› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Halloween is the season for self-expression in all of its many glorious forms: costumes, music, dance, art, theater, and maybe even a few forms that can’t be classified. Whether you’re a trash-culture junkie or a splatter-movie freak, a pagan ritual follower or a brazen exhibitionist, you’ll definitely find something chilling, somewhere in the Bay Area. Here’s a sampling; for more Halloween and Día de los Muertos events, go to www.sfbg.com.
PARTIES AND BENEFITS
FRIDAY 27
The Enchanted Forest Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 10pm-2am. $5-10. Silly Cil presents the seventh annual Enchanted Forest costume ball; woodland nymphs and mythical creatures are welcome. DJs McD and Scotty Fox rock the forest with hip-hop and ’80s sounds.
Hyatt Regency/98.1 KISS FM Halloween Bash Hyatt Regency, 5 Embarcadero Center, SF; 788-1234. 8 pm. $28.50 advance ($30 door). KISS Radio’s Morris Knight MCs an evening of costumed revelry. DJ Michael Erickson brings the dance mix.
Rock ’n’ Roll Horror Show Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; 820-3907. 7:30pm. $5-10 donation. Rock out and scream loud for a good cause: proceeds go to the ninth SF Independent Film Festival. A screening of 1987 B-movie Street Trash is followed by the sounds of Sik Luv, Wire Graffiti, Charm School Drop Outs, and Madelia.
SambaDa: Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Exotic Halloween Extravaganza Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; 552-7788. 10pm. $8-10. Don’t feel like ghosts and goblins and blood and guts? How about samba and bossa nova grooves to keep your feet busy?
BAY AREA
Halloween Madness Speisekammer, 2424 Lincoln, Alameda; (510) 522-1300. 9pm. Free. Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch offer hard-drinking sailor songs. Come in costume and get a free rum drink, matey.
SATURDAY 28
Exotic Erotic Ball Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF; 567-2255, www.exoticeroticball.com. 8pm-2am. $69. P-Funker George Clinton, ’80s icon Thomas Dolby, and rapper Too Short are among the musical guests at this no-holds-barred celebration. Put on your sexiest, slinkiest number and admire the antics of trapeze artists, fetish performers, and burlesque show-stoppers, as well as those of the attendees.
SUNDAY 29
Fresh/Halloween T-Dance Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF; www.freshsf.com. 6pm-midnight. $20. Sassy, slinky, and sexy costumes abound at this Halloween dance party. DJ Manny Lehman spins.
MONDAY 30
Dead Rock Star Karaoke Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 8pm-2am. Free. Elvises, Jim Morrisons, and Kurt Cobains deliver heartrending renditions of favorite songs.
TUESDAY 31
A Nightmare on Fulton Street Poleng Lounge, 1751 Fulton, SF; www.polenglounge.com. 8pm-2am. $5-10. The third annual Holla-ween showcases a rich harvest of fat beats, thanks to the DJ skills of Boozou Bajou.
Scary Halloween Bash 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF; 970-9777. 8pm. $10. All dressed up but not feeling like heading to the Castro? Want to hear a marching band? No, wait, come back. It’s the Extra Action Marching Band, which specialize in baccanalian freak-shows. Sour Mash Jug Band and livehuman leave you grinning beneath that rubber mask.
FILM/MUSIC/THEATER/ART
WEDNESDAY 25
Art Hell ARTwork SF Gallery, 49 Geary, suite 215, SF; 673-3080. noon-5:30pm. Free. Bay Area artists render darkness, death, and all things devilishly creepy. Sale proceeds go to the San Francisco Artist Resource Center. Also open Thu/26-Sat/28, same hours.
THURSDAY 26
Babble on Halloween Dog Eared Books, 900 Valencia, SF; 282-1901. 8pm. Free. There’s nothing like shivers up the spine to go with cupcakes and wine! Bucky Sinister, Tony Vaguely, and Shawna Virago creep you out with spooky stories and bizarre performances.
A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco’s Lost Cemeteries California Historical Society Library, 678 Mission, SF; 357-1848. 6pm. Free. Trina Lopez’s documentary tells the story of how San Francisco relocated burial grounds in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire — ironically sending some of the city’s settlers on a last journey after death.
Shocktoberfest!! 2006: Laboratory of Hallucinations Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; 377-4202. 8pm. $20. The Thrillpeddlers are back with a gross-out lover’s delight: public execution, surgery, and taxidermy in three tales of unspeakable horror. Also Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm.
FRIDAY 27
BATS Improv/True Fiction Magazine’s Annual Halloween Show Bayfront Theater, 8350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. 8pm. $18 ($15 advance). Madcap improvisational comics of True Fiction Magazine transform audience suggestions into hilariously bizarre pulp fiction–inspired skits. In the spirit of the season, TFM is sure to throw ghoulish horror into the mix. Also Sat/28.
Hallowe’en at Tina’s Café Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; 581-1600. 9pm. Free. What’s Halloween in San Francisco without any drag? Before you consider the sad possibilities, let Tina’s Café banish those thoughts with a deliciously campy drag queen cabaret show. Mrs. Trauma Flintstone MCs.
Rural Rampage Double Feature Alliance Française de San Francisco, 1345 Bush, SF; www.ham-o-rama.com. 7:30pm. Free. Those midnight movie aficionados at Incredibly Strange Picture Show unreel a shriekingly tasty lineup from the “scary redneck” genre: Two Thousand Maniacs and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
SATURDAY 28
11th Annual Soapbox Pre-Race Party/Halloween Show El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; 282-3325. 9pm. $7. What better way is there to get revved up for the Oct. 29 Soapbox Derby in Bernal Heights? With a full evening of good ’n’ greasy garage rock and rockabilly, thanks to the All Time Highs, Teenage Harlets, and the Phenomenauts, this party gets you in touch with your inner speed demon.
Pirate Cat Radio Halloween Bash Li Po Cocktail Lounge, 916 Grant, SF; www.piratecatradio.com. 8pm. $5. The community radio station presents an evening of crazy rock mayhem with Desperation Squad, the band now famous for getting shot down on TV’s America’s Got Talent! Wealthy Whore Entertainment, the Skoalkans, and Pillows also perform.
Shadow Circus Vaudeville Theatre Kimo’s, 1351 Polk, SF; p2.hostingprod.com/@shadowcircus.com. 9pm. $5. Shadow Circus Creature Theatre hosts a variety show of ukulele riffs, comedy, burlesque, and filthy-mouthed puppets.
Spiral Dance Kezar Pavilion, Golden Gate Park, 755 Stanyan, SF; www.reclaiming.org. 6pm. Free. Reclaiming, an international group observing pagan traditions, celebrates its 27th annual Spiral Dance with a magical ritual incorporating installations, drama, and a choral performance.
BAY AREA
Flamenco Halloween La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, ext. 20. 8:30pm. $15. Flametal brings the evil to flamenco with mastermind Benjamin Woods’s fusion of metal and the saddest music in the world.
Murder Ballads Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 841-0188. 9pm. $8. Murder, misfortune, and love gone really, really wrong — all sung by an impressive array of garage rockers, accordionists, and female folk-metal songstresses. There’s even a duo who specializes in suicide songs! Dress up so no one can recognize you weeping into your beer.
SUNDAY 29
The Elm Street Murders Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF; www.myspace.com/theelmstmurders. 7:30pm. $20. Loosely based on A Nightmare on Elm Street, this multimedia interactive stage show promises heaping helpings of splatter.
MONDAY 30
The Creature Magic Theatre, building D, Fort Mason Center, SF; 731-4922. 8pm. Free. Reservations required. Black Box Theatre Company gives a single performance before a studio audience of their new podcast adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankensten. This version tells the story from the monster’s point of view.
Independent Exposure 2006: Halloweird Edition 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; 447-9750. 8pm. $6. Microcinema International assembles a festively creepy collection of short films from around the world, focusing on the spooky, unsettling, and just plain gross.
TUESDAY 31
Bat Boy: The Musical School of the Arts Theater, 555 Portola, SF; 651-4521. 7pm. $20. It’s back: a Halloween preview performance of the trials and tribulations of everyone’s favorite National Enquirer icon, Bat Boy. Camp doesn’t get any better than this.
Cramps Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF; 346-6000. 8pm. $30. Don’t get caught in the goo-goo muck. The Demolition Doll Rods and the Groovie Ghoulies also whip you up into a rock ’n’ roll frenzy.
One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil) San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut, SF; 771-7020. 7:30pm. Free. Before the Rolling Stones became some of the richest people on earth, Mick, Keith, and the boys dabbled on the dark side. At a rare screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One, you get a chance to see them at the height of their flirtation with evil, performing the still-mesmerizing “Sympathy for the Devil.”
EVENTS/FESTIVALS/KID STUFF
FRIDAY 27
Haunted Haight Walking Tour Begins at Coffee to the People, 1206 Masonic, SF; 863-1416. 7pm. $20. How else can you explain all of those supernatural presences drifting between the smoke shops and shoe stores? Here’s a chance to find out about the more lurid chapters in the neighborhood’s history. Also Sat/28-Tues/31, 7pm.
SATURDAY 28
Boo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo, SF; 753-7071. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Costumed kiddies can check out the Haunted Nature Trail and the Creepy Crawly Critters exhibit. Live music, interactive booths, games, and prizes keep little ghosts and goblins delighted.
Children’s Halloween Hootenanny Stanyan and Waller, SF; www.haightstreetfair.org. 11:30am-5pm. Free. The Haight Ashbury Street Fair folks provide children ages 2 to 10 with games, activities, theater, and food. Costumes are encouraged.
Family Halloween Day Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9600. 10am-2pm. Free. Trick-or-treaters play games, carve pumpkins, create creepy crafts, and take part in the costume parade. Jackie Jones amazes with a musical saw and dancing cat; Brian Scott, a magic show.
Hallo-green Party Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm. $8. It’s never too early to teach your children about environmentalism. The party includes a costume contest and a chance to bob for organic apples.
House of Toxic Horrors Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm and 4-8pm, $8. Ages 9 and older. No, it’s not a Superfund site, but it should be equally educational: the center’s first haunted house addresses the scary world of environmental horror. Sludge and smog lurk behind every corner.
BAY AREA
Boo at the Zoo Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links, Oakl; (510) 632-9525. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Dress up the kids and bring them over to the zoo for scavenger hunts, crafts, rides on the Boo Choo Choo Train, puppet shows, and musical performances. Also Sun/29, 10am-3pm.
SUNDAY 29
Halloween’s True Meaning Shotwell Studios, 3252-A 19th St., SF; 289-2000. 1-3pm, $5-15 sliding scale. Kids are encouraged to come in costume for this afternoon of interactive theater led by Christina Lewis of the Clown School. Enjoy Halloween history, storytelling, role-playing, and face-painting.
Pet Pride Day Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; 554-9427. 11am-3pm. Free. Dress up your pet in something ridiculous and head down to Golden Gate Park to laugh at all of the other displeased pups! The pet costume contest is always a blast, as is the dog-trick competition.
BAY AREA
Haunted Harbor Festival and Parade Jack London Square, Oakl; 1-866-295-9853. 4-8pm. Free. Families can check out live entertainment, games, crafts, activities, and prizes. The extravagantly decked-out boats in the parade are not to be missed.
Rock Paper Scissors’ Annual Street Scare Block Party 23rd Ave. and Telegraph, Oakl; www.rpscollective.com. Noon-5pm. Free. Who doesn’t love block parties? The kid-friendly blowout has something for everyone: fortune-telling, craft-making, pumpkin-carving, and all sorts of wacky games and prizes. And barbecue — witches love a good barbecue.
MONDAY 30
Halloween Heroes Benefit Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon, SF; (650) 321-4142, www.wenderweis.org. 6:30pm. $185 for a parent and child. A benefit for the Exploratorium Children’s Educational Outreach Program and the Junior Giants Baseball Program, this lavish costume party for kids promises to be equally fun for the parents. Many of the exhibits are turned into craft-making and trick-or-treat stations.
TUESDAY 31
Halloween in the Castro Market and Castro, www.halloweeninthecastro.com. 7pm-midnight. $5 suggested donation. You and 250,000 of your new best friends — reveling in the streets and getting down to thumping beats. Don’t even think of driving to get there, and don’t forget: no drinking in the streets.
Vampire Tour of San Francisco Begins at California and Taylor, SF; (650) 279-1840, www.sfvampiretour.com. 8pm. $20. This isn’t Transylvania, but San Francisco has had its share of vampires. Just ask Mina Harker, your fearless leader, if you dare take this tour.
DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS
ONGOING
BAY AREA
‘Laughing Bones/ Weeping Hearts’ Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm. $8. Guest curator Carol Marie Garcia has assembled a vibrant collection of installations produced by local artists, schools, and community groups, all celebrating the dead while acknowledging the sorrow of those left behind. Through Dec. 3.
THURSDAY NOV. 2
Death and Rebirth Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, 2981 24th St, SF; 334-4091. 7-10pm. Free. Precita Eyes Muralists will be celebrating the work of founder Luis Cervantes with a breathtaking mural exhibit and celebration.
Día De Los Muertos Procession and Outdoor Altar Exhibit 24th St and Bryant, SF; www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7pm. Free. Thousands of families, artists, and activists form a procession to honor the dead and celebrate life, ending at the Festival of Altars in Garfield Park, at 26th Street and Harrison. Local artists have created large community altars at the park; the public is invited to bring candles, flowers, and offerings.
Fiesta De Los Huesos’ Gala Opening Reception Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 6-11pm. $5. Curator Patricia Rodriguez has put together a family-oriented party, with musical performances, mask carving, sugar skull–making, videos, and other tempting creations among the exhibits, altars, and installations. The exhibition opens Oct. 27.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Benefit Concert 2232 MLK, 2232 Martin Luther King Jr., Oakl; www.2232mlk.com. 7pm. $8-20 sliding scale. Hosted by the Chiapas Support Committee, this benefit concert features Fuga, los Nadies, la Plebe, and DJ Rico. Early arrivals get free pan dulce and hot chocolate.
SUNDAY NOV. 5
Dia De Los Muertos Family Festival Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9681. 1-5pm. $100 and up for family of five. The family event benefits the museum’s Toddler Treehouse and other toddler programs. Arts and crafts, food, and entertainment make this a rewarding educational experience for kids. Attendees learn how to make masks and sugar skulls and to decorate an altar. Los Boleros provide festive entertainment.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Fruitvale Festival International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave and 41st Ave, Oakl; (510) 535-6940. 10am-5pm. Free. With the theme “love, family, memories,” the Unity Council in Oakland has put together a full day of family celebration. Five stages showcase music and dance performances by local and world-renowned artists. More than 150 exhibitors and nonprofits highlight wares and services. Art and altars are on view, and the Children’s Pavilion promises to be a rewarding educational experience for kids of all ages.
THURSDAY NOV. 9
Mole to Die For Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 7-10pm. $5. Try it all at this mole feeding-frenzy and vote for your favorite.
Dance
SPECIAL: Scary monsters and supercreeps
SUNDAY
Oct. 22
Visual art
“Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle”
It’s been almost 50 years since Wallace Berman withdrew his art from public spaces after facing obscenity charges for a show he put together in Los Angeles. The traveling exhibition “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle” brings the late Berman’s creativity and that of his many associates – including Jack Smith – into a museum space. Every one of the dozens of varied contributors to Berman’s journal Semina opens up a fascinating universe. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Opens Wed/18, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. (through Dec. 10)
Berkeley Art Museum
2625 Durant, Berk.
$5-$8 (free for children and UC Berkeley students)
(510) 642-1295
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
Dance
Imagenes Flamencas
When it comes to flamenco, Yaelisa more than knows how to bring the drama and the beauty – she’s been dancing onstage since she was four, and for the past decade she’s been bringing the best of her chosen form to the Bay Area through classes and performances. Fresh from a recent collaboration with Savion Glover, she’s reuniting with a number of artists from Spain for Imagenes Flamencas, the latest show by her company, Caminos Flamencos. The show draws inspiration from the flamenco pictorials of painter Roberto Zamora. (Johnny Ray Huston)
3 p.m.
Cowell Theater
Fort Mason Center
Marina at Buchanan, SF
(415) 345-7575
www.caminosflamencos.com
SATURDAY
Oct. 21
Dance
Daughters of Haumea
The latest show by Nā Lei Hulu i Ka Wēkiu doesn’t just promise to be another terrific piece of choreography by 2002 Goldie winner Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne – it’s also a work of scholarship. In Daughters of Haumea, Makuakāne draws from a recent book that rescues two lost centuries of indigenous Hawaiian women’s history. Using both hula kahiko and Makakuāne’s modern hula mua, Nā Lei Hulu move beyond the typical focus on Pele to bring oracles, fisherwomen, and dragon totems to the fore. (Johnny Ray Huston)
8 p.m. (also Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. Through Oct. 29)
Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
3301 Lyon, SF
$30-$35
(415) 392-4400
www.naleihulu.org
Performance
Going Through Kathy Acker’s Stuff and October Country
Given to willfully crude rewrites of works like Great Expectations, the late Kathy Acker knew a thing or 300 about going through other people’s stuff. If anyone in the Bay Area is qualified to go through Acker’s stuff, it’s Dodie Bellamy, whose novel The Letters of Mina Harker takes Acker-like cannibalistic writing practices and runs with them in new directions. Bellamy rummages through some of Acker’s belongings in a new performance-lecture; she’s joined by Donal Mosher, whose October Country is a photographic exploration of his family’s haunted fall traditions. (Johnny Ray Huston)
7 p.m.
SF Camerawork
657 Mission, second floor, SF
$2-$5
(415) 512-2020
www.sfcamerawork.org
Economy class
› superego@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO “Please pass the grilled Moroccan spice-rubbed lamb loin,” I dewily asked the cute investment banker from Philadelphia on my left.
Me and Hunky Beau were seated under the Saturday stars at Escondida, a “hidden kitchen” — a.k.a. renegade restaurant in someone’s home or backyard — deep in the Outer Mission, at a table that also included four hip lady lawyers and a postgrad neurobiologist from UCSF who makes headphones for birds. (Don’t ask. Well, OK — first you implant screws in the skulls of small finches, and then you jury-rig a sort of “fly-pod” out of two Q-tips and an old transistor in order to test their hearing skills. Someday, I swear, those poor, deaf birds will have revenge on us all.)
Hidden kitchens are big these days, especially since the permit processes for restaurants and clubs seem to be getting more complex by the minute, and most of the time the underground menus are cheaper than the real thing: you get multicourse gourmet eats plus drinks in a lively underground setting for the price of appetizers at Andalu. And there’s a naughty inspectors-be-damned thrill to boot. (It’s all very hush-hush, but you can usually find hints about upcoming covert cucina events on chowhound.com or Craigslist — just don’t sue me if you get botulism. I got nothin’ for ya.)
The food and company were delish. But me? I was more interested in shoving as much entrée as I could into my faux-leopard baguette handbag — the Hunkster and I were due on a plane to Honolulu in a few hours to attend the biggest gay wedding of the year in Waikiki. And a girl can’t survive a five-hour ride on $4 minicans of Pringles alone. It was bad enough I had to pack my in-flight Stoli in three-ounce saline solution bottles just to get past the damn check-in.
Waikiki? Why not, I say. But first, a real drink to get the whole aloha ball rolling. So we hit up Jet, the new Greg Bronstein joint in the Castro where the Detour used to be, and ordered us up some primo alco-Dramamine. Although I partially miss the hurricane-fence decor and tragic queen atmosphere of the Detour, Jet’s awfully cute, with black padded leather walls, Broadway marquee lighting, and a fuzzy pink double bed in an alcove in the back. There’s also a small dance floor, rare these days in the Castro without a giant video screen playing Kylie Minogue. The club, in all its luxuriant gay sleaziness, is either a pint-size Studio 54 or Liza Minnelli’s future mausoleum. Probably both. Right now, the music is all hip-hop lite — pretensions to be the next Pendulum? — and there’s a velvet rope on weekends — as if! — but something could definitely be done with the place.
Lemme tell you though, Honolulu in October is fabu. The mangoes are huge, the agua is aqua, the gay scene is horrid — new club coming in November: Circuit Hawaii! — and the 14-year-old tranny hookers in six-inch clear plastic heels are gorgeous. Plus there’s, like, five military bases nearby, for those into raping drunk Marines. And who isn’t? Me and Hunky were hopping around like we had humuhumunukunukuapuaas in our Volcoms.
My dearest amigos from the old EndUp days, ChrisP and Armando, got betrothed right on the water in a tear-jerking all-hula celebration bursting with orchids and sunlight. There weren’t any conch shell blasts or caged white doves (or earthquakes), but the grooms were rowed into the friends-and-family ceremony on an outrigger by four hot muscle dykes in sports bras — an ancient tradition, I’m told. It was the second amazing gay wedding I’d been to this year, and although I used to rail against such things politically — why be normal? — I cried like Tonya Harding at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Love is real. And so was the open bar, which me and my sadly, gloriously bare ring finger quickly sidled up to for a post–gay marriage mai tai, studiously avoiding the moony-eyed intimations Hunky Beau was sending my way. I’m not quite done playing hard to get yet. Or am I? Aloha! SFBG
JET
2348 Market, SF
8 p.m.–2 a.m.
www.jetsf.com
SUNDAY
Dance
Savage Jazz Dance Company
Do you know what jazz dance is? For Reginald Ray Savage, who took it upon himself to let the Bay Area see what he considers jazz dance when he founded his Savage Jazz Dance Company 14 years ago, the definition is simple: jazz dance is what gets performed to jazz music. His musical taste is immaculate and never better than in the current premiere: Everything’s Everything is all based on Miles Davis. (Rita Felciano)
3 p.m.
ODC Theater
3153 17th St., SF
$15–$25.
(415) 863-9834
www.odctheater.org
Also Oct. 19–21, 8 p.m.; Oct. 22, 3 p.m.
Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts
1428 Alice, Oakl.
$14–$19
1-866-558-4253, (415) 256-8499
Music
Vagabond Opera
Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, there run two rivers, one of vodka and one of absinthe. Not found on any maps, they are known only to five men and one woman. The name of these musicians? Vagabond Opera. Fusing klezmer with sounds of the Balkans and the Rom, along with a peppering of belly dance, opera, and tango, these neo-cabaret fire starters roll out a rabble-rousing vision of globalization, 1920s-style. With the “Bay Area’s Premier Balkan Brass Band,” Brass Menazeri. (Todd Lavoie)
9 p.m.
Amnesia
853 Valencia
$7
(415) 970-0012
www.amnesiathebar.com
www.vagabondopera.com
In bed with the Long Winters
It’s become popular to characterize the Long Winters’ John Roderick as an intellectual ronin of sorts: a librarian without master who travels the countryside lending his songs and wisdom to brainy 826 benefits. Others reject this stuffy veneer outright, preferring to embrace him as a lovable vaudevillian rogue of the “song, dance, seltzer down the pants” variety.
Still, Roderick is well aware of his reputation as a mysterious dude, explaining, “It’s never been clear, even to the people close to me, whether or not I might actually be an emotionally abusive, exploitative, drunken rapist posing as a sensitive singer-songwriter, and that’s an ambiguity that I cultivate.”
His band, the Long Winters, are back with their third album, Putting the Days to Bed (Barsuk), a sonic patchwork of lust, architecture, rock ’n’ roll love children, and memories of lovers past that defy destruction. Maybe. Roderick writes to ensure that his lyrics don’t bind the listener with logistical detail, preferring to provide softly focused emotional Polaroid photos. “What I’m shooting for is that the listener be able to recall their own stories — when they felt the same way,” he says. With mentions of everything from teaspoons to retired Air Force pilots, however, come fans usually seeking interpretational guidance. Why not indulge listeners with answers? “No one really wants me out in the parking lot after a show explaining my lyrics” he deadpans. “Even if a few people might think they do.”
The crazy thing is, it actually works. On “Teaspoon,” rituals of courtship, “the way that she smiles me down,” careen past as a horn section trumpets the start of a new relationship. Even if the lady in question “claims to be clowning,” the mood is clear, the butterflies in the stomach already swirling. Putting the Days to Bed’s best moment is the wistfully gorgeous “Seven,” a song that lies on its back in tall grass, staring at the sky and hoping against hope to see a lost lover’s face in the clouds. “Would you say that I/ Was the last thing you want to remember me by?” Roderick wonders aloud.
It’s this kind of masterfully eloquent longing that has built the Long Winters no small amount of indie fame. Yet while appreciative of the kudos, Roderick quickly reduces them to a digestible perspective: “I think the Long Winters fall somewhere between it being OK for us to sample some crackers from the deli tray of the Wrens without getting our hands slapped but not so far as to get drunk and spill guacamole on Sufjan Stevens’s pants.” (Kate Izquierdo)
More of Kate Izquierdo’s interview with Long Winters’ John Roderick.
LONG WINTERS
With What Made Milwaukee Famous and the Vasco Era
Fri/13, 9 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
Deconstructing Destruction
“The shattering of paradise” is how Kali Yuga director Ellen Sebastian Chang refers to the 2002 bombing in Bali in which 202 people from 22 nations died. A series of attacks in 2005 killed 23 more. A world indeed had crashed, not only for the Balinese people but for the music and dance lovers who have made pilgrimages to that magical isle where art is integrated into the texture of daily life.
Gamelan Sekar Jaya was particularly hard-hit. With both Balinese and American members, the El Cerrito–based music and dance group has had an ongoing, close relationship with Balinese culture. In 2000, during its last tour, the group received a Dharma Kusuma award, Indonesia’s highest artistic recognition, never before given to a foreign company. So Gamelan Sekar Jaya wanted to address the tragedy in artistic terms. Its members also realized, says company director Wayne Vitale, that “what happened in Bali is a worldwide problem.”
The result is Kali Yuga, directed by Sebastian Chang and choreographed by I Wayan Dibia, with music composed by Vitale and Made Arnawa. Two years in the making, the work will receive its world premiere Oct. 14 at Zellerbach Hall. “We want this to be a gift to the Balinese people,” Vitale explains.
Working closely with poet-journalist Goenawan Mohamad, a vocal critic of the Indonesian government, the collaborators found the seed for the 70-minute piece in the Mahabharata: during the Kali Yuga — the age of chaos and destruction — a prince, challenged by his brother, gambles away everything he owns, including his wife. From this story of male testosterone and female humiliation arises a contemporary parable about the gambling we do with Mother Earth.
At a recent rehearsal in a warehouse in West Oakland, one could sense a little of Bali’s community-minded spirit. Kids roamed freely around the periphery of the performance space. One of the dancers had a baby slung over her shoulder; another would periodically step out to gently redirect the energy of a particularly rambunctious little boy. For a sectional rehearsal, Sebastian Chang knelt on the floor, coaxing the required laughs and stories from two six-year-old girls. Minutes earlier, they had exuberantly twirled all over the place; now they focused diligently on the task at hand.
The team has conceived Kali Yuga as a conflict between two parallel universes, one visible, the other not. Even in the piece’s unfinished state, it appeared that the dancers were keeping to the parameters of Balinese drama. The villain — who in the original tale humiliates the woman by attempting to strip her naked — is wonderfully raucous; the heroine is soft and pliant.
However, even traditional forms allow for innovation, as Sebastian Chang knows from experience. A writer as well as a director, she has worked within many genres and often with young people, hip-hop artists and the poets of Youth Speaks among them. In conceiving Kali Yuga, she wondered about the people in that Balinese nightclub. They must have been young. But who were they? What kind of music did they listen to on that fateful night? What were the dance moves that those bombs cut off so fatally?
Rhythmic sophistication, she also knows, is not unique to gamelan music. Rashidi Omari-Byrd is an Oakland-based rap artist and hip-hop dancer with whom Sebastian Chang has worked in the past. He had never heard gamelan music. Nor was he was familiar with Kecak, the percussive chanting originally performed by Balinese male ensembles. But the match was perfect. In Kali Yuga, Omari-Byrd — a tall, lanky performer who towers over everyone in the show — raps Mohamad’s poetry and break-dances to the musicians’ snapping heads and chack-chacking chant. (Rita Felciano)
KALI YUGA
Sat/14, 8 p.m.
Zellerbach Hall
Lower Sproul (near Bancroft and Telegraph), UC Berkeley, Berk.
$20–$32
(510) 642-9988
www.calperfs.berkeley.edu
Restoration Hardcore
Davis might not have those frog signs along the westbound side of Highway 80 anymore — “Live in Davis because it’s green, safe, and nuclear free…. It’s academic!” — but there’s certainly no shortage of wondrous music happening there.
Exhibit A: KDVS — the UC Davis radio station, a longtime champion of alternative music and the only entirely student-run station in the UC system — is about to put on the fourth edition of “Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom,” a twice-a-year one-day music festival, the likes of which have seldom been undertaken by Northern California college radio stations.
Unlike other music festivals hawking themselves as “alternative,” O:RMF is the real thing, presenting strictly music of the compellingly weird variety without sponsored stages and pricey merch tables — by sheer dint of student-volunteer willpower. “It’s a good time out in the sunshine,” said Erik Magnuson, who DJs at KDVS in addition to holding down the station’s assistant programming directorship. “We’re able to get great acts without having to worry about advertising to offset costs.”
The festival isn’t a station fundraiser — all profits go toward future incarnations of the event — but is instead an earnest offering of experimental sounds chosen democratically in committee by station volunteers. Those volunteers run O:RMF at Woodland watering hole Plainfield Station, which KDVS events coordinator and O:RMF organizer Brendan Boyle described as a “biker bar with a quasi-Libertarian vibe.” O:RMF itself fully “represents the radio station,” Boyle continued. “We’re free-form, which is a real anomaly, and it’s a reaction to our current political climate.” Hence the military-operation-inspired name.
The first, all-ages O:RMF in May 2005 was headlined by elastic noise psychos Sightings and Elephant 6 pop oddities a Hawk and a Hacksaw, and the subsequent fests have featured bands like the increasingly relevant, drift-ambience peddlers Growing and the splendidly hard-angled post-punkers Erase Errata. In each case, KDVS has looped in some of the most keenly unconventional artists around, and the upcoming festival looks the best yet.
This time it’s drawn 17 artists of various marginal modes, all of great repute in their respective scenes: longtime glitch-head Kid606 started the Tigerbeat6 label, and quirk-folk guitarist Michael Hurley was a luminary in Greenwich Village’s 1960s folk scene. Hop around to the dance punk of Numbers and the disorienting, psychedelic hip-hop of Third Sight. The garage-punk component is damned impressive by itself: the Lamps, one of Los Angeles’s finest and an In the Red mainstay, will crack their bass-heavy fuzz whip along with Th’ Losin Streaks, whose famously fun live show begets a cleaner, more Nuggets-like, ’60s garage vibe.
Suffice to say that few stations have the guts and the cavalier student base to put on an event like this, especially one that’s plainly not out to make money. As Boyle puts it, “it’s a very real event with no bullshit attached,” and with any luck, attendees will get as stoked on smashing music industry conventions as KDVS is. (Michael Harkin)
OPERATION: RESTORE MAXIMUM FREEDOM IV
Sat/7, noon–midnight
Plainfield Station
23944 County Road 98, Woodland
$15, $10 advance; all ages
For tickets and the complete lineup, go to www.myspace.com/maximumfreedom
Roughin’ Justin
› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Don’t be tripping, sit your sexy back down slowly, and I’ll try to break the news to you gently: Justin Timberlake and I have a history.
OK, it’s not like we sat around in Pampers and OshKosh B’Gosh, playing gastroenterologist with Barbie and GI Joe and gurgling along to “White Lines.” Though I am getting a dose of feverish white-line nostalgia listening to coke-daddy ode “Losing My Way” off dusty Justy’s new Jive album, Speakerboxxx … whoops, I mean FutureSex/LoveSounds. And it’s not as if we met on The Mickey Mouse Club, brawling over mouse ears and bawling about diaper rash and paltry camera time. We don’t go that way back.
But Kimberly discovered Timberly long before a certain sheepish someone made contact with that Jackson scion’s nipple ornament. I first saw el Cueball, as I so lovingly dubbed my mousy darling’s shaved pate, fronting *NSYNC at the Santa Clara County Fair around ’98. You know, back when the strings were still apparent. I was there with a few other geezer peers, measuring the hype on the opening local Filipino American vocal group, when the budding boy banders entered prancing and the 14-year-old girls went positively cuckoo, clutching photos and near weeping with longing as Timberlake and company worked the whistled theme to Welcome Back, Kotter into the encore.
Then I met up with Timby again at the Oakland Arena when the “Justified and Stripped” tour broke away from the rest of the bubblegum boys and strapped on Christina Aguilera. Whatever you think of Aguilera’s dirty-girl front, she certainly displayed pipes and pride live, strutting around like Femlin in a black corset and short pants and belting out “Beautiful.” But that was forgotten when Timberhunk emerged — thin voice or no, the little girls were still going utterly nutzoid. They screamed, freaked, and gaped like ravenous baby birds beneath the catwalk he beatboxed upon. That’s the power of cute, man.
But Just-oh doesn’t want to be just cute anymore, as the cover of FutureSex attests: suited up in a skinny black suit like a baby Reservoir Dog, little buckeroo looks outright pissed, crushing a disco ball beneath his heel. If Justified hasn’t made it perfectly clear, Timberlake wants to be considered a force — artistic, tough-guy, whatev — to be reckoned with. Pity the poor pop-pets — Madonna, Britney, Justy — they all have such an ambivalent relationship with le fickle dance floor. FutureSex reeks of such ambition — as the swinging singles prince offers up a kind of archaic devotion to the album format and a familiar if downbeat trajectory tracing a loverboy’s woozy weave from lust to lovesickness. Witness the first half of the full-length: “FutureSex/LoveSound,” “Sexyback,” “Sexy Ladies.” Either someone’s out of synonyms for doing the doity or someone’s ob-sexed.
Musically kitted out by Timbaland in the Neptunes’ absence, FutureSex is clearly intended to be a kind of Prince-ly, sensual opus, and for having the good taste to imitate the most original funk rock stylists of the ’80s, Timba-lake should be commended. But all the CD images of Timbo smashing disco balls seem out of character, overwrought. To wax crassly, Justin tries to show us he has the balls to both musically embrace Grandmaster Flash, Queen, Lil Jon, and yes, the alpha and omega, libertine and spendthrift couple of ’80s soul, Prince and Michael Jackson, and strike out on his own. Just ignore the slimness of Timberlake’s vanilla soul. It’s barely flavored, not quite iced, with techno, barebacked beats, and retro soul, and despite the disc’s initially fluid, almost mirror-ball-like reflective programming, it opens into a dull middle section that’s broken up only by the frisky groove of “Damn Girl.” It makes you wish Timberlake had the courage of his initial fantasy-fueled single’s conviction. If only this disco baller had left it at FutureSex and Timberlake stuck to his, er, cheesy pistols and the Prince of schwing’s original program.
CALIFONE DREAMING Califone’s Tim Rutili can probably understand the urge to try out new personae. While talking about his new, gorgeous album, Roots and Crowns (Thrill Jockey), the frontperson and soundtrack composer fessed up to believing in past lives — and indeed relying on that knowledge when it came to penning tunes about kittens that see ghosts, lost eyes, and black metal fornication. “The writing process is all about that — just letting things bubble up,” he says from Chicago, where the band is rehearsing. And what does he imagine the members of Califone were in a past life? “Circus clowns.”
The ex–Red Red Meat member doesn’t seem to spook easily. Case in point: the last time Califone played San Francisco, their van was broken into. Treasured gear such as Rutili’s grandfather’s 1917 violin and a custom-made acoustic guitar, which he says was “nicer than my house,” were stolen. “They were nice enough to leave stuff that looked shitty,” he waxes positively. “It was heartbreaking, but in the end it forced us to learn a lot of new tricks, open up our ideas, and gather new things. It really did inform the recording to not have to lean on any of the old stuff.”
The scattered Califone seems to be working out the kinks in its evolution, with Rutili in Los Angeles writing music for film and the rest of the band in Chicago and Valparaiso, Ind. “I see us getting older and becoming more creative,” Rutili muses. And most people just get older and watch more TV. “That doesn’t seem to be happening with us, but it makes it more difficult too. TV is easy — keeping your eyes open and your ear to the ground and trying to remain connected and in touch with creativity is difficult.” SFBG
CALIFONE
With Oakley Hall and D.W. Holiday
Tues/10, 9 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
SATURDAY
Oct. 7
Visual Art
ArtSpan Open Studios
Art, it’s often argued, is in the eye of the beholder. During ArtSpan’s 31st Open Studios, you’ll have the opportunity to behold a lot of it as more than 700 working artists open their studios to the public over the course of four weekends. Art aficionados like the Open Studios event as a time to spot emerging trends; artists like it for the chance to display and sell their backlog; plebs such as myself enjoy the accompanying Havarti cubes and two-buck chuck. There will also be a number of events held at SomArts, including a free opening reception on Fri/6 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., plus an exhibition of over 400 pieces. (Nicole Gluckstern)
Through Oct. 29
Times and locations vary
(415) 861-9838
www.artspan.org
Dance
Smuin Ballet
You can pick any of three reasons to see Smuin Ballet this month. Reason one: the dancers. Each of the 15 is a strong, well-trained, uniquely talented individual – including the three new ones. Reason two: the rep. It’s a pungent mix of the new and the old. Top billing has to go to the world premiere of Amy Seiwert’s Revealing the Bridge, based on Claude Monet’s painting The Japanese Bridge. Michael Smuin’s new Obrigado, Brazil, set to João Gilberto’s music, probably will rouse the bossa to the point where you wish you could join the dancers. Smuin is also bringing back Shinju, which will be performed to Paul Chihara’s magical score. This piece just might be the most erotic you’ll ever see in ballet form. Reason three: the Palace of Fine Arts. With good sight lines and a relaxed setting, it’s the perfect theater for a company of this size. (Rita Felciano)
Through Oct 15. Opens Sat/7, 8 p.m. Runs Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m. (also Sat., 2 p.m., except Sat/7); Oct 15, 2 p.m.
Palace of Fine Arts
Bay and Lyon, SF
$40-$55
(415) 978-2787
www.smuinballetorg
Boys? What boys?
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
I meet bandleader, videographer, and Mission District indie icon Leslie Satterfield at Ritual café on a summer evening as she walks up Valencia Street looking weather-beaten and weary from her recent travels. Is she just back from a cross-country tour, I wonder? No, she was precisely where you’d expect the guitarist from Boyskout to have been: camping. She survived days of deer watching and near–bear sightings in the Sierras, and despite her desire for a hot shower and warm bed, Satterfield settles in with a cappuccino and some good stories.
Satterfield may be best known for her post-punk quartet Boyskout, a band that’s risen the ranks since its inception in 2001 to tour around the United States and Germany and headline major local venues including Mezzanine and Bimbo’s 365 Club. But the sandy-blond, late-20s songwriter has been also turning heads of late with her filmmaking.
Her video for Film School’s song “11:11” — a minimalist travelogue set in San Francisco streets and tunnels — is the latest work for her own Sharkbone Productions, which has also produced Boyskout videos shown internationally at major gay and lesbian film festivals. Her latest projects include a video for Rough Trade UK–signed act Scissors for Lefty and a self-produced experimental film that she describes as “being about love and creating what you believe.”
“Most of my films have been about how we create our own realities with our mind and how powerful the mind itself is — how your thoughts create everything that happens to you,” Satterfield says.
With her Mission artist garb — black boots and worn dark denim — I figure Satterfield had a youth spent in mosh pits and zine-collective punk hangouts. On the contrary, she grew up listening to the Beatles, Olivia Newton-John, and Simon and Garfunkel, while spending a lot of time drawing. She earned a BA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and resided in Amsterdam for a year before moving west. Now in addition to classics from Elton John and Heart, her iPod holds songs by Coco Rosie, the Libertines, and Tapes ’n Tapes. It’s an eclectic collection of music, similar to the local bands she holds dear and performs with regularly. The list includes up-and-coming acts like the Fucking Ocean, Tartufi, Full Moon Partisans, Death of a Party, and the Mall, as well as Shande — the group fronted by her sometime–guest guitarist Jennifer Chochinov.
Admittedly a shy, coy romantic who’s just completed an all-acoustic album, Mixing Memory with Desire (Dial), as J-Mod, Satterfield was initially a reluctant lead vocalist. You wouldn’t know it from Boyskout’s recent rock-out performances: Satterfield’s steely, saucerwide blue eyes zap the audience playfully while she mixes it up with her bandmates onstage. Along with bassist Piper Lewine, keys and violin player Christina Stanley, and drummer Ping (and occasionally adding guest guitarists like Chochinov or Daniel Dietrick to the lineup), Satterfield slayed audiences at South By Southwest this year in Austin and returned immediately to begin recording Boyskout’s now completed second album, Another Life (Three Ring). At the time we speak, eight of the planned 11 songs are done but won’t be out, well, until they’re done. “I’m a huge perfectionist,” Satterfield confesses. “The biggest in the world. I really like to take my time and do things to a tee.”
The songs I’ve heard from the project, including the Nocturne-era-Siouxsie-sounding “Spotlight” and the jittery dance-rock slab of “Lobby Boys,” are as refreshing as local underground music can get (word to Live 105). Meanwhile, Satterfield’s singing on the J-Mod disc (fantastically recorded at Hyde Street Studios) resembles Nico or Hope Sandoval in their darkest, most mysterious moments. Each album serves as an introduction to Satterfield’s thoughtful and dissonant guitar playing, a style that compliments her alabaster-smooth voice. Based on her range of projects and contacts, I get the impression that Satterfield has some big opportunities on the horizon.
Other recent adventures include a trip to Portland to teach at the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. “I taught last year in New York, and it was really fun. I worked with a group of 8-year-olds who formed their own band called Pink Slip.” Which reminds me, I never did get to ask Satterfield what her day job is. For now I’ll just assume it’s the professional term for “brilliant multidisciplinary artist.” SFBG
BOYSKOUT
With the Mall and the Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower
Oct. 5, 9:30 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.boyskout.com
SATURDAY
Sept. 30
Film/Event
Film in the Fog: Them!
What sounds like a broken air conditioner, looks like a ghetto-rigged muppet, and will kill its own mother for a small taste of sugar? A big fly? A bear? Nope. I’m talking about the horde of giant motherfucking ants from the 1954 horror classic Them! Gordon Douglas’s quintessential nuclear monster movie opens with a young autistic girl wandering through the desert and ends with the bombing of a group of ants who have somehow taken over a military battleship. In between these two moments lie multiple flame-throwing sessions, a small dose of sexual tension, and a 15-minute documentary about the inherent evilness of the species Formicidae. (Justin Juul)
5 p.m.
Main Post Theatre lawn
99 Moraga (at Montgomery), Presidio, SF
Free
(415) 561-5000
www.sffs.org
Opera/Dance
King Arthur
Refrigerated love is one of the treats in store for viewers of choregrapher Mark Morris’s somewhat radical restaging of King Arthur, the late-17th century semiopera by Henry Purcell. In addition to cleaving long narrative passages by John Dryden out of his production, Morris has added touches such as the Cold Genius (baritone Andrew Foster-Williams) first appearing in a fridge before being roused by Cupid. If it didn’t divide critics, it wouldn’t be a Morris production, and the eternal “bad boy” creator of this King Arthur was accordingly awarded with bouquets and some light spankings upon its London premiere. (Johnny Ray Huston)
8 p.m. (also Tues. and Thurs-Sat.; through Oct. 7)
Zellerbach Hall
UC Berkeley, Lower Sproul (near Bancroft and Telegraph), Berk.
$42-$110
(510) 642-9988
www.calperfsberkeley.edu
THURSDAY
Sept. 28
Event
Haute House Burlesque
Admit it – it’s been way too long since you’ve seen a good burlesque show. The best way to rectify this situation is to check out the Haute House Burlesque Review. Picture a mashup of ’50s style, extravagant song and dance productions, and strippers. Haute House stars Bombshell Betty, Lily le Rogue, Miss Banana Peel, Coconut Cream, Mynx d’Meanor, Sweet Cheeks, Ophelia Coeur de Noir, and Isis Stars. The house band for the evening is Lucifer’s Old-Timey Strip Club Band and complimentary champagne is served at intermission. Formal attire and fancy dress are encouraged. (Aaron Sankin)
8:30 p.m.
Jon Sims Center for the Arts
1519 Mission, SF
$10-$15, sliding scale
(415) 554-0402
www.jonsimsctr.org
www.bombshellbetty.net/hautehouse.html
Music
Mojave 3
When ’90s shoegazers Slowdive decided that three albums’ worth of layered guitars and distorted pop meant mission accomplished, they could have just broken up and gone their separate ways, leaving behind a brief but rewarding career of sonic bliss. Fortunately for the music world, this is not what happened; instead, the members simply rechristened themselves to reflect the clean slate in their hands. The name couldn’t have been more fitting for their new sound: Mojave 3. Over the past 11 years, Mojave 3 have built upon this sound, culminating in their latest release, Puzzles Like You (4AD, 2006), which bubbles and bursts with pop thrills. (Todd Lavoie)
With Brightblack Morning Light
8 p.m.
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
$16
(415) 255-0333
www.slims-sf.com
www.mojave3online.com
WEDNESDAY
Sept. 20
Music
Mission of Burma
Much like their post-punk and art rock contemporaries of the early ’80’s, MoB were around when nobody seemed to give a shit about the American indie rock scene. Sticking it out for one full-length and an EP, the Boston quartet called it quits due to guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus, but since their reformation in 2002, they’ve chalked up two captivating releases. Touring in support of this year’s The Obliterati (Matador), Mission of Burma have reemerged into the rock world at a time when we’re all hungry for tomorrow’s anthem. (Chris Sabbath)
With 50 Foot Wave
9 p.m.
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
$21
(415) 885-0750
www.musichallsf.com
Film
Queens
Five variably neurotic mothers – including Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura, Verónica Forqué, and Marisa Paredes – descend upon Madrid when their sons are due to take part in the nation’s first legal gay nuptials, which will unite 20 same-sex couples. The men themselves have some last-minute issues to work out, but it’s the moms who bring on the bulk of this cluttered but amusing big-screen sitcom’s crises. These include a first-time heterosexual experience (with a future in-law), attempted suicide, nymphomania, and a particularly stupid gratuitous dance interlude. Queens is sheer contrivance, but no more so than the average mainstream US romantic comedy, and overall its good-natured silliness proves quite enjoyable. (Dennis Harvey)
In Bay Area theaters
Weather channeling
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Dancer-choreographer David Dorfman is a poet of the ordinary. He digs below the commonplace and lets us see what’s underneath. Early in his career, with Out of Season, he paired football players with highly trained dancers. Ten years ago he invited his ensemble’s family members to join in performances of Familiar Movements. Both pieces revealed fresh ideas about dance, community, and beauty. They also showed Dorfman to be an artist of sparkling wit with a generous spirit.
In the two pieces that his David Dorfman Dance company made its Bay Area debut with last year, he worked single conceits into exuberant, athletic choreography that resonated beyond its voluptuously evocative appeal. In See Level, sprawled bodies on a studio floor suggested maps of continents, with individual countries that were self-contained yet had relationships with each other. A naked lightbulb inspired Lightbulb Theory, a meditation on death. Is it better, the piece asked in densely layered images, to die quickly or to flicker for a while?
Dorfman’s newest work, the 50-minute underground, opens the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ new Worlds Apart series, which according to executive director Ken Foster features artists who “create work that inspires us to think deeply and become responsible citizens of the global village.”
For underground, Dorfman started with history, using local filmmaker Sam Green’s Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground as a jumping-off point. The film documents the activities of the Weathermen (later, Weather Underground). In the 1960s and ’70s, this radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society advocated violence to incite change. For Dorfman, the film and his associated research raised questions about individual and social responsibilities when faced with injustice. He also began to wonder about the effect of age on one’s perspective and decision-making process.
Speaking from his home in Connecticut, Dorfman explained that he was a Chicago teenager during the Days of Rage — four days in 1969 when stores and public buildings were attacked in protest of the Chicago Seven trial. “Now, I wanted to look at the idea of resistance against an unwarranted war from the perspective of a man with a 50-year-old body.”
Dorfman’s underground will strike a raw nerve with audiences, though he refuses to narrowly assign blame for the causes of societal unrest. He wants to unearth root causes, not apply Band-Aids. “Yes, of course I feel burned by the elections of 2000 and 2004 and the shameful behavior of our government. But this is not just about the current administration. Much damage was done before,” he said, pointing out that our conversation happened to be taking place on the anniversary of 9/11.
“I try hard to be a good global citizen, and I mourn the needless loss of life. So I want my generation and younger people to look at the nature of activism and what, if anything, justifies the use of force and violence.”
After the June premiere at the American Dance Festival, which occurred during the Israel-Lebanon conflict, a young audience member told Dorfman that he wanted to get off his backside and do something. “I don’t know what that something is,” Dorfman responded. “But we have to talk about it.”
The show stitches documentary footage, photo collages, spoken and projected text, and a commissioned score by Bessie winner Jonathan Bepler to Dorfman’s choreography for his nine dancers — plus some 20 local performers whom he auditioned this month. Though he still loves to work with people he calls “folks who don’t think they can dance,” underground’s choreography requires professionally trained artists.
Reminded of his ideal “to get the whole world dancing,” Dorfman is quick to point out that while realistically war may not always be avoided, perhaps we could learn to tolerate each other, and that dance — “nonsexual, noninvasive physical contact” — just might help.
Besides, he said, “If people are dancing, for that one brief moment they cannot kill each other.” SFBG
UNDERGROUND
Thurs/21 and Sat/23, 8 p.m.;
Sun/24, 2 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
700 Howard, SF
$19–$25
(415) 978-ARTS
www.ybca.org
Bringing Knives out
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Emily Haines is not known for keeping her thoughts to herself.
As part of Toronto’s Metric, the notoriously outspoken singer-keyboardist incorporates her political beliefs into wildly infectious synth-rock songs. On 2003’s Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (Everloving) and last fall’s Live It Out (Last Gang), Haines tackled such unlikely pop-song subject matters as war, Big Brother, and the emptiness of consumer culture with thrilling, often thought-provoking results. “Buy this car to drive to work/ Drive to work to pay for this car” — from “Handshakes” — is a typical sentiment. She’s even more articulate in Metric interviews, discussing everything from voter disenfranchisement to the futility of trying to create real change through music.
It’s strange, then, that Haines is tight-lipped when it comes to her solo debut, Knives Don’t Have Your Back, out Sept. 26 on Last Gang. During a phone conversation from England, where Metric performed at Reading Festival two days prior, she sounds annoyed by the mere idea of talking about her album’s lyrics. “Do you think you can put it in words?” she icily counters when asked to elaborate on the central theme. “If I have to name the narrative, then there’s no point in having had one there at all.” Clearly, she prefers to keep her own songs open to interpretation.
Thing is, Knives is such a huge artistic departure both musically and lyrically for Haines that some insight might prove helpful. Rather than rely on the propulsive energy and shout-it-out choruses that define Metric’s sound, Haines (who also moonlights in Broken Social Scene) has recorded an album of soft, piano-based hymns more intent on capturing a mood — and a seriously somber one at that — than whipping audiences into raucous, dance-floor frenzies. Recorded with help from members of Sparklehorse, Stars, and Broken Social Scene, the album is hardly recognizable as the work of the same feisty woman who fronts Metric.
Haines, however, insists she didn’t approach Knives’s songs any differently than those of her band. “I spend all my time at the piano,” she explains. “For Metric, we’ve always just adapted my piano songs into a rock ’n’ roll format. So it was interesting [for Knives] to keep some of them for myself and leave them as is. Because I’ve always written more music than anyone could be asked to digest, I just chose the songs that I realized it’d be kind of sad if I never, ever put them out. It’s taken me a while to get up the nerve to release them though.”
The product of a rather lengthy incubation period, Knives was written over four years and recorded in as many cities — namely, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, and New York. So it’s a bit surprising that the album comes off as such a cohesive collection of, as Haines puts it, photographs from her past. “It ended up feeling like snapshots over that period of time,” she says. “When I look back and listen to these songs, I feel like the last four years have been some of the most intense.”
As song titles such as “Our Hell” and “Nothing and Nowhere” suggest, the result is almost abysmally bleak. Turning her focus from political anger to personal turmoil, Haines ruminates extensively on pain, loss, loneliness, and despair. “Are we breathing? Are we wasting our breath?” she sings in “Crowd Surf off a Cliff.” Even more unnerving, “The Last Page” finds her cryptically singing, “Death is absolutely safe.” But while the entire album could pass as a heartrending document of one woman’s extremely troubled times, all Haines will say (and only after much prodding) is that Knives is “essentially about being grateful for what you have, even when your life is shit.”
When she comes to San Francisco this week — a sequel to her July 2004 Cafe du Nord appearance, where she offered a rare sneak preview of an in-progress Knives — Haines will be accompanied by bassist Paul Dillon and Sparklehorse drummer Scott Minor, whom she’s enlisted to help her “nail that Plastic Ono Band vibe.” She’ll then head back to England for another Metric tour and to start recording the band’s third album. Later, if time allows, she hopes to play more solo gigs and eventually perform again with Broken Social Scene.
In other words, while fans may find it odd that Haines is suddenly mum about her solo music, they can take comfort that she’s fast becoming one of the busiest artists in indie rock.
“It’s weird,” she says. “When people say to me how busy my life is, I suppose that I really am ridiculously busy. But to me, it just feels like being a musician. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s what I’m doing. I’m making music. It’s not a job. It’s my life. It’s my friends and my family. So the more the better.” SFBG
EMILY HAINES AND THE SOFT SKELETON
Fri/22, 9 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
Famez!
› superego@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Does it count as gay if you’re in love with yourself? That was my philomasophical rumination as I obsessively re-YouTubed Kevin Federline’s icky, icky “rap” debut on last month’s Teen Choice Awards. Because if loving yourself counts, then I agree with most of the 200,000 teens who posted comments: K-Fed is gay, honey. Too gay to know she’s a train wreck.
Yet I simply couldn’t tear myself away. My chica Anna Conda had just got fagbashed in the Tenderloin. (She’s OK; the fucks got busted.) There’s a ginormous police state crackdown on New York clubs going down right now. And then, you know, the whole scary fuckin’ world and stuff. Oh lord, it’s a mess.
But here I was lost in the Yubehole, glued to Mr. Britney Spears’s Vanilla Ice-O-Matic Beastie Boys bar mitzvah act, complete with breakin’ goofballs in golf pants and choreography cribbed from Basic Instinct’s bisexual dance floor. Ignorance was bliss. Thank the ethernet someone just then uploaded hundreds of ’90s underground vogue ball clips, so I could toggle my ogle to some real synthetic talent — and erase the taste of rap tapioca from my slack-jawed mouth. Search string “femqueen” for days and days of two-snaps-up.
Talking point: if technology’s taught us anything, it’s how to use our screens to look away.
Talking point: I’d still do him. Ugh.
But wait. Hold up. Replay selection. Why the online mainline? If I really wanna see someone act a fool, I’d rather see it in person. I’d rather have some fun with it — and them have fun with it too. One of the finer club pleasures to arise since the death of the supastar DJ has been the explosion of live performance. People are gingerly stepping out of the virtual fishbowl and doin’ it live. Dirty drag, ragged karaoke, amateur strip contests, impromptu tambourine circles: it’s an interactive wonderland out there, I tells ya. A Xanadu on Xanax. And everyone’s a sparkly Newton-John.
So fuck K-Fed. I bust out to FAME!, the new hip-hop karaoke monthly at the Bar of Contemporary Art, hosted by DJ White Castle and MC Hector Preciados of the Sweatbox crew. It’s a smallish crush of good-looking folks there, but the joint is boisterous. The first thing I see is a guy in a Jesus getup flowing to some Notorious B.I.G. That put the kibosh on my plans to tackle “It Takes Two.” Can’t beat the Notorious JC, y’all. He’s followed up by a dude in a Hebrew Oakland A’s cap. Say what? I’m freakin’ out. The kid has mads, and the crowd’s tipped up on its South Side Zappos, spilling its cran-Absoluts. Polish up your Tupac and have at.
Four shots later, I head to Deco for nine-foot-tall dragsaster Renttecca’s new out-of-control monthly, Starfucker. Absurd Galz-Gone-Wild antics galore, a downstairs sex parlor, busty wonder Hoku Mama’s loungy sauna-swamp, and a “Hottest Ass in the Tenderloin” contest. (I brought a can of Raid for that last one. And maybe will for the second one as well.) I was approaching Deco’s magic portals when a large, muscular hand laid itself on my seductively bared shoulder. It was one of the hot denizens of FAME!
Dip it low, pick it up slow, roll it all around, punk it out like a backhoe: uh-oh. Looks like my trajectory’s changed. Sorry, Renttecca, but in the limpid, slightly crossed pools of his gangsta-dreamy eyes I forgot Deco, forgot Starfucker, even forgot FAME!
Hey, what’s my name? SFBG
FAME!
Last Fridays, 10 p.m.–2 a.m.
BOCA
414 Jessie, SF
$5
(415) 756-8825
www.sweatboxsf.com/fame
STARFUCKER
Fourth Fridays, 10 p.m.–4 a.m.
Deco
510 Larkin, SF
Call for price
(415) 346-2025
www.myspace.com/starfuckme
The Village Voice, 1953 to October 2005 (the date the New Times purchased the Voice), RIP
The hitman cometh
There’s a key phrase in this morning’s New York Times account of the Mike Lacey massacre at the Village Voice (“Village Voice Dismisses 8, including Senior Arts Editors, a ‘reconfiguration’ leaves the critic Robert Christgau unemployed”). Click here
It followed the standard boilerplate press release that always accompanies what a former Voice press critic Cynthia Cotts called “the signature New Times bloodbath.” The boilerplate: Village Voice Media/New Times/Mike Lacey described the layoffs as an effort to “reconfigure the editorial department to place an emphasis on writers as opposed to editors.” The company added: “Painful though they may be in the short term, these moves are consistent with long-range efforts to position the Voice as an integral journalistic force in New York City.”
Then comes the standard line that is widely known to all of us who have tried in vain for years to get Lacey, the editor in chief of VVM/NT and the l7 paper chain from Phoenix, Arizona, to respond on the phone or by email to legitimate news issues:
Lacey “did not return calls seeking further comment.”
Lacey is a colorful editor. After New Times purchases a paper, he loves to ride into town and shoot up the saloon
and massacre the staff and the paper. He did this in San Francisco when the New Times bought the SF Weekly and he did it with the Voice in New York. He loves to whack away at me and the Bay Guardian with long screeds (his latest, a 20-pager of high volume vitriol up on the web somewhere, with the head, “Brugmann’s Brain Vomit, cleaning up the latest drivel from San Francisco’s leading bullgoose looney.”) It full of marvelous stuff and is one of my prized possessions.
But Mike and the New Times folks have a fatal flaw: They love to hit, run, and hide.
That’s how I started guerrilla blogging awhile back. The local version of Lacey’s journalistic ethics, the SF Weekly, would through the years blast away at me and the Guardian and our issues with a distinct pattern: they rarely would call for comment before publication. When they did call, they would get the quote wrong or out of context. And, when we would write a letter to the editor to correct the quote or get our point out, they would refuse to run the letter and would not explain why.
So I started doing some guerrilla blogging and sending my points by email to the SF Weekly/New Times people-and, of course, to Mike safely hunkered down in his foxhole in Phoenix.
The classic was when the SF Weekly/New Times/Lacey gave me a Best of award in 2003 for “Best Local Psychic.” It read: “Move over, Madam Zolta, at least when it comes to predicting the outcome of wars, Bruce-watchers will recall with glee his most recent howler, an April 2 Bay Guardian cover story headlined ‘The New Vietnam.’ The article was accompanies by an all caps heading and a photo of a panic-stricken U.S. serviceman in Iraq, cowering behind a huge fireball. The clear message: Look out, folks; this new war’s gonna be as deep a sinkhole as the old one. Comparing a modern U.S. war to Vietnam-how edgy! How brilliant! How original! And how did the prediction pan out? Let’s see now: More than 50,000 U.S. soldiers got killed in Vietnam vs. about l00 in Iraq. Vietnam lasted more than l0 years; Iraq lasted less than a month (effectively ending about two weeks after the story ran.) Vietnam destroyed a U.S. president, while Iraq turned one into an action hero. Well, you get the picture. Trying to draw analogies between Vietnam and Iraq is as ridiculous as Brugmann’s other pet causes. Scores of reputable publications around the nation opposed the Iraq war, but did so in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. Leave it to the SFBG, our favorite political pamphlet, to help delegitimize yet another liberal cause. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft send their sincerest thanks, Bruce.”
Three years later, the war drags on, “reputable publications” all over the country are calling it another Vietnam–and Lacey and his Best of writers and editors look like fools and we still don’t know what the Lacey/New Times position is on Bush, the war, and the occupation. But this is vintage Lacey and vintage New Times politics distilled into their publication run largely on a centralized format out of Phoenix. The key point: the article was not bylined and I tried, again and again by guerrilla email and phone calls to Lacey and his SF Weekly editors, to get someone to say who conceived, wrote, and edited the item. Nobody would fess up. But I was told reliably that the writer was the cartoonist Dan Siegler and the editor was John Mecklin, then reported to be Lacey’s favorite editor and hand-picked by Lacey to take on the Guardian in San Francisco. I confronted them with emails, asking for confirmation or comment. I have not gotten any to this very day.
Alas, that in a nutshell is the political and journalistic and ethical policies that Lacey and the New Times have imposed on the Voice. No more liberal politics. No more James Ridgeway in Washington. No more Press Critic Syd Schanberg and no more press clips columns. No regular section criticizing the Bush administration and the war. No more editorials and no more endorsements and no more legendary Voice thundering away on the major New York and national issues of the day that cry out for a strong news and editorial voice from the Left.
And, according to the Times story, Voice layoffs and firings that “decimated the senior ranks of its arts staff,” including theater editor Jorge Morales, dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer, senior editor in charge of books Ed Park, art director Minh Uong, and Robert Cristgau, 64, who as a senior editor and longtime pop musit critic “helped put the Voice on the map,” as the Times put it. Cristgau had been with the Voice off and on since l969 and is quite rightly known as the dean of the Voice.
No more Village Voice as we have known it through all these years.
Instead, the Voice has Mike Lacey. I last ran into Mike at the annual business meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) in Little Rock in June.
I held out my hand for a handshake and said, in a friendly way, “Mike, how are you doing?”
He stopped, looked at me, and said, “Bruce, Go fuck yourself.” And he turned and scampered off, never to return to the meeting and never to come near me again.
Mike, get out out of your bunker and give people a chance to ask you some questions. Start a blog.
P.S. We had fun with the Best of issue. We did a counter Best of, a full page ad, titled “Best Premature Ejaculation,” a special award to the editors of the SF Weekly/New Times.
We ended with this note: “Sorry, folks: WE wish the war in Iraq were as neat and tidy as you, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft would like to think it is. But you, um, spoke too soon.”
Our postscripts drove home the points about Lacey’s style of hit and run journalism.
“PS: The real mystery of the city: who wrote the SF Weekly piece? Who assigned it? Who edited it? We’ve been calling, writing, e-mailing, and faxing the local office and corporate headquarters in Phoenix, but nobody will tell us.”
“PPS: Gee, what’s the New Times position on the war, anyway. We can’t seem to figure it out.”
And, let me add in retrospect, what was their position on Bush’s reelection? Well, as far as I can tell, the only endorsement published in any New Times paper came at the end of their syndicated sex column by their gay sex columnist Dan Savage just before election day. Dan, bless his heart, came out for Kerry and is now pushing publicly for impeachment. Where’s Mike? Mike? Mike? B3
A final PS point: If any one at New Times is still wondering about their pretty little month-long war that turned a president into an action hero, check out This nice item from the NY Times. We’re still at war, Mike, and kids are still dying. In case you hadn’t noticed.
‘Voice’ Staffers To Be Crying Into Their Bongs Tonight?
SUNDAY
Sept. 3
Music
Dub Mission
Sometimes finding a unique spin on a familiar concept only leads to bankruptcy (e.g., the thankfully short-lived Pets.com), and sometimes it can lead to a 10-year residency at the Elbo Room, which is what San Francisco’s only weekly dub, dancehall, and progressive roots club, Dub Mission, celebrates tonight. Founded in 1996 by former KUSF DJ Sep (who recently returned to the decks after a brief spot of maternity leave), Dub Mission has consistently attracted a thoroughly mixed, laid-back fan base whose primary focus is dancing, not dissing. This week’s festivities will feature a live performance from J-Boogie’s Dubtronic Science. Happy anniversary, Dub Mission, shall we dance? (Nicole Gluckstern)
9 p.m.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
$15
(415) 552-7788
www.dubmissionsf.com
www.elbo.com
Film/dvd
A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005
Ah, Market Street. How many lonely nights I’ve stood on you, freezing my pachangas off while waiting for the stupid 9 to show up. How many times (two) I’ve gotten my tire stuck in the F car rails and flipped over my handlebars. Whether you’re a financier, panhandler, chess player, or German tourist, the street has undoubtedly worked its way diagonally into your heart. Even if your connection to Market is – like mine – cold and painful, you owe it to the relationship to check out the screening and DVD release party for A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005, two movies made a hundred years apart about its illustrious past and present. (Jason Shamai)
2 p.m.
Exploratorium
3601 Lyon, SF
Free with museum admission ($8-$13)
(415) 563-7337
www.exploratorium.edu