The annual Hard French Wnter Ball, in which our favorite queer retro-soul party gets gussied up and holds a prom in Santa Cruz (next Saturday!), has always gone big and hilarious with its promotions. But it’s outdone itself this year, with an epic kooky acid trip promo video by Dirtyglitter. Get it, Veronica Kuka-Florez.
We’ve been fans of Gregg Golding, aka hyperreal rapper Odynophagia, for years. We’ve also been waiting for his epic movie Struggled Reagans to be released for years. And now it’s gonna be! “Taking inspiration from Power Rangers, decaying tokusatsu, & nightmares of ’90s children,” the film will debut at New People, Wed/11, 9pm as part of the Another Hole in the Head fest.
Golding told us:
“Ok: This film is off brand dollar store knockoff action figures from Asia, and the nightmares that followed. There is a tumor in the collective unconscious. In our myth of deluded comfort, we call upon the Reagans to pierce a laser beam through the core of Samsara. It’s a movement. #struggledreagans #VaginalCucumberReagan #TeamAntoine #StruggledReagansClitTattoo
Don’t just see the movie, live it. The chemical burns of your past fears are a mutagen; igniting the sacred trauma tumor. It’s morphin’ time! Bask as a cosplay spandex mmmmmm (The sound when spandex thighs rub. Helmet visor fogs, dodging a fireball.) When you come to the screening….in a giant robot. See you Wednesday. Meet the first 6 Struggled Reagans to become the next 6 billion.”
One of our favorite local acts is Panamanian hip-hop duo Los Rakas, based in Oakland, who consistently tear it up. Bounce with them this Saturday at the New Parish — and try to get “Soy Raka” out of your head.
Just in time for Halloween: LA beach-punk sister duo Bleached released a graveyard and zombie-filled video for the track “Love Spells.” Stick it on your playlist for the ghoulish parties this weekend.
The song is off this spring’s Ride Your Heart, which we discussed with Bleached earlier this year.
Here’s a brand new video from local “pow wow punk” band Sweat Lodge. Featuring the song “Throwing Rocks,” it shows the noisy psych band hanging out around San Francisco, playing music, drinking beers. All fun weekend activities! Sweat Lodge plays next Oct. 1 at Bottom of the Hill, with more early October opportunities to see the band live at the Hemlock and the Knockout.
Folsom Street Fair is coming — and so are its parties. The kink-hippest one is Deviants, actually taking place inside the fair area itself (it’s a pop-up!) Here’s the awesome video, see you there.
Here, fishy fishy fishy.
Cool local electro-dream trio Pixel Memory puts all that recent construction scaffolding to use in its latest, consisting of “sleek, cyberpunk visuals” from director Sean Gillane.
Bonus: Pixel Memory are pretty awesome live — check them out performing a version of 2501 live at SUBmission:
Love the look:
Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown are tearing up the stage, and people are taking notice. The Nashville-based country and blues-rock group released its well-crafted, guitar-heavy, debut album Wild Child in January of this year, and just wrapped a lengthy tour through the States, which included a stop in San Francisco.
Following its gritty performance at Brick and Mortar Music Hall late last month, the group talked about how it arrived at its raw, high-energy performances, first loves, and non-musical hobbies.
A realization reached this morning while Google (or in this case, Froogal) Hanging with Houston rapper’s Fat Tony video for “Hood Party”: A look at someone’s desktop can tell you more about a certain breed of 2013 person than watching them speed hunt-‘n’-peck their way through their inbox on the other bar stool. Small wonder then, that the screen grab confessional is now a thing. Thanks in part goes to local goth-hop promotor Marco de la Vega’s current video installation, viewable IRL through June 30 at Little Paper Planes‘ Owl Cave Books video installation space. Viewing instructions to my Guardianistas: play loud af in your headphones.
Watch the clip above for the real life daytime dealings of a club promotor, including the inner workings of Ticketfly, kitty cuddles, email inbox exposure, and cameos by some real cute videos-within-video: Mykki Blanco’s latest headturner and a compilation of death drops by vogue legend Erica Kane. Disclosing fully: De la Vega is not only a Guardian posterchild, but also a FB chat buddy of mine. Of course, that’ll be obvious to anyone who makes it to the 4:11 mark in the video. You can check out a whole bunch of other hip-to-the-minute clips made for Owl Cave’s video series on its Youtube channel.
I was actually upset that Bette Midler did not get nominated. What is happening to me? Call out the jazz-hands police, I’m dancing along with Neil Patrick Harris tonight. PS: Mike Tyson.
Jeanie loves pop music, and she just wants to dance with her friends. Her angry parents and religious figures just don’t understand. Watch Jeanie rebel in the suburbs in the new music video from former Bay Guardian “On the Rise” group, Warm Soda: “Jeanie Loves Pop,” filmed by sometimes-Guardian photographer, Chris Stevens.
The glam-garage band, led by Bare Wires frontperson Matthew Melton, has debut album Someone For You out now on local Castle Face Records, and will tour Europe for the first time this summer.
The view from my studio apartment’s bay windows includes a clear view of my building’s garbage chute. Often times the chute gets clogged and the trash piles high for days. I think about it and freak out over how it will fester and potentially attract vermin. Obviously, I don’t like it when that happens, but I’ve thought to myself, “Man, that dude from Uzi Rash would really love it here.”
So what’s the Oakland frontperson (with an affinity for making his own refuse-themed jams) been up to since the Rash cleared up? Well, as this video post depicts, Max Nordile is literally writhing around in muck and he’s got some friends in the Trashies that have joined him.
“I’m a Worm” off their fourth LP, Teenage Rattlesnakes, is another Dan Shaw-directed VHS video, starring Nordile and his band mates in this gunked-up role. Most of them are from Seattle (including members of Unnatural Helpers, TacocaT, and Shitty Pete and the Fucks), but the East Bay influence is clear.
The video opens with some accusatory name calling before panning over to the band members working through their “mangled Monks worship” as they conduct full-body pantomime as the scum of the Earth. A shrill, descending guitar solo later, each one them has made a mess of their white shorts by the time they’ve reached the finish line comprised of a dilapidated set of instruments.
I’m told wriggling around at Albany Bulb’s mud flats is a gross and “smelly affair”. Seems these worms may never learn.
The West Coast tour, “West Coast Worms Save Music,” starts Fri/31 and coincides with the album release.
In Oakland: June 4 with Courtney n’ the Crushers, Shannon and the Clams and Wet Spots at the Stork Club.
In San Francisco: June 12th with Buffalo Tooth and Scraper at the Hemlock Tavern.
Beloved former SF club denizen, fast-forward stylist, and king of fresh Frankie Sharp — who basically won New York in March — has teamed up with director Lil Internet and hot-hot-heat fetishwear producer Nasty Pig to melt our screens.
Here’s the IamNastyPig summer lookbook video, just dropped. We would like all of these, plz. Including the wave-splashed retro-boxing/board shorts. Also this:
Matt Damon in a see-through Speedo and ’80s porns star hair. Michael Douglas creeping in a hot tub. Rob Lowe’s over-tanned needlenose. And fabulous, fabulous, fabulous fabulosity and scandal everywhere. “Behind the Candelabra,” airing May 26 on HBO, truly has it all.
Feast your eyes on the latest offering from San Francisco electro-hop duo Double Duchess – a gritty, glammy, pulsing new video for the single, “Deviant,” off its forthcoming EP, due out this summer on Oakland’s Le Heat Records. There may or may not be a purple dildo in there somewhere.
And Double Duchess – said to be influenced by “Baltimore club, booty breaks, ballroom house…couture fashion!” – knows a thing or two about provocative videos, remember last year’s “Bucket Betch” off the duo’s debut EP, Hey Girl! Just killer.
This time it’s all hot clothes, neon hair, chain-link fences, glossy leather masks, subliminal block lettering, baroque furniture in ’90s rave warehouses, strobe-lights, glitter-spitting goodness. And for a split second, you might spot Guardian culture editor Caitlin Donohue in there, looking fancy, and preening in pink hair.
Check the band live next at the Elbo Room, April 5, with Micahtron, HussyClub, and DJs BeyondADoubt and Jaysonik. www.elbo.com.
So this is pretty much perfect. It’s been 10 years since the Postal Service released its mega indie hit album, Give Up. Go way back to the band’s original “auditions” in this new clip.
Also, the band, which of course features Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard on lead vocals, just announced a second Bay Area date later this year (the first one quickly sold out). The Postal Service will play Berkeley’s Greek Theater July 26 (sold out) and July 27 (not yet sold out). Tickets and additional info on those here. Specifically, get tickets to the July 27 show here.
The Bay is blessed with street artists who take seriously the responsibility that comes with painting on a surface thousands of people will see every day on their way to work and school. See: the Estria Foundation, which was started by graff legend Estria Miyashiro and just released this video of the group’s latest trip to Bogotá, Colombia as part of its #WaterWrites mural program.
Stop by Bissap Baobab on Thu/7 for a dinner presentation on the group’s trip to Bogotá and recent voyage to Cape Town, where it completed another mural that examined the issue of water rights.
You can check out more photos of the project on the collective’s Flickr page. Here’s what the Estria foundation sent us about the making of the Bogotá mural:
Our Executive Director, Erin Yoshi, recently returned from working on the #WaterWrites Mural Project in Bogota, Colombia. The 2000 square foot mural was created in collaboration with the APC Crew, one of the largest graff crews in the nation. It was painted next to a community center that hosts music and arts workshops for youth.
The mural is dedicated to raising awareness about the current water conditions in Colombia. It portrays nature and humanity joining forces to evict water polluters and exploiters of natural resources. Nature is painted as a character, surrounded by trees, flowers, life, and water. Animals, insects, and people are housed in the hair and along the body. The left arm directs the attention towards a barge in the river containing the impact of resource extracting industries; mining, fishing, logging, and plantation farming. Graffiti on the sides of the ship attest to the history of resistance it has met everywhere it has traveled.
#WaterWrites mural projects dinner and reports
Thu/6, 6:30-9:30pm, regularly priced dinner menu
Bissap Baobab
3388 19th St., SF
This Saturday, there is a mindblowing dark electro underground happening called PSYCHIC DIMENSIONS. Profligate is one of the many artists scheduled to appear. Slightly NSFW.
Longtime acid crunk pusher an-ten-nae has a hit on his hands with super-trippy “Raindrops on Roses,” featuring the appropriately named Alice D. on vocals. Here’s the rabbit-hole sparkle-pony rave-to-grave video.
Our own Blackbird Blackbird makes us feel funny with a grainy new video for “It’s a War” off his 2012 EP, Boracay Planet (Lavish Habits).
The SF-born electronic pop music maker’s song glides through a tale of modern young love, in a seven-minute-long video directed by Patrick Pearse and starring bleached pro-surfer Thom Pringle and freckled model Shenay Carey.
Blackbird Blackbird opens for Portland’s STRFKR this Fri/1 at the Regency Ballroom, as part of Noise Pop.
Antwon, one of our favorite local rappers, goes all Muppets take the club in this video for “3rd World Grrl,” off new mixtape In Dark Denim.
For those concerned, yesterday Twon tweeted: “3rd world grrl isnt about girls in a third world its about being so physically close to someone but their heart being far away.” Aww.
You can see him next this Sat/23 at 120 Minutes night at the Elbo Room.
The answer is yes. “THE INTERNSHIP stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital world. Trying to prove they are not obsolete, they defy the odds by talking their way into a coveted internship at Google.” Is this movie from 1998? Eeugh.
Congratulations and ejaculations to you, Sue Casa — a new “talent” taking it back to the Trannyshack old school last Friday. (Hey, she beat out the poop-eating.)
