Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

A rictal dysfunction

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According to Peter Bogdanovich, 1928 remains unique in film history as Hollywood’s greatest year. The latter-day American director cites landmark silent film contributions such as King Vidor’s The Crowd, Victor Sjöström’s The Wind, and Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. as evidence that synchronized sound — first used in 1927’s The Jazz Singer — initially limited rather than expanded the cinematic medium. Alongside those celebrated pictures, Bogdanovich also praises a 1928 German Expressionist classic produced in the United States: Paul Leni’s macabre mutilation drama The Man Who Laughs.

Based on an 1869 novel by Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs is a mordant and often morose satire about a deformed clown in the Stuart Court. It follows the sad character of Gwynplaine, the son of a British duke who is orphaned and forsaken to die at the command of the British sovereign.

Gwynplaine survives, but with a horribly butchered mouth permanently twisted into a smile, He grows up amid a wandering freak show, becoming its main attraction. His only pleasure comes in the form of his adopted family — carnival mountebank Ursus the Philosopher and the blind beauty Dea, who loves Gwynplaine and remains unaffected by his strange visage. But when word reaches Queen Anne that an heir to the dead duke remains alive, she commands that Gwynplaine be installed as a lord and made to marry the reigning duchess Josiana. Forced to leave Dea and Ursus for the royal court, Gwynplaine soon bears the brunt of a royal freak show whose insidious machinations are alien to the golden-hearted clown.

The Man Who Laughs was produced by Universal in the wake of its increasingly popular horror pictures, particularly the 1925 blockbuster The Phantom of the Opera. Budgeted at the then-unprecedented amount of $1 million, Leni’s film became a flamboyant melding of costume melodrama and Expressionist mise-en-scène. It stars Mary Philbin as the blind heroine Dea and Conrad Veidt — a German Jewish actor featured in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919) — as the mutilated clown. Without reliance on dialogue, and beneath a rictus held in place by prosthetic hooks, Veidt produces an extraordinary gamut of emotion through little more than a lachrymose stare. Often mantling his disfigurement with a cape and moving with the rigid gait of a trauma victim, his Gwynplaine becomes a kind of paralytic, living and communicating only from his goitered eyes. He is a casualty of what Hugo declares "an art/science of inverted orthopedics." The film’s image of Veidt influenced comic book writer Bob Kane when he created Batman’s arch-nemesis The Joker.

Leni’s film hasn’t enjoyed the immediate critical attention of Expressionist classics such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) or F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). But its anticipation of the horror genre’s waves of mutilation — from Georges Franju through to David Cronenberg — is remarkable.

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS

Sat/12, 7:45 p.m.

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com


THE 13TH SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL runs July 11–13 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF. Advance tickets (most shows $12–$17) are available by calling 1-800-838-3006 or visiting www.silentfilm.org

Gore gone global

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(SHOULD BE A) CULT FILM Pakistan: land of the Markhor goat (a twisty-horned national animal), major software industry, ancient civilizations, field hockey, purported terrorist training cells, and extremely good-looking people of both sexes. The latter, at least, was suggested by those who went to my midwestern university a couple decades back: they were terribly urbane, funny, and cool. Admittedly, they were the next-generation cream of the country’s privileged-liberal economic elite. But they endeared me to a country that, at least as they reflected it, couldn’t harbor anything too religio-fanatical. Could it?

Such first impressions linger — never mind that I have since become slightly less of an overgeneralizing idiot. Proof that Pakistan retains a freethinking, Western-influenced minority — no insult intended against its more conservative Muslim majority — arrives in the unexpected form of Hell’s Ground (a.k.a. Zibahkhana), which plays the Hypnodrome as a Dead Channels presentation. Omar Ali Khan’s debut feature is a frantic pileup of horror genre tropes whose energy never flags. Purportedly Pakistan’s first gore film, it’s funny as well as grotesquely over-the-top.

Much as the movie might strike some as proof of the Great Satan’s poisonous cultural influence — and indeed it offers shameless tribute to the accumulated clichés of Western horror trash — it nonetheless hews to the genre’s most essential moral conservatism. (And unlike traditional slashers, no T&A is bared to justify lethal punishment.) Among the film’s quintet of teens sneaking out of town to a rock concert they’ll never reach, who do you think is gonna survive? I wouldn’t place bets on the amiable pothead, jaded party girl, or overgroomed stud. Poor virtuous scholarship student Simon? Good girl Ayesha (nicknamed Ash, à la Evil Dead‘s Bruce Campbell), who wears a "God Is Great" pendant? Maybe.

After someone has the bright idea of taking a dirt road shortcut, the fivesome run across zombies (including midget undead), then the freaky inbred family of a mystery-meat-selling matriarch whose offspring are Texas Chainsaw Massacre brethren reincarnated way off the Bible Belt. The crazy hitcher guy is now a long-haired religious fanatic; as in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original, he’s got an unpleasant surprise to spring once he gets in the van. Khan’s Leatherface equivalent substitutes a blood-spattered burqa and a lethally wielded mace for a dried-human-skin-mask and a buzz saw.

Funded by entrepreneur Khan’s Lahore ice cream parlors, Hell’s Ground is a fun and accomplished tree-shaking of Pakistan’s once-lively, now largely moribund "Lollywood" film industry. It did well when the country’s censorship board finally approved its theatrical release early this year. It emerges stateside this month via TLA Releasing, a normally gay-centric DVD distributor whose Danger After Dark label has recently given exposure to a gamut of international horror, fantasy, and suspense films. So far they’ve ranged from cheesily enjoyable (Greece’s first zombie flick, 2005’s Evil) to brilliant (Simon Rumley’s 2006 Brit madness portrait The Living and the Dead).

Despite all of the English comic book–panel intertitles ("Little did they know … ") and nods to Western horror classics, Hell’s Ground is shot through with Pakistani cultural totems (like a glimpse of hijiras, transvestite eunuchs), vintage pop, and in-jokes. Not least is the cameo by long-retired actor Rahan of 1967 Pakistani cult smash The Living Corpse. As a chai shop proprietor, he warns our hapless youngsters that they’ve already "strayed off the right road" and that "good Muslims should be getting ready for evening prayers." Later he’s heard pronouncing "You’re on the road to hell my children. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA!"

"The characters in Zibahkhana are part of the urban elite," Khan said in an interview with British newspaper the Guardian. "It’s true that class lives in a privileged bubble. The real, frightening, ‘unknown’ Pakistan is out there in the countryside, and that is why in the film it is when the kids leave the city that they starting encountering trouble."

HELL’S GROUND

Wed/2, 7:30 p.m., $5

Hypnodrome Theatre

575 10th St., SF

(415) 377-4202, www.deadchannels.com

Domestic unrest

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Survival often depends on one’s ability to scurry around. Dancers and smaller-scale presenters must use their wits if they want to show their audiences more than homegrown fare. For the most part, the process at SCUBA — a presenters’ network that shares companies out of Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco — works. Sometimes, however, there is a glitch. Such was the case June 26–28 with one of the two dance installations presented as part of "ODC Theater Festival 2: Local Heroes/Big Picture," Kate Watson-Wallace’s House and Karen Sherman’s Tiny Town.

Watson-Wallace has made something of a reputation for herself in her home city of Philadelphia, where she takes over physical locations and transforms them through performance. Since these are acutely site-specific works, traveling with them is difficult. At Theater Artaud, she was confronted with a huge space that has a strong personality of its own. It proved particularly problematic during the first of two performances on opening night when the soft light of dusk streamed through the huge, history-crusted windows of Artaud’s loading dock. She also had to deal with memories (at least this audience member’s) of Lizz Roman, Joanna Haigood, and other artists who have presented their own — and stronger — interpretations of Artaud. Watson-Wallace works best with intimacy, and her production simply needed more confinement than the space or the budget allowed.

House consisted of what probably were three excerpts from the original piece, performed in the theater’s loading dock and lobby. To create the dining room, she placed a long table and six chairs in a corner, which afforded some sense of enclosure. This first part was choreographically the richest, and well performed by Watson-Wallace, Megan Mazarick, and John Luna with local dancers Sebastian Grubb, Jocelyn Lee, and Marisa Mariscotti. Shifting relationships — on, over, and under the table, as well as up the wall — flowed with the inevitability of clock time, yet they were filled with nuanced little fits and starts. An emotional climate redolent with suggestions of love, rebellion, and fatigue recalled tense moments around anyone’s family dinner table. People came and went, hands tentatively touched, looks were exchanged, support was given and withdrawn.

In the living room — suggested by a sofa, rug, and coffee table nailed halfway up a wall — Mazarick’s slow-paced solo had to deal with gravity as she slithered, climbed, and hung over the furniture. This was bland. Two pillows attached to Artaud’s lobby served as Watson-Wallace and Luna’s bedroom. A live video projected their movement onto a lumpy mattress. The duo’s well-danced intimacy — tender, playful, troubled — suggested two people used to each other in bed and out. I kept wondering whether an element of voyeurism was supposed to be at play between the real and the virtual performance. If there was, I didn’t see it.

Sherman resides in Minneapolis but was born in St. Louis. The person sitting next to me at the show was familiar with the choreographer’s birthplace and caught local references that escaped me. Tiny Town was a sardonic but curiously affectionate portrait that peeled away the layers of what the program described as a "Midwestern landscape," yet this could be any small town. It’s a place where everyone minds everyone else’s business, where residents frantically try to keep up and fit in — and woe to those who can’t.

Tiny was meticulously crafted with rich production values. It ran a little flat toward the end, but showcased fine performances from dancers Sherman, Joanna Furnans, Megan Mayer, Morgan Thorson, and Kristin Van Loon. You knew that not everything was right behind the set’s picket fences when a rising cloud revealed two atomic reactors and a woman with her legs tied literally turned herself upside down to "walk." She ended headfirst in a stack of pancakes, and that was just for starters. In this world of superficial prettiness — flowers stuffed in mailboxes, glittery party dresses — tomboys get beaten up and toothy housewives are indeed desperate.

The dancing was appropriately stiff-legged and fractured, full of moments infused with a dogged persistence. It spoke volumes about discomfort within one’s skin, if not outright self-hatred. And all of it was presented with pasted-on smiles.

Centiclubs

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s like an old ship. Things break, things fall apart, and you just keep bailing water and hope you hit land someday!"

That’s Guy Carson, Café Du Nord owner and ex-Hotel Utah booker, on owning a 100-year-old club. Yes, there are the inevitable aches and pains attendant with a structure erected just two years after the great ‘quake, as well as eerie little trap doors and escape hatches from the Prohibition era. But, oh, the stories the Du Nord, House of Shields, and Hotel Utah — a troika of oases overflowing with libation and live music that have all hit the century mark in the past year — could tell. ‘Member the time PJ Harvey played a not-so-secret show at the Utah, triggering round-the-block queues? Or the first San Francisco show by rock legends the Zombies at the Du Nord? Or the rumored gunfight played out by Comstock Lode robber baron William Sharon in front of his then-men’s social club, now known as the House of Shields?

‘Course you don’t. So much has been lost in the mists of Bay Area mythology and Barbary Coast conjecture. But there’s always word of mouth — in full effect at the shambling, loving June 19 celebration of the Utah’s centennial, as Birdman Records’ David Katznelson presented witnesses like owner Damian Samuel, a ukulele sing-along by music writer Sylvie Simmons and Bart Davenport, and tributes by artists who have stomped Utah’s boards, including Paula Frazer and Greg Ashley.

Since its days as Al’s Transbay Tavern (name-checked in 1971’s Dirty Harry) through the years owned by screenwriter Paul Gaer (who brought in Robin Williams and puppet shows), the venue has not only been instrumental in establishing a beachhead for local bands — Cake was considered a resident outfit in the 1990s and Counting Crows, Jewel, and Tarnation were onetime regulars ("For a while I used to say that the Hotel Utah was Geffen’s A&R department," recalls Carson). Its communities include "open mic–ers, the regulars, and the people who live in the building," Samuel offers. "It’s a live amoeba of sorts that has its own direction." He says the UK’s Noisettes now call the Utah its home base, and past staffers include ex-booker Mike Taylor (Court and Spark), Cory McAbee (Billy Nayer Show), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pile-Up). One of Samuel’s fave tell-alls: in 1997 he had to walk future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Buckethead around the block so he could make a dramatic entrance onstage. "Here I am walking him around in SoMa, a chicken bucket on his head," Samuel recalls. "He kept saying, ‘I didn’t realize this block was so long.’<0x2009>"

Uptown, a century ago, the House of Shields also threw open its doors — in a much more hush-hush way: the venue began life as a men’s social club, and the only women permitted in until the ’70s were, says owner Alexis Filipello, "working girls." These days, the venue that got its name from its ’30s owner Eddie Shields is more likely to see indie artists like Sean Smith and Beam than highly establishment swells sneaking a stiff drink, but the crowd remains raucous, gathered around the elegant bar originally meant for the Pied Piper watering hole in the Palace Hotel across New Montgomery. When artist Maxfield Parrish made his Pied Piper of Hamelin mural (1909) far too long for the piece, the bar was sent over to Palace cobuilder William Sharon’s other nightspot. After Filipello bought the watering hole in 2003, she restored the natural wood, refurbished the moldings, reupholstered the booths, and jettisoned the "funky" taxidermy. "It was just such a beautiful old location, a piece of San Francisco’s history," she recalls. "We did a lot of work to get it back up to its beauty." No plans, however, for the firmly closed underground passage that links House of Shields to the Palace. Persistent rumors have it that in 1923, President Warren Harding died, not in the Palace as officially reported, but in the Shields’ speakeasy, and was transported through the tunnel back to his suite to avoid Prohibition-period scandal.

The ground is still shaking, happily, around Café Du Nord, which hit its 100th in October. In the next year Carson hopes to create a coffeehouse/art space upstairs next to the club, where performers can show their work, then play a show upstairs at the Swedish American Hall — which has hosted performers ranging from Cat Power to Michael Hurley — or downstairs at the Du Nord. He also plans to install an elevator where the Du Nord women’s room now sits, renovating the space so he can do the unique, one-off shows he prefers.

Carson is striving to continue nurturing the creative spirit of the Utah. "The difference between then and now is that everything costs so much. Our overhead here is so high, you can’t fail," he says. Back in ’90 when Gaer hired him at the Utah, he adds, "it wasn’t a big financial nut to crack, and we ran it like a living art experiment. I really miss those days. It was fun!"

QUESTION AUTHORITY?

MEGAFAUN


Backwoods Table of the Elements crustastic jams? The Durham, N.C., trio also joins Akron/Family at the High Sierra fest for a Mega-Akron set. Wed/2, 8:30 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org. Also Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $8. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. www.12galaxies.com. Fri/4–Sat/5, check Web site for times, $30–<\d>$168. High Sierra, Quincy; www.highsierramusic.com

BATTLEHOOCH


Kooky, crunchy spazz-tastic moves for kids? The SF band dons Baagersox guise for the first anniversary Lazerdance dance-off Thursday, then goes into seven-piece mode Saturday. Thurs/3, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com. Also Sat/5, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR


All-boy rock testimonials from Low’s Alan Sparhawk? Tues/8, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Scott Wells and Dancers

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PREVIEW Watching dancers launch themselves into space is every bit as exciting as the sparks and explosions that fill traditional July 4 celebrations. Take, for example, the frequently airborne Scott Wells and Dancers. The company’s Last Call show will be every bit as full of surprises as a fireworks display, only more environmentally friendly and weather independent. If you’re not familiar with this masterful artist, Wells is a super free spirit who has been setting up frameworks for contact improvisation pieces for the past 16 years. Many choreographers create works that use contact improvisation as a starting point for generating ideas that then get formalized. But Wells offers the real thing: the experience that there is only one moment, and it’s now. He also chooses music wisely and uses it beautifully. Two things strike you when you watch these dancers/athletes tumble, fly, and roll: the trust is absolute, and so is the fun. For Last Call, the company is bringing back — for the last time, Wells says — Home Again, the riotous 1991 encounter of man-meets-furniture. I am no great sports fan, but when Wells mounts Gym Mystics, his 2007 take on gymnastics, I’ll join the club. Also on the schedule is the world premiere of West Side Story, staged for 11 performers to Leonard Bernstein’s legendary score. Independence Day festivities include a 5 p.m. party prior to the performance with food, drinks, movies, and a guest artist.

SCOTT WELLS AND DANCERS Fri/4, 7 p.m. (party, 5 p.m.); Sat/ 5 and July 10–12, 8 p.m. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. $18–$22. (415) 863-9834, www.artaud.org

“Hancock”

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REVIEW This summer’s obligatory Will Smith blockbuster has the ever-bankable star playing the titular role in Hancock — a foul-mouthed antihero apt to fly into action while clenching a bottle of whiskey. Though this reluctant superman of unclear origins consistently puts bad guys behind bars, the citizens of Los Angeles are none too thrilled when he arrives on the scene; Hancock’s chaotic brand of crime fighting has been taking a devastating toll on the city’s roads, buildings, ice cream trucks, and beached whales. That is, of course, until he saves the life of Ray (Jason Bateman), an idealistic public relations executive who decides to help Hancock revamp his image. Smith has the kind of charisma that can make even the most poorly-written shlock at least somewhat bearable. This time around, he doesn’t have to work as hard; Hancock is teeming with the fast-paced action and destruction that we seem to crave during the summer months. Plus, it’s surprisingly funny. As you might expect, Smith brings the bulk of the laughter but Bateman exceeds his straight-man role with his playfully wry delivery. Yes, the story is predictable and there is an annoyingly telegraphed "twist" involving Ray’s wife Mary (Charlize Theron), but Smith’s foray into superhero movies manages to entertain. For those keeping track, Hancock is no Men in Black (1997). Thankfully, though, it’s no Wild Wild West (1999) either.

HANCOCK opens Wed/2 in Bay Area theaters.

“Jim Campbell: Home Movies”

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REVIEW The West Coast electronic artist Jim Campbell returns to the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum to reprise his popular 2006 installation "Home Movies," a screening of amateur, low-resolution family films projected through a tapestry of LED lights. Strung from ceiling to floor, the highly pixilated reflections of quotidian family life become nothing less than digital simulacra when magnified to such extremes. Building on the conceptual linkages of his Illuminated Averages (2001-03) and Ambiguous Icons (2000-03) series, the technophile artist has arrived at a startling depiction of memory and magic. Campbell’s explorations of communications apparatuses since the mid-1980s largely mirrors the hypermodernist theories of Jean Baudrillard — problematizing rather than simply fetishizing the digital domain — and rejects the scientific utopianism of Bergsonian temporality for the more radical slippages of personalized memories and nostalgia. For Campbell, the question surely remains whether digital perception has elevated or mutated our inscriptions of the past.

The answer, of course, is far from conclusive and further still from novel. In fact, "Home Movies" is reminiscent of cinema’s magical roots in the 18th century Fantasmagorie shows, which posed similar concerns in their embrace of new technologies. Spectral and hypnotic in their visual imperfections, these magical lantern exhibitions introduced the sublime moment when the still painting became animate, reaching out from its crypt of secrets to grab hold of the spectator in a living darkness. The Fantasmagorie often thrived on intimate family images, using projected portraits of recently deceased ancestors to unsettle or mesmerize the audience. In his brilliance, Campbell has recognized a similar power in manipuutf8g the iconography of America’s recent past, using the omnipresent home movie as a prop of sorts for his own digital legerdemain.

Historical and aesthetic precedents aside, "Home Movies" is a supreme cinematic delight, re-presenting the primal pleasures of film-going but refracting this nostalgic glow through a matrix of increasing digital deconfiguration.

JIM CAMPBELL: HOME MOVIES Through Aug. 1. Wed.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. $4–$8 (free first Thurs.). (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

At his Beck and call

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The year 1994 was when Beck Hansen finally went electric. Prior to Mellow Gold (Geffen), he lodged in a shed, made homespun cassettes of lo-fi recordings, and busked on the streets of Los Angeles. Panned by critics as a novelty for slacker-minded Gen Xers, Beck epitomized the slack, flannel-draped, messy-haired ethos of most teenagers at the time — myself included — and his post-grunge anthem, "Loser," catapulted him to buzz clip status on MTV faster then you could spell Porno for Pyros. Shortly afterward, K Records quietly released One Foot in the Grave — an album’s worth of folk songs recorded before Mellow Gold that pretty much fell upon deaf ears while Beck rode his commercial wave of fame.

Mattey Hunter of the Portland, Ore., psych-folk-noise duo Meth Teeth, however, took notice. The vocalist-guitarist revealed through an e-mail that he purchased the album when he was 12 because "Loser" was "all over the radio," and he still considers it to be at the one of his favorite records.

"It’s just Beck and some friends, a trash-can acoustic, and him playing the songs he wants to play, totally stripped down," he pointed out. "He covers blues songs and sings sad love songs. I’ve never gotten into the other stuff he did, but that one blows my mind."

Meth Teeth’s folky inclinations are foreshadowed on the CD-R Hunter sent me in the mail. The disc comprises songs from the group’s February self-titled seven-inch on the Sweet Rot imprint as well as a handful of tracks from their forthcoming debut, Taking Dude Mountain by Strategy. It’s raw, yet Hunter and drummer Kyle Raquipiso jack up the din so that the needles kiss the red. The tunes are ultra-catchy with a psych-pop garagey tang. The amplifiers sound fried and blown out with fuzz and hiss while Raquipiso bangs away at his kit, and Hunter’s drawls are syrupy and monotone in delivery. You can hear Syd Barrett and the Kinks at once, but Hunter claims he started Meth Teeth in reaction to his past musical experiences, "coming from a long line of punk bands and dealing with shitty band politics."

"There is a great to deal to be said about someone who writes about what they think or feel rather than doing that post-punk lyrical thing that sounds like you’re trying to rip off David Byrne’s ideas," Hunter writes. "I love David Byrne, but you gotta change it up every once in a while. All styles wear out their welcome, as they should."

METH TEETH

Sun/6, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

No wallflowers

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… And you shall know Tilly and the Wall by their tap-dancing rather than their drumming, their girl-gang vocals, their dazzling finery, the virtual — and at times, I swear, literal — confetti in the air. So is it any shock that the Omaha, Neb., five-piece, once better known as a Bright Eyes spin-off, has become one of the most beloved live indie acts to still hop in a van and hit the road? Nonetheless, the ensemble, which more often resembles a hyperpositive winsome art project than your average stony-faced indie rock unit, has weathered its share of audience adversity.

"We once played a coffeehouse, opening for Pedro the Lion, and there was one guy sitting in front, sawing logs," muses vocalist Neely Jenkins from Omaha, thinking back on the band’s oddest performances. "We were like, ‘Really? We’re that boring? We gotta do something.’<0x2009>"

Hence the Tilly and the Wall approach: no snores, no folded-arms bores, and this time out, a crew member devoted to lights. "Having gone to shows since I was in junior high, I know what shows excite me," says Jenkins, 34, who once performed with tap-dancing bandmate Jamie Pressnall in Conor Oberst’s poppy Park Ave. "It is nice to have something to look at, to make it more fun and more visually stimuutf8g. Especially now because tickets are so expensive — you better put on a good show."

The wild children of the Midwest are attempting to hold their fans’ attention offstage as well with their latest, third full-length, a multitextured affair enigmatically titled O (Team Love), after the oval frame that will surround the various, limited-edition, handmade prints created by friends. The covers’ collages, watercolors, and cartoonish imagery visually parallels the collaborative approach of Tilly and the Wall, touching on O‘s new moods and musical turns, which capture both feisty girl-group pop ("Blood Flowers") and sample-propelled Of Montreal–like psych-bounce ("Chandelier Lake").

"Our sounds have been sort of lighter, but our subject matter has always been a little bit darker," Jenkins explains. "I feel like there were some more truthful feelings in this one. It wasn’t just the happier side of life. It wasn’t a cover. There was some real stuff going on."

TILLY AND THE WALL

Tues/8, 9 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

Hirocks

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"We’re like a cockroach," explains Hirax vocalist Katon W. De Pena early on in our lively recent phone interview. "You can’t kill us." De Pena founded Hirax in Los Angeles in 1984, and if his enthusiasm is any indication, the enemies of metal better start stockpiling Raid. Although they never achieved the towering reputation of the bands they rubbed shoulders with in the 1980s, De Pena’s newly reinvigorated outfit is working harder than ever, deep in the once-underground thrash trenches including gradually disinterred, now-ascendant old-schoolers like Death Angel, Exodus, and Testament, and eager newcomers such as Municipal Waste, Hatchet, and Merciless Death.

Hirax has second billing behind Exodus at the 11th Tidal Wave Festival, a free outdoor metal concert taking place July 5 and 6 in John McLaren Park. Way back in 1984, the band got its first big break with a feature in Tim Yohannon’s influential Bay Area zine, Maximum Rocknroll, and De Pena overflows with appreciation for the support San Francisco has shown his group over the years: "Playing free is like giving something back to the movement that helped spawn thrash metal. We have a lot of great memories from playing San Francisco."

The outfit has always had a fiercely independent streak, which served them in good stead when a bunch of guys in flannel hacked down the tent pole at the metal big top in the early ’90s. Since parting with Metal Blade in 1986, Hirax’s members have been the masters of their headbanging domain, releasing albums through their own label and distributing them around the world through licensing deals with major players like Relapse and Century Media Records.

This uncompromising approach has won them widespread respect, and relentless touring has uncovered dormant thrashers desperate for something to rock out to. De Pena has become a connoisseur of the American metal heartland. "In the US, there are cities that are just amazing, like Allentown, Penn.," he says. "We meet these fans, and it puts it in perspective why you do it. They believe in you. That they care so much keeps you caring."

It looks like a new dawn for thrash in America, and De Pena thinks his band is ready to capitalize. Crediting his natural stubbornness and the support of his "total metalhead" wife who saw him through the dark days of the ’90s, the ebullient frontman sees a bright future ahead. "I think people are looking for something exciting, and thrash metal has that," says De Pena. "It always was very exciting. Over the last 10 years, music has gotten pop-y or emo or nü metal, and people have wanted something with more edge to it. It’s just gotten better and better [for Hirax] every year."

TIDAL WAVE FESTIVAL

With Exodus, Psychosomatic, Havok, Ludicra, Saros, and others

Sat/5–Sun/6, noon–6 p.m., free

Jerry Garcia Amphitheater

John McLaren Park

45 Shelley, SF

www.thetidalwave.org

Fillmore Jazz Festival

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PREVIEW Known during the ’40s and ’50s as the "Harlem of the West," the Fillmore District once housed a spirited enclave of West Coast jazz culture. Over time the district has endured periods of struggle. The recently installed Fillmore branch of Yoshi’s symbolizes the district’s fight to respect its past while staying in step with the present.

The Fillmore Jazz Festival began after much of the current "urban renewal" (i.e., the construction of large apartment buildings) took hold. Now in its 24th year, the popular two-day festival draws nearly 100,000 people as a strong reminder of jazz’s prominence in the Fillmore. The musical slate holds many established local performers, including Fillmore veteran Kim Nalley, local favorites Jazz on Mondays, and world-influenced Sila and the Afrofunk experience.

Bruce Forman is one of the prime-time headliners. The longtime guitarist began the JazzMasters Workshop in 2001, a nonprofit focused on giving free jazz lessons to kids. In 2006 he became an artist in residence at University of Southern California’s studio/jazz guitar department. With Western-influenced band Cow Bop, Forman recently completed his own Route 66 Challenge, which consisted of Forman and company touring along the length of the famous highway, with the proceeds going toward the JazzMasters Workshop.

FILLMORE JAZZ FESTIVAL With Bruce Forman, Barton Tyler Group, Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Jazz on Mondays, Randy Vincent Quartet, Sila and the Afrofunk Experience, Kim Nalley, Vinyl, and more. Sat/5–Sun/6, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m. Fillmore between Eddy and Jackson, SF. Free. 1-800-310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com

Mr. V

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PREVIEW Anybody out there miss hip-house? I do, although I often blush at its bare innocence — coming at a time before the separatism of gangsta rap and corporate rave, when 1980s MCs like Fast Eddie, Kool Rock Steady, Merlin, or the Wee Papa Girls could preen over a jazzy or acid-inflected groove and it felt like underground worlds colliding brilliantly.

Nuyorican house DJ, producer, and rapper Mr. V isn’t exactly the reincarnation of that much-maligned genre, although 2005’s "V Gets Jazzy" (Vega) with Louie Vega is a fierce update of KC Flightt’s 1987 hip-house classic "Let’s Get Jazzy" (TMT). Mr. V’s not even a rapper, per se — he’s more into gently exhorting the crowd to "Put Your Drink Down," do "Da Bump," and "Jus’ Dance," because he’s giving you "Somethin’ With Jazz." Those four spoken-vocal jams have been lodged in club speakers worldwide for the past three years, and the 34-year-old Mr. V’s instantly recognizable voice, combined with spooky-stunning mixes from Masters at Work and Quentin Harris, has injected some of the old hip-house glow and energy into house’s ever-looming loungeteria doldrums. When Mr. V sexily growls, "Bring some baby powder to the dance floor," boards from Brooklyn to Jo’burg get liberally sprinkled.

V’ll be spinning an old-school eclectic set — and hopefully taking the mic — at Mighty on Saturday, July 5 as part of the "For the Love of House" party, a title that somewhat confusingly refers to yet another nuevo hip-house hit, 2005’s "4 the Love" by DJ Karizma, who’ll be appearing July 13 at the Super Soul Sundayz weekly in the Temple catacombs (www.myspace.com/supersoulsundayz). A mini hip-house revival? Break out the talcum. (Marke B.)

"FOR THE LOVE OF HOUSE" With Mr. V, John Cutler, Michael Tello, and others. Sat/5, 10 p.m., $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

Back Fasheezy

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

After three and a half years chasing rappers for the Guardian, I’ve met, photographed, and finally interviewed Keak da Sneak, but never all at once. Getting ahold of E-40 is a breeze compared to tracking down Keak. One of the only Bay artists whose singles routinely play on KMEL, even hitting number one locally with 2005’s "Super Hyphy," Keak is perpetually hot and therefore elusive. When I recently interviewed Keak by phone, he was a continent away in NYC, under the watchful eye of Koch Records executives eager to promote his new album, Deified.

The release of Deified on Koch, one of the country’s biggest independent imprints, is significant not just for Keak but for the entire Bay Area. While major-label discs by Mistah FAB and Clyde Carson continue to languish, Deified could be the breakthrough everyone’s hoping for. With his diehard local following, plus an instantly recognizable, burbling, volcanic growl spewing out new slang like "hyphy" and "fasheezy," Keak has a real shot at shattering the glass ceiling frustrating the Bay’s national ambitions.

"My fans and the Bay are behind me, but I want to see the world’s reaction," Keak said. "I wanted to make this album much more than a Bay Area album."

Naturally, the question arises: where was this album in ’05 when "Super Hyphy" was peaking? Originally released on the Rah Records compilation Dopegame 2, "Super Hyphy" was such an unexpected hit that Keak had no album ready to follow. Moreover, in 2006, after making national noise on E-40’s "Tell Me When to Go," Keak was in a contractual dispute he claims scuttled major-label interest.

"Right after ‘Tell Me When to Go’ and the hyphy movement, when that wave was going, people expected me to drop," he recalled. "I had [Universal Records executive] Sylvia Rome come to my house and try to give me $1 million. Someone claimed I had a contract with them, but they never sent a copy. They bluffed us for a year, so I missed that deal."

Besides holding up his own career, the delay, Keak feels, also squandered hyphy’s momentum. "The introduction wasn’t right because my album didn’t drop," said the rapper. "40 opened the door with that single, but he still didn’t introduce hyphy. He introduced the hyphy movement."

"But hyphy is a ritual. It’s a Bay way of life," Keak continued, referring to the dread-shaking, ghostriding ghetto culture that shows no sign of waning. "This is what we do every day. So hyphy has never died. The movement might have died because we ain’t sticking together."

Of course, in order to have impact, Deified needs to be tight, and Keak’s releases haven’t always been top-shelf. While there’s been no shortage of Keak titles during the last few years, Keak claims only three previous solo discs — Sneakacydal (Moedoe, 1999), Hi-Tek (Moedoe, 2001), and Copium (Sumday, 2003) — disowning much of his extensive catalog.

"People said they had me under contract and were just gathering up songs," he complained. "The deals weren’t the right deal, so when I fell back on that shit, these guys put albums out."

Fortunately, Deified is exactly what Keak wants, down to the cover art. Produced almost entirely by Modesto’s Young Mozart, responsible for Keak’s popular "That Go," which is present in remix form and features Prodigy and Alchemist, the album contains the burgeoning radio single, "Nothing Without You," with Messy Marv — a rare love song for both rappers and a good indication of how well-rounded an artist Keak has become. Most important, while local rappers often distance themselves from the region’s sound when attempting to go national, Deified is unmistakably a contemporary Bay Area album, even as it looks back to classic mob music.

Since his deal with Koch involves just one album, the disc could be the springboard back into major label consideration. "I didn’t want to get tied up for three or four years," Keak concluded. "I want to drop this album, see how it do, then talk to the majors again." Here’s hoping Deified leads to that conversation.

Speed Reading

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FASHION: A PHILOSOPHY

By Lars Svendsen

Reaktion Books

188 pages

$24.95

As a once and future dandy, I’ve noted the growing field of fashion philosophy. In the realm of the academy, the idea of a unified theory of style has become something of a holy grail. The latest knight-errant, Lars Svendsen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Bergen in Norway, starts his quest by seeking the meaning of fashion.

Relying heavily on Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, Svendsen (as translated by John Irons) creates a concise and comprehensive primer on fashion and clothing as it relates to identity. He then stitches on a virtual CliffsNotes of philosophy on fashion, citing Roland Barthes, Charles Baudelaire, and Michel Foucault, and then appliqués some hep quotes from Bret Easton Ellis, AbFab, and the Pet Shop Boys.

In the end, Svendsen finds that we cultivate surfaces, that we live in an increasingly fictionalized reality, and that our identities are in steady decline. He concludes that fashion is a highly diverse phenomenon that pretends to have meaning, but in reality "has meaning to only a limited extent." That’s it? Fashion has no meaning, but some meaning? How weak is that?

If philosophy wishes to find meaning in fashion, it must make room for the power of talisman, totem, and fetish — elements that pure reason cannot abide. Svendsen errs in a manner many fashion philosophers have, by refusing to look away from the runways of Europe toward the magical elements of dress in Africa, Asia, and South America. The eggheads just don’t get it.

Flight or write

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"The moment one learns English, complications set in," wrote Spanish ex-pat Felipe Alfau, in English, beginning his 1948 novel Chromos (first published in 1990). Learning English, he wrote, "far from increasing [one’s] understanding of life, if this were possible, only renders it hopelessly muddled and obscure." While this might be true of learning any new language — one starts to see how words simply refer to other words — we might say the same about literature. Are those of us who look to books for salvation making the simple needlessly complex? Orhan Pamuk claims that writing novels is just an "excuse to wrap myself up in new personas." Gregory Corso wrote of our relationship to books: "I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk / pour secrecy upon the dying page." Though not especially positive, both descriptions are sensual and alluring.

Katherine Silver’s thrilling translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness (New Directions, 142 pages, $15.95), the first English appearance of any of the Salvadoran exile’s eight novels, brings out the physical effects of a different type of reading: the translation of human tragedy into words, and then back into life. It begins with the incantatory phrase, "I am not complete in the mind." The sentence comes from a report of transcribed Indian testimonies of survivors of a massacre in an unnamed country that resembles Guatemala. The alcoholic, sardonic, surprisingly compassionate narrator is editing this report as a freelance gig for the Catholic Church.

On the phone from her home in Berkeley, Silver admitted that when an editor first showed her 2004’s Insentatez (Tusquets Editores) at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, she was put off by the subject matter: "I looked at it very quickly and said, I don’t like violence. Then I read it on the airplane and said, ‘I want to do this.’ It’s not really about violence. It’s all ultimately about the intimacy of language and writing."

Despite being plagued by increasingly violent fantasies ("For I am not a total stranger to magical realism," the narrator says to explain a particularly brutal one in which a brain is split in half), he is finally brought back to earth not by the truths of the report but by a paranoid (and in the end, realistic) attention to the relationship of the report to the outside world. One sexual fantasy’s effect is simply to "stabilize" his mood. Later, overwhelmed with isolation, he goes outside to "howl like a sick animal under the star-studded sky." After this release, he is able to see the real danger approaching in the shadows.

Senselessness builds so seamlessly to an arresting finale that you will immediately read it again, attentive to how the language of the report infests the narrator’s language. Silver was lucky, she said, to be working with such a "careful" writer. "A translator is a very close reader," she said. "It’s kind of like looking at a book through a magnifying glass. But I never had to second-guess him. He wears well." As a result, the moment one starts reading Senselessness, complications set in — complications we cannot live without.

Hunter, haunted

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," says the reporter in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a film about the importance of living up to one’s image, even when that image is predicated more on fiction than fact. It’s a burden either way, and the dilemma is echoed in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a lively new documentary by Alex Gibney, who directed 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and picked up an Oscar this year for Taxi to the Dark Side.

Gonzo focuses on Thompson’s most fruitful professional period — 1965 to 1975, a decade that saw the New Journalism proponent (who committed suicide in 2005) write Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. During that time, he also launched an ill-fated campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., and shaped his public persona into that of a gun-toting, drug-crazed, booze-soaked, authority-bashing champion of outsiders, capable of churning out pages of brilliant and utterly unique prose, always written in first person and most often written while under the influence.

Speaking over the phone from New York City, Gibney reflected that he was drawn to his latest subject largely because of that persona. "He was a guy who didn’t play by the rules, and it seems like we need a guy like that around now, when the rules are being used against us by people in power," the director said. "Also, he seemed like a fun character to do, this larger-than-life character that — for at least for a brief period of time — became this outlaw that we all wanted to live by."

Gonzo taps quite a bit of home-movie footage, photos, and audiotapes to flesh out Thompson beyond his words (read by Johnny Depp, who bonded with the author while prepping for the 1998 Fear and Loathing movie). A diverse array of contemporary interviews (Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner, Hell’s Angel Sonny Barger, both of Thompson’s wives, Pat Buchanan, illustrator Ralph Steadman, George McGovern, and Jimmys Buffet and Carter) bears out the wide range of Thompson’s influence. According to Gibney, the only interview he would have liked to have gotten but didn’t was with Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who would only speak off the record.

"My first day on the job was to go out to [Thompson’s funeral] — the one Johnny Depp paid for — and hang out, try to get a bunch of people to talk, and then shoot the funeral itself. I shot the funeral, but nobody much wanted to talk to me," Gibney recalled. "But once I let everyone know I was doing this film and that it was really gonna focus on his work, that opened people up, and inevitably they started talking about Hunter the character as well."

The funeral, briefly shown in Gonzo, is a surprisingly tasteful spectacle involving taiko drums, a giant cannon, and glimpses of famous friends (John Kerry, Bill Murray). The film doesn’t spend much time on Thompson’s suicide, though in its first scene it speculates how the writer might have lost his trademark edge. In Gibney’s eyes, Thompson’s Dr. Gonzo alter ego was the reason for both his success and his ultimate downfall.

"Initially [his persona] just grew out of a natural journalistic instinct to supply your own perceptions, to put yourself in the story, to be the lens through which viewers would see whatever you were covering," Gibney said. "But over time it became [less of a] lens [and more of a] bubble in which he got trapped. So I think that was the trick. Sometimes this mythical character he created just kind of took over. As he remarks in the film, ‘Sometimes I don’t know who to be, whether to be Duke or Hunter.’<0x2009>"

Duality also manifested itself in Thompson’s private personality, which Gibney was surprised to discover as being "almost bipolar."

"Hunter’s mood swings kind of represented his ability to see the kind of schisms or splits in the American character," he said. "I knew he was always a very perceptive writer about the American character, but I think maybe he was so perceptive because he — more than a lot of people — is like America. Sort of the best and the worst. I didn’t really understand till I started the film just how many-sided he was."

Visually dynamic and entertaining for Thompson devotees as well as those who only know him from Depp’s portrayal in Fear and Loathing, Gonzo is nonetheless tinged with the melancholy that eventually tempered Thompson’s considerable lust for life. Blame health problems, professional frustrations, the re-election of George W. Bush, or more existential concerns — Thompson’s quest for the American Dream, documented in Fear and Loathing and elsewhere, was never really satisfied. Instead, Gibney speculated, "I think he ended up finding how elusive it is, and how much-desired it is — but how rare it is to ever find it. And that’s what he found in Vegas, I think: what a perfect vehicle for the death of the American dream, this place where you go hoping to fulfill that rags to riches dream, yet in some fundamental way knowing that the house always wins."

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Opens Fri/4 in Bay Area theaters

www.magpictures.com

Dirty girl!

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend is into degradation during sex. It turns me on too, so I’m not worried about damaging our great relationship. I would like to explore more but am not sure where/how to start. Is there somewhere I can learn to be more degrading to my girl?

Love,

Earnest Student

Dear Earnest:

Heh. It’s not easy being mean, is it? People who enjoy abusing the comparatively powerless require no instruction on how better to be beastly. There are no books, for instance, on being rude to your waiter, or dog-kicking for fun and profit. Sadly, though, while recreational malevolence may not come easily to the naturally nice, no one has yet noted and attempted to fill the obvious market niche. There are classes and books on dominance and submission (you should attend or buy some) and quite a few on how to talk dirty, but none dedicated to lists of synonyms for bitch and whore or handy degradation scripts you can print out and tape to the wall behind the bed.

If what you’re looking for is vocab homework, you could try some of the abundant movies and stories out there in which one person degrades the other viciously but all in good fun. Why not rent some DVDs or surf the Web for ideas? It does occur to me, though, that if your girlfriend has watched or read the same stuff, she may recognize your cribbed dialogue and end up laughing at you. Nothing breaks the mood like your sub helplessly giggling at your attempts to be brutal. All you really need, anyway, is to work on your attitude. It doesn’t much matter if you call her "squealing little slut-pig" or "daddy’s little cum bucket" or whatever; it’s all in the delivery. You will gain confidence with practice, and if it’s working for her, she won’t be rating you on the originality of your epithets.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’ve yet to come across something in your column similar to what I recently experienced (and was grossed out by), and I’m wondering what makes certain people desire what they do.

Several months ago I went out with a good-looking guy I’d met before. I was in the mood, so we ended up at his place for sex. The foreplay was great, and I was getting into it. While I was straddling his face as he performed cunnilingus, he suddenly asked me if I would defecate (not his word) on his face. He seemed to get excited after he said it but did not take note of my reaction and tried to put his mouth over my anal area. I had to get out of there right away.

I don’t remember what I said exactly, but I was dressed and gone in less than five minutes, I think. Have you heard of this desire, and how prevalent do you think it is? What could possibly cause someone to want that? Maybe I don’t want to know.

Love,

Don’t Tell Me!

Dear Don’t:

I don’t know where you’ve been looking (I most certainly have written about it before), but if you’d entered "scat" into Google (on second thought, do not enter "scat" into Google), you would’ve been deluged with information, far more information than you could possibly have wanted.

Oddly, the answer to the question why people "want that" won’t be found in the above-mentioned deluge, because nobody actually knows. Most attempted explanations will say something about flouting taboos or being dirty (there’s nothing dirtier, really, is there?) or perhaps rebellion against the tyranny of toilet-training. These sound good, but you don’t have to be very clever to imagine that the desire to play with shit has something to do with bad toilet-training, do you? Doesn’t mean it’s true.

All we know for sure is that there are (some, few) people who fantasize about playing with shit and (some, fewer) people who actually do it. Most of those who only fantasize have no wish to follow through, but I’ll also wager that inability to find a willing partner keeps some in the fantasy-only camp. If one of them wrote me (oh, they have, they have) wondering how to broach the subject with a would-be partner, I’d probably say, "Whatever you do, don’t do what Don’t Tell Me’s date did." It’s hard to imagine a clumsier approach than blurting out "Shit on me!" in the midst of passion, without so much as a "by your leave." Well, actually shitting on a person, all spontaneous-like, would be worse, but let’s not even speak of that.

I don’t think that someone having a disgusting desire is in and of itself so terrible. One can always say, "No, thank you" and no harm done, after all. Not realizing that most young ladies won’t take kindly to such a demand, however, demonstrates such a profound emotional tone deafness that I really must wonder about your new boyfriend. Or rather, your ex–new boyfriend. Spontaneity is nice, but some subjects require a more formal introduction.

Love,
Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Editor’s note: This column originally ran on Dec. 28, 2004.

Glamazonia in “Portal Potty”

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@@http://www.sfbg.com/glamazonia@@

Beyond belief

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

THE QUEER ISSUE Aurora Theater takes on — reportedly — its first gay-themed work with a West Coast premiere of Keith Bunin’s almost-too-smart The Busy World Is Hushed, a play that ultimately has as much to do with questions of Christian faith and the mixed blessing/burden of family as with sexual orientation. The play, which debuted off-Broadway in 2006 amid a fracas in the Episcopalian Church over the issue of homosexuality, concerns a middle-aged Episcopalian minister, scholar, and single mother named Hannah (Anne Darragh) who hires a young writer, Brandt (Chad Deverman), to ghostwrite her book on a newly discovered gospel that may represent more faithfully (ahem) the "authentic" Jesus.

Both characters have personal reasons for being interested in this project. Hannah was widowed when her husband walked into the sea in a possible suicide, leaving her pregnant and alone. Her sharp intellect leaves plenty of scope for criticism of the institutional and historical construction of God and the bigotry of the Church, but her faith — which she grounds in her own suffering and isolation as a way of giving them meaning and purpose — is only refined in the process. Meanwhile, Brandt, a lapsed Episcopalian, long ago moved away from a church that invalidated his identity as a gay man. But with his father dying in the hospital and unable to concentrate on his own writing, he’s eager to lose himself in Hannah’s work — at least partly because of the bitter questions his father’s cruel demise stirs up about the nature of God and religion.

Bursting into this scene comes Hannah’s wayward 26-year-old son, Thomas (an especially engaging James Wagner), just back from another of his ecstatic "get lost" adventures, a patch of porcupine quills jutting from one ankle. Soon Brandt, clearly smitten, is kneeling before Thomas plucking out one quill after another with a mischievous glee that covers for the eroticism in this little St. Sebastian moment (a tableau that morphs into another about as preposterous when, in their next meeting, Thomas dons a big leather toolbelt to put up a couple of shelves). Hannah’s delving into Christian history and exegesis mirrors her equally solitary if gregarious and promiscuous son’s own restless quest to understand his real-world father — which holds out for him a similar promise of existential meaning, moral guidance, and a quieting of the soul.

But their quests, while similar, are also in conflict. A battle is being drawn between mother and son — in some sense over, and in the name of, the father(s) — so that when Hannah practically begs the hapless Brandt to act on his feelings for her son, it’s with something less than unalloyed Christian spirit. Director Robin Stanton’s actors deliver their lines with conviction, but the dialogue gets both too pat and too constructed, at times almost Socratic, so that soon belief is a dwindling resource all around.

THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED

Through July 20

Wed–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 and 7 p.m.; $40–$42

Aurora Theatre

2081 Addison, Berk.

(510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org

Rare, medium, and well-done

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When Sean Dorsey started the Fresh Meat Festival in 2001, transgendered artists were sequestered inside the alternative club scene. With this new event, Dorsey threw the doors wide open. While transgender and queer performances still have a special attraction for their constituencies, the festival’s need to move to Theater Artaud, its largest venue yet, proves its broader appeal.

This year’s presentations ranged far and wide, and so did the quality. That’s one of the perils of this type of focused programming: the desire to be supportive and inclusive can mean presenting artists who may not be experienced or even talented enough. The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival went through similar growing pains. But Fresh Meat — which is fun, balanced, and thoughtful — is on the right track.

Five groups received commissions. The Barbary Coast Cloggers and Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu presented excellent premieres; the first joyously clickety-clacking, the other lyrically flowing through new interpretations of passed-down dancing. In trying to show the breadth of its repertoire, however, Colombian Soul attempted too much. The troupe presented undeveloped, under-rehearsed fragments, including a religious procession and a same-sex partnered "maypole" dance. Musicians Nejla Baguio and Prado Gomez’s artistic partnership looked young. The tentative Who’s Your Daddy?, musings on being a parent, had a few sparks but ultimately fizzled. Also respectfully but unenthusiastically received was the transgendered Transcendence Gospel Choir and its invitation for a community sing-along.

Two artists I would like to see more of were the outstanding countertenor Jose Luis Muñoz, who sang a powerful aria from Juana (an opera-in-progress by Carla Lucero), and Scott Turner Schofield, a FTM word artist. In an excerpt from Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps, he performed a smart, witty audition for Hamlet. It was also a pleasure to see the nonchalant Shawna Virago, who performed two supersmart, edgy new songs.

Still, the evening belonged to Dorsey, and not just because he founded the festival. Lost/Found, a duet he performed with Brian Fisher, showed again how nuanced a thinker, writer, dancer, and choreographer he is. I can’t think of anybody, no matter their identity, who creates works about growing up as theatrically cogent and as tremulously alive.

Where there’s Will …

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER The cormorants know, the red-winged blackbirds have heard, and the quail would wail: the Marin Headlands and surrounding environs are imbued with more than a little magic. You don’t need to spend much time there to know this, rolling through pebbly Rodeo Beach or tromping down Tennessee Valley Road, soaking up the sagey scents and painting the digits dark red with crushed blackberries, as little girls wander by talking on seagull-feather faux cellies.

They will testify, as will Will Oldham — a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, a.k.a. ace Palace Brother, singer-songwriter, and star of Old Joy (2006) and Matewan (1987) — to the area’s healing properties and the way its fresh breezes, rippled clouds, and hills in every hue of green ignite the imagination. After all, until recently Oldham was squirreled away at the Headlands Center for the Arts as an artist in residence. In one of the few interviews he’s consented to lately, Oldham told me he ended up doing much songwriting, including a commissioned piece with his Superwolf partner Matt Sweeney intended for a new Wim Wenders film.

"I felt super-fortunate," said the jovial, easygoing Oldham from Louisville, Ky., where he’d driven to from the Bay Area only three days previous. No matter that tornado warnings were all over the local media as he cast his mind back. "It was kind of a dream situation, because out there in the Headlands, there’s no cell phone reception. And once you cross through that tunnel, you’re in something you can imagine as wilderness and by the sea, and there’s a fair amount of wildlife — snakes and skunks and turkeys and deer and coyotes and bobcats and seals, which, if you choose to, you can see more of than you see any human being on any given day."

He’ll be back in the Bay after touring Europe and playing a handful of US dates, ending in San Francisco. The occasion is Lie Down in the Light (Drag City), Oldham’s worthy, rootsier follow-up to the transcendent The Letting Go (Drag City, 2006). If the latter is colored by the otherworldly ambience of its Icelandic origins, then the new album is touched by the tender humidity of its Tennessee recording site, encompassing, according to Oldham, "a couple songs that sort of address — using terms of love, devotion, and even lust — songs themselves."

"I think," he offered, "at the end of the day, sometimes it can be the truest form of comfort, especially if you’re a singer. You can find in music just about any ideal emotional landscape you crave, whether it’s angst or rebellion or celebration or union or dissolution. It’s all there, and none of it’s going to call you back or text you at four o’clock in the morning or blame you for anything you did or didn’t do or slap you with a paternity suit."

Not that Oldham can speak on paternity suits. "My lawyer says I can’t answer questions like that," he demurred mirthfully. Meanwhile there’s some heavy weather to consider. "I do have a cellar," he said, not worried at all. "But I’m not the hiding kind. I want to see it if it comes. I think I can run faster than a tornado." *

KICKING, LICKING, GOOD

LOWER CLASS REVOLT


Kicking it blue-collar style, the comp celebration includes Rademacher, Tigers Can Bite You, and Light FM. Wed/25, 10 p.m., $4. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com

JONAS REINHART


Kicking it Krautrock, the Citay collaborator’s Kranky release promises near-exotica grooves. Wed/25, 9:30 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

DILATED PEOPLES


Kicking it old-school, the Los Angeles underground hip-hoppers unleash The Release Party DVD in July. Thurs/26, 9 p.m. doors, $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

GRAND ARCHIVES


Kicking it Vivaldi styley, if the composer wore Converse. The ethereal Sub Pop indie-rockers get with their folk label mate Sera Cahoone. Sat/28, 9 p.m., $13. Slim’s, 333 11th., SF. www.slims-sf.com

MUTE SOCIALITE


Kicking it free-noise mode — with such Oakland exploratory musical surgeons as Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, and Liz Allbee. Sun/29, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ALL THAT GLITTERS: LADY GAGA

It takes a lot of g-g-guts to name your act after the Queen tune "Radio Gaga," ‘fess up to the fact that you attended Catholic school alongside Nicky Hilton, and make it your personal mission to make pop cool once more. Lady Gaga, 22, has the moxie to undertake all of the above, having gone from setting hairspray afire on fringy NYC stages and attending Tisch School of the Arts at NYU to hammering out songs for Britney Spears, and making her own brazen dance-pop à la "Beautiful Dirty Rich." Why did she name her debut, The Fame (Streamline/Interscope)? "The concept is that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you have, as long as you can embody a sense of inner fame and value of your own ideas, you can really be whoever you want," Lady Gaga opined huskily on her way to a Raging Waters gig in San Dimas. "I was nobody, and I’ve been jerking people for years into thinking I’m somebody I’m not. I used to get into clubs like when I was 16. I’d usually just walk right in because of the way I carried myself, the way I dressed, the way I spoke to people."

Sat/28, 8 p.m., $45. Temple, 540 Howard, SF; www.templesf.com. Sun/29, 6:10 p.m., Pride Festival, Civic Center, SF; www.sfpride.org

“The Monkey and the Devil”

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PREVIEW Sometimes history has a peculiar way of bringing us full circle. Charles Trapolin’s family owned slaves on their plantation in South Carolina. Joanna Haigood’s family were slaves in the vicinity. The commonality and difference between those two families led to The Monkey and the Devil, a collaboration between Trapolin, the former ODC dancer turned visual artist, and dancer/choreographer Haigood. Taking its title from racial slurs, the world premiere examines a festering wound in the social fabric that has not healed nearly as well as many of us would like to pretend. Haigood started the piece long before Barack Obama’s candidacy but, she points out, it certainly has acquired an unexpected urgency. "Racism," she says, "hurts everybody. It’s a social ill that we need to address and realize that it is connected to economy and class." Formally, the piece is an installation, continuing Haigood’s long-time interest in working with picture frames. It’s a visual motif that works well with Trapolin’s idea to create a house split in two. On the set, two couples — one white, one black — take turns assuming roles. Audiences are invited to stay as long as they like during this four-hour performance. Though she’ll have a collection box, the show is free because Haigood really wants all of us to come see it.

THE MONKEY AND THE DEVIL Fri/28 and Sat/29, 1–5 p.m. Free. Zaccho Dance Studio, 777 Yosemite, studio 330, SF. (415) 822-7644, www.zaccho.org

Asunder

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PREVIEW Listening to Asunder is freaking me out. It’s the middle of the night, the moon is full, and I was barely paying attention to the plodding funereal doom. That is, until I glimpsed a foreign movement from the corner of my eye and, sensing a phantasmic force, my heart plummeted into my guts. If John Gossard’s eerie chants, likely effective at summoning Lucifer from the bowels of a very cold hell, didn’t raise ghosts previously unheard from in my creaky Victorian, what did?

It’s no secret if you’re even passingly attuned to local music happenings — or ever pick up this paper — that the doom-death community on both sides of the Bay is close-knit and as prolific as a war graveyard at the height of collateral damage. But Asunder just might be the darkest, dreariest, and most melodically melancholy of them all. But it’s too simple to relegate their metal dirges to the staid realm of the glacial and miserable; Asunder begs the question, "Can doom be dynamic?" and answers in the affirmative. Patience and subtlety, reverence and yes, the spiritual, are conjured in equal parts by down-tuned strings and minor keys. When their sophomore release, 2006’s Works Will Come Undone (Profound Lore Records) — produced by the East Bay’s esteemed Billy Anderson (High on Fire, Saros) — filled 72 minutes and 45 seconds with two epic tracks, it was risky but the foursome added enough slow complexity to make it work. Let their chilling arrangements and a newly upgraded sound system tempt your ghosts at the Oakland Metro Opera’s grand reopening.

ASUNDER With Trees, Necrite, Skin Horse, and DJ Bad Jew. Fri/27, 8 p.m., $8. Oakland Metro Opera House, 630 Third St., Oakl. (510) 763-1146, www.oaklandmetro.org


Asunder with Trouble and Mammatus. Wed/9, 8pm, $16-$18, Slim’s, www.slims-sf.com

Rock Candy

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REVIEW May 15 was one of those few cheery days in San Francisco when a sunny morning transitioned into a "warm wind blowing, stars are out" night. Oh yeah, and that whole State Supreme Court lifting the ban on gay marriage thing probably raised overall spirits a bit. But no, that wasn’t the reason the evening mood was so upbeat. In fact, the joyous news that day was that a straight couple, refusing to be disenfranchised any longer, announced their engagement at the Stud’s mixed, bimonthly, electro-punk-pop night Rock Candy. I know, it’s all so unclear, but it wouldn’t be the city by the Bay if the fog didn’t continuously roll in, right? And as I rolled into the club, ready to rock, I too refused to be left out in the cold any longer and searched the venue for my next ex.

Sure, I came up in the age of rock star divorces like those of Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear or Locklear again and Richie Sambora. So I vow that if I were a rock, I’d be jade — because I no longer have faith in the so-called sacrament of marriage. Still, I say if straight people want to live in acrimony, they should be able to. But ear candy beat eye candy for the night-creatures in attendance amid the polyamorous union of DJed new rave, goth, indie, and Brit-pop, and club hosts Marc Blinder and Virginia Suicide’s rousing gay marriage-themed sing-along, which culminated with the inspiring "We Are the Champions." Truth be told, I think it’s great that the happy couple delayed their announcement until everyone achieved the freedom to marry. Nonetheless, my more disillusioned half wondered what all the commitment-phobic gay partners, who previously shooed off marriage with "Darling, I’d marry you if I could," will do now.

ROCK CANDY First and Third Thursdays, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $5. Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.elasticfuture.com

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