Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Gyan Riley

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REVIEW I first heard Gyan Riley on the spectacular, otherworldly The Book of Abbeyozzud (New Albion, 1999), by his father, minimalist maestro Terry Riley. The younger Riley’s playing on "Zamorra," a guitar duet with David Tanenbaum, reached new heights of raging classical guitar intimacy.

In 1999, Gyan Riley was the first guitarist to receive a full scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Since then, he’s been around: he’s had major commissions from the Carnegie Hall Corp. and the New York Guitar Festival, given performances worldwide, and held an artistic directorship with the San Francisco Classical Guitar Society and a teaching gig at Humboldt State University. So the stakes are high for his new full-length, Melismantra (Agyanamus Music). With an almost preternatural sense of musical presence, it doesn’t disappoint.

The four-part "Progression of the Ancestors" suite showcases the range of Riley’s complex sensitivity as a guitarist and composer. He never rushes the moment unless an overwhelming musical force takes control of the song on its own. Tabla giant Zakir Hussain’s elegant pops and rolls and Scott Amendola’s persuasive drumming add texture to the mix. Tracy Silverman’s electric violin playing — introduced prior to "Progression of the Ancestors" on the epic title track — touches on everything I love about not just violin but sound itself. Throughout the album Silverman leaps and bounds in world-turning harmony with Riley.

Melismantra‘s opening three-song cycle, "Mobettabutta," recalls the fusion jazz and somewhat self-interested tone poems of guitarists Larry Coryell and Pat Martino — especially the latter’s odd 1976 album Starbright (Warner Bros.). This doesn’t quite jibe with the rest of the recording, but in a way "Mobettabutta" opens your mind to the delightful guitar perversions of "Herbie Moonshine’s Last Dance." Riley might make thinking people’s music, but he knows how to party.

GYAN RILEY With Tracy Silverman and Scott Amendola. Thurs/21, 8 p.m., $19.50. Freight and Salvage Coffee House, 1111 Addison, Berk. (510) 548-1761, www.thefreight.org

Beaufort

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Avoiding taking a political stance in favor of depicting a military operation under extreme circumstances with stark, vivid immediacy, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort reenacts the Israeli Army’s evacuation of the titular fortress during its 2000 pullout from Lebanon. Constructed next to an ancient castle built by 12th-century crusaders, the enormous bunker — in which characters often seem to be running around like rats in a maze — was taken from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1982 and fortified to an even more imposing degree. The skeleton crew that remains is anxious about both leaving and staying. As their planned departure nears, surrounding Hezbollah troops step up their shelling to make it appear they chased the Israelis out. This creates numerous harrowing situations; so do the self-doubt and inflexibility of youthful commander Liraz (Oshri Cohen), who makes some serious tactical errors and finally seems reluctant to let the men complete their mission by blowing the whole place sky-high. It’s not on the movie’s agenda to question whether Israel should have been there in the first place, which may seem a titanic omission to some viewers. But by simply conveying the unpredictability, heightened emotions, and claustrophobia of being under siege, Beaufort is perhaps the most visceral war movie since Downfall.

BEAUFORT Opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters.

“Low Life Slow Life: Part One”

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REVIEW "Low Life Slow Life: Part One" is a self-curated portrait of the artist Paul McCarthy as a young man told with a few of his favorite things. It’s a very personal exhibit, much of it culled from the archives of a now-grown enfant terrible, and lays out a canny narrative about artistic influence that throws the viewer more than a few MacGuffins.

Before McCarthy fully developed his taboo-vioutf8g aesthetic — which found its most abject expression in his foodstuff- and prosthesis-filled performance pieces of the 1970s and ’80s — he was a Utah painting student whose first steps in using his body as a medium were guided by the action-based events of artists such as Allan Kaprow, Kazuo Shiraga, and Yves Klein. A first edition of Kaprow’s canon-making Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings (H.N. Abrams) is on display here, alongside paintings, photographs, sculptures, and printed matter by or related to several of the artists included in the 1966 volume.

Much of what McCarthy has chosen would slot neatly into the syllabus for one of the art history classes he now teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles. Which is to say that he is aware of how institutions inevitably shape an artist’s time on Earth into a career, placing it within a historical context in relation to and often as a reaction against other artists. McCarthy’s piss take on these sorts of creative genealogies starts with Dada collagist John Heartfield’s swastika-shaped Tannenbaum (1934), then jumps 30-odd years to Joseph Beuys’s 1962 sculpture made with fallen pine needles, whose brown color is shared by McCarthy’s dead Xmas tree and bric-a-brac pileup (2007). The trees’ tinder skeletons look like the survivors of a pillow fight on a paintball range. Wisely, McCarthy leaves other works out of such daisy chains of facetious art history scholarship. Mike Henderson’s giant, ghoulish oils Nonviolence and Castration (1968) stand alone as apocalyptic visions of the dark underside of American life. I wonder if they remind McCarthy of his salad days of stuffing Barbies up his ass while besmirched with ketchup. (Matt Sussman)

LOW LIFE SLOW LIFE: PART ONE Through April 12. Tues. and Thurs., 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Wed. and Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, 1111 Eighth St., SF. (415) 551-9210, www.wattis.org

Years of Lead

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW Reflecting on his work on millenarian Europe, the autonomist and political philosopher Antonio Negri stated, "This is certainly one of the central and most urgent political paradoxes of our time: in our much-celebrated age of communication, struggles have become all but incommunicable."

Long an influential campaign in Negri’s native Italy, autonomia, or self-rule, has received little critical attention from the English-speaking world. Editors Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi’s Autonomia: Post-Political Politics (Semiotext(e), 340 pages, $24.95), originally released as part of the short-lived Semiotext(e) magazine series in 1980, proffers the first English-language introduction to one of the most controversial movements of postmodernity.

Developed in the vibrant Götterdämmerung of the late 1960s in reaction to the largely corrupt and co-opted Eurocommunist parties, the worker-inspired Potere Operaio and its immediate descendent Autonomia Operaia were a philosophical umbrella, or, as one government critic put it, "a veritable mosaic made of different fragments, a gallery of overlapping images of circles and collectives without any social organization." At its heart, autonomia was a rejection by individuals and marginalized groups of not only the capitalist state but also its traditional ideological enemy — Marxism and its central doctrine of class struggle — for a postideological and immaterial way of life.

Brokered in universities throughout Bologna and Rome but dedicated to labor activism and the street-level situationism of sessantotto (student unrest), autonomia was powered by a number of formidable philosophical proponents. They included Negri, Oreste Scalzone, and Paolo Virno, as well as French sympathizers and arch collaborators Félix Guatarri, Gilles Deleuze, and Paul Virilio. Autonomia collects the various polemics, letters, and récits of these authors in an attempt to again dramatize the revolutionary and sometimes violent struggles between neofascists, unionists, and the ultraleft during the ensuing "Years of Lead."

Semiotext(e) editor Lotringer prefaces this new edition with a short travelogue describing his interactions with the various underground factions of Rome and Bologna in the shadow of politician Aldo Moro’s assassination by the dreaded Red Brigades, or Brigate Rosse. Long associated with the neofascists and socialists as the armed division of the Autonomia Operaia, the Red Brigades began resorting to terrorist propaganda, bombings, and assassination in the wake of government crackdowns in the late 1970s.

Lotringer encounters a gaggle of activists, intellectuals, and simulationists who may or may not pledge loyalty to the Red Brigades and who live in compounds and squats hiding from the omnipresent carabinieri, who continue to surveil the streets. Some are in costume and others spin Velvet Underground records; still others may be government informants or simply thrill to the hip simulacra of espionage. According to Lotringer, this alternative and autonomist space may have accomplished, however briefly, the utopic "non-fascist living" of Deleuze and Guattari.

Throughout Autonomia‘s 300 pages of densely translated text — from theorists and tricksters, reporters and members of the lumpen proletariat — the truly inclusive and sometimes circuitous worlds of the title movement become all the more apparent, yet never transparent. Negri’s contributions are particularly inspiring and frustrating in their brilliant opacity. Ultimately, in rejecting the verticality of hierarchies of power — textual, political, and economic — the autonomists opened up larger interpretative spaces: realms that existed beyond capital and beyond empire.

Glad to be unhappy

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Terence Davies is coming to town. For anyone who loves the cinema, this is news of paramount importance — and MGM-level musical magnitude. Davies is one of the greatest directors of the final quarter of the 20th century. He’s created at least two acknowledged classics, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The House of Mirth (2000), and I count his 1992 rendering of a movie-mad childhood, The Long Day Closes, as one of my all-time favorite films. In a single shot that passes across the floors of a family apartment, Davies captures the magic of nature mingling with artifice (a waterfall of raindrops, reflected from a window, passing over the leaf pattern of a carpet), then conveys the passage of time with a potency that never fails to bring a tear to my unsentimental eye.

Time, free-flowing through mental mazes of negative space that Manny Farber would have to admire, is at the center of Davies’s autobiographical work. He connects music with memory in a manner that yields greater returns each time one returns to his movies. At the Pacific Film Archive, he’ll appear at screenings of The Terence Davies Trilogy (1984), Distant Voices, The Long Day Closes, and The Neon Bible (1995) and lead an audience through a shot-by-shot discussion of Distant Voices. In anticipation of this visit, I recently spoke with him on the phone.

SFBG It’s disheartening to read about the various funding problems you’ve been encountering over the past eight years.

TERENCE DAVIES We don’t have a cinema in this country — we just have an extension of television. You’ve got 25-year-olds who don’t know anything and think cinema started with [Quentin] Tarantino. We’re just little England. We’ve become virtually another state of America. In 20 years’ time, if we don’t watch it, we’ll be just like Hawaii, but without the decent weather.

SFBG Within British cinema, your films don’t fit into the contrasts that place David Lean–like literary adaptations or the documentary base of directors like Lindsay Anderson against more flamboyant directors such as Nicholas Roeg, Ken Russell, and Joseph Losey. You have elements of all of the above: your work is autobiographical and learned, but it has also has a flamboyance I relate to, though it isn’t outrageous.

TD I suppose my influences were very simple: the British comedies from the period when I was growing up and American melodramas and musicals. I remember being taken by my two older sisters to see Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing [1955] or All That Heaven Allows [1955] and going by myself to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers [1954] or The Pajama Game [1957] and any comedy that attracted Margaret Rutherford and Alastair Sim.

My films are an amalgam of those things and of the fact that I was brought up Catholic. I was very devout until I was 22. What a waste that was!

Also, I was influenced by classical music, particularly [Jean] Sibelius and [Dmitry] Shostakovich and my beloved [Anton] Bruckner. And poetry. [My family] got our first television in 1961, and about two years later, over the course of four nights, Alec Guinness read [T.S. Eliot’s] entire Four Quartets from memory.

SFBG Your current documentary project, Of Time and the City, is about your hometown of Liverpool. I came across an interview from the era of Distant Voices, Still Lives in which you talk about its utter transformation and deterioration. That interview dates from almost 20 years ago. Have the changes continued?

TD Yes, inevitably. At the time I left, Liverpool was very down at heel. I left it at its worst. It’s getting better now, but there’s still an awful lot to be done. The evocation of war that Humphrey Jennings did in Listen to Britain [1942] I’m trying to do for Liverpool. I wanted to try and capture what it was like when I was growing up. Even I was shocked at some of the footage of the slums, which were some of the worst in Europe. I grew up in one, and when you grow up in one you don’t realize it, because everyone else is in the same boat. But seeing footage of it now, it’s absolutely appalling. When you think that in 1953 this massive amount of money was spent on the coronation of the present queen, it’s just obscene. They get away with it — it’s quite extraordinary. I’m very much a republican; I’m not a monarchist. When you juxtapose the coronation with the footage that we’ve found, it’s shocking.

SFBG Solitude and rich sensory experience are qualities at the core of your movies. Those qualities take on specific aspects in cinema — your use of darkness in relation to light is connected to, and even a few times directly about, the experience of being in a dark movie theater.

TD You have to see the films in the cinema. It’s lovely to see, say, Letter from an Unknown Woman [1948] on the telly, but if you see it projected, it’s even more ravishing. The only way to see a film is in the cinema — nowhere else.

SFBG I first saw my favorite of your films, The Long Day Closes, at the Castro Theatre here in San Francisco.

TD The Castro is a beautiful theater. But I remember that when I was there, two men were walking down the aisle and one asked, "What did you see last night?" The other said he’d seen the [Terence Davies] Trilogy. The first asked, "What did you think?" And the other said, "Not very good."

SFBG There’s no accounting for taste.

TD Another man said to me, "These films make Ingmar Bergman look like Jerry Lewis," which I thought was a wonderful insult — practically a compliment. Isn’t that fabulous?

CLOSELY WATCHED FILMS: TERENCE DAVIES

Feb. 20–27, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Going solo

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Regarding the recent column on women who can’t have orgasms [1/30/08]: I hate to say it, but it looks like you phoned this one in. Where are the partners in the equation? If you were the boyfriend, wouldn’t it seem rude for your girlfriend to say, "I’m going to put you on hold while I play with toys to feel better sexually"? I think it would be better for her to say, "We need to talk," then describe what’s going on with her sexual responses and feelings. Why shut him out? That doesn’t help the relationship. They can figure it out together; maybe it can even be a playful exercise in experimentation. If he can’t deal, then he wasn’t the right boyfriend for her anyway.

I really do enjoy your column.

Love,

All about the Teamwork

Dear Team:

Hey, that’s OK. I really do enjoy your feedback. I actually didn’t phone this one in, though. I told the young women to put their boyfriends on hold for a while because partnered sex was not working for them. And desperately trying to have a good time works about as well in bed as it does out on the town on New Year’s Eve, which is to say, not at all. If I neglected to tell the young women that they ought to at least notify the boyfriends that they would be checking out for a bit to do some exploration on their own, well, that was sloppy, and I do apologize. (Girls, tell your boyfriends why you’re not having sex for a while, OK?) But I stand by my original suggestion that they should, indeed, skip the partnered sex in favor of masturbation until they can at least say with some conviction that they know what an orgasm feels like.

I said in the original column that it isn’t fair, but women often get out of touch with their sexual responses in a way that’s pretty rare for men. And although women certainly have no lock on extreme self-consciousness, what gets in our way is a mostly female blend of "Oh no, he’s looking at me and he’ll see I don’t look like [insert current icon here]" and "Oh no, I’m taking too long. What if he thinks I’m selfish or gets bored?" plus fear of losing self-control and looking slutty. And sometimes the only way to ditch all of that stuff is to run away alone.

I also mentioned Lonnie Barbach and Betty Dodson but somehow forget to include Julia Heiman and Joseph LoPiccolo, whose Becoming Orgasmic (Prentice Hall, 1976) has been around since the ’70s and originated some of the ideas I toss around as though they were obvious, which I realize they are not. Heiman and LoPiccolo do not begin their program with "tell your partner what you like" or "masturbate in front of him" or any of the other fairly advanced techniques that sex experts throw at women who are having trouble with orgasms (I’m sorry, I’m enough of a geek that I can’t see that phrase without thinking, immediately but unhelpfully, of tribbles). Instead, it starts way back, with examining your history and your ideas about sexuality before you even get close to literal physical examination — and when you do get there, you get there alone. (For those who prefer their sex help with early ’90s hair, there is a video version, also called Becoming Orgasmic [Sinclair Institute, 1993], which you can order online.)

The idea of solo exploration before allowing the partner back into the bedroom reminds me of something else (besides tribbles, that is), and now I realize what it is. It’s all very similar to the late, lamented (he seemed like a nice guy, and he sure wrote a useful book) therapist Bernie Zilbergeld’s well-known program for overcoming premature ejaculation in his (please forgive me) seminal book The New Male Sexuality (Bantam, 1984), which was rooted in the work of Masters and Johnson. You start slowly, with guided imagery and masturbation, and not even particularly fun masturbation. Gradually, over weeks or months, you add partnered activities. The program works much better for men in stable partnerships, but that doesn’t mean the partner is involved every step of the way.

So no, I didn’t mean to imply that the anorgasmic girls’ club ought to nail up a permanent "No boyz allowed" sign, and of course I think it would be silly and almost certainly destructive to embark on such a program without fully informing any partners first. But if the problem is compounded of various parts self-consciousness, bad messages, fear of judgment, and just plain fear, then no, I don’t think taking one’s very first, faltering steps toward sexual self-confidence in front of an audience is necessarily the best idea.

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.

Double talk

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

PREVIEW I approached a meeting with Gilbert and George, the joined-at-the-hip-since-the-late-1960s so-called living sculpture, with some trepidation. How does one interact with such a well-honed identity in a way that resembles a real conversation? How do you talk to a work of art?

Thankfully, the pair are a burnished public entity with manners — and demeanors that may seem a bit canned but not exactly insincere. They wear their trademark suits: Gilbert, 65, the shorter, Italian-born half, in gray tweed, and George, 66, the slightly ruddy-skinned, bespectacled Brit, in beige. Their time-honored uniform sets them apart, though at the same time they could be ordinary insurance salesman: these suits don’t seem like designer artifacts. The only hint at a subversive side are matching ties with splotches suggestive of some body fluid or another. The artists are warm and friendly, like real people, like a pair of eccentric uncles. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that they’re not particularly quirky, theatrical, or difficult to engage. Then again, a 40-year life and art partnership can result in a comfortable public face.

They give me a tour of their in-progress de Young Museum show. Even without much lighting, a magisterial, pop art stained-glass-window effect is apparent. The pieces are huge and colorful and address urban conditions, religious hegemony, and boys, boys, boys. There’s barely a female figure to be seen in these galleries not long ago inhabited by Vivienne Westwood.

"Gilbert and George" is a reduced version of the Gilbert and George retrospective presented at the Tate Modern last year: "It was four times bigger," Gilbert states. (He seems to be the practical sort, frequently pointing to facts while George philosophizes.) Apparently, it was the largest such show the British museum has ever presented. A working model of the gallery is a key part of their process in plotting out their exhibition, and there’s one on a table with tiny, hand-drawn versions of the expansive pieces on the wall. "We do all of this ourselves," Gilbert announces, referring to the layout, although more than once he makes that claim in terms of the production of their work. The tinted photo-collage work used to be done by traditional photographic and hands-on graphic arts techniques, though they shifted to working on the computer in 2001. "But you can’t tell the difference," he boasts.

Among the first things they tell me is that a piece from 2005 titled Was Jesus Heterosexual? was edited out of the show’s United States tour by the Brooklyn Museum for its religious content — not a shock given that was the site of the 1999 "Sensation" controversy that involved another generation of English artists and Christian icons. "All the American journalists in London say, ‘How uptight you British are,’ when it’s really the other way around," George says wryly. I get the impression they enjoy the ruckus, as their work regularly generates lively debate: for example, their big pictures of turds, including a panoramic one on view here.

It comes as no surprise, then, that they’re tickled by double entendres and randy references. Pointing to a typically large-scale work with the term spunk in the lower right corner, George expresses concern that it may not make sense here: "Do Americans even know that word? What is it here, jism?" I wonder if this is a playful, flattering ploy, as he speaks as if these were obscure terms, like I’m in on the secret. In a similar spirit, he asks me to identify a fuzzy gray image, instantly recognizable as a crab. "And not the kind you get at Fisherman’s Wharf," Gilbert giddily interjects. As they make repeated references to a kind of authenticity — "We photograph everything ourselves," they say — I ask where they got the subject. "Same place you would," George lobs back quickly.

That comment is more than a characteristic bon mot. Though Gilbert and George are not exactly ordinary characters, their subjects are as elemental as piss, shit, and blood — not to mention bottles of booze — which inform some of the earlier works seen here. These elements’ associations are hardly rarefied topics. As we’ve worked our way backward, we end up at a wall of small black-and-white photos of the pair posing together beneath trees in 1971. "We were so young and innocent," George confesses, revealing that beneath the bolder proclamations of their work, there’s even some love.

GILBERT AND GEORGE

Through May 18

Tues.–Thurs. and Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.; Fri., 9:30 a.m.–8:45 p.m.; $6–$10 (free first Tues.)

De Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive

Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 750-3614

www.famsf.org/deyoung

Bent empire

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REVIEW Holy glowing gonads! That’s what popped into my head — as my eyes popped out — when I entered the second room of the de Young Museum’s gorgeous "Gilbert and George" exhibition, which encompasses 30 years and 65 pieces of the British duo’s video, graphic, and two-dimensional sculpture work. There, two neon-explosive series of four humongous photomontages — Death Hope Life Fear (1984) and Shitty Naked Human World (1994) — are hung directly opposite each other, tugging the viewer into a phosphorescent hallway of actual shit and roses.

The first quadripartite series is peppered with the pair’s customary images of ethnically diverse underage hustlers, English roses, and collaged ziggurats of the artists themselves, magically combined to suggest all that was evil and delicious about the Thatcherite ’80s. The second, famously, floats giant turds against a backdrop of luminescent color and naked shots of the artists’ ass cracks and shriveled penises. Both sets are gloriously naughty, and when I caught a glimpse of prim society matron Dee Dee Wilsey standing perplexed beneath World‘s giant ball of flying crap, I almost lost it.

The rest of the exhibit goes on like this: feces fly, sperm spurts, blood boils, men and boys bare all, and enough sacred cows are roasted to fill a few Sizzler menus. And always, the deadpan artists peek through the mayhem like two chipped teacups adrift on a postcolonial ocean of desire. Even though Gilbert was born in Italy, the inseparable pair, with their matching worsted suits, impeccable manners, and sexually coy public personae, are so very British. Surely they’re commenting, from their tidy little studio in Spitalfields, East London, on the wreck and temptations of empire?

The show’s first room, dedicated to the artists’ early graphic work, contains some excellent aesthetic tingles but mostly concerns itself visually with a rote investigation of the possibilities of red, white, and black. You can sense Gilbert and George limiting their palette to a trio of fussy tones perhaps to excuse their content, fairly outré for the ’70s fine art world: spray-painted penis graffiti (1978’s The Penis), sticky puns on orientalism (1974’s Cherry Blossom No. 1), and other furtive steps into the realm of rebellious hyperinfantilism they would soon make their own.

It was during this nascent period that Gilbert and George developed their singular style: mixing multiple photographs of themselves with those of their immediate environs to make a single image, then blowing it up enormously and subdividing it into a grid of framed panels hung flush with one another, like a stained-glass window of perfect squares. As their artistic journey progressed and as the show winds through the basement galleries, their pictures burst with clashing tints and increasingly weirder experiments with displaced symmetry.

Various themes — ’80s youth-culture fetishism (for hipsters infatuated with fluorescent leg warmers, this is the show of the century), the tormented and fashionable spiritual journeys of the ’90s, a pungent streak of antipapism, and more than a few dips into pedophilia — are given the scatological Manic Panic rainbow treatment. Then the 2006 Terror pictures arrive, made in response to the London bus bombings, and the palette recollapses into a stunned black, red, and white, the English roses become torturous thorns, and pilfered headlines like "Police Quiz Bomb Suspect’s Father" are scrawled across each panel. So maybe there are limits?

Noise Pop: Hot shots

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Mika Miko


Los Angeles’ proudly punky ladies have been busy tearing out new tunes back home. Expect them to show their hand in their constant quest to drive the audience bonkers. Also on board is more of their characteristically dark imagery. "There’s nothing worse than happy-joy-joy," drummer Kate Hall says. "You gotta go through some dark stuff." (Kimberly Chun)

With DJ Amp Live and Tempo No Tempo. Tues/26, 8 p.m., free for badge holders and VIPs. Rickshaw Stop, 55 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011

Minipop


Indie pop rarely gets sweeter — or more radio-friendly — than in the hands of San Francisco’s preternaturally poised Minipop. The foursome found an avid listenership early in their career, and the recently released A New Hope (Take Root) finds the unit looking fondly back at the dreamy alt-pop of the early ’90s, with graceful nods to 4AD forebears. (Chun)

Feb. 27, 8:30 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

The Mumlers


Perhaps the Mumlers were channeling the spirit of William Mumler, a mid-19th-century man famous for claiming he could photograph ghosts, but once all seven band members touched their fingers to a Ouija board’s planchette, the board, they claim, spelled out their group’s name. Regardless, it’s clear their swaggered ruckus pop channels dead folk musicians galore. Despite the ghostly origins of their handle, the Mumlers’ live appearances tend into turn to lively celebrations, with the outfit dancing about the stage. Their repertoire of instruments rivals any philharmonic’s and includes guitars, drums, upright bass, various keyboards, euphonium, French horn, trumpet, clarinet, tambourine, pedal steel, and recently, eagle whistles from Mexico. While the tunes give old-time music an indie pop sheen, beneath the group’s sprawling arrangements the lyrics and vocal delivery compare to those of Johnny Cash’s later recordings — with a touch of early Bob Dylan. (Alex Felsinger)

With the Entrance Band, honey.mooon.tree, and Golden Animals. Feb. 27, 9 p.m., $14. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

The Morning Benders


This group has no shortage of hooks and crescendos, and with a lighthearted indie pop style familiar enough to capture anyone’s attention and enough creativity to hold it, they stand out from their peers. Listeners have drawn comparisons to Voxtrot, the Shins, and Of Montreal for good reason, but in the end the Morning Benders’ biggest debt is to the Beatles. So far they’ve recorded all of their releases at home but have always managed to mimic that old analog sound, even when using nothing but a laptop and one microphone. With their upcoming debut, Talking Through Tin Cans (+1), they’ve successfully stepped into hi-fi wonder without losing their homespun feel. The Morning Benders don’t break any musical molds, but their solid songwriting and smooth deliver serve pop tradition well. (Felsinger)

With Kelley Stoltz, Grand Archives, and the Weather Underground. Feb. 28, 8 p.m., $14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

The Blacks


SF’s grungy indie rock band the Blacks sound so much like the Pixies that they ought to be called the Frank Blacks, but they trump the re-formed Pixies in stage presence tenfold. Vocalist JDK Blacker doesn’t sing much at all but rather focuses his energy on livening up the audience: sometimes he’ll help drummer Gavin Black smash cymbals, or perhaps he’ll simply thrash around with his trusty tambourine. Vocalist Luisa Black holds the group together with solid alternating rhythm and lead guitar, while Gavin Black’s drumming shines with stripped-down, solid beats. The Blacks take the simplicity of ’70s punk and garage rock and jump-start the attitude: the concept isn’t new, but then, a combo doesn’t need to be entirely original to rock. (Felsinger)

With Cursive, Darker My Love, and Judgement Day. Feb. 29, 8 p.m., $18. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

Jeffrey Lewis


Crass saved punk. They never fit the part, never ripped off the Rolling Stones, and never tried to become famous, because they genuinely wanted to create a better world and thought they could do so through music. But in the past four years every kid with a leather jacket has picked up an acoustic guitar to sing against the war and capitalism, recorded some songs on their PowerBook, then thrown them up on MySpace. Folk punk has swept the nation’s underground to the point where 924 Gilman Street Project hosts a monthly Acoustic Night. Bringing it full circle, New York City’s Jeffrey Lewis recently released 12 Crass Songs (Rough Trade), composed entirely of acoustic versions of Crass numbers, including some of the group’s best. Lewis came out of his city’s so-called antifolk scene — a Crass cover LP ought to be deemed anti–folk punk, right? — and his vocal patterns have a hushed, somewhat raplike flow. The CD’s best track has to be "Punk Is Dead," which Lewis delivers as a wistful ballad. Hearing a folk singer recite the lyrics 25 years after the first recorded incarnation makes more sense than ever — because the words are certainly truer today. (Felsinger)

With the Mountain Goats, OKAY, and Aim Low Kid. Feb. 29, 8 p.m., $18. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. www.bimbos365club.com

British Sea Power


Do You Like Rock Music? is the provocative title of British Sea Power’s new Rough Trade LP. Well, sure, but do I like their brand of grand indie? Their engorged drums and highly dramatic overtures just might get them discounted as the Big Country of the ’00s, though their quieter moments and more experimental textures hint at increasing — and welcome — complexity and nuance. (Chun)

With 20 Minute Loop, Colour Music, and Off Campus. March 1, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Immigrant


These SF vets of Evening have come a long way from would-be bell-ringing bouts, taking on an epic yet poppy, synth-dappled alt-rock veneer with the self-released Novakinesis. (Chun)

With Panther, Wallpaper, and Distraction Fit. March 1, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011

Port O’Brien


One might note that the flowing harmonies between the four members of Port O’Brien work so well onstage that the audience would be doing a disservice to the band if they joined in. But that would be an unfair request. Port O’Brien’s music emits the instant atmosphere of a warm campfire sing-along. The group’s more intimate acoustic concerts are now only rare gems, and their recorded efforts tend to fall short of capturing the same level of energy, yet their glowing personalities and dedication to the crowd are still evident at their amplified full-band performances. (Felsinger)

With Delta Spirit, What Made Milwaukee Famous, and the Mayfire. March 1, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

The Virgins


Imagine Julian Casablancas with a freshened-up adenoidal approach and jaded ‘tude intact, backed by sloppy-cool disco-rock rats. Equipped with a taste for that tatty late ’70s intersection where punk and disco met, snarled, and duked it out on the train on the way back to the boroughs, these New York City decadance-kins seem likely to outshamble Babyshambles and their louche ilk. Too bad you can only be a virgin once — wonder what the combo’s next trick will be? (Chun)

With Airborne Toxic Event, the Blakes, and Man/Miracle. March 1, 9 p.m., $12–$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

Scatterbrain Jamboree

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PREVIEW How many times have you heard this before? "There’s no good local rock scene in San Francisco! It’s totally a DJ city!" Sigh. Before resigning yourself to a safe and steady diet of well-known touring indie bands — "Why risk $10 on an unknown local band that could suck?" you ask — while bemoaning how much cooler the scene is in other towns (Brooklyn! Montreal! Portland! Oh my!), check out the Scatterbrain Jamboree at Thee Parkside. Sponsored by Stanford radio station KZSU, 90.1 FM, this two-day, all-ages local band–palooza features 19 groups, including some of the freshest new talent this city has to offer.

Highlights include: French Miami, headlining Feb. 23, who manage to combine the anthemic, sweaty-basement-party spirit of Japanther with the speed and prowess of a math rock band (think finger tapping) and the harmonized guitars of the Fucking Champs. Channeling Frank Zappa, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and Devo, the six members of Battlehooch create a fantastic racket that makes you want to scream your way right into a straitjacket. Little Teeth play raspy, effervescent freak folk with hints of Animal Collective’s raw psychedelia and the quirkiness of bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Moldy Peaches. Finally, Master/Slave is the ultradanceable electropop brainchild of guitarist Matt Jones and makes for a remarkably tight live show. But perhaps the best thing about the jamboree is that it’s a benefit for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

SCATTERBRAIN JAMBOREE With White Pee, Pidgeon, Mumlers, Schande, Make Me, Holy Kiss, Top Critters, and DJ Nate Nothing. Fri/22, 8 p.m., $10. Also with French Miami, Master/Slave, Death of a Party, New Centuries, Battlehooch, Shitkickers, Settler, Little Teeth, Thunder Thighs, and Bug Pedals. Sat/23, 2 p.m., $10. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. (415) 252-1330, www.theeparkside.com

Flesh peddlers

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In the category of coolest stuff in the world, Sasha Wizansky recently sent a copy of Meatpaper (subtitled Your Journal of Meat Culture), a magazine she coedits with Amy Standen, to the Guardian offices. The magazine is a veritable cornucopia, nay, a butcher shop of fascinating articles, from an interview with meat inspectors to found meat photography and a beef heart recipe. I immediately contacted Ms. Wizansky and proposed marriage. What I got in lieu of matrimony was an interview, excerpted below.

SFBG Why did you want to do a magazine about meat?

SASHA WIZANSKY The answer that we usually give for that is we perceived that there is a meat movement going on. We call it the fleischgeist, which stands for "the meat zeitgeist." This was a cross-country trend, which apparently is global as well. People are thinking about meat in new ways. That’s partially in the context of restaurants and home cooking, but also in art and culture. So we started a magazine to report on the fleischgeist and basically collect multiple perspectives on what’s going on and publish them side by side.

SFBG Are you going to include non-meat-eating perspectives?

SW Yeah, that’s actually a huge part of what we do. My coeditor and I believe that people’s choice to not eat meat is actually a big part of the story of meat. That’s something that we’re actually extremely interested in covering. We like to cover all perspectives.

SFBG Do you think there’s been a backlash against vegetarianism and veganism in San Francisco?

SW I personally have witnessed a pretty big shift in maybe the last eight years or so. I moved to San Francisco in ’95 and I felt like most of my friends were vegetarians, and that’s not true anymore. So if my community is representative at all, I think things really have changed. I think part of it is that a lot of the reasons that people were choosing vegetarianism had to do with, you know, organic food and environmental reasons, but now a lot of those same issues are being addressed by meat production. It’s possible now to participate in a sustainable meat economy in a way that wasn’t before.

SFBG Were you ever a vegetarian?

SW I was a vegetarian for seven years. From 13 to age 20. My personal reasons I think had a lot to do with health. Sort of personal choice. There was a moment at age 20 when I decided that it was the right thing for me, healthfully, to eat meat again. And I haven’t gone back.

SFBG What is the most adventurous meat eating experience you’ve had?

SW Well, what I think is really interesting about adventurous meat eating is it’s so much to do with your head and so little to do with your palate. I think the idea of some of these extreme meats is frightening to a lot of people, but the reality is not. I suppose in terms of an extreme meat idea, Amy and I had duck fries at Incanto Restaurant.

SFBG Duck what?

SW Duck fries. Which is a euphemism for testicles. Chris Cosentino, who wrote the recipe for beef heart for [Meat Paper] — that’s his restaurant. The idea of [duck fries] is so extreme; the reality is very mild. They looked like big kidney beans, and they tasted like little sausages.

SFBG As someone who eats meat, do you feel there are moral ramifications and karmic and moral weight to eating meat?

SW This is a tough one. I’m not sure I want to go all the way there about my own choices. But I think it’s complicated. On one level it feels like an uncomfortable thing that an animal should have to die for me to eat. On the other hand, I see myself in a lineage of a species that has existed, you know, forever, eating meat. These are contradictory things, and sometimes it’s a moral tug-of-war. It’s something that I think about a lot. People assume that because I edit a magazine about meat that I’m eating bacon and sausages [all the time]. Actually, I am going to a salami tasting tonight. But I don’t eat meat three meals a day.

www.meatpaper.com

Talking points

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The two women invited to a mysterious dinner party in the American Conservatory Theater–commissioned Brainpeople have no idea why they’re there. For some time we’re not sure why we are either. After detouring into the uncharacteristically straightforward screenplays of The Motorcycle Diaries and Trade, playwright José Rivera is back in quirky magic-realist overdrive. Too much of this 80-minute one-act feels propelled by a willful eccentricity less delightful than pointless. There is a point, though — and it’s worth the wait.

Dressed-to-kill beauty Mayannah (Lucia Brawley) has summoned two houseguests to her Los Angeles manse, which is heavily fortified against the violent police state outside. Both are promised substantial monetary reward for their attendance, though it seems all they’ve got to do is arrive (via armored limo) and enjoy "the meal of your lives."

This must be too good to be true. Garrulous wallflower Ani (Sona Tatoyan) voices our suspicions by nervously inquiring if the huge platter o’ mystery meat is, er, people. (It ain’t, but it is something equally seldom masticated.) Fellow guest Rosemary (Rene Augesen) doesn’t care what it is — she is hungry. She also displays odd shifts in mood and accent, soon exposed as a whole cacophonous chorus of schizoid "brainpeople" taking turns à la Sybil with her body and behavior.

In Daniel Ostling’s creepy-elegant dining room set, beautifully lit by Paul Whitaker, all three women reveal their demons via flamboyant yet unfelt monologues. Augesen in particular contorts through multivoice fireworks more actor punitive than audience rewarding. But Rivera and director Chay Yew’s premiere production are heading somewhere. When the "miracle" Mayannah hoped would occur this evening does, performers and play transcend all prior filigreed excess. Brainpeople ends on a sustained grace note that’s unsettling, poignant, and haunting.

CURVY, BALLSY?


There’s just one woman’s voice revealing all in Curvy Widow, the Cybill Shepherd showcase that’s opened here after a reportedly very rough Atlanta tryout and considerable retooling. But it’s the kind that can suck air out of a room all by itself.

A first playwriting effort by Bobby Goldman, widow of stage and screen writer James Goldman (The Lion in Winter), this plotless autobiographical monologue is the precise equivalent of an experience everybody suffers sometime: you’re stuck with that worst-case-scenario stranger who views every social contact as a passive admirer to regale with dazzling banter about their adventures, knowledge, professional stature, and general fabulousness. Yet all you’re hearing is the deafening roar of hot air. Under such circumstances even an elevator ride can seem interminable. Curvy Widow is 90 minutes long.

Shepherd’s "character" (the program leaves no doubt that Goldman "IS The Curvy Widow") is a 57-year-old professional fixer who does everything from choose furniture to chase squirrels out of the house, enabling other rich folk to do zilch for themselves. Her meant-to-be-hilarious dating travails include many descriptions of men who are rude, unattractive, "dumb as posts," or otherwise less than worthy of her. But just what does the widow deserve? Not jury duty, vaginal dryness, or various other complaints that amazingly made it into this revised script. It’s true men get away easier with being pushy and abrasive — they’re "ballsy," not "bitchy." But when women like Goldman and (in interviews) Shepherd celebrate having those qualities as empowerment, are they inverting a stereotype or just making excuses for being spoiled jerks?

There are a handful of funny lines, plus others Shepherd sells as funny. One can’t really blame her mostly awkward performance, Scott Schwartz’s direction, or the ugly physical production for everything else. You want to tell the Curvy Widow, "Shaddap and get a vibrator." But she already has an autopleaser. This play is the ultimate act of self-love.

BRAINPEOPLE

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m. (also Sat/16, 2 p.m.), $12.50–$20.50

Zeum

221 Fourth St., SF

(415) 749-2228

www.act-sf.org

CURVY WIDOW

Through March 9

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m. (also Sat., 3 p.m.); Sun., 3 and 7 p.m.; $50–$75

Post Street Theatre

450 Post, second floor, SF

(415) 771-6900

Your funny Valentines

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s 60 percent embarrassing and 40 percent hot. And the hotness is derived from how embarrassing it is. Or maybe that’s just me."

Talkin’ ’bout Valentine’s Day, the big VD, that bad case of lovin’ you, with a digest-to-impress din-din and a small but meaningful token of my esteem. Specifically, Club Neon organizer Jamie Guzzi, a.k.a. DJ Jamie Jams, is speaking of Club Neon’s fourth annual Valentine’s Underwear Party.

Yep, I know you know good times sans culottes have been happening for aeons — years, even — on a, ahem, more informal basis, way before Fuse TV’s Pants-Off Dance-Off. But guarens, it’ll be way sweeter and sexier at Club Neon: the first year at the Hush Hush, in 2003, "people were pretty tentative, and there were still lurkers," Guzzi says. "When you hear about these sorts of events, it’s more of a creepier crowd. When people first hear about it, they think it’s a Power Exchange or more Burning Man kind of thing — a lot of people you don’t want to see in underwear leering at each other. But this is a more indie crowd, and the kids are all cute and twee, and everyone shows up in American Apparel underwear." At least the clothing company’s soft tease is good for something more than selling terry cloth hot pants: vive le thunderwear as social equalizer!

"When you’ve got a couple hundred people in underwear, it’s pretty hard to front," Guzzi says, explaining that the idea emerged after he got frustrated with kids dressed to the nines vibing one another. The bonus: once stripped down at Club Neon’s key soiree, Guzzi claims, "you end up realizing that a lot of your friends are way cute. It shuffles the deck in terms of who’s attractive!"

And thank St. Valentine for dynamos like Guzzi. Sour grapes, bitter pills, badasses, bummed punks, gloomy goths, and hardcore realists have long realized all holidays have become co-opted as multimillion-dollar promotional vehicles to buy more, by playing off residual guilt, goodwill, or simply that overarching existential emptiness concerning life’s perpetual gerbil wheel. But what if you decide to suspend disbelief and descend into the commercialized maelstrom, mindfully participating in the recommended shopping, wining, and dining rituals? You’re accustomed to rocking outside the system, so what to do with your bad self when you need back in? Still no reservations? I’ve got a few ideas for every subculty cutie.

Indie Rock Ian Grub: fixed with a laid-back bike ride to Bernal Heights’ MaggieMudd for Mallow Out! vegan cones. Gift: an all-show pass to the Noise Pop or Mission Creek music fest or a steamy copy of the baby-making Juno soundtrack.

Hyphy Heather Grub: grind down on maple syrup–braised short ribs at the bupscale 1300 on Fillmore. Or for old times’ sake, snatch Sunday brunch at the latest Powell’s Place in Bayview (2246 Jerrold) now that gospel star Emmitt Powell has been forced to relocate. Gift: she voted for Barack Obama, but today she’ll swoon for Mac Dre’s Pill Clinton (Thizz Ent., 2007).

Metal Sven Grub: pick up a nice red wine and some stinky cheese for a Mountain View Cemetery picnic in Oakland — pretend you’re downing the fresh blood and putrid flesh of virgins. Gift: Santa Cruz combo Decrepit Birth’s Diminishing Between Worlds (Unique Leader) inspires … birth control.

Techno Cal Grub: nibble sour plum, shiso, and flaxseed sushi and other vegan Japanese delights at Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation. Gift: avert your eyes from the Versace boutique on your way outta the Crocker Galleria minimall, and here you go, the Field’s From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt, 2007)

Country Kat Grub: fried rabbit — oh hell, we’re in former cow country, go for the porterhouse at the deliciously ’40s-western retro-authentic Hayward Ranch. Tip the blue-haired waitress well — she’s gotta have the patience of St. Val to deal with you two after your fourth Bloody Mary. Gift: seal the deal with Queen of the Coast (Bear Family, 2007), a four-CD box set of tunes by Bonnie Owens, who stole both Buck Owens’s and Merle Haggard’s hearts.

Jam Band Jessie Grub: grab your nut cream at Café Gratitude and chase each other around the table with wheatgrass shots. New game: if you don’t make me utter the goofy menu item names, I will be grateful. Gift: crash into the Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City Music Hall Blu-ray DVD (Sony, 2007).

So hurry up and give your favorite pop tot some love — or you just might find yourself without on VD.

CLUB NEON’S VALENTINE’S UNDERWEAR PARTY

With DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, Little Melanie, and Aiadan

Thurs/14, 9 p.m., $5

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

www.neonsf.com

LOVE VENUS, LOVE DENGUE FEVER

J’adore Dengue Fever’s new Venus on Earth (M80), and the band provides the perfect post-love-in aperitif with Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. The John Pirozzi documentary on the Los Angeles combo’s trip to Cambodia ended up involving more than anyone anticipated. "Every contact was, like, ‘Don’t worry about anything! Just show up! Everything will be great!’<0x2009>" tour mastermind and bassist Senon Williams explains. "We’d be, like, ‘Where are we playing?’ ‘I don’t know. Just show up!’ So we were all nervous going over there. We had all our instruments, but we needed amplifiers and PAs and a crowd to play to." Fortunately, Dengue Fever were quickly booked to appear on Cambodian Television Network, and a two-song turn mushroomed into 10 numbers and a two-hour appearance. "Instantly, we became famous across the country," Williams tells me, "because everyone watches TV there."

SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE MEKONG

Fri/15, 9:30 p.m.; Sat/16, 12:30 p.m.; $10.50

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Robert Moses Kin’ and Black Choreographers Festival

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PREVIEW In February, as the days start getting longer again, two things come to mind: Black History Month summons deep reflections, and all of that extra light brings the advent of fresh views. In the Bay Area no better example of clear-sighted perspectives can be found than in the work of the Robert Moses’ Kin company and from the codirectors of the fourth Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes and Laura Elaine Ellis. Moses starts his two-week season at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on Feb. 14, while the Barnes-Ellis team is entering its festival’s second half at Project Artaud Theater in San Francisco.

From Moses, be prepared for a smaller company of six dancers performing in a brand-new program that includes three world premieres and a revival of 2007’s Rose (set to Beethoven), which is new to San Francisco. In addition to choreographing, the prodigious Moses also created the score for one of the evening’s pieces, Reflections on an Approaching Thought. In step with the company’s tradition of addressing social issues, the program’s Consent delves into the ethics of medical experimentation on poor people.

The Black Choreographers Festival has scheduled three lineups spanning work representative of the African diaspora — jazz, African, Afro-Brazilian — as well as modern and dance theater. If you have never seen site-specific choreographer Joanna Haigood and her Zaccho Youth Group, from the Bayview neighborhood, don’t miss them on the afternoon of Feb. 17. They are exceptional young artists.

ROBERT MOSES’ KIN Thurs/14–Sat/16 and Feb. 20–23, 8 p.m.; Sun/17 and Feb. 24, 2 p.m.; $23–$26. Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1233, www.jccsf.org

BLACK CHOREOGRAPHERS FESTIVAL Fri/15–Sat/16, 8 p.m.; Sun/17, 3 and 7 p.m.; $10–$20. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. (415) 863-9834, (510) 801-4523, www.bcfhereandnow.com

Uri Caine and Friends

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PREVIEW The versatile jazz pianist Uri Caine has carved a niche for himself as a fearless interpreter of classical music. His discography includes idiosyncratic recordings of music by Mozart, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Mahler, and Wagner. In 2006 he began to investigate Hungarian folk music at the source, delving into Béla Bartók’s original field recordings of village performances, documented on wax cylinders in the early 20th century. While Caine notes that some aspects of the music are tough to translate into Western terms, given the inflection and distinctly unsquare rhythms of traditional dances, the melodic material serves as an ideal springboard for his brand of agile improvisation. For his Feb. 16 performance, Caine and his ensemble visit Hungary’s distant musical territory with no pretension to exact authenticity. It’s a good hook, considering both Caine’s credentials and the local craze for Eastern European traditions, with Balkan brass bands and Roma-inspired DJs abounding. It will be exciting to hear Caine explore this expansive concept with artful and inspired clarinetist Chris Speed and respected long-time contributors to the adventurous downtown New York improvisational scene drummer Jim Black, violinist Joyce Hamman, and bassist John Hebert. Even if their distinctive flavors take a moment to blend, these are the ingredients for a good stew. Caine will round out his visit to the Bay Area with a solo piano performance and discussion at the Community Music Center in the Mission District, free of charge.

URI CAINE Fri/15, 6 p.m., free. Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF. (415) 647-6015, www.sfcmc.org

URI CAINE AND FRIENDS Sat/16, 8 p.m., $27–$39. Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg., 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org

Dub trio

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PREVIEW Let’s say you’re a fan of dub — the remixed reggae subgenre pioneered by the studio experimentalism of King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry — and I say to you, "Hey, come over. You have to hear this new dub CD I’ve got." Excited, but in a laid-back, dubby way, you roll a semistereotypical joint and skate down to my place on a longboard with big, soft wheels, smoking all the way. I throw on Another Sound Is Dying (Ipecac), the new Dub Trio CD. Immediately bombarded by crunchy guitar riffs and a distorted, growling bass line reminiscent of New York noise mavens Unsane, you become confused. Why the fuck is this metal record harshing my mellow?

Dub Trio — three spot-on musicians whose lists of recent session work reads like a who’s who of putf8um hip-hop artists — eventually work island rhythms and delayed reggae riffing into the album, which may or may not bring your buzz back, Smokey. Yet the band is most true to the core idea of dub — the experimental manipulation of sound — in its willingness to destroy it, to go beyond the confines of traditionally dubable reggae material and say, "Fuck it, we can do a dub of this and that too." The trio’s ambition, their sheer steeze to take the chains off the dub aesthetic, makes them fascinating, if not brilliant, and they go from nut-crunching sludge riffs to long, loping chill-outs without flinching. "What the guys in the beginning of dub were doing in the studio, we try to bring that element and re-create that concept live," drummer Joe Tomino said over the phone from New York City.

They stay true to the roots of dub in a wild new way: each band member controls effects for everyone else’s instruments as well as their own. Which means Dub Trio’s 12 Galaxies show will be a must-see: these guys can’t just sleep through the same set every night. They’ve got to be on it, reacting to and changing the music as it’s being made. "It’s a constant way of thinking as one and listening to exactly what’s happening onstage," Tomino said, "so you don’t get in the way of the conversation or dialogue that’s happening."

DUB TRIO With Foreign Island and Hour of Worship. Fri/15, 9 p.m., $12. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. (415) 970-9777, www.12galaxies.com

“Tre”

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REVIEW A semisequel to writer-director Eric Byler’s 2002 debut feature, Charlotte Sometimes, this low-key but quietly devastating relationship meltdown in the mode of Harold Pinter and Neil LaBute is his best work to date. Tre (Daniel Cariaga) is a burly, shaved-headed, aggro personality who burns rubber driving drunk and reckless one night to the Santa Monica Mountains house of longtime bud Gabe (Erik McDowell) and his girlfriend, Kakela (Kimberly-Rose Wolter). On the run from yet another bridge burned, Tre’s irked to find the guesthouse already occupied — by prickly Nina (Alix Koromzay), who has just left her husband. It’s dislike at first sight for the two temporary residents: she’s tightly wound, and he likes to push people’s buttons for the hell of it. Yet in Byler and Wolter’s screenplay, that negative spark doesn’t at all preclude their ending up in bed — it might even hasten the event. Meanwhile, Tre embarks on an even more perverse path, playing on rudderless trust funder Kakela’s self-doubts to seduce her away from the trusting, oblivious Gabe. Does this angry thirtysomething slacker antihero ("I reject the notion that a steady job makes me successful and a college degree makes me smart," he protests) simply see her as another female meal ticket? Is he really interested in her? Or is his agenda some complicated, half-acknowledged result of feelings of resentment and possessiveness toward his best friend? Tense and ambiguous, with sharp character detailing and explanatory background spaces left artfully blank, this is the kind of cunning, sardonic psychological study that pays off in grim affirmation of the worst suspicions about human nature. See it with someone you want to break up with.

TRE Opens Fri/15 at the Four Star Theater. See Movie Clock at sfbg.com

“Lautrec in Leather: Chuck Arnett and the San Francisco Scene”

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REVIEW The clean-cut man in the portrait looks straight ahead with knowing eyes, his leather jacket open — an invitation, perhaps? — revealing a muscular torso and chest, on which is tattooed a purple butterfly. The painting’s mix of leather and a little lace sums up much of the art and life of Chuck Arnett, a habitué and documenter of the leather bar scene during gay liberation’s golden age in the 1960s through the late ’70s.

The majority of Arnett’s work was inspired by and made for the bars and back rooms he frequented. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll are unapologetically front and center, a potent mix reflected in styles that veer wildly from rough sketches of men fucking in bathhouses to carefully executed psychedelic oils. The surviving fragments and photos of Arnett’s large-scale painted murals for the original Stud, the Tool Box, and the Detour — and related ephemera like patchwork wall hangings of tanned scraps instructing "Eat It!" — not only tell the story of Arnett’s transformation from Southern ballet sissy to acid-dropping public-sex advocate but also illustrate the radical changes the gay community underwent between The Wild One (1953), Stonewall, and Harvey Milk’s murder.

Arnett’s national coming-out as a painter arrived when Life included a photograph of his Tool Box mural in its landmark 1964 spread "Homosexuality in America": the bar’s leather-clad denizens mirrored Arnett’s black-and-white swathe of butch fauna. Five years later Arnett would quote himself in a massive Day-Glo mural for the Stud — sadly, reproduced in photo only: a panorama in which Marlon Brando clones warp into a cosmic chessboard dominated by an American Indian and a Sahasrara chakra. In a corner of the piece one surviving component is an appropriately phallic biker, whose badge says what could have served as Arnett’s maxim: "Freak Freely."

LAUTREC IN LEATHER: CHUCK ARNETT AND THE SAN FRANCISCO SCENE Through April 26. Tues.–Sat., 1–5 p.m. GLBT Historical Society, 657 Mission, no. 300, SF. (415) 777-5455, www.glbthistory.org

Shocked, G?

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When I first heard Digital Underground in 1989, via "The Humpty Dance," little did I imagine it would someday fall to me to announce the group’s end. After a 20-year run — including five albums, one EP, one rarities disc, solo albums by Shock-G and Money B, and a helluva lot of touring — DU are calling it quits. Their Feb. 22 show at the Red Devil Lounge may be your last opportunity to see these putf8um Bay Area OGs. You’d be a fool to miss it: their shows are a cut above most live-rap, P-Funk-style fests, driven by Shock’s keyboards and an endless array of MCs, including, at one time, 2pac himself.

"Every group from [Public Enemy] to the Stones has experienced a hiatus, some straight-up fallouts," says Shock, a.k.a. Humpty Hump, on the phone from Los Angeles. "I think we hold the record for longest harmonious run without a breakup. I gave it a loyal 20 years — ya can’t be mad at that."

Despite the lack of internal beef, however, Shock’s decision to disband DU is both personal and artistic. Constant touring, for example, has taken its toll, particularly with the group’s partying reputation.

"The energy was gettin’ bad," Shock concedes. "Both the group and the audience were becoming a bunch of alcoholics. That means it’s time for a break.

"I did several sober shows over the past few years, like 1 in every 10. However, when I suggested this to the band, everyone looked at me like I’m crazy, as if I suggested doing the show naked!"

Even more pressing, however, is Shock’s desire to expand as an artist, musically and otherwise.

"I’ve always wanted to give serious musicianship a shot," he says, "to sit down at the piano like a jazz musician and do complicated arrangements and improvisations with other musicians. But it’s hard to be fully present anywhere when I’m outta town every weekend to do DU shows."

While Shock confirms he has about two albums’ worth of unreleased DU he’ll eventually drop and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a reunion — "Ask me in five years," he says — for now he wants to direct his energies in nonmusical directions.

"I wanna go down to Hollywood and see what it do: voice-overs, comedic acting, films, TV — stuff I never had time for from recording and touring. For the first time since 1987, I have time to commit to something else. I’m excited.

"I used to use George Clinton, Sting, and RZA as my models," he concludes. "Now I plan to be more Ice Cube, more Puffy, more Jamie Foxx, more wherever I wanna be."

DIGITAL UNDERGROUND

Feb. 22, 8 p.m., $20

Red Devil Lounge

1695 Polk, SF

1-866-468-3399

www.reddevillounge.com

Drink, then Swallows

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When Jon Miller was a boy, his parents pulled off an impressive trick: convincing him there was beauty to be found on the New Jersey Turnpike. Wondering, as any hopeful naïf might, about the strange fogs puffing from roadside refineries, the lad was given a celestial explanation. Those were, he was told, cloud machines.

Miller is old enough now to be a bit more suspicious of Garden State industrial output, but that entrancing image gets new life as the title of his second record with Portland, Ore., duo Swallows. The pair, Miller on drums and pal Em Brownlowe covering vocals and guitar, have been honing a sinewy turn on Pacific Northwest alt-rock since 2003. They call it garage pop, but that term feels too claustrophobic, too sweaty for the sound they develop on their Cloud Machines EP (Church of Girl, 2007). The previous Swallows effort, Me with Trees Towering (Cherchez la Femme Projects, 2006), was fairly sludgy, with guitars thrust forward in the mix and Brownlowe’s piercing vocals left to fight it out from the rear. Cloud Machines is no less textural, but it is largely free of such gridlock. Its filthy space is bigger. Put a warehouse or a factory in front of that pop.

But be sure to keep calling it pop. Cloud Machines‘ intrigue stems from the cohabitation it gins up: cheery American melody making keeps its shape amid angular chord charts and sharp vocal tones. On lead track "Anchors," Brownlowe has moments of channeling Patti Smith, but she’s also describing how she’ll kick out the jam: "Start to move your feet / Jon’s gonna find his beat / And it’ll burn the house down." Much like its titular image, which envisions a utopia on dystopia’s home turf, the record gets fantasy and disaffection all mingled up.

I asked Miller and Brownlowe about this, and they confirmed that their songs are meant not just as tracks but as ditties. Brownlowe copped to aiming for "memorable and catchy" music: "stick in your head"–type cuts. But on this point, even the band isn’t sure where the parody ends and the sincerity begins. Brownlowe related how the most sugary track here, "When You’re in Love," initially started as a "mockumentary" dashed off as a joke with her girlfriend. Portland bands, after all, do not sing things like "When you’re in love, nothing else matters / When you’re in love, you smell the flowers." But then she showed the gag to Miller, and "he wanted to write a verse too," she said.

The vocals are key to Swallows’ evolution on Cloud Machines, but equally crucial are Miller’s increasingly adventurous drums. The group’s earlier songs hint at impatience with straight-ahead rock rhythms — both "Words of Love" and "Pulsar Heart Attack" from Me with Trees Towering include unorthodox tom-tom rumbles — and tradition has now been pretty thoroughly dismissed. The beats of Swallows 2.0 almost encroach on world music territory, an effect increased by Miller’s out-of-order kit and unusual tuning. He claims to have copied his intervals from "Three Blind Mice," but whatever manual he’s using, it’s effective. On album closer "Language Is Restless," for example, he uses shifty rhythms to leave the melody unmoored and adrift, cleverly scrambling our wish for a quick fix.

All of this sullied pop got me thinking about another image, complementary to those merry smokestacks, that Brownlowe detailed in an e-mail about Swallows’ early days. When she and Miller first began playing together — in a "dank practice space in the industrial part of Portland run by a crazy alcoholic stoner" — they cut an EP as Dirty Shirley, a reference to the vodka-laced Shirley Temples that fueled the sessions. Other bands just have beers. These two had to spike a nonalcoholic drink.

SWALLOWS

With Agent Ribbons and the Moral Tourists

Feb. 22, 9:30 p.m. doors, $5

Edinburgh Castle Pub

950 Geary, SF

(415) 885-4074

www.castlenews.com

SWALLOWS

With Agent Ribbons and Light Peaks

Feb. 24, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

The return of the return of the DJ

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Born from the ashes of New York hip-hop DJ supergroup the X-ecutioners and from a frustration with the current state of turntablism, Ill Insanity are on a mission to return the art of the DJ to its former glory.

Composed of ex-X-ecutioners Rob Swift and Total Eclipse along with younger inductee DJ Precision, the turntable trio have just released their progressive scratch music debut, Ground Xero, on Fat Beats, which includes among its turntable guests fellow former X man Roc Raida, plus Excess and DJ Q-Bert.

Ill Insanity’s ongoing national tour, which stops in San Francisco on Feb. 21 for a performance and a workshop at Guitar Center and a party-rocking throw-down at Levende Lounge, seems less like a jaunt and more like a crusade to its three impassioned turntable ambassadors.

"This is the beginning of us taking the art form back," Rob Swift said, sounding something like one of the Marvel Comics heroes from which his original group, the X-Men, took their name. "And I feel that we are putting it on our shoulders to show people that this is real creative music. And we are educating people about this art form because it seems to me like no one else is really doing it right now."

Speaking a few weeks ago at Swift’s Queens, NY, apartment, which also serves as the group’s recording studio and rehearsal space, the trio had gathered to mourn what they see as a creative lull in the art of turntablism and to prepare for its pending renaissance.

"Basically we were all bored with music, and that’s what brought us together," Total Eclipse said. All three agreed that for several years now DJ battles, traditionally the barometers gauging the advancement of the turntable art form, have been in a decline. "There has been a really poor attendance at DJ battles for the past five years, especially here in the US," said Precision, the 2007 USA DMC Finals DJ battle champion. "And it’s because the art form has slipped so much."

Part of this artistic stagnation, they believe, is because DJs of recent years have been satisfied with merely imitating instead of trying to innovate. "The younger DJs are too caught up with looking up to what came before, so they stop practicing when they master that trick that QBert or whoever has already done years ago," Swift said, "and consequently now everyone is sounding the same."

Precision jumped in: "And a lot of them don’t even know the complete history of the DJ, like that Steve Dee created beat juggling."

In performance Ill Insanity’s setup includes five turntables, three mixers, and computers to operate the Serato program. "What we are trying to do is to use the new technology without dumbing down the art," Swift insisted. "We have much respect for what came before us, still applying the skills of Grandmaster Flash, party-rocking, and so on…. But we’re saying, ‘Let’s do a 2008 version of what’s already been done in the past.’<0x2009>"

And as for the future of turntablism? Swift is optimistic: "There could be a kind of DJ revolution again. I predict that in a couple of years things will go back to the way they were." (Billy Jam)

ILL INSANITY

Feb. 21, 6 p.m. performance and workshop, free

Guitar Center

1645 Van Ness, SF

(415) 409-0350

www.guitarcenter.com

Love on the road — and on the page

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Dean Wareham mainly remembers his last San Francisco performance for a "botched guitar solo." Though the alleged incident was hardly a blip during the seductive show he and wife Britta Phillips delivered with their band, he promises on the phone from New York City, "It won’t happen again."

We’ll see. Dean and Britta come back to San Francisco to play Yoshi’s with French postmodern chanteuse Keren Ann in the first nonjazz performance at the tony new venue on Fillmore.

Wareham met bassist-vocalist Phillips in 2000 when he was first considering leaving Luna, a band he fronted for 10 years and eight albums. She replaced longtime Luna member Justin Harwood, piquing Wareham’s interest in keeping the group together — at least for a little while.

"I was thinking, ‘I’m just not sure I want to do it without Justin,’" Wareham recalls.

Not only did he feel his longtime friend and bassist’s departure was a sign to move on, but the music business had entered a funk that had the modestly popular but hugely respected band scrambling for a label. Wareham wasn’t really a happy camper.

"Then Britta joined the band, and I have to say if I’m being honest with myself that that made it fun again," he says.

Indeed. The intriguing, siren-voiced Phillips was already something of a cult figure when she joined Luna, having gained notoriety as the singing voice of animated TV character Jem.

Wareham thinks the last two Luna records made with Phillips, Romantica and Rendezvous (Jetset; 2002, 2004), are two of the best from the group, which mainly developed its music together.

"We would be in a rehearsal studio playing electric guitars so it was a louder thing," Wareham says. "Someone would have an idea that we would just play again and again."

Luna played their final concert at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City on Feb. 28, 2005.

In contrast, Dean and Britta make silkier, sexier pop, though their first recording together, 2003’s L’Avventura (Jetset), started as a Wareham solo project that Phillips gradually became a part of. "Neither one of us really knew what we were doing," Wareham explains. "It was going to be all covers and then, bit by bit, sort of transformed into something else." The album encompasses an eclectic batch of songs by other writers — the Doors’ "Indian Summer," Madonna’s "I Deserve It," Buffy St. Marie’s "Moonshot" — but the couple’s intimate sound became defined by Wareham’s "Night Nurse" and two outrageously seductive Phillips originals, "Out Walking" and "Your Baby," as the couple’s vocals purr through floating washes of strings and vibes courtesy of producer Tony Visconti.

Wareham concedes last year’s Back Numbers (Zoe) was more thought-out. "We probably had a better plan, and more of it was recorded at home," he says. "The record was built brick by brick in the studio. Then we have to learn to play the songs live, which makes it quite a challenge, actually." The couple took time to get married when producer Visconti left to work on a Morrissey album in England.

Indie-rock gossip hounds might be interested to know that Wareham and Phillips didn’t become a couple immediately after they met — and they kept it on the down low even after they hooked up. Wareham promises to tell all in his new memoir, Black Postcards, which will be published by Penguin in March. "The dirt is going to be out there soon," he deadpans with a laugh. The frontman seems circumspect in conversation, though he also clearly strives for as much honesty as propriety allows.

"It covers a lot of personal stuff," he adds.

The writing was difficult for Wareham, and he likens the two-year process to a "very long therapy session," albeit one in which they pay you instead of the other way around.

"Obviously I’m used to writing, but when you write lyrics they can be cryptic and you don’t really need to reveal very much of yourself. Sometimes you might, but you can pretend something’s about you or it’s about someone else. This was a different kettle of fish," he says.

He believes people may be surprised by what he chooses to reveal, particularly fans of his first band, Galaxie 500, who thought he was "such a nice boy," as he puts it. "There will probably be some people who are disgusted with my behavior, but," he says, sighing, "oh well."

DEAN AND BRITTA

With Keren Ann

Mon/18, 8 p.m., $18–$22

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

To be, or to be autonauts

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REVIEW Certain travelogues can be likened to love letters to a destination, though rarely does actual romance play a part in their construction. But when acclaimed postmodern Argentine author Julio Cortázar took to the road with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, it was a journey precipitated by mutual fondness as much as a desire for discovery.

In Autonauts of the Cosmoroute (Archipelago Books, 354 pages, $20) an author best known for his nonsequential opus Hopscotch and collections of surreal short stories approaches the task of travel with the same whimsy and contradiction that characterize his literary oeuvre. Setting out on a pseudoscientific expedition to map the freeway between Paris and Marseilles, a distance of approximately 500 miles, Cortázar (nicknamed El Lobo) and the Canadian Dunlop (La Osita) spend a full 33 days en route, confining themselves to two rest stops per day.

Diligently recording their every meal, the time and temperature, and the specifics of local flora and fauna, the two intrepids further intersperse their daily log reports with expository musings on the nature of games, perception, and existence; fictitious letters from a fellow freeway traveler; and sweetly sincere tributes to their May-December romance. From Dunlop: "This genus of wolf is capable of the worst insanities, which are usually the most beautiful." From Cortázar: "My new day, my reason to live a new day."

Whether perused as an exploration of the external world or a map to an interior one, Anne McLean’s translation of Autonauts of the Cosmoroute compels the reader to examine the minutiae of the mundane with the microscope of wonderment. Reveling in inconsistency, El Lobo and La Osita aim not to simply bridge distances but to illuminate them. Their unique approach is perhaps best espoused by Cortázar, who apocryphally quotes another, unnamed metaphysician: "When you concentrate your attention in that gap, in the void between two objects … then at that one moment, you see reality."

Wherefore art thou, Romero?

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On returning to his independent filmmaking roots: When we made [1968’s Night of the Living Dead] we were just a bunch of young people in Pittsburgh. We had a commercial production company, so we had our own equipment, and we audaciously decided that we should go out and make a movie. So the first one was real guerrilla filmmaking — but actually the first five or six films that I made were completely independent. After Dawn of the Dead [1978] we hooked up with a distributor-production company, and they financed us to some bigger budgets. But even those films were independent. There was a period when I was courted by Hollywood and made a couple of studio pictures and was getting very discouraged. Finally, the last zombie film that I made, Land of the Dead [2005], was for Universal. And they really let me alone — they let me make that movie. But it was a grueling process. And I realized, "Man, this is all getting too big. It’s approaching Thunderdome here." I felt this incredible disconnect with the roots, with where it all came from. I really wanted to throttle down and back up and see if I had the energy and the chops to go do another really low-budget film. I needed to revitalize myself.

On the trend of movies using the self-filming technique: I haven’t seen Cloverfield. Redacted, I guess, was similar. Vantage Point I haven’t seen. I thought that we would be the originators of it, but now I guess I have to say we’re part of a trend. I think there’s some kind of collective subconscious — all the world has a camera these days. I think it’s rather obvious for fiction writers, filmmakers, whatever, to take note of that and use it. It’s pretty scary, this blogosphere — man, you just wonder who’s out there throwing up all these ideas.

On finding truth in the media, be it mainstream or underground: To me that’s the argument that’s central to [Diary of the Dead]. When there were three networks, sure, [the news] was all being managed and controlled and spun, no doubt. Now it’s completely unmanaged. And it’s not even necessarily all information — it’s opinions, viewpoints. Anybody could get on there with any kind of an idea and find followers. That’s what spooks me. What would you rather have: it being controlled but not be insightful, or would you rather have this chaos? And I don’t have the answer to that. I almost blame the public more than anybody else for being suckered into it and not bothering to do their own homework. People would rather have somebody tell them the way it is, and go along with it.

On the living dead: The zombies, to me, don’t represent anything except the disaster. They could be a hurricane. They could be an approaching asteroid. My stories have always been about the people and how they respond or fail to respond or respond improperly — and keep trying to preserve the world as they knew it instead of readjusting to whatever these changes are on the planet. The zombies are just zombies. They’re the reason that I can get these movies made. They’re the fun part of it! But to me, they don’t represent anything in particular.

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