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Axis power

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It has been noted in the mostly laudatory press surrounding their collection of 10-inch EPs, Transparent Things (Tirk/Word and Sound), that Fujiya & Miyagi aren’t Japanese. Nor are they a duo. They are in fact three white friends from Brighton, England, whose openly acknowledged obsession with Neu’s motornik pulse and Can’s subdued funk has resulted in some very infectious, kraut-tinged electronic pop songs as well as gentle speculation about whether Fujiya & Miyagi are simply derivative or being cheekily open about their influences.

Anticipating their critics, the band even declare at one point as a chorus, "We’re only pretending to be Japanese!" But Fujiya & Miyagi seem too polite to be doing all this as a piss-take, yet too self-conscious to claim sui generis innocence by way of a strange musical synchronicity. After all, I don’t think I am the only person who thought they were Japanese when I first heard them.

To some extent, all bands wear their record collections on their sleeves early on. Some simply loathe admitting it. Initial Stereolab singles were basically remakes of Neu’s "Hallo Gallo" (although so were Neu’s subsequent albums) with vocal window dressing snatched from ’60s French yé-yé pop. It was the unexpected synthesis of the two that made them sound so fresh. By now Fujiya & Miyagi’s warm-cold instrumentation — guitars compressed into brittle chirps, warm analog synth washes, percoutf8g drum machines — is a familiar palette (again, think Stereolab or some DFA productions), but David Best’s vocal style fogs up the transparency of the homage.

Best’s clipped, affectless approach works well to underscore his distanced lyrics, whether he’s detachedly recounting the scuffs incurred while falling in and out of love ("Collarbone" and "Sucking Punch," respectively) or cataloging the commodities around him ("Transparent Things"). His rolled r‘s and staccato delivery also uncannily invoke the quieter Damo Suzuki of Can’s 1972 album, Ege Bamyasi, or the 1973 disc Future Days (both Mute).

Granted, James Murphy stands accused of swagger-jacking Mark E. Smith’s extra syllables (Smith, appropriately enough, donned Suzuki vocal drag for the Fall’s "I Am Damo Suzuki" — perhaps Fujiya & Miyagi’s chief precedent). And Beck’s skinny-white-boy take on Prince circa Midnite Vultures (Interscope, 1999) is no more or less suspect than Justin Timberlake’s Off the Wall falsetto.

Appropriation is an old and often circular debate in music, one inflected by racial politics as much as the vagaries and entitlements enabled by whatever strength so-called postmodernism still holds as a position. The earnest love of kraut Fujiya & Miyagi see reflected in their music may come off as a studied imitation to some, but when "Collarbone" hits its breakdown, and Best breathily beatboxes the old "knee bone connected to the shin bone" nursery rhyme like he wants to rock your body, Fujiya & Miyagi momentarily sidestep the anxiety of influence and become simply a great pop group. *

Pop goes Panther

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Prince may have his devoted popites canonizing those purple-clad jewels once again after his recent Super Bowl halftime performance, but in Portland, Ore., there’s an equally crude one-man dance-aster who could soon take the crown from His Royal Badass. This beat blaster and master, however, comes in the form of a scrawny gyrator whose elasticlike body rapidly contorts, recoils, and slams against walls during his pop-flushed freak-outs.

Since 2002, Panther, a.k.a. Charlie Salas-Humara, has administered a hip-spasming dose of what his press literature describes as "damaged soul," fusing pulsating drum machines and bassy hooks with disheveled synths and glass-cracking falsettos. MTV2 has even taken a liking to the 32-year-old, nominating "You Don’t Want Your Nails Done," the single from his debut, Secret Lawns (Fryk Beat), for Video of the Year. During the video a brown-suited Salas-Humara rocks the microphone in a room cluttered with cardboard furniture, cell phones, and iPods. The fidgety performer busts into the Robot like a Tourette’s-afflicted Michael Jackson and beatboxes, "When you’re making these fists / You don’t want your hair / When you’re making these fists / You don’t want your nails done." Watching the video makes you want to grab the sweat-drenched vocalist by his shoulders and yell, "Go, white boy, go!"

But according to Salas-Humara, Panther’s intoxicating bite hasn’t taken that much effort. "It’s a great project because I don’t have to think about it, and there’s no concept besides whatever shit I pull together in my basement," he says on the phone from Portland. "It’s just me, and I don’t have to be a Gang of Four cover band or try and be some pop thing."

And Salas-Humara doesn’t always sound like he’s in pursuit of pop. Songs such as "Rely on Scent" and "Take Us Out" evoke a free jazz and R&B artiness and rely heavily on organ to keep them afloat. Others, such as "How Does It Feel?" and "Tennis Lesson," recall the mechanized keyboard bluster of early-’80s Herbie Hancock and the Art of Noise while integrating densely arranged hip-hop beats as their driving force.

Born in Florida but raised in Chicago’s suburbs, Salas-Humara moved to Portland in 1995 with his band, the Planet The. The trio stuck it out for 11 years, though Panther had already sprung to life before the group’s demise.

"I started doing Panther because somebody asked me to do one of those solo performance nights where people from different bands get together and play acoustic songs," he says with a laugh. "I thought it would be funny to terrorize it with prerecorded drum machines."

Salas-Humara claims that he thought he would never perform as Panther again, but he continued producing new music because his friends kept egging him on.

"It was really fun to try and fill up a lot of space on a stage with one person, so I started experimenting with dancing and doing different things with the stuff I would choreograph," Salas-Humara explains. "Basically, I just get weird."

In addition to the MTV2 nomination, 2006 saw Panther embark on tours with the Gossip and Ratatat, and Fryk Beat released the lauded 12-inch Yourself.

Gearing up for his first national tour, Salas-Humara confirms he’s a bit nervous about the jaunt.

"You never really know where your fans are," he says. "I’m sure it’ll be pretty awesome in some places and dismal in others. I guess that’s the way that it goes." (Chris Sabbath)

PANTHER

With Yip Yip, Lemonade, and Like Nurse

Thurs/8, 9:30 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

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Frosty love

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By Johnny Ray Huston


› johnny@sfbg.com

First things first: even if there’s been a Michael Mann remake of Miami Vice between the day that Pusha T and Malice first rhymed about Tubbs and Crockett and now, Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury (Re Up Gang/Star Trak, 2006) also hath no shortage of extraordinary future-sounds. It never lets up, from the three tracks before the cold Clipse calypso of the new-money anthem "Wamp Wamp" through the seven tracks after the harp strum, extended and echoed for maximum shimmer, on "Ride Around Shining" — a startling use of the instrument that ain’t Alice Coltrane and sure as hell ain’t Joanna Newsom. On "Keys Open Doors," ah harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place on Philip Glass’s project-haunting Candyman soundtrack back up a title chorus that turns passage metaphors inside out.

Then there’s "Chinese New Year," on which Clipse’s Malice and Pusha T are joined by the hilariously named Roscoe P. Goldchain for a drive-by in which the ammo is punch-line rap: "Mask on face / Glock in hand," Malice is "in and out of houses like the Orkin Man," while Pusha T has a vixen who’ll "eat your face like Ms. Pac-Man." Speaking of white lines and dots and those who gobble and snort them, the Neptunes’ production backs these boasts with keyboard squiggles that aren’t far from the noises vintage video game monsters make when they’re turned into ghosts.

The trademark Neptunes sound has never been better than on Hell Hath, but their touch is a curse as well as a blessing for Clipse. It’s a curse because of Pharrell Williams’s overexposure and because the long-delayed Hell Hath finally dropped at the exact time that Williams and fellow Neptune Chad Hugo unveiled their worst overdecorated cake of a pop production — the yodeling monstrosity known as "Wind It Up," Gwen Stefani’s leadoff single from The Sweet Escape. Some East Coast bloggers have given themselves a hand for helping boost Hell Hath ‘s sales numbers, but commercially speaking, the album has underperformed like, well, a Pharrell solo effort.

But I’d much rather blast Hell Hath than Pharrell’s In My Mind (Interscope, 2006), not to mention all but a handful of other albums released last year. The reasons why are too many to be named in full. But one is that Pharrell takes a backseat, doing less MCing and fewer pint-size Curtis Mayfield impressions than on 2002’s Lord Willin‘. In fact, his misleading front-and-center presence on the first single, "Mr. Me Too," probably didn’t do Pusha T and Malice any sales favors. On Hell Hath, the track signals the arrival of a bottom end after two lean and mean cuts — the organ-based church of coke testifying of "We Got It for Cheap" and the polka minimalism of the accordion-laced "Momma I’m So Sorry." That bottom end goes Jules Verne deep, whereas Pharrell’s version of boasting — all Diddy parties and skateboard contracts — comes off cartoony and corny next to Pusha T and Malice’s dealing drama. The only category in which he’s fresher is a stale one, bling: he mentions "Lorraine" (Schwartz), and Clipse refers to the oft-cited Jacob the Jeweler on another track. On Hell Hath‘s closer, "Nightmares," it’s Bilal rather than Pharrell who does the Mayfield impression, just one reason why as a paranoid anthem — that rap paradox with Robert Johnson roots, an affirmation of sketchy solitude — it’s closer to the Geto Boys’ classic "Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me" than it is to Rockwell’s "Somebody’s Watchin’ Me."

"No hotta / Flow droppa / Since Poppa," Pusha T asserts at the kickoff of "Wamp Wamp." Though he follows that up with a truly terrific double-edged pun ("You penny ante niggaz see I know copper" — and also "no Copper"), it’s a bit of a stretch to claim he and Malice are in the Biggie leagues. Take Life after Death‘s "What’s Beef?" (Bad Boy, 1997), on which Biggie begins with a vainglorious "ha ha ha ha ha," declares himself the "rap Alfred Hitchcock," and rhymes "I see you" and ICU. On that track he also serves up the couplet "Think good thoughts, die while your skin starts to glisten / Pale blue hands get cold, your soul’s risen." In comparison, on "Chinese New Year," Clipse threaten they’ll turn you "Cookie Monster blue." Scary cute but no don’s cigar.

But they’re closer to Biggie than most anyone else these days, save maybe their rival, Bush-bashing Lil’ Wayne. Hell Hath is packed with almost as many cleverly phrased disguises for cocaine as it is amazing noises, yet Pusha T and Malice’s brand of brotherly love and hate is at its best when it surrounds the drug with an image-laden story, as on "Dirty Money." There, one track after his big bro demonstrates how to cook drugs like a "black Martha Stewart," Pusha T gets so high on his ability to transform substances and words that Benjamin Franklin’s face starts to look 3-D and silly on some "new crisp billies." By the time he and Malice are dealing with the inevitable comedown on "Nightmares," the substance of their words could turn the warmest smile upside down. *

CLIPSE

With Low B of Hollertronix

Wed/14, 9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.clipseonline.com

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Noisepop cracks up: trading jibes with Patton Oswalt

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Our little bundle of noise is almost all grown up. Damning the brooding tradition of adolescence, Noise Pop has learned to laugh at itself — and anything that involves swigging beer and heckling Patton Oswalt without a two-drink minimum sounds like pure fucking genius to me. I recently spoke to Oswalt on the phone from Burbank. After soaking in enough indie to keep you cloaked in scene points until next year, you may want to check out his act alongside fellow comedians Brian Posehn and Marian Bamford. (K. Tighe)

SFBG You’ve been gigging at indie rock venues for a while — and now you are getting booked at festivals such as Noise Pop and Coachella. A lot of bands must be pissed off at you.

PATTON OSWALT Getting invited to these things is really flattering, but my rider’s still simple. As long as there is old scotch, I’m fine.

SFBG Have you ever been to the Noise Pop festival?

PO No, but I’m really excited. I’ve only ever listened to Genesis, so I’m hoping to discover new stuff.

SFBG You used to live in San Francisco. Are there any old haunts you still frequent when you play here?

PO I have about 10 old haunts. They are all Starbucks now.

SFBG El Farolito or Cancun?

PO La Cumbre all the way. They are mighty, mighty, mighty, and they’ve never fallen.

SFBG Your San Francisco act is always incredibly liberal — how much do you need to alter your political material from city to city?

PO I don’t have a tailored act. I trust the audiences to rise to the occasion. There are more and more pockets of resistance everywhere. Besides, the things I say aren’t all that outrageous compared to what is actually going on.

SFBG Any early thoughts on the 2008 presidential race?

PO I’m saying it now: the Democratic ticket will be Mickey Rourke and the original lineup of Journey.

COMEDIANS OF COMEDY

Sun/4, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m., $24

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

MORE NOISE POP PICKS

FEB. 28

DAMIEN JURADO


At a recent gig in Seattle, Damien Jurado recounted an interview with a French journalist who had asked him if folk music was the new grunge. The singer-songwriter dismissed the question, but it was clear he was as comfortable cracking wise as he is creating the bleak portraits and doleful characters that inhabit his songs. Jurado’s latest release is not new but a reissue of Gathered in Song (Made in Mexico), which was originally put to tape in 1999 by friend and fellow plaintive songwriter David Bazan. Three months older though still freshly minted is And Now That I’m in Your Shadow (Secretly Canadian), a milestone recording with Jurado’s first permanent band, including cellist Jenna Conrad and percussionist-guitarist Eric Fisher. Here the trio essays the same lyrical and windswept landscapes that dominate Jurado’s discography, though gone are the upbeat pop numbers that have peppered past albums. The result is at once tender and forlorn. John Vanderslice headlines; the Submarines and Black Fiction also perform. (Nathan Baker)

8 p.m. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. $14. (415) 771-1421

MARCH 1

TRAINWRECK RIDERS


Despite critical acclaim for their latest album, Lonely Road Revival (Alive), Trainwreck Riders remain as down-home as their sound. Proof the San Francisco boys haven’t gone Hollywood yet: vocalist Andrew Kerwin still works at Amoeba in the city, and the band recently got arrested and Tasered by Houston police at a show with former labelmates Two Gallants. Songs such as "In and Out of Love" combine roots rock, punk, and country that sound familiar, retro, and refreshing all at once. The harmonica in "Christmas Time Blues" makes me want to flee to my favorite dive bar to sulk, even on a good day. (Elaine Santore)

9 p.m. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. $12. (415) 861-2011

MARCH 2

DAVID DONDERO


If ever there were a diamond in the indie rock rough, it is David Dondero. National Public Radio named him one of the 10 best living songwriters, but he still tours in his truck and has probably served you pints at Casanova. Nick Drake may have lamented that "fame is but a fruit tree," but he checked out long before his notoriety took root and grew. Dondero, on the other hand, has worked for years in relative obscurity. His latest effort, South of the South (Team Love), was bankrolled by Conor Oberst, an overdue invitation to the feast from a man who freely admits to copping Dondero’s style. Jolie Holland headlines; St. Vincent opens. (Baker)

9 p.m. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. $20. (415) 346-6000

TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS


Naming your band is one of the early hurdles for any would-be rock star. Ted Leo and his mates had a stroke of genius the day they alighted on the Pharmacists, arguably trumping even the Beatles for best tongue-in-cheek rock ‘n’ roll pun. Not that ingenuity is lacking in this outfit, which packs as much fevered punk energy into a four-minute tune as a mitochondrion does into a cell. For those who slept through freshman biology, that’s the part of a cell that, among other things, processes adrenaline. And anyone who has ever attended a Leo show is all too familiar with this chemical. (Baker)

8 p.m. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. $18. (415) 885-0750

MARCH 4

CAKE


The genre-bending Sacramento band known for funky arrangements, monotone vocals, droll lyrics, and a whole set of cabaret, country, and soul cover songs (including Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive" and Black Sabbath’s "War Pigs") finishes Noise Pop with characteristic verve and vibraslap. This indie-turned-mainstream-turned-indie quartet has gotten increasingly political in recent years — check out the band’s Web site (www.cakemusic.com) if you want to see what I mean — so expect some social commentary with your catchy ditties. It’s also worth showing up for the textured pop sound and cheeky lyrics of opening band the Boticcellis; Money Mark and Scrabbel also perform. (Molly Freedenberg)

7:30 p.m. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. $25. (415) 474-0365

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New mutants

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A-ha. Baltimora. Missing Persons. Those bands probably have an emblematic significance to any Brat Pack–emuutf8g, spring break–starved teenager affiliated with the MTV generation of the 1980s. But as the ’90s beckoned, feathered hair and talking cars gave way to the Urkel and Mentos commercials, and all the while, another compulsion began to render our motor skills useless. Only this one came in the form of a heather gray plastic box, and its mascot was a mustachioed plumber with a Brooklyn accent. To this day, the Nintendo Entertainment System and its notable features — the ingrained Contra password, the Power Glove — have a special place in our hearts. The bleeps, chimes, and peals that ebb and flow tirelessly on Eats Tapes’ sophomore full-length, Dos Mutantes (Tigerbeat6), make it sound like San Francisco couple Gregory Zifcak and Marijke Jorritsma still spend plenty of hours wrangling the rectangular-shaped joystick around too.

"What’s great about the Nintendo is that you get this choppy, 8-bit sort of thin sound," Jorritsma says over dinner in the Mission District. She laughs as she flails her arms. "So basically you hear it, and your knees get weak, and you’re like, ‘Ahhh!’ "

"Don’t say 8-bit. It’s too much of a buzzword," Zifcak says.

"There’s something rewarding about the thing that you herald as the ultimate fun machine and then being able to hack into that pot of yummy memory gold and smear it onto your own composition," Jorritsma continues.

Fitted with an arsenal of analog synthesizers, hardware sequencers, drum machines, and cassette players, Eats Tapes have been inducing all-night sweat-a-thons with their head-panging techno and acid-fried hooks since late 2002. The duo met at a pizza restaurant they worked at in Zifcak’s hometown of Portland, Ore., in 2000 and soon discovered that they shared a partiality for bands such as New Order and Kraftwerk. At that time, Zifcak was mixing jungle tracks on what he describes as "a bunch of junk from a pawnshop being sequenced by an ancient computer with no hard drive." Claiming she was his biggest fan, Jorritsma suggested they start making music together. The twosome relocated to the Bay Area six months later.

Developed initially as a live project, the pair bumped into Miguel Depedro, a.k.a. Kid606, and in 2005 his Tigerbeat6 label dropped their debut, Sticky Buttons. Since then, Eats Tapes have packed tiny clubs, warehouses, and living rooms on both sides of the Atlantic and have also remixed tracks and been remixed by artists such as the Blow, Lucky Dragons, and the Soft Pink Truth.

While Dos Mutantes pretty much picks up where its predecessor left off, Jorritsma and Zifcak have emerged more focused, and its caffeinated tempos and psych-noise assaults sound much more polished.

"We were a bit more adventurous, while using the same beats per minute all throughout, and it’s still pounding your face off," Zifcak says.

So what is it about the music that really gets these lovebirds going?

"With electronic music, you spend so much time on a set, and then people whip themselves into a frenzy, strip themselves down to their underwear, start dry-humping the ground, MySpacing 50 times, and then you’re, like, ‘Yes, this is it,’" Jorritsma explains.

Let’s hope Dos Mutantes has the same effect. *

EATS TAPES

With 16 Bitch Pile-up and Bulbs

Fri/2, 9:30 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

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Raising the BARR

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"I haven’t lived anywhere since April for more than 12 days." Brendan Fowler tells me this on the phone from New York, where he’s dug in to prepare for a national tour — his first with a live band — supporting BARR’s new album, Summary (5 Rue Christine). He’s a little out of breath from racing up apartment stairs while hyping the band ("I think it’s going to be bananas. I totally started crying the other day when we were playing songs for the first time. It sounds nuts"), but our interview remains hectic as he runs through his different projects and enthusiasms. It’s been a busy couple years for Fowler, even by the industrious standards of the DIY community, from which he draws inspiration — several BARR tours, including opening slots for Xiu Xiu and Animal Collective; a profile in Artforum; performances at prestigious venues such as New York’s the Kitchen and Los Angeles’s David Kordansky Gallery; the publication and proliferation of art and culture magazine ANP Quarterly; and now the new record, a rousing confessional several bounds ahead of 2005’s Beyond Reinforced Jewel Case (5RC).

As BARR, Fowler doesn’t really sing lyrics so much as spit them out — pages and pages of them — and this often seems to trip up reviewers. The music doesn’t quite have the measured flow of rap or the hard-bitten enunciation of spoken word. The twin spirits of hardcore and hip-hop loom large, but Fowler’s channeling is defiantly personal. There’s performance-art bravura akin to that of BARR’s first tourmates, Tracy and the Plastics, and Fowler’s unflinching intimacy reminds me some of the DIY, self-documenting impulse in Jonathan Caouette’s 2004 film, Tarnation.

Summary tightens the screws of Fowler’s sonic palette: his choppy drumbeats find balance with top-heavy piano chords and brainy bass lines. "The Song Is the Single" is a splashy party jam in the LCD Soundsystem mold, though elsewhere Fowler continues to tow his own line, whether on introspective confessionals such as "Complete Consumption of Us Both" or political rave-ups such as "Half of Two Times Two." Though Fowler studied free jazz drumming in college, the directness of his approach naturally blooms in performance, when he can, quite literally, reach out and touch someone. He performed at the Mama Buzz Café last spring and totally ruled the space, careening up and down, thinking aloud.

BARR is obviously Fowler’s personal outlet, though one could easily argue his larger contribution lies in his talent as a facilitator. Indeed, his generous, motivating artist’s spirit makes him something of a latter-day Wallace Berman. Berman cohered an eclectic circle of like-minded artist-explorers in his handsome homemade magazine, Semina, the subject of a recent, effusive show at the Berkeley Art Museum. A similar sensibility is cast in ANP Quarterly, the ad-free and free glossy Fowler coedits with Ed Templeton and Aaron Rose for LA skate-art-clothes magnate RVCA. Each ANP casts a wide net of coverage, profiling skateboarders, activists, and idiosyncratic entrepreneurs as well as outsider artists looking in and insider artists looking out. Perhaps most refreshing is the way ANP cuts such a wide swath across the country, with an eye for what’s happening in Phoenix and Iowa City as well as NYC and LA. Check out all these people doing their own thing, ANP tells us. It’s a spirited vision of America, one that Fowler rhapsodizes in "Half of Two Times Two" as being made of those "rebelling from the systems, and the norms that are saying ‘be bummed’ and ‘be bored,’ and they’re taking matters into their own hands, and that’s what matters."

Fowler articulates this free-thinking position more. "I do think about the outside world and bigger things but with an intimate, fine lens…. But I would hope that, on some level, the stuff that’s more intimate and fine would speak to the larger picture."

He laughs at his own seriousness and closes, "Fingers crossed." *

BARR

With Marnie Stern

Mon/5, call for time and price

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

www.theknockoutsf.com

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Feeling the spirit

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Yeah, I was a club kid once. It’s a bit of a blur, but somehow somewhere in the ’90s I went from punk and indie to baggy pants and glow sticks in the flick of a switch. I put away my Fall records and picked up endless white-label 12-inches and compilation CDs with titles like Ultimate Techno Explosion. Or something to that effect. Like I said, it’s a blur. I remember the dancing, though — suddenly my punk ass liked to shake! It’s a shame most of my indie friends chose to stay behind, but this was the ’90s. In those days, never the twain shall meet….

It’s now a full decade later, and — finally! — the indie kids are cutting loose without fear of bruising their street cred, thanks to artists such as the Rapture, !!!, and LCD Soundsystem. Turns out rock and dance music don’t have to be mutually exclusive terms. Need further proof? Take Austin’s finest ambassadors of electropunk mania, Ghostland Observatory. The duo — composed of vocalist-guitarist Aaron Behrens and keyboardist-drummer Thomas Ross Turner — whip up a mighty frenzy of swaggering rawk bravado and delirious vocal acrobatics delivered with a come-hither fluster over sweltering beds of booty-bouncing beats. Music for getting hot and bothered, certainly — or maybe songs for unleashing demons. Take your pick.

"We’re two entirely different people," Turner says, chuckling, over the phone from the Texas capital, in explanation of how their quite dissimilar influences have coalesced into the flipped disco of 2005’s delete.delete.i.eat.meat and last year’s Paparazzi Lightning (both Trashy Moped Recordings). "Aaron’s more into the rock showman thing — people like Prince and Freddie Mercury. For me, Daft Punk pretty much are my heroes — they got me into electronic music and club culture. That’s where we’re each coming from."

They might be coming from different places, but their destination is clearly shared, as evidenced on Paparazzi Lightning. Picture an evening of unbridled debauchery — one in which a club night teeters on the brink of collapse — condensed into 35 frantic minutes, and you’re on your way to understanding the Ghostland Observatory vision. Behrens can clearly work a room into whatever mood he sees fit, whether through stomping and yowling with wanton glee on the thundering "All You Rock and Rollers" and "Ghetto Magnet," or the seething taunts of "Move with Your Lover." Meanwhile, Turner effortlessly guides us on the emotional travelogue of a never-ending night, flashing away with the urgency of red-carpet paparazzi as he peppers the album with synth shrieks, squelches, and Daft Punk–worthy rhythms.

Asked about their live shows, Turner gives fair warning: "It’s really nonstop. We just give and give until everybody’s wiped out and goes home." All right, indie rockers and club kids — you heard the man. Better start stocking up on energy drinks. *

GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY

With Honeycut, the Gray Kid, and Landshark

March 3, 9 p.m., $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

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Noise Pop: Revisiting the Clinic

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Liking a band for more than three albums is getting harder these days, as many fall apart by that point. Even when groups do make it, most stop being musically interesting or otherwise start sucking. Clinic almost did that: Their third album, Winchester Cathedral (Domino, 2004), wasn’t bad but didn’t find the band progressing. Their distorted Farfisa started to sound routine and cliché; their trance-inducing rhythms begat yawning.

Clinic’s recently released full-length, Visitations (Domino), finds the Liverpool quartet back in form. All the elements that make Clinic’s unique sound are still there — the organ and the beat, fuzzed-out guitar, dubbish bass — but they sound just a bit better this time around. "Family" starts the album on a vaguely major note, a krauty stomp with a snaky blues riff that devolves all over the song. The album ends quietly and morosely with the title track, hushed strumming, hand drums, and melancholy keyboard building into a sinister waltz over broken glass. In between, the band’s economical songwriting creates an overwhelming sense of eeriness within the confines of three-minute pop songs. When they really hit their stride, on "Gideon," for instance, they create a palpable feeling of dread that almost manifests physically by the track’s end. Even on less heavy tunes such as the garagey "Tusk" and the vaguely funky "Animal/Human," Ade Blackburn’s taut and desperate vocals make sure nothing goes down too easy.

For a band to make it past number three is hard enough. For a band to pull itself out of a rut and create a stunning fourth album is outstanding. I don’t know if they’re still wearing surgical gowns onstage, but they needn’t bother with the gimmick when they perform as part of Noise Pop. (Gene Bae)

CLINIC

With Earlimart, Sea Wolf, and the Mumlers

March 3, 9 p.m., $17

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

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Noise Pop: Basking in their luster

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Oh me, oh my, love that country pie, and oh me, oh my, the influence of Devendra Banhart and Will Oldham is now as long and thick as their beards. Actually, Brightblack Morning Light’s Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes were opening for Oldham when Banhart was making the leap from homemade cassette to Young God. But in the autumn of 2006, around when they landed a primo spot opening for Os Mutantes at the Fillmore and then walked onto the cover of Arthur like it was a throne lying in wait for them, the applause for and catcalls about their group really began to fly back and forth. Spiritualized acolytes old enough to have gone high-igh-igh with Spacemen 3 the first time around praised Brightblack’s "heroin-gospel" sound, while other older folks who’d seen one too many white people claim an American Indian great-grandmother cried foul. Younger fans espoused nature love as their more cynical peers held their noses — that is, with whichever hand wasn’t masturbating an iPod with carpal tunnel–ridden thumbs. At the end of last year, as rock critics assembled top 10 lists, there were many rivers to cross — some leading to the Walkmen’s cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats — and yet just about all roads led to the Rhodes-dominated sound of Brightblack Morning Light (Matador). This show should offer some hints about the follow-up. (Johnny Ray Huston)

BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT

With Women and Children, Mariee Sioux, and Karl Blau

March 3, 8 p.m., $14

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

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Noise Pop: Nilsson rating

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You may not have heard of Harry Nilsson, but you sure as hell have heard his music. The singer-songwriter was responsible for everything from "Without You" ("I can’t live, if living is without you") to "Coconut" ("You put the lime in the coconut, you drink ’em both up"), from "One" (famously covered by Aimee Mann for Magnolia) to "Everybody’s Talkin’ " (which he sang for Midnight Cowboy). So why haven’t more people heard of Nilsson, one of the most prolific, talented, and experimental artists of his generation? That’s what John Scheinfeld’s 2006 documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ about Him?) seeks to answer — and to remedy. This engaging, affectionate film follows Nilsson’s life and career throughout its tumultuous, triumphant, tragic course, from his start singing demos to his collaboration with the Beatles. Interviews with an eclectic cast of colleagues — including Yoko Ono, May Pang, Terry Gilliam, Robin Williams, Micky Dolenz, and Randy Newman — round out the picture of this profoundly creative but fatally self-destructive genius. With its stellar nostalgic soundtrack, Who Is Harry Nilsson is a must-see for rock ‘n’ roll lovers, Beatles fans, and the people who already know and love Nilsson — which, after this screening, hopefully will include you. (Molly Freedenberg)

WHO IS HARRY NILSSON (AND WHY IS EVERYBODY TALKIN’ ABOUT HIM?)

Feb. 28, 7 p.m., $10

Roxie Film Center

3117 and 3125 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

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Noise Pop: Blag, guts, and pussy

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› duncan@sfbg.com

Love ’em or hate ’em, the Dwarves are as close to punk rock royalty as San Francisco is ever gonna have. They’ve been in the game since emigrating from Chi-town in the ’80s, with nary a letup for soul-searching acoustic meandering or trips to rehab.

"What you wanna do, B? What you wanna do?" a voice queries in "Demented," from 2004’s The Dwarves Must Die (Sympathy for the Record Industry). "I wanna fight, fuck, and destroy like they used to" is vocalist Blag Dahlia’s answer.

Dahlia, born Paul Cafaro, and the ever-naked (except for a Lucha Libre mask) Hewhocannotbenamed on guitar have been the core of the Dwarves for longer than some of their audience members — and dates — have been alive and got the band booted from Sub Pop in 1992 for engineering a Hewho death hoax. Living in San Francisco, one can count on good burritos, high gas prices, and experiencing six or fewer degrees of Blag separation at all times. I made out with a girl who claimed he’d stolen her spiked belt when they lived together. On a snippet from Thank Heaven for Little Girls (Sub Pop, 1991), an audience member at a Dwarves show says, "The lead singer’s a fucking shithead, man. He broke a fucking glass onstage. I get bumped by the crowd. The next thing you know, my hand’s fucking sliced." I could swear this happened at a show I was working security for at Slim’s.

While Dahlia has certainly created an impressive myth, just how worthy of their legacy — or relevant — are the Dwarves in 2007? The Dwarves Must Die has the middle-aged Dahlia rapping, of all things, to hilarious effect on "Massacre," on which he spouts the line "This one goes out to Queens of the Trust Fund: you slept on my floor, now I’m sleeping through your motherfucking records," which led to a much-publicized dustup with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme at a Hollywood club. I’ve even spotted Dahlia playing around town as MC Blag. He takes swipes at "fake punkers" Good Charlotte, but he’s apparently cowritten songs with them, as well as produced more than one Offspring album.

"I don’t ride a skateboard and love what you hate for / And don’t give a fuck about punk-rocking no more," Dahlia raps on "Massacre." To me, it’s this willingness to not be punk rock that makes the band even more so. Musically, things took a turn for the poppy on 1996’s The Dwarves Are Young and Good Looking (Epitaph), and that’s when they got interesting. Far from being merely a glass-smashing nihilist, Dahlia is also a frustrated romantic, a ’50s protorock crooner like Dion or Del Shannon in fingerless leather gloves (see Must Die‘s warped piss take on Shannon, "Runaway #2").

According to one of Dahlia’s ex-lovers, "He’s very mellow and affectionate. I’d get random 3 a.m. voice mails with him singing old soul songs where every word that was romantic would be changed to my name." She went on to say that despite his onstage calls for violence, during their time together she’d never seen him in a fight: "He’s kind of a pacifist."

All this, of course, is neither here nor there. As far as I’m concerned, after 1990’s death blast Blood Guts and Pussy (Sub Pop), with its iconic, Michael Lavine–photographed cover of two naked women and an equally buck-ass midget drenched in blood (the midget appears to be making nice with a bunny rabbit), they could have basically shit in jewel cases for the rest of their career and still worn the crown. That record is basically the punk rock version of Slayer’s Reign in Blood (Def Jam, 1986): 12 tracks in 13 minutes and six seconds — pure punk bliss. And they were smart enough to not try to repeat it every record. Really, what’s Josh Homme have that can hold a candle to that? *

DWARVES

With Girl Band and the White Barons

March 4, 10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

>

Noise Pop: Cats have nine lives

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Few numbers are as loaded as three. From the Holy Trinity to the three main spiritual channels in our bodies described by kabbalists and yogis alike, spiritual triads exist alongside musical forms of threeness: the exponential sound of the power trio, great albums named III, and, indeed, Loudon Wainwright III.

The trio Sebadoh, early harbingers of indie rock, had their own III back in 1991, trading off instruments and artistic wills to make 23 wonderfully unpredictable tracks of folk-core meanderings and spastic noise rock shape-shifting. It’s pretty much universally acknowledged that this record rocked in ways previously unknown. But what really went on between the three original members, Eric Gaffney, Lou Barlow, and Jason Loewenstein? They had all gone on to solo careers before announcing last year both the reissue of III on Domino and a gig at the Great American Music Hall for Noise Pop, an early stop on the Sebadoh "reunion" tour from the West Coast to Toronto and back again.

But Sebadoh’s members aren’t surprised to find themselves together again. "Sebadoh have never reissued anything," Barlow said recently on the phone from his house in Los Angeles, while his young daughter seemed to be taking a noise rock solo in the background. "I think Pavement were reissuing things within two years of being together. The question is, actually, why didn’t we ever reissue things before?"

The new III is fantastic, complete with a bonus disc including the prescient Gimme Indie Rock! EP, the original four-track demo of "The Freed Pig," and "Showtape ’91," a noise and word collage that’s a flashback to the original supporting tour for III. The reissue process was typically strenuous but also cathartic. It was partly to deal with Homestead Records, the album’s original label, Gaffney explained in a recent e-mail. "Signing to Homestead turned out to be a bad idea, so years later I filed a lawsuit … to try to get paid and get the masters back."

Sebadoh never got them back. So how did a reissue happen? "We worked on the bonus disc, and then it was remastered at Abbey Road from a store-bought III CD and the vinyl," Gaffney wrote. "I found a lot of old band tapes for the ‘bonus’ CD. Good stuff."

Barlow agreed, sort of. "A few years ago, Eric and I had an e-mail conversation … an e-mail war … where we just basically went point-by-point through every misunderstanding we had between us, and it all culminated in the reissue. I really just kind of had to let Eric choose what went on the extras disc. But it was totally worth it just to get the record out." They both got what they needed out of the process, Barlow said. "And then it just kind of came up that, well, I guess we could play some shows. Let’s up the ante here! What’s the next logical challenge?" III is an important Sebadoh disc partly because the clash of wills and styles made the music sound so driven. If their accomplished solo projects are any indication, the tour should rock hard and sweet, and that’s all that matters. They plan to play off the crowd, Barlow said, and sets may include material from any time in Sebadoh’s history. "It’s when we get lost in the moment and enjoy the music and drop the phony power plays, that’s when it’s happening," wrote Gaffney, who lives and breathes right here in San Francisco. In other words, the third time — Sebadoh with Gaffney, without, and now again with — is a charm. (Ari Messer)

SEBADOH

With the Bent Mustache, Love of Diagrams, and the New Trust

Feb. 28, 8 p.m., $18–$20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

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Noise Pop: Miss him?

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The first time Roky Erickson performed in San Francisco was in the summer of 1966, fronting his Austin, Texas, band the 13th Floor Elevators, whose garage rock classic "You’re Gonna Miss Me" was rising up the national charts. Sharing the bill at the Fillmore with Grace Slick’s first band, the Great Society, Erickson sang of psychedelic reverberations and reincarnations in both sagely reassuring croons and blood-curdling yelps. The Elevators’ name shows up on Fillmore-Avalon posters so often that even today they’re still thought of as an honorary San Francisco psychedelic band of sorts.

The last time Roky performed in the city was in the early 1980s, and he was singing of two-headed dogs and aliens from the most tawdry of B-grade horror films. Times had changed, yes, but Erickson had changed more, irreversibly fried by a three-year stint in a maximum-security Texas state hospital after he was declared insane in 1969. The one thing undeniably the same was that one-of-a-kind voice, crushing Little Richard, James Brown, and Buddy Holly through the blender of a particularly Texan brand of acid-baked dementia.

Performers from GWAR to Marilyn Manson have made a lucrative career by fashioning an act from gothic horror. Erickson, to all appearances, has actually lived it, and if his record sales have been tiny in comparison to those of others, the fervor of his cult following is second to few. "Roky’s aesthetic rings true with younger music-media fans," says Billy Angel, who played autoharp as part of Erickson’s backup band the Aliens when Erickson reemerged in the late 1970s. "He brought to vision many years ago the now-contemporary experience of rock music coming through the sound system while film noir beams from the video screen."

Erickson’s first San Francisco appearance in about 25 years — as part of Noise Pop on March 1 — comes at a time when most fans had given up hope of seeing him onstage. Withdrawing from music entirely for about a decade, he began performing again in late 2005 after a bitter fight for his custody between his mother and his brother Sumner — the latter also a renowned musician but quite a different one: a tuba player for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. You couldn’t make it up, but we know it’s true because the whole battle was caught on film, in the mesmerizing and disturbing documentary You’re Gonna Miss Me (screening at the Roxie Film Center on Feb. 28).

As his family feuds over what’s best for its prodigal son and praise pours in from such interviewees as Patti Smith, Erickson wanders through the film like a ghostly observer. Apparently neither gratified nor agitated by the attention of either fanatical fans or would-be caretakers, he’s more interested in adjusting his army of televisions and stereos to just the right impossibly painful, cacophonous loudness. As much as most everyone on camera gushes over his genius and tragedy, what Erickson thinks about his cult and incapacitation remains a mystery.

There’s just one scene in the 90-minute film in which he seems at ease and makes one suspect his upcoming show might not be the psychodrama we fear. A therapist asks him to play a song; Erickson starts to strum an acoustic guitar and sing with folky, gentle tenderness, his vocal chops fully intact. Suddenly, he doesn’t seem like a nearly inert burnout fawned and fought over like a familial football. Music courses through his system — his thoughts and voice are clear and calm. It might be the only psychic skin he has left, but he wears it well. *

YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME

Feb. 28, 9:15 p.m., $10

Roxie Film Center

3117 and 3125 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

ROKY ERICKSON AND THE EXPLOSIVES

With Oranger, Howlin Rain, and Wooden Shjips

March 1, 8 p.m., $25

Great American Music Hall

850 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

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Noise, pop — two great tastes in one!

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FEB. 27

TAPES ‘N TAPES, HAR MAR SUPERSTAR, AND MC-DJ DAVID CROSS


Song scribe extraordinaire Har Mar ripped it up at Thee Parkside a few Noise Pops back, and buzz band Tapes ‘n Tapes made the South by Southwest crowd go nuts (and crawl the wall outside), so you know this is gonna be a blast. Watch for those low-flying groupies of indie comedy fave David Cross too. (Kimberly Chun)

9 p.m. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. Free if you sign up at www.noisepop.com/freedm

FEB. 28

HELLA, POP LEVI, AND MACROMATICS


In Northern California we are all familiar with the term hella, typically used to convey abundance. This same definition can be applied to Sacramento’s math rock savants Hella, whose chaotic brew of avant musical equations can be compared to a piano falling down an elevator shaft or the sonic vibrations of a song trapped in a quasar. Once made up solely of guitarist Spenser Seim and drummer Zach Hill, Hella has since morphed into a full band with the addition of guitarist Josh Hill, bassist Carson McWhirter, and vocalist Aaron Ross, making for a more contained noise that verges on the fringes of prog. Opening is London’s Pop Levi, who describes his slithering psych pop as "Prince making out with Bob Dylan in Syd Barrett’s bedroom," and Romy Hoffman, better known as Macromatics, who makes punk-rooted hip-hop and has been known to shout out to Lemony Snicket and Melanie Griffith in the same breath. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

8 p.m. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $12. (415) 621-4455

JOSH RITTER


Sure, I remember the first time I heard Josh Ritter, who plays a solo acoustic set as part of Noise Pop. There I was, driving beneath a huddle of midnight pines in the middle of nowhere when a warm drawl lured me off the dirt road and into the airwaves with tales of Patsy Cline’s ghost and girls with wooden-nickel smiles — all delivered with the urgency of a young Bob Dylan and the intimacy of Townes van Zandt. Five years later, the Idaho-bred indie folkie still slays me with the Americana mythology of "Golden Age of Radio," and the storytelling voodoo he has cast ever since makes me wish they’d start giving out the O. Henry Award for songwriting. Ritter could be the first winner. (Todd Lavoie)

7:30 p.m. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. $15. (415) 861-5016

MARCH 1

LYRICS BORN AND THE COUP


This Noise Pop show is a warm reminder that all is not lost in contemporary rap music. Yes, it’s still possible for hip-hop to both move your butt and stimulate your mind. Prime examples of this are longtime Oakland political wordsmith Boots Riley and his funk-fueled live band the Coup, who are blessed to be back after a recent tour bus accident. With headliner Quannum MC Lyrics Born, who has proven himself a tireless performer at 150 shows a year, you have a hip-hop concert that’s guaranteed to deliver on all levels. (Billy Jam)

8 p.m. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. $25. (415) 346-6000

NO AGE


Hybridizing jangled guitar treatments and shrill electronics, No Age make ambient basement rock that sounds like the Stooges if Iggy had moved the rest of the band with him to Berlin. For the past year, this LA duo — embodying two-thirds of the short-lived maniacal punk outfit Wives — has wed lo-fi with New York noise. On "Dead Plane," a song featured on the band’s MySpace page, a slow burner of dainty hums builds then takes a backseat to a three-chord commotion of dismantled sounds. Matt and Kim, Erase Errata, and Pant Pants Pants round out this rocktastic happening. (Chris Sabbath)

8 p.m. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $10. (415) 621-4455

SCISSORS FOR LEFTY


At first glance, Scissors for Lefty remind you of those dudes down the block who your friends keep telling you are going to make it big. The video for their latest single, the new wave "Ghetto Ways," off Underhanded Romance (Pepper Street Music), works in clips from the 1970s horror flick The Dead, the Devil and the Flesh. The result: pure camp, including an impressive dance break by vocalist Bryan Garza. Lest you forget SFL hail from the Bay Area, "Mama Your Boys Will Find a Home" gives a shout-out to the Mission and girls who "breathe new life into checking our voice mail." (Elaine Santore)

8:00 p.m. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. $15. (415) 255-0333

MARCH 2

ANNUALS


The gears of this much-blogged-about sextet’s musical engine are greased with an all-engaging medley of brash experimental pop and electronic folk. And like kindred spirits Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Arcade Fire, the Annuals back up their buzz with a punch of indie rock delight: their 2006 full-length, Big He Me (Ace Fu), has scored a favorable reception from critics and fans alike. Led by singer-songwriter Adam Baker, the Raleigh, N.C., group’s captivating live show promises to be one of the highlights of Noise Pop. Simon Dawes, Pilot Speed, and Ray Barbie and the Mattson 2 also perform. (Sabbath)

9 p.m. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $10. (415) 861-5016

AUTOLUX


A dreamlike fusion of languid atmospherics and apocalyptic noise, Autolux’s futuristic dark pop is fit for a fembot. The LA trio is composed of bassist Eugene Goreshter, guitarist Greg Edwards, and drummer Carla Azar, whose pounding percussion echoes with an ominous clamor. On songs such as "Turnstile Blues," from Future Perfect (DMZ/Epic, 2004), austere vocals, lush musical landscapes, and fuzzed-out, droning guitars inspire comparisons to the shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine, the moodiness of Slowdive, and the artful dissonance of Sonic Youth. Their sound may borrow from distortion-heavy bands of the past, but Autolux appear to be ushering in their own version of sonic modernism. (Kaufman)

9 p.m. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. $14. (415) 771-1421

DANDY WARHOLS


The Dandy Warhols: you either hate to love them or love to hate them. But regardless of their arrogant pomp, overt cheekiness, and swaggering vocalist Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s pretentious double-hyphenated name, this foursome still comes through with catchy, pop-laced psychedelia that successfully blurs the boundaries between the underground and the mainstream. The Dandys — who made a splash with their 1997 single "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" and later garnered attention as the sell-out antagonists to the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s incorrigible madcap Anton Newcombe in the 2004 documentary DiG! — continue to find commercial success while staying true to their original sound. This show’s openers include the Bay’s Elephone and Oakland’s Audrye Sessions, whose sweeping, romantic indie rock lullabies will thaw even the most jaded heart. (Kaufman)

9 p.m. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. $30. (415) 625-8880

ALELA DIANE


What hath Vashti wrought? Here they come round the mountain, like Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls Wilder in the credit sequence for Little House on the Prairie — yes, indeedy, the fair maidens with granny hankies of acoustic stringed Americana seem to be multiplying endlessly or cloning themselves through antique alchemical methods such as MySpace. Yet many deliver the goods — and I don’t just mean personally sewn CD packaging; I mean singing and songwriting. Such is definitely the case with the palindromically named Alela Diane, who hails from Joanna Newsom country — Nevada City — but favors guitar over harp and resuscitates Karen Dalton’s quaver with less affectation than Newsom. Humming through teeth, tying tongues in knots, and finding flatlands within mouths, Diane has a definite flair for oral imagery and aural spells: "My Brambles" vividly invokes a favorite word or pet cat, while "The Rifle" and "Lady Divine" flirt with danger instead of falling prey to it à la Marissa Nadler’s eerie murder ballads. (Diane’s handsome friend Rubio Falcor also has a way with a song, if his MySpace cabin is anything to go by.) Along with Zach Rogue and Thao Nguyen, Diane will open for Vic Chesnutt, who is dusting off his shelves and ghetto bells for a few California shows. (Johnny Ray Huston)

7:30 p.m. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. $15. (415) 861-5016

MARCH 3

DEAD MEADOW


Followed by a trail of critical acclaim inundated with joint-smoking references and marijuana puns, Dead Meadow are frequently and unfairly categorized as drugged-induced hard rock. Instead the Washington, DC, group possesses a genius far surpassing the clownish gimmickry of unsophisticated stoner jams. As musically intricate and ethereal as they are untamable and beastly, Dead Meadow take inspiration from rock greats such as Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin but inhabit a unique and mystical domain where early incarnations of metal coexist with swirling, murky psychedelia — the perfect soundtrack for a druid ritual or black magic spell casting. Starlight Desperation and Spindrift open. (Kaufman)

9 p.m. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $12–$14. (415) 861-5016

PONYS


Chicago’s Ponys are making dangerous music. You know, the kind of stuff you don’t want your little sister listening to for fear that she might become seduced by the unduutf8g rhythms, or worse, that she’d fall for the shaggy-haired drummer. This tough-as-nails garage quartet is the sonic kick in the pants that music fans have been craving. Saddled with thundering guitars and ferocious bass lines, the Ponys bring grit and musical malevolence to a famously frenetic live show. Even better, Jered Gummere’s sneering vocals evoke Richard Hell’s, lending an old-school flavor to a feral yet infectious racket composed of equal parts DIY primordial punk, dirty psych à la Blue Cheer, and Love’s irreverent melodicism. Lemon Sun, the Gris Gris, and Rum Diary open. (Kaufman)

9:30 p.m. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $10–$12. (415) 621-4455

SPINTO BAND


If you own a television, you might already know the Spinto Band — or at least their song "Oh Mandy," which provided the soundtrack to a Sears commercial. But don’t hold that against this quirky, energetic group from Delaware. While you’re dancing to their melodic, happy, and bouncy brand of indie rock, you’ll forget all about sweaters and washing machines. Also on the lineup: Dios Malos, who offer catchy and experimental SoCal suburban indie pop; the Changes, who make romantic, earnest pop that made them one of Paste‘s bands to watch; and the Old-Fashioned Way, who produce danceable indie with a sense of humor straight outta the Tenderloin. (Molly Freedenberg)

9 p.m. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. $12. (415) 861-2011

For more Noise Pop picks, check out next week’s Guardian.

For more info, see www.noisepop.com/2007

The rise and fall of the Donnas

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

The Donnas have every right to be bitter — and the general nonexistence of delectable male groupies is just one item on a laundry list of spoilers. "Seriously, if there were hot guys throwing themselves at me, I would take advantage of them!" complains vocalist Brett Anderson, lounging on the patio outside engineer Jay Rustin’s Sherman Oaks recording studio, where the Donnas are recording their next album.

What’s the issue on this mild winter day in an intensely girly garden paradise cluttered with poodle-haired pups, dive-bombing hummingbirds, and wildly whistling songbirds? The unequal treatment undergone by one of the most celebrated and derided groups of female rock musicians to hit the country’s pop radar since the Go-Go’s. Essentially, "it’s not the same!" Anderson and guitarist Allison Robertson yelp simultaneously.

"It’s much harder for a girl to get a blow job," adds Robertson, ever the analytical Donna, even in matters of quickies. "A lot of guys on the road in rock bands don’t always bang every girl — they just get blow jobs really fast. Guys can do that. It takes 10 minutes or five minutes. But with girls, it’s just not the same. We all know — it’s a little more involved. You need a little more privacy usually, I dunno."

Their tour bus just has tiny bunks shielded by curtains. "Literally, a Porta Potty is more private than a bunk," says Anderson, still the wisecracking, immaculately turned-out amazon in a sweater, skinny jeans, flats, and Springsteen T.

Once Palo Alto’s misfit all-girl rockers from Jordan Middle School, San Francisco’s punk-metal-pop sweethearts on Lookout!, then Atlantic’s up-and-comers splashed all over MTV, the Donnas are now, 13 years along, veterans at the ripe ages of 27 and 28 who can say they’ve been and done that and seduced, if not 40 boys in 40 nights, then thousands of listeners. Today labelless, off their well-worked and beloved touring circuit, and working through a Saturday on a disc with nary a flunky pushing a pop agenda, the Donnas are free, though their trajectory has been tough — littered with put-downs (some said they were the products of a Svengali in the form of Radio Trash–Super*Teem label owner Darrin Raffaelli, who initially collaborated with the teen band once called Ragady Anne then the Electrocutes), innuendo (who could ignore the unsettling amounts of older stalker dudes at their shows?), and rumor. "A lot of people think we’ve gotten dropped and we owe [Atlantic] thousands of dollars and we can’t pay them back!" Robertson explains. "Also that we’re broke and we’ve broken up."

"Also that we’re lazy," Anderson jumps in, imitating an imaginary slurring, boozy Donna. " ‘Oh yeah, we’re working on our record. Gimme another beer!’ "

Contrary to conjecture, it turns out that the Donnas weren’t dropped from Atlantic but left amicably, deciding not to renew in the face of pressure to go more pop after 2002’s Spend the Night failed to take off on rock radio despite much MTV play for their video "Take It Off" and 2004’s Gold Medal failed to remedy matters. "Our big joke was that we were making Gold Medal so Spend the Night would go gold," Anderson quips. Fortunately, the women who once aced their high school courses and recorded their first 7-inches after hours at a local Mailboxes Etc. are used to driving themselves — even when they couldn’t operate a motor vehicle.

"They started when they were in seventh grade," Anderson’s mother, Bonnie, says over the phone from Palo Alto. She’s one of a contingent of Donnas parents including Robertson’s musician dad, Baxter, and bassist Maya Ford’s English instructor father, John, who founded Poetry Flash. "We had to drive. We were the roadies. Mostly we drove them to different shows, unloaded them, watched them, and went, ‘Omigod,’ and loaded ’em up again. We lived vicariously through them."

But then, the Donnas’ career has been marked by such disjunctions: they were the good students who got into UC Santa Cruz (Robertson and Ford), UC Berkeley (Anderson), and NYU (drummer Torry Castellano) as well as sexy, nice girls-gone-bad who foregrounded female desire, fast tempos, and crunchy metal-fleck glam rock licks, fashioning a sound that might have emerged from Rikki Rockett and Vince Neil if they took the rock train to the next gender. All appetite and attitude, riding the tension between the needs to please and be pleased, the Donnas projected the carefree party-hard image that presaged Andrew W.K. while undergoing their share of trauma and drama, starting with a car accident on the cusp of 2001’s Turn 21 (Lookout!) and continuing through the trouble-plagued Gold Medal sessions, which saw Castellano’s painful case of tendonitis, Anderson’s ravaged vocal chords, Robertson’s divorce, and ordinarily prolific lyric writer Ford’s dry spell. "I kind of ran out of ideas and just got depressed," Ford says on the phone in Los Angeles. "I think I felt, like, a lot of pressure, and it’s never a good situation to be under the gun."

But the Bay Area–bred band stuck together, even when they always felt like outsiders amid Lookout!’s East Bay punk scene. "The thing that’s the most impressive about the Donnas is that through all of this, being teenagers, being best friends, having dreams of school and different careers, parental pressure to pursue those, highs and lows in terms of record sales and attention, they’ve stuck together," says manager Molly Neuman, once the drummer of riot grrrl groundbreakers Bratmobile and a force behind the now-catalog-driven Lookout! alongside her ex-husband, Christopher Appelgren.

The frustrating thing — even on this Grammy weekend, as the Dixie Chicks were getting ready to receive their dust collectors across town — was hitting the wall on rock radio as so many other female bands have. All the while they were dancing backward, away from the on-air jokes about synchronized periods and D-cups and being told repeatedly, " ‘We don’t play female rock on our rock station,’ " unless it’s Evanescence or No Doubt, Robertson says.

After trying Atlantic’s pop strategy and working with songwriters such as Dave Stewart ("You write songs with a guy who’s had these number one hits, and you see he still has to sit and go, ‘Dog, no. Frog, no’ — that’s nice," Anderson says. "You feel like, ‘Oh shit, he has to do that too’ "), they’re hoping to strike a balance with the new record, cooking up hard rock ear candy that satisfies a craving for sweet riffs and hard-to-shake hooks without falling prey to the monochromatic hardness of, say, Spend the Night. The songs they’ve tracked so far focus on Donna favorites — partying and dancing — with glances at the equalizing effects of nightfall and the loneliness of the road. And perhaps the gumption that gave these women the courage to face prove-it punks and surly sods every night on tour, the same sassiness that some mistake for brattiness, has been tempered with time.

"We were listening to old records and thinking, ‘Shit! Like, we’re scary!’ " Anderson says, laughing.

"This album," Robertson says softly, "is more like ‘Come party with us.’ " *

DONNAS

With Boyskout, Bellavista, and Push to Talk

March 2, 9 p.m., $20

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

Sonic Reducer will return next week.

Robe of glory

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"The Jim Kweskin Jug Band was sort of the first group of goofballs who didn’t wear uniforms, who didn’t have set patter. It was the acoustic precursor of the Grateful Dead," Geoff Muldaur says on the phone from Los Angeles. "Bob Weir got our first album and ran over to Jerry and said, ‘We’ve gotta form a jug band. You’ve gotta hear this shit!’ "

Before iTunes and Pandora.com, getting your hands on a new record was sometimes like receiving a password to a part of your spirit you didn’t know existed. Since Muldaur’s early days with Kweskin and blues integrator Paul Butterfield, his vocal chops have become legendary at the very least. "There are only three white blues singers," Richard Thompson once said. "Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them." Muldaur has been an equally powerful force in the interpretation and expansion of the American songbook.

On "Wait ‘Til I Put On My Robe," one of the most moving songs on Muldaur’s 2000 solo album, Password (Hightone), there is an immediate feeling of ascension as Muldaur’s sings, "Going up the river so chilly and cold / Chills the body but not the soul." The stunning arrangement of this traditional gospel tune comes from Clarence Clay and William Scott, two blind African American street musicians recorded in Philadelphia in 1961. It sounds like Muldaur’s back in ’61 joining in on what he describes as the "weird, modal, wonderful, jumping" harmonies.

Although he was an essential part of the exponential surge that happened in the folk and blues scene in the ’60s, Muldaur is still in awe of the musical movement. He assures me that no matter what I’ve heard about those times in Cambridge, Mass.; Woodstock, NY; San Francisco; and beyond, "it’s all true! When I was hanging out with Jim Kweskin, Fritz Richmond, Bill Keith, and Maria [Muldaur, his wife at the time], I just assumed that’s how life was and that we were just sort of good. But the combination of those people was unmatchable. Bill Keith left Bill Monroe to join the jug band. Maria was shocking — she was so good."

With the exceptions of a quickie gig at the Lincoln Center in 2001 and a tribute concert in Japan for Fritz Richmond after the king of the jug and washtub bass died in 2005, Muldaur and Kweskin haven’t had a chance to really sit down and play together for many years. Muldaur is as excited as anybody for their reunion at the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse. "Just playing with Kweskin, man — it’s magic," he says. "Look, I go to the gym so I can keep this shit up!"

Playing in Berkeley will be a metaphysical homecoming. Muldaur lived in Mill Valley from 1988 to ’89 and would sneak across the bridge to revisit places where he had jammed in the ’60s. "When [the Jim Kweskin Jug Band] came out to the West Coast at first, to LA, it was like oil and water," Muldaur says. "But when we came to San Francisco and Berkeley, we were right at home because there were already freaks like us. The jug band and the scene in Cambridge was very much like in Berkeley, but Berkeley stayed that way."

Terry Gilliam told Muldaur his crew members used to get on their knees every morning and pray to Muldaur’s version of "Brazil," which gave the 1985 film its name. "It represented this insane, wacky, other place in reality," Muldaur says. With a major jug band documentary and an immense CD set charting Muldaur’s influences in the works, that other place in reality will soon be here to stay. *

GEOFF MULDAUR

With Jim Kweskin

Fri/16, 8 p.m., $19.50

Freight and Salvage Coffee House

1111 Addison, Berk.

(510) 548-1761

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From hardcore to soft

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What happens when you can fit your entire tour into a pickup truck? When your song can follow a Neil Young track in a juke joint? When you’re able to blend your steel guitar with indie rock unironically? What happens when you stop playing loud and start getting real?

Things get really, really good.

Could this be the culmination of what was intended when Armchair Martian guitarist-vocalist Jon Snodgrass and All frontperson Chad Price decided to unplug their amps and form Drag the River? Now — a decade after these hardcore dudes decided to play it slow, low, and rootsy — we’re left wondering how anyone else can lay claim to the most whiskey-soaked of genres, country rock. Staking thematic ground between Bruce Springsteen and the Minutemen, their sixth album, It’s Crazy (Suburban Home, 2006), builds icons from the shells of the down-and-out, romanticizes the working class, and casually explores Americana motifs. It’s Crazy‘s strained, simple "Mr. Crews" pulls us through the tough times of the wayward misanthrope: "Words are hard and bulletproof. Are we monsters? Are we fools? Rednecks, rejects, lonely losers …" "Leavin’ in the Morning" is a sparse charge through failed romance, and "Beautiful and Damned" covers the heart-wrenchingly hopeless category, while "Amazing G." gives an anthemic nod to the misguided barroom girls of the world. "Well, she once believed in Jesus," Price sings, "but she never believed in love. Now she worships at the altar of alcohol." And with a swollen sway, "Dirty Lips" fetishizes the hard-worn woman: "You must be talking too much shit — someone’s gonna smash your pretty lips."

Fan favorite "Me and Joe Drove Out to California" is straight stadium country — the kind that makes you want to drive and drive and drive — and in this, Drag the River electrify the essence of the best country songs, crossing state lines, raising hell, and chasing down your own good times.

Track 13 is so much more than just a title track: it’s a welcome reprise of the entire album and a reminder that this is not kitsch country — this is the hard stuff. In fact, one might have difficulty pegging Drag the River as alt-country if not for the past musical affiliations of its members. Shedding pretense and skin, Drag the River provide their brittle bones for our consideration and show us what veteran punk rockers are capable of. (K. Tighe)

DRAG THE RIVER

With Tim Barry of Avail and Hannalei

Fri/16, 8 p.m., call for price

Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 503-0393

www.theeparkside.com

>

So fresh, so clean

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Some weeks ago I ran by Melrose Middle School in East Oakland to catch DJ Fresh in action. Voted third-best DJ in the United States at the International Turntablist Federation finals in 1999, the 26-year-old veteran is a nationwide presence in hip-hop and handled the 1s and 2s behind figures such as Nas and Common before going on to produce a series of album-length projects during the past two years with Bay Area luminaries such as Mistah FAB, J-Stalin, and Sac-Town kingpin Smigg Dirtee. But the gig at Melrose was a little different: an afternoon class in rap and production for a bunch of mildly rambunctious middle schoolers. (He teaches two groups there, in addition to an adult education course at Eastside Alliance in Oakland.)

"This is my good class," he said with a wry smile, and in a way his performance managing the kids is more impressive to me than his two national tours as Nas’s DJ for Stillmatic and God’s Son (Sony, 2001 and 2002 respectively). Laid-back, allowing the students to address him as DJ Fresh, he can still rock the don’t-mess-with-me teacher mode when necessary, commanding respect and obedience. It’s something you need a knack for.

Fresh was born in Baltimore and moved with his mother to San Jose at age nine. He spent his teens going back and forth between the coasts, developing his talents on piano as well as turntables. "I tell people I started DJing when I was nine," he said, "because I was on them things, fucking with it every day." Inspired by older brothers DJ LS1 and DJ Dummy, who remained back East, the teenage Fresh joined 12-Inch Assassins, a clique of battle DJs featuring his siblings and DJ Chaps.

LS1 went on to DJ for DMX and more recently G-Unit, while Dummy worked with Onyx and currently DJs for Common. Through Dummy, Fresh got to perform at his first major rap shows, spinning at a number of Common gigs. By 18, Fresh was back in the Bay Area, only to be recruited by Nas, whose tours really put him on the map.

"The nigga just called me up one morning," Fresh recalled. "I knew it was going to happen, but I’m the kind of person, I’ll believe it when I see it. He was, like, ‘Have you done any major shows?’ I kinda lied. My brother told me, ‘Before you tell him what you want, tell him to make you an offer.’ So he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. His manager called me back the next day, and it’s been on since then."

"After my second tour with him, I went to school," Fresh continued. "I took that money and used it for my schooling over at Expression in Emeryville. The tour shit is cool, but I didn’t want my eggs in one basket. I went for sound engineering — I learned a lot of shit there." Though many rap producers eschew such formal training for fear of losing their autodidactic uniqueness, Fresh is a prime example of someone whose education has only enhanced his natural talent. Check, for example, the mix on his 2006 collaboration with J-Stalin, The Real World: West Oakland (FreshInTheFlesh). The sound is spacious — huge — clean and clear as a bell, requiring technical virtuosity behind the boards. Combined with his knowledge of ’70s and ’80s R&B — "What I See," for example, interpolates "Strawberry Letter 22" — Fresh’s beats immediately stand out.

"When I make my beats, I still got the DJ mentality," Fresh said. "Right when you hear it, it’s catchy. When you doing a party, you trying to keep it cracking, keep it off the hook. I take a lot of old shit and re-create it and reflip it. Bring it back with 808s and claps and all that good stuff." While such music could hardly be described as hyphy, it was, in fact, Mistah FAB who first put Fresh on the map in the Bay, freestyling on a 2005 full-length in Fresh’s main series, The Tonite Show (FreshInTheFlesh).

"It was before FAB had blew up," Fresh pointed out. "We had a song called ‘We Go Stupid in the Bay.’ It had a buzz, so that was my first establishment. Then he needed his DVD made — The Freestyle King. So we swapped. I edited the whole shit. That put me on blast more too."

Both the DVD and The Tonite Show helped fuel the increasing buzz around FAB’s main album, Son of a Pimp (Thizz, 2005), a process Fresh hopes to replicate for FAB’s upcoming Sony disc, The Yellow Bus Rider. A second FAB-hosted Tonite Show is projected for a March release.

This year promises to be a big one for Fresh: His gang of impending Tonite Show releases includes a compilation with his frequent collaborators due Feb. 23, as well as The Tonite Show with DJ Fresh, a mixtape-style installment of Fresh DJing his own music, slated for late February on Koch Records. He’s also shooting beats at his previous big-name associates — soon to drop are Tonite Shows starring Beeda Weeda and J-Stalin, Nump of "I Got Grapes" fame, the Acorn neighborhood phenom Shady Nate, and even Nas himself — and he intends to start a production team, the Whole Shebang, with Jamon Dru, 10AK, and Tower, an extraordinarily deep-voiced rapper who’s a cousin of Richie Rich. To top a furious schedule, Fresh has a radio show, running Mondays through Fridays on the first and third weeks of every month on Rapbay.com, called The World’s Freshest Hour.

"He’s just a hustlin’ dude," FAB remarked. "He’s always on his grind, and I respect that. He’s very humble, and that’s what makes working with him so easy." *

myspace.com/thetoniteshow

myspace.com/djfreshh

myspace.com/thewholeshebang2

Believe the buzz

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Signed to Frenetic Records and publicized by Fanatic Promotion, local boys–made–groovy the Makes Nice are surprisingly mellow. Perhaps they’ve been consorting with a resurrected British freakbeat muse — it’s been "more relaxed than you’d think, given the name and all," vocalist-guitarist Josh Smith writes via e-mail, discussing the group’s deal with Frenetic. The San Francisco label — also home to releases by one of Smith’s previous bands, the Fucking Champs — is proving an ideal base for these kind and raucous rockers. Their debut, Candy Wrapper and 12 Other Songs, is a head rush without the dizziness. Think honey versus synthetic sweeteners, Tartine Bakery’s shimmering morning buns versus Costco’s limp croissants.

Throughout Candy Wrapper there’s a certain calm — call it the clarity that comes with good ole musicianship. Phil Manley of Trans Am expertly engineered the album at Lucky Cat, and he emphasized how the jazzlike rapport among the players helps the ripping guitar solos become play-it-again hooks, while the drum beats groove like funky piano solos. "I always know that your opinions are stale / When you say fresh, I know it’s fucking stale / And it don’t mean nothing at all," the boys harmonize smoothly over staccato syncopation on the title track. On "As Long As I Can" a crowded drumbeat that could throw off lesser percussionists dances in the agile hands of Jack Matthew (also a member of Harold Ray Live in Concert). When I compare the vocals on "Anna Karina" to those of punk groups on Fat Wreck Chords, Smith responds, "They were supposed to have been stolen from Les Fleur de Lys, Powder, SRC, and maybe the Everly Brothers." The members of the Makes Nice don’t have SRC’s fantastic hair, but the Mothballs’ Aaron Burnham plays bass that would stand strong in any decade of rock.

But how to describe the nature of this superfun trio? A mandolin is subtle and effective because of its double strings. So maybe we could label the Makes Nice a double trio, though they would prefer either a ragingly ridiculous moniker or none at all. "If it’s cool, I would prefer to call my songs post-techstep neofreakbeat," Smith jokes. "I’d call Aaron’s songs anachronistic Spartacus watchband croon-wop. I’d consider Jack’s songs to be hybrid vapor-wetware tragicomedy…." Maybe they play un–surf rock for those who don’t like genre surf rock and don’t know how to surf. "I wish we could play surf music," Burnham writes, pretending to brood. "We sorta tried and failed."

I like to blame the vicious surf gangs in Santa Cruz for stymieing my surfing education. But honestly, I was just as happy to bodysurf in safer spots and then — sunned, exhausted, and deliriously happy (remember that time before laptops?) — find a big smooth rock and rest on it, reading comics. Eventually, I added a Walkman to this scene, then a lover. The Makes Nice capture such windswept feelings in the tunes "She Don’t Ever Let Go" and "California Sun."

Talented local artist Hellen Jo (www.helllllen.org — that’s five l’s) designed Candy Wrapper ‘s cover, an eye-grabbing minicomic depicting a terrible car accident. "I met Hellen about five years ago while we were both students at UC Berkeley, and we’ve pretty much been friends and mutual fans ever since," Burnham writes. "We sent her a few songs with lyrics and asked her to choose one to depict with a minicomic for the cover. And she did, exceeding all of our expectations. We emptied out the band piggy bank for her, of course."

Likewise, Candy Wrapper speaks clearly to a graphic-novel generation that sees stories in everything. Along with such similar punky doo-woppers as the Tralala, the Makes Nice are building a bridge recalling the missing link that the original freakbeat bands provided to psych rock in the 1960s. A bridge to what? Duh, to whatever is next. *

MAKES NICE

With the Moore Brothers and Miguel Zelaya

Feb. 14, 9 p.m., $8

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

(415) 647-2888

www.makeoutroom.com

www.myspace.com/themakesnice

>

Just bounce to this

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While the majority of techno and house music producers have been obsessed recently with exploring their genre’s ’80s and ’90s origins via time-warp disco maneuvers, a select few dance connoisseurs have been making great leaps into the future. London artist Dave Taylor, who records as Switch for Freerange Records and his own Dubsided imprint, is at the forefront of pogoing, digitally chopped-up house music that sounds more like 2080 than 1980. Taylor makes electrifyingly twisted house tracks, tunes that mercilessly slice samples into slivers and glue them together with a torrent of liquid bass. This is not your daddy’s house music, but it could be a robot society’s soundtrack. Taylor’s currently constructing tracks for M.I.A.’s new album and remixing Diddy, but this lunatic’s music roots go back further.

Taylor burst onto the underground dance charts in 2003 under the alias Solid Groove with his 3-Stylin’ EP for occasional collaborator Graeme Sinden’s Loungin’ Recordings. The disc’s title would prove descriptive for Taylor’s hybrid broken beat–techno–house grooves, which were fleshed out on the singles and remixes that followed. In 2004 and 2005, Taylor went into warp speed, catching the global DJ community off guard with innovative productions for Freerange such as "Get Ya Dub On" and "Get On Downz."

These singles sounded like no others at the time, taking the meticulous hyperedit philosophy of glitch techno and souping it up with bouncy bottom-end bass influenced by Taylor’s sound system–rich Ladbroke Grove, London, surroundings. Today Taylor leads the ranks of a growing British house revolution that includes wild innovators such as Jesse Rose, Trevor Loveys, Jamie Anderson, and Will Saul.

It hasn’t take long for others in his native city to take notice. Freerange founder Jamie "Jimpster" Odell thinks Taylor is the hardest-working producer he knows and also an anomaly: an artist able to make fucked-up and twisted tracks accessible to the masses. Obviously, the assessment is accurate, judging by the volumes of DJ mix compilations and remix credits (Busta Rhymes, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers) Taylor has racked up in the past three years. Odell also thinks Taylor’s success is instinctive, noting that "he [knows] what makes people freak on the dance floor but listens to so much different stuff all the time, he’ll never get stuck in a rut."

Solid Groove numbers such as "This Is Sick" and Switch tracks like "Just Bounce to This" are propelled by low-slung kick drums; thick, wobbly bass frequencies; and a blender full of chopped vocal samples that reference everything from Timbaland-style hip-hop to the sonic expanses of digital pop culture. Taylor’s sounds pan across the audio spectrum and rebound in your head like bingo balls in a tumbler. It’s easy to get worked up by a Switch set on the dance floor and wonder where three hours just went. But how do you sell Switch to a skeptical Bay Area audience?

Local DJs Qzen (née Susan Langan) and Bryan James of Moxie Musik recognized Taylor’s appeal and arranged to bring Switch to Mezzanine. The former describes Taylor’s recent remixes of the Futureheads and Lily Allen as twisted, jackin’ house that will drive a floor mad if dropped at the right time, and although she’s pioneered Switch and similar artists on her West Add Radio show (Sun., 9–11 p.m., 93.7 FM, westaddradio.com), she says she has a hard time finding words to describe his signature clatter. James chimes in that Taylor makes cut-up house loaded with quirky samples and boombastic bass, which is about as accurate a narrative portrait as you’ll get. Switch makes music you have to experience rather than talk about. *

SWITCH

With Claude VonStroke

Feb. 15, 9 p.m., $10

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

>

Space disco disks

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BLACK DEVIL DISCO CLUB, 28 AFTER (LO)


Imagine Klaus Nomi’s more butch and less robotic brother riding the peaks and valleys of a Giorgio Moroder blip roller coaster, and you have a glimpse of the personality of this EP by Bernard Fevre, who sure looks cute in the (circa late ’70s?) photo foldout within its shiny black jewel box. Was all of 28 After recorded 28 years ago, when Fevre was influencing what would become acid house, or was it spruced up recently? Whatever the answer, its six tracks are a treat. "I regret the flower power," the Parisian Fevre claims in the chorus of one song, but he shouldn’t regret the disco in its wake.

SALLY SHAPIRO, DISCO ROMANCE (DISKOKAINE)


Even though it has one of the tag’s two words in its title, I’m not sure this shy singer’s gorgeous album qualifies as space disco. It could just as easily be deemed classic synth pop, with an emphasis on classic — which means something, considering how synthy and poppy it is from start to finish. Fans of St. Etienne and Annie should run out and buy it before they’ve finished reading this sentence. Everyone else should give one listen to writer-producer Johan Agebjörn’s "I Know" and see if it’s possible to resist the song’s charms, which are as immense as Shapiro’s voice is petite. Early contender for album of the year.

SKATEBARD, MIDNITE MAGIC (DIGITALO)


Gotta love the floating toothy black-lipsticked mouths on the high-gloss cover of this album by Annie’s roommate, Baard Lødemel. The title of "Holidays on Ice in Space" shows the Bergen, Norway, producer has a sense of camp humor, while the hovering sound of "Caravan" suggests that he’s Aphex Twin’s glitter ball–loving other half. Another highlight is "Boyvox," on which the vox in question is breathy. A word (via the liner notes) from the man himself: "This record is best experienced on a portable music player, or an evening walk in your nearest forest or park."

VARIOUS ARTISTS, CONFUZED DISCO: A RETROSPECTIVE OF ITALIAN RECORDS (MANTRA-VIBES)


Italo disco is space disco’s illegitimate, polysexual parent. Disc one of this two-disc tribute to a top label largely showcases drag-ready originals such as N.O.I.A.’s "True Love" and Fawzia’s "Please Don’t Be Sad," though Radio Slave makes an excellent, shuddering cameo. The overall peak has to be Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas’s rock-powered remix of Answering Service’s "Call Me Mr. Telephone" on disc two. It adds a new bass line, guitar hook, and keyboard phrasing that rise in tension John Carpenter–style. It also condenses and enhances the best bits from the track’s female vocal, which plays like some modern Italian misunderstanding of "Please Mr. Postman." Viva Italo disco.

SEE ALSO


Metro Area, Kelley Polar Quartet. (Huston)

2007: a disco odyssey

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› johnny@sfbg.com

What is space disco? Well, it’s a term some people have thrown around when the music of Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is written about or discussed. What does the man from Oslo, Norway, think of the two-word catchphrase? "I guess the good thing is that some people are telling me, ‘Hey, man, you invented a genre,’ " he says, speaking from Oslo and capping the remark with a characteristic quiet, slightly jittery laugh. "If people think about it that way, it’s fine for me, because I get mentioned. But I think it’s limiting in terms of my music. In my opinion, disco with space elements, lots of laser beams — " he laughs again " — is not a wide genre."

Space disco might not be a wide genre, but Lindstrøm, who’s released 12-inch singles under his last name since 2003 for his own Feedelity label, has provided many of its highlights, recently collected on the compilation It’s a Feedelity Affair. One example is "I Feel Space," a sonic floating shuttle with a title that seemingly plays off the epically orgasmic Giorgio Moroder–produced Donna Summer classic from 1977, "I Feel Love." Another is "Gentle as a Giant," a rhythmic percolator that goes so far as to incorporate the same signature opening trinitarian chords of Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra that Stanley Kubrick utilized in the score of his 1968 cinematic astro classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As to whether the latter is a joking response to the space disco tag, Lindstrøm pleads innocence. "I just really like [Strauss’s] theme," he says.

Space disco might not even be a genre. But assuming it exists, Lindstrøm has also stepped far outside it, as on a 2005 collaboration with a fellow Oslo musician, Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas (Eskimo Recordings). That album’s expansive leanings are pastoral rather than interstellar. Beginning with a seemingly endless hit from a bong, "Don O Van Budd" sends autumnal wordless harmonies across acoustic plains with an easygoing charm Yo La Tengo might envy.

Asked about music that has emerged from Norway in recent years, Lindstrøm divides it according to city, saying he’s met the Bergen-based Annie and her roommate Skatebard and regularly communicates with fellow Oslo residents such as Thomas and the much sought-after remixer Todd Terje. "He’s one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to contemporary music," Lindstrøm says of the latter. But it’s a mistake to view Lindstrøm’s music in strictly contemporary terms. He was raised on country and western. He shares a multi-instrumental, unconventional approach to disco with the late Arthur Russell, whose Dinosaur recordings he especially enjoys. Many tracks on It’s a Feedelity Affair lock into rock-ready and steady live drum beats and bass lines that wouldn’t be out of place on a record by Neu! or Can.

On Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas‘s "Turkish Delight," Lindstrøm unwinds a Holger Czukay–like lengthy guitar solo — one ingredient, safe to say, that qualifies as a rarity on club tracks. Around the time of the Thomas collaboration’s release, Lindstrøm wasn’t averse to name-checking folks such as Yngwie Malmsteen in an interview and was full of praise for the fuzzed-out solo in the Carpenters’ "Goodbye to Love." But he’s since entered a minimal phase. "I’ve been touring and traveling, playing my music for other people at clubs, and for many people some of the early stuff is too inaccessible," he says. "I’ve been trying to make my music more simple, hopefully without losing what’s important."

It’s around this time that I hear a child crying in the background on Lindstrøm’s end of the line. As he continues to describe his musical approach — "I really like the combination of organic sounds, such as guitar, with digital programming" — the cries grow louder and contort into shrieks.

"Just a minute — can I call you back?" he asks.

Half an hour and one call later, peace has been restored. "My son really wanted to talk to me," Lindstrøm explains, a bit of embarrassment and pride mixed up in the words. Our conversation soon wanders to the subject of his studio. "It’s not like a professional studio. I’ve just installed all my equipment — and I don’t have that much — in a room," he says. "As you know, since we had to interrupt our conversation because of my kid, sometimes I have to go somewhere else."

Like a personal space? Certainly, space is important — Lindstrøm knows this more than most musicians working today. Space disco may not be a wide genre, and it may not exist, but Lindstrøm’s best recordings engage with notions of space in a way that multiplies the word’s meanings. As he jokes, the term can conjure literal images of melodies played on laser beams, and indeed, some of his songs do exactly that. But if that’s what space disco is or can be, the form was probably invented by Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Charting realms far from Star Wars kitsch, Lindstrøm uses a much more contemporary disco sound to manipulate notions of space. With — and even without — dub techniques, he expands the dimensions of a song’s sound so the melodies seem to travel into a neon and pitch-black eternity.

This approach is cinematic, really, as that 2001: A Space Odyssey link within "Gentle as a Giant" might suggest. "Hey, wait a minute," I think to myself as I hang up the phone. "Don’t the liner notes of A Feedelity Affair imagine Lindstrøm giving a track-by-track movie pitch to 2046 director Wong Kar Wai?"

It’s a link worth exploring. I’d call Lindstrøm back and ask him about it, but I don’t want to come between him and his son. *

LINDSTRØM

With Carl Craig, Gamall, and ML Tronik and TK Disco

Fri/9, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $12 advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

>

Strive for More Music Showcase

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LOCAL LIVE The art of soul singing is far from dead, even if it’s taken a backseat to hip-hop. The current chart successes of R&B singers such as Akon and Mary J. Blige surely provide proof of soul’s vitality, as does the fact that most of the strongest contestants on American Idol, both black and white, are immersed in the tradition. Used to be, however, that budding Bay Area soul singers had plenty of clubs at which to hone their skills in public. Such opportunities have largely vanished, and today many singers perform only inside recording studios while working on landing deals. A few get their contracts, but if the product fizzles, no one is likely ever to hear them, aside from friends and family.

Maxwell’s Lounge, a downtown Oakland supper club with a predominantly upscale African American clientele, is one of the few venues now presenting live R&B vocalists once a week. Local favorites such as Maya Azucena and Michael Cheadle appear at "R&B Fridays," booked by Kerry Fiero, whose Strive Management has worked in the past with R&B divas Ledisi and Goapele. On Jan. 26, Fiero presented the first of a projected quarterly showcase featuring three Northern California vocalists who had impressed her at a music camp in Los Angeles last summer.

Neither Rozzi Crane nor Taylor Thompson had ever performed in a club, which is understandable since both are 15. Crane, a Christina Aguilera–inspired siren from San Francisco, hit the stage first with a three-song set predominantly of oldies: Gladys Knight’s "If I Were Your Woman," Brandy’s "Baby," and the blues standard "Call It Stormy Monday." She was solidly backed, as were the other participants, by Clear Soul, a jazz-imbued quartet that is especially distinguished by member Quetzal Guerrero, who alternates between acoustic guitar, congas, and electric violin. Though her cadenza on the blues was overwrought, Crane has alto pipes that are remarkably pliant, and her phrasing at times suggested an Anita Baker influence. She shows much promise and is currently working on a demo with Sundra Manning, Ledisi’s former musical director, now Prince’s organist.

Fairfield resident Thompson followed, singing R. Kelly’s "I Believe I Can Fly" and two other numbers in a chilling high tenor that could have been mistaken for a falsetto if his speaking voice weren’t in the same register. Unfortunately, as Randy Jackson might say, Thompson was rather "pitchy." Not so for 31-year-old Nikko Ellison. The Suisun City vocalist, who regularly performs as a member of the United States Air Force Band’s rock and jazz ensembles, effortlessly moved between a soaring falsetto and a ringing lower tenor during a set of songs associated with Usher, Stevie Wonder, Robin Thicke, and Brian McKnight, as well as one of his own. Spine-chilling melismata and Sam Cooke–like yodels were employed in service of the material, never ostentatiously, and Ellison worked the crowd like a pro, falling on his knees at one point to croon to a group of women at a front table. It was a most auspicious club debut. (Lee Hildebrand)

STRIVE FOR MORE MUSIC SHOWCASE April 27, 8 p.m. Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakl. Call for price. (510) 839-6169, www.maxwellslounge.com

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On the Download — Ridin’ the wi-fi

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ON THE DOWNLOAD Don’t doubt it: southern hospitality is real, and it’s especially so in the rap game now that Lil Wayne and Chamillionaire have released free downloadable mixtapes of their latest rhymes on their Web sites. As mixtapes so often incorporate other rappers’ beats without written permission, the circuit, despite its hype and promotional benefits, has become a sizable source of controversy in the recording industry following the Jan. 16 arrests of DJ Drama and Don Cannon in Atlanta. In a Jan. 21 Reuters-Billboard article, Young Jeezy, a rapper who’s collaborated with Drama and other mixtape DJs, is quoted as saying he was "getting booked for shows in Detroit, D.C., places [he’d] never been" because of his mixtapes, which have each sold thousands. According to the same article, the Recording Industry Association of America is behind these arrests, apparently intending to target "illegal CDs" by way of "anti-piracy activity" — problematic designations at a time when artists and major labels monetarily support their proliferation. Luckily, legalities aren’t trapping Chamillionaire’s and Wayne’s new tapes, which both showcase major steps forward in their talent.

Chamillionaire, hailing from Houston and best known for megahit "Ridin’," posted Mixtape Messiah Pt. 2 on his relaunched site for free download on Christmas Eve. It’s a bitchin’ present, to be sure. This guy’s mixes are anticipated for a reason: his flow’s got such a malleable step that even the simplest rhymes smack of brilliance, plus the man can sing his own choruses. No Akon necessary! (It is, however, a terrific bonus that he appears on "Ridin’ Overseas.") Despite the title, Chamillionaire is disarmingly charming in his sentiments throughout — he comes across as a genuinely nice guy, pledging an end to dis tracks on the skit following his take on Nas’s "Hip Hop Is Dead," a remix that’s considerably more thrilling than what Nas himself committed to record.

As if topping Nas on his own beat wasn’t enough, "Roll Call Reloaded" shows Koopa convincingly imitating several friends, including Lil’ Flip, Slim Thug, and Bun B and Pimp-C of UGK. The gee-whiz factor doesn’t stop there: "I Run It" would be single material if it weren’t all about the biz, and "Get Ya Umbrellas Out" lays down a swaggering, believable promise of continued greatness over an AZ beat: "I’m about to bring the rain so they know how the thunder sound / Get ya umbrellas out."

Umbrellas are also advised as Lil Wayne continues to "make it rain on them" with his own playfully warped flow on Lil Weezyana the Mixtape Vol. 1. Credited to Lil Wayne and Young Money, it’s mixed by Raj Smoove and features MCs from the Young Money label, Wayne’s own imprint alongside Cash Money. The other MCs — including Curren$y and a secret weapon known only as Elle — don’t quite shine like Wayne, who blazes over Jay-Z’s "Show Me What You Got" in a way that leaves one feeling pretty uneasy about Jigga’s supposedly tight rein over the scene. Wayne’s rhymes are always intriguing, including such clever quips as "In the game, I’m manning up like Eli" and "Coupe blue like the do on Marge."

Smoove’s beats constantly switch up their style, allowing Wayne to exhibit his ability to kill just about any beat: "Secretary" employs a scratch-based hip-hop track, while "Vans" is finger snaps and an 808 behind a whispering Weezy. There are more serious moments, as on "Amen" and "I Like Dat," and the sincerity on these tracks is as compelling as the surreal wordplay elsewhere. This tape, alongside last year’s Dedication 2 (Gangsta Grillz) with the aforementioned DJ Drama, shows how dramatically far Wayne’s skill has come since his days in the Hot Boyz — you may not have guessed it from "Go DJ," but this guy is now spittin’ with the best. *


www.chamillionaire.com/mixtape/

www.youngmoneyent.com/ymaudio/index.html

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