through 10 bars in six cities over four days, all carefully chosen by the hosts at Tiki Central (an online forum for all things hula kitsch).

Highlights are sure to be Thursday’s kickoff in San Francisco, including a stop at the Disney-worthy Tonga Room, and Saturday’s tour of the East Bay, which concludes at the Trader Vic’s that started it all. Check the Web site for schedules, bus tickets ($35 for Friday’s South Bay tour, $40 for Saturday’s East Bay extravaganza) and rideshares, and more information about ugly mugs and thatched rooftops than you ever wanted to know.

TIKI CRAWL 9 Thurs/9–Sun/12, times and locations vary. Free admission. www.tikiroom.com/misc

Doug Biggert: “Hitchhikers and Other Work”

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PREVIEW So. I find out about this show "Doug Biggert: Hitchhikers and Other Work," and it sounds and looks amazing. It’s all generated from a discovery that two friends of Biggert’s made in 2002: namely, that he’d taken a photograph of nearly every hitchhiker he’d ever given a ride to. The acquaintances, Xavier Carcelle and Chloe Colpe, organized the almost 400 images into an exhibition that began its own travels in Paris, as well as a monograph.

It turns out that a California show devoted to Biggert, like this one, is a special homecoming for a lifelong artist who was never a careerist. In the early 1970s, Biggert had a solo exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art) showcasing photos he’d taken at a sandal shop in Balboa Park. Liv Moe and the folks at Verge Gallery in Sacramento aren’t just presenting Biggert’s hitchhiker photos in their gallery space — they’ve also put together a "Sandalshop Wall" recreation of that 1,700-image early ’70s show, complete with rented furniture that matches the furniture of the original.

Another twist of the Biggert story is that the longtime Sacramento resident made a crucial contribution to the growth of the zine movement. He was responsible for getting "zine racks" into Tower Records shops throughout the world.

So. I want to see this show. And as I read about it, I found out that Verge Gallery just had an exhibition of work by Daniel Johnston. Damn. That one would have been worth hitching a ride to, too.

DOUG BIGGERT: HITCHHIKERS AND OTHER WORK Opens Thurs/9, 6–10 p.m., continues through Aug. 23. Wed.–Fri., 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sat., noon–5 p.m. Verge Gallery and Studio Project, 1900 V Street, Sacramento. (916) 448-2985. www.vergegallery.com

WestWave Dance Festival

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PREVIEW The WestWave Dance Festival has been limping along for the last few years, but for most of its past, it has been a much-welcome venue for new and little-heard voices of Bay Area dance. For many artists, the opportunity to show that one new piece for which they have managed to scratch the money together, and to do so in a professional environment, has proved essential to keep going. WestWave now seems to be in a holding pattern, engaged in the process of rethinking itself — no mean endeavor considering the evaporation of funding sources. So the 2009 WestWave is about as small as it can get: a one-night stand. However, it boasts a good, fresh lineup that showcases quality artists who represent the richness that is Bay Area dance. Including world premieres by experienced artists is always a good programming decision, and these are judiciously chosen. The four new works will be by hula master Patrick Makuakane, ballet choreographer Amy Seiwert, modern dance collaborator Manuelito Biag (with Kara Davis and Alex Ketley), and dance theater artist Kim Epifano in a song cycle about her recent travels. The evening also includes film and live work by the excellent Benjamin Levy and Katie Faulkner. One-nighters can be a lot of fun and leave sweet memories. This one looks promising.

WESTWAVE DANCE FESTIVAL Sun/12, 8 p.m., $18–$25. Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, SF.

(415) 345-7575, www.westwavedancefestival.org

Kode 9, Spaceape

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PREVIEW "The mainstream of dubstep is becoming such an abortion," Kode 9 complained to electronic music advocate (and former Bay Area writer) Philip Sherburne in an eMusic.com interview. It’s a curious statement from someone who is being marketed (along with Burial, Skream, Benga, and a handful of others) as leaders of the dubstep incursion, a hybridization of 2-step garage, jungle breaks at half-speed and good ol’ ragga. (It’s the amalgamation of "dub" and "step.") Only two years after Burial’s Untrue (Hyperdub) brought pop’s cool-hunters to this bastard genre, it seems, dubstep is already eating itself.

U.K. electronic music (and its Anglophile offshoot) is herded by theorists, and Steve "Kode 9" Goodman is one of them. He has a doctorate in philosophy, and recently received a commission from the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s Rhizome technology initiative for a forthcoming documentary, Unsound Systems, that explores the use of sound as psychological weapon. His record label, Hyperdub, started out as a Web site spotlighting futurists like Kodwo Eshun and was responsible for the aforementioned Untrue as well as Zomby’s recent spin on ’90s ‘ardkore dynamics, Where Were You in ’92? (Werk).

Kode 9’s first collection, 2006’s Memories of the Future, pairs bleak echoing tones with pummeling bass thuds. One popular track, "Sine," finds vocalist Spaceape reinterpreting Prince’s "Sign O’ The Times" as dread intonation: "Sign o’ the times mess with your mind, hurry before it’s too late."

Declaring that a scene is "over" just as the great unwashed embraces it — recent dubstep parties in San Francisco have packed dance floors — seems particularly snotty and perverse. But by disappearing into thicker brush, Kode 9 stays ahead of pop mediocrity. His new singles, particularly "Black Sun / 2 Far Gone," add melancholic melodies and popping bass, retracing a path back to 2-step. Accordingly, U.K. critics have made it an example of a silly new subgenre called "funky." (George Clinton would laugh at that one.)

All this ideological shoegazing shouldn’t distract you from enjoying Kode 9’s tunes. But it should tell you that U.K. electronic music has traveled very far up its own arse. "I think U.K. electronic music is a bit of a mess right now and very microsegmented, to be honest," said Kode 9 in the eMusic interview. "But there are some lines of intersection that are promising."

THE FUTURE: KODE 9, SPACEAPE, THE FLYING SKULLS Fri/10, 10 p.m., $10 (advance). 103 Harriet, 103 Harriet, SF. (415) 431-8609. www.1015.com/103harriet/events

Andy Votel, Gaslamp Killer, Free the Robots

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PREVIEW A small portion of music nurtures body, mind, and soul. A minuscule subsect does so by ripping you magnificently out of your familiar musical safety zones with unpredictable and compellingly fresh organizations of sound. Some have baptized the songs that fall under this rarefied territory of music "face-melters," and for good reason. Assiduously dissolving toughened aural skin, face-melting music inspires knowledge of the outer galactic and inner expansive reaches of the embodied mind. Its dangerous allure has solicited varied responses from thinkers, poets, and musicians throughout history. Plato advises to obliterate such enigmatic revelry in The Republic. William Blake seeks to illustrate its destructive purity in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. More recently, Afrika Bambaataa’s "Searching for the Perfect Beat" embodies the infinite quest for mystical rhythms.

The DJ, producer, and deep crate-digger Andy Votel has made a career out of cultivating and archiving the face-melting phenomenon. Conducting the freaked-out, electronic psych epic Styles of The Unexpected (Twisted Nerve Records, 2000), and helping spearhead Finders Keepers Records to reissue international instances of obscure and intensely monstrous tracks from around the world, Votel is a leading expert on the limit zones of post-World War II music. Notable Finders Keepers reissues and compilations that will rewire your neural networks have emerged from Anatolia (Mustafa Özkent, Selda), France (Jean-Pierre Massiera, Jean-Claude Vannier), and Pakistan (this year’s comp Sound of Wonder).

One contemporary contributor to the Keepers catalog is Los Angeles’ feral beatsmith and DJ the Gaslamp Killer. A mad scientist of the Low End Theory collective, GLK psychedel-ifies hypnotic boom bap cuts and mutates vocals into chilling hums and fuzzed out screams locked toward another kind of prayer. But don’t believe me, peep his avant-garde corpse ringer mix I Spit On Your Grave (Obey, 2008). Once you’ve trained your ears on his radiated sewer funk, flip it fresh on Gaslamp’s collaboration with fellow Theorist, Free The Robots, for the jazzier side of the gutter on The Killer Robots (Obey, 2008).

To mark the third birthday of SF funk wizard DJ Centipede’s Catch the Beat party, Votel, GLK, and Free the Robots have come together for a face-melting good time. Leave your mask at home.

CHANGE THE BEAT 3RD YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY With Andy Votel, Gaslamp Killer, Free the Robots, DJ Mahssa, DJ Centipede, Citizen Ten. Fri/10, 10 p.m., $10. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-5017. www.paradisesf.com

Art or ARG

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ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES It starts, as most quests do, with a question. "What the hell?" A flyer advertising the Aquatic Thought Foundation, a division of the Jejune Institute devoted to Human-Dolphin interaction. And even though you’re probably the type to resist even the perverse pleasure of sitting through a bullshit Scientologist e-meter reading, something about the prospect of communing with dolphins is absurdly compelling. You call the number. A recondite family awaits.

So begins stage one of an ongoing self-paced scavenger hunt/walking tour/alternate reality game devised by a pseudonymous cabal of Bay Area artists and pranksters. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with the clumsy graphics and overblown hyperbole of cultist media will recognize, the shadowy overlords behind the Jejune Institute have done their homework well. Their office digs on California Street are pure cult cliché — from the op art adorning the walls to the shelves of new age esoterica and obsolete radio equipment to the videotaped welcome message from Institute founder Octavio Coleman, Esq. Upon completion of the "induction," the inductee embarks on a clue-finding expedition through Chinatown, armed with a treasure map and an official Jejune Institute pencil. The mysterious trail wends lo and hi, from the St. Mary’s parking garage to the back balcony of a shabby-retro edifice on Grant Street, places not exactly on even the most well-honed urban explorer’s radar.

Level two, hosted by rival branch the Elsewhere Public Works Agency, takes place in the Mission District, hitting a series of beloved independent institutions — Faye’s, Force of Habit, Adobe, Paxton Gate — as well as the site of a former Native American cemetery, a spate of interdimensional hopscotch, and a visit to what might be the district’s smallest micro-neighborhood. If the Jejune Institute is a picture-perfect façade of cult imagery, the EPWA is an even more fully realized vision on both the physical plane and that bastion of obfuscation, the interwebs. Clues as well as false leads can be gathered online from phony Wikipedia pages, faked Chronicle archives, and bogus blogs as well as out in the real world via micro-transmission radio broadcast, CDs, custom-printed books, teeny-tiny letters and a charmingly illustrated map. Piecing together the puzzle is the least part of the game’s ultimate value — the stealthy introduction to an underlying artist’s philosophy, to resist "false nonchalance" yet cultivate a sense of wonder and discovery in even the most familiar places is compelling and apt — and the revelation of secret locations hidden in plain view a welcome prize.
www.jejuneinstitute.org
www.elsewherepublicworks.com

Isthmus insanity

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Roberto Gyemant, a.k.a. DJ Beto, doesn’t need to tell you how extra-zesty Panamanian music is: all he has to do is play "Juck Juck Pt. 1," by Sir Jablonsky, off Panama! 2: Latin Sounds, Cumbia Tropical and Calypso Funk on the Isthmus 1967-77 (Soundway), the new compilation curated by the San Francisco native. The bubbly calypso-reggae-funk mutant of a track gets its playful tenterhooks into you — and refuses to let go. "If someone can tell me the genre of that song, I’d love to hear it," Gyemant marvels over fruit juice in the courtyard of Haus. "This guy! ‘I juck them in Spanish, and I juck them in English,’ then he speaks in patois. You’re like, ‘OK, this is a special country!’"

Gyemant’s taken his hot shoe back to the burning avenues of Panama more than 20 times since he first discovered the country’s brassy, highly spiced musical hybrids baking in forgotten grooves buried in neglected radio station LP libraries. At the time, in 2003, he was living in Costa Rica, working on a novel. But the music — and an ever-expiring tourist visa — brought him back to root out more old long-players and to get the stories behind the songs, a major endeavor since the pressings in the tiny country were so small and little info existed on musicians like Papi Brandao, whose infectious, accordion-propelled "La Murga de Panama" runs a Puerto Rican bomba through his tipica (folklorico) ensemble’s Afro-Cuban influences. The fruit of Gyemant’s loving labors: Panama! (Soundway, 2006) and now its tipica-flavored sequel, as well as at least one book, a forthcoming encyclopedia on Latin jazz and dance music from 1930 to 1975.

Gyemant — who also put together Soundway’s 2008 comp Colombia! and the upcoming Colombia! 2 — first got bit by the bug in David, Panama, where he stumbled on a radio station willing to part with its old LPs, crammed floor-to-ceiling in a back room. "The guys really let me loose on it," he recalls. Without a portable turntable, Gyemant tried to figure out which albums and 7-inches were worth buying (hint: he stayed away from the ones listing boleros and clung to the records that mentioned, say, Afrofunk). Talking to collectors and fans led him to such players as Francisco "Bush" Buckley of Menique el Panameno con Bush y los Magnificos, who drove him around Panama and took him to old musicians’ hangouts. Still, the writer wasn’t sure if he was on the right track until he started selling funk LPs on eBay, and Soundway head Miles Cleret bought them all. The two began trading MP3s, which led to the comps.

What makes Panama’s musical blend so sizzling? The nation’s complex, fluid multicultural melting pot. The Afro-Antillean workers of Caribbean descent who came to build the canal — and who made up about 20 percent of the small population — played a major part, opines Gyemant. "Per capita, I’ve never found so many calypso boogaloo records," he raves. "It’s like, what?! Or soul guaracha. Or bossa funk. But I think the music speaks for itself."

PANAMA 2 RELEASE PARTY

With DJ Beto, DJ Guillermo, and Vinnie Esparza

Fri/3, 10 p.m., $5

Elbo Room

647 Valencia St

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

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TARTUFI GETS ITS FOURTH OFF

Get it straight: Tartufi is not playing the Fourth of July eight-band marathon at El Rio that the duo’s Lynn Angel has organized for four years. Nevertheless, during a break from the rock band summer camp at Sausalito’s Bay Area Discovery Museum, where she and Brian Gorman teach 4- to 7-year-olds how to write songs, Angel makes a case for the holiday. "We have a healthy addiction to fireworks," she says, while Gorman chimes in that he likes the ones the make his stomach shake. San Franciscans must wait until August to shake for Tartufi at the Rock Make Street Festival. Before then, the endlessly creative, good-humored duo hit the U.K., where the excellent rock-symphonic Nests of Waves and Wires (Southern) is garnering raves. "We’ve been getting compared to Animal Collective every other day, which is kind of strange to me," says Angel. "I can’t see the connection myself, but I won’t turn it down!"

BIG TIME FREEDOM FEST

Sat/4, 1:30 p.m., $8

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.elriosf.com

ROCK MAKE STREET FESTIVAL

Aug. 23, noon, free

Treat at 17th Ave., SF

www.myspace.com/rockmakestreetfestival

Daydream city

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

In the Bay Area’s labyrinth of low-lit warehouses, cramped house parties, and grimed-out dive bars, it’s a cacophonous tug-of-war for the three-chord crown.

This latter-day resurrection of traits from the late 1960s — the Sears Roebuck guitars; the off-key, offbeat attack; the onstage fearlessness — has brought many unpretentious all-for-one-and-one-for-all shows to the scene. Poised to snag a bit of the shiny rock ‘n’ roll royal headdress is Oakland’s Snakeflower 2, a trio whose blistering, bare-bones repertoire seems to spring newly alive from a dusty, attic-dwelling bin of decades-old abandoned vinyl.

Vocalist and bassist Matthew Melton’s lo-fi roots stretch — like the world’s longest amp cord — all the way back to his hometown in Memphis. There, he grew up playing in garage bands and jamming with prolific punk hero Jay Reatard.

Discontented with the Memphis scene’s lack of fire, Melton eventually put together a ramshackle, road-ready outfit that became Snakeflower’s first incarnation. The group played what Melton, a lover of subgenres, describes as "art punk non-songs." Moving his musical dreams and new band to California instigated a gift-and-curse scenario. "We decided almost overnight to go on tour," he says. "It was really ill-conceived. We did a full U.S. tour literally calling venues from the road, jumping on these bills and having pretty crazy shows along the way."

Snakeflower mark one had wilted by the time the group made it to San Francisco, and Melton’s bandmates stranded him in the city and left for Los Angeles. Nonetheless, he decided to stick things out and reform the band with two new members, drummer Billy Badlands and guitarist Tim Tinderholt.

"Where I grew up in Memphis, you can be guaranteed that no one’s gonna pay any attention to you," Melton says. "Here, there’s much more energy in the scene. Plus, being surrounded by so many great bands is a motivation to keep making great music."

It’s easy to hear what the California scene has done for Snakeflower 2’s live shows and recordings — the group’s aggression is undeniable. The late 2008 release Renegade Daydream (Tic Tac Totally) is steeped in the dire urgency of a fragile heart under pressure. It grooves hard, thanks to dagger-sharp hooks and vicious chord progressions, all registering at shit-hot speed to keep up with Melton’s nervy vocal swagger. "Memory Castle," the album’s single, pairs psychedelic tunnel-vision reverb with a rumination on lost dreams and the courage it takes to get them back.

Melton’s already looking in a new direction for the group’s next album. When his other brainchild, the smooth-punk outfit Bare Wires, gained popularity, Snakeflower 2’s gigs took a hiatus. But during that time, he devoted himself to writing fresh, epic material.

"I’ve actually been working in secret to write and record a 14-minute long cantata called ‘Forbidden Melody,’" he explains. "I had to set time aside to isolate myself [and] work with really pure ideas. [The new music] is something totally different, almost like a rock opera. I’m trying to go a little bit further, really trying to come up with something new."

While much of the local garage scene sticks to the ordinary and familiar. leave it to Melton and his mates to shoot the moon and score an album in the process.

SNAKEFLOWER 2

With the Vows, In the Dust

July 13, 9 p.m., $5 (day of show only)

Elbo Room

642 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

Michael Jackson, 1958-2009

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It was a strange day. It didn’t start normally, nor did it end that way. It began with a disturbing run-in with one of my roommates. I was getting ready to work at 6 a.m., while he was trying to hook up after pulling an all-nighter. After that awkward encounter, I made my way into work with an uneasy, ill feeling. It was inexplicable. My sour mood took twists and turns and like the onset of what I imagine feels like a nervous breakdown. Something was wrong. Everyone knows peripheral, typical job frustrations, but I had a scowl on my face for my entire shift. I work in a newsroom at an all-news radio station.

Early on, the death of Farrah Fawcett was announced. Hmm, that’s too bad, I thought to myself. I heard it was cancer. She was very much an icon and sex symbol, but her bout with the disease was lengthy, much publicized, and we all saw it coming. Let’s see … Ed McMahon, Farrah … uh oh. Famous people die in threes, right? Something bad was going to happen.

After leaving work, I wanted to stop at a few record stores before going home. In between Rasputin and Rookie Ricardo’s, I got a text from a friend who had dressed as Michael Jackson along with me a few Halloweens ago: "MJ in the hospital!"

My previous inkling about trios of death had now become more of a dark premonition. I thought it was strange that the story had completely evaded the wires in the newsroom. I was off the clock, and I had been scooped. Things soon took a dire turn when the friend called to say she got an IM that TMZ had confirmed his death. Yet I remained skeptical. It was a bit much to process so quickly.

Once I was inside Rookie’s, people came out of the woodwork via text message and I started to believe the unbelievable. I’m not usually one to make a fuss or bring attention to myself, but this was one instance where I just had to know: Did Michael Jackson really die? I was more than moved, compelled even, to make a public announcement. Actually it was more of a question. So I went ahead and shouted out in despair to the clerk and all four customers, "Did you guys hear about Michael Jackson?" Everybody sorta perked up and looked at me strangely. "I think he might be dead." A patron checked his iPhone and the sad truth was revealed. I left soon after. I was in no mood to look at the old soul records that were the primary foundation of Michael’s musical roots.

In the early 1980s, MJ just looked cool. The jherri curl, aviator shades, and that mysterious sequined glove were all signs that someone special was about to do something great. Up on stage (the place where, like many icons, he claimed to be most comfortable), his tall, slender body was perfect for much of the angular choreography he created. He took inspiration from and expanded on the stage moves of his hero, James Brown, to create his own repertoire. He popped and locked in the ’70s to the Jackson 5’s 1973 "Dancing Machine," doing the robot with such precision, I’m convinced to this day that he must have been at least part alien. I don’t need stock footage or YouTube to remember when he debuted his mind-blowing moonwalk at the Motown 25 TV special. His voice had a flair for high notes, but could also make the walls resonate like thunder. Listen to him shudder toward the end of "The Lady in My Life," on Thriller (Epic, 1982), or as the Scarecrow in The Wiz (1978) during his opening number "You Can’t Win." So deep. Quintessential soul. He will probably always be every bit as enigmatic as he was charismatic.

No one will ever truly know the inner turmoil of Michael Jackson. But his decaying exterior over the years is a good clue. People tend to disregard his creative efforts post-Bad (Epic, 1987). But there is much to be said about MJ’s latter-day lyrics. His mood and tone can be cold, agonized, and despairing. On "Will You Be There" from Dangerous (Epic, 1991), almost crying instead of singing, he assures us that he’s only human (despite the monster that we’ve made him out to be) and prone to mistakes — essentially, a child that needs to be held. The lyrics are of a shocking introspective nature, most poignant during a spoken passage at the song’s close where he expresses loneliness and violent frustration. Clearly it is gospel-influenced. He’s singing for salvation.

The opening lines of "Stranger in Moscow" (a new track on the 1995 Epic compilation HIStory) couldn’t have been more clear. I was wanderin’ in the rain / Mask of life feelin’ insane, swift and sudden fall from grace. At that point, MJ was aimless — having achieved uncharted greatness, but the glory behind him. In a sense, his mask, or face, was both his fault and ours. We are the ones who put him on the pedestal since childhood and gave him the fame that would eventually eat him alive, whether he liked it or not. We saw him grow up then blow up and couldn’t get enough. Maybe he didn’t want to be recognized anymore. Maybe he wanted to become a monster so that we would leave him alone. If so, it all backfired and made "Jacko" a laughingstock to the mainstream media for the remainder of his life.

The same song also contains the line "Armageddon of the brain." Those four words always resonate with me when it comes to analyzing MJ’s psyche. They paint a picture of an explosion inside his head, a virtual inferno of the mind. Perhaps a reference to the moment he snapped or reached his breaking point.

Yeah, I am a genuine fan of Michael Jackson. His musical gift, contributions, and accomplishments are unfathomable. I don’t blame people for calling him a freak. I know he’s misunderstood, and if I were in his shoes I’d probably have slit my wrists long ago. I don’t know what he was guilty or innocent of in his private life, but I do know that in death, he’s free of persecution. If anyone believed in magic, it would be MJ, so maybe he knew I was having a shitty day and gave a true fan a final parting gift. He knew I needed all those texts from people checking on me to see if I’d heard the news, showing they cared. I guess you know who your true friends are when Michael Jackson dies. God bless tortured souls.

Forever our kings

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

The simplified, VH1 history of rock music tells us that Black Sabbath’s landmark first two albums Black Sabbath (Warner Bros., 1970) and Paranoid (Warner Bros., 1971) buried the 1960s rock aesthetic with the strength of a thousand Sha-Na-Nas at Woodstock. But Sabbath wasn’t quite the peerless anomaly that popular mythology makes out. Under the group’s massive transatlantic shadow toiled an eclectic assortment of rock bands just as disillusioned with the pop music of the past decade, and just as compelled to forcibly harsh some vibes.

Pentagram has remained the most vital of these groups. The OG southern Hessians have maintained a cult fan base throughout a 38-year career, but the 2002 compilation First Daze Here (Relapse) helped a new generation of metalheads embrace their lo-fi proto-metal. Classic tracks like "Livin’ in a Ram’s Head" and the power chord masterpiece "Forever My Queen" justify Pentagram’s doom legend status, while softer numbers like the garage rock ballad "Last Days Here" and a relatively faithful cover of "Under My Thumb" serve as reminders of the band’s musical roots.

Pentagram is coming to town, and whether or not the various kick-ass opening acts on the bill were influenced by them, there’s a distinctive retro vibe at play. Since 2007’s Instinct: Decay (Southern Lord), Nachtmystium has been experimenting with old school electronic effects, lacing its basement black metal sound with Pink Floyd-like Moog and theremin drones. Last year’s Assassins: Black Meddle Part One (Century Media) finds Blake Judd and company taking their experiments in blackened space rock even further — the headbanging energy of the songs’ traditional verse-chorus structures is complimented by Sanford Parker’s haunting electronic textures. Since Nachtmystium’s current approach is tailor-made for live drone-jams, it’ll be interesting to see how the Chicago black metallers’ set plays out.

Some enterprising dork could probably spend a lifetime documenting all the leftover Summer of Love tidbits that have informed the San Francisco music scene over the years, but trying to fit a band as innovative as Hammers of Misfortune into a greater rock canon is a total cop-out. Peter, Paul, and Mary they ain’t; clean, folky vocal harmonies take on a warped life of their own in the context of Hammers’ elegantly doomy guitar work, making what in lesser hands would be an obnoxious gimmick into an integral part of the group’s sound. They’re also way too fucking metal for their own good.

Be forewarned, indeed.

PENTAGRAM

With Hammers of Misfortune, Nachtmystium, Orchid, DJ Rob Metal

Thurs/2, 8:30 p.m. (doors 8 p.m.), $20–$25

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

Capitalmania

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a&eletters@sfg.com

REVIEW UC Santa Barbara sociology professor William I. Robinson was recently in the news for having the temerity to criticize the Israeli military’s assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Right-wing groups including the ADL orchestrated a campaign attacking Robinson with the implication that any criticism of Israel’s military abuses in the occupied territories somehow equates to anti-Semitism.

It would be nice if Robinson also received some press for the incredibly rich body of work he has produced in his career. His current volume Latin America and Global Capitalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 440 pages, $55) is an important book for anyone interested in where our imperiled planet is headed. Robinson, author of the brilliant 1996 study of U.S. foreign aid Promoting Polyarchy, is admirably thorough in his overview of the direction capitalism has taken in Latin America since the 1970s. Robinson uses research from years of on-the-ground work, and sifts through rafts of data to map out how neoliberal trade agreements and other mechanisms for greasing the machine of global commerce have increased profits for global elites while deeply disrupting traditional patterns of life and balance with the natural world.

One glaring example Robinson focuses on is the shift toward intensive farming of soy, which has massively displaced small farmers and production of dairy, fruit trees, horticulture, and other grains. Soy production is now much more profitable than food production for local consumption — hence malnutrition is on the rise in soy producing areas.

Plans for expansion of biofuel production, Robinson writes, "could well obliterate small and medium producers and consolidate a new empire of corporate agribusiness, biotechnology, chemical and pharmaceutical TNCs [transnational corporations] in South America. The ecological devastation would undermine any gains in terms of a reduction in carbon-based fuels, and we would face a situation — absolutely absurd from any social logic yet consistent with the logic of capital — in which cars would replace human beings as the main consumers of world cereal output."

In addition to these new agro-exports, Latin America and Global Capitalism analyzes the spread of maquiladoras, the transnational tourist industry, exported labor, and remittances from abroad sent home. Robinson makes no bones about being a politically engaged academic, or of shaping his thorough, rigorous work with the intent of it being useful for popular progressive struggles. His sentiments are clearly with the indigenous resistance movements he chronicles in Latin America, as well as the immigrants’ rights movement in the United States and the continuing Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. The ruling elites have their well-funded, right-marching think tanks churning out public intellectuals cultivated to defend the status quo. Grassroots radicals need more like William Robinson.

Zine it like you mean it

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johnny@sfbg.com

INTERVIEW Nestled in the corner of the old New College building, true seekers will find Goteblüd. Matt Wobensmith’s zine emporium keeps the building’s dedication to countercultural self-publishing alive. As characterful as it is small, Goteblüd places shelves of photocopied DIY writings amid a brown shag paneling motif that wittily references the cat-scratch antics found within Ed Luce’s comic Wuvable Oaf, the store’s main link to contemporary publications. Currently the space also hosts "Yes I Am, But Who Am I Really?," a showcase of queer zine and queer punk memorabilia: zines, photos, and letters (including a pissy postcard from Henry Rollins) create a terrific one-of-a-kind wallpaper, while t-shirts for bands hang from the ceiling, as if asking to be filled by new rebellious bodies. After scoping out the show, I recently asked Wobensmith about Goteblüd’s origins, its contents, and its future plans.

SFBG How did Goteblüd come about?

MATT WOBENSMITH I’ve been collecting zines since I was a teen. In the past few years, I’ve heard people say things like "I just threw out four boxes of zines," and I say to myself: That is wrong! Why do people think old zines are worthless? They’re priceless. So I began to take zines off peoples’ hands, and started putting them in storage boxes. After a while, this pastime became more of an obsession as I tried to fill gaps in the collections by actively buying from people. When I found the space, I knew it was time to launch a vintage zine store.

SFBG A book titled Queer Zines (Printed Matter, 180 pages, $25) was recently published. As someone who played a major role in an important period of the queer zine and queer punk movements, what did you think of it?

MW I was active in the queer punk and then homohop music scenes for a while, but that’s kind of history. It’s through this weird zine collecting thing that I find myself faced with my past again.

I saw the Queer Zines book that accompanied the show Printed Matter did in New York City last year. It was inspiring and also satisfying that this era of self-publishing was finally getting more exposure. I don’t know who I’d be without some of those zines!

At the same time, I felt that the queercore phenomenon was different from the larger queer zine genre. It’s focused around music and music culture, had lots of young people, and was connected to a radical subculture loosely based on punk rock. The name of the show is paraphrased from a Team Dresch song: "Yes I Am, But Who Am I Really?" It’s a slight dig at Melissa Etheridge, but ultimately sums up the struggle for identity and purpose and survival.

Also, it’s a scene where women played an enormous role in shaping the dialog and aesthetics. The influence of the riot grrrl movement was not insignificant, either. Some people attribute queer zines to things like Straight to Hell or [William S.] Burroughs, but these zines are far more likely to have been inspired by radical music figures: Black Flag, Throbbing Gristle, the Shaggs, Yoko Ono, female rockers, as well as good old 1980s hardcore. In many ways, queercore was an alternative to an alternative. And it had a soundtrack.

SFBG Looking back at the materials in the current show, what surprises you — what do you see anew now, years later, or wish was more present in current society or social currents?

MW What I really value in old zines is this incredible sense of urgency. There’s some insane, obsessive person trying to reach out and find like-minded people, so they make a zine. It’s a search for kindred souls, and an almost desperate bid for creative and intellectual validation. It can be fun, but is ultimately quite serious. It has a lot of integrity. I love that spirit and dedication.

That same feeling is totally lacking in today’s culture. The Internet has released much of the pent-up need to connect, to find information, to really put effort into communication. Today’s pop culture is also highly self-aware and navel-gazing, and people seem more obsessed with mundane actions of others — via tweets, social networking, whatever — than creating original ideas and taking risks. Old zines have original ideas and risks in spades.

SFBG What kinds of zines will people find in Goteblüd?

MW We try to carry a wide assortment of popular and unknown zines; the more DIY, the better. Though we do have some indie glossies, we carry tons of underground music, pop culture, art, skateboarding, graffiti, lowrider, comic, and experimental zines from the past four decades. We try to focus on older stuff because it’s harder to find and it gets people excited. We are always buying and trading too. I love when people challenge me to find a certain zine for them, and I have it!

SFBG One section of Goteblüd is devoted to Ed Luce’s Wuvable Oaf comics and paraphernalia. What do you like about Wuvable Oaf, and what plans do you have in connection with the comic?

MW Ed’s work, in one word, is fun. It’s also really smart and has no small amount of sharp observations on human behaviors and interactions. It’s a "post-bear" comic, but we hate the b-word. It’s set in a city that looks suspiciously like San Francisco and we all write the stories together. We try to juxtapose big and small, human and animal, and we love to show people in awkward situations. It’s not ironic; it’s loving and earnest.

The comic fits into the store — oddly — as it is an encapsulation of so many different sensibilities. Ed’s constantly referencing his icons of fashion, bad horror movies, and music — particularly Morrissey. I think it’s like a gayer Love and Rockets but that doesn’t begin to do it justice. Our next issue will spotlight our house cartoon band, Ejaculoid, and we’ll be releasing a limited edition record of their music — which is "disco grindcore."

GOTEBLÜD is at 766 Valencia in SF and is open weekends only from noon–5 p.m.

Daughter of darkness

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Whether by dint of nature, nurture, or nepotism, Jennifer Lynch’s small resume to date hasn’t fallen far from the paternal tree. Tie-in novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer annotated Twin Peaks, doing a good job too, even if one still better left to your own vile imagination. That series’ Sherilyn Fenn wound up starring (after Madonna, and then Kim Basinger, famously dropped out) in 1993’s Boxing Helena, a "controversial" amour fou tale somehow much more intriguingly offensive in anticipation than actuality.

After a very long unexplained hiatus, Lynch is back with her second feature as writer-director. Surveillance again drafts talent from dad’s stable, notably Bill Pullman, star of 1997’s Lost Highway. And again, there’s a certain hollow jonesing after shock value, where David’s cinematic heart of darkness always seemed both frighteningly real and unpinnable. Yet modern desert noir reveling in nastiness, Surveillance does have its sardonic pulp satisfactions.

FBI agents Pullman and Julia Ormond arrive at a dusty rural police station to investigate two murky incidents producing a lot of fresh corpses. Sole survivors are one precocious little girl (Ryan Simpkins), one still-high skank (Pell James), and one very defensive patrolman (co-scenarist Kent Harper).

While their sometimes fibby testimonies are teased out — what really happened being revealed in flashback — three more bodies turn up in grotesque tableau at a nearby motel. Plus, authorities are on high alert for a natural-born thrill-killing couple on the loose, precise whereabouts unknown.

At its core, Surveillance is just cruel, without any true empathy or moral weight attached. But it’s also just clever enough to invite re-viewing, no matter how far off you spy the big twist coming. Lynch has honed her directing chops; things rumble and explode with precision, no matter that credibility wobbles ever wider like an ill-bolted wheel. Some unexpected names (Cheri Oteri, French Stewart) blend seamlessly into a sharp ensemble. With this Jennifer Lynch starts to be interesting on her own — even more since her already-wrapped next, Hisss, is an India-shot horror fantasy based on local mythology. Which, at last, is a project one can’t even imagine David Lynch doing.


SURVEILLANCE opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

If it IS broke, don’t fix it

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I met this guy ("Dave") a couple of years ago through other friends and we became friends. I think he was attracted to me, but we were both involved in relationships. Then both of us broke up with those other people, but not because of each other. We started running into each other more and hanging out, and got to be very good friends. One night we were kind of drunk and we kissed, and then agreed that we didn’t like each other that way. And then we did it again! So after that, we had sex. It was good and I thought, OK, so Dave and I are going out. We said the "I love you’s, and then a few weeks later, he said there was something stopping him from doing it with me any more — but he didn’t know what, it just felt wrong. He still wants to hang out and maybe have oral sex or something sometimes, though, just not sex, or being in a relationship. Then he changed his mind and we had sex and then he changed his mind AGAIN. So what is going on with him? What kind of things could be stopping him from having a relationship with me?
Love,

Flummoxed

Dear Flum:

If we’re going to talk about this at all, we have to get our terminology right, so let me get schoolmarmish on you for a sec and say that oral sex is sex, so what he doesn’t feel "right" about is intercourse. And then let me turn Andrea-ish again and just say: "Run! Run for your life!"

Oh, it’s not that he rings some "that man is criminally insane" bell with me. He doesn’t. He does sound broken, though, in a way that is common, moderately inexplicable, and tedious. And if you keep messing around with him and trying to fix him you will get, if not broken yourself, certainly hurt. Why not not do that, while you still have a choice?

Here’s where I admit that, while dating advice is ostensibly part of my job and it’s my responsibility to keep up, I never could bring myself to read either The Rules or He’s Just Not That Into You. You don’t have to, either, since you had the good sense to write to me instead of spending a lot of money on gimmicky books. Here’s the secret, the nugget, the important truth buried under all the trendy exhortations to wait so many days before returning a phone call, or never to make excuses for a Person of Interest’s caddish behavior: it does not matter why someone does not behave toward you the way you would like him to; it only matters that he doesn’t.

Way back when my friends were all in law school, they named the "reasonable man" who is posited in many contracts law hypotheticals "Dave." So Dave remains for me the perfect fill-in-the-blank name, for reasonable and unreasonable men alike, like so:

Unless your Dave finds intercourse physically uncomfortable and has failed to adequately explain this, leaving you to assume that he does not want to have intercourse with you, he has some sort of intimacy issues. The act of intercourse, generally considered pretty intimate, tweaks these. Perhaps he was poorly treated in a previous relationship and fears a repeat. Maybe he was poorly parented, and thus has never been able to develop the sense of trust necessary to let down his guard and be truly intimate with you. Perhaps he has "performed" (I hate this concept, term, and usage, but it’s kind of unavoidable) poorly in the past and been jeered at or dumped for it and fears a repeat. Perhaps he .. but, wait. What did I just say, above?

None of it matters. As soon as you start thinking of him as wounded and wondering what happened to the poor lamb and how it could be remedied, you have started making excuses for his wretched behavior toward you. Unless you are both under, say, 19 (that’s majority plus one grace year I extend grudgingly), he has no business starting things with you that he is too damaged to follow through on. As an adult, it’s his responsibility to know what he is capable of and what he needs to work on before he’s in any position to promise anything.

"He’s just not that into you" may be reductivist, somewhat insultingly simple-minded, and insufficiently inclusive (what about shy guys who are that into you but too paralyzed with fear to call yet?), but the core concept is very useful: if you need to wheedle, support, excuse, or manipulate a guy into giving you what you want, he doesn’t really want to give it. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter what you do. And offering yourself to him on terms that you find essentially unsatisfactory will gradually grind away at your self-esteem and joie de vivre until you don’t have any. And you’ll need those later.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Kinda Kink.com

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johnny@sfbg.com

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood — won’t you be my neighbor? That classic American question is all trussed up and ready to go thanks to "Safe Word," a new exhibition at Chris Perez’s gallery Ratio 3 that peeks inside a nearby Mission District space: San Francisco’s lively new gargantuan factory of BDSM imagery, Kink.com.

An all-too-rare site-specific appraisal of urban landscape and activity is intrinsic to this show. Even before Kink.com took over the 200,000-square-foot San Francisco Armory, the landmark’s fortress-like appearance and mammoth scale cried out for this kind of creative response. Back in 2003, reviewing a show of mixed media cubic works by Will Yackulic at the now-defunct gallery Pond, I used the block formations in Yackulic’s art and Pond’s across-the-street proximity to the Armory as an opportunity to take stock of the structure formerly known as San Francisco National Guard Armory and Arsenal, a neo-medieval brick goliath that was fully erected in 1914 and registered as a historical landmark in 1978.

At that time, the Armory was long dormant, but three years later, Kink.com purchased the site to use it as a production studio. While Kink.com’s location and activities have, unsurprisingly, generated a vast variety of local reportage, the five contributors to "Safe Word" don’t attack or celebrate the company — and its curious macrocosmic 21st-century update of old Hollywood’s studio system — so much as use its complex notions and representations of literal site and virtual space as trampolines for their own artistic imaginations.

In comparison to the clutter and overload characteristic of many group shows, "Safe Word" spreads nine works by a handful of artists across Ratio 3’s roomy confines in a manner that prevents any one piece from going neglected. To some degree, the standout works are those one first encounters upon entering the gallery. On the immediate right are four oil-on-panel paintings by Danny Keith that depict screen captures of grappling men from NakedKombat.com and UltimateSurrender.com. In Keith’s paintings, two torsos become one — not through the penetration shots one associates with hardcore porn, but through beast-with-two-backs-and-one-head physical images that momentarily occur during wrestling bouts. The compelling puzzle of these human pretzels is that Keith’s carefully selected and at times broodingly emotive visions bypass or subvert or transform the power games present in the titles of the source material. (In contrast, an orange-hued painting by Francine Spiegel remains elliptical as a visual response to Kink.com.)

Amanda Kirkhuff’s two graphite drawings (one on a large sheet of paper, another on a wall) are confrontational. On the far side of the room from Ratio 3’s front door, they greet viewers with (in one case) human-scale and (in another) larger-than-life full-frontal female nudity. Kirkhuff’s The Oldest Profession is like a 21st-century female answer to de Kooning. Thanks to a tit mountain and triangular patch of pubic forest, the piece’s faceless female torso flirts without sentiment with monumental abstraction — less obviously, and more wittily, Kirkhuff uses the magnified pixel or fractal block patterns of video in a manner that evokes Kink.com’s brick façade. Kirkhuff’s The Burden is the closest thing to a self-portrait in the show. Its subject meets the viewer’s gaze with a casual strength and defiance. Viewed within the context of Kirkhuff’s past hilarious renderings of pop culture icons and monsters such as Monique and Dr. Laura, these works prove she’ll likely excel in a solo show context.

Two pieces within "Safe Word" reconfigure material from Kink.com. Takeshi Murakata’s installation Because I Know How to Relax, I Can Work and Play Better matches woman-on-woman BDSM video with new age relaxation audio. There’s a comic frisson between the imagery and the verbal instructions: when the voice-over asks one to imagine a hand reaching inside one’s body, a semi-literal corollary takes place on screen. And connections between BDSM and meditative practice becomes quite clear. The idea is a bit glib and easy, though. More evocative is Anthony Viti’s looping five-minute video Mission & 14th, a card-shuffle barrage of fast-forward on-the-set screen captures of men and women at work and at play before and around the camera. At the same time that Viti’s piece demystifies or ignores the rigid barricades that characterize Kink.com activity, it also — like Keith’s paintings — defies the rules and perhaps rigidity associated with BDSM. Here, desire isn’t bound or laying down the law. Instead, it manifests as a polymorphously perverse blur.

SAFE WORD

Wed–Sat, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; through Aug. 8

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3771

www.ratio3.org

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