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Music Features

Hang on, Ramsey

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Venerable jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis will be 74 in May, but you’d hardly know it from his packed tour schedule and mounting awards. The Chicago native and 2007 NEA Jazz Master honoree hosts a nationally syndicated radio show, has recorded nearly an album a year since 1956 plus tours with his trio, does regular duets with Dave Brubeck, and moonlights as a member of smooth jazz supergroup Urban Knights. But perhaps Lewis’ greatest accomplishment was bringing jazz and pop together in soulful harmony.

Sample libraries and hip-hop production would be diminished were it not for Lewis’ funky covers ("Dear Prudence," "Soul Man," "People Make the World Go Round," "Slipping into Darkness"). Likewise Lewis, whose been playing since age four, has a sense of history: he studied Bach, Beethoven, Hayden, Duke Ellington, and Art Tatum before forming the Cleffs with Eldee Young on bass and Redd Holt on drums, his first of many trio configurations.

As the Ramsey Lewis Trio he scored hits in the mid-1960s on Chess-Cadet label releases like "Wade in the Water," "The In Crowd," and Motown cover "Hang on Sloopy." Lewis did for the piano what Stevie Wonder did for the harmonica, made the instrument swing. He also managed to evolve with the times, switching to Fender electric piano and writing originals like "Uhuru" and "Bold and Black" on 1969’s Another Voyage (Cadet) produced by studio great Charles Stepney. Sun Goddess (Columbia, 1974), which showcases enduring Lewis collaborator Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire on drums and vocals, was rediscovered by DJs decades later and ushered in the early-’90s acid jazz movement.

His most recent recording, 2005’s With One Voice (Narada) includes gospel standard "Oh Happy Day," redone with a house groove, and soulful reggae number "Keep the Spirit." These days bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce fill out the trio, and the group makes an extended stop at Yoshi’s SF, a great prelude to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and Barack Obama’s inauguration.

In 1967 Columbia Records president Clive J. Davis said: "In the next century or so, we may very well no longer draw distinctions between what is ‘jazz,’ what is ‘classical,’ what is ‘progressive,’ ‘rock,’ or ‘soul.’ It may all just be called music, and let it go at that. For it’s all here, in the music that Ramsey makes." Davis’ hope for an end to genre distinctions may not have come to pass yet, but he was right about Lewis, it is all in him.

RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO

Thurs/15–Fri/16, 8 p.m., Sat/17, 8 and 10 p.m., Sun/18, 7 p.m.; $65

Yoshi’s SF

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

sf.yoshis.com

Wise blood

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The only real city within a 1,000-mile radius, Denver perches a full mile above sea level, a windswept plateau superficially blanketed by strip malls, widget manufacturers, and convention centers. Bereft of both cosmopolitan peerage and any truly cohesive sense of cultural identity, the loneliness of the native Denverite is pervasive, haunted, and misunderstood, but not wholly undersung. For within the discomfited bosom of the Centennial State, an entire subgenre of music has continued to flourish — attracting devotees from far beyond the state line.

At the forefront of the Denver sound, even before there was such a term, has been David Eugene Edwards. Formerly a member of the Denver Gentlemen — as was fellow standard-bearer, Slim Cessna — Edwards’ most well-known band, 16 Horsepower, had all the requisite qualities characteristic of the Denver sound: conviction, intensity, and an uncompromising spiritualism that manifested itself in fire-and-brimstone lyricism, American Gothic instrumentation, and the feverish denouncements of a traveling preacher man. It is difficult to speak of Edwards without the specter of 16 Horsepower looming large behind the context, but Edwards’ current band Wovenhand, an entity in progress since 2001, has finally broken away from the tyranny of the past to fully inhabit its own potential with a new album: Ten Stones (Sounds Familyre, 2008).

Ten Stones is as elemental an album as Edwards and present company have ever crafted. From the rock-solid, faith-shaken lament "Not One Stone" to the north wind-inhabited "Kicking Bird" to the curiously moving cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s "Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars)," which sounds as if it had been recorded underwater, almost every song on the album corresponds intriguingly with a companion force of nature. One of the album’s particular surprises, the druggy rocker "White Knuckle Grip," feels like the rising tension of clouds gathering before a particularly fierce Colorado thunderstorm — the kind that splits the sky in two and harks back to the great flood that drowned the world. The album showcases the metamorphosis of the band as a whole from solo side project into a tightly knit collaborative, drawing inspiration from the impassioned religious fervor for the supernatural that characterizes much of the Denver sound, and from a greater reverence for the immutable power of the strictly natural, and of the music that lies buried at the heart of both.

Peter van Laerhoven, Wovenhand’s lead guitarist since 2005, especially comes into his own on Ten Stones. Like a spirited horse finally allowed his head, he rises to the challenge — penning two of the disc’s songs, most notably the aforementioned "Kicking Bird" — and smoothly lending earthy heft to the otherworldly divergences of bandmate Edwards. Stripped of many of the alt-Americana bells and whistles of Edwards’ earlier music, this strong guitar base helps anchor the tunes in a thoroughly modern context, without diminishing the ageless quality of their emotional weight. And while a driven, revival-meeting furor was essential to the development of the original Denver sound, this willingness to encompass other forms of reverence has become its new watchword. Call it a tempering process, or simply call it maturation. The refined blade of Wovenhand may have been forged in the youthful fires of what was once 16 Horsepower, but with a steel all its own, it cuts straight to the bone.

WOVENHAND

Tues/20, 9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

The Funeral Party

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PREVIEW By the late 1990s, the better part of the country had reached a consensus. The whole East Coast vs. West Coast thing had officially run its course and was, decidedly, un-chill. A pimp-stick-wielding Snoop Dogg blowing a gasket at The Source Awards and doing his damndest to incite a riot was one thing. But, once the two most transcendent, brilliant musicians of the generation were murdered in cold blood, America and everyone else involved decided, enough was enough.

Ten years on from Biggie’s death, a new crew of whippersnappers has decided to boil up some East Coast/West Coast beef. Though they aren’t talking about engaging in sexual congress with anyone’s betrothed, Los Angeles dance-punk quartet the Funeral Party is sick of the Big Apple hoarding all the indie cred. On the raging "NYC Moves to the Sound of LA," from their jarring debut EP, Bootleg (Fearless, 2008), the precocious upstarts take aim at the "unoriginal," "contrived" New York City scene. Vocalist Chad Elliot venomously spits, "Stole all of your ideas from other cities<0x2009>/ Things are lookin’ stale<0x2009>/ It’s time to turn around<0x2009>/ New York City loves to mess around with the LA sound!" You hear that, Vampire Weekend? You’re fucking going down!

Only time will tell if this sick burn will plant the seeds of a feud that will dominate the back pages of publications nationwide. If I was a betting man, I’d give the "FP vs. NYC" feud between a 2 percent and .00231 percent chance of captivating America. But I would bet the ranch that the Funeral Party’s arresting brand of punk-based dance-rock — imagine Babyshambles on uppers, jamming with At the Drive-In-era Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Johnny Marr — landing them on the front pages of a few magazines in the coming years. Popscene has a knack for booking artists with solid buzzes before they blow up, so get ready to add the Funeral Party to the list of bands you saw before Carson Daly 2.0 informed America who they were.

THE FUNERAL PARTY Thurs/15, call for time, $8–$10. Popscene, 330 Ritch, SF. (415) 902-3125, www.popscene-sf.com

Inca Ore

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PREVIEW In the liner notes to his Automatic Writing (Lovely Music, 1996), Robert Ashley talks about how he tried to source text for his 1967 opera That Morning Thing by soliciting recordings from his friends narrating, without psychological or moral interpretation, scenes from their life that they’d chosen to keep secret. Describing the results of his survey as "very bad," Ashley decided to synthesize his own text, the result being the viscerally creepy "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon."

The mercurial earth-mother drones of Inca Ore — the solo moniker of Oakland’s Eva Saelens — have, in their blown-out glory, a circuitous sonic relationship with the whining Moog ambience of Ashley’s strangest music, and the raw psychic effects of last year’s Birthday of Bless You (No Fun) are comparable to the composer’s work. Leaping from the absolutely banal to the densely metaphysical, Bless You‘s world is psychology- and morality-free, and when words replace bodiless moans, the effect is evocative, occult, and informed by a slight but potent sense of self-parody. As she declaims through a delay pedal at the conclusion to scrape-scape "Infant Ra": "to all jewels buried in the grass, awake, discovery, in oyster shells!" It’s not a hard world to get sucked into.

INCA ORE With Mangled Bohemians, and the Why Because. Wed/14, 9 p.m., $6.

Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

Beautiful voices

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In the 2005 Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, Bob Dylan noted an era when people desired "beautiful voices over very melodic songs." He referred to the early 1960s and pop balladeers such as Doris Day and Johnny Mathis. But the description fits the current soul scene, too, and its celebration of black — and, increasingly, white — artists with wondrously perfect voices and virtuous, albeit sexually complicated lives. A friend of mine used to call it "church."

If the soul scene resembles a megachurch, then John "Legend" Stephens is its deacon. His rise in the music industry — from backup vocalist on Jay-Z’s "Encore" to flagship artist on Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music imprint — was balanced with a years-long stint as music director at Philadelphia’s Bethel A.M.E. Church. In photos accompanying his 2004 debut Get Lifted (G.O.O.D. Music/Columbia), Legend stood in the aisle of a nondescript church, bathed in sunlight, his hands resting on two adjacent pews. Thematically the album followed Legend’s transformation from hip-hop kid with a roving eye ("She Don’t Have to Know," "Used to Love U," which pays homage to Common’s "I Used to Love H.E.R.") to chastened man trying to save his relationship ("I Can Change," "Ordinary People") and, finally, spiritually and physically devoted lover ("Stay With You," "So High"). He performed these songs with a studious air. His voice alternately massaged and swayed, like an altar boy brushing the dirt off his shoes as he enters.

Legend has moved on to other themes of love and devotion, but the Christian aspects of his music remain. The "church" probably wouldn’t have it any other way. The modern R&B industry resembles the old-school pop industry — before it lapsed into the Madonna/whore syndrome personified by Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus — in its celebration of carefully manicured personalities with stylish (but not too avant-garde) fashion sensibilities and gossipy (but not too slutty) love lives. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with going to church. Still, whether used as a metaphor or visited as a place of worship, a church and its congregation idealize the world around it.

As a result, most soul vocalists sing about love and sex, reducing the vagaries of life to intimate relationships. A few, particularly the great Anthony Hamilton and Raheem DeVaughn, address the black community, the effects of violent crime and rampant poverty, and the idea of working hard for a paycheck and dreaming of better days. But that’s not really Legend’s thing. He imagines as a songwriter and composer in the vein of Quincy Jones and Billy Joel. He cuts a dashing figure on the cover of his 2004 album Once Again (G.O.O.D. Music/Columbia), tinkling a grand piano in the middle of busy New York City streets and spinning light, romantic numbers such as "P.D.A. (We Just Don’t Care)." "Let’s go to the park, I wanna kiss you underneath the stars," he sings in a breezily sultry voice. "Let’s make love."

Much like Burt Bacharach, the old-school mandarin of fluffy Brill Building pop, Legend is an ace craftsman of modern standards. His best songs mix concise and thoughtful lyrics with subtle melodies, expert musicianship, and standout choruses. For his new full-length, Evolver (G.O.O.D. Music/Columbia), he adds "Green Light," a seductive come on buffeted by drum and keyboard programming. "Give me the green light, give me just one night," croons Legend as stray synth melodies pop and sparkle around him. Andre 3000 from OutKast shows up after the second hook, promising to have "you giggling like a piglet / Oh, that’s the ticket / I hope you’re more Anita Baker than Robin Givens."

The cover of Evolver, where Legend poses mysteriously in a Members Only jacket, plays on "Green Light"’s promise that the traditionalist is playing a new game. But, of course, it’s the same tricks. Get Lifted successfully mixed A-list rappers with familiar neo-soul grooves: baby-making music with a contemporary edge. Despite the subtle nods to ’80s babies nostalgia, Legend doesn’t wander too far from that winning formula. Instead, he offers creamy ballads such as "Cross the Line," where he admits, "I don’t want to risk losing everything."

For all the loveliness of Legend’s voice, it would be nice to hear him write more challenging material. Get Lifted drew unpredictable, exciting tension from his classical tendencies and hip-hop’s swagger, but with Evolver he veers dangerously close to blandness. Of course, his "church" probably wouldn’t want it any other way.

Back in 2006, I saw Los Angeles singer-songwriter Esthero open for Legend. Walking on stage barefoot and in loose-fitting clothes, Esthero’s funk jams and earthy Bjork-like trip-pop drew snickers from the audience. She was almost booed off the stage. It took Legend to pacify the old ladies and married couples.

"Hey, do you remember this one?" he teased them, playing a few notes from Jay-Z’s "Encore" and Slum Village’s "Selfish." He sang in fine form that night, and the church was pleased.

JOHN LEGEND

With Estelle

Mon/12, 8 p.m., $50.50–$76.50

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakland

www.apeconcerts.com

3 Inches of Blood

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PREVIEW Keyboard neckties. ‘Ludes. Neck beards. Meerkat racing. The 2005 Dan Alvarez would have told you that all of these things have a better chance at becoming popular with kids than the dork fest that is power metal. This is coming from a guy who spent his formative years listening to groups like Rhapsody, known for their symphonic epics about goblins and dragons and their uncanny ability to induce crippling bouts of prolonged virginity. So you could imagine the 2008 Dan’s surprise when groups like Dragonforce, Dream Evil, and Protest the Hero began headlining shows and moving units with the very same operatic (read: cheesy) vocals and bombastic (read: indulgent) qualities I hold so dear.

One of the undisputed leaders of power metal’s shocking renaissance is Vancouver sextet, 3 Inches of Blood. The armor-wearing, orc crushing — they actually have a song called "Destroy the Orcs" — miscreants craft technically impressive, melodically sophisticated captivating battle anthems. They are led by a twin-vocal attack, highlighted by the aptly named Cam Pipes, who recalls a young Rob Halford and who is seriously into larping. Pipes’ glorious, shrill falsetto is backed by the brutal, guttural barks of second vocalist Jamie Hooper. Though Hooper had to take the year off due to throat problems related to his intense screaming, guitarist Justin Hegberg makes sure the band retains its steel by effectively stepping in for Hooper. The group’s frenetic live shows seem guaranteed to go over well at the metal-friendly Slim’s. Sharpen your broad sword, tap your mana, and get ready for war!


3 INCHES OF BLOOD With Toxic Holocaust and Early Man. Tues/13, 8 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 255-0333, www.slims-sf.com

Funky Meters

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PREVIEW Since we’re dealing with a reunion here, let’s start with what’s missing: the funky Meters are not the same as the original Meters. You might own some records by the plain old Meters, the New Orleans funk unit whose best-known full-lengths are Look-Ka Py Py (Josie, 1969) and Fire on the Bayou (Reprise, 1975). That version of Meters consisted of — in addition to singer-keyboardist Art Neville and bassist George Porter Jr. — guitarist Leo Nocentelli and drummer Joseph Modeliste. The band, which broke up in 1977, reformed in 1989 as the funky Meters, with the latter two original members being replaced, at different points, by Brian Stoltz and Russell Batiste Jr. To make matters more confusing, the original lineup occasionally plays dates as well — thus, the original vs. funky distinction.

Robert Christgau called the Meters "a totally original band," and as usual he’s right: the band’s sound contributed in a big way to the development of funk and was an idiosyncratic voice within it. Fire on the Bayou is probably its most-appreciated album, but even at the height of its power, the group had a funny way of shamelessly accommodating itself to pop formulae without abandoning its uniqueness. This is the kind of outfit self-aware enough to give its disc’s longest and least engaging track the self-deprecating title "Middle of the Road," and yet make the track — whose style presages the smooth jazz radio format — melodically and rhythmically sophisticated enough to maintain your basic attention, because the musicians know that’s all they can ask for. Although Modeliste’s and Nocentelli’s contributions to the Meters were substantial enough to justify being wary of their substitutions in the Funky Meters’ lineup, something in the ensemble’s past behavior indicates they all might be on the same page, with the same doubts, and better — or at least more honest — performers for the experience.

BILL’S BIRTHDAY BASH With funky Meters featuring Cyril Neville, Marcia Ball, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Bonnie Raitt with Hutch Hutchinson. Sat/10, 9 p.m., $50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-TIXS, www.livenation.com

Orgone

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PREVIEW Los Angeles’ Orgone chose its name well: if you have a couple hours to kill, you could do worse than riding the Wikipedia reference trail in the direction of Wilhelm Reich’s concept and its ambitious attempt to link observable events with libidinal energy. What the idea lacks in scientific standing, it makes up for in its ability to st(r)oke the imagination. Orgone’s abbreviated Afrobeat-soul-funk jams might even make a good alternate soundtrack to the orgy of styles, stories, and moods on display in Dušan Makavejev’s W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971). Even though Orgone has nine core members, there’s nothing flabby or random about the ensemble’s sound: Fela Kuti’s fusion of Ghanaian highlife and American funk sets the rules and agenda for the group on tracks like "It’s What You Do," and the playing is tight enough to put accusations of "genre exercise" to bed while brimming with the kind of coherence that might even make something as anarchic as W.R. make sense.

But even when dipping their toe in Afrobeat, Orgone’s overriding ambition clearly points to the soul/funk axis of Otis Redding and the Meters. Next to Antibalas’ jazzy flow, Orgone’s horns seem unable to content themselves with Afrobeat’s long-form, percoutf8g build, eager instead to burst out of the song’s frame. Romantic longing is the locus of this Angeleno nonet’s music, a point that’s unmistakable when vocalist Fanny Franklin steps up to the mic on tracks like "Who Knows Who." In submitting to its influences rather than vying for the romantic notion of the original artist, Orgone humbly hits all the pleasure points strewn across the genres the band venerates. It feels as bright and welcoming as it sounds.

ORGONE With DJ K-OS. Sat/3, 9:30 p.m., $15. Boom Boom Room, 1601 Fillmore, SF. (415) 673-8000, www.boomboomblues.com

Dengue Fever

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PREVIEW Inspiration comes from the strangest of places. It came to organist Ethan Holtzman when he left Los Angeles behind for a six-month journey through Southeast Asia. As he traveled on the back of a pickup truck, his driver was blasting tracks by Cambodian stars of the 1960s and ’70s, many of whom were eventually killed by the Khmer Rouge. Drawn to the slinky, bouncy sounds of legendary artists like Sin Sisamouth, Holtzman returned home, determined to bring the electric style to the west. After recruiting four other LA rockers, including brother and ex-Dieselhed member Zac, to fill out the band, Holtzman knew he needed a vocalist to bring the project to life.

Enter Chhom Nimol. The group met the 29-year-old chanteuse in a nightclub in the little Phnom Penh district of Long Beach and, after much convincing, the Cambodian expat decided to attend a rehearsal. Thus, Dengue Fever was born. While they began as a cover band, reworking songs from Cambodia’s golden era of rock, they soon began writing their own material, first in Nimol’s native Khmer and later in English. Their new material is a compelling mixture of surf, psychedelia, and indie rock, while still remaining deeply rooted in Cambodian pop. Their latest album, Venus on Earth (M80), dispels any last whispers that they’re a novelty group, and displays their continuing maturity and advanced songwriting prowess. Numbers like "Seeing Hands" and "Sober Drivers" tell compelling stories, and employ sweeping melodies, driven by Nimol’s ethereal vocals. In an indie climate sorely lacking in dynamic, trailblazing groups, Dengue Fever breathes fresh, exciting life into a scene in danger of going stale.

RICKSHAW STOP’S FIFTH ANNIVERSARY BASH With Dengue Fever and Goh Nakamura (Fri/2) and the Attachments (Sat/3). Fri/2–Sat/3, 9 p.m., $8 advance. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 235-5718, www.rickshawstop.com

It’s tops

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For more top 10s, see our Year in Music 2008 issue.

JONAS REINHARDT’S TOP 10


1. Droids, Star Peace (Repressed)

2. Steve Moore, Vaalbara (Noiseville)

3. La Düsseldorf, La Düsseldorf (Nova, Water)

4. Cluster US tour

5. Lovefingers.org

6. White Rainbow, "Snake Snacks Brain Tazer Pt2"

7. Richard Pinhas, Singles Collection 1972–1980 (Captain Trip)

8. 88 Boadrum, Aug. 8, ’08

9. Methusalem, Journey into the Unknown (Ariola)

10. B.O.D.Y.H.E.A.T. light show, Nov. 7

MI AMI’S DANIEL MARTIN-MCCORMICK AND DAMON PALERMO’S COMBINED TOP 10


*Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill (Type)

*US Girls, Introducing (Siltbreeze)

*Sugar Minott, Dancehall Showcase Vol. II (Black Roots/Wackies)

*Fripp and Eno, No Pussyfooting (EG)

*Steel an’ Skin, Reggae Is Here Once Again (Em)

*Dam-Funk, "Burgundy City" (Stones Throw)

*Pyha, The Haunted House (Tumult)

*Orchestre Régional De Kayes, The Best of the First Biennale of Arts
and Culture for the Young (Mississippi)

*Various artists, Blackdisco (Blackdisco)

BOMB HIP-HOP’S DAVID PAUL’S TOP 10


1. Grip Grand, Brokelore (Look)

2. Sweatshop Union show at Rickshaw Stop, Sept. 25

3. DJ Zeph and Azeem, On the Rocks mix CD

4. Planet B-Boy DVD (Arts Alliance America)

5. Prince vs. Michael show, Madrone Lounge, Nov. 15

6. Large Professor, Main Source (Gold Dust Media)

7. DJ Agent 86, "The Ultimate" 7-inch (Bomb Hip-Hop)

8. EMC, The Show (M3)

9. DJ Design with Party Arty, "Get on the Floor" single (Look)

10. History of Rap poster

TARTUFI’S TOP 10 OF ’08


*Paper Airplanes, Scandal Scandal Scandal Down in the Wheat Field (self-released)

One of the best albums we have heard in years. Wins Most Mind-Twisting Listen award from Tartufi, which just so happens to be a hairless alpaca.

*Department of Eagles, In Ear Park (4AD)

A lush and weighty release. Wins Best Overall Production award, which just so happens to be a medium-sized bologna.

*Low Red Land, Dog’s Hymns (self-released)

Man, this album is just so freaking good. It is like a chocolate river of dreams wrapped in bacon and covered in Tony Alva. They win Album Most Likely to be Sung at Top of Lungs No Matter Who Is Around award, which just so happens to be Tony Alva wrapped in bacon.

*Deerhoof, Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars)

Awesomely awesome and both classically deery and innovatively hoofy. Wins the award for Longevity, Perseverance, Persistence, Reliability, and Most Rockin’-est, which just so happens to be a completely un-offended Maggie, fresh and new!

*Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

Didn’t want to like this after seeing it more times that we have ever seen anything before, at every Starbucks in the whole universe. Then we took a listen, and it is actually quite good. Wins the Your Albums Will Forever Be in Starbucks (a Blessing and a Curse) award, which just so happens to be a Slip ‘N Slide.

*Musee Mecanique, Hold This Ghost (Frog Stand)

These guys rule live. Wins the Classiest Band in All the Land award, which just so happens to be the option to plate a member of the band in gold.

*Russian Circles, Station (Suicide Squeeze)

A rad album with just the right amount of chunk, noise, pretty, psych, and space. Wins the Most Dreamiest Drummer Ever award, which just so happens to be a date with Lynne!? Weird.

*Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

Admittedly, this album was purchased based upon the cover art alone, but imagine the surprise and blissed-out happiness upon hearing the actual music! Wins the Smoothest Vocals and Best Use of a Drum Machine award, which just so happens to be a tall ship towing a peanut.

*Radiohead, In Rainbows (ATO)

We listened to this a lot while on tour. Like, a lot. Wins the Smarty Pants award and the Duhhhh award, which just so happens to be invisibility cloaks for the whole band. You guys are welcome. We know what it’s like. We are pretty famous, too.

*Vetiver, Thing of the Past (Gnomonsong)

Andy’s voice makes me so happy and his musical choices make me even happier. Wins Best Use of Hats, Beards, and Boots award, which just so happens to be the lemon tree from the back patio at El Rio! You guys sing a cover, and I will sneaky sneak it out the front.

SORCERER’S DANIEL JUDD’S TOP 10


1. Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It (Sony BMG/Columbia)

Heard this while I was record shopping in Chicago. Thought it was a Motown record I had never heard before. Great songs, production, and the singing is excellent.

2. Menahan Street Band, Make the Road by Walking (Daptone)

On Election Day we grabbed fish tacos on Ritch Street and there was a DJ wearing a George Bush mask who was spinning this record on the turntables set up on the sidewalk. The sun was shining, and Obama was about to win — a dawning of a new day.

3. Various artists, Pop Ambient 2008 (Kompakt)

This year’s collection might be my overall favorite.

4. Zo! and Tigallo, Love the 80’s! (Chapter 3hree)

Nice modern R&B versions of the most random ’80s jams. Good for throwing in a mix with the catchy Usher, T-Pain, and R. Kelly jams I also dug on this year.

5. Woolfy at the Elbo Room

A great show from Woolfy at B.O.D.Y.H.E.A.T.’s monthly night. A full band rocking great, slow-burning dance jams.

6. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, US) at the Roxy.

Loved the unreleased music and the glimpses of his creative process.

7. Boom Clap Bachelors, Kort Før Dine Læber (Music for Dreams)

Crazy futuristic electro-soul. One of the dudes is from Owusu and Hannibal, another cool group in this realm.

8. Various artists, Watch How the People Dancing: Unity Sounds from the London Dancehall, 1986–1989 (Honest Jon’s)

Been loving the Casio-fueled insanity, the craziest voices from the singers.

9. Various artists, Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980–1986 (Strut)

The tropical boogie/reggae vibes flow so nicely from this cast of jammers.

10. Hatchback, Colors of the Sun (Lo)

Arpeggios and creamy chord changes.

THE HARBOURS’ MIGUEL ZELAYA’S TOP 10 2008 RELEASES


1. Two Sheds, untitled EP (iTunes)

2. Kelley Stoltz, Circular Sounds (Sub Pop)

3. Uni and the Dig! String Trio, As Gold (self-released)

4. Pillars of Silence, Pillars of Silence (self-released)

5. Michael Zapruder, Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope (SideCho)

6. Land of Talk, Some Are Lakes (Saddle Creek)

7. Radiohead, In Rainbows (ATO)

8. Hayden, In Field and Town (Fat Possum)

9. +/-, Xs on Your Eyes (Absolutely Kosher)

10. The Beach Boys, U.S. Singles: Capitol Years ’62–65 (EMI)

KELLEY STOLTZ’S TOP 10 AND MORE


*Borts Minorts on earth and in concert

A white body suit, a musical instrument made of a ski and bass string, and beautiful dancing gals. Fun SF weirdness without the Burning Man remorse.

*Thee Oh Sees live and The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In (Tomlab)

Really, how many awesome tunes can a human being write?

*The Fresh and Onlys

What a fine group — so fine I started a label, Chuffed, to put out their first single. Where the embers of the Red Crayola and the Elevators’ hash pipe merge with Born to Run muscle.

*The Dirtbombs

Since I toured with them this year I got to see them 53 times, and they were awesome every night — except that first night in Bloomington, Ind., but that was a bummer gig all around. "I Can’t Stop Thinking About It" is the best tune I heard this year.

*Margo Guryan, Take a Picture (Sundazed)

Thanks to Chris at Groove Merchant for hipping me to this. Soft chanteuse-y vocals, booming drums, sitars, and fuzz = awesome pop.

*Beck, "Chemtrails" from Modern Guilt (Interscope)

I just really dig this tune. I like the homemade video for it on YouTube and the conspiracy theories the song alludes to.

*Randy Newman at SFJAZZ fest, playing a solo piano gig, for nearly two hours

Again, how many good songs can one person write — it’s ridiculous!

*Sunday night shows at the Rite Spot

Annie Southworth does a good job booking the place: Colossal Yes, Adam Stephens, Prairie Dog, occasional jazz cats, and the Ramshackle Romeos were my year’s highlights.

*Local bands at SFO

It’s mostly soft ‘n’ gentle pop, classical, or jazz — no Caroliner concerts are planned yet. But wouldn’t a Bart Davenport tune help the Xanax really take the edge off the preflight panic?

*Mon Cousin Belge at Café Du Nord

Somehow MCB unites Antony and Jello Biafra song skills, vocal chords, political proclivities, humor, and pathos into a horrifically scarred Belgian-in-exile crooner to make SF laugh and cry. Jobriath of the now!

*Jeffrey Lewis at Hotel Utah

The best concert I saw all year. The supergenius from your eighth-grade math class returns 20 years later with tunes that mix the Femmes, Jonathan Richman, and James Joyce.

CITAY’S EZRA FEINBERG’S MUSIC OF 2008


*M83, "Kim & Jessie" (Mute)

’80s melancholia with good drum fills.

*The Dry Spells’ "Rhiannon" to be released on Antenna Farm in spring 2009

Much better than the Fleetwood Mac original. No, I am not fucking with you.

*Realizing the Grateful Dead’s "Touch of Grey" (Arista, 1987) is the best aging hippie anthem ever, and feeling like I relate to it, especially because I’m rapidly going gray.

*Tune-yards’ "News" (Marriage)

This is the best unknown band I’ve ever heard, no joke, hands down — you’d be insane not to check it out at tuneyards.com.

*3 Leafs, Space Rock Tulip (self-released)

Amazing SF all-star mostly improv band featuring members of Gong, Tussle, Citay, and others. Epic, spacious, physical, colorful, and powerful, with catchy and fun moments throughout. www.myspace.com/3leafs

*The Botticellis, "The Reviewer" (Antenna Farm)

Total power pop, like the best upbeat Big Star meets the best Cheap Trick. One of my favorite songs of recent memory.

*Tune-yards live in SF and Portland, Maine

Citay played on a bill with Tune-yards in Portland, Maine, and then we set up a show for her here in SF. We promoted the heck out of it, the people came out, and Tune-yards killed. Truly inspiring.

*Vetiver’s cover of "The Swimming Song" (Gnomonsong)

*Half Japanese at the WFMU showcase at SXSW

*Discovering Mastodon, way, way late.

VICE COOLER’S TOP 10 MUSIC RECORDING THINGS


1. Toxic Lipstick, "Thunderdome" (Dual Plover)

This is one of the most fucked-up songs from one of the most fucked-up records in the past 20 years.

2. Deerhoof, current tour clips on YouTube

Since I got their first two records at age 15, Deerhoof has remained one of my favorite bands, and the addition of Ed Rodriguez has pushed them into a new terrain of amazingness.

3. E-40 featuring Lil John, "Turf Drop" (BME/Reprise) and Urxed, Car Clutch, and Soft Circle live at Triple Base

Fucking incredible! And the Triple Base show pretty much made everyone’s "show of the year."

4. Lil Wayne, "A Millie" (Cash Money/Young Money/Universal)

This song completely saves the rest of this half-assed, boring, and otherwise overhyped record.

5. Matmos, Supreme Balloon (Matador)

Dude, they always deliver!

6. Bleachy Bleachy Bleach

It’s sort of like Cobra Killer being thrown into a fryer, but made by super young Bay Area suburban girls whose first "big band" that they got into, at age 14, was Wolf Eyes.

7. Disaster’s LP and Barr’s new songs live

I was lucky enough to see the few performances that he made it to, after he cancelled most of his shows for this year. As far as his alter ego, Disaster, goes — I like it because people think the record player is broken when you listen to the album.

8. The Younger Lovers, Newest Romantic (Retard Disco)

Full disclosure: I recorded four songs on it. This is a band started by a friend I grew up with named Brontez. Highly recommended.

9. Fatal Bazooka, "Parle a Ma" (Warner)

While on tour in France we were tortured by mainstream French radio. Fortunately, this song was a big hit at the time. Thank God we don’t speak much French, because I am 100 percent positive that the lyrics fucking suck.

10. Quintron, Too Thirsty 4 Love (Goner)

The best album cover and best opening song. It’s tragic that bands like My Chemical Romance are so huge and have pushed such genius artists as Quintron and Miss Pussycat into such obscurity.

New Years Eve Parties 2008

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Here’s some rockin’ bottle-pops for your 2k9 hello — followed by some all night dance affairs ….

BUTTHOLE SURFERS


One of the best parts of reading Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life (Little, Brown, 2001) is learning how psychotic the Butthole Surfers actually were. Whether filling an upside-down cymbal with lighter fluid and igniting and playing it or projecting scary-ass surgery footage onto huge smoke machine-generated clouds to terrorize the audience, the Buttholes clearly intended to have everyone walk away from shows with physical or mental wounds congruent to their own self-inflicted ones. By the time Electric Larryland (Capitol, 1996) gave them access to post-Nevermind commercial radio, the Butthole Surfers had transformed into a run-of-the-mill heavy rock unit, saving their perverseness for their lyrics.

But all’s you need to do is backtrack to Locust Abortion Technician (Touch and Go, 1987) to find the group’s secret reverence for classic rock juxtaposed with a not-so-secret love of tripping balls on tracks like the genuinely disturbing "22 Going on 23" and imagine that there was a time when the Butthole Surfers toured with a naked dancer named Ta-Da the Shit Lady but managed to devote enough energy to the whole "music" side of being a band to write something as enduring as the proto-grunge of "Human Cannonball." The group’s more recent output isn’t good, and it goes without saying that the ‘Urfers will never be able to equal the antics of their past. This one is a mixed bag, but I’m guessing that, while Gibby Haynes won’t be regaling us with tales of Chinese men with worms in their urethras, he won’t pull any cutesy "you are loved" Flaming Lips bullshit, either. (Brandon Bussolini)

With Negativland. Dec. 31, 9 p.m., $55. (Also with Fuckemos, Tues/30, 8 p.m., $35). Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com

GEORGE CLINTON AND PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC


"Bow-wow-wow-yippee-yo-yippee-yeh." That was the "Atomic Dog" mantra back in the day when I worked at a mega-music store for minimum wage: it kept us tame, it soothed our frayed nerves, and it never failed to remind all concerned that there was a little dog in me, you, and everybody. Hell, if "Atomic Dog" mastermind George Clinton stopped with just Funkadelic’s Free Your Mind … and Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain (both Westbound, 1970, 1971) many a fan boy and babe would have been satisfied to sing his praises forever more, but nooo, the musical groundbreaker and funk-rock-R&B OG of a dogfather has had more creative lives than a nuclear feline — a good and bad thing, I suppose, in terms of quality control.

Later, I would come to associate Clinton with a tale divulged by a colleague who was once allowed into the icon’s smokin’ sanctum sanctorum — namely a venue bathroom — to, ah, do an interview. This time, however, when the man brings Parliament-Funkadelic to the Warfield for New Year’s Eve, I’ll expect candidate Clinton — settling into his golden years, it appears, with the recent release of his covers album, George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love (Shanachie) — to tear the roof off with a super-stupid rendition of his prescient par-tay anthem "Paint the White House Black." (Kimberly Chun)

With the Greyboy Allstars. Dec. 31, 9 p.m., $79–$89. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-TIXS, www.goldenvoice.com

FANTÔMAS


For all those who don’t want to spend their New Year’s Eves puttin’ the lime in the coconut and twistin’ it all up, General Patton has got you covered. Patton and the melodicidal miscreants of avant-garde metal quartet Fantômas invade the Great American Music Hall on a mission to decimate eardrums and bring aural beasts to life. The San Francisco supergroup — which includes Buzz Osborne of the Melvins, Trevor Dunn, formerly of Mr. Bungle, and Dave Lomabardo of Slayer — formed in 1988, and is Patton’s longest-running project. The resume of the king of musical ADHD reads like an major-indie label discography, but the workaholic always finds time to confound and bludgeon with Fantômas.

The group’s beauty lies in its ravenous experimentation and intensity — and in Osborne’s Don King hair. Over the course of their four LPs, they’ve mix electronic glitches; nonsensical and horrifying utterings; Lombardo’s mind-boggling drum dexterity, which roves from blastbeats to technical jazz; and King Buzzo’s gigantic sludge riffs to create controlled chaos in its most primitive, powerful form. They’ve covered The Godfather (1972), worked with free-jazz sicko John Zorn, and, most of all, done whatever they fucking wanted to. As long as they keep doing that, we’ll keep listening. (Daniel N. Alvarez)

Fantômas’ "The Director’s Cut" with Tipsy and Zach Hill. Dec. 31, 8 p.m., $45. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Here’s a very select blast of bubbly, DJ-driven New Years Eve parties. (Check the Guardian for more as the date approaches.) All events take place Wednesday, Dec. 31 — and those marked "late" go afterhours for your party-hopping pleasure.

Afrolicious


Feel a warm, wet vibe of the new with DJ Sabo of Sol Selectas, residents Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, live percussionists, and hundreds of gyrating lovelies.

10 p.m., $20. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

Bootie Pirate Party


Arrrr — it’s 2k9! Swing from the mashup club’s mizzenmast with Smash-Up Derby live and DJs Adrian and Mysterious D, Party Ben, Dada, and Earworm.

9 p.m.–late, $25 advance. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.bootiesf.com

Booty Call NYE


Drag mother Juanita More, playboy Joshua J., DJ Initials P.B., performer Hoku Mama Swamp, and star photographer Brandon — look smart! — bring all the hot boys together to pop a few corks.

8:30 p.m., Check Web site for price. The Bar, 456 Castro, SF. www.juanitamore.com

Eclectic Fever Masquerade


Shake your feathers and bhangra in the new with the NonStop Bhangra dance troupe, and then get global with Sila and the Afrofunk Experience, Daronda, and DJ Felina.

9 p.m.–late, $55. Gift Center Pavilion, 888 Brannan, SF. www.eclecticfever.com

Imagine


Spundae and Mixed Elements explode with local house heroes Kaskade, Trevor Simpson, and baLi — plus, a jungle room and "shiny confetti rain."

8 p.m., $60 advance. Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF. www.rubyskye.com

Love Unlimited


Almost every fab disco crew — Gemini Disco, DJ Bus Station John, Honey Soundsystem, Ferrari, Beat Electric — comes together for this all-night beat blast with DJ Cosmo Vitelli.

9 p.m., $15 advance. Paradise Lounge, 308 11th St., SF. www.myspace.com/honeysoundsystem

Midnight


Dancehall, reggae, and classic hip-hop go boom with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, Amp Live of Zion I live band Native Elements, Trackademicks, and Jah Warrior Shelter.

9 p.m.–late, $25 advance. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

New Years’ Revolution


Banger, turbocrunk, and electro freaks unite under the sheer speaker-blowing awesomeness of Diplo, Jesse Rose, Ghislain Poirier, Plastician, and hundreds more.

9 p.m.–late, $55 advance. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

Opel: Fire and Light


Wacky, burner-flavored breaks and bass from special guest DJs Lee Coombs and Blende, plus Mephisto Odyssey, Syd Gris + Aaron Jae, Jive, and more from the Opel crew.

9 p.m.–late, $25–<\d>$55. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.opelproductions.com

Reveal


"Reveal your inner light" is the dress code at this glamorous Supperclub affair, with DJ love from Ellen Ferato, Liam Shy, and Michael Anthony — and tons of performers.

8 p.m.–late, $120. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. www.supperclub.com

Sea of Dreams


The immense extravaganza is back, with a full live show by Thievery Corporation, beats whiz Bassnectar, circus stars The Mutaytor, and Brazilian soulsters Boca Do Rio.

9 p.m.–late, $79 advance. Concourse, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.blasthaus.com

Second Sunday NYE


The summer favorite lights up in winter with this special blowout, featuring Chi-Town house god DJ Derrick Carter, local legend DJ Dan, Jay Tripwire, and Sen-Sei.

8 p.m., $40 advance. Mission Rock Cafe, 817 Terry Francois Blvd., SF. www.2ndsunday.com

Temple NYE


Cryogenic fog! Whirling lasers! Sonic Enlightenment! "Optix stimuli!" Oh, and a host of rockin’ techno DJs like Paul Hemming, IQ!, and Ben Tom bring the party knowledge to Temple.

9 p.m., $80. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

Storyville NYE


Poleng Lounge shoots back to its past incarnation with a jazzy house and hip-hop extravaganza. DJs Lady Alma, Mark De Clive Lowe, and Daz-I-Kue take you there.

9 p.m., $25 advance. Poleng Lounge, 1751 Fulton, SF. www.polenglounge.com

Loose canon

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Pet Sounds (Capitol, 1966) not Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol, 1967). For that matter the Plastic Ono Band rather than the Beatles, and Brian Wilson before Paul McCartney. Scott Walker, not Paul Simon. Arthur Russell, not David Byrne — though regards to the Talking Heads. ‘Fraid no Bruce Springsteen but plenty of Neil Young. The Band not … well, Bob Dylan hangs on despite the unfortunate I’m Not There (2007), the seeming party-stopper in a never-ending stream of Dylan books and arcana. Prince, in lieu of Rick James, bitch.

Low-budg bedroom production, not Chinese Democracy (Interscope). Not reggaetón but Krautrock. Not Afro-Cuban but African. Not doo-wop but girl group. Nope to Phil Spector but yes to Lee Hazlewood or, better, Lee "Scratch" Perry. Stock on the Replacements and Hüsker Dü is way down, but Bad Brains and Black Flag shares are up. Sorry, the Who isn’t all right but Zep’s song remains the same. Nevermind Nirvana but hello, Sparks — and no, not Jordin Sparks. And oddly enough, not the Tubes or Huey Lewis and the News, but Journey — and specifically "Don’t Stop Believin’."

Now repeat, twirl around, pat your head whilst rubbing your stomach, click your heels together twice, and commit the aforementioned to memory: this is your new rock canon.

Just trust me on this. I’ve read a lot of music stories and CD reviews in ’08, and since I’m missing the crucial math gene, I can’t quantify the exact number of times the hallowed names of Arthur Russell, Neil Young, or Brian Wilson have been invoked, but believe me, they have, more times than group-think-phobic music writers care to admit. And that’s not to say the artists and recordings these canonical creators have displaced are now worthless: even admitting that a canon (or three or four) exists, let alone articuutf8g one, can be a dicey proposition — whether you’re among lit professors or cruising music crit circles. The very idea evokes exclusivity, hierarchy, neocon grandstanding, worries about exclusion, and allusions to dead white men. "I think most professors would not want to say there’s a canon but if you teach a course on American literature there are still things you want to teach," opined one tenured prof pal. "They’re critical of a canon but they still are creating a canon. It’s very implicit and unconscious in some ways."

Yet anyone who’s cared deeply enough about pop to critique it can’t help but notice the seismic shift in the ’00s — even as the state of criticism seems to wax and wane with the fortunes of a music industry still searching for an uploadable business model; music mags busily folding or scrambling for lifestyle advertising; and newspapers gutting their staffs and substituting arts criticism with reviews wrought by, say, sports copy editors. Meanwhile blogs generate a still-fluid mixture of earnest criticism, bracing truth-telling, and hands-free promotion. A canon — or the very idea of classics and common musical references that all agree on — presupposes a foundation of critical thought, and who can afford to judge amid the hand-wringing desperation of today’s music marketplace?

Who instigated this changing of the guard, this revised rock ‘n’ roll canon? Tastemakers, tastefakers, marketing minons, and branding blowhards? Writers, DJs, musicians, music store staffers, promoters, and Robert "Dean of American Rock Critics" Christgau? All Tomorrow’s Parties, Arthur, Pitchfork, and the Chunklet writers who dreamed up issue 20’s music journalist application form ("Would you admit to not actually being that familiar with your frequent points of reference you name-drop [e.g., Captain Beefheart or Gang of Four]?")? This very humble independently owned, independent-minded rag? We’ll never admit it — because the very notion of forging a new pop canon in this fragmented, un-unified, de-centered vortex of music-making, consumption, and collecting seems utterly ridiculous, if not downright moronic. Yet a generational aesthetic realignment has occurred, and as a wise friend once told me, shift happens.

KIMBERLY CHUN’S VITAMIN-FORTIFIED TOP 10-PLUS


• BEAT SUITE Benga, Diary of an Afro Warrior (Tempa); Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp); Portishead, Third (Mercury/Island)

• EXOTICA Gang Gang Dance, Saint Dymphna (Social Registry); High Places, High Places (Thrill Jockey)

• J-HEAVY Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Recurring Dream and Apocalypse of Darkness (Important); Boris, Smile (Southern Lord)

• LIVE LOVES Fleet Foxes at Bottom of the Hill; High on Fire at Stubb’s; Jonas Reinhardt at Hemlock Tavern; MGMT and Yeasayer at BOH; My Bloody Valentine at the Concourse; Nomo at BOH; Singer at Rickshaw Stop; Stars of the Lid at the Independent

• LOCALS ONLY The Alps, III (Type); Faun Fables, A Table Forgotten (Drag City); Tussle, Cream Cuts (Smalltown Supersound); Dominique Leone, Dominique Leone (Stromland); Mochipet, Microphonepet (Daly City)

• PLEASANT NODS Beach House, Devotion (Carpark); Growing, All the Way (Social Registry); TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope)

• POP NARCOTIC Crystal Stilts, Alight of Night (Slumberland); Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch); Times New Viking, Rip It Off (Matador)

• PSYCHED Guapo, Elixirs (Neurot); Mirror Mirror, The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness (Cochon)

• PUNX Fucked Up,The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)

• YESTERDAYS La Dusseldorf, Viva (Water); Graham Nash, Songs for Beginners (Rhino); Linda Perhacs, Parallelograms (Sunbeam); Rodriguez, Cold Fact (Light in the Attic); Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (Sony)

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Ask a musician

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› johnny@sfbg.com

There is a riddle wrapped in the central enigma of Stephen Kijak’s 2007 film Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. That riddle is Julian Cope. Dozens of musicians, including David Bowie and Brian Eno, listen to the elusive Walker’s music on-camera and testify to its impact. But Cope, who effectively revived Walker’s career and laid the foundation for his current cult legend status by compiling the ultrarare 1981 retrospective, Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker (Zoo), only communicates with Kijak via an e-mail that the filmmaker weaves into the web of commentary. In a movie dedicated to slowly revealing a famously mysterious figure, Cope cameos as an invisible man.

Cope’s role in 30 Century Man got me thinking about his position within popular music, a train of thought that led to the subject of musicians as creators and guardians of musical canons. In the ’80s, I’d bought albums by Cope’s group, the Teardrop Explodes, and early solo recordings such as 1984’s fox-y Fried (Polygram, 1984), where he wears a turtle shell and nothing else on the cover. Some close friends were so devoted to Cope that they named their first son Julian, but my interest in him fizzled. Checking back decades later, I soon realized that through writing, he’d generated new waves of enthusiasm around the "supreme Magic & Power" of Krautrock (via the self-published 1995 tome Krautrocksampler [Head Heritage]) and Japanese psychedelia (via Japrocksampler, published in 2007 by Bloomsbury). His Web site, www.headheritage.co.uk, spotlights a favorite album each month and uses list-making as an opportunity to uncover unique tracks like Bloodrock’s 1970 death-rattle ambulance anthem "D.O.A." — a song one of my high school teachers used to introduce poetry to a class of burnouts.

Deemed a "rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, and poet" by Wikipedia, Cope is likely the most visionary canon creator or canon editor among those musicians given to the practice. The man who once sang a love song to Leila Khaled is now more ambivalent about terrorism — and about Cluster, even if Krautrocksampler helped remake their reputation. But his musical guides might also be sonic versions of the ancient megaliths he’s also studied and written about at length. Before I even began reading Cope’s notes on rock’s various formations, they’d put a spell on me — in other words, they influenced my listening habits. He’s like a benevolent musical version of Dr. Julian Karswell, the rune master in Jacques Tourneur’s 1959 film Night of the Demon.

Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne is a musician-canonist whose aesthetic has fewer aspirations to deep authority than Cope’s, but one that roves more freely. While Devendra Banhart is often credited with the rediscovery of pastoral folk priestess Vashti Bunyan, it was Stanley who first introduced her recordings to new generations: she appears on Dream Babes, Volume 5: Folkrock ‘n’ Faithfull (RPM), a 2003 entry in a ’60s girl-pop series he began in 1994, as well as his 2004 compilation, Gather in the Mushrooms: British Acid-Folk Underground, 1968-1974 (Castle Music). A keen expert regarding cult figures such as Joe Meek, Stanley recently traced Bon Iver’s current fringe hero status back to Thomas Chatterton in a piece for the UK Guardian. Saint Etienne’s revelatory 2004 contribution to the mix series The Trip alone has turned me on to the Left Banke, Gloria Scott’s neglected 1974 disco classic What Am I Gonna Do? (Casablanca, 1974) and its arranger, Gene Page, and Serge Gainsbourg’s 1970 Cannabis soundtrack (Universal, 2003).

The musician as critic, if not canonist, has a long tradition in the United Kingdom: Stanley wrote for Melody Maker before forming Saint Etienne, for example. Cope might be viewed as the butch authorial corollary of Morrissey, who has waved the banner for such alternate history icons as Sparks, Klaus Nomi, and Twinkle, the latter the subject of a Stanley RPM compilation. The rock star- or DJ-as-curator trend also manifests via compilation series such as Fabric and festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties. When My Bloody Valentine curated the 2008 New York installment of ATP, to some degree the musician-as-canonist idea came full circle, as the most evasive band from the mid-to-late-’80s reappeared amid a flurry of reissues from the era. If you’re frozen at the Googleplex crossroads of music circa 2008 and looking for a new old direction, it helps to ask a musician. (Johnny Ray Huston)

JOHNNY RAY HUSTON’S NEW AND REISSUE TOP DOZEN OF 2008 (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)


• Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

• Coconut, Hello Fruity (Allone Co.)

• Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours (Modular)

• El Guincho, Alegranza! (XL/Young Turks)

• Bruce Haack, The Electric Lucifer (Omni Recording) and "Party Machine" and "Icarus" from Haackula! (Omni Recording)

• Tim Hardin, 1 (Water)

• Nite Jewel, Good Evening (Gloriette)

• The Present, World I See (Loaf)

• Michael Rother, Fernwärme, Flammende Herzen, Katzenmusik, and Sterntaler (Water)

• Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me (Audika)

• Various artists, Space Oddities: A Compilation of European Library Grooves from 1975–1984 (Permanent Vacation)

• Ricardo Villalobos, Vasco (Perlon)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Purple canon

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One of the hot discs in Oakland back in 2004 was In Thugz We Trust (Rap-A-Lot/Asylum) by Thug Lordz, a duo of mob music veterans Yukmouth and C-Bo. It was dope but it underscored a problem: all the big Bay-associated artists established careers in the ’90s, before radio play and major label action dried up. During the pre-hyphy drought, it was tough to achieve any fame outside the hood.

Fast-forward to post-hyphy 2008: the canonical list of Bay Area rappers has expanded considerably. Despite receiving no local airplay through an ongoing dispute with KMEL musical director Big Von Johnson and continued hedging by Atlantic to release his album, Mistah FAB managed to dent national consciousness with his hook on Snoop’s single "Life of Da Party." The increasing clout of SF independent label SMC raised newer acts Beeda Weeda and J-Stalin to the regional stardom necessary to go further. Winner of the Guardian‘s reader choice poll for hip-hop, Beeda had one of the most successful discs of the year with Da Thizzness, while Stalin’s Gas Nation topped the rap best-seller list at Rasputin Music the week of its release, Sept. 23. Other acts like Eddi Projex have cracked the airwaves to remain hot, while the Jacka — whose career began at the tail end of the ’90s as a member of C-Bo’s Mob Figaz — had the biggest local single of the year, "All Over Me," from his highly anticipated album Tear Gas, due in March.

The older acts haven’t disappeared, however, as witnessed by new discs from San Quinn and E-40. A notable development of the past two years has been the solo career of former Delinquent G-Stack. Taking a page from Mac Dre’s book, Stack has developed new personae like Purple Mane and George W. Kush to release four purple-themed compilations, plus a solo EP, preparatory to his SMC full-length, Dr. Purp Thumb, slotted for February. Along the way, he’s begun developing newer acts like Deev Da Greed, a co-owner of Stack’s 4 the Streets Entertainment and, along with Qoolceo and Tay Peezy, a member of the HEEM Team.

"I can rap but that wasn’t my dream," Deev confesses at the Grill studio in Emeryville. "When we opened the label, I was in the lab [the studio] a bunch, so I was, like, let me do a verse." Despite these casual origins, Deev acquired serious buzz this year with his effortless flow — he just floats over any beat — and clever wordplay, co-signing Stack’s fourth comp, Abraham Reekin (4 the Streets).

The accidental rise of Deev illustrates the difference four years has made. The glacial pace of change during the pre-hyphy period has become torrential as fresh acts like Stevie Jo, Philthy Rich, and Yung Moses continue to bubble to the surface. This is partly technological — the fruit of a Pro Tools and YouTube generation — but it’s also inspirational. Unlike the first half of this decade, there’s a place to rise to. The prospect of attaining fame as a Bay Area rapper is still unreasonably difficult, but FAB and others have at least proved the prospect still exists. (Garrett Caples)

GARRETT CAPLES’ TOP 10


1. J-Stalin, Gas Nation (Livewire/Thizz/SMC)

2. Beeda Weeda, Da Thizzness (PTB/Thizz/SMC)

3. G-Stack, My Purple Chronicles (4 the Streets)

4. The Jacka, Fed-X, and AP.9, Mob Trial III (Sumo)

5. Mistah FAB, Playtime Is Over (Demolition Men)

6. Shady Nate, The Graveyard Shift (Demolition Men)

7. G-Stack and Deev Da Greed, Abraham Reekin (4 the Streets)

8. Livewire Da Gang, Pay Ya’self or Spray Ya’self (Livewire)

9. Ise Lyfe, The Prince Cometh (7even89ine)

10. San Quinn, From a Boy to a Man (Done Deal/SMC)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Tops in 2008

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TOMAS PALERMO’S TOP DANCEHALL AND REGGAE ARTISTS 2008


This year saw American pop (Rhianna, Kardinal Offishall, and Sean Kingston) broadly embracing Jamaican music. Likewise, Jamaican artists emulated, covered, and incorporated American pop and R&B motifs more than ever. The trend in JA was toward hot singles over hot albums, while dozens of new artists broke out. Women in particular had a massive resurgence in reggae (Queen Ifrica, Etana, Cherine Anderson) and dancehall (Tifa, Timberly, D’Angel, Tami Chynn). Money — having it, making it, spending it — was the most prevalent song topic. Here are six categories of reggae artists who made as big an impact on music as Jamaican athletes did on the track in Beijing.

TOP DAWGS Dancehall chart-toppers included Mavado, Vybz Kartel, Beenie Man, Elephant Man, and Busy Signal.

ROOTS REFRESHERS Taj Weekes, Dwayne Stephenson, Morgan Heritage, Pressure, and Tarrus Riley enlivened one-drop traditional reggae.

LADIES IN CHARGE Women charged the charts, including Spice, Tifa, Natalie Storm, Timberlee, Pompatay, D’Angel, Etana, and Queen Ifrica.

CATCHING FIRE Newcomers galore emerged, like Bugle, Serani, Demarco, Erup, Black Ryno, and Konshens.

SOLID AS A ROCK Veterans who didn’t let us down included Beres Hammond, Tony Rebel, Jah Cure, Mr. Vegas, and Junior Reid, as well as Damien and Steven Marley.

POP GOES REGGAE These reggae/pop/R&B combinations and remixes made us smile: Estelle/Sean Paul, Jazmine Sullivan, John Legend/Buju Banton, plus French roots-boots remixes of Mary J. Blige, Lil Wayne, Nas, and Motown.

WOODEN SHJIPS’ TOP 10 (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)


•Art Lessing, Sleeping Ghost (An Electric Eggplant)

•Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps), Games for Slaves (Siltbreeze)

•Endless Boogie, Focus Level (No Quarter)

•Expo 70 and Rahdunes’s split-LP (Kill Shaman)

•Fabulous Diamonds, Fabulous Diamonds (Siltbreeze)

•Los Llamarada, Take the Sky (S-S)

•Nothing People, Anonymous (S-S)

•Sic Alps, US EZ (Siltbreeze)

•Suicide, Live 1977–1978 (Blast First)

•Times New Viking, Rip It Off (Matador)

GEORGE CHEN’S DISORDERLY 10


•Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type)

•Krallice, Krallice (Profound Lore)

•Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom and Black Wooden Ceiling Opening (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

•Ecstatic Sunshine live

•Prurient live

•Bulbs, Light Ships (Freedom to Spend)

•Mincemeat or Tenspeed in a cave

•Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons (Constellation)

•Pukers cassette

BEN RICHARDSON’S "BEVY OF HEAVY" TOP 10 METAL ALBUMS


•Testament, The Formation of Damnation (Nuclear Blast)

•Gama Bomb, Citizen Brain (Earache)

•Bloodbath, The Fathomless Mastery (Peaceville)

•Cannabis Corpse, Tube of the Resinated (Forcefield/Robotic Empire)

•Hail of Bullets, …of Frost and War (Metal Blade)

•Bison B.C., Quiet Earth (Metal Blade)

•Grand Magus, Iron Will (Rise Above/Candlelight)

•Jucifer, L’Autrichienne (Relapse)

•Gojira, The Way of All Flesh (Prosthetic)

•Enslaved, Vertebrae (Indie)

DJ AMPLIVE’S TOP 10


1. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular (Sony)

2. Zion-I, "Juicy Juice" (Gold Dust)

3. Grouch, Show You the World (Legendary Music)

4. Weezer, "Pork and Beans" (Geffen)

5. Santogold, Santogold (Downtown/Atlantic)

6. The Foals, Antidotes (Sub Pop)

7. T-Pain, "Chopped ‘N Skrewed" (Jive)

8. Tapes ‘N Tapes "The Dirty Dirty (Recession Remixes)"

9. Jamie Lidell, Jim (Warp)

10. Hottub, "Man Bitch" (LeHeat)

THEO SCHELL-LAMBERT’S TOP 10 OF ’08


10. The Kills, Midnight Boom (Domino)

Hince and Mosshart’s latest was forceful and impressively consistent, which, yes, meant it was professional, and which, no, didn’t mean it was soulless. The pair spotted the rhythmic snap and hypnotism in ’60s playground sing-alongs. Working with these features instead of nostalgia or camp, they had the basis for a percussion-driven ’00s rock.

9. Steinski, What Does It All Mean? 1983–2006 Retrospective (Illegal Art)

Steve Stein’s influential ’80s tracks were extreme hip-hop: not only any song, but any sound that society had made could be sampled and woven into his boom-box fabrics. Of course, this made for legal nightmares. In 2008, we got the gift of a straightforward packaging.

8. Benga, Diary of an Afro Warrior (Tempa)

The Croydon dubstep man shoved the movement forward with Warrior, but he played it as a nudge. An eclectic, graceful, and terrifically undogmatic outing, it seemed to stroll along the Thames, picking up a new rhythm in each neighborhood. Through that, it remained fierce.

7. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)

When you head off to the cabin in the woods to record your masterpiece, it doesn’t tend to work out well. You realize the woods are cold and boring, and that you are missing some helpful equipment. Justin Vernon’s excursion into the Wisconsin snow should inspire a new crop of such failures, because it polishes the myth. In its austerity and bone-cooling effect, Emma recalls a more focused Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

6. The Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch)

In 2008, soaking an indie album in Jesus and Mary Chain noise was about as original as what Bon Iver did (see above). Yet it too worked. Critically, Stephin Merritt never let his latest become a disc about texture: he knew that the key to noise pop is the pop. And Distortion delights in the girl-group drums and pert melodies while dramatically cringing at the feedback it pretends is just part of every record. "Drive on, Driver" is more indebted to Fleetwood Mac than anyone else.

5. Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (Lost Highway)

We extend the same sort of charity to Lucinda Williams as we do Chan Marshall — we just really want those gals to be in a happy place. For the first time in a while, Lucinda cut a studio set with optimistic poetry, and Honey not only warmed anyone who got close to Essence or West (both Lost Highway; 2001, 2007), it even matched the elegance of those discs — and with a way juicier palette.

4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL)

The culture-jamming ("Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa") wasn’t as deeply meaningful as some held, but the light touch with which it arrived made the record a bit of a marvel. It was sweet, it was for parties, and it had nothing to do with Paul Simon. And the lyrics cribbed from freshman classes at Columbia were remarkably workable and unsophomoric.

3. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Cash Money)

Wayne has a monopoly on ink. What doesn’t make it onto his neck goes into his paeans. Both outlets — the tats, the praise — can seem excessive, but the latter just keeps on being reasonable. Wayne is the rapper as post-rapper, deliciously self-aware. Rapping is a funny thing to do, and rap albums are increasingly funny things to make. He’s getting inside it: looking with awe at that thing he just said, then riffing off it, then riffing off that, wheezing and grunting until his syllables morph, and enjoying himself.

2. Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

The Baltimore pair found a sound on their debut. On their second record, they improved it and grew into it. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally seemed to be operating in some last outpost of melody, where tart country-pop hooks could be heard in a final, furry form before they collapsed. That made Devotion both comforting and lonely.

1. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)

For starters, DBT are shaping up as their generation’s premier bards of booze. When not singing mid-bender, they’re suffering through the aftermath or plotting the next go-round. What that really means is that their songs teeter powerfully between the concomitant bitterness and shame. The 19-song Creation was built to have room for all the less proud emotions.

Honorable mentions: Lykke Li, Youth Novels (LL); White Hinterland, Phylactery Factory (Dead Oceans); Kathleen Edwards, Asking for Flowers (Rounder); James Pants, Welcome (Stones Throw); Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

THE FUCKING CHAMPS’ TIM SOETE’S TOP 10 2008 RELEASES


1. Various artists, Obsession (Bully)

2. Kurt Vile, Constant Hitmaker (Gulcher)

3. Jonas Reinhardt, Jonas Reinhardt (Kranky)

4. Ariel Pink, Oddities Sodomies Vol. 1 (Vinyl International)

5. Lindstrom, Where You Go, I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound)

6. Bum Kon, Drunken Sex Sucks (Smooch/Maximum Rocknroll)

7. La Dusseldorf, Viva (Water)

8. John Maus, Love Is Real (Upset the Rhythm)

9. RTX, JJ Got Live RaTX (Drag City)

10. Sic Alps, US EZ (Siltbreeze)

CHRIS SABBATH’S TOP 10


1. Godwaffle Noise Pancakes

A cluster of floor-crouching noiseniks + a heaping helping of syrupy waffles hot off the griddle = a great way to kill two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

2. Beth from Times New Viking tells me outside the Great American Music Hall that she likes my cat sweatshirt: And according to her, she only gives out one sweatshirt compliment per year — oh, snap!

3. Spire Live, Fundamentalis (Autofact/Touch)

Dynamite double LP compilation of live recordings dubbed in various European cathedrals from the likes of Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz, BJNilsen, and more.

4. Eat Skull, Sick to Death (Siltbreeze)

Hurrah to the Philadelphia noise imprint for releasing this gem of a debut.

5. Kevin Drumm, Imperial Distortion (Hospital)

The Chicago native once again falls head over heels for the drone.

6. Wavves, Wavves (Woodsist)

I love this kid! Bedroom-spun beach punk in the vain of Beat Happening and the Embarrassment.

7. Common Eider, King Eider, Figs, Wasps, and Monotremes (Root Strata)

If I could fork a Goldie over to Rob Fisk for every time this album made its way through my stereo speakers, he would have a lot of Goldies.

8. Excepter, Debt Dept (Paw Tracks)

The Brooklyn electronic performance troupe sings about burgers, sunrises, and killing people on its new disc.

9. Blank Dogs, On Two Sides (Troubleman Unlimited)

New-wave synths soiled in grime, decayed vocals, and tape hiss galore from this prolific newbie.

10. John Wiese at the Lipo Lounge

Sounded like chunks of metal swelling to the size of balloons and then bursting into my chest for 10 awesome minutes.

PETER NICHOLSON’S TOP 10 TUNES TO DANCE AWAY THE HEARTACHE


1. Yellowtail featuring Alison Crockett, "You Feel Me" (Bagpak)

2. Dave Aju, "Crazy Place" (Circus Company)

3. Jazzanova featuring Randolph, "Let Me Show Ya (Henrik Schwarz Remix)" (Sonar Kollektiv)

4. Grace Jones, "La Vie en Rose (Casinoboy Version)" (Trackybottoms)

5. Mike Monday, "The 11 11" (Om)

6. Recloose, "Catch a Leaf" (Loop Sounds)

7. La Vida Buena, "Humanidad" (Amalgama)

8. Sebo K, "Too Hot" (Mobilee)

9. Art Bleek, "Modern Spaces" (Connaisseur)

10. Jimpster, "Dangly Panther" (Freerange)

IRWIN SWIRNOFF’S FAVORITE RECORDS AND MUSICAL MOMENTS OF 2008


•John Maus, Love Is Real (Upset the Rhythm)

•Hercules and Love Affair (DFA) and at Mezzanine

•Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt.1: 4th World War (Motown)

•Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch)

•Stereolab, Chemical Chords (4AD)

•White Magic, New Egypt (Latitudes)

•Cluster at Aquarius Records and the Boredoms at the Fillmore

•My Bloody Valentine at the Concourse

•Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp)

•Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type)

I can’t not mention: Sparks, Exotic Creatures of the Deep (Lil Beethoven); Beach House, Devotion (Carpark); Cut Copy, In Ghost Colors (Modular Interscope); Nagisa Ni Te, Yosuga (Jagjaguwar); the Alps, III (Type); Paavoharju, Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal); Antony and the Johnsons, Another World (Secretly Canadian).

ERIK MORSE’S TOP RECORDS OF 2008


•Gas, Nah und Fern (Kompakt)

•Fennesz, Black Sea (Touch)

•Mavis Staple, Live: Hope at the Hideout (Anti-)

•Various artists, Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records’ Story (Big Beat)

•Abdel Hadi Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers, Abdel Hadi Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers (Honest Jon’s)

•Skyphone, Avellaneda (Rune Grammofon)

•Autechre, Quaristice (Warp)

•Susanna, Flowers of Evil (Rune Grammofon)

•Raymond Scott Quintette, Ectoplasm (Basta)

•The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement (Domino)

•Tape, Luminarium (Hapna)

•Al Green, Lay It Down (Blue Note)

•Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

TWO GALLANTS’ TOP 10 OF 2008


•Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

•Various artists, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days (Dust to Digital)

•Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue: The Authorized Biography by Robert Scotto (Process, 2007)

•Barack Obama

•Blitzen Trapper, Furr (Sub Pop)

•What It Is: What It Is by Paul G. Maziar and Matt Maust (Write Bloody)

•Various artists, Eccentric Soul: Trager and Note Labels (Numero)

•Immortal Technique, The 3rd World (Viper)

•Grayceon, The Grand Show (Vendlus)

Two Gallants perform Dec. 26, 8 p.m., at the Fillmore. www.twogallants.com

DEERHOOF’S ED RODRIGUEZ’S TOP 10 THINGS OF A MUSICAL NATURE 2008


• I Got the Feelin’, James Brown in the ’60s DVD (Shout! Factory)

It will remind you why you decided to play music in the first place. If you don’t play music then it will make you want to start.

• Silentist, Silentist (Celestial Gang)

Mark Burden always keeps me interested. Nancarrow or Reich with blast beats.

• Over the course of more than two months of touring I saw and got to know several bands that were new to me. Coconut, Experimental Dental School, Parenthetical Girls, Flying, and so many more. I can’t remember ever getting to see so much inspiring music made by so many creative, energetic, and completely fun people.

• Weasel Walter, solo, duos, trios, and on and on

No matter what the setting, he pushes the situation further with his drive, talent, and humor (all of which are refreshing and needed in the improvised music scene).

• Bronze

Nominated for the best act of commitment that didn’t involve self-mutilation. All in unison, shaving their heads onstage and then revealing perfect Marine dress uniforms under their smocks. They looked so good it inadvertently might have been the best recruiting campaign since Kid Rock and NASCAR teamed up to con kids across the US.

• Death Sentence: Panda! and …

• Burmese

I went to every show of both these bands over the year whenever I was in town. Without fail I would be deaf, destroyed, and smiling, or dancing, laughing, and smiling. Check them out to match those descriptions to the correct band!

• Earth, Wind and Fire: In Concert DVD (Geneon, 2000)

I work at Lost Weekend Video, so I watch more new music DVDs more often than I get new CDs. But maybe you’ll do the same after watching this bass player do high kicks for an hour and not miss a note.

• Touring with old friends KIT and Hawnay Troof. Watching Vice Cooler get a bunch of crossed-armed kids dancing, cause bartenders to leave their posts to run to the stage and move, and VC almost break his neck jumping off monitors all in single-digit minutes. With KIT, add in the insane attack of Steve, the bouncing energy of Kristy, and the apologetic guitar soloing of George Chen, and try not to beam.

• Joining Deerhoof! Getting to spend so much time of 2008 with John, Greg, and Satomi has made this year feel like no other.

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Youthquake

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Wooo! Wooooo! No, I’m not a giant faggotty owl. I’m the ghost of recent San Francisco underground dance floors past — equally faggotty — and I controool you. Or at least I did, until that brazen neon bitch from American Apparel showed up on the 2k8 guest list, with his matte lamé leggings, Adderall diet, Marvel comics mask, baile funk BFF, and Ableton plug-ins.

Gurl, I got caught with my ZOMGs down, and it was total fap fap fap.

For more than a decade, I fierce ruled the insular world of club tunes, dividing them up into techno, house, and hip-hop, with some occasional ’80s nostalgia on the side. I froze all dance genres in the booty-phat ’90s with my snap-hand, casting off up-and-comers with a haughty high-hat spray of laughs. Breakbeats? Electroclash? IDM? Nu-rave? Trance? Specter, please. Passing fancies, they all got swallowed up with ghostly ease. Despite my aging denizens — no more backflips at the breakdowns, no more weekend trips to Body and Soul in NYC, a lazy wash of Rihanna remixes and Mary J. mash-ups — I held all the club cards, and it felt mighty real.

I just never thought the children would use my own tools to destroy me.

Sure, I peeped those Misshapen mid-aughts electro youngsters at the fringes, flashing their disabled glasses and pajama-like outerwear on Lastnightsparty, snapping up Justice remixes on BIGSTEREO, laughing along with Hipster Runoff. And, yeah, I knew that high-school crunkers fetishized "da club"; that feisty programmers refreshed techno; that global styles stewed together in dubstep; that iDJs resurrected ancient categories like grunge and hair metal, irony slowly melting into earnestness.

But all that was old news, relying on even older genres — I mean, electro’s like from what, 1972? — and most of those darned kids, I figured, would end up directly beamed into MySpace, never setting a single fluorescent Nike onto me. The few who found their way to the "real" underground — my underground, with my same five goddamned DJs — would still have to bow down before me.

Oh, how wrong I was. I never opened up to any of the newer energies — I was afraid, I got petrified — despite their thrilling old-school affinity, preferring to keep my exhausted thralls lockstep in an endless search for purity, the enslaving chimera of "authenticity."

"Fuck that," said the children, and exploded. This year, especially, the local scene saw an infusion of youth like it hasn’t seen since rave. And like rave, there’s just no stopping the march of the Smurfs — with more to come, if the wide-eyed, underage flood at LoveFest was any indication. Everything’s escaping my control! Lazer bass! Bloody Beetroots remixes! Banger freaks! Electro-cumbia! Disco perversion!

I’d blame the hipsters, except I helped create them, d’oh. And even if, in this onslaught of danceable enthusiasm, some of that old underground feeling seems to be lost — the yearning for an inverted hierarchy to escape the real world, the notion of a special dance floor family — it’s still kind of thrilling. Maybe I, the ghostess with the mostest, should float down from my high horse and show the new gen how to dance properly.

MARKE B.’S TOP 10 EARWORMS OF 2008

Frankmusik, "3 Little Words" (Island Music)

Ane Brun, "Headphone Silence (Henrik Schwarz Remix — Dixon Edit)" (Objektivity)

Clubfeet, "Die Yuppie Scum" and Gold on Gold (both Plant Music)

Mark E., "Slave 1" (Running Back)

Foals, "Olympic Airways," Antidotes (Sub Pop)

SIS, "Nesrib" (Cecille)

Buraka Som Sistema, "Sound of Kuduro" (Modular)

The Golden Filter, "Hide Me" (Dummy)

The Very Best, "Sister Betina," Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are the Very Best mixtape

The Notwist, "Boneless," The Devil, You + Me (Domino)

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Hater aid

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When I saw the promo blurb for rock critic Dave Thompson’s new book I Hate New Music (Backbeat) a couple of months ago, I figured I’d found a kindred spirit — someone who could explain once and for all why U2 and the Foo Fighters were evil, Radiohead was hopelessly overrated, and the Kings of Leon or whoever were irrelevant. Someone who could articulate why even a bad Humble Pie or Thin Lizzy album — you know, like Renegade (Warner Bros., 1981) — is likely to be more memorable and entertaining than this week’s featured review on Pitchfork. (By the way, I just checked, and right now, it’s the new album by the Killers. I’ll take my creaky cassette of Humble Pie’s Smokin [A&M, 1972] over them any day.)

Well, for all its potential, I Hate New Music reads less like a searing manifesto and more like a batch of shoot-from-the-hip essays on assorted classic-rock topics: the double album, Queen, 8-tracks, the double live album, and so on. Only briefly does he touch on some of the more distressing trends that have taken hold over the last decade or so, like the impact of Pro Tools, which allows home-studio mavens to polish turds as convincingly as major-label artists. Or the simultaneous rise of online music distribution and the sad, slow demise of the local record store. Releasing music is now easier than ever. Getting paid for it or, if you’re a listener, wading through it all is harder. Actually, it’s impossible. (It doesn’t help that I’m currently living in Indiana, where it’s still 2002.)

I don’t want to hate new music, and though I may be crotchety beyond my years, I really don’t hate it. Not all of it. I was genuinely excited by all the albums on my humble year-end list — and a handful more that didn’t fit. And in an encouraging trend, only two of those entries are reissues. It’s just that I don’t care if music is actually new or just new to me, and there’s always going to be more of the latter. I finally got the American Music Club this year, which happened to have an excellent new disc. But I also finally got, or discovered, Lee Perry’s, Omar Khorshid’s, and Peter Laughner’s solo recordings, a slew of weird CD-Rs on the barely legal (or not) Dolor Del Estamago label, and the deluxe reissue of the Allman Brothers’ 1972 double-album Eat a Peach (Mercury). These things excited me as much as anything with "2008" stamped on the back.

Anyway, while I disagree with Thompson that rock died in 1976, I do agree it’s getting harder to weed out the survivors.

WILL YORK’S TOP 10


1. Various artists, Always Something There: A Burt Bacharach Collectors’ Anthology 1952-1969 (Ace)

2. Joe E., Love Got in My Way (Eabla)

3. Outlaw Order, Dragging down the Enforcer (Season of Mist)

4. American Music Club, The Golden Age (Merge)

5. Bohren and der Club of Gore, Dolores (Play It Again, Sam/Ipecac)

6. GridLink, Amber Grey (Hydra Head)

7. Soilent Green, Inevitable Collapse in the Presence of Conviction (Metal Blade)

8. Nadja, Desire in Uneasiness (Crucial Blast)

9. Esoteric, The Maniacal Vale (Season of Mist)

10. Singer, Unhistories (Drag City)

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Hungry for Lee Hazlewood

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Imposing baritones, orchestral sweeps, and curious couplings of drama and whimsy — honestly, could we ask for better components to soundtrack a year of such 11th-hour intensity, a year of struggle and strife and the unspeakably surreal, mercifully offset by glimmers of giddiness at the prospect of something altogether new? The gift of hope delivered to us on Nov. 4 was a lovely early Christmas treat, but let’s face it: all of that waiting made 2008 a year of epic proportions. How fitting, then, that I ticked off the months with a steady stereo stream of theatrics, and that guiding most of them was the spirit of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugee who subverted pop music by embracing the machine while still trying to tear it down and start anew. The godfather of cowboy psychedelia, the architect of the saccharine underground, the original pop iconoclast himself: Lee Hazlewood.

Hazlewood’s greatest gift — both as a solo artist and as the cranky-baritoned foil to the sugary Nancy Sinatra — was his ability to take the supposedly disparate genres of pop, country, and lounge music and rub them against one another to riveting, highly cinematic effect. Heaped in heavy echo and bolstered by gushing string arrangements, delivered with the skill of a raconteur and bristling with unexpected juxtapositions, his music remains as head-swimmingly oddball as ever.

This year saw the return of three leading carriers of Hazlewood’s quixotic torch. Lambchop’s OH (Ohio) (Merge) offers more cryptic, disheveled elegance from the Nashville band, while the twisted lounge and heavy-ballad wooziness of Tindersticks’ The Hungry Saw (Constellation) gives a worthy update to Hazlewood’s signature tearjerker "My Autumn’s Done Come" — vibraphone and all. Not to be outdone, Nick Cave temporarily tables his more-recent chest thumping for big-screen melodrama on a few moments of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Anti-): on "Jesus of the Moon," in particular, he and his Bad Seeds serve up Hazlewood-worthy western-skied balladry.

Cue the strings! With its sumptuously reverb-steeped production, punchy brass, and colossal orchestrations, the Last Shadow Puppets’ The Age of the Understatement (Domino) proves to be just as indebted to Hazlewood’s studio wizardry as it is to its obvious Swinging London signifiers. Local chanteuse Kira Lynn Cain floats out haunted refrains of the legend’s twang-cabaret on her billowing beauty The Ideal Hunter (Evangeline), while the desert panoramas of Calexico’s Carried to Dust (Quarterstick) provide a testimonial to the power of Hazlewood’s beloved mariachi horns. Seekers of the heir apparent to the vocalist’s wry, croaking country wordsmithery should look no further than the parallel honky-tonk universe of the Silver Jews’ Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City). Lastly, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan pick up the familiar Nancy and Lee story line and flip the script: on their Sunday at Devil Dirt (Fontana International), Campbell assumes the male, Svengali role of Hazlewood, writing all of the words and arrangements, and Lanegan becomes the gravel-diva counterpart to Sinatra. The result is ravishingly weepy orchestral pop and off-kilter country-blues rambles. Would Hazlewood approve? Total-Lee. (Todd Lavoie)

TODD LAVOIE’S TOP 10


•Spiritualized, Songs in A & E (Fontana International)

•Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree (Mute)

•M83, Saturdays = Youth (Mute)

•Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight (Fat Cat)

•DeVotchKa, A Mad and Faithful Telling (Anti-)

•Sigur Rós, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (XL)

•Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid (Fiction/Polydor UK/Geffen)

•Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Anti-)

•The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement (Domino)

•Hot Chip, Made in the Dark (DFA/Astralwerks)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

You heard it here first

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The first time I noticed that my city of art and innovation was getting short shrift was when The New York Times started going on about "freak folk," Joanna Newsom, and Devendra Banhart and really, you know, getting rhapsodic about these baroquely retro space-folk flavors.

And somehow it never quite came up that these people are San Francisco people, and that their music is San Francisco music. I mean, yes, Banhart has a rep as being a bit of a drifter. Yes, Newsom is really from, you know, Nevada City … and yet, where else could they have first truly taken root, where else could they have first broken through the topsoil, drunk of the dew, and soaked up the dappled sunlight, except in the rich, loamy cultural compost heap that is San Francisco, the Bay Area, and its wooly NorCal surround?

This germination of culture, color, sound, and flavor is, in the most organic sense of it, completely cyclical. Ken Kesey’s garden parties put out roots and rhizomes and threw up spores that took hold almost immediately among music lovers in the region. The result was a distinctly American growth medium for the archetypes of Dionysus, Pan, and Astarte; for the mystic and mythic yearnings of the Victorians; and for the willful, self-starting proto-anarchism of the English Diggers. Cross-pollinate that with the intellectual and aesthetic rebellion of situationism and free jazz, borne in with the gusting, blowsy Beat generation, and you have yourself a rather fecund and folkloric little bramble — one that got even more biodiverse with all the punk rock springing up like weeds in the 1970s.

This polyglot epoch of musical discovery gave us so much. Not just the Dead’s first three records, the Airplane, or even David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name (Atlantic, 1971) — what about Blue Cheer, Moby Grape, Fifty Foot Hose, the Flamin’ Groovies, the Avengers, and the DKs? Rather a multifaceted mix, but relevant, because Bay Area bands like these set the pattern for divergent waves of underground music-making during the next three or four decades.

The last 15 years in particular have seen these retro sounds made new in the Bay Area and then breaking into the critical, and sometimes commercial, mainstream somewhere else. Usually New York is quickest to take all the credit. Like with that whole garage rock revival. Yeah, yeah, the Strokes, blah, blah, the latest in NYC retro-cool. It’s not that we were first, here in SF. It’s just that we’ve been playing that stuff on KUSF-FM for years, and fabulous local bands have been cranking out that sound for years, and suddenly the Big Apple is basking in the hipniz.

Or in the glorification of Williamsburg, which totally followed the Mission District in terms of exuberantly youthful, excruciatingly hip, oft-naïve, and fearlessly spasmodic creative gusto. Dang, before there was a TV on the Radio, Kyp Malone was working at the One World Cafe on McAllister and Baker streets, making music with Rocket Science and the Nigger-Loving Faggots and handing out fresh-pressed records to the community-radio DJ down the street. OK, so that’s not the Mission, but it sort of was a suburb of the Mission.

Or with the whole freak-folk thing. Back in 2004 or thereabouts The New York Times started noticing there were hairy kids playing spacey and folkoric acoustic sounds. They quickly championed the term "freak folk," and in 2006 even ran a big, lushly illustrated, front-page article in the "Sunday Arts & Leisure" section, Will Hermes’ "Summer of Love Redux," that curiously never once mentions San Francisco, despite bolting the whole thesis down with repeated references to Banhart, Newsom, Vetiver, Comets of Fire, the Six Organs of Admittance, and Jolie Holland.

Now we see, from the foggy depths, a new rising of fuzz and hair, the shambling and very organic children of Blue Cheer. Parchman Farm was an early bloomer, as was Comets on Fire, and now the Bay Area is throbbing with shaggy combos exploring the idiom. Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Sleepy Sun, and so many of those Frisco Freakout acts — how will these vibrations resonate across the nation over the next five years? And will New York City somehow take credit for that, too? I think not. They’re just too damn cool to grow out their bangs past the uncomfortable midlength stage.

Philly, though, which gave us Bardo Pond, Brother JT, Siltbreeze Records — there’s a hairy, done-it-all scene stealer I can live with.

JOSH WILSON’S TOP FIVE

1. Godwaffle Noise Pancakes closing show at the former ArtSF, Nov. 8

2. William Hooker, Hemlock Tavern, July 24

3. Heavy Metal (1981) and Conan the Barbarian (1982, with James Earl Jones and some other guy) at the Castro Theater’s "Analog Adventures" showcase

4. All Tomorrow’s Parties, Monticello, NY, Sept. 19-21

5. Expo for Independent Arts moves to Dolores Park and triples in size, Sept.

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Daughters of the drone

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Whether it was the Numero Group’s 2006 Ladies from the Canyon compilation, the Water reissues of Judee Sill and Anne Briggs, Vashti Bunyan’s return, Devendra Banhart’s heroine-worship of Karen Dalton, or Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation (Atria) — the history of female singer-songwriters has received welcome revisions over the past few years. Lone wolves like Townes Van Zandt and domestic collaborations like John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s are the exception to the rule: hallowed solitude and spiritual doubt belong to the women at their pianos and guitars. The brilliant innuendos and cavalier remonstrations of the Leonard Cohens and Paul Simons of the world are too arch to nick the lonely edge of invisibility. It’s that old "show, don’t tell" lesson: the men fulminate despair, masquerading transparency, while the women blur the singer and the song.

From the outskirts of the musical map there are persistent rumblings of a new solo sound. Some of my favorite albums of the year are by women who fling their voices across miles of echo, and push chords into thick drifts of dub drones and nursery rhyme traces. I’m thinking of Grouper’s Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill (Type), Valet’s Naked Acid (Kranky), Avocet’s Morning Singing in Afternoon (self-released), Christina Carter’s Original Darkness (Kranky), Lau Nau’s Nukkuu (Locust), and Inca Ore’s Birthday of Bless You (Not Not Fun), though surely there are others. Add to this already-stellar group Pocahaunted, the Los Angeles duo whose full-length, Chains (Teenage Teardrops), is a mandala wheel of Stevie Nicks yowls and grungy repetition, and you’ve got a stacked playlist.

On the face of it, these women artists appear to contradict the basic tenet of singer-songwriterdom: make sure everyone can understand the words. But Sill, Dalton, and Mitchell all registered opacity. Their albums often seem as much about stealing away from the outside world as they are about letting the listener in. The records by Grouper, Valet, Avocet, Carter, and Inca Ore are too distended and punk-streaked to pass as folk, though they have that same sense of precarious balance as the earlier so-called ladies from the canyon. Diffuse in sound and space, their music is concentrated in effect. Grouper’s recording is my favorite of the bunch for the slippery melancholy of Liz Harris’ hunched acoustic strums. Her starry vocals conjure stillness and distance without sounding aloof. Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill ends with the stark, sad pop of an amplifier being unplugged, an apt reminder of the limits of intimacy. And yet, how else to describe the experience of these albums? Following their designs, we find ourselves in a mental state as free as it is familiar.

MAX GOLDBERG’S TOP 10 REASONS TO BELIEVE


(in alphabetical order)

•Michael Hurley, Little Wings, Avocet, Lucky Dragons, and a sunset for all time at Angel Island, July 12–13

•Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

•Sam Cooke, "A Change Is Gonna Come" (RCA Victor, 1964)

•Bob Dylan, Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Columbia)

•Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp)

•Group Inerane, Guitars from Agadez (Sublime Frequencies)

•Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill (Type)

•My Bloody Valentine at Concourse, Sept. 30

•Rodriguez, Cold Fact (Light in the Attic)

•Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, US)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Moving forward

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Gathering my thoughts about how I listened to music in 2008, I think not only of Luc Sante’s piece on Manny Farber in this month’s Artforum, but also Ariana Reines’ Action, Yes piece explaining why she hates the "cleanness and elegance of tight and perfect writing." In different ways, both pieces deal with the importance of smallness, incompleteness, and, to steal the title of Reines’ piece, "sucking."

Because it’s easy not to suck, and this may or may not be the Internet’s fault. Music itself did not suck in 2008, despite the crumbling of an always-already imaginary consensus, and that’s maybe what’s so unsatisfying about trying to hang 12 months on something as well-executed yet under-inspiring as, say, Dear Science (Interscope). I’m not sure that people won’t start rallying around a single release or clutch of releases to narrate what made this year worth listening to deeply, but the albums that spring to mind now as forecasting what will sound good in the future are ones that pursued a small, near-inarticulate muse and ended up with something almost monomaniacal. It’s not a coincidence then that so many of these records were made during time apart from the artists’ main gig. The economy, man. We all gotta grind.

BRANDON BUSSOLINI’S TOP 10


1. Inca Ore, Birthday of Bless You (Not Not Fun)

Former PDXer and current Oaklander Eva Saelens is Inca Ore. Her most recent solo LP is an incantatory, patient ritual, a literally awesome tapestry of magnetic tape smears, disembodied wails, and dark, roiling resonance.

2. Arms, Kids Aflame (Melodic)

Harlem Shakes guitarist Todd Goldstein strikes out on his own here, and the results can be insanely satisfying: the indie triumvirate made up of "Whirring," the title track, and "Tiger Tamer" is a welcome reminder that pop music is supposed to make your heart race. The album’s second half is less distinctive, but it’s not like it hasn’t earned the right to be.

3. Bohren and der Club of Gore, Dolores (Ipecac)

There’s nothing organic about this full-length’s inert pace: slow enough to make Swans sound like a thrash band, its floating vibraphone riffs eerily familiar/defamiliarizing like only the Twin Peaks soundtrack before it, Dolores at times seems like a morbid joke. If the characters in Samuel Beckett’s trilogy listened to music, I have a hunch it would sound much like this.

4. Zomes, Zomes (Holy Mountain)

In addition to playing guitar in Lungfish, Asa Osborne constructs sturdy little habitations out of drum machine, guitar, and organ under the Zomes moniker. While it may sound too controlled at first, the recording’s insistence on small, unvarying patterns reveals itself as an autonomous language over time, its photocopy mystery emerging from the stuff of repetition and reproduction itself.

5. Ssion, Fool’s Gold (Sleazetone)

This disc’s two release dates might as well stand in for its own ability to navigate, rather than drown in, Internet-era self-reflexivity — it seems less like a one-off collection of jams than a collection of techniques for fucking with identity. Tracks like "Street Jizz" and "Clown" don’t have to decide between earnestly camp and campily earnest because they realize a third way.

6. School of Language, Sea from Shore (Thrill Jockey)

The punched-out vowel sounds that open this album recall, like Sébastien Tellier’s "Divine," old Art of Noise productions. Field Music’s David Brewis uses them as a bed not for uptight Euro-funk, but for generously rendered bedroom prog. At moments surprisingly muscular ("Disappointment ’99") but always rhythmically ambitious, Sea may seem like Manny Farber’s "white elephant art" from the outside, but is unmistakably "termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art" within.

7. Indian Jewelry, "Free Gold!" (We Are Free)

Thematically, the idea of establishing your own currency as a subversion of government and the totalizing power of capitalism both has a precedent, at least, in the B-52’s Whammy (Warner Bros., 1983). The record’s appeal has little to do with good timing, however: there are too many honest-to-goodness songs here for it to be "out" rock, too much Rev/Vega worship for it to be simply psychedelic. Gold’s appeal, instead, is its beefy epileptic punch. Listen close and feel the retina burn.

8. Portishead, Third (Mercury/Island)

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t care about this band before this album, but what’s remarkable here is that for all the group’s touted perfectionism, the two preceding LPs consistently opted for the warmth of loneliness, something the listener could, y’know, identify with. In contrast, Third is a hard, long, steely drag on modernism’s cold monumentality: "Machine Gun" is dubstep packed tight into a tarry espresso shot. Even the escape imagined in "The Rip" is hounded by a spidery Casio riff — the stuff of uneasy sleep.

9. RA.085, Tobias Freund Podcast (residentadvisor.net)

Stepping away from dance-oriented mixes for a minute, Resident Advisor commissions the best mix they’ve ever hosted. Freund’s work is hard to find, but this mix makes clear that he’s got a privileged understanding of both minimal techno and ambient’s DNA — and some killer crate-digging luck. I mean, come on, that Savant track? (Discogs it!)

10. Gang Gang Dance, Saint Dymphna (Social Registry)

The cliché about bands like GGD — nominally "noise," but whose music actually deals in another kind of abstraction, like Animal Collective or Excepter — is that they get more pop and more weird as they grow into their career. Saint Dymphna can be swallowed whole — parts of God’s Money (Social Registry, 2005) tended to stick in the throat — and the group makes no bones that this comes at the expense of extraneous oddness. But a certain strange eclecticism takes its stead. Occasionally Lizzie Bougastos’ voice sounds like a Wiccan falsetto incarnation of M.I.A. The band openly goes for dubstep in "Princes," and "House Jam" is the song folks will go apeshit over at their reunion concerts 20 years in the future.

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

A better tomorrow

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In the real world, the New York Stock Exchange did the butterfly flop all year, and the global economy sank along with it. But in the fantasy world of hip-hop, stock options on prime talent just went up and up. If it wasn’t XXLmag.com proclaiming its Freshman Class of ’09 — led by Blu, Kid Cudi, and Wale — then it was top blogs Nahright.com and 2dopeboyz.com posting hundreds of videos, MP3s, photo galleries, and other ephemera per week. Web sites like Okayplayer.com lavished attention on its favorites — "real hip-hop" artists like the Roots and Common — with audio/video items and high review scores, doling out 92 of 100 for Q-Tip’s The Renaissance (Universal Motown).

Of course, MTV and its poorer cousins, MTV Jams and BET, still showed plenty of Young Jeezy and Rick Ross videos, mean-mugging thugs and "dimepiece" models looking soulfully in the camera, eager to show their souls and shake their asses. On the Billboard charts, dependable superstars such as Kanye West and T.I. dominated with subpar albums and MOR malaise.

Meanwhile, like a cheery prospectus, the new hip-hop media teemed with blogs and Web sites promising a better tomorrow of future stars. Seasoned music journalists found the hype difficult to ignore: this year’s CMJ Music Marathon included a panel asking, "The Hip-Hop Renaissance: A Cultural Rebirth?" Meanwhile XXL magazine, the bastion of conservatism that seemingly puts 50 Cent on the cover every month — the Freshman Class list was a rare lapse — wondered, "What the hell happened to good ol’ gangster rap?" Apparently, the new breed of MCs’ penchant for appropriating nerdy icons (Charles Hamilton’s Sonic the Hamilton), paying homage to old-school classics (Pacific Division’s "F.A.T. Boys"), issuing 10-minute linguistic exercises (Mickey Factz’s "The Inspiration"), and rhyming over dance beats (Wale’s cover of Justice’s "D.A.N.C.E.") present a major threat to rap’s G’s-up-hos-down kingdom.

It needn’t have worried. The new Internet landscape flourished on buzz, not actual achievement. Indie-rockers were doing it for years — witness the rise of mediocre talents Vampire Weekend and Lykke Li — before the Cool Kids learned how to blow up with nothing more than a few demo songs and a flashy MySpace page. By the time the Cool Kids finally put out The Bake Sale EP (Chocolate Industries), an ode to limited-edition sneakers and sugar cereal, the Chicago duo had already spent several months basking in magazine covers and sold-out national tours. The Bake Sale may have been good, but its release felt anticlimactic. And let’s not even mention Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Cash Money), and his "100 best Lil Wayne songs you’ve never heard." That’s so 2007.

The Cool Kids may be the best example of how to manipulate the new hip-hop stock market — ply the blogs with YouTube videos (popular topics: Top 10 R&B chicks worth a "smash"), and distribute mixtapes via Zshare.net (popular topics: Barack Obama and freestyles over Lil Wayne’s "A Milli" and old J Dilla beats). Original material such as Kidz in the Hall’s The In Crowd (Duck Down) and Black Milk’s Tronic (Fat Beats) drew positive reviews from magazines and traditional Web sites. But once the free MP3 downloads and shaky-camera videos dried up, the new hip-hop media didn’t seem to care about actual albums one could buy in stores — or, sadly, just download for free. It thrived on fresh content, not critical analysis.

Some actual hits emerged amid the deluge. Kid Cudi’s "Day N Nite," Asher Roth’s "Roth Boys," Q-Tip’s "Gettin’ Up," Kidz in the Hall’s "Drivin’ down the Block," B.O.B.’s "Haterz," and Jay Electronica’s "Exhibit A (Transformations)" drew universal props. Mountaintop pronouncements from Jay-Z ("Jockin’ Jay-Z," "Brooklyn Go Hard"), Eminem ("Number One"), and Nas ("Be a Nigger Too," "Hero") were heeded by all, though these utterances paled in comparison to past glories.

Mostly, though, there was a lot of crap to sift through. If critics and fans couldn’t agree on whether Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III was a certified classic or just an above-average hit album, it was because we were too busy downloading music, surfing blogs, and watching videos to think about it. Perhaps we’ll figure out what 2008 means many years from now, long after that tomorrow finally arrives — for better or worse.

MOSI REEVES’ BEST INDIE HIP-HOP ALBUMS OF ’08


1. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp)

2. Daedelus, Love to Make Music to (Ninja Tune)

3. Black Milk, Tronic (Fat Beats)

4. The Cool Kids, The Bake Sale EP (Chocolate Industries)

5. Kidz in the Hall, The In Crowd (Duck Down)

6. Blue Sky Black Cinema, Late Night Cinema (Babygrande)

7. Invincible, ShapeShifters (Emergence)

8. Black Spade, To Serve with Love (Om)

9. Common Market, Tobacco Road (Hyena)

10. Lyrics Born, Everywhere at Once (Epitaph)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Mercury Rev

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PREVIEW "Snowflake in a Hot World," the opening track off Mercury Rev’s new Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc), seems to touch lightly on the perishable nature of the band’s homegrown psych experiments. The New York combo has been around for more than two decades — often lumped with Flaming Lips due to their common musical explorations and the fact that de facto member Dave Fridmann is also the Lips’ longtime producer — which is long enough to fall into routine. But that’s not the way to make a Snowflake, so the band took a few new approaches to crystallizing the glimmering, moody yet surprisingly urgent psych-pop recording.

Moving blues played a part: Mercury Rev had to relocate its studio twice and was forced to purge unused equipment in the process. The tools that remained explain the electronic textures infusing the album. The group also played tiny clubs in the Catskills and the Hudson Valley area, buried on bills as the Harmony Rockets, and they’d try out one simple idea on generally unsuspecting audiences: "It could be a very simple motif," explains keyboardist Jeff Mercel from Boston. "We’d just take it and embellish and spin it out for 45 minutes in a live, electronic, improvisational sort of way." Back at the studio, the musicians also developed Snowflake Midnight‘s sound via improvisation. "I don’t think any of us wanted to sit by candlelight and try to write the perfect song and then impose it on everyone else," Mercel says. After a year, Mercury Rev had hundreds of hours of instrumental music. The pieces that "kept insisting you pay attention to them slowly rose to the top," says Mercel. The result, as "A Squirrel and I (Holding On…and Then Letting Go)" goes, was "something more beautiful but strange."

MERCURY REV With the Duke Spirit. Wed/17–Thurs/18, 8 p.m., $25. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422, www.theindependentsf.com

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