Dance

Bay Area National Dance Week

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PREVIEW Can dance save the world? Those of us who are hooked on it like to think so. At the very least, it makes you feel more alive as a human being. But in the cultural pecking order, dance often gets the short stick: you can’t buy or own it, hang it on a wall, or sell thousands of DVDs of it. You pretty much have to depend on bootlegs or YouTube to get your fix. Maybe that’s why such fervor surrounds Bay Area National Dance Week and its 10 days of dance madness. This year, BANDW celebrates its 10th year with a throw-open-the-doors event designed to give all comers a chance to see or try all manner of free moves: hula hooping, belly dancing, salsa, body orchestration, Scottish country dance, Sufi dancing, Greek dancing, swing, fire twirling, and more. Some 300 participants are on board, the majority from dance companies and studios. For us working stiffs, weekday classes take place mostly in the evening, but ODC Dance Commons will offer Dance Week–related classes throughout the day. For those who prefer watching, there will be many free performances as well, ranging from San Jose’s sjDANCEco, to Mill Valley’s RoCo Dance with Oakland’s Axis Dance Company, to San Francisco’s Mark Foehringer Dance Project. Get the details of what the good people at BANDW have in store for us from their 24-page brochure, available at select cafés, libraries, and most dance studios. The kickoff conga line event starts Friday at 11:30 a.m. in Union Square.

BAY AREA NATIONAL DANCE WEEK April 25–May 4, free. www.bacndw.org

6 African feasts

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If there’s one thing I learned while traveling in Africa, it’s that you can never predict the sublime. With little to guide you except your nose and your gut, eating "out" usually means perching on the side of the road in front of an unprepossessing stall and entrusting your appetite’s fate to the dish of the day. Luckily it seems there’s no end to the possibilities created from a handful of humble ingredients — tomatoes, onions, legumes, and yams — and the deft talents of a multitude of unsung culinary geniuses. Even luckier, in San Francisco, traveling gastronomically around an entire continent is as easy as hopping the bus to the next neighborhood, proving that even local travel can broaden one’s horizons — not to mention waistline.

TAJINE


Ever the sentimentalist, I have been known to wax nostalgic about Tajine’s former gritty Jones Street location, which was so tiny it only had two or three tables and a bustling to-go trade among the city’s taxi drivers. But because I consciously strive to embrace change (no, really!), I am able to appreciate their newer, bigger, and admittedly more expensive Polk Gulch location. Though its menu includes kebab plates, flaky bastilles (savory phyllo dough pastries), and an array of salads, it’s the hearty, meaty, one-pot stews (tajines) that really get my tastebuds tingling.

1338 Polk, SF, (415) 440-1718, www.tajinerestaurant.com

BISSAP BAOBAB/LITTLE BAOBAB


From the national dish of Senegal (thiebou djen, a tilapia-based stew, served with red rice) to the regional specialties of yapou khar (a melt-in-your-mouth lamb dish from the city of Thiès) and yassa chicken from Casamance, Bissap Baobab dishes up pan-Senegalese cuisine with friendly flair. The not-to-be missed drinks, mixed with bissap (hibiscus), ginger, and tamarind juices inspire smooth (and otherwise) moves on the dance floor of Little Baobab once the tables have been pushed away and the rotating lineup of DJs comes out to play at 10 p.m.

2323 Mission, SF. (415) 826-9287

3388 19th St., SF. (415) 643-3558

www.bissapbaobab.com

AXUM CAFÉ


The axis of the San Francisco Ethiopian restaurant "scene" for many years, Axum Café serves a fine, spicy kifto (Ethiopia’s version of steak tartare), tender lamb tibsie, and an array of vegetarian options that would make even a diehard carnivore’s mouth water. Tucked behind an unpretentious facade on Haight Street, what Axum might lack in slickster glamour it more than makes up for with its solid menu and neighborhood-friendly prices. Plus, you can mistake their injera for a tablecloth — it’s that big (though much tastier).

698 Haight, SF. (415) 252-7912, www.axumcafe.com

A TASTE OF AFRICA


If you’ve come down, as I’ve been known to, with a persistent craving for fufu and egusi soup, you’ll be relieved to know that your hankering can be satisfied at A Taste of Africa without having to jump on the next plane to West Africa. This cheerful Cameroonian establishment also serves steamed corn koki (call ahead for availability) and a variety of savory vegetable dishes and meat stews. For an even more accurate taste of Africa, their food truck at the Ashby BART flea market definitely reminds me of the open air food stalls where I sampled so many of these dishes the first time around.

3015 Shattuck and Ashby BART station, Berk. (510) 981-1939

NEW ERITREA RESTAURANT


Though the cuisines are virtually identical, you don’t want to confuse Eritrea for Ethiopia in polite company. Still, for those who love their Ethiopian restaurant experiences, the drill at New Eritrea Restaurant will be familiar. Receive platters of flavorful food, plunge in sans silverware, and chase with copious amounts of Harar beer or steamed milk with honey. For the frugal and adventurous alike, they offer the familiar vegetarian sampler platter and a less usual meat one, plus three varieties of sambusas (stuffed East African fritters).

907 Irving, SF. (415) 691-1288

TROPICAL PARADISE


I love eating out in Berkeley period. You never have to stand in hipster hell waiting for admittance to food heaven, even on weekends. And for my money, as far as heavenly goes, you can’t beat the Ghanaian grub at Tropical Paradise. Try the tastiest fried plantains in the Bay, served piping hot alongside delicately seasoned black-eyed peas — a deceptively simple dish known as Red Red. The ubiquitous fermented corn dumplings (kenkey), hearty waachi, and a blood-warming "light" soup with fufu and generous portions of goat, chicken, or salmon bring Ghana to life in your mouth — especially when pleasantly washed down with a spicy sweet blend of fruit and ginger.

2021 University Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 665-4380 *

More green reasons, post-Earth Day

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Michael Kang photo.jpg
Michael Kang of the String Cheese Incident is in at the Digital Be-In.

The sun may have set on Earth Day, but that doesn’t mean the musically oriented eco-celebrations can’t continue. Here are a few more events:

DIGITAL BE-IN 16: ECOCITY
An Ecocity theme and speakers, exhbiits, installations, an eco-fashion show – and live music by Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident), Waterjuice (Vaporvent), Lumin with Irina Mikhailova, Yossi Fine (Ex-centric Sound System), Diana Rosa, and MC Yogi, and DJs Rhythmystic (Rhythm Society), Alex Theory (Mystic Vibration), Irina Mikhailova (Cyberset), Neptune (Beat Church), Dov (Cyberset, Muti Music), Goz (Cyberset), Omer (Harbin), Timonkey (Muti Music), and David Shamanik (Rhythm Society). Fri/25, 7 p.m.- 4 a.m., $20-$25. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. (415) 750-0971.

CARNAVAL SAN FRANCISCO’S ECO-GREEN FESTIVAL
Zona Verde is the theme of this green fete – which organizers are claiming as the largest outdoor green event in the city. Tribal DJs will be force along with sacred healing ceremonies, art installations, and natural home and alternative energy vendors. May 24-25. time to be announced. Harrison and Treat at 17th St., SF.

HARMONY FESTIVAL
Alongside eco-awareness booths and holistic health product peddlers are performances by Angelique Kidjo, Paula Cole, Mickey Hart Band with Steve Kimock and George Porter, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Arrested Development, Jackie Greene, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Stern Band with Victor Wooten and Friends, the Devil Makes Three, and the Amazing Techno-Tribal Community Dance. June 6, 2-10 p.m.; June 7, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; June 8, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. with after-hours shows from 10 p.m.-2 a.m.; $25-$139. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa.

You’ll go blind doing that

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> a&eletters@sfbg.com

ISBN REAL Nobody knows better than writers that there’s nothing inherently special or ennobling about reading a book. Fiction abounds with infatuated references to studious ritual, yet there’s also no shortage of passages that portray reading as a distraction, or an ingredient in a tedious bourgeoisie mating dance. The Great Gatsby (1925) may stroke the ego with its halfwits who treat books as props, but Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) get straight to the point and portray reading as a fool’s pastime.

It still brings me down a bit when I think of that blip of a minor character in Wilson’s book martyred to this belief: a sort of intellectual Margaret Dumont. Here was a woman who undoubtedly read millions of words — and good ones — and all it got her was the position of deluded gadfly.

Meta-masochism is hardly required to appreciate the point that books ain’t all that. There are plenty of sad reminders in the three-dimensional world, like an acquaintance of mine during college who sported on his backpack a button with the mating call "I STILL READ BOOKS." Clearly we had an enlightened soul on our hands, one with an intellect of such dexterity, no less, that he somehow pulled off the Orphean mental journey necessary to think Pay It Forward was a high-quality movie. The world is so full of bookworm poseurs and onanists it’s hard not to question one’s own motives for curling up by the fire.

Mikita Brottman’s new book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 224 pages, $14.95) takes a crack at this question on our behalf, attempting a scholarly treatise against the assumption that reading, in and of itself, makes you a better person. Brottman, a language and literature professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, wonders if perhaps our faith in the alchemical power of the practice "draws its power from a toxic brew of magical thinking, narcissism, and nostalgia."

Them’s fightin’ words. Unfortunately, Brottman’s punches don’t land nearly as often as they should. It would be hard to find the academic who could give the hyper-literate life a sound thrashing. But to maintain a modicum of fidelity to one’s thesis, not to mention one’s doubly barbed title, seems a modest expectation. The articulate introduction of Brottman’s book, sprinkled with aperitif-caliber evidence, lugs behind it 200-plus pages of disposable items from the trove of idiosyncrasies that is modern readership. Equal parts trivia, anecdotal digression, and halfhearted cautionary tale about the perils of culture-sanctioned solipsism, the result is not easily distinguishable from a valentine to reading.

I picked up Solitary Vice expecting to intermittently yell, "Preach it!" and have my opinions about literary fetishism fortified with case studies and garnished with academic authority. I don’t buy the spiritual democratization argument put forth in books such as Mark Edmundson’s 2004 Why Read? (Bloomsbury USA, 160 pages, $12.95). A book’s availability is the democratizing factor, not its contents. It seems wise that we’re introduced in our dumb-ass youth to the many types of intellectual life ripe for the plucking if we ever become so inclined. What’s not wise is assuming that students shouldn’t shuck those disciplines they find obnoxious immediately upon leaving school — that the best examples of literature aren’t at their core well-executed indulgences of an impractical enthusiasm. My reading life has helped the world only inasmuch as the world has to put up with a much less cranky person.

I will not fault you, Mikita Brottman, if you humbly disagree.

Skyphone’s ‘Avellaneda’ soars

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skyphonecd.jpg

SKYPHONE
Avellaneda
(Rune Grammofon)

By Erik Morse

The Danish trio of Thomas Holst, Keld Dam Schmidt, and Mads Bodker has deepened the exotic secrets first whispered in its 2004 debut, Fabula (Rune Grammofon), with a new quiet masterpiece, Avellaneda.

Possibly a titular reference to the small port city in Argentina or the aristocratic family for which the town is named, Skyphone’s Avellaneda seems to recall nothing less than the cryptic landscapes and genealogies of Jorge-Luis Borges. In name alone, tracks like “Schweizerhalle,” “Quetzal Cubicle,” and “Yetispor” present odd, polyglot taxonomies of old Europe and the New World. While the grab bag of gizmos in Avellaneda – glockenspiels, toy pianos, analog synths – and field sounds are all found in the band’s debut, the manner in which they are layered together vertically in the former rather than stitched laterally in the latter liberates the space of each track, allowing the sounds to tarry and erect their own internal rhythms.

This is a great leap forward in Holst and co.’s working method. As a Scandinavian relative to artists like Alog, Phonophani, and Kim Hiorthøy, Skyphone’s achievements in lush, ambient soundtracking are not without referents, but in demurring to the post-dance emulsions of glitchy beats or po-mo production, Avellaneda puts the group in a sonic universe somewhere between Debussy and Eno. In fact, the conjurations of moody bliss and non-Western rhythms make the album a sequel of sorts to Eno’s 1975 classic Another Green World (EG). Deserving of all of the hype, Skyphone confirms why Scandinavia is still at the forefront of avant-garde electro-acoustic music.

Guide to greener living

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Click here for even more green businesses and services, including Green Citizen, Green Zebra, PLANTSF and more!

ERECYCLE CAMPAIGN


Want to obey the bumper stickers and kill your television? That’s OK. But be careful where you bury it. TVs, as well as computers, DVD players, and all kinds of electronics, have no business in landfills. They’re made of plenty of metal which can be recycled, along with plenty of chemicals that are hazardous to the public. The eRecycle campaign, sponsored by the California Integrated Waste Management Board, maintains a Web site of local pickup and drop-off services for your e-waste — and thankfully, just in time for the high-def TV changeover in 2009.

www.erecycle.org

ECO HOME IMPROVEMENT


Want a greener home from the ground up? This is your one-stop shop. From flooring and cabinets to decor and lighting, everything here is natural, sustainable, and eco-friendly.

2617-2619 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 644-3500, www.ecohomeimprovement.com

DR. NAMRATA PATEL


Finding the right dentist is tough. But Dr. Namrata Patel makes your decision easier with her new LEED-certified (that’s Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design) office. Patel uses nontoxic products — keeping PVC, formaldehyde, and chlorine out of everything from floors to cabinetry. She’s careful about reducing waste. She uses minimal radiation and a special filtration system for dealing with mercury fillings. Even her office furnishings are made with recycled materials. And yes, she accepts insurance!

360 Post, Suite 704, SF. (415) 433-0119, www.sfgreendentist.com

SAN FRANCISCO GREEN BUSINESS PROJECT


Want to make sure your favorite restaurant or preferred electrician uses green practices? This online resource will point you toward businesses in SF, from bars to baby clothes retailers, who are committed to the environment.

www.sfenvironment.com/greenbiz

LUSCIOUS GARAGE


The actual act of driving isn’t the only reason having a car is hard on the environment. Maintaining it is too. But Luscious Garage is trying to help on both accounts. This woman-owned and operated facility specializes in hybrids, and runs the whole business as sustainably as possible, from the machine shop to the office. And for these luscious ladies, sustainably goes beyond chemicals and objects — they also sustain their community by hosting classes and a hybrid car club in their beautiful facility.

459 Clementina, SF. (415) 875-9030, www.lusciousgarage.com

PAT’S GARAGE


Like Luscious Garage’s brother, Pat’s also focuses on environmentally friendly business practices. Bring your Honda, Acura, or Subaru for services you can feel good about. Or, if you have a hybrid, you can work with Pat’s partners, Green Gears, to upgrade your hybrid with plug-in capabilities. Bonus? They offer free car classes for women.

1090 26th St., SF. (415) 647-4500, www.patsgarage.com, www.greengears.com

KEETSA


This SF-based business wants you to rest easy with their eco-friendly mattresses. With recycled steel in the coils, bamboo and unbleached natural cotton for fabrics, nonchemical odor-controlling and antibacterial treatments, and ingenious use of scrap memory foam bits, every mattress is as kind to the earth as it is to your body. Keetsa further reduces its carbon footprint with its innovative mattress compression technique, allowing for easier and more efficient transport. But are they good mattresses? They must be. After less than a year in business, they’re already opening a store in Fairfield.

271 Ninth St., SF. (415) 252-1575, www.keetsa.com

ECOHAUL


Just bought a new Keetsa and want to get rid of your tired old Sealy? Don’t just throw it in the trash. If you don’t live on one of those SF streets where a stranger will pick up your stuff from the sidewalk within an hour, call San Rafael–based Ecohaul. This nationwide service will pick up your furniture, appliances, yard waste, and just about anything else you can think of. Then they’ll reuse, recycle, and repurpose everything they can, diverting as much from the landfill as possible.

1-800-ecohaul, www.ecohaul.com

THE ORCHARD GARDEN HOTEL


You’ve greened up your home, so why not find an eco-friendly home away from home? The Orchard Garden was the third hotel in the United States to be given LEED certification for its key card energy control system (SF’s first — it’s based on the European model), organic bath products, natural materials, and general commitment to sustainability. Also check out its sister hotel, the Orchard, on Union.

466 Bush, SF. (415) 399-9807, www.theorchardgardenhotel.com

EPI CENTER MEDSPA


Ten years ago, Epi Center was the first spa in the country to combine traditional spa treatments and medical procedures. Now it celebrates its anniversary with a new innovation: the ecomedspa. This LEED-certified arm of the original spa combines regular procedures with organic treatments in a healthy environment, all according to the principles of William McDonough’s "Cradle to Cradle."

450 Sutter, SF. (415) 362-4754, www.skinrejuv.com

NEPALESE PAPER


Based in Penngrove, this company imports handmade Nepali paper made from bark of a white shrub called lokta, which regrows after pruning. Not only does this mean no trees are cut down, it also means employment for many women in Kathmandu Valley and financial support for village regions of Nepal. Plus, the paper’s gorgeous. Order online, or find it at Stylo, Autumn Express, Kinokuniya Stationery and Gifts, or San Francisco State University.

(707) 665-9055, www.nepalesepaper.com

MORE DIRT


Make a fashion statement with these simple, 100-percent organic T-shirts by Heidi Quante. The shirts, which are brown with white lettering saying "More Dirt" on the front are meant to capture attention and send people to Quante’s Web site, which shows people how to combat global warming through planting trees, establishing community gardens, and using permaculture techniques. Inks are made without PVC or phthalates, and shirts come in sizes for men, women, and babies.

www.moredirt.org

A. MACIEL PRINTING


Family owned and operated since 1984, A. Maciel specializes in recycled and tree-free papers as well as soy-based inks. What’s even better? The shop is completely wind-powered. Though the print shop is capable of doing corporate jobs, A. Maciel caters to nonprofits and community groups like the American Land Conservancy, Forest Ethics, and Greenpeace. They’re also part of Northern California Media Workers/Typographical Union. Sure beats Kinko’s.

50 Mendell, Unit #5, SF. (415) 648-3553, www.amacielprinting

TRANSPORTEDSF


All aboard the ecobus! This organization takes Das Frachtgut, the veggie oil–fueled bus Jens-Peter Jungclaussen uses as a mobile classroom, on an ecofriendly party tour. Movie nights are all about watching modern classics and then doing some kind of relevant outdoor activity (e.g., see The Big Lebowski, then bowl outside). Dance nights turn the bus into a mobile DJ booth and an instant, impromptu club. It’s fun, safe (no drunk driving, kids!), and above all, Earth friendly.

www.transportedsf.com

CO2 stew

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER It’s not easy being green, music lover. Because I’ve tried to shove my big fat cultural consumption hoof into a smaller carbon footprint, but I can’t dance around the numbers.

I’ve ponied up the green stuff for nonprofits, come correct at the composting and recycling bins, and threatened to finally get the crusty Schwinn into shape despite the near-death horror stories from bike messenger chums back in the day. But what can a music-gobbling gal do when faced with the hard if rough facts spat out by, for instance, the free online Carbon Footprint Calculator? After selecting "I often go out to places like movies, bars, and restaurants," I watched my print soar to Bigfoot proportions — thanks to my nightlife habit I supposedly generate around the US average of 11 tons of CO2 per person — rather than the mere 8.5 tons if I indulged in only "zero carbon activities, e.g. walk and cycle." Even if this out-late culcha vulcha flies on zero-emission wings to each show, I’m still feeding a machine that will prove the undoing of the planet, since the Calculator estimates that hard-partying humanoids need to reduce their CO2 production to 2 tons to combat climate change. We won’t even get into the acres of paper, publications, and CDs surrounding this red-faced, would-be greenster. I’m downloading as fast as I can, but I wonder whether my hard drive can keep up: hells, even MP3s — and the studios and servers that eke them out — add to my huge, honking footprint. Must I resign myself to daytime acoustic throw-downs within a walkable radius from my berth? Can I get a hand-crank laptop? Just how green can my music get?

Well, it does my eco good to know that a local venue like the Greek Theatre has gone green all year round: Another Planet has offset an entire season’s 113 tons of CO2 emissions; composted over two tons of cups, plates, and utensils; used recycled paper and soy-based ink on all their printed materials; and offered a $1 opt-in to ticket-buyers to offset their environmental impact. I can feel my tonnage shrinking just staring at the numbers. And while gatherings such as last year’s Treasure Island Music Festival sported zero-emission shuttles and biodiesel generators and this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will team with Amtrak to provide a free train that will move campers from Los Angeles’ Union Station to Empire Polo Field sans smog-spewing traffic jams, artists like José González have embarked on green tours, adding 50 cents to tickets to support nonprofits. Yet such efforts might prove more consciousness-raising than anything else, González concedes: "For me, playing mostly solo and touring with a small crew, I feel like the actual cut down on emissions is marginal comparing it to major artists, so it’s more about the symbolic value of it, and the ripple effect it might bring."

Still, CO2 spendthrifts like me need a swift kick in our waste-line. Lining up to deliver are such music-fueled events as the free South Lake Tahoe Earth Day Festival April 19 and the Digital Be-In 16 April 25 at Temple nightclub, organized by the Cyberset label with an "ecocity" theme aimed at sustainable communities. Green practices, Be-In founder Michael Gosney says, "may not be huge in of themselves, but they set an example for communities to take these practices back into their own lives." One such community-oriented musician is String Cheese Incident mandolin player Michael Kang, who’ll perform at the Digital Be-In and appear with Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks at the free Green Apple Festival concert April 20 in Golden Gate Park.

Organizing seven other free outdoor Earth Day shows throughout the country on April 20 as well as assorted San Francisco shows that weekend, the Green Apple Festival is going further to educate artists and venues — the usual suspects that inspire me to make my carbon footprint that much bigger — by distributing to participating performers and clubs helpful Music Matters artist and venue riders: the former encourages artists to make composting, recycling, and offsets a requirement of performances; the latter suggesting that nightspots consider reusable stainless-steel bottles of water and donating organic, local, fair-trade and/or in-season food leftovers to local food banks or shelters.

But how green are the sounds? Musicians like Brett Dennen, who also performs at SF’s Green Apple event, may have grown up recycling and composting, but he confesses that environmentalism has never spurred him to craft a tune: "Things as big as global warming have never moved me to write about it, even though I’m doing what I can." And Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett, who plays April 17 at the Design Center Concourse, may describe himself as a "recycling animal — I love it! I go through trash at other people’s houses!", yet even he was unable to push the rest of the his group to make their latest CD, Under the Blacklight (Warner Bros., 2007) carbon neutral.

So maybe it comes down to supporting those leafy green rooms, forests, and grasslands we otherwise take for granted. Parks are the spark for ex–Rum Diary member Jon Fee’s Parks and Records green label in Fairfax, which wears its love of albums on its hand-printed, all-recycled-content sleeves and plans to donate a percentage of all its low-priced CD sales to arboreal-minded groups like Friends of the Urban Forest. Fee and his spouse Mimi aren’t claiming to have all the answers in terms of running a low-carbon-footprint imprint, but they are pragmatic ("In order to support bands, labels need to give them something they can sell to get gas money," Fee says) and know their love of the outdoors segues with many musicians. "You develop that camping mentality from touring," he offers. "You’re not showering, and you’re hanging out for long periods of time. Everyone loves to be outside." That’s the notion even those too cheap to buy offsets can connect with — until the weird weather is at their doorstep.

Sheik it

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How much hot queer Arab on the dance floor can you handle? If you’re dating me, it better be a lot.

Others can test their capacity for swivel-hipped, uluutf8g cuties this Saturday at what more sensationalist club critics might dub a "Battle of the Belly Dancers." Two gay-oriented Middle Eastern–themed parties, Bibi and Club La Zeez, butt bejeweled foreheads in different venues — on the first night of Passover, no less. But that’s a different geopolitical kettle of couscous.

Hitting up both events would be ideal, since each is put on by folks of SWANA (Southwest Asian–Northern African) descent; pumps out zills-tinkling contemporary and traditional Persian, Arabic, Latin, and South Asian floor bangers; and serves an underrepresented audience hungry for connection in these unfashionably volatile times. If you are forced to choose, I recommend Bibi. La Zeez, a monthly launched in March at Club Eight by Los Angeles playwright Saleem, is good fun but gives off a touristy vibe — "Magic Carpet" lounge, really? It also caters to a mostly mainstream gay male crowd and uses the word exotic in its press materials. Tacky.

Bibi, on the other many-ringed hand, is a quarterly charitable grassroots affair that has delighted queers of all genders for a year now and is hosted by local playboys Rostam and J. Maximilian. This time around, the party’s at Six and called Bibi Chic, so dress yourself fancy and free. Proceeds go to six queer Middle Eastern foundations, including Iraqi LGBT; IRQO in Iran; and Beirut’s fabulous new LGBT center, Helem. DJs Emancipacion, Masood, and Josh Cheon will throw down beats and performance artist Cherry Gallete and belly dancer Amira will dazzle the crowd.

And what about us queer Arab Americans who’ll be sitting down to Passover seder that evening with our gorgeous Jewish boyfriends? "Both of you come afterward! Bring cookies!" Rostam entreated me over the phone. "There’s room on our dance floor for everyone."

BIBI CHIC

Sat/19, 10 p.m., $15.

Six

60 Sixth St., SF

(415) 863-1221

www.clubsix1.com, www.myspace.com/bibisf

CLUB LA ZEEZ

Sat/19, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $12–$15

Club Eight

1151 Folsom, SF

(415) 431-1151

www.eightsf.com

Bumping and thriving

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Crazy be the knowledge of self." If you’re into conscious hip-hop, you might expect such an interpersonal refrain as this intro to Black Spade’s "Good Crazy" on his intricately self-produced debut, To Serve with Love, out last month on Om Hip Hop, an imprint of San Francisco’s Om Records. Still, there’s something new going on here, something hot that snags your mind and your kicks and refuses to let go.

Maybe it’s Spade’s technique. The rapper otherwise known as Veto Money easily shifts between samples from every genre imaginable, funked-out click tracks, alien blips reminiscent of delightfully geeky hip-hop producers such as Styrofoam, and choruses that sound like he’s singing to you personally. His tight flows simulate a head bobbing up and down and grinning by pushing syllables into full beats, with rhymes and emphases hitting on downbeats instead of more typical upbeat syncopation.

Or maybe it’s just a simple sense of freedom. Remember when freedom was fun? Om Hip Hop is doing for the experimental hip-hop community what they’ve become known for worldwide in the electronic music world: finding talented musicians who could be superstars but are more interested in the music than in superficial fame, connecting them with other mavericks, and giving them free reign to rock the house. It’s the hip-hop version of what the Los Angeles CityBeat has dubbed Om’s effective "anti-superstar-DJ music policy."

"I’ve never worked on a project I didn’t believe in 100 percent," said Jonathan McDonald, speaking in Om’s SoMa headquarters, surrounded by countless promo discs and magazines. McDonald, who started out as an intern at Om while he was working as the hip-hop buyer at Amoeba Music, is now in charge of A&R and publicity for Om Hip Hop. He was psyched two years ago when Om founder Chris Smith decided to create and devote resources to the new imprint. Hip-hop was integral to Smith’s original vision for Om in 1995, said McDonald. "But when dance culture really took off in the city, Om followed," he said. The phenomenal success of Mark Farina’s Mushroom Jazz Vol. 1 (1996) — still Om’s bestselling record — outplayed early hip-hop projects such as People Under the Stairs.

With a stage name that plays on race, death, and the name of a ’70s New York street gang, Black Spade easily shifts between social critique ("Head Busters fightin’ security at the Mono / Should I sell dope or slave at McDonald’s?") and romanticism ("Excuse me miss, I know we’re fighting / But what is that smell? It’s so exciting"). Yet another Om Hip Hop artist, Crown City Rockers’ Raashan Ahmad, who now resides in Oakland, expands this sense of storytelling on The Push, which will be out in May. Considering everything from his mother’s battle with cancer to the birth of his son, Ahmad’s liquid lyricism takes us on a striking emotional ride, with stops for inspiration ("The linguist synonymous with soul power") and praise ("Hip-hop saved my life"). "I wanted to show all sides of hip-hop — and all sides of me," said Ahmad, on the phone from Los Angeles. By offering unprecedented support, Om let him create an album that even shows his "insecurities," he said. "Everything they said they’d do, they’ve done. They gave me complete creative freedom."

In June, Om will release the One’s Superpsychosexy. McDonald hopes that the Spade and Ahmad discs will help prep listeners for the Charlotte, N.C., artist’s "left field" sound, which includes hypnotic production and elastic, naughty-and-nice soul vocals. The One, né Geoffrey Edwards, would probably think of this pre-exposure as foreplay. "Superpsychosexy is music to make babies to. No, scratch that — it’s music to practice making babies to!" he said with a laugh, on the phone from his home. The One’s father is a minister. From a young age, his family was encouraged to create on multiple instruments, and on tracks such as "Drippin," and "Milkshake Thick," he summons some very hot demons.

The mixture of local and global artists has played a major role in Om Records’ success. Their Bay Area talent includes Zeph and Azeem; Zion I and the Grouch; and J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science, which has a new full-length coming later this year. Om has also formed a partnership with imeem, a San Francisco social networking site based around music, which McDonald believes will be a "driving force in new media."

It’s a perfect match. Om Hip Hop is all about community and shows no signs of slowing down. Colossus’s West Oaktown (2005), the first Om Hip Hop release, presented original funky tracks alongside hip-hop remixes, so you could feel the DJ at work. Om’s "Spring Sessions" show at the Mezzanine is bound to see some healthy human remixing, live and in the house. *

BLACK SPADE

With Supreme Beings of Leisure, Turntables on the Hudson, Samantha James, and J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science

Fri/18, 10 p.m., $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

You’ll go blind doing that

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ISBN REAL Nobody knows better than writers that there’s nothing inherently special or ennobling about reading a book. Fiction abounds with infatuated references to studious ritual, yet there’s also no shortage of passages that portray reading as a distraction, or an ingredient in a tedious bourgeoisie mating dance. The Great Gatsby (1925) may stroke the ego with its halfwits who treat books as props, but Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) get straight to the point and portray reading as a fool’s pastime.

It still brings me down a bit when I think of that blip of a minor character in Wilson’s book martyred to this belief: a sort of intellectual Margaret Dumont. Here was a woman who undoubtedly read millions of words — and good ones — and all it got her was the position of deluded gadfly.

Meta-masochism is hardly required to appreciate the point that books ain’t all that. There are plenty of sad reminders in the three-dimensional world, like an acquaintance of mine during college who sported on his backpack a button with the mating call "I STILL READ BOOKS." Clearly we had an enlightened soul on our hands, one with an intellect of such dexterity, no less, that he somehow pulled off the Orphean mental journey necessary to think Pay It Forward was a high-quality movie. The world is so full of bookworm poseurs and onanists it’s hard not to question one’s own motives for curling up by the fire.

Mikita Brottman’s new book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 224 pages, $14.95) takes a crack at this question on our behalf, attempting a scholarly treatise against the assumption that reading, in and of itself, makes you a better person. Brottman, a language and literature professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, wonders if perhaps our faith in the alchemical power of the practice "draws its power from a toxic brew of magical thinking, narcissism, and nostalgia."

Them’s fightin’ words. Unfortunately, Brottman’s punches don’t land nearly as often as they should. It would be hard to find the academic who could give the hyper-literate life a sound thrashing. But to maintain a modicum of fidelity to one’s thesis, not to mention one’s doubly barbed title, seems a modest expectation. The articulate introduction of Brottman’s book, sprinkled with aperitif-caliber evidence, lugs behind it 200-plus pages of disposable items from the trove of idiosyncrasies that is modern readership. Equal parts trivia, anecdotal digression, and halfhearted cautionary tale about the perils of culture-sanctioned solipsism, the result is not easily distinguishable from a valentine to reading.

I picked up Solitary Vice expecting to intermittently yell, "Preach it!" and have my opinions about literary fetishism fortified with case studies and garnished with academic authority. I don’t buy the spiritual democratization argument put forth in books such as Mark Edmundson’s 2004 Why Read? (Bloomsbury USA, 160 pages, $12.95). A book’s availability is the democratizing factor, not its contents. It seems wise that we’re introduced in our dumb-ass youth to the many types of intellectual life ripe for the plucking if we ever become so inclined. What’s not wise is assuming that students shouldn’t shuck those disciplines they find obnoxious immediately upon leaving school — that the best examples of literature aren’t at their core well-executed indulgences of an impractical enthusiasm. My reading life has helped the world only inasmuch as the world has to put up with a much less cranky person.

I will not fault you, Mikita Brottman, if you humbly disagree. *

CubaCaribe Festival

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PREVIEW The CubaCaribe Festival, now in its fourth incarnation, is a three-week celebration of the African diaspora, as manifested in this country, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. (Conceivably, as we continue to learn how widespread and diverse African influences are, the festival might well grow to include dance and music from Peru.) Like many other culturally based dance forms, these diverse African influences of the diaspora grow from pockets that develop around specific newcomers to the fertile Bay Area, who bring the seeds of knowledge with them. Observe this year’s festival performers: Tânia Santiago was born in the Bahia region of Brazil; two members of Nsamina Kongo come from the Republic of Congo; and Luis Napoles, Ramón Ramos Alayo, and Danis "La Mora" Pérez Prades hail from Cuba. Others, such as Portsha Jefferson and Michelle Martin, are American, but their affinities have led them to the sources of their art; Jefferson has lived and worked in Haiti, and Martin in Nigeria, Cuba, and Haiti. Of particular interest is guest artist Pérez Prades’s New York–based Oyu Oro ensemble and CubaCaribe founder Ramos and his Alayo Dance Company. An excellent dancer with Robert Moses’s Kin, among others, Ramos brings a personal, decidedly contemporary perspective to his choreography. Last year’s Three Threes was a thoughtfully built homage to Cuba’s modern dance pioneer Narciso Medina and a smart, excellently danced roundup of Cuban social dance.

CUBACARIBE FESTIVAL Fri/18–Sat/19, April 24–26, and May 1–3, 8 p.m.; April 20 and May 4, 2, and 7 p.m. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. $18–$22. (415) 273-4633, www.cubacaribe.org, www.brownpapertickets.com

Clubs: Bootyful action at Full Figure Friday

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Party with me, plus. All photos by Joshua Rotter.

By Joshua Rotter

Going out dancing can be a confidence-buster for peeps of all sizes. But the extreme shame imposed on plus-size women often outweighs their desire to hit da club. Full-figured party promoter Lady Tigress was no different. “I was never a clubber in my twenties because I didn’t feel like I would be comfortable in a nightclub setting,” Tigress said. “I bought into what I saw on TV and thought everyone in bars or dance clubs looked like Beyonce or Britney.”

In a world where the Barbie doll reigns supreme, these notions are only reinforced by a media that has little love for big girls. Rarely on the covers of magazines, large women remain the laughing stock of hip-hop videos, the early eliminations on reality showmances, and stand-up fodder for late night television: think Jay Leno’s Jonah and the whale jokes about Lewinskygate. And Lady Tigress knows that clubland is no kinder.

“There are gorgeous plus-size women in all types of clubs all over the Bay,” Tigress said. “But even if they are confident, there is snickering that sometimes happens when a crew of big girls shows up at a mainstream club, or they are sometimes ignored because a lot of people don’t want to admit that they are attracted to women who live outside of the super-skinny American beauty standard.”

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After Tigress started going out to Bay Area BBW parties such as Big Boogie Nights, Sexy at Any Size, and Heavy Rotation in her thirties, she realized that if the event was fat-friendly, these women would come out and party. So Tigress was inspired to create an even larger night, a hip-hop party for plus-size women and their fans called Full Figure Friday, and decided to host her evening, unlike similar hotel-based events across the Bay, at the stylish San Francisco club Bambuddha Lounge.

IranianRadio.com takes you on a drive through the Persian-pop unknown

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By Dina Maccabee

Sometimes – when I notice I’ve developed an allergy to my entire iTunes playlist, when all my CDs are mysteriously missing from their cases, and I’m not ready to resort to listening to mix tapes from high school – the silence on my stereo can be deafening. In those dire times, I resort to iTunes radio.
Scrolling down the list of offerings, there isn’t a lot of campaigning to sway your vote. I breeze past the bland listings for Classic Rock, Electronic, and Ambient, on down to International, where if nothing else the flavors have a chance of being spicy. Still, I couldn’t say what exactly prompted me to try IranianRadio.com for the first time. “Persian traditional music,” it read, sandwiched between “The Best Mix of All Things Iranian” and “Persian Pop.” I must have been feeling anti-American.

At any rate, I was pleased to discover hours of uninterrupted Persian classical music, a tradition so stately and affecting that its surface exoticism melts away after only a few minutes. But I began to wonder, from whence, exactly, issues forth this fountain of unfamiliar yet dulcet tones? I pressed a button and suddenly linked the sounds of classical Persia with a bedroom in San Francisco in 2008.

I wanted some background color for the monochromatic iTunes radio experience – and some direction on how to explore the region’s music even further (the station’s format ranges from Persian Dance to Kurdish Pop). Fortunately a friendly service representative at IranianRadio.com, identifying himself only as Cyrus, was able to set me straight on the mysteries behind the music.

SFBG: Who programs the content of IranianRadio.com?

Super “Scales”

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The words were sometimes garbled, but the body’s language was not. Les Écailles de la Mémoire (The Scales of Memory), a fiery collaboration between Senegal’s all-male Jant-Bi and Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women, shouted, chanted, and danced about anger, pain, and love, always with an Africa-grounded sensibility.

It’s more than slightly ironic that the men of Jant-Bi are more familiar to Bay Area audiences than the all-female Urban Bush Women, who have uncovered African American cultural traditions for more than 20 years. Jant-Bi last appeared in San Francisco in 2005 with Fagalaa, a response to genocide. The Bush Women have not been seen here since 1990, when their Praise House illuminated a failed festival event.

The English title of Jant-Bi’s and Urban Bush Women’s gorgeously complex investigation of what people carry in their DNA is apt. Scales of Memory strips away the layers of hardness that have grown around racial pain. But it also measures, evaluates, and ultimately honors that reality. "I accept," the piece’s 14 dancers announce at the end.

The colonizing of Africa and the history of Africans in this country provide the base for Scales of Memory‘s complex exploration of subjugation and survival. The piece is brilliantly supported by Fabrice Bouillon-Laforet’s mixed score, which draws upon urban, natural, and musical compositions from various sources. The sounds enhanced Germaine Acogny and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s choreography, which is rooted in specifics but open to the world.

Scales of Memory began with the ensemble divided into small groups, each staring silently at the audience. One by one, the dancers stepped forward to shout out generations of ancestry. Though there was no overt textual narrative, the images evoked stories of communities destroyed and resurrected. The solos and ensemble dances hammered their way into our consciousness; they also drew us in with the strength — and humor — of their realization.

Both groups feature extraordinary performers who speak with an African-based dance language but use it in contemporary, individualistic ways. When the men strolled across the stage in unison, they could have stepped out of a Gene Kelly movie. But when they threw themselves into knees-to-the-sky leaps, it became clear that the ancestral ground beneath their feet was composed of clay, not concrete. The women’s big-hipped acknowledgment that they’ve got back — a Bush Women trademark — had a jazzy urban sass to it. Throughout, the dancers exuded power and self-confidence.

Nora Chipaumire, now Urban’s primary dancer, served as a bridge-building priestess figure. When she stepped forth, at first in a white ceremonial gown, she seemed to contain the levels of history and experience within Scales. But all the dancers embodied the pain of enslavement in a way that made it raw, visceral, and present. They put it on stage without any comment.

The men’s red T-shirts became gags and face-covering hoods. Seemingly exuberant male dancers became unbearable to watch once it became clear that their hands were tied behind their backs and an invisible force was beating them into dancing. The performers spread individual expressions of rage and anguish across the stage. They called up the suffering of Africa’s diaspora, then dragged themselves back into a life-giving, body-to-body circle dance similar to the one at Scales‘ beginning.

A mourner’s bench in a slave-auction scene— a seat reserved for sinners in African American church tradition — became an auction block and stirred up old shame. Chipaumire and her male partner sat on the bench and stroked their own heads. They called up body memories of the degrading examinations of physical fitness that determined a slave’s price. But the prop then transformed into one element of a gathering place. Men and women on facing benches jabbered at each other in a scene of pure comedy, one that recalls the memorable finale of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations (1960).

Strong solos balanced group sequences. Catherine Dénécy’s "I Am Who I Am" was simultaneously an attack and a celebration. The modern "Dance Hall" segment offered another form of communal celebration: women preened to comments by an off-stage male voice during its delightful opening moments. Later, a voice-over presentation of a Rumi poem was too sappy. But the ensuing dances between couples were alternately hot and heavy or tender and shy, with a feisty Chipaumire letting her partner know exactly how far he was allowed to go. Restrained or not, Scales of Memory‘s visceral heat just about melted the roof off the theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Metamorphenomenal

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Positivity — can we get some, please? Sure. Zing! Spring’s come bounding from its musty, dusty closet like a newly out Floridian, little rainbow fanny pack ablaze, itchy pink nipple rings jingling. Poor green thing! Isn’t it up to us to lead her, tripping and grinning, into the limelight fantastica? Aren’t we already there? Change, unlike Aqua Net and Paco Rabanne, is in the air. The clubs, they’ve gone azalea-crazy, bursting with neon irises and tuneful fuchsia streaks. Cocktails mysteriously grow stronger in our hands. And parties, parties everywhere — there’s far too much to do right now. Hell, my nightlife Blackberry just exploded all over my fresh electric Onitsuka Tiger shoes.

Anybody here got a Wet Ones?

"We’re spinning in the pyramid of life / As day turns to night," goes a latest wriggly dance-floor burner. "I wish the stars could shine now / For they are closer / They are near," goes another. "Let’s make out!" goes a third. Sex, stars, spinning, and you — sounds like a few times I’d love to have. How ’bout we do the bunny hop and rock our burgundy hair at the following affairs? Oh, and bring that spring girl, too. There’s always room for one more in the back.

WELCOME TO PARADISE


What do you do when you get too famous? Besides wipe up dog shit with your borrowed Chanel? How ’bout change your name and make a record? I sincerely hope you’ve made it at least once to two of the most regularly orgiastic parties in the city: Frisco Disco and Blow Up. If you have, then you’re intimately familiar with the semi-nude gymnastics, lubed-up disco-house-electro jams, and jailbait fanbase of one DJ Jefrodesiac, our fair burg’s current reigning turntable sex god.

I may just win that tiara back, though, because Jefrodesiac is dead. Metaphorically. Witness the birth of Jeffrey Paradise, his latest incarnation, who’s about to release a new EP on PrinceHouse Records and make us all update our contacts. He’ll be debuting this next evolution at Blow Up on Friday, April 11, which is also, somewhat confusingly, his birthday bash. Because one personality is never enough!

WILL THEY SERVE COSMOS?


I’m not sure how I feel about the space program, but hey, if the nearby NASA Ames Research Center and something rather ominously called the Space Generation Advisory Council want to cohost a big rave at Moffett Field, presenting forward-minded DJs like Amon Tobin, John Tejada, Dr. Toast, and Tycho, well, beam me up (snort). I’m talking about Yuri’s Night, an astro-fantastical, techno-futuristical anniversary celebration of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight into space in 1961. Yuri’s Night, Saturday, April 12, is being feted this year with 153 parties in 46 countries on goddess-knows-how-many giant-screen satellite feeds, so make sure your outfit is tight. Also on the blast-off tap: a huge technology fair with zippy visual installations and electronic doodad demonstrations galore. Pack your sonic screwdriver.

BIGGER BOOTY


Srsly, I wept when longtime San Francisco mainstay Fag Fridays ended in February — and not just because my Moisture Wear wasn’t quite so hypoallergenic after all. The gay and their ilk really lost something when the party shut down after 12 years, not least of all a soulful house crashpad in the weekend’s early afterhours.

No more tears, though. "Girl, we couldn’t wait to have a Friday off!" David Peterson, one half of Fag promoters Big Booty, exuberantly told me. Big Booty’s certainly taking advantage of its free time. Peterson’s Booty partner, Jose Mineros, just launched a bouncy house Saturday weekly, Collide, at the fab Club 222 (www.myspace.com/222hyde). Fag Fridays will make a special return at Mighty for Pride. And biggest of all, Big Booty just launched a new dance-music label, Thread Recordings. They’ll be toasting Thread’s first release, "The Rhythm" by DJ David Harness, with a deep and thrilling party at luminous megaclub Temple, featuring Harness and legendary NYC DJ Tedd Patterson. Boys keep swinging.

BLOW UP

With Jeffrey Paradise

Fri/11, 10 p.m.–2 a.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

YURI’S NIGHT

Sat/12, 2 p.m.–2 a.m., $40–$50

NASA Ames Research Center

Moffett Field, Mountain View

www.ynba.org

THREAD RECORD RELEASE PARTY

With Tedd Patterson and David Harness

April 19, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $20

Temple

540 Howard, SF

(415) 572-1466

www.templesf.com

Club Gossip

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REVIEW Wanna gossip? Of course you do. Can you believe that Justin Timberlake is inducting Madonna into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Wasn’t he, like, one when her first single dropped? I know.

OK, so I was four years old, but at least I remember watching the "Lucky Star" video premiere on MTV, in which Madonna exposed the navel that would launch a now-25-year career.

But it wasn’t fuzzy navels I was hung up on at video dance night Club Gossip’s Madonna tribute Feb. 29. It was the Material Girl: a vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice concoction. Two sticky-sweet cocktails later, it was time to dance to DJed songs and VJed videos that documented Madonna’s many reinventions from her playful early years to her controversial Sex book era to her current kabbalah/yoga-mother period.

If my Madonna moves had been rusty, all those tips on Wikihow.com’s entry labeled "How to Dance Like Madonna" — which encouraged me to wear a tight outfit, get edgy, and release my inhibitions — really helped me get into the groove. Before I knew it, I was bopping, vogue-ing, and disco dancing along with a new crop of twentysomething Madonna wannabes in headbands and bangles.

While Madonna may have been an odd artist to honor at a night that generally concentrates on darker bands such as the Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Depeche Mode, there is no disputing her brief goth flirtation via her "Frozen" video. I may have heard a rumor that that wasn’t her song, but no, that kinda gossip isn’t welcome on this night. The girls would’ve taken my eyes out with their crucifixes.

CLUB GOSSIP Second Saturdays, 9:30 p.m.–3 a.m. $7. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. (415) 703-8964, www.myspace.com/clubgossip

Clubs: Anavan sans Ativan

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Holy Spazmosis!. Jumpy young rockers Anavan drove up from Salt Lake City to play the queer (and friends!) punk monthly Trans Am at Club Eight for a rapturous beer-spurtin’ crowd last Saturday.

Anavan, “You’re Taking Me Out”

The frantic foursome greeted us with mucho fog machine, trademark hockey helmets, drum, bass, and a wall of synths. And then everything got crazy in a voices-in-your-head way (mostly thanks to the skittering, hyperactive vocals mixed waaaay back in the echo-delay mix.)

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Courtesy of the muthafuckin’ LA Times

In the case of the hockey helmets, visual connections to those masked masters Daft Punk, MSTRKRFT, and occasionally (if primly painted-on facial scruff counts — yes, I’m calling those skinny French boys out) Justice might be made. And sonically they can sometimes resemble those glam-tech outfits a teeny-tad, mostly in their boppy keyboard riffs. But Anavan adds its own cymbal-crashing, wildly energetic No-Wave twist, sure to please the art school crowd (Richard Hell is all the rage again, haven’t you heard?) and dance floor maniacs as well as indie kids. I expect you’ll hear them burning down discos near you soon.

(Next month a Trans Am, Sat May 3, features SF native cuties Ex-Boyfriends — should be rocking’.)

Metal maidens

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER How are we driving — in terms of womanly representation in the Bay Area metal scene? The verdict: we’re pretty bitchin’, but we could do better.

Anyone who’s gotten an eyeful of hoary ole hair-band imagery, courtesy of Headbanger’s Balls of yore, is all-too-familiar with the form’s sexism — excused by such critics as Chuck Klosterman and Robert Walser in Fargo Rock City (Scribner, 2001) and Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Wesleyan, 1993), respectively, with claims that it’s beside the point to even critique the genre and that the music was simply "shaped by patriarchy." Nonetheless, when I wondered where all the girl groups had gone, following the demise of Sleater-Kinney, Destiny’s Child, and le Tigre (see "Band of Sisters, 07/18/06), I might have found solace in the fact that the Bay Area’s headbanging underground is fairly bangin’ for ladies: women can be found onstage in heavy bands ranging from Hammers of Misfortune, Ludicra, and Totimoshi to Bottom, Embers, and Laudanum.

The New Jersey–raised Leila Rauf is in a position to know as the guitarist-vocalist of the four-year-old Saros: female metal musicians are still "rare," she said, "having lived in other cities where that was the case. I think a lot of it has to do with the political climate in the Bay Area. Maybe there’s more women just not participating in traditional gender roles and you find women doing lots of things that women normally don’t do in more conservative parts of the country — being in a metal band being one of them."

Her San Francisco group is just completing their new untitled album, which they’re in the midst of mixing with producer Billy Anderson (High on Fire, the Melvins, Neurosis). Over the phone on her way to meet her Amber Asylum/Frozen in Amber bandmate Kris Force, Rauf described the recording as "still metal, but there’s more going on — a lot more singing, a lot more harmonic, and a lot more acoustic." It’s part of the evolution she and cowriter-guitarist Ben Aguilar have undergone since their five-track release, Five Pointed Tongue (Hungry Eye, 2006). "We’re just getting bored playing the same thing, loud all the time, technical all the time. We’re trying to get more negative space into the songs."

Still, even an accomplished, intelligent figure such as Rauf — who was working on a PhD in speech pathology at Purdue when she dropped out to pursue her muse — has had to wash out the nasty taste of Neanderthal behavior, even in the relatively forward-thinking Bay metal scene. In a later e-mail she recalled multiple instances of violent passes at San Francisco metal shows, including an time when "a really big dude grabbed me and tried to stick his tongue in my mouth. Eww." All of which pales next to other moments of intense sexism, she added: "I have been denied band auditions before — later finding out that it was due to my gender — but being told to my face it was because they didn’t think I had the chops. I even read an ad on Craigslist recently for a metal band looking for members that made it a point to exclude women. To believe this is happening in 2008 … "

One is loathe to think that the local metal resurgence is linked to a kindred revival in gender stereotypes. Are they still so charged, now that the music and its imagery seems to have moved toward less-biased turf? While there are still bastions of all-boy metal exclusivity — thrash, Rauf noted, is one of them, which parallels the general absence of women in chart-topping hard rock — area players should be quietly (or loudly) proud of its estrogen-friendly underground. It will only make for more unique work — and a new generation of girls who aren’t afraid to kick out the jams. *

AMBER ASYLUM

With Graycion and Embers

April 19, 9 p.m., $8

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.elriosf.com

SAROS

With Black Cobra and Mendozza

April 24, 9 p.m., $7

Annie’s Social Club

917 Folsom, SF

(415) 974-1585

www.anniessocialclub.com

HAIGHT’S NEW METAL HQ

Something wicked heavy — and ambitious — this way comes with the opening of the Shaxul Records storefront at 1816 Haight. Scheduled to throw open its dark doors on April 1, the shop takes over the narrow, shoebox-like spot across the street from Amoeba Music, where Reverb Records once purveyed dance 12-inches — after much delay, said co-owner Stone Shaxul, a.k.a. DJ Shaxul of Rampage Radio on KUSF 90.3 FM. There are reasons why this will likely be the only metal store in the Bay, he wrote in an e-mail, citing the high cost of San Francisco retail space and the Haight in particular as prohibitive to most metalheads as he madly prepped the operation, which carries vinyl, CDs, and 7-inches focusing on Bay Area underground metal scene and the label’s releases (including the vinyl version of Above the Ashes by lost ’80s local thrash unit Ulysses Siren), as well as T-shirts, books, patches, and other "blasphemous goods."

"We want Shaxul Records to be a place where real metalheads can come and be proud and where new metalheads can learn what the real stuff is about. We also want to give all the metalheads from around the world who visit a place to go that acknowledges our great metal tradition when they visit," Shaxul offered. Does he have any misgivings considering the struggles of music retail? "Not many people," he philosophized, "get a chance to live their dream."

Listening deeply to future’s past

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

With this month’s release of Quaristice (Warp), Manchester electro pioneers Autechre have proven once again why they remain the most vital experimental force of the Warp generation — invoking, in their dance-floor songscapes, a considerable 50-year palimpsest of hermetic sounds, from classical avant-garde to fin de millénaire techno. Nearly two decades into their careers, musical partners Sean Booth and Rob Brown still generate, synthesize, and surpass cutting-edge diapasons, matched by a timeless — and dare I say archetypally English — craftsmanship. By turns baroque and warm, then granular and cold, Autechre’s sonic creations continue to defy and frustrate the ramifying narratives of critics and hipster musos, who often label the mysterious duo with vague descriptors like "architectonic."

"There’s plenty of bad grandiosity — like Jean Michel Jarre," Booth says, laughing on the phone from Manchester. "People used to say our music sounded Wagnerian, weirdly enough. Of course, there are other European composers I prefer."

While the sutured beats and acid loops of past classic recordings like 1995’s Tri Repetae (Warp) and 1999’s EP7 (Warp) are based in the futurist ’80s hip-hop of Mantronix and Afrika Bambaataa, Autechre’s dissonant tones and eerie melodies are also a product of the same decade’s underground cinema. "Soundtrack music was my sideways introduction to classical electronic music," recalls Booth. "I really love John Carpenter, more than I even like Kraftwerk, which is a lot." In the age of glammy mainstream new wave, during which Yamaha keyboards were built and played like guitars and Trevor Horne–style production was all brass and filigree, sci-fi and horror provided an inroad to the sounds of future’s past — and its composers. Booth goes on to praise Tod Dockstader and Roland Kayn, among others.

In Booth’s studied references to musical obscurants, whose accompanying concepts of cybernetics and generative synthesis are usually reserved for the Uni computer lab set, the self-taught Northerner is not engaging in the familiar game of highbrow name-checking that has pervaded certain pockets of electronic culture since the early ’90s — and that indirectly birthed the dubious title Intelligent Dance Music. Rather, he is trying to articulate his deep passion for a kind of music that is nearly indescribable in everyday language and always alludes and evades more than it expresses.

Call it deep listening, call it microtonal, but don’t call it IDM. "I kind of looked at the computer [when we began] as a means to an end," Booth explains. "Like how far could you take music using this machine and still create reasonably interesting music? [Karlheinz] Stockhausen was all over this. He was even blurring the line between what a tone is and what a succession of events is. And that’s a major turning point in 20th century music. I think by the time we got to those ideas, it was about reapplication."

Of course, for all of its new possibilities, techno culture has its obvious downside, Booth contends, mostly as a result of market saturation. "I think that if people are overequipped, they can find it harder to make decisions, because they’ve got more things to choose from," he explains, referring both to the music industry and cultural spheres. He points to the phenomena of MySpace as comparable to the glut of plug-ins and processors that have become the norm for music producers. "But it’s all fixation in a way, because it’s not like if you buy a synth, then everything is going to change."

The progression of drum ‘n’ bass and dub techno met such a fate, being outstripped from within by idle bandwagoners who capitalized on the mechanics but not the soul of the genres’ originators: Dillinja, Ed Rush, and Jeff Mills, or the highly influential Basic Channel label. "Unfortunately, there are loads of idiots waiting in the wings to capitalize on that originality," Booth laments. "I think the whole electronic scene is really conservative now, and safe. In the early days when Xenakis and Cage and Stockhausen were first discovering these sounds, it was absolutely terrifying."

Autechre has always tried to maintain a certain minimalist craftsmanship in response, according to Booth. And it is apparent in Quaristice that they have put as much emphasis on flow, narrative, and rhythm as bricolage, creating a sophisticated "live" feel throughout. While some punters might say Autechre has now returned to the safety of its roots after mining the difficult territory of computer processing and software algorithms, Booth is quick to point out that most of the gear they have used of late is identical to what they used before. "It’s just much more reactive," he says. "I’m making decisions based on what Rob just did and vice versa. In a way it’s more rewarding than spending six months programming something that’s very elaborate and complex in a different way."

And if there is one descriptor we might use to encapsulate Booth and Brown, it would never be "safe." In their tireless soundtracking of a subterranean past and underground future, Autechre continues along an innovative path of music with as much heart as hardware.

AUTECHRE

With Massonix and Rob Hall

Sat/5, 9 p.m. doors, $18

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Grooves

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KYLIE MINOGUE

X

(EMI)

As with any highly anticipated release from a pop siren, there’s sure to be predictable praise from diehard fans: think of all the Janet devotees who’ve supported her multiple failed attempts to relaunch as an pop icon, instead of a wardrobe-malfunctioning pariah. Also to be expected are the rip-to-shreds haters who will use any sign of weakness as bait. For miniature Aussie pop goddess Kylie Minogue, her 10th effort, X, was receiving equal amounts of love and hate many moons before its repeatedly pushed-back release date. Thanks to the cyberpirates of the techno-age, Minogue’s aural goodies were offered up for all of the online world to hear — even before the official tracklist was determined.

Leakage aside, opinion didn’t deter this überpop-tart from bringing a fiercer, more sexed-up version of her already adorable self to the dozen tracks on the uneven but thoroughly enjoyable X. Highlights include the vampy swagger of opener "2 Hearts" and the frenetic disco-meets-electro jam "In My Arms," written and produced by Scottish electro prodigy Calvin Harris and laced with his signature warped, underwater synths and pert handclap percussion. In its weaker moments, X sounds like a mashup of modern pop heavies. The robotic chant of "Speakerphone" recalls a made-for-TV version of Daft Punk’s "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and "Nu-di-ty" is a Britney-esque banger, with jolts of ripping bass and nasally vocal "whoops" that would have fit perfectly into the guiltily pleasurable Blackout (2007). Back in her skyscraping stilettos, Kylie proves with X that her kitten-with-a-whip dance anthems still titillate. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

THE BREEDERS

Mountain Battles

(4AD)

Eighteen years after debuting with the alluringly odd Pod (4AD), and 15 since careening full force into the mainstream for a few months with the bubble-bass alterna-anthem "Cannonball," the Breeders return with Mountain Battles, their fourth album in nearly two decades. While hardly prolific, the Kim Deal–led enterprise has been successful in concocting fetchingly askew garage-pop, and their latest presents the band in marvelously fevered, fearless form, covering a considerable amount of stylistic and emotional territory over the course of 35 minutes.

Deal’s exuberantly woozy vocals remain as cough syrup–thick as ever, and the microphone give-and-take with sister Kelley once again yields delectable results. "Bang On" — a fiercely minimal hip-wiggling thump à la ESG — focuses around the chanting proclamation, "I love no one, and no one loves me," with Kim’s sunny assertion of the phrase chased by Kelley’s frowning echo. Elsewhere, the opiated melodica backdrops of "Istanbul" make for a seductive travelogue, as does "Regalame Esta Noche," an exquisitely vulnerable Spanish-language ballad rendered in the dustiest, huskiest of tones. Listeners seeking the familiar Breeders guitar-chug, however, will gleefully throw themselves face-first into the psychedelicized swirls of "Overglazed," an ecstatic thunderer set a-twitch by Kim’s howling repetition of a simple, inarguable line: "I can feel it." Honestly, though: who couldn’t? (Todd Lavoie)

THE BREEDERS

With Colour Revolt

April 30, 8 p.m., $23

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

www.slims-sf.com

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Om: Miami 2008

(Om)

Back when I was a younger young ‘un, Om helped open my ears to the world of San Francisco house music. I’d waste gallons of gas I couldn’t afford, driving around listening to the likes of Miguel Migs and Colette because my car had a decent sound system. Lately, though, I’ve been disappointed with the label since it seems to have drifted away from the soulful house I had grown to love. So I was skeptical when I popped the new Om: Miami 2008 in my deck while driving down I-580. Two bridge tolls and four missed exits later, I was still in a trance from the Fred Everything’s deliciously nostalgic "Here I Am." Overall the compilation stitches together a slew of impressive sounds, including Eric Kupper’s remix of Samantha James’s "Breathe In." Om is clearly back to its old tricks, and I’m all ears. (Jamilah King)

Rip up the mayor’s club-violence plan

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EDITORIAL Back in January, 34-year-old Clarence Corbin was shot and killed during a fight outside Jelly’s Dance Café nightclub in Mission Bay. Mayor Gavin Newsom leapt into action, announcing that this sort of violence was unacceptable. We’re with the mayor on that, although we wish he’d shown the same kind of energy in dealing with the epidemic of shootings in the Bayview and Western Addition over the past few years.

But his solution — a crackdown on nightclub promoters — is unlikely to do anything about violence and will almost certainly damage the creative underside of the city’s entertainment scene.

Sup. Sophie Maxwell is carrying the mayor’s legislation, which she introduced March 4. Some of the provisions just seem silly: the bill, for example, would ban "loitering" within 10 feet of a club between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Of course, people stand outside clubs all the time — among other things, to smoke cigarettes — so the bill says smokers would be exempted. So would people who are waiting for cabs. People who simply wanted some fresh air or to make a phone call (or to make out away from the dance floor) would be subject to fines. The loitering law, like most similar laws, seems like a blueprint for discriminatory and illegal enforcement. (Will young African American men get cited more often than white people? Of course they will.)

How are the cops going to decide who’s really waiting for a ride (cabs can take half an hour to arrive on a Saturday night) and who’s just hanging out? Might potential troublemakers just light up a cigarette and thus be free from legal action? It’s hard to see the practical logic here.

Then there’s the provision that would require promoters who hold two or more club events a year to obtain a permit (and presumably, pay a fee). Applicants would have to have proof of $1 million in liability insurance.

That, frankly, would kill a whole lot of small-time events in San Francisco.

Although Newsom complained to the press about "fly-by-night promoters," the city’s full of well-established people who do shows at various clubs with various programs a few times a year or a few times a month — and most of them are small-time operators. Very few have ever had any problems with the law, or promoted a show that led to violence — but most of them would have to shut down, because the $1 million in insurance money would be too expensive.

The Bay Area Reporter suggested March 13 that the bill could harm nonprofit events promoters by forcing them to devote much of the charitable take from their shows to paying for insurance and security plans.

We just don’t see how any of this really addresses the problem of violence outside of San Francisco clubs (and we don’t really see that clubs are to blame for much of the violence in the city anyway). When Sup. Ross Mirkarimi tried to get Mayor Newsom to put cops on foot in high-crime areas, the mayor balked. When Sup. Chris Daly tried to create a violence-prevention program that might have actually gotten to the root causes of this horrible pattern of kids killing one another, the mayor rejected it.

Instead, he wants to create a strange and ineffective plan to give police an excuse to arrest the wrong people that will penalize the small promoters who every week give so much to the city’s cultural landscape.

If club owners are concerned about crowds fomenting violence outside their doors, then the problem needs to be addressed. But this is an ass-backward way to do it. The supervisors need to rip this plan apart and start fresh.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet

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PREVIEW It’s about time. This Saturday, Complexions Contemporary Ballet is finally making its Bay Area debut. The company is 14 and travels all over the globe, from Israel to New Zealand. Founded by former members of Albert Ailey American Dance Theater Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, the company started out small, primarily with duets Rhoden created for himself and Richardson. In the Bay Area, Rhoden’s work has been seen most often during the Ailey company’s yearly gigs. In 2002, the Oakland Ballet (then under the leadership of Karen Brown) debuted his Glory Fugue to much acclaim. Meanwhile, Richardson, a principal guest artist of American Ballet Theater, is mesmerizing in whatever capacity he chooses to perform. In the Bay Area he is best known for the title role in San Francisco Ballet’s filming of Othello. Today, Rhoden is a hot item in musical theater, film, video, and jazz, as well as ballet and modern dance. Complexions’s 20-odd dancers continue to focus most of their endeavors on the prolific Rhoden’s choreography, which favors speed, angularity, and the kind of power attacks even a William Forsythe could admire. As performed by Complexions, the pieces showcase forceful dancers who draw their perspectives from a wide variety of backgrounds — both artistic and cultural. The program for this one-night stand includes a solo by Ailey dancer Abdur-Rahim Jackson; the rest of the program is entirely by Rhoden and features the recent Dear Frederic (2007), an homage to Chopin, and honors Marvin Gaye with the closer Chapters Suite (2007), which Rhoden peopled with a fabulously eclectic mix of street characters.

COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET Sat/5, 8 p.m., $25–$40. Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. (415) 499-6800, www.marincenter.org

Careers & Ed: Photo pro

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› culture@sfbg.com

A line snakes down Fell Street on a Friday evening in front of the Rickshaw Stop, where Meleksah Jurgenson cradles a large camera and surveys the over- and underdressed revelers in Hayes Valley. A man in bright sneakers and slouchy jeans calls her over: "Dude, Meleksah! You gotta take a photo of this!" He gleefully points to a poor shlub on the curb resting a weary head on his knees. The guy’s been there, immobile, for at least 20 minutes.

Jurgenson smiles apologetically. With her long brown hair pulled back and bangs cut straight across her forehead, her face is girl-next-door lovely: sweet, a little sly, and essentially nonthreatening. Like the sidewalk lush, her camera remains fixed in her hands. She doesn’t shoot.

"I want everyone to look back at the pictures and be just as excited [to see them] as I was to take them," she explains later. A native of Washington, DC — her mother is a photographer at the White House — Jurgenson is now a resident cameraperson at Mezzanine, as well as at the weekly Frisco Disco and Blow Up parties cohosted by her husband, Jeffrey Fare, at the Transfer and the Rickshaw Stop. (Fare, a former member of postpunk dance purveyors the Rapture, DJs at these parties under the names DJ Jefrodisiac and Jeffrey Paradise.)

A rigorously spontaneous career track — "I never make plans for the future," she says — found Jurgenson working as both a model and a party planner. "So it was a natural progression to move from booking and throwing parties to [hosting] nightclubs," she says. "And to move from shooting fashion editorials to being on the other side of the camera. I just fell into it."

As she walks around the Rickshaw Stop, the regular disco kids light up. Hugs and air kisses are exchanged; everyone poses, happily and extravagantly. The photos, tagged with a hot-pink stripe signed "Lady Meleksah," then pop up on the various outlets where she serves as contributor or founder: Blow Up’s official Web site, Jurgenson’s makeshift party-photo outlet friscodiscofever.blogspot.com, and electro-music blog Missingtoof.com, in addition to her personal MySpace and Flickr accounts.

But Jurgenson isn’t on the typical photographer career track. These days, young arts professionals are pushed to consolidate their work online, have extensive multimedia experience at their fingertips, and create profiles on sites such as LinkedIn to attract employers. So there’s something old school about what Jurgenson does: take photos, make friends, and get hired. The ease of social-networking sites comes along with random and uneven exposure, so she figures if you’re not being seen around town having a legitimately good time, then maybe you’re not the right person for the job.

In fact, Jurgenson, who only began shooting professionally two years ago, doesn’t even — gasp! — have an online portfolio. Despite this, she’s done some band shoots and magazine work. But her bread and butter is the nightclub scene. "I love the people, I love the music, I love the sex. I love the dancing. I love everything about it," she says. "Having the camera is almost secondary. I come home after these parties with bruises and beer spilled all over me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way." And the parties keep getting bigger: she shot the Winter Music Conference in Miami last month and will shoot at Coachella.

Perhaps one reason Jurgenson is so successful is that she has a slightly different take on club photography from the norm. For example, sites such as Los Angeles’s Cobra Snake or New York’s Last Night’s Party often court controversy for their photographers, who are criticized for taking advantage of the subjects’ inebriated states as much as for their photos. Visually, the images feature the short-range flash that briefly illuminates bleary-eyed faces and exposed bodies. Every so often, these bodies are shown lying next to a pool of their own vomit. But Jurgenson wants to capture people looking good and having a great time.

She also manages to get more intimate photos of people — and receives less criticism about her photos exploiting women — than most photographers (typically male) can get.

"I’m not an imposing guy shoving a camera in somebody’s face," she says. "I don’t think people are as threatened by me."

The people in her nightclub work appear as radiant as they must have felt at that very moment. Instead of featuring closed house parties and backstage antics with celebrities, her photos, laced with dazzling lights and brilliant colors, mostly take place on the open dance floor. Rather than exploiting blotto hipsters, Jurgenson shoots buoyant clubhoppers and exhibitionists unlikely to regret the posturing. "I don’t particularly like Cobra Snake or any of the other party photographers out there," she says. "I don’t want to capture pictures of a girl standing there making a silly face."

Jurgenson doesn’t bother photographing the aftereffects of the parties — the three-day hangover or the sore throat and lungs. Her work puts the most exuberant parts of the night on display — the parts that evoke carefree and careless times. It’s gloriously unapologetic and unabashedly playful. "Look, stop worrying about the ‘misspent youth,’" the faces seem to shout. "Just dance with us!"

"I think that’s what separates me from a lot of photographers," Jurgenson says. "I immerse myself in the festivities and shoot. To capture a party like I do, you have to be a part of it, not a photographer."

But when you’re a consummate hostess connecting and socializing with everyone around you, there’s no doubt that observing and participating in the environment changes it. But Jurgenson isn’t concerned with keeping photojournalistic distance. She likes to shake things up.

Other photographers are "sort of like birdwatchers," Jurgenson says. "But I’m on safari."

Tingly for techno: DEMF lineup announced

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First off: How old does it make me feel that some kid at UPenn is writing his dissertation on the techno parties I threw in Detroit in the early ’90s? *Ancient sigh*. Second off: the nine-year-old Detroit Electronic Music Festival, sometimes known as Movement for legal reasons but basically Mecca for tech-heads, has announced its initial lineup for May 24-26 (Memorial Day weekend). The big news is not that it’s sponsored by Big Boy this year (eek!) but that fest originator and knob-twiddling god Carl Craig is returning to perform. carl.jpg Carl Craig: BACK Carl bought my video camera in 1994 so I’d have money for Amtrak to move to SF (sweetheart!) so blame him for my presence here. Also performing will be a number of other wicked-wonderful characters from back-in-tha-D days, like my spiritual twin brother Alton Miller, who will be a highlite of the more complex, jazzy house side of the fest. altona.jpg Alton Miller: You should see him dance, really Other NAMES on the pretty soulful hitlist: Speedy J, Buzz Goree, Terrance Parker, Girl Talk, Moby, Mike Grant, Alex Under, Konrad Black, and for some hip-hop new old-schoolness Cool Kids. More lineup and info here. I’ll be there covering every backstage minute for SFBG. Put your hands up for Detroit. (That’s not me in the vid, it’s my cuz. I’m in no way responsible for his dancing or this entire music video.)

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