SFBG Blogs Archives — Page 522 of 597 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Make mine Mekons…at Swedish American Hall

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October 11, 2007

Sitting pretty: Sally Timms and the rest of the Mekons sing out another San Francisco Saturday night. All photos by Ashleigh Reddy.

By Ben Sinclair

This year is the Mekons’ 30th anniversary, and it’s been a particularly fruitful year. It’s odd to imagine this Leeds group had once been an edgy punk outfit and then a trad-rock and country combo, slipping into new wave songs now and then. This weekend, they were a folk band.

And a very smart folk band, at that. After the Oct. 6 show at the merch booth, drummer Steve Goulding wouldn’t let me get away with passing off my last $12 for a $15 disc. Perhaps this is an attitude that has helped keep the band alive for so long. I promptly retrieved another $3 from the folks I came with and returned for a limited-edition copy of Dance on the Volcano, the new album by Tom Greenhalgh’s other band King Tommy’s Velvet Runway. A good decision. We all missed Greenhalgh’s voice that night, as he couldn’t make it for this leg of the tour, but the band rocked the hell out of “Hard to be Human Again” anyway.

Otherwise the classic lineup was present, and the banter between members felt warm and, at times, invigorating. I sat – and stomped and clapped – through the entire set with a happy-go-lucky grin on my face. “Give Me Wine or Money” was the night’s opener, further permeating the “fair trade” section of my mind. “Yeessss…,” I heard myself thinking, “Stop downloading this band from now on.” Later, casting like a smoky, pagan warlock, founder Jon Langford recommended the whole audience not hesitate to spend a bit in the back – after all, Greenhalgh now needs all the money he can get. He and his wife are having their third child.

Come out, come out!

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October 11, 2007

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In honor of National Coming Out Day today — and all the beautiful people, young and old, who’ve stormed out of the closets in an explosion of sequins and feathers — this one goes OUT to all the Idaho senators, MySpace bisexuals, bearded dictators, and four-star generals who could learn a thing or two about taking themselves so seriously. It’s just love, baby!

Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live, “Iran So Far Away”

Gayest. Videos. Ever. (Pt. 3)

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October 10, 2007

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Are you bored with the series yet? Well don’t be, because we plan to drive this sucker right into the shiny, dripping dance floor. (Click here for part 1 and here for part 2)

For those just catching up, we’re asking the City’s most prominent fairies for their favorite “gay” videos, which is a bit of a takeoff on the “Gayest. Music. Ever.” cover story we ran a few weeks ago. This week, we’ve asked writer, DJ, and all around bon vivant Matt Sussman, aka Missy Hot Pants, for some of his faves. Let’s get gay on the giga!

“Oooh, blog-opportunity!” quoth Sussman, when we told him we’d pay him ten dollars to sit still long enough to contribute. “What can I get for ten dolla? Not “anything you want,” just these gay-ass clips.
xo,
Missy

Samwell, “What What In the Butt”

The Village People, “Sex Over the Phone”
Ed Note: Warning! For some reason, I shit you not, Prince and the NPG are removing all clips of this at a furious pace. Therefore, after the jump, we present a really gay French parody video, in case this one gets “Princed” …

After the jump: Mae West raps! Eartha Kitt prowls! “Hairdresser”!

Tom’s of Colgate-Palmolive?

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October 10, 2007

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In some ways, I feel totally cheated by this. I had no idea Tom’s of Maine sold the farm to Colgate. I’ve been brushing my teeth with their toothpaste for years, I’ve been to their headquarters in Kennebunkport (which is a bonanza of free/cheap products), and I frickin’ love their gingermint flavor. Love it.

Tom and Kate say they still have their values, and it’s all about broadening their market (Wal-Mart) and bringing those values to more consumers, and they still donate ten percent of their profit, but you gotta wonder what those values are really all about. Especially since they chose not to disclose on their packaging that they’re now owned by a global giant. Tom said, “I don’t see why our customer would be interested in seeing a Colgate reference. Branding is really about values, and the Tom’s of Maine values are intact. We are living those values, and that is what we need to reinforce among our consumers by investing in the Tom’s of Maine logo, not confusing them with another logo.”

Kate said, “It clarifies that we are still in Maine. It’s important, a sense of place.”

What? Maybe your summer house on Monhegan Island is still in Maine, and your factory is still in Maine, but this feels like finding out the man you love kills people for a living. World domination of the toothpaste market — what kind of value is that?

Did anyone else see “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox” last week at the Red Vic? That company is still family-owned, they give away 70 percent of their net, profit share with their workers, and Ralph Bronner was still whipping out his wallet and passing out $100 bills on camera and presses hugs and bottles of soap on anyone he runs into. Guess I’m back to brushing with the peppermint Bronner’s.

The Chauncey Bailey Project

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October 10, 2007

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Just as the Chauncey Bailey Project makes its presence known in Oakland and in the U.S. media,
I am off to Miami for an assembly of the InterAmerican Press Association (IAPA), the international free press association for the Americas.

For years, the hardy U.S. journalistic souls who are members of IAPA have helped do resolutions, go on free press missions throughout the Americas, and support impunity projects to investigate the murders of journalists and turn the evidence over to prosecutors and then push for successful prosecutions.

This year, for the first time, I will be pushing the IAPA for help on the deaths of two U.S. journalists who were killed in the line of duty. The first is Brad Will, the New York video journalist who filmed his own assassination last fall while filming violent demonstrations in Oaxaca province in Mexico. The second is Chauncey Bailey, the Oakland editor who was gunned down in August on his way to work at the Oakland Post by a man wearing a ski mask.

The good news is that an impressive array of journalists, news organizations, and journalism schools have come together to form the Chauncey Bailey Project and to take on the job of finishing his reporting on the suspicious activities of the Your Black Muslim Bakery. This coalition has already had some success. The San Francisco Chronicle was asked to join the project, but declined and said that it preferred to do its own reporting.
And so, for the last four days, anticipating the project’s investigative reports, the Chronicle has rolled out extensive and detailed front page stories on the murder.

The investigative team plans to go further and deeper and research the activities of the Bey family empire, which operates the bakery, and their thuggish operations for the past two decades and the protection they have gotten from the Oakland political establishment. “This is a unique collaboration and we hope our work goes beyond Bailey’s murder and reveals broader issues that impact the lives of Oakland’s citizens,” said Robert J. Rosenthal, editorial coordinator for the project and former managing editor of the Chronicle.

This amounts to an unprecedented collaboration among competing news organizations and promises to be the largest collective journalistic project since the Arizona Project was formed 31 years ago following the murder of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles for his reporting on the tangled Arizona underworld.

The resulting collaboration and story led to the formation of the group called Investigative Reporters and Editors. But significantly, the Arizona Republic in Phoenix didn’t run the story and a Tucson daily was the only daily in the state to run the story. The New Times, the local Phoenix alternative paper, ran the story, as did the Guardian in San Francisco. The story was widely run in other papers throughout the country.

This time around in Oakland, the hometown media stand fully and publicly behind the Bailey Project. “We cannot stand for a reporter to be murdered while working on behalf of the public,” vowed Dori J. Maynard, president and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland. “Chauncey’s death is a threat to democracy, journalists will not be intimidated. This type of crime cast a chilling effect over our community. We will not be bullied. We have to prove that there is no gain, and hell to pay, when the very structure of society is challenged.”

Moreover, Maynard said that the team would insure that “Chauncey did not die in vain.”

Pete Wevurski, executive editor of the Oakland Tribune, said, “I’m happy that the Oakland Tribune, and our Bay Area News Group-East Bay partners the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, are involved in this noble effort and extremely pleased that the Tribune has been able to take a lead role.” Wevurski is also managing editor of BANG-EB. “Chauncey Bailey was a colleague and friend to many of us and we want to honor his work and our profession by picking up the standard that fell the morning he was assassinated. I’m extremely gratified by the numbers and caliber of journalists who have joined the coalition, and I’m astounded by the work they are turning in already.

“The project is essential to Oakland and essential to us as journalists who wish to emphasize the point that you can kill the messenger, but the message is still going to get through. Based on this alone, I believe this will be the most important work any of us have ever done and ever will do.” Let me add, as an occasional critic of Dean Singleton, owner of the Media News Group, that this project may be the most important work that he or any of his papers have ever done or will do. I congratulate him for allowing his troops to plow forward on a tough story that everyone involved knows how high the stakes are.

The coalition’s message is profound and dramatic: you can’t kill a journalist, in the Bay Area, in California, in the United States, and get away with it. Because the best reporters and editors and news organizations in the area are going to go after you and see that the story is told and justice is done.

Journalists from the following organizations are working on the project:

Bay Area Black Journalists Association
Bay Area News Group
Center for Investigative Reporting
KGO-AM
KPIX-TV
KQED Public Radio
KTVU-TV
Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
National Association of Black Journalists
New America Media
New Voices in Independent Journalism
San Francisco State Journalism Department
San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Jose State University Journalism Department
Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter
University of California, Berkeley; Graduate School of Journalism

I’ll keep you posted from IAPA in Miami. Continue reading to learn more about IAPA. B3

Click here to read the Guardian’s story on the Chauncey Bailey project.

Newsom and the chickens

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October 10, 2007

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The chickens were back last night, come home to roost in front of Dede Wilsey’s (the swell’s chicken-in-chief) house, where she helped Mayor Gavin Newsom by hosting a fundraiser to stop Question Time from becoming enforceable law through Prop. E. Fun stuff, but the real fun comes tomorrow night when Newsom tries to shake his chicken image by finally debating the dozen candidates who are running against him, including Chicken John. The League of Women Voters event starts at 6 p.m. in Koret Auditorium at the main library, but seeing as this is the only debate Newsom has agreed to (insert clucking sounds here), attendees are advised to arrive early because it’s expected to be a capacity crowd.

Photos by Patrick Roddie, webbery.com

Homeless = without a home

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October 10, 2007

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This morning on Forum Michael Krasny hosted Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness and CW Nevius, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, discussing the homeless sweeps in SoMa and the vitriol stirred up by the Chron’s coverage of life on the streets by pointing at the shit, the needles, the trash, the insanity.

Near the end of the piece, Nevius says that using the cops to ticket homeless people who do these things is one solution and a way to hold them accountable. He said he doesn’t know how to solve the overall issue of homelessness. In the background, you can hear Friedenbach simply say, “Housing.”

Which is the whole frustrating disconnect on this issue. “Homeless” does not automatically translate into “criminal,” or “insane,” or “druggie,” or “lover of shitting on the street.” Nobody wants to see people sleeping in the streets, using drugs, defecating, or publicly displaying their individual psychotic problems. So give them a place to live. Don’t buy cops, buy housing. Let people do what they need to do behind closed doors.

One caller mentioned new housing developments at 5th and Mission and how none of the buyers of the million dollar condos are going to want to see the streets outside their doors in such a condition. Again, another major disconnect — developers want attractive neighborhoods, but when it comes to building affordable housing that might make those neighborhoods more attractive by housing the homeless, they run away screaming that it can’t be done.

Sports: How green is that Cup?

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October 10, 2007

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Baseball season has wound down, football season’s revving up, and in my hometowns of Detroit, MI, and Zurich, Ontario, people are practically kicking their own nuts off over the upcoming hockey season. In that spirit, Brendan I. Koerner of Slate published this nifty little breakdown yesterday of the amount of energy spectator sports consume.

Good thing we have public transport, but what’s blowing into the Bay?

Given that PG&E totally greenfucked AT&T park over earlier this year by claiming to charitably install massive solar panels that would save the park millions (which turned out only to provide enough energy for 40 homes) and then announced that rate-payers would actually foot the bill, it’s interesting to note that, as Koerner points out, the energy consumption required to keep those Jumbotrons flashing and that nacho cheese melted in many major stadiums is relatively little (about 1.35 pounds of carbon emission per fan per game — the average American is responsible for around 65 pounds a day). The REAL energy burn comes with people driving to and from the stadium for games. A typical 78,000-person football stadium requires the emission of 232.84 metric tons of carbon dioxide just for people to get there and back home. Eek!

Koerner says that hockey and basketball are the lowest energy hogs, because those sports have shorter seasons, that football is slightly worse because it, too, has relatively infrequent games — but that baseball is the biggest hog over the long haul because it puts on the most games (and, I would argue, does it over the summer, when people are more prone to drive to see a game.)

Wasted!

Koerner won’t even consider NASCAR for, as he writes, “any sport that centers around vehicles that get four to six miles per gallon is obviously pretty far from green.” Are you listening, Nextel Cup?

“Your pet cat”

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October 10, 2007

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People always ask me why I love horror movies so much. That, I can’t answer … though probably for some dark, disturbing psychological reason we needn’t speculate upon here. More concrete is when I started getting into horror movies. There was the first time I saw Poltergeist (at a slumber party in fifth grade; a year later, at the sixth-grade slumber party for my own birthday, I gleefully played host to a roomful of terrified classmates as we huddled in my basement, watching Psycho). Recently, I unearthed a junior-high creative-writing exercise entitled “How to Watch a Scary Movie Alone in the Dark.” I must have been around 13 when I wrote that. But I think the horror-movie thing goes even further back. In fact, I blame Walt Disney, from whose Haunted Mansion-spawning mind sprung this impression-maker:

Whose light is on up there??

Day job hell: Litquake writers say “I’d prefer not to”

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October 10, 2007

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By Justin Juul

“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.”
–William Faulkner

Day jobs are terrible, soul-crushing, things for most people, but they can actually inspire thoughts of suicide and murder in those with high aspirations — like writers, for example. Such was the case with the literary giants who spoke at Porchlight / Litquake’s recent shindig, “I’d Prefer Not To: Writers Talk About Day Job Hell,” and such is the case with me. I have been working non-stop since the age of fourteen and I have hated every minute of it with all my heart. But what can you do, right? Until someone offers to pay me a living-wage for writing, I’m just gonna have to keep on hustling. I got bills and shit, ya know?

Crispin Glover as Bartleby, the Melville character who made “I’d prefer not to” a revolutionary cry.

A coffee mug stencil of Crispin Glover by Mr. Juul. We’ll leave the implications to Baudrillard, thanks.

The pretty dang famous writers who spoke at The Swedish American Hall on Monday were able to laugh and make jokes about working because they don’t have to do it anymore. These days they just kick back and enjoy wealth and fame and appreciation and respect and adoration and I fucking hate them all. God!

Here’s a partial list of the shitty positions they held before they got their big breaks.

Another housing plan

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October 10, 2007

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Randy Shaw checks in today with another housing action plan for the city. I’m getting a real sense of urgency on this, all over town, a feeling that San Francisco needs some sort of comprehensive housing legislation. I still like a prop. M for housing, but Randy’s idea that the city needs to buy up as much land and as many buildings as possible also should be part of the mix.

The only problem with the city buying land and buildings is figuring out what happens next. Either the city mainstains the buildings, becomes the landlord and rents them out, or the city turns it over to a nonprofit to do that job — or, if we want affordable ownership housing for middle-class people, which is part of Randy’s platform, the buildings need to be sold as part of a land trust to make sure they stay affordable forever. Otherwise it’s only affordable housing until the owner decides to cash in and sell at some astronomical price.

Let’s Hear from Newsom on Lennar

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October 9, 2007

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Wade Crowfoot of the Mayor’s Office looks on as School Board member Eric Mar hands him the school board’s unanimous resolution asking for a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s site until health testing can be done. Crowfoot promised to “pass the message along” to Mayor Gavin Newsom…

Sup. Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi joined educators, spiritual leaders, and families and residents from BayviewHunters Point outside City Hall today to commend the San Francisco School Board for unanimously passing a resolution that asks the City to halt Lennar’s BVHP construction at Parcel A of the Hunters Point Shipyard, at least until testing proves that it is safe.

A dressed down Daly (there was no Board of Supes meeting today) joined the anti-dust rally outside City Hall

Casanova Lounge: Vancouver International Film Festival, Part Two

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October 9, 2007

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Fueled by cinema love more than just biz deal BS, the Vancouver International Film Festival offers a chance to not only see films by upcoming directors, but also to see the directors themselves outside the movie theatre. One great example this year was a night in which Serge Bozon, director of the acclaimed La France, transformed into DJ Bozon.

At an upstairs bar on Richards Street, Bozon spun 45s from his collection of rare ‘60s garage rock, Northern Soul and Motown vinyl. Cinemascope editor and VIFF programmer Mark Peranson told me that Bozon has paid thousands of dollars on eBay for a single coveted disc. It’s not for nothing that this director has a film (which I’d love to see) titled Mods: he was coiffed and styled like a Gallic cousin of Linton from SF’s gone but not forgotten Popscene progenitors the Aisler’s Set. In a nod to the Northwest, he played the Sonics. But what about his movie?

Yes, Chuck, enough is enough

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October 9, 2007

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Is Chuck Nevius…

…the new Ken Garcia?
It’s bad enough that the San Francisco Chronicle and its columnist Chuck Nevius have been demonizing the homeless for months in a highly sensation and misleading fashion. But in today’s paper, they have the gall to claim — with little substantiation — that San Franciscans are no longer tolerant of the poor and now support the homeless crackdown being pushed by the Chronicle and Mayor Gavin Newsom (and let’s not forget the Examiner’s Ken Garcia, whose old anti-homeless columns for the Chron Nevius has now revived).
And when I asked Nevius about why he’s chosen the homeless for his punching bag, he said his coverage has been driven by the “400-plus” blog comments they’ve gotten complaining about the homeless. You see, he’s just giving the people what they want. As he wrote to me, “I understand that not everyone agrees, but I’ve been at this for a while, over 20 years, and my experience is that newspapers can’t create issues — no matter how we try. We can only follow them.”
Well, Chuck, I’ve been at this for almost 20 years myself, long enough to recognize bullshit when I smell it — and to understand when a newspaper is trying to play on people’s prejudices in setting the public agenda.

Cinema is Useless: Vancouver International Film Festival, Part One

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October 8, 2007

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My first morning at this year’s Vancouver International Film festival brought Riri Raza’s 3 Days to Forever. Though a colleague loves Raza’s 2002 Eliana, Eliana, I’ll admit that a more basic form of curiosity drew me to his latest movie. One of its stars is Nicholas Saputra, a pop culture idol in Indonesia, who shared a very rainy boat ride with me and a few dozen other people at the Vancouver fest two years ago. On that particular gray Sunday, Saputra occasionally walked over to a director and I and would talk with us, only to quietly go off and then come back again. Back then, Saputra was at the fest because he had the title role in Gie, Raza’s follow-up to Eliana, Eliana.

Ammiano on the Blue Angels

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October 8, 2007

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Hey, how about all that noisy, scary, upside down, loop-to-looping….Damn the Muni!

(From today’s voicemail of Sup. Tom Ammiano)

Bless the animalia

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October 8, 2007

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I completely spaced that last Thursday, Oct 4, was World Animal Day (known to the more ecumenical among us as the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi) — I was probably busy beating my kitty. KIDDING! I was beating my fish. But fur flew in the City, I bet, as many people hauled their four-footed friends to church to have them blessed.

No comment on that. (What’s the Latin for ringworm again? Tinea.) But there’s a pretty nifty gallery show right now at David Cunningham Projects in SoMa that pays tribute to the wee people in fur coats, called “Animal Rites.” It features works of artists as various as Ireland’s Michael Beirne, fab homegirl Kerri Lee Johnson, and even an anonymous artist from the 17th century. Stop by and pet your eyes. And click here for more info, including some more neato images.

Michael Beirne, Untitled, 2004

Kerri Lee Johnson, Rabbithead girl, boy, horse

“Animal Rites”
Through Nov. 10
David Cunningham Projects
1928 Folsom, SF
415-341-1538
www.davidcunninghamprojects.com

Amp Fiddler has us amped

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October 8, 2007

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By Todd Lavoie

A couple of weeks back on Noise, I was carping and crowing away about all those amazing import-only discs that demand a small fortune out of us till a domestic release finally sees the light of day – assuming that moment ever comes, that is. In some cases, it looks likely that American labels will continue passing up wonderful talents such as Candie Payne and Husky Rescue out of curious misperceptions about “the American market” – whatever that means – and we’ll be left with no choice but $20-and-then-some price tags. Yeah, I know – quite the tale of woe and all, this record-shopping dilemma of mine, but sometimes a dork’s just gotta shake his skinny little fists in protest at this great big spinning orb of injustice and say, “Enough is enough!” Feel me?

But fair is fair, they say, and so I should try to balance out that bitch fest with a bit of the ole happy. How about a small victory? And for Detroit, no less! I’ve heard they could use a few victories, so let’s trumpet this one up. See, up till very recently, one of the 313’s finest, cosmic-soul pioneer Amp Fiddler, was without an American record deal for a spell, thus making his latest release a challenge to track down in all but the most obsessively thorough of record stores.

In fact, Afro Strut has been available in Britain on the Genuine label for practically a year, while in his home country it was nearly absent from the racks! Talk about a cryin’ shame. Mercifully, this sad state of affairs has changed, now that Play It Again Sam US/Wall of Sound has issued a domestic version of Mister Fiddler’s sophomore release. Better still: they went and improved upon the original! Rather than simply re-issuing it as is, Amp – or, Joseph at the supper table – took the British edition of Afro Strut and did some, er, fiddling with it. (Yeah, a pun. Shoot me.)

DJ Spinna splashed my Sundayz

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October 8, 2007

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I fruitlessly spent Saturday night looking for the party. Trans Am was fab as always, but after the Passionistas played, no one was dancing. Playboy was cute and had the goofy bearish boys of gay clubstravaganza Horse Meat Disco spinning around on the dance floor (they’ll be laying down queeny tracks at an underground loft party this weekend), but all my shots were wearing off. I hit up d’n’b legends LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad at Temple and Detroit/Windsor techno god DJ Dan Bell at Kontrol – I even popped in on a shirtless circuity nightmare, Adonis at Space 550. Oy!

But it was one of those nights – either the music was great but the crowd was awful or immobile, or the other way around (Adonis qualified as awful on both counts). I never landed when the time was right. This was discouraging!

Fortunately, I didn’t let my disappointment keep me at home on Sunday night. Sure I wanted to chill with some Indian takeout and new Simpsons episodes, but somewhere, however faintly, a dancefloor was calling. It was Super Soul Sundayz’s second anniversary at the EndUp, and resident DJ/promoter David Harness had flown in legendary DJ Spinna from Brooklyn to tear shit up.

He took me up, he turned me out, he … Spinna

Spinna came on after an awesome deep electrofied soul set from David, plugged in his laptop and let rip. He’s mostly a hip-hop DJ (he’s known for his work with J Dilla), but his house style is pretty unique – he likes to play two or three records at a time to get a specific groove going (one record will be totally deep and tracky in a Chicago acid way, another will be a back-in-the-day soul selection) and then he’ll use the laptop to overlay another track, maybe with some vocals or an instrumental solo, fading it in and out as he changes the records underneath. It’s a thumpy tapestry! His de-reconstruction of “I Feel Love” was out of the park, and I’ve heard folks pulling that record apart for 20 years now (I still think Derrick May does it best but, hey, he invented Techno, so … ). Anyway, I was drenched with soul and sweat ’til 4am.

DJ David Harness warms my heart, and feet

Super Soul Sundayz is every Sunday night at the EndUp. Next week’s guest is Latin sensation Mr. V. Check out some of Spinna’s music here.

After the jump — video samples of this crazy, aurally mixed-up weekend.

Teddy Thompson: Americana by way of England

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October 6, 2007

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By Anna Mantzaris

Teddy Thompson (that’s Thompson as in spawn of Richard and Linda) may be an English boy by birth, but the 31-year-old’s rock-folk-country sound will make you think he’s spent years fine-tuning his sound deep in the land of the American south.

Taking on the greats – Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, George Jones – Thompson’s latest CD, Up Front and Down Low(Verve Forecast), is a thoughtful collection of interpretations of C&W classics and not-so-well-known gems, with dad Richard and pal Rufus Wainwright lending their talents. A New Yorker by residence, Thompson takes his show on the road opening for Suzanne Vega; he appears Monday, Nov. 12, at the Fillmore.

Bay Guardian: How did Up Front and Down Low come about? Why an album of covers?

Teddy Thompson: I came home after touring after the last record for a year. I didn’t have a lot to do. I started just recording some songs for fun, but I liked the way it came out and I thought maybe it would make a good side-project album.

Today’s Ammianoliner

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October 5, 2007

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Hello, Mr. Jew.

May I help you.

I’m not a lawyer

But I play one on tv.

(On the voice mail of Sup. Tom Ammiano) B3

What’s a singer/songwriter got to do with me?

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October 5, 2007

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Is singer/songwriter a genre of music? Is it merely a description? Is it shorthand for “folkie with guitar” or “soloist who’s still looking for a drummer”? Does calling someone a singer/songwriter really tell you anything at all?

This question came up last night, when some friends and I went to Amnesia to see New York-based artist Ana Egge (who sings, yes, and writes songs, yes) and special guest AJ Roach. At the door, we overheard someone ask the bouncer what was going on inside. “Singer songwriters,” he said.

Photo by B. Gootkind
“Singer songwriter” — aka badass musician — Ana Egge.

Open up to opera

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October 5, 2007

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By Amber Peckham

Opera is kind of like really kinky sex; some people are afraid to try it because they don’t think they’ll like it, but almost everyone who tries it loves it. If you’ve been hesitating to have your first experience (we’re talking opera now, not sex; you can figure the sex out on your own) tonight’s the perfect opportunity to ease yourself into the opera scene.

For $25, tonight San Francisco State University hosts its second annual Opera Gala, where patrons will enjoy highlights from popular operas performed by current students and alumni of the university’s renowned vocal and opera program.

SFSU production of The Magic Flute

Ahoy, my latest lupine indie: Sea Wolf

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October 5, 2007

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Come sea about me: Sea Wolf in performance elsewhere. Photo by Alex Brown Church

By Chris Lotto

Sea Wolf is Alex Brown Church, the band’s frontperson and only standing member. The rest of his pack are drawn on a rotating basis from a conglomerate of LA musicians known as the Ship Collective. It’s unclear whether this tour will produce a more permanent membership. On Wednesday, Oct. 3, at the Independent, he was backed by drums, bass, cello, a drowned-out lead guitar, and an extremely sexy keyboardist doing this lazybop back-and-forth shoulder maneuver the whole night. I think I may have seen a ring on her finger. No matter. That’s not the sort of band review we’re after here.

Invoking the spirit of Jack London’s 1904 work, Sea Wolf plays to life’s awareness of death. The songs intimate a fondness for bluegrass, moving in time with Church’s favorite apprehension: the decay of the natural world. The first five numbers could have easily featured Church alone with zero accompaniment. Like I said, Sea Wolf is Alex Brown Church. It’s not that the show was any less enjoyable because of all the other noise – only that a brooding cello line layered over a skip-slowly backbeat didn’t add much in the way of color, depth, or interest to Church’s own brooding melodies and skip-slowly acoustic.

Nor is this meant to discount Church’s – and the band’s – effectiveness in conveying a sense of well-traveled melancholia. He’s got a storyteller’s voice that leaves a near sad impression, yet it remains a voice that aims to please – Church has a gift for creating contented hymns of worry. Plenty of heads were bobbing inside the Independent, and Church’s reminiscences definitely had a couple thirtysomething couples giving each other the old “yeah, he’s got it” nod of approval. The lyrics are plenty evocative, happy to be doing a eulogist’s work, but much of the instrumentation is redundant, wasted on Church’s singer-songwriting.

Sea Wolf did get the place going with one you may have heard on the radio, “You’re a Wolf,” a tame little rock-out that, along with a second one just like it – punchy, highly civilized – made a little room for meaningful collaboration. And though it was a short set composed of short songs that all ended abruptly, it seemed that everybody in attendance, myself included, appreciated Church’s thoughtfulness, even more his easy, plangent grace.