PREVIEW We — the proud, the few, the musical eccentrics besotted with both Michael Hurley and Harry Nilsson, both Hazel Dickens and Lee Hazlewood — have it good in the Bay. We’re at the ground zero of a highly unofficial appreciation society for the aforementioned, unclassifiable sounds. And that’s why nifty string-strewn, jangle-happy xylophone-plonkers like Okie Rosette exist and neato noise-loving, cacophony-cagy urban-rusticators like Little Teeth persist, alongside other neo-okies like Or, the Whale and Port O’Brien.
The restless, chaotic imagination of small children enraptured by rickety musical instruments and down-home noise-makers alike supercharges the manic locals of Little Teeth and the two-year-old threesome’s just-out full-length, Child Bearing Man (Absolutely Kosher). So where do the rousingly anthemic melodies of songs like "Between My Ears" and "Applegate" come from, blasting through the washtub thump, accordion bleat, and the banjo pluck? Makes me nuzzle Little Teeth as they howl at the moon, toss their untamed manes, and shake their small fists at the sky with tears of inchoate joy and rage in their wild eyes.
While Little Teeth seemingly sprung fully blown from the brow of hillbilly Zeus, the lyrically folk-rockin’ Okie Rosette rose gracefully from ashes of Bay Area critical fave Granfaloon Bus. Todd Felix Costanza initially got together with fellow ex-Granfalooners Jeff Stevenson and Ajax Green to make Okie Rosette’s new Leap Second (Monotreme) — though Costanza gives equal credit for the disc to background movers like Dee Kesler of Thee More Shallows: "We plugged away in his studio in west Oakland, and he turned my skeletons into people." And beauteous, quirk-filled people they are: imagine Grey Gardens‘ Little Edie warbling backwoods dancehall numbers when Costanza croons, "It’s starting to rain so put on your trash bag." So how to explain the okie label? "But my family tree has had more than one redneck fall from it," Costanza writes in an e-mail, "and I loved The Grapes of Wrath."
OKIE ROSETTE With Emily Jane White and Winters Fall. Wed/10, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com
LITTLE TEETH With Jel and Lovely Public. Sun/14, 9 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord