Festival

Music Listings

Maria Poblet
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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B Foundation, Katastro, Jahlectrik Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Careerers, Le Mutant, Marmalade Mountain Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DOM, Heavy Hawaii, Melted Toys, EpicSauce.com DJs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Ari Hest, Rosi Golan Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Katchafire, Tomorrows Bad Seeds Independent. 9pm, $20.

Weapons of the Future, Tokyo Raid, Knives Knockout. 10pm, $6.

Mary Wilson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Mitch Woods Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Zodiac Death Valley, Preteen, Mata Leon Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Guerrilla Cabaret with Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Michael Parsons Trio Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Stevie Coyle Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm.

Rose’s Pawn Shop, All My Pretty Ones Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Matthew Santos, Chi McClean, Chris Gelbuda Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

David Wagner Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.caferoyale-sf.com. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Salem, Water Borders, Whitch, Disco Shawn 103 Harriet, 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 8pm, $10.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alabama Mike Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

B-Stars Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Dreamdate, Touch-Me-Nots, Elvis Christ Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Dreamdate, Touch-Me-Nots, Elvis Christ Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Frail Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Doug E. Fresh Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

Brendan James and Matt White, Lauren Pritchard Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Kem, Timothy Bloom Warfield. 8pm, $49.50-69.50.

Koalacaust, Steel Tigers of Death, King City Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Travie McCoy, Donnis, Black Cards, XV, Bad Rabbits Slim’s. 7:30pm, $18.

Route 66 Players Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Southeast Engine, Pancho-san, Tommy Carns Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dominique Leone, Meotar, Headshear Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 9pm.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Pascal Bokar Band and Alan Benzie’s Berklee College of Music Band Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $10.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

“Tingel Tangel Club: Three Year Anniversary Party” Café Du Nord. 9pm, $16-20. Cabaret with Ann Magnuson and Kristian Hoffman, Uni and Her Ukelele, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and old-time jam Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Prince Royce Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $38.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bag Raiders, DJs Aaron Axelsen, Omar, and KidHack Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm.

Base Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $10. With Roger Sanchez.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

Wax Candy Showdown, 10 Sixth St, SF; www.showdownsf.com. 9pm, free. Disco, funk, house, and techno with Sergio, the Worker, André Lucero, and Travis Dalton.

FRIDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 8pm, $55.

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Ben, Ian, and Tom of Gomez Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Books on Tape, Downer Party, Nero Nava Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

De La Soul Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $45.

Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry and Rebirth Brass Band Fillmore. 9pm, $29.50.

Last Nova, Untied, Fever Charm, Distorted Harmony, Amply Hostile Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Lenka, Greg Laswell Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $14.

Stung, Petty Theft Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

“Thee Parkside Anniversary Party” Thee Parkside. 9pm, free. With Glen Meadmore and His Hot Horny Born Again Revue.

Walken, Lozen, Dog Shredder, Pins of Light Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

BeauSoliel aves Michael Doucet Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $25.

Head for the Hills Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Rupa and the April Fishes, Rumen Sali Shopov and the Soul of the Mahala, Sani Rifati and Mahala Blaster, DJ Zeljko Independent. 9pm, $20.

Tony Ybarra and Sonido Moreno Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Aural Fixation with Kool Keith Club Six. 9pm, $15. Plus DJ Godfather, Dials, Prince Zammy, and Ryury.

DJ Scott Cams Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

ESL Music Showcase Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 10pm, $15. With Rob Garza, Ancient Astronauts, and Afrolicious DJs.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Mix-Up! 540 Club, 540 Clement, SF; www.540-club.com. 10pm, free. DJ Ben Abstrakt plays indie, new wave, dance, and more.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, one-hit wonders, and soul with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

120 Minutes Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Witch house with DJs oOoOO, Whitch, Nako, and White Ring.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Strangelove Cat Club. 9:30pm, $6. Goth, industrial, and plenty of surprises with DJs Tomas Diablo, Melting Girl, Mitch, and more.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Steel, Yi, Cat Party, Hanalei Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $12.

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 7 and 9:30pm, $55.

Baseball Project, Minus 5, Steve Wynn Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

Big Bang Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

De La Soul Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $45.

Doormats, Daisy Chain Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry and Rebirth Brass Band Fillmore. 9pm, $29.50.

Hunx and His Punx, Shannon and the Clams, Grass Widow Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Zigaboo Modeliste and the New Aahkesstra Independent. 9pm, $22.

Nibblers Shine SF, 1337 Mission, SF; www.shinesf.com. 9pm.

Sex With No Hands Ireland’s 32. 10pm, free.

Trophy Fire, I Was Totally Destroying It, Glass Trains Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Marcus Shelby Trio Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 11am, $5-15.

John Santos Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $19-60.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

“Americana Jukebox” Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-10. With Hang Jones and Susan James.

Hot Buttered Rum String Band with guests Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Lee MacDougall Elbo Room. 6-9pm, $10.

Belle Monroe and her Brewglass Boys, California Honeydrops, Windy Hill Bluegrass Band Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bardot A Go Go’s Serge Gainsbourg Birthday Dance Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10. French pop.

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups.

Bridge 2 MIghty. 10pm, $10. Eclectic dance music with Deekline, Udachi, and Qdup Foundation.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Fly your flannel at this 90s alternative party with DJ Jamie Jams and EmDee.

DJ Duserock Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

HeroesNHunks Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF; (415) 252-0306. 6pm. Superhero-themed party with an XXX twist.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Mount Kimble, Shigeto, Matthew David Mezzanine. 9pm, $15.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 7pm, $55.

A Day to Remember, Bring Me the Horizon, We Came as Romans, Pierce the Veil Warfield. 7pm, $27.

Ferraby Lionheart, Henry Wolfe, Charlie Wadhams Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Gears, Controllers, Poop Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $10.

Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, Atlas Moth Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

Middle Brother, Blake Mills Independent. 8pm, $20.

Dorian Wood Viracocha, 998 Valencia, SF; (415) 374-7048. 8pm.

Young Prisms Knockout. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Daria Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Swing-out Sundays Milk Bar. 9pm, $7-15. With beginner swing lessons.

“Switchboard Music Festival” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.switchboardmusic.com. 2-10pm, $15-40. Marathon concert with Birds and Batteries, Causing a Tiger, Loren Chasse, Genie, Gojogo, and more.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Gentry Bronson, Rachel Efron, Kate Isenberg Yoshi’s San Francisco Lounge. 8pm, $7.

Dang Show Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $35.

Slow Poisoner, Naked and Shameless Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Kush Arora.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Saturn, KaeRo, Zutra El Rio. 7pm, $7.

Seasick Steve Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Witchburn, Betty White Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Phil Manley, Sean Smith, Ava Mendoza Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith Orbit Room, 1900 Market, SF; (415) 252-9525. 7-10pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Sarah Allner, Brian Weeber El Rio. 7pm, free.

Ryan Bisio, Gwyneth and Monko, Ben Jordan Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Erin Brazill and the Brazillionaires, Annie Bacon and Her Oshen, Love Axe Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

British Sea Power, A Classic Education, Sporting Life Independent. 8pm, $16.

Crackerjack Highway, Fulton and 44th Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $12. Benefit for Boys Hope Girls Hope of San Francisco.

Das Butcher, Rodney J. Cooper, Chronox Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Donion, Outlaws and Preachers 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Kevin Kinsella Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Talib Kweli Fillmore. 8pm, $28.50.

Sydney Ducks, Face the Rail, Go Time, DJ Mackiveli, DJ Taypoleon Knockout. 8:30pm, $5.

Yeallow, Secret Secretaries, General Bye Bye, Interchangeable Hearts Kimo’s. 9pm.

Pete Yorn, Ben Kweller, Wellspring Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Benefit for Capoeira Brasil Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. Brazilian dance hits, samba, and more with DJs Dion and Kwala.

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house

 

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
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Schedules are for Wed/30–Tues/5 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Other Cinema:” April Fool’s special with books and films about pranksters, Sat, 8:30.

BIG UMBRELLA STUDIOS 906 1/2 Divisadero, SF; www.bigumbrellastudios.com. $1. “This is No Joke: These Movies Were Really Made:” •The Room (Wiseau, 2003), and Troll 2 (Fragasso, 1990), Fri, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Sing-a-long:” The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), Wed-Thurs, 7 (also Wed, 2). •Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Burton, 1985), Thurs, 7:30, and Edward Scissorhands (Burton, 1990), Thurs, 9:20. The African Queen (Huston, 1951), Sat-Sun, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:20.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-15. Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Wed-Thurs, call for times. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (Bowser, 2010) Wed-Thurs, call for times. Winter in Wartime (Koolhoven, 2009), call for dates and times. The Storm That Swept Mexico (Teles and Ragin, 2011), Thurs, 7. Trophy Wife (Ozon, 2010), April 1-7, call for times.

GOETHE-INSTITUT SAN FRANCISCO 530 Bush, SF; (415) 263-8760. $7. “From the Wild West to Outer Space: East German Films:” Hot Summer (Hasler, 1968), Thurs, 7.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. “Re-Imagining Gaza,” short films produced by Palestinian youth, Wed, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: French Twist:” Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema: Fantasy Films and Realms of Enchantment:” The City of Lost Children (Jeunet and Caro, 1995), Wed, 3:10. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “Different Tongues: Film in Dialogue With Music, Literature, and Dance,” Wed, 7:30; “Preserving the Avant-Garde at PFA,” Sun, 3. “Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema: Patricia Woodbridge on Art Direction:” “Lecture by Patricia Woodbridge” followed by I Am Legend (Lawrence, 2007), Thurs, 7; Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010), Sun, 5:30. “Under the Skin: The Films of Claire Denis:” Beau travail (Denis, 1999), Fri, 7; Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001), Fri, 8:30; Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1988), Sat, 8:30. “Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Patricio Guzmán with Jorge Ruffinelli:” Salvador Allende (Guzmán, 2004), Sat, 6:30.

PARAMOUNT 2025 Broadway, Oakl; 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com. $5. Pillow Talk (Gordon, 1959), Fri, 8.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974), Wed, 2, 7, 9:20. Kaboom (Araki, 2010), Thurs-Sat, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat, 2, 4). Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010), Sun-Mon, 7, 9:20 (also Sun, 2, 4:15). The Housemaid (Im, 2010), April 5-6, 7:15, 9:20 (also April 6, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? (Siegel, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7, 8:45. “Men and Machine Guns:” Ninja Turf (Park, 1985), Fri, 7:30; Miami Connection (Park, 1987), Fri, 9:15. Orgasm, Inc. (Canner, 2009), April 1-7, 6:45, 8:30, 10 (no 8:30 show Sun/3; also Sat-Sun, 1:30, 3:15, and 5).

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St., SF; www.sfmoma.org. $10. “San Francisco Cinematheque:” “Radical Light: In Search of Christopher Maclaine: Man, Artist, Legend,” Thurs, 7.

SAN FRANCISCO MAIN LIBRARY 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. Bicycle Bride (Zee, 2010), Sun, 2.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “Thursday Film Cult:” •Some Girls Do (Thomas, 1969), Thurs, 9, and The President’s Analyst (Flicker, 1967), Thurs, 11. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Human Rights Watch Film Festival:” In the Land of the Free (Jean, 2009), Thurs, 7:30. “Iran Beyond Censorship:” Close-Up (Kiarostami), Fri-Sat, 7:30; Crimson Gold (Panahi, 2003), Sun, 2; White Meadows (Rasoulof, 2009), Sun, 4. “San Francisco Cinematheque:” “Two Together One: Stanton Kaye and Jim McBride,” Fri, 7; “Two Together Two,” Sat, 7. These events, $10. “Fearless: Chinese Independent Documentaries:” Karamay (Xu, 2010), Sun, 1.<\!s>*

NY Export: Opus Jazz — where dancers get to be themselves

John Elberling
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NY Export: Opus Jazz — where dancers get to be themselves

The empty, Depression-era McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn was, until 2009, a hip venue packed with vibrant twenty-somethings for concerts and summer “pool parties” alike. It’s also appropriately the location for the opening dance scene in NY Export: Opus Jazz, a film celebrating youthful exuberance, during which, fresh-faced New York City Ballet members in sneakers and street clothes perform the original 1958 Jerome Robbins choreography from the ballet of the same name. Exuding vigor and cool, the film, conceived by New York City Ballet soloists Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, marks the first return of Robbins’ choreography to the streets of New York since West Side Story. NY Export: Opus Jazz made its San Francisco premiere on Fri./25 at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center as part of the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, directed by Greta Schoenberg.

During the first movement, a linked chain of dancers, captured from above, curves into a semi-circle on top of peeling painted swim lanes. The dancers sway, snap their fingers and throw high kicks under the arch of crumbling brick that frames the pool. The next movement of Robbins’ dance emerges when four men and the sizzling Georgina Pazcoguin tear into Richard Prince’s jazz score in an abandoned parking garage. Leaping to their stomachs and sliding on the cement, the men appear smaller than the statuesque female standing in the foreground of certain camera shots, adding to Pazcouguin’s powerful presence. Each dance scene alternates with footage of city life (traveling on a train, gathering at a diner), thus incorporating the soundscape of Manhattan’s taxis and horns.

Trailer for NY Export: Opus Jazz:

M

As the whole ensemble gathers at a school gym, sneakers squeak on the shellacked wood floor and dancers take turns curling their hands into fists and thrusting the pelvis. Arial shots capture the colorful formations as dancers weave between each other on the basketball court. Men playfully shimmy and quick flashes of partnering send dancers into the air. The performers get to be themselves in this film: both dancers and city dwellers, with Robbins’ still-relevant choreography as the vehicle for expressing youthful vibrancy.

Later, Craig Hall and Rachel Rutherford perform the seductive duet during sunset on Manhattan’s Highline, their tension-filled embrace revealing a sense of yearning. With all of the film’s dance set in abandoned surroundings, including the final movement performed onstage at an empty theater, NY Export: Opus Jazz suggests that the dancers truly perform for the joy of themselves and each other, rather than any outside audience. The resulting most ravishing spirit is addictive – that of being young and alive in the Big Apple.

NY Export: Opus Jazz is available for purchase at www.opusjazz.com.

 

SXSW Music Diary wrapup

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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SXSW Music Diary wrapup

MUSIC South by Southwest was completely overwhelming, and my feet are killing me. It’s hard to avoid the constant feeling of missing out on something, because you always are. But once you get over that fact, it’s possible to have a really good time. Here’s a highlight reel from my first time at the Austin festival.

Wed/16 Made it to Dallas on the early-early flight from SFO and found the gate for Austin, a hipster ghetto in DFW’s sea of middle Americans. The first musician sighting was Toro y Moi, then it was off to the live music capital of the world. Post-credentialing, we attempted to catch Raphael Saadiq at the much-hyped Fader Fort party … but the line stretched for hours. The first of many scrapped plans. We then stumbled across the Palm Door, where Anamanguchi was playing irresistible Nintendo-core power pop. Later that eve I saw the sweet Icelandic troubadour stylings of Olof Arnalds and caught an amazing version of “Benny and the Jets” by piano gods Marco Benevento.

Thurs/17 Biked straight to a loft party featuring Brasileira MC Zuzuka Poderosa, who was spitting out Funk Carioca lyrics on top of beats by DJ Disco Tits. Tried to go to the NPR showcase, which was done, then tried to see Big Freedia, the “Queen Diva” of Bounce … all I got was a taste from the sidelines. Ran into SF local Meklit Hadero as she and her band tried to find the venue where they were showcasing. Saw Boston’s David Wax Museum at the Paste party and crossed paths with J Mascis on my way out. Caught the tail end of Meklit’s show at Marco Werman’s “All Music Is World Music” showcase, then Abigail Washburn’s stellar bluegrass set. Rode clear across town in the hopes of catching Devotchka at Lustre Pearl, but the line nixed that plan. Came back for the Atlantic Records showcase hoping to check out Lupe Fiasco, but B.O.B was playing in his place. Decided to forgo Janelle Monáe’s show (she’d been subbed in for Cee-Lo) so I could get off my feet.

Fri/18 Ran into Red and Green of Peelander-Z, the outrageously festooned Japanese punk band, who sweetly obliged a snapshot (they’ll be playing DNA Lounge on April 7th with Anamanaguchi). Got dished up a tasty burger at the Alternative Apparel Lounge as my cohort Matt Reamer was summoned to take pics of Linda Perry. We shared our table with Shane Lawlor of Electric Touch, who chatted about his band’s road from getting signed to playing the big festival circuit this year. Checked out James Blake at the Other Music/Dig For Fire lawn party. It was kind of like listening to all the sexy backing elements of a Sade song, without Sade. I loved Tune-Yards’ pygmy-esque vocal layering and percussive fervor. Her last song got everyone to their feet with a Fela Kuti vibe. And !!! brought the crazy dance party. I finally felt like I’d arrived at SXSW.

Later that eve, the Shabazz Palaces set was weighed down by sound issues. Ran into the ladies of HOTTUB as I went to see Toronto’s Keys N Krates, who killed it: two DJs and a drummer juxtaposing amazing sampling and turntablism with live percussion. Cubic Zirconia’s electro funk set at the Fool’s Gold showcase was also great. Singer Tiombe Lockhart held court. The closer was seeing Chief Boima during the Dutty Arts Collective showcase.

Sat/19 Last day in Austin. The hot daytime ticket was the MOG.com party at Mohawk. That meant getting there early and committing the entire afternoon … but the payoff was catching headliners TV on the Radio and Big Boi with just a few hundred other folks. Austin’s Okkervil River was playing the outdoor stage when I got there, and then Brooklyn’s Twin Shadow was playing inside. Even though they’re on the ’80s synth-pop bandwagon, they managed to keep things fresh. TV on the Radio’s SXSW shows officially put an end to their two-year hiatus and previewed their highly anticipated upcoming album Nine Types of Light. Next up on the outdoor stage was Big Boi. Songs from his recent release had some traction, but whenever an OutKast jam dropped, the crowd lost their shit. A funny moment: when he invited a sea of hipster girls to the stage to shake it with his ATL crew.

That eve, the rumor mill about surprise shows was alive and well. Kanye, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake were breathlessly being mentioned around town. The conundrum became one of whether to chase those dragons or stick with a confirmed showcase.

After briefly checking out the Red Bull Freestyle DJ contest, I decided on the confirmed showcase approach. The globetrotting Nat Geo showcase at Habana Bar was stellar. I walked in as Khaira Arby, the legendary queen of Malian desert rock, was rocking the house. Up next was Brooklyn’s Sway Machinery, then Aussie roots-reggae group Blue King Brown. Things really got packed for the closing act of Austin’s own Grupo Fantasma. The recent Grammy-winning group marched the crowd through the paces of their super tight cumbia, salsa, and funk grooves while experimenting with heavier psych rock influences. I enthusiastically made it through about half their set until my feet cried uncle. I made my way through the sloppy Sixth Street madness, dodging teenage lotharios and puddles of sick on the way to my bike, and then home.

A PHOTOGRAPHER’S ADVICE FOR SXSW FIRST-TIMERS

• You have to let go. You will not see half the acts you want to, but there is always a good band within a few hundred yards — so be where you are and enjoy it. Discover some new music.

• Live music photography is best when there’s a mosh pit. It’s much easier to move through a swirl than a dense crowd. I’m not the type to post up 30 minutes before the band starts — but I am the type to push up once they’re on. Sorry, short people.

• Wear comfortable shoes.

• There is a lot of free booze — but not as much as I thought. (Matt Reamer)

Read all of Mirissa and Matt’s coverage of the fest here

Motion pictures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Motion pictures

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Dance and the camera have a long-lasting love/hate relationship. Films that honor the art, such as 1948’s The Red Shoes or 1951’s An American in Paris with its extraordinary dream sequence, are rare. Although dancers like that their performances acquire an afterlife, they also hate giving up three-dimensionality for two-dimensional space. Nor are they fond of editing practices that alter continuity, control a viewer’s focus, and favor smiles over feet. Nonetheless, a recently discovered snippet of film that showed Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in a blurry clip of Les Sylphides, apparently the only extant film of the legendary company, sent dance historians into a tizzy.

Now in its second annual incarnation, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival concerns itself with more contemporary dance films. The advent of inexpensive, lightweight cameras has made possible a new genre, “screendance,” which features choreography designed for the camera. Los Angeles and New York City have long had had festivals honoring these creations. Now the Bay Area, after previously unsuccessful attempts by presenters like Cynthia Pepper and Charlotte Shoemaker, is getting its own look at what’s floating out there. “We received 110 submissions from 25 countries,” producer Greta Schoenberg says of this year’s selection process.

Schoenberg has assembled a program in which shorts are bookended by longer films such as Victoria Marks’ ground-breaking 1993 Outside In and the San Francisco premiere of Finite and Infinite by RJ Muna, who is best known for his spectacularly airborne dance photography. Historian/critic Joanna Harris will also show rare films of Bay Area dance pioneers and work by avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren.

In the Bay Area, a small but growing group of dancers is intrigued by the specific requirements of dancing for the camera. Among them are Private Freeman, Nol Simonse, and Maria Kotchekova, who in 2009 won the solo gold medal on the TV show Superstars of Dance. Schoenberg cast her film noir Nightingale, which receives its world premiere at the sold-out opening night gala, with local dancers. Freeman is one of them.

“I like the idea that film can focus a viewer as long as it wants,” Freeman says. “I also like that you have a 360-degree sense of space. You are working with different concepts of continuity and detail. At the same time, when you have several takes, you need to remember how exactly you had positioned your leg.”

Brevity, with most works typically lasting between three and 10 minutes, characterizes most “screendances” Even the experienced Mitchell Rose, who recently moved to the Bay Area to teach Dance on Camera at Mills College, stuck to this YouTube-friendly time frame when making his wondrous Modern Daydreams: Part One (2001).

The 18 selections in this year’s San Francisco Dance Film Festival stick to the norms. Marta Renzi’s Texas Plate (2007), a romance to music by singer-songwriter Patti Scialfa, is two minutes. A journey onto a wooded mountain, Stronger (2010), by the U.K.’s Wilkie Branson, takes four minutes. Dutch director Carmen Rozestraten’s trip into a Catalan woman’s dream world in After the Water the Clouds (2009) requires nine.

Neither Schoenberg nor documentary and experimental filmmaker Ben Pierce — a former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer who showed work in last year’s festival — can explain the logic behind the short format. Perhaps, they suggest, it’s what audiences want to see, and what festivals like theirs prefer to program. The time frames of YouTube, where a lot of these works end up, is a definite reason. Lack of financing for bigger projects may be another. It’s also possible that the creators of these collaborative ventures haven’t developed the necessary technical chops to master longer works yet.

One festival juror intrigued by the buzz around dance on screen is ODC associate director and choreographer KT Nelson. She finds herself fascinated by the idea of honing in very closely to the body (“Let’s say to the crook of an elbow”) or to create a work in a completely different setting (“Water, for instance”). She hasn’t jumped in yet — but there’s always next year.

SAN FRANCISCO DANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Thurs/24 through Sun/27, $10–$25 ($75–$125 for workshops)

See website for venues

www.sfdancefilmfest.org

Our weekly Picks: March 23-29, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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THURSDAY 24

MUSIC

Music For Animals

The catchy tunes of the self-proclaimed “cult” Music For Animals — San Francisco quartet Nick Bray (guitar), Jay Martinovich (vocals), Eli Meyskens (bass guitar), and Ryan Malley (drums) — evoke 1980s classic pop rock while simultaneously embodying the twee music of the here-and-now. While comparisons have been drawn to other electropop acts like the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs, Music for Animals’ neon-retro fans have embraced the band as its own indie rock entity. Its high-energy shows can include wacky antics, making for a perfect opportunity to bust a move. Join the cult! (Jen Verzosa)

With Foreign Resort and Matinees

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

FILM

Disposable Film Festival

Hollywood churns out a huge number of what you might call disposable films (Drive Angry 3D: use once and destroy). San Francisco’s Disposable Film Festival applies the adjective instead to the technology used to create each of its entries: readily available and often handheld devices like cell phones, point-and-shoot cameras, webcams, and so on. Celebrate the all-access-ness of 21st century filmmaking by checking out tonight’s always-popular competitive shorts program; weekend events include an industry panel entitled “How to Become A Disposable De Palma,” a spotlight on filmmaker Christopher McManus, a concert and workshop with YouTube music-video darlings Pomplamoose, and more. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/27

Competitive shorts night tonight, 8 p.m., $12

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.disposablefilmfest.com

 

EVENT

Neil Strauss

I’m not sure what I like most about Neil Strauss. A six-time New York Times best-selling author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone, he coauthored memoirs with Jenna Jameson and Mötley Crüe. He lived with Dave Navarro for a year and went undercover in the “seduction community” to write about pick-up artists. He was in Beck’s gloriously goofy “Sexx Laws” video. His new book of celebrity chatter, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys Into Fame and Madness, features pop culture personalities from Britney Spears to Stephen Colbert. But his 227 “moments of truth” aren’t in-depth, traditional Q&A pieces. Instead, Strauss wove together the most intriguing few minutes of each interview. Huh? How? Ask him yourself. (Kat Renz)

7:30 p.m., free

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

 

MUSIC

Phantom Kicks

Taking after the Grizzly Bear-meets-Radiohead, now-disbanded Raised By Robots, the San Francisco-based trio of Tanner Pikop (guitar-vocals-keyboard), Phil Pristia (guitar-vocals), and Mike Rieger (drums) — better known as Phantom Kicks — is experimental, ethereal post-punk born of white space à la the xx. Even without an album, Phantom Kicks’ eerie electro pop has garnered notoriety throughout the Bay Area after gigs at numerous local venues and festivals, sharing the bill with other local indie greats like My First Earthquake, the Dont’s, Skeletal System, and Sunbeam Rd. And its days as a live-only entity are soon to end: Phantom Kicks’ debut EP, Tectonics, is due in April. (Verzosa)

With Adventure and Exray’s

8 p.m., $6

Milk Bar

1840 Haight, SF

www.milksf.com

 

FILM

San Francisco Dance Film Festival

Now in its second year, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, presented by Motion Pictures and the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, features three evenings of screenings as well as workshops on shooting and editing dance footage. In addition to selections of work by local and international dance filmmakers, Friday night’s lineup includes the San Francisco premiere of NY Export: Opus Jazz, a reimagining of Jerome Robbins’ 1958 “ballet in sneakers” danced by members of the New York City Ballet. This is the first return of Robbins’ choreography to the streets of New York City since the 1961 movie version of West Side Story. (Julie Potter)

Through Sat/26

6:30, 8, and 9:15 p.m., $10

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

145 Ninth St., SF

(415) 625-6100

www.sfdancefilmfest.org

 

FRIDAY 25

PERFORMANCE

Free: Voices from Beyond the Curbside

Destiny Arts Center in Oakland has been around so long — it was founded in 1988 — that you tend to take it for granted. Better stop doing that, especially in this climate of shrinking resources for socially-engaged arts programs. Destiny provides a safe place, activities, and role models during after school, weekend, and summer programs. Students ages three to 18 learn martial arts, dance (modern, hip-hop, and aerial), theater, self-defense, and conflict resolution. All these elements come into play one more time during this year’s Destiny Youth Company’s big-time production at Laney College. Created by the students with the guidance of adult artist-teachers, Free explores concepts of personal and social freedom (and the lack thereof). The program also features documentary filmmaker David Collier’s video of the process that made Free possible. (Rita Felciano)

Through April 3

Fri.–Sat., 7:30 p.m. (also April 2–3, 2 p.m.), $6–$25

Laney College

900 Fallon, Oakl.

1-800-838-3006

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

ROCK

Vastum

Vastum, from the Latin vastus: immense. Empty. Wasted. It’s easy to feel that way bumbling home from a dime-a-dozen metal show — depthless, bored, and boozed. But the three times I’ve seen Vastum, I almost pissed myself with joy: my fingers can form horns again, my head bangs rather than bobbles, my tired faith is revived. With members from two stalwart San Francisco bands, Saros and Acephalix, the five-piece delivers precision death metal with a little punk, classically fast and aggressive with none of the cheesiness often befalling the genre. The venue’s a gem, too: an all-ages Oakland warehouse run by an old-school artist and a gargantuan raptor. (Renz)

With Embers, Atriarch, and Headless Lizzy and Her Icebox Pussy

9 p.m., $6

First Church of the Buzzard

2601 Adeline, Oakland

Facebook: Vastum

 

MUSIC

Wye Oak

Rock duos tend to strive toward sounding greater than their parts. Wye Oak, composed of Baltimore-based musicians Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, are no exception. Rather than pure bombast, the two play into the contradiction of expectations on almost every track. Wasner’s guitar and lyricism are the initial focus, typically heavily folk-influenced backed by true multi-instrumentalist Stack, who plays drums and keyboard at the same time. As the melodic verses build into the explosive choruses, so do the 1990s alternative rock influences, recalling Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine. It’s an attention-grabbing effect and in a smaller venue should be impossible to ignore. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Callers and Sands

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

SATURDAY 26

DANCE

“Pilot 58: Fight or Flight”

It may not take a village to produce a dance concert, but a collective of choreographers sure makes the process more creative and exciting. Or at least that’s the lesson gleaned from the participants in Pilot, ODC’s self-producing incubator that selects six dance artists to work together on a shared bill. Known as a springboard for emerging choreographers, Pilot showcases new and under-the-radar dance from fresh choreographic voices: Raisa Punkki, Byb Chanel Bibene, Bianca Cabrera, Katharine Hawthorne, Ashley Johnson, and Erica Jeffrey. Arriving at choreography through notably different experiences, the evening brings a host of ideas to the table, from moving light sources to little dance cartoons. (Potter)

Sat/26–Sun/27, 8 p.m. (also Sun/27, 4 p.m.), $12

ODC Studio B

351 Shotwell, SF

(415) 863-6606

www.odcdance.org

 

SUNDAY 27

MUSIC

Rotting Christ

Though not as famed as other loci of Lucifer, Greece has a long and distinguished black metal history. Delightfully named Rotting Christ was founded in 1987 by brothers Sakis and Themis Tolis, who have been plying their blast-beaten trade ever since, much to the dismay of born-again Christian headbanger Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, who refused to play at a Greek music festival once he learned that Rotting Christ was on the bill. The hellbound Hellenic quartet is joined on its current tour by cult favorites Melechesh, a “Mesopotamian” metal band — composed of Israeli expatriates based in Amsterdam — whose distinctive sound combines razor-wire riffing with idiosyncratic Middle Eastern harmonies and rhythms. On a more somber note, this show will be the last promoted by Shawn “Whore for Satan” Phillips, whose retirement will be a deeply-felt loss for metal, both in San Francisco and elsewhere. (Ben Richardson)

With Melechesh, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Lecherous Nocturne

7:30 p.m., $25

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

MONDAY 28

MUSIC

Röyksopp

Fame can go in divergent ways. For Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp, the breakthrough was “Remind Me,” a catchy 2002 cut featuring vocals from Kings of Convenience’s Erlend Øye. In the U.K. it picked up Best Video at the Europe Music Awards that year. In the U.S., however, a version of the song is associated with a Geico commercial featuring a caveman. Look past that though, as the pair of musicians have otherwise proven themselves as standouts on the electronic scene, releasing ethereal downtempo compositions. Live, their performances are more amped up and free-ranging, involving unexpected covers like Queens of the Stone Age’s “Go With The Flow.” (Prendiville)

With Jon Hopkins

8 p.m., $30

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com


TUESDAY 29

DANCE

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Under the directorship of Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater became the country’s most popular dance troupe, with an impressive infrastructure and a $3 million budget. Now it will be up to Robert Battle, its new artistic director, to build a repertoire that matches the troupe’s organizational achievements. His appointment was something of a surprise; he never danced with Ailey and, at 37. he is young to assume that kind of responsibility. (Jamison was 43). Programs A and C on this year’s Zellerbach schedule each feature one of his choreographies. Whatever he does in terms of programming, he is not likely to offer fewer glimpses of Revelations, the company’s bread and butter. But how about presenting it with live music? The Bay Area has some excellent gospel choirs. (Felciano)

March 29–April 2, 8 p.m. (also April 2, 2 p.m.);

April 3, 3 p.m., $34–$62

8 p.m., $34–$62

Zellerbach Hall

Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperformances.org 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Music Listings

Maria Poblet
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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Antonionian, Doseone, Jel Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Burmese, Vaz, Rabbits Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Esben and the Witch, Julianna Barwick, Hungry Kids of Hungary Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Otis Heat, Diamond Light, Caldecott Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Theophilus London, Alexander Spit, The 87 Stick Up Kids, C Plus and Duckworth 330 Ritch. 9pm, $17.

Tecumseh, Derek Moneypenny, Opera Mort, Caldera Lakes Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Wakey! Wakey!, All Smiles Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Alfredo Rodriguez Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $10-18.

Cat’s Corner with Christine and Nathan Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Green, Through the Roots, Thrive Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $13.

Matt Turk Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco, DJB.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Club Shutter Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. Goth with DJs Nako, Omar, and Justin.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Blind Willies Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 8pm.

Curious Mystery, Greg Ashley, Zoobombs Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Quinn Deveaux Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Dispirit, Atriarch, Alaric El Rio. 8pm, $8.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Liam Finn, Luyas Independent. 8pm, $15.

Flexx Bronco, Spittin’ Cobras, Hewhocannotbenamed, Crawler Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Kids of 88, Art vs. Science Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10-20.

Music for Animals, Foreign Resort, Matinees Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Naughty By Nature Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $38.

Sky Parade, Grand Atlantic, Parties, Modern Day Sunshine Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Soul Man Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Toro Y Moi, Braids, Cloud Nothings Great American Music Hall. 7:30pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Derek Smith Latin Jazz Band and director Dee Spencer SFSU Jazz Bands Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $10.

Jane Monheit SF Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-50.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Paul Drescher Ensemble 25th Anniversary Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.org. 7pm, $20.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kris Delmhorst Café Du Nord. 8pm, $18.

JimBo Trout and the Fishpeople Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Gigantic Beauty Bar. 9pm, free. With DJs Eli Glad, Greg J, and White Mike spinning indie, rock, disco, and soul.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Beats Antique Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

Bruises, Hold Me Luke Allen, Eighteen Individual Eyes El Rio. 9pm, $5.

Elle Nino, Club Crasherz, Double Duchess Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Good Charlotte, This Century Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Hot Panda, Twinks, Watch It Sparkle Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Candye Kane Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

King Tuff, Personal and the Pizzas, Rantouls, Wrong Words, King Lollipop Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Ed Kowalczyk Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $30.

James Lanman and the Good Hurt, Mark Sexton Band, Dylan Cannon Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Men, Lady Tragik, Katastrophe Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Saw Doctors, AM Taxi Slim’s. 8pm, $24.

Smoking Popes, New Trust, Hot Toddies Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Taj Mahal, Lady Bianca Independent. 9pm, $40.

Wye Oak, Callers, Sands Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Lacemaking: Katy Stephan with the Nice Guy Trio Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-20.

Paul Drescher Ensemble 25th Anniversary Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.org. 8pm, $20.

Marlina Teich Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia String Quartet Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Tin Cup Serenade Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Albino!, Mark Edwards, DJ Spincycle Elbo Roon. 10pm, $10.

Baxtalo Drom Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Cityfox Showcase Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.cityfox.eventbrite.com. 9pm. With Digitaline, Lee Jones, James What?, and more spinning deep house and techno.

Debaser 111 Minna. 9pm, $5. The 90s party celebrates its third anniversary with a Fugazi cover band and DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, and Stab Master Arson.

Duniya Dancehall Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 10pm, $10. With live performances by Duniya Drum and Dance Co. and DJs dub Snakr and Juan Data spinning bhangra, bollywood, dancehall, African, and more.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: The 90s Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque plus DJs spinning 90s jams.

Psychedelic Radio Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Kial, Tom No Thing, Megalodon, and Zapruderpedro spinning dubstep, reggae, and electro.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Soul Rebel Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free.

Spindig Happy Hour Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With Ryan Poulsen, Joe Bank$, and Stef playing rap, punk, and everything in between.

Teenage Dance Craze: The Number One Twisting Party in the Universe Knockout. 10pm, $4. Surf, garage, soul, and more with Russell Quan and dX the Funky Granpaw.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Appleseed Cast, Muscle Worship Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Beautiful Losers Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

Blue Roan Filly, Pie Crust Promises, Steel Hotcakes El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Davila 666, Mean Jeans, Biters, Booze Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Ha Ha Tonka, Hoots and Hellmouth, Devil’s Own Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

“Jason Becker’s Not Dead Yet Festival” Slim’s. 9pm, $25. With Joe Satriani, Richie Kotzen, Steve Lukather, Kehoe Nation, Flametal, Vinnie Moore, and Michael Lee Firkins.

Lost Coves, Bambi Killers, Chapter 24 Hemlock Tavern. 5pm, $6.

Narooma, Aimless Never Miss, We Be the Echo, Form and Fate Submission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 7:30pm, $6.

O’Death, Arann Harris and the Farm Band, Helado Negro Independent. 9pm, $12.

Parson Red Heads, Jean Marie, Laguna Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Say Hi!, Yellow Ostrich, Blair Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $14.

Sheila E. Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Earl Thomas Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Beni Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12.50.

Traditional Fools, Audacity, Culture Kids, Underground Railroad to Candyland, Skumby and the Disney Dads, Shrouds Thee Parkside. 2pm, $10.

Voodoo Fix, Sara Payah, Con Brio Amnesia. 8pm, $7-10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Gina Harris and Torbie Phillips Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

Paul Drescher Ensemble 25th Anniversary Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.org. 2 and 8pm, $20.

Alex Pinto Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Jake Shimabukuro Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7 and 9pm, $30-75.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Red Poppy Art House. 7:30 and 9pm, $12-20.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Mijo de la Palma Mission Cultural Center Theater, 2868 Mission, SF; www.missionculturalcenter.org. 7:30pm, $12-15.

Mucho Axé 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9:30pm.

Nada Brahma Music Ensemble Om Shan Tea, 233 14th St., SF; 1-888-747-8327. 7pm, $10-20.

Corey Allen Porter, Seth Augustus, Handlebars and Kindle Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF: Titus Jones DNA Lounge. 9pm, $8-15. Mash-ups.

4OneFunktion Elbo Room. 10pm, $8-10. Hip-hop and funk with DJ Numark, F.A.M.E., and DJs Platurn, J. Boogie, and B. Cause.

Go Bang! Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.gobangsf.com. 9pm, $5. Atomic dancefloor disco action with special guest Tim Zawada, plus residents Steve Fabus, Stanley Frank, Tres Lingerie, and Sergio.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Lonely Teardrops Knockout. 10pm. Rockabilly with Daniel and dX theFunky Gran Paw.

Open Forum Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Pam the Funkstress and DJ BackSide spin 80s, 90s, hip-hop, funk, and more.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Temptation Cat Club. 9:30pm, $7. Video dance explosion with DJs Dangerous Dan, Skip, Ryan B spinning 80s and new wave, and guests Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie.

SUNDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“AP Tour” Regency Ballroom. 5:30pm, $18. With Black Veil Brides, Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, I See Stars, VersaEmerge, and Conditions.

David Dondero, Franz Nicolay, Boats Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Jeff Jones Band Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, free.

Miniature Tigers, Pepper Rabbit, Cannons and Clouds Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Mo’Some Tonebender, Lolita No. 18, Zukunashi, Hystoic Vein, Josy Independent. 8pm, $15.

Jay Nash, Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Nobunny, Apache, Wild Thing, Midnite Snaxxx, Egg Tooth Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Ready Set, Allstar Weekend, Downtown Fiction, We Are the In Slim’s. 6:30pm, $16.

Rotting Christ, Melechesh, Hate, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocture DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $25.

She Rides, Bully, Dcoi Submission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 7:30pm, $5.

Sharon Van Etten, Little Scream, Colossal Yes Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Erica Von Vokyrie vs. Honey Mahogany Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Frank Jackson, Larry Vuckovich, Al Obidinski Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Little Brown Brother Band Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

Paul Drescher Ensemble 25th Anniversary Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.org. 2 and 7pm, $20.

Swing-out Sundays Milk Bar. 9pm, $3-15. With beginner swing lessons.

Irma Thomas Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-60.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Beyond the Pale, Orkestar Sali Amnesia. 9pm, $10.

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8pm, free.

Ray Martinez and Salsa Jazz Project El Rio. 4-8pm, $8.

Old Man Markley, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Cooper McBean Thee Parkside. 3pm, $10.

Abigail Washburn Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $18.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest DJG.

45 Club: 100 Years of Funky Soul Records Knockout. 10pm, free. With English Steve and dX the Funky Gran Paw.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B and Not B, She’s, I Hate You Just Kidding Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Crosby and Nash Warfield. 8pm, $43.50-60.50.

Endroit, Mahgeetah, Add Moss Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Le Mutant, Tank Attack, Arms N Legs, Black Stool El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Royskopp, Jon Hopkins Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

She Wants Revenge, Californian Independent. 8pm, $25.

“Under Raps” Showdown, 10 Sixth St., SF; www.bposmusic.us. 9pm. Hip-hop open mic hosted by Mantis One and Big Shawn.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Earplay: Sound Tangents” Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. 7:30pm, $10-20. Works by John Cage, Elliott Carter, and more.

Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait and Switch Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $15.

Lavay Smith Orbit Room, 1900 Market, SF; (415) 252-9525. 7-10pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Endemics, Uzi Rash, American Splits, Broken Water Knockout. 9pm, $5.

Greenflash El Rio. 7pm, free.

Guitar vs. Gravity, Control-R, Cleve-Land, DJ Culture Shizzam Elbo Room. 9pm, free.

Katchafire, Tomorrows Bad Seeds Independent. 8:30pm, $20.

Mallard, Sugar Sugar Sugar, Will Ivy Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Parlotones, Imagine Dragons, Ivan and Alyosha Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Rebecca Roudman Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

Uh Huh Her, Diamonds Under Fire Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Mary Wilson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

DANCE CLUBS

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.<\! * *

 

Stage Listings

Maria Poblet
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. 

THEATER

OPENING

*Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm (through March 27). Opens March 31. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 1. The Marsh presents a new solo show about aging and mortality by Geoff Hoyle.

ONGOING

As Always Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; www.AsAlwaysTickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through March 27. Tracy Ward directs a new musical by Peter W. Tucker.

*Caliente Pier 29, The Embarcadero; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. $117-145. Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Open-ended. Teatro Zinzanni presents a new production conceived in San Francisco.

*40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Sat/26. “I hate assumptions,” says Pidge Meade. In fact, her new solo show, about her experience as a young woman of size on a brutal crash diet, goes a long way toward unsettling more than one. Developed and directed by Charlie Varon (Rush Limbaugh in Night School, Rabbi Sam), Meade’s multi-character monologue eschews easy sentiment for a sharply performed, consistently funny and genuine engagement with her younger, bigger self. Framed by a 20-year college reunion during which she suffers an unwanted conversation with an old roommate about her intervening dramatic weight loss, Meade recounts trying to lose 40 unwanted pounds to please her devoted but “harsh” father, an Olympic-level gymnastics coach shocked and appalled by her weight gain while at school. The father-daughter story comes interlarded with a few other encounters and characters measuring the variety of attitudes and approaches to weight among women in her Midwestern milieu. Meanwhile, Meade’s problematic relationship with her demanding if ultimately responsive father finds an unexpected echo in her former roommate’s pushy inquisitiveness (which, we learn, stems from her own desperate concern over a beloved but obese teen nephew). It’s in quietly mingling awkwardness, fear, and love that Meade’s piece can really surprise, and reaffirm that whatever else follows, it’s the usual assumptions that need shedding first. (Avila)

The Homecoming American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Call for times and prices. Through Sun/27. North London in the mid-1960s served Harold Pinter well as an apt location for an enduring vision of familial nightmare, namely a jockeying tribe of self-interested working-class men bent on embracing as much as destroying one another. Into this testy household returns for a visit, unannounced and in the wee hours, one of their own: social climber Teddy (Anthony Fusco) back from America with wife Ruth (René Augesen). What happens next still has real force, even if it’s sometimes missing in American Conservatory Theater’s current revival. A family unit of vipers and sadists and weirdoes is still a family unit, but real connections between the actors are few here. Augesen’s Ruth—startlingly set free from deadening domestic harmony by the braying barnyard she soon comes to dominate—is the riveting center of attention, but the tension overall remains diffuse and inconsistent despite her gravitational pull. As the pugnacious patriarch, Max, slipping mercilessly from his historic spot at the top of the dog pile, Jack Willis is a bit all over the place, sometimes physically—director Carey Perloff has him well across the room in the opening scene’s vital first confrontation, instead of up in the grill of coiled son Lenny (Andrew Polk)—but in tone and register too. Kenneth Welsh’s fine performance as Max’s superficially calm brother Sam goes some way toward grounding the proceedings, but the other performances remain more dutiful than distinguished and the production never quite attains the pressure and threat it should. (Avila)

James Bond: Lady Killer Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission; 732-9592, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/26. Dark Room Theater presents an all-new James Bond adventure.

Lady Grey (in ever lower light) EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 10. Cutting Ball Theater presents the Bay Area premiere of three short plays by Will Eno.

*Loveland Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Sat/26. Ann Randolph’s one-woman show extends its run.

M. Butterfly Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.custommade.org. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also April 3 and 10, 7pm). Through April 16. Custom Made Theatre presents David Henry Hwang’s award-winning play.

*Obscura: A Magic Play Exit Studio, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 16. Christian Cagigal is back with the magical. Over the last several years, the popular Bay Area writer/performer has developed a series of dramatically structured magic shows (the most recent being the autobiographical Now and at the Hour), each a different attempt at blending expert prestidigitation with elements of narrative theater. Tightly focused and deliberately small-scale, Obscura is in some ways his most successful foray yet. In the Exit Theater’s new studio space, Cagigal (with occasional help from his audience) unfolds a series of sly Gothic stories combined with extremely clever, sometimes dementedly playful card and coin tricks—the majority a collection of favorite pieces from other magicians—all played out on a delicately managed little table augmented by overhead projection (a set-up that offers various visual opportunities, including use of title cards). Rapid-fire narration (occasionally indistinct but generally articulate) and a laid back, slightly mischievous demeanor combine here with consummate skill in an intimate and very enjoyable evening of crafty little tales. If there’s an overarching theme, it probably has something to do with human folly, the persistence of mystery, and the devil, but then any good fable involving a deck of cards probably should. (Avila)

The Oldest Profession Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Brava Theater presents a play by Paula Vogel, directed by Evren Odcikin.

Out of Sight Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/27. Sara Felder’s one-woman show extends its run.

Party of 2 — The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Fri, 9pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Regrets Only New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 3. New Conservatory Theatre presents a play by Paul Rudnick, directed by Andrew Nance.

7 Sins…One More Time! EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 10. James Judd’s long-running comedy hit has a return engagement.

Sex and Death: A Night with Harold Pinter Phoenix Theatre, Suite 601, 414 Mason; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/26. The thing with Harold Pinter is you never know for certain whether he means for something to be funny or not. Take his most celebrated one-act, The Dumb Waiter, a rather tense dialogue between two hit-men waiting for their mark to show which veers into disarmingly surrealist territory once they start receiving mysterious lunch orders via a creaky dumbwaiter, despite not having any food, or indeed any gas to cook food on. Is this Pinter’s attempt to lighten the mood in an otherwise joyless examination of two minor functionaries in the criminal underworld, or is it a way for him to interject more unease into their already intractable situation? In Off-Broadway West’s staging they opt mainly for the latter interpretation, neither Gus (Conor Hamill) nor Ben (Shane Fahy) play up much of the sly humor tucked into their lines, and when the “surprise” twist arrives, it feels like a foregone conclusion. More deftly nuanced, the second one-act on the bill, The Lover milks the sex lives of the petty bourgeoisie for all the hidden wit and complicated innuendo that could possibly be excavated. Morphing from chilly society marrieds to shameless afternoon fling and “common garden slut” Chad Stender and Nicole Helfer play out a tightly-wound sexual fantasy with a cool edge, a satisfying end to a low-key revival. (Gluckstern)

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.shoppingthemusical.com. $27-29. Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. A musical comedy revue about shopping by Morris Bobrow.

Tenth Annual Bay One-Acts Festival Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma; 891-7235, www.bayoneacts.org. $20-32. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Sat/26. Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company presents the tenth incarnation of the curated festival.

BAY AREA

Free Range Thinking Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 9. The Marsh Berkeley presents a new comedic solo show by Robert Dubac.

The Iliad Berkeley City Club, 1802 Fairview, Berk; (510) 698-4030. $12-24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 3. Inferno Theatre Company presents an adaptation of Homer’s ancient tale.

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Berkeley Playhouse, 2640 College; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Call for dates and times. Through April 3. Berkeley Playhouse presents a musical fantasy based on the C.S. Lewis story.

The North Pool TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefiled, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $24-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 3. TheatreWorks presents a psychological thriller by Rajiv Joseph.

Not a Genuine Black Man The Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through March 31. Brian Copeland’s one-man show returns to the stage.

Romeo and Juliet La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/26. Bet you thought Romeo and Juliet was just a sappy love story at its beating heart. But as Impact Theatre’s artistic director Melissa Hillman, fight director Dave Meier, and production “blood technician” Tunuviel Luv manage to remind us, R&J is known as a tragedy for good reason—full of escalating violence and a bodycount almost as high as Hamlet’s. Before they snuff it though, Romeo (Michael Garret McDonald) and Juliet (Luisa Frasconi) fall in love in a meet-cute, after-school special way: Frasconi exhibiting the coltish excitability of a very young teenager, and doofy McDonald egged on by a pack of uncouth youth (Seth Thygesen as Benvolio, Marilet Martinez as Mercutio, Miyuki Bierlein as Balthasar) who pretty much steal the show with their crass deconstruction of Romeo’s woes. Unfortunately, the Russian mafia angle is less fully fleshed out than the teen romance portion of the show. Yes, the mobsters all sport some great tattoos, carry mean-looking pistols, and occasionally deliver their lines in Russian thanks to language consultant Helen Nesteruk, but setting the show in the ex-pat Russian community “in the Bay Area” dilutes the extreme feudalism that setting the show in Moscow would imply, and allows the production to rely a little too heavily on familiar California-isms—phrases, behaviors, and fashions— rather than committing fully to exploring the vastly different world of the Russkaya Mafiya. (Gluckstern)

*Ruined Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-73. Call for dates and times. Through April 10. Berkeley Rep presents Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning play about the lives of women in Africa.

Singing at the Edge of the World The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 16. The Marsh presents a one-man show by Randy Rutherford.

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Marga’s Funny Mondays Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk.; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/28, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series. *

 

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
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Schedules are for Wed/23–Tues/29 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. Sweet Crude (Cioffi), Wed, 7:30. With special guest Emem Okon, a women’s rights activist and advocate from Nigeria. “Free Form Film Series: TransCosmic Geometry,” Thurs, 8. “Re-Imagining Gaza: Screenings of Short Films,” Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” Rachel (Bitton, 2009), plus more films about Israel and Palestine, Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Kuroneko (Shindo, 1968), Wed, 3:10, 7, and House (Obayashi, 1977), Wed, 5:05, 9. “Disposable Film Festival,” short films made on cell phones and other “everyday devices,” Thurs, 8. This event, $12; advance tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com. “Sing-a-long:” The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), March 25-31, 7 (also Sat and Wed, 2).

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-15. Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Wed-Thurs, call for times. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (Bowser, 2010) Wed-Thurs, call for times. Winter in Wartime (Koolhoven, 2009), March 25-31, call for times.

DELANCEY SCREENING ROOM 600 Embarcadero, SF; www.thackarystime.com. Free (seating limited; please RSVP to bstrebel@sbcglobal.net). Thackary’s Time (Klausner and Strebel), Wed, 7.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis (Borgs, 2010), Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Heros and Misfits: The Films of Stephen Frears:” Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Fri, 6.

NINTH STREET INDEPENDENT FILM CENTER 145 Ninth St, SF; www.sfdancefilmfest.org. $15. “San Francisco Dance Film Festival,” dance films from around the globe, Fri-Sat, 6pm.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Under the Skin: The Films of Claire Denis:” Nénette and Boni (Denis, 1996), Fri, 7; Beau travail (Denis, 1999), Fri, 9; Down By Law (Jarmusch, 1986), Sat, 8:30. “First Person Rural: The New Nonfiction:” La libertad (Alonso, 2001), Sat, 6:30; Agrarian Utopia (Raksasad, 2009), Sun, 3; The Sky Turns (Álvarez, 2004), Sat, 5:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. Rushmore (Anderson, 1998), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:15. “Regurgitated: A Multimedia Comedy Show About Food,” performance by Michael Capozzola, Thurs, 7:30, 9. Poison (Haynes, 1991), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat, 2, 4). Somewhere (Coppola, 2010), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sun, 2, 4:15). The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974), March 29-30, 7, 9:20 (also March 30, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. You Won’t Miss Me (Russo-Young, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 8:50. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? (Siegel, 2010), Fri-Mon, 7, 9 (also Sat-Sun, 1:45, 3:30, and 5:15); March 29-31, 7, 8:45.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “Thursday Film Cult:” •Dimension 5 (Adreon, 1966), Thurs, 9, and ESPY (Komatsu, 1974), Thurs, 11. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Volume 14: Middle East,” nine videos focusing on the Middle East compiled by ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, Thurs-Sat, noon-8; Sun, noon-6. “Human Rights Watch Film Festival:” Last Best Chance (Camerini and Robertson, 2010), Thurs, 7:30. “Iran Beyond Censorship:” Close-Up (Kiarostami), Fri-Sat, 7:30; Crimson Gold (Panahi, 2003), Sun, 2; White Meadows (Rasoulof, 2009), Sun, 4.

The Performant: Life is a BOA

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bay One Acts festival turns 10

“Life is like a Boa,” the random stranger at the bus station (Nicole Hammersla) announces to the sweetly bemused young man (Ray Hobbs) she has marked as her test subject. Cleverly referencing both the reptile and the Bay One Acts festival — through March 26 at Boxcar Theater — in which she is performing, Hammersla goes on to demonstrate the action of being constricted by a giant snake, first on herself, and then on Hobbs. It’s a reference that perhaps doesn’t stand up to close examination, but for a moment at least you go with it. Life is like a snake sometimes, and sometimes a play. Sometimes coiled around you, smothering, dangerous, and sometimes unfolding swiftly before you, like a message pulled from an unexpected bottle washed to shore. 

At the Bay One Acts festival, now in its tenth year, there’s plenty of the unexpected tucked inside the eleven shorts plays by local playwrights, running in repertory through March 26. Sunday I saw a lineup of six (“Program two”) as wildly divergent in tone and intention as a group of strangers in the bus station thrown together by chance—the shared goal is to survive the ride. In Daniel Heath’s  “Twice as Bright,” Nicole Hammersla’s bus station character, Jen, announces to Hobb her intention to have a fifteen-minute love affair with him before her bus comes. “All I want from life is an abundance of wonderful things,” she explains as she slinks around him with calculated insouciance, trying to avoid the afterburn of a relationship gone wrong by fanning the brief, bright flame of a new one.

Far removed from the slightly sordid staging ground of the bus station, Megan Cohen’s “A Three Little Dumplings Adventure” is set in the claustrophobic confines of a home in the ‘burbs, where three manic little dumplings dressed identically in baby pink and powder blue, blaze a trail of wreckage in search of the hidden world they know only as their mommy’s room. Unlike a lot of “updated” fairy tales that seek to show how it would be really literally possible to live in a shoe or a pumpkin, and suck the blood out of the scary bits, “Three little Dumplings” replaces blood with gleeful venom and madrigals with choreographed electropop numbers. Murderous, foul-mouthed, impossibly cute, whatever truth the dumplings are poised to reveal is sublimated by the hurricane force of their spontaneous safari, their inability to grow up the not-so-stealthy weapon of their appeal.

Yet another completely different chord is struck by the 11th Hour Ensemble’s newest movement-based work, “Cloud Flower”. Eerily apropos for this particular moment, much of the piece is set in and inspired by the bombing of Hiroshima, and includes a tableau of corpses, fires, a rescue, a song perched on the edge of a dream. Streaks of ash-black paint trickling down the faces and hands of ensemble members, recalling the effects of devastation. Especially in light of the looming possibility of a present-day nuclear crisis in Japan, the heart of the piece is almost too tender, too overwrought to bear, but in terms of life and art imitating each other, there may be no better time to see it than right now.

Through March 26
Boxcar Playhouse
505 Natoma, SF
$20-$32
www.bayoneacts.org

SxSW Music Diary: Day 3

Charles Russo
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As we walked through downtown Austin we ran into Red and Green of Peelander-Z, the outrageously festooned Japanese punk band. They sweetly obliged a snapshot and then continued on their way. Just found out that they’ll be touring with Anamanaguchi, the frenzied “Nintendo-core” band I saw on day 1. Make sure to check them out at DNA Lounge on April 7th.

Was dished up a tasty burger at the Alternative Apparel lounge as Matt got summoned to take pics of Linda Perry. We shared our table with Shane Lawlor of Electric Touch (an adorable brit rocker who looked to be straight out of central casting) and chatted about his band’s road from getting signed to playing the big festival circuit this year.

After that it was a walk in the sun to the Other Music and Dig For Fire lawn party. We made it in time to check out James Blake. It was way too packed to even catch a glimpse of him but it felt great listening from a shady spot on the grass. I agreed with Dan that the sound was like listening to all the sexy backing elements of a Sade song, without Sade.

Tune-Yards was incredible. I loved Merrill Garbus’s pygmy-esque vocal layering and percussive fervor. Her last song brought everyone to their feet with a Fela Kuti vibe. And !!! brought the crazy dance party. The party was on a gently sloped hilltop, the crowd was manageable, and there was free ice cream courtesy of the Ice Cream Man. It finally felt like I’d arrived at the festival.

Later that eve I caught a bit of the Shabazz Palaces set which was weighed down by sound issues. Ran into the ladies of HOTTUB as I went to see Toronto’s Keys N Krates who killed it. Two djs and a drummer juxtaposing amazing sampling and turntablism with live percussion. Unreal.

Cubic Zirconia‘s electro funk set at the Fool’s Gold showcase was also great. Singer Tiombe Lockhart held court. One girl in the audience made the mistake of jumping up on stage to show her enthusiasm… but Lockhart wasn’t having it. She quickly initimidated the girl into backing down and gave a speech about respecting her stage. The girl was mortified but Lockhart was right, it wasn’t cool.

The closer was seeing Chief Boima during the Dutty Arts Collective showcase. Oakland’s Los Rakas stopped by for a shout out and Chief Boima played their new single.

Be sure to check SFBG Contributing Photog Matt Reamer‘s slideshow from his Day 3 adventures.

 

Songs of flesh and faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Songs of flesh and faith

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Some cowboy angels have been crying into their beer for salvation; meantime, some of us singing cowgirls who are also in struggle push onward to save ourselves. Texan-in-exile Josh T. Pearson’s new Last of the Country Gentlemen (Mute) is very much the answer record for that divide, its harrowing, beautiful 60 minutes transmuting into a sonic angel and devil’s advocate for both sides.

On hearing the disc’s seven songs — or, as when seeing Pearson live a few weeks past at Brooklyn’s Bell House, where he opened with the one-two punch of “Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ” and “Thou Art Loosed” — you might be inclined to label the work mere post-breakup bittersweets, or worse, sexist. Yet you would be woefully wrong, akin to those scene-making hipsters at the Bell House who refused to pocket their cell phones and thus did not respect the artist or the hush required to truly hear the songs. You would not be awake to the fact that Brother Pearson’s preaching the (female) listener toward empowerment. He fled Sam the Sham, crossing the pond for refuge, solace, and space, but did not find old world streets paved with gold, and ultimately he was stalked by heartache, firewater, and despair. No one else can love you into wholeness. Reckon I don’t know if Jesus saves; down here, it appears nobody can save your soul but you — savior self.

In my recent long seasons of darkness, this is the hardest life lesson I was forced to learn. And so the acute sadness of Josh T. Pearson the artist — once weighted with the spoils and pressures of one anointed as sonic savior, courtesy of his prior trio Lift to Experience and its lone apocalyptic recording The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001) — and his seven devastating accounts of love gone wrong, about the chains of dissipation and loss of mind and self, resonate with me in ways that cannot be reduced to printed matter nor speech. After a decade of inner turbulence and music’s collective loss of grace, here, at last, is a recording made by a grown-ass man.

With their length and delicate, unvarnished instrumentation — chiefly, Pearson’s voice and guitar, recorded over two days in Berlin with strings added a few months later — the songs of Last of the Country Gentlemen will doubtless cause some to resist, too cowardly to engage with pain. They need to recognize that Pearson is strong enough to balance (gallows) wit with generous depth and unflinching honesty. See “Honeymoon is Great, I Wish You Were Her,” or even the tortured meshes of “Sorry With A Song,” with its “Last time you left I got my drunk ass whupped in a fight/ My whole life’s been one clichéd country unfinished line after line after line after line.” On stage at the Bell House, he joked about expecting to see more beards in the Brooklyn crowd, and noted that the 10-year length of his own mirrored his “absence.” Awake, awake…know his embodiment of the divine.

The portrait Pearson is gentlemanly enough to present: a young Ugly American seeking detachment abroad, unraveling, and painstakingly slaying dragons to evolve and become a better human. Yes, there are ghost notes between his being the son of a Southern preacher man and myself being the granddaughter, niece, cousin of same; a shared lore of traditions and the Word communicates beneath the surface of this record (and I nigh passed out when he seamlessly recuperated the Melodians-minted “Rivers of Babylon” into his oeuvre live last week).

It matters not that Pearson focused on busking and drifting across western Europe and the isles, surfacing only once in the past decade with a (fitting) cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and continuing to sit on a trove of unreleased material. In fleeing the horrors of Bush America, he reconnected with the traditions of his own soil and kinfolk (as slyly/sadly limned on the single, “Country Dumb”) and went through them changes to fiercely mature as songcatcher and man. When he opens his record keening, crying that he is “off to save the world,” he may be earnest and he might be clowning himself. It could just be the bravado of wishful drinkin’, but it sho’nuff ain’t purty aesthetic insincerity. I am bone-weary of Pan’s musical sons capering in the glades, and the ever-cloning manchildren of indie-ana. Give me Brother Pearson’s testimony and its rare, precious ability to trigger the full spectrum of human feeling.

The inevitable forthcoming hooptedoodle that results from Pearson’s appearance at Austin’s annual South by Southwest festival next week will determine how much of his vault comes to light and whether or not the amorphous-but-fervent digital cult that enshrined Lift to Experience and has awaited any new music with bated breath expands to a mass. However, I neither require consensus nor further laurels determining its future reception to claim that Last of the Country Gentlemen is a masterpiece. Especially when it seems possible that Brother Pearson could well disappear into Texas, never to record again. Or feel beckoned anew by the boomtown Berlin of our master satirist Californian bard Stew, and Pearson’s fellow quester, the noted East Village African performance artist Krylon Superstar (a “breathaholic,” as we all should be). He could pull a Josephine-with-her-leopards rather than remain here to help rebuild America(na) from the ashes.

I, the Indian watching from the deep dark woods as the settlers clash and struggle to resurrect themselves and their ideals from the heaven/hell of Bush’s infinitely twisted New Jerusalem, am very grateful that Josh T. Pearson has boldly called himself out an American dreamer. He reminds me that I could be one, too, if I am brave enough to bleed. This is worth so much more than letter grades and lazy crit comparisons to this act or that, so expect none. Due to powers of inner vision and commitment, Pearson conjures the two other maverick artists who framed the past decade for me: my most-beloved white chocolate master, Lewis Taylor, from the United Kingdom, and still-undersung, Carolina-to-canyon folk visionary Jonathan Wilson. But he is virtually without peer. It takes a great deal now to summon me from the abyss. Truth alone.

Myself, still too blue to fly — yet there is great remedy and mystery to be gained from Josh the Revelator’s Wild West revolution of the mind. I know you have heard the sounds of red, white, and blue footsteps scrawling in fear. You know intimately the disintegration of this earth. If only you have the ears to hear both the low lonesome and glory of “Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ,” wherein Pearson wrenches out, through rippling guitar, “You don’t need a lover or a friend/ You need a savior/ And I am not him.” Don’t flinch when he sings from a land you’re stranger to. Do not escape into the sunset — the brother needs you to openly and humbly step up as his amen corner, and welcome holy breath. 

Josh T. Pearson will be making his solo debut at South by Southwest at three official performances — the first, Wed., March 16 at the Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin, should be the hot ticket

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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THEATER

OPENING

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm (through March 27). Opens March 31. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 1. The Marsh presents a new solo show about aging and mortality by Geoff Hoyle.

M. Butterfly Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.custommade.org. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also April 3 and 10, 7pm). Custom Made Theatre presents David Henry Hwang’s award-winning play.

BAY AREA

Free Range Thinking Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (through Sat/12). Opens Fri/18, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 9. The Marsh Berkeley presents a new comedic solo show by Robert Dubac.

The Iliad Berkeley City Club, 1802 Fairview, Berk; (510) 698-4030. $12-24. Opens Fri/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 3. Inferno Theatre Company presents an adaptation of Homer’s ancient tale.

ONGOING

As Always Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; www.AsAlwaysTickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through March 27. Tracy Ward directs a new musical by Peter W. Tucker.

Caliente Pier 29, The Embarcadero; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. $117-145. Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Teatro Zinzanni presents a new production conceived in San Francisco.

*40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 26. “I hate assumptions,” says Pidge Meade. In fact, her new solo show, about her experience as a young woman of size on a brutal crash diet, goes a long way toward unsettling more than one. Developed and directed by Charlie Varon (Rush Limbaugh in Night School, Rabbi Sam), Meade’s multi-character monologue eschews easy sentiment for a sharply performed, consistently funny and genuine engagement with her younger, bigger self. Framed by a 20-year college reunion during which she suffers an unwanted conversation with an old roommate about her intervening dramatic weight loss, Meade recounts trying to lose 40 unwanted pounds to please her devoted but “harsh” father, an Olympic-level gymnastics coach shocked and appalled by her weight gain while at school. The father-daughter story comes interlarded with a few other encounters and characters measuring the variety of attitudes and approaches to weight among women in her Midwestern milieu. Meanwhile, Meade’s problematic relationship with her demanding if ultimately responsive father finds an unexpected echo in her former roommate’s pushy inquisitiveness (which, we learn, stems from her own desperate concern over a beloved but obese teen nephew). It’s in quietly mingling awkwardness, fear, and love that Meade’s piece can really surprise, and reaffirm that whatever else follows, it’s the usual assumptions that need shedding first. (Avila)

James Bond: Lady Killer Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission; 732-9592, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. Dark Room Theater presents an all-new James Bond adventure.

Lady Grey (in ever lower light) EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. ThroughApril 10. Cutting Ball Theater presents the Bay Area premiere of three short plays by Will Eno.

*Loveland Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 26. Ann Randolph’s one-woman show extends its run.

The Oldest Profession Brava Thater, 2781 24th St; 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Brava Theater presents a play by Paula Vogel, directed by Evren Odcikin.

Out of Sight Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through March 27. Sara Felder’s one-woman show extends its run.

Party of 2 — The New Mating Musical Shelton T8eater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Fri, 9pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Regrets Only New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 3. New Conservatory Theatre presents a play by Paul Rudnick, directed by Andrew Nance.

7 Sins…One More Time! EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 10. James Judd’s long-running comedy hit has a return engagement.

Sex and Death: A Night with Harold Pinter Phoenix Theatre, Suite 601, 414 Mason; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. The thing with Harold Pinter is you never know for certain whether he means for something to be funny or not. Take his most celebrated one-act, The Dumb Waiter, a rather tense dialogue between two hit-men waiting for their mark to show which veers into disarmingly surrealist territory once they start receiving mysterious lunch orders via a creaky dumbwaiter, despite not having any food, or indeed any gas to cook food on. Is this Pinter’s attempt to lighten the mood in an otherwise joyless examination of two minor functionaries in the criminal underworld, or is it a way for him to interject more unease into their already intractable situation? In Off-Broadway West’s staging they opt mainly for the latter interpretation, neither Gus (Conor Hamill) nor Ben (Shane Fahy) play up much of the sly humor tucked into their lines, and when the “surprise” twist arrives, it feels like a foregone conclusion. More deftly nuanced, the second one-act on the bill, The Lover milks the sex lives of the petty bourgeoisie for all the hidden wit and complicated innuendo that could possibly be excavated. Morphing from chilly society marrieds to shameless afternoon fling and “common garden slut” Chad Stender and Nicole Helfer play out a tightly-wound sexual fantasy with a cool edge, a satisfying end to a low-key revival. (Gluckstern)

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.shoppingthemusical.com. $27-29. Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. A musical comedy revue about shopping by Morris Bobrow.

Tenth Annual Bay One-Acts Festival Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma; 891-7235, www.bayoneacts.org. $20-32. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through March 26. Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company presents the tenth incarnation of the curated festival.

BAY AREA

Death of a Salesman Pear Avenue Theatre, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/20. Pear Avenue Theatre presents the Arthur Miller classic.

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Berkeley Playhouse, 2640 College; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Call for dates and times. Through April 3. Berkeley Playhouse presents a musical fantasy based on the C.S. Lewis story.

The North Pool TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefiled, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $24-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 3. TheatreWorks presents a psychological thriller by Rajiv Joseph.

Not a Genuine Black Man The Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Brian Copeland’s one-man show returns to the stage.

Romeo and Juliet La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. Bet you thought Romeo and Juliet was just a sappy love story at its beating heart. But as Impact Theatre’s artistic director Melissa Hillman, fight director Dave Meier, and production “blood technician” Tunuviel Luv manage to remind us, R&J is known as a tragedy for good reason—full of escalating violence and a bodycount almost as high as Hamlet’s. Before they snuff it though, Romeo (Michael Garret McDonald) and Juliet (Luisa Frasconi) fall in love in a meet-cute, after-school special way: Frasconi exhibiting the coltish excitability of a very young teenager, and doofy McDonald egged on by a pack of uncouth youth (Seth Thygesen as Benvolio, Marilet Martinez as Mercutio, Miyuki Bierlein as Balthasar) who pretty much steal the show with their crass deconstruction of Romeo’s woes. Unfortunately, the Russian mafia angle is less fully fleshed out than the teen romance portion of the show. Yes, the mobsters all sport some great tattoos, carry mean-looking pistols, and occasionally deliver their lines in Russian thanks to language consultant Helen Nesteruk, but setting the show in the ex-pat Russian community “in the Bay Area” dilutes the extreme feudalism that setting the show in Moscow would imply, and allows the production to rely a little too heavily on familiar California-isms—phrases, behaviors, and fashions— rather than committing fully to exploring the vastly different world of the Russkaya Mafiya. (Gluckstern)

*Ruined Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-73. Call for dates and times. Through April 10. Berkeley Rep presents Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning play about the lives of women in Africa.

Singing at the Edge of the World The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. The Marsh presents a one-man show by Randy Rutherford.

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Marga’s Funny Mondays Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk.; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/21, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series.

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. 

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/16–Tues/22 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “OpenScreening,” Thurs, 8. for participation info, contact ataopenscreening@atasite.org. To Dream of Falling Upwards (Alli, 2011), Fri, 8. “Other Cinema,” films about the military-industrial complex by Andrew Wilson, Javier Arbona, and more, Sat, 8:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-10. COINTELPRO 101, Tues, 7. With a discussion led by Claude Marks of the Freedom Archives.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950), Wed, 2:30, 5:10, 8. •The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957), Thurs, 3:15, 7, and Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946), Thurs, 5:05, 8:55. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925), Fri-Sun, 7:30, 9:30 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4, 5:45).

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-15. Garbo the Spy (Roch, 2010), call for dates and times. Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), March 18-24, call for times. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (Bowser, 2010) March 18-24, call for times.

DAVID BROWER CENTER 2150 Allston, Berk; www.browercenter.org. $10. “EarthDance Short Attention Span Environmental Film Festival,” short films about nature, culture, and the environment, Thurs, 7 and 9.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crush (Gelpe and McCormack, 2006), Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Heros and Misfits: The Films of Stephen Frears:” The Snapper (1993), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953), Wed, 3:10. “San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival,” Wed-Sat. See Film Listings for complete schedule and ticket information. “Under the Skin: The Films of Claire Denis:” No Fear, No Die (1990), Sun, 3. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “Experimental Animation,” Sun, 5.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:25. “2011 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films, Live-Action and Animated,” Thurs-Sat, 9:30 (also Sat, 4:15). The Illusionist (Chomet, 2010), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sun, 2). “The Ski Channel Presents:” The Story, Sun, 5. Rushmore (Anderson, 1998), March 22-23, 7:15, 9:15 (also March 23, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $10. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (Leyser, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:10. You Won’t Miss Me (Russo-Young, 2009), March 18-24, 7, 8:50 (also Sat-Sun, 3:15, 5:10).

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “Thursday Film Cult:” •The Ambushers (1967), Thurs, 9, and Salt and Pepper (1968), Thurs, 11.

WOMEN’S BUILDING Audre Lord Room, 3543 18th St, SF; sheviros@gmail.com (RSVP requested). Free. My Mom the General (Rosenfield), Thurs, 8:30. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Volume 14: Middle East,” nine videos focusing on the Middle East compiled by ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, Jan 13-March 27 (gallery hours Thurs-Sat, noon-8; Sun, noon-6). “Human Rights Watch Film Festival:” Enemies of the People (Lemkin and Sambath, 2009), Thurs, 7:30. “Iran Beyond Censorship:” Offside (Panahi, 2008) with “The Accordion” (Panahi, 2010), Sun, 2.

Delhi 2 Dublin brings the St. Paddy’s bhangra

Andrew Lam
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It’s St. Patrick’s Day and everyone is Irish. Truly — the West coast brand of ethnic identity is a far cry from that of New England and New York, where families ran straight from the Potato Famine to set up shop in certain neighborhoods, maintaining their Celtic colors even now. Nope, by the time the gene pool wagon-wheels its way to California, most people are some amalgamation of several cultures. Which is to say that the Vancouver-based Celtic electro-bhangra of Delhi 2 Dublin should be seen as less of a new bastardization of world musics as much as a let’s-all-get-down reflection of who we are today.

But I’m waxing more sociological (per usual) than the band does itself. We caught the group’s DJ, Tarun Nayar, on a layover in an airport he was having trouble identifying (“Baltimore?” he guessed). The only concrete location we were able to get out of him is that the band is playing Mezzanine on St. Patrick’s itself, Thurs/17, after its show at the Aubergine in Sebastopol on Tues/15. Other sureities? Go to either and you’re gonna have a high-energy, border-blurring dance party on your Guinness-wielding hands.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: So you guys are playing your St. Patrick’s Day show here. In honor of the holiday, can you run down the group’s Celtic connection for me?

Tarun Nayar: Well the group was born on St. Patrick’s Day five years ago, so the Celtic connection is really important to us. The ex-director of the Vancouver Folk Festival called me to do an Irish-themed event. I was an electronica DJ and I was like, I don’t think we’re going to be able to put together enough material for you. He suggested that we blend together Indian and Celtic music. At the last minute we got together with a Punjabi singer. It’s always been easy to blend the two together since then. 

 

SFBG: Is there any actual Irish heritage in the group?

TN: There is – I’m half Irish-Scottish, and our fiddle player Sara Fitzpatrick is – ha, obviously.

 

SFBG: Why does that mix work so well, do you think?

TN: It’s the world’s two greatest drinking cultures! No, but really I think that two types of music – and we also play with North Indian influences – can be really happy, but have a real melancholy, introverted streak too. Plus, there’s all these historical theories that the Celts and the gypsies of North India have common ancestors. But we don’t really philosophize about it, we just play what sounds good. 

 

SFBG: Is there a single genre that describes Delhi 2 Dublin?

TN: We say “world fusion.” But that sounds so lame to me – it has these connotations to it. I just like to say good music.

 

SFBG: You’ve also got some interesting solo side projects…

TN: Yeah, I have a solo CD that came out March first in the States and Canada. It sums up my experience traveling around the world – it doesn’t really have anything to do with electronic music or Punjabi music. I sometimes do the scores of movies too, I just did work on a really gritty film about sex workers north of Bombay. 

 

SFBG: I hear a lot about Vancouver’s incredible cosmopolitan nature, and diversity. How did the city influence your music?

TN: Vancouver has one of North America’s strongest South Asian music scenes. Without the light of that community and the strength of its culture Delhi 2 Dublin definitely couldn’t have made it. Our singer and dhol player are out of that tribe. Without the open-mindedness of the people of Vancouver also, I don’t think we’d be around. We’ve always felt that San Francisco is a bigger version of Vancouver. San Francisco was one of the first cities on the West coast to embrace us. 

 

 

Delhi 2 Dublin 

With Señor Oz, Pleasuremaker, and DJ Dragonfly

Thurs/17 9 p.m., $18

Mezzanine 

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Stories for big kids: Tales hit the stage with Paul Flores, the Living Word Project, Campo Santo, and Word for Word

John Elberling
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Stories for big kids: Tales hit the stage with Paul Flores, the Living Word Project, Campo Santo, and Word for Word

Stories aren’t just for youngsters who read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before bed or tell scary tales around a campfire. The big kids need stories too, and lucky for San Francisco, the city boasts dynamic performers enacting mature and human stories on stage. Feeding complex chronicles to the souls of grown up audience members, Paul Flores, Living Word Project, Campo Santo and Word for Word do their parts to prove stories for big kids rule.

In You’re Gonna Cry, a one-man show about the effects of Mission District gentrification performed in February at Dance Mission Theater, Flores embodied about a dozen neighborhood characters. Ranging from a Latino bohemian, a pink-haired DJ, and an elderly dumpster-diving immigrant, to a salsa-dancing old timer, a drug dealer, and a well-meaning business man, the personalities illuminated his story from diverse perspectives.

With versions of each character walking the streets in real life, You’re Gonna Cry‘s tales resonated. “The project is not meant to be consumed passively, but to move people to respond and take action,” Flores wrote in the program notes, revealing his intention to employ art for social change. The call to action: empathy, respect, and support for one’s neighbors, and acknowledgment of the cultural nuances in the Mission District. For Flores, hip-hop theater and storytelling helped to put a human face on the issue. 

A Def Poet, playwright, novelist, and spoken-word artist, Flores continues to make a huge impact on teens as a co-founder of Youth Speaks, which implements programs connecting poetry, spoken word, youth development, and civic engagement. The resident theater company of Youth Speaks, the Living Word Project extends the reach of  personal narratives, emphasizing spoken storytelling to communicate important social issues and current movements. Living Word Project Artistic Director Marc Bamuthi Joseph, also a former Def Poet, works closely with a select group of writers and performers, whose ages span from 19 to 25, for the productions.

Trailer for the Living Word Project’s ‘Word Becomes Flesh’:

Excerpts from the Living Word Project’s Word Becomes Flesh appeared in December of last year at YBCA’s Left Coast Leaning festival, co-curated by Joseph. There, committed performers enacted letters to an unborn son, with electrifying physicality and rapid-fire wordplay. The work presented a counter-narrative to the narrow frame of current commercial hip-hop, breaking stereotypes. Through performance, the group focused on the oral transfer of a story, directly confessing personal thoughts and emotions to make connections. Watch for them with Campo Santo at Intersection for the Arts this November in Tree City Legends, written by Dennis Kim of Denizen Kane and directed by Joseph.

Campo Santo, the resident theater company at Intersection for the Arts led by Sean San Jose, plays a major role in theatrical storytelling, linking writers to the stage. “Campo Santo is Spanish for sacred ground,” the group’s artist statement declares. “Like the roots of our name, we are taking the sacred form of storytelling and using it as a tool to bond community through socially relevant plays.”

In May, Campo Santo performs for the first time in Intersection for the Arts’ new home at the San Francisco Chronicle Building, presenting Nobody Move, based on the book by Denis Johnson. Adapted by San Jose, the performance offers a noir psychic picture of the United States from an outsider’s seat. In September, Campo Santo continues its work with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz when it presents The Pura Principle, created from Diaz’s recent short stories and original writings. Also expect storytelling to be part of this year’s Bay Area Now Triennial at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where San Jose is one of several curators for performances during the final months of 2011.

Another group breathing life into short stories is the Word for Word Performing Arts Company, operating at Z Space. Founded by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word is known for staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction, enabling the company to tell literary stories with theatricality. Word for Word’s last show was extended due to its popularity and positive critical reception. This week, The Islanders opens at Z Space, telling about the bonds of friendship – as two women reunite for a trip to Ireland — by bestselling author Andrew Sean Greer, directed by Sheila Balter. 

While some degree of storytelling already exists in most narrative theater work, the outward expression of a story onstage shifts the performances of Flores, the Living Word Project, Campo Santo, and Word for Word into distinct territory. By combining narrative and literature with powerful theatricality, these San Francisco performers make clear that stories are for people of all ages.

THE ISLANDERS
Wed./9-Fri./11, 8 p.m.; Sat./12, 3 and 7 p.m.; $15-$40
Z Space
450 Florida, SF
www.zspace.org

March to the rainbow

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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March to the rainbow

culture@sfbg.com

IRISH Whether you live in Dallas or settle in SoMa, March is the month when Americans throw out their stale V-Day candy hearts and bring out the greens. Not the ones you smoke, silly, we’re talking St. Patrick’s Day here. Along with the rest of the country, San Franciscans will bite into green bagels, take a swig of something Irish, and head down to the St. Patrick’s Day parade (ours is early this year, Saturday, March 12) to join in the Celtic revelry. But — typical — there’s something about our Irish celebrations that set SF apart — our St. Patrick’s Day parade is one of few in the country to welcome the LGBT community to the party.

While it’s easy to forget over here at the end of the rainbow, most St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the U.S.A. have a strict no-gays policy when it comes to who is allowed to march — which is sad and ironic considering that Irish Americans once faced the same discrimination that their parade associations now seem to be condoning when it comes to gay Americans.

Three cities in the country allow gay groups to participate in their St. Paddy’s parades: Queens, N.Y., SF, and Key West, Fla. (editor’s note: not exactly true, as it turns out — check out our correction for the other bergs around the country to welcome the queer community into the St. Paddy’s fold) The Queens parade was created as an all-inclusive alternative to the New York City parade, which still does not allow LGBT groups to participate despite years of protests — after Irish pride, these demonstrations may be NYC’s second highest profile St. Paddy’s Day tradition. This year the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, has refused to participate in the Big Apple’s march on account of the parade’s regrettable policy. She’s not the only one: Boston’s mayor has refused to march in his city’s parade for the past few years.

But here in the country’s queer mecca, we can shake our heads in smug, gay disapproval at the St. Patty’s wars of the rest of the country. SF has a history of hoisting our rainbow shamrock high: this city’s parade is all-inclusive, which the president of SF’s Irish Societies (the organization behind the parade and concurrent Civic Center Plaza festival), Dermot Philpot is glad about.

“We include everybody, and we look for them to be in the parade,” Philpot told us in a recent phone interview. “When we include LGBT groups and individuals in our parade, it shows that [the SF Irish community] is part of a larger community.” Although there are no nominally gay groups marching in the parade, unlike in years past, Philpot says he hopes “[the LGBT community] feels included and that they will be there.”

The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band is one LGBT group that has high-stepped for Irish pride, making its most recent St. Patrick’s Day parade appearance in 2000. Doug Litwin, who is the secretary for the band’s board of directors, says the band had been participating in the parade even before he and his clarinet joined the group in 1985. Although marching on St. Paddy’s Day is a subject of contention for queer groups in other parts of the country, for the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band the parade is about as run-of-the-mill as any. “The bottom line is in San Francisco it’s just not that big of a deal to be openly gay anymore,” says Litwin. “Our band was declared the official band of San Francisco by two different mayors. Some of these parade organizers practically beg us to march.”

Openly gay senator Mark Leno is another familiar face on parade day. Leno is unable to attend the event this year because of an out-of-town speaking engagement, but says he’s been included in the parade as far back as 1998, when he was first elected to office. “I’ve always been proud of the fact that San Francisco’s parade is inclusive. And as long as I have been in office, I’ve always felt welcome in the parade.” Only once has he ever gotten negative reactions from the parade crowds. As Leno recalls, that year he had opted to ride through the parade in a Jaguar. “I heard booing and hissing right as I got up to Second Street.” At issue: red-blooded parade watchers were upset that Leno hadn’t chosen an American car for his cruise through the crowds.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

Sat/12, 11:30 a.m., free

Begins at Market and Second streets, SF

(415) 203-1027

www.uissf.org

Erin go barhopping

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Erin go barhopping

caitlin@sfbg.com

IRISH Public service announcement: you do not need to get drunk on St. Patrick’s Day. This year there are a gamut of cultural activities that will teach you more about paddie heritage than finding the bottom of yet another Irish car bomb. But drink yourself green if you must — in this country, an argument could be made that the day has become a celebration of alcoholic pride more than anything. Just please, for the love of corned beef and cabbage — try to limit your use of novelty T-shirts.

 

ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE AND FESTIVAL

The big potato kicks off St. Paddy’s season this year and will honor upstanding Irish folks from around the city.

Sat/12. Parade: 11:30 a.m., free. Starts at Market and Second; Festival: 10 a.m.–5 p.m., free. Civic Center Plaza, SF. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com

 

ST. PATRICK’S DAY FITNESS CRAWL

Stage a preemptive strike against all the Guinness you’ll be drinking at this affordable fitness boot camp.

Sat/12 9:30 a.m.–3 p.m., $10. Third Street Boxing Gym, 2576 Third St., SF. (415) 550-8269, www.thirdstreetgym.com

 

“IRISH CALIFORNIA: AN EVENING WITH THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION”

Snack on Irish bites and booze while perusing the Historical Society’s stockpile of Irish American ephemera — photos, pamphlets, and more from the Golden State’s green past.

Wed/16 5:30–7:30 p.m., $4 suggested donation, free to members. RSVP recommended. The California Historical Society, 678 Mission, SF. (415) 357-1848, www.californiahistoricalsociety.com

 

ST. PADDY’S PUNK BASH XI

The leprechaun rager returns for its 11th year in action, featuring the Undead Boys, Street Justice, Crosstops, Ruleta Rusa, and Face the Rail.

Weds/16 8 p.m., $8. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-7788, www.elbo.com

 

FARLEY’S 22ND BIRTHDAY

The Guardian staff’s fave cafe around the corner celebrates multiple decades of well-roasted independent business awesomeness with live bagpipers in the daytime and a concert in the evening.

Thurs/17 bagpipes 9 a.m.–1 p.m.; concert 8 p.m., free. Farley’s, 1315 18th St., SF. (415) 648-1545, www.farleyscoffee.com

 

O’REILLY’S ST. PATTY’S BLOCK PARTY

Between this and the Royal Exchange block party (see below) you’ll be well — if not over — served on “Kiss Me I’m Irish” tees, green face paint, and Bailey’swhiskeycarbombGuinness blackout glory. Pad your stomach before you get too deep in the drinkin’ with O’Reilly’s classic Irish brunch foods.

Thurs/17 Serving brunch 9 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; black party 3 p.m., free. O’Reilly’s, 622 Green, SF. (415) 989-6222, www.sforeillys.com

 

HABITOT MUSEUM’S SHAMROCK DAY

Make potato prints, drink green punch, and decorate your own pair of shamrock glasses with your little leprechaun at the family learning museum.

Thurs/17 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., $9 museum admission. Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk. (510) 647-1111, www.habitot.org

 

PARKSIDE TAVERN IRISH LUNCH

Traditional fixin’s abound on this Sunset pub’s special Irish menu — corned beef and a little Irish stew to go with your Jameson?

Serving from 10 a.m.–10 p.m. Parkside Tavern, 1940 Taravel, SF. (415) 731-8900, www.parksidetavernsf.com

 

FINANCIAL DISTRICT ST. PADDY’S STREET PARTY

Wonderbread 5 provides rockin’ live tunes during happy hour, and pub Royal Exchange keeps the suds a flowin’ at this al fresco rager in FiDi.

Thurs/17 3 p.m.–2 a.m., free. Front between Sacramento and California, SF. www.royalexchange.com

 

ST. PATRICK’S NIGHTLIFE

DJ Nako puts the spin on St. Patrick’s, and the swanky science museum plies you with green-themed activities at the shamrock edition of its bangin’ night at the museum’s weekly event.

Thurs/17 8–10 p.m., $12. California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, SF. 1-888-670-4433, www.calacademy.org

 

DELHI TO DUBLIN

Can you hold your finger cymbals and Guinness stein in the same hand? Try. This multicultural Celtic bhangra group always brings the jams — its St. Paddy’s Day gig in clubland is sure to be the most high energy dance party this side of Riverdance.

Thurs/17 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

 

CULANN’S HOUNDS

Didn’t get enough of the folk rock Hounds at the March 12 Civic Center Plaza festival? Check out the SF group’s headlining gig ensconced in the wooden glory of the Great American Music Hall. Renée de la Prada’s dulcet voice soars over the accordions and violins of her band.

Thurs/17 7:30 p.m., $20. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

 

BISS ME I’M IRISH ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARTY

Celebrate the Irish infiltration into every corner of the globe with the hip-hop-cumbia-reggaetón punch of La Gente, which headlines this diverse lineup, otherwise composed of female singer-songwriters bringing it in the keys of punk, rock, and pop.

Thurs/17 9 p.m., $10. Cafe Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

Bay Area dance’s bragging rights

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bay Area dance’s bragging rights

DANCE When the 25th Annual Isadora Duncan Dance Awards take place March 14, the local dance scene will have much to celebrate. In advance of the event, I recently asked several local members of the community what makes Bay Area dance special.

Wayne Hazzard, executive director of Dancers’ Group, pinpoints the relationship between contemporary and traditional artists. “I’ve seen it [the dance community] really grow and continue to do what it’s been doing and attract new companies and artists to the area.”

According to Hazzard, the dance scene’s steady development is linked to the Bay Area’s “livability” and “the maverick nature of the West Coast, this region where you can find yourself. Even if you are coming from a tradition, you can deepen that and go in your own direction, which seems to be a truism of artists here whether [we’re discussing] the San Francisco Ballet or Brenda Way or Chitresh Das. They’re all traditionalists, yet they’re imbuing their formal structural ideas around theater and dance with current issues. Joe Goode as well.”

Jessica Robinson Love, artistic and executive director of CounterPulse, focuses on a different aspect of community. “We can’t talk about dance in the Bay Area without discussing the Ethnic Dance Festival and the huge amount of culturally-specific dance that’s practiced here,” she says. Love also believes the Bay Area’s proximity to Silicon Valley makes for greater interest in and use of technology: “Being on the Left Coast gives us a freedom to experiment. There’s less of a fear of risk-taking and failure, so there’s a lot more diversity in terms of the choices choreographers make about their work.”

“I also see a real emphasis on queer and gender-bending performance,” she adds. “There’s an emerging, blossoming conversation between the drag performance community and the dance community in San Francisco right now.”

Joe Landini, artistic director of The Garage, agrees that queer dance-makers are among the strongest voices to surface. Specializing in emerging choreographers, he produces an exceptional amount of new work. “What I’m finding is that a lot of choreographers coming out of the university system are choosing to relocate to San Francisco because the resources are less competitive than New York. San Francisco probably has more opportunities for emerging choreographers than any other place in the United States, so we have a huge pool of trained choreographers.”

Site-specific work also makes its mark on the scene. Hazzard points in particular to Anna Halprin’s long history of investigations, noting that, at 90, she’s still creating new work, including an upcoming trilogy honoring her late husband titled Remembering Lawrence. “Joanna Haigood particularly deals with space and ideas,” he adds, “so when you look at aerial artists that work here, whether its Haigood or Jo Kreiter or Project Bandaloop, no one anywhere else is doing what they’re doing. It’s uniquely about our region and space and relationship to dance and performance.”

THE 25TH ANNUAL ISADORA DUNCAN DANCE AWARDS

Mon/14, 7 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Youth in revolt

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Youth in revolt

arts@sfbg.com

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL What’s the matter with kids today? Young people wrestle with issues that many adults would find beyond their ken at this year’s SFIAAFF. Coming of age is a hazard in a Vietnam where street gangs grapple with injustice, under highly emotional — and entertaining — circumstances; in Iran, where oppressive fundamentalism colors even the most carefree youth; and in Hawaii, where the endless party of skate-rat slackitude hits the skids of very adult responsibilities.

The young folks of Le Tranh Son’s Clash (2009) are desperate — and alas, all too used to it. The doe-like, fiery-eyed, and formidable fighter Trinh (actress-vocalist Ngo Thanh Van), a.k.a. Phoenix, has plenty to scowl about. Kidnapped at a tender age to serve as a prostitute, she was plucked from the brothel by crime king pin Black Dragon (Hoang Phuc) — an opera-loving, white-suited baddie that John Woo would love — to be groomed as one of his highly skilled soldiers. Now on a mission to steal a briefcase of codes for Vietnam’s first satellite, Trinh assembles a crew that Son films like the suavest thugs in the slum, set to a chest-thumping arena-rock and hip-hop soundtrack. The most handy-in-a-corner hottie of the bunch is Quan (Johnny Tri Nguyen), a.k.a. White Tiger.

Contrary to initial impressions, “we’re not in some cheesy Hong Kong action movie,” as one character declares when Trinh attempts to wield an iron fist of intimidation over her charges — although Nguyen and Ngo’s stunningly rapid-fire martial arts skills (and chemistry: the two are a real-life couple) make this flick a must-see for fight fans. Clash was the highest-grossing movie in 2009 in its homeland; though the film strives to please with its visceral, full-throttle fight scenes, it seems haunted by a colonial past as well as recent terrors. Life is a constant struggle for Clash‘s young people. They’re fully capable of working their conflicts out with bare knuckles, but what really breaks through their defenses are the injustices that befall family dear to them.

The ties that bind the handful of 20-something Iranians are tested in Hossein Keshavarz’s Dog Sweat (2010) — though not in ways one would immediately expect. The lo-fi, handheld camerawork can be distractingly shaky, especially since Dog Sweat was shot without the proper permissions and permits. But the director’s eye for telling detail is sure, at times humorous, and other moments poetically penetrating. Bedroom rock is the only way to go: behind closed doors, a trio of men booze it up on so-called Dog Sweat moonshine while dancing and flipping on and off the light switch for a homemade strobe effect — they’re dreaming of Western-style intoxicants and freedoms and wondering why America doesn’t come and “save us from this nightmare.”

In another bedroom, girls gossip (“There were some hot guys at the demonstration!”) while shimmying with themselves in the mirror. Keshavarz captures the propaganda-embellished concrete and the parks for men searching for other lonely men, and the double standards that apply to the music-loving woman who yearns to sing but must hide from the recording studio owner, and the rebellious girl who acts out by donning a scarlet hijab and romancing her cousin’s husband. A rough snapshot of a generation that crosses class lines, conceived during Ahmadinejad’s crackdown on artists and dissidents, Keshavarz succeeds in conveying the palpable hopes, humor, anxieties, and fears of young people in resistance, primed to explode.

“Da kine,” that fuzzy, vagued-out arbiter of “whatever,” reigns supreme in the Hawaii of writer-director-skater Chuck Mitsui’s One Kine Day (2010). Welcome to the other side of the isle, far away from touristy Waikiki, where skater Ralsto (Ryan Greer) is dealing with his morning-sick 15-year-old girlfriend Alea. His boss at the skate shop isn’t buying his diffuse excuses for lateness; Alea doesn’t want to go through another abortion; mom is putting pressure on him to get a stable job at the post office; and loutish friend Nalu believes he can score the money for “da kine” abortion at an underground cock fight. Of course, it will all come crashing down at the big house party — but will the perpetually tragic-faced Ralsto go postal? Mitsui shines a light on the less-than-savory aspects of the islands — the pregnant teens in the malls, the ‘shroom-popping adults who turn on and phase out, the fact that you have to drive everywhere — and dares you to tear your eyes away from the sun-streaked, well-baked screen.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

March 10–20, most shows $12

Various venues

www.caamedia.org

By demons driven

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By demons driven

arts@sfbg.com

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL A few years ago, much was being made of the “new wave” of Asian horror films. Western audiences were being introduced to the long-haired, vengeful spirits and women on the verge of murderous rampages that had been scaring moviegoers in Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia for much of the late 1990s and early aughts. Companies such as Tartan and Lionsgate rushed to make the latest bloodbaths from directors such as Takashi Miike and Kim Ji-woon available on DVD, and Hollywood began to voraciously buy up story rights and churn out English-language remakes. Then Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005) came along.

But while the new wave of Asian horror may have crested as a Western phenomena, SFIAAFF’s retrospective “After Death: Horror Cinema from South East Asia” proves that using regional ghost stories as a springboard for Romero-worthy blood feasts is still a winning formula for many Southeast Asian directors. Nang Nak (1999), the oldest of the three films in the series, reenvisions the Thai folktale of a wife whose love for her family chains her to the earthly realm long after death. Histeria (2008) loosely bases its six-girls-tormented-by-an-evil-spirit variation on the classic slasher narrative on actual cases of mass hysteria among Malaysian schoolgirls. And 2008’s Affliction (the only film unavailable for preview) pits a father against his daughter as he fights to prevent her transformation into an Aswang, a blood-sucking monster of Filipino legend.

To be honest, there might be a reason these titles have received less attention abroad than the output of the Pang brothers (2002’s The Eye), for example. For all its flashy cinematography and folkloric source material, Nang Nak drags for most of its 100 minutes (when we already know long before the protagonist does that his dutiful dearest is not all she appears to be, waiting for him to finally catch on feels like an eternity). Histeria has more fun at least with its set-up, sketching out the hierarchy at work in its clique of schoolgirls sentenced to a long weekend of janitorial labor at their rural boarding school before dispatching them in unsavory ways one by one. The film even features what’s touted to be Malaysian cinema’s first same-sex onscreen kiss; although a “half-peck” might be more accurate. Still, the film’s special effects are imaginative — especially its creature design — and its scares are genuine even if the twist ending doesn’t pack much surprise. Indeed, the films in “After Death” are perhaps SFIAAFF’s most familiar offerings, but that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable for, say, date night.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

March 10–20, most shows $12

Various venues

www.caamedia.org

 

Our Weekly Picks: March 9-15

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 9

FILM

San Francisco Ocean Film Festival

Featuring more than 50 fascinating films about the ocean and its importance in nature, along with the role it plays in our society, the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival features programs ranging from documentaries on marine life and environmental science to surfing videos and panel discussions on International Marine Protected Areas. Highlights for this year’s fete include a program dedicated to sharks (and the ongoing debate over the sale of shark fins) and a chance to meet the filmmakers who work among the denizens of the deep at a special opening night benefit fundraiser. (Sean McCourt)

Wed/9–Sun/13

Tonight, 6:30–9:30 p.m., $60 (most festival programs $5–$12)

Theatre 39 and Aquarium of the Bay

Pier 39, SF

(415) 561-6251

www.oceanfilmfest.org

 

MUSIC

Damien Jurado

Despite a start with Sub Pop in the late 1990s and a steady stream of beautiful, literate albums ever since, Damien Jurado has always flown a bit further under the radar than some of his contemporaries. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter recalls echoes of Nick Drake’s sparsely intimate folk and combines it with modern arrangements full of strings, pianos, and clanking percussion, all of which is perfectly displayed on his 2010 LP, Saint Bartlett. The higher registers and slight twang that creep up in Jurado’s voice help bring his character-driven songs to life with a hushed, fragile clarity that can make you want to hang on his every word. (Landon Moblad)

With Viva Voce and Campfire OK

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

MUSIC

Castanets

Spawned from the quirky, vintage-clad loins of the early-aughts freak-folk movement, Castanets is sort of like psychedelic country without too much acid trippy-ness. Portland, Ore., (by way of San Diego) bandleader Raymond Raposa works with a merry-go-round of accompanists; his latest release, Texas Rose, the Beasts, and the Thaw, is just shy of 39 minutes — though a review posted on label Asthmatic Kitty’s website insists it is “Pink Floyd gone epic.” The review also notes, in case you were worried, that Texas Rose is “not a hippie record.” Even squares can have a ball. (Jen Verzosa)

With Holy Sons and Dolorean

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

PERFORMANCE

The Islanders

Ever want the words you read to leap off the page and come to life? Word for Word Performing Arts Company makes it happen, and in this book-loving city they are truly at home. Known for staging performances of top-notch literary fiction, Word for Word presents The Islanders, a story about the bonds of friendship as two women reunite for a trip to Ireland, by best-selling author Andrew Sean Greer and directed by Sheila Balter. If you’re feeling fancy, come for Friday’s performance, which includes a champagne reception with the artists and a post-show conversation between Andrew Sean Greer and Daniel Handler (the face of the mysterious Lemony Snicket). (Julie Potter)

Wed/9–Fri/11, 8 p.m.;

Sat/12, 3 and 7 p.m., $15–$40

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(415) 626-0453

www.zspace.org

 

THURSDAY 10

FILM

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

On its opening night, the 2011 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival premieres “Youth Producing Change,” a collection of short films by teenagers from across the globe who’ve candidly captured their day-to-day experiences. As they document their realities on film, they give a face to important human rights and social issues: child labor, LGBT acceptance, the struggles associated with seeking political asylum, environmental contamination, land and water rights, refugee life, and ethnic persecution. Several of the young artists will be on hand to discuss their experiences. (Verzosa)

March 10–31

Tonight, 7 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

MUSIC

Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death and Cave Singers

Though the Murder City Devils haven’t released a new record in almost 10 years and only play the occasional reunion show now and then (and are sorely missed by fans!), most of the band members have gone on to form other outstanding groups,. Two of these come to town tonight on the heels of recent excellent releases. Singer Spencer Moody appears with Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive To Death, whose Some Of Us Are In This Together came out in January, while Derek Fudesco brings the Cave Singers, whose No Witch was released last month. (McCourt)

With Lia Ices

8 p.m., $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

PERFORMANCE

Atlacualto (The Ceasing of Water)

José Navarrete and Violeta Luna, SF artists originally from Mexico City, summon the figures of the Aztec god and goddess of water for their multimedia performance, Atlacualto (The Ceasing of Water), which sheds light on the serious ecological issues of water rights and shortages. Highlighting the roles of water as sacred and as a commodity, Navarrete and Luna shift between striking ritualistic tableaus and humorous yet compelling scenes including an overzealous street vendor. The work combines contemporary dance, performance art, new music, visual art installation and video, stirring thought about this life-sustaining substance in the modern world. Water anyone? (Potter)

Thurs/10–Sat/12, 8 p.m., $25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

FRIDAY 11

DANCE

13th Floor Dance Theater

If you like weird, Jenny McAllister is your woman. I mean, would you want to make a piece about the fun of being hit by lightening several times? Even the extreme weather nuts run for cover when Zeus starts throwing his thunderbolts. But then McAllister is not exactly your workaday choreographer: she has shared her skewed — and at times hilariously funny — perspective on weddings, Christmas, and everything that creeps, crawls, and walks. McAllister was half of Huckabay McAllister Dance for 15 years; last summer she started her own company, the 13th Floor Dance Theater. The current program, a collaboration with writer Kim Green and visual designer Michael Oesch, presents two works: Lighting Strikes Anonymous and Under the (Periodic) Table. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/11–Thurs/13, 8 p.m., $15–$18

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

 

EVENT

Star Trek Convention

Bay Area Trekkers (Don’t call them “Trekkies!”) should set their coordinates for San Francisco this weekend as an official Star Trek convention takes over the Airport Hyatt. Joining them will be two of the most esteemed names in the Trek universe — Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) and Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) — make appearances, chatting on stage about their careers and meeting with fans. Other notables set to participate include Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Bobby Clarke (the Gorn), and Grace Lee Whitney (Yoeman Janice Rand). Fans also will be able to peruse a galaxy of vendors and participate in seminars, workshops, and parties. Live long and prosper! (McCourt)

Fri/11–Sun/13, times and prices vary (general admission, $20–$40)

Hyatt Regency

San Francisco International Airport

1333 Bayshore, Burlingame

www.creationent.com

 

MUSIC

Pogo

Electronic music has an obvious relationship with technology, but South African Nick Bertke, a.k.a. Pogo, is indebted to one specific medium, YouTube. Pogo first gained attention with a video-based on Alice in Wonderland, which mined the 1951 Disney classic for new sounds, chords, and lyrics to create hypnotically familiar original music. The formula led to further sanctioned work from studios including Pixar. But if that all sounds a little too twee princess, Pogo’s selections surprise, taking musical inspiration from films as wide-ranging as The Terminator (1984) and The Apartment (1960). As previewed in “Gardyn,” a video recorded in his mum’s flower patch, Pogo hopes to extend the project to sample the world. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Lynx

9 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

SATURDAY 12

MUSIC

Red Fang

Rock and roll! Hoochie coo! Truck on out and spread the news: Three bands, spawned from two cities of skinny-jeaned, tatted-up, new-boho meccas. One stage. My guess is Portland, Ore.’s, Danava, with its harmonized fuzz and searing synth, will flow seamlessly from the shreddy, Dixie-prone assault of Lecherous Gaze, an Oakland band boasting members of the now-defunct Annihilation Time and boldly claiming to embody “the future of rock and roll.” With tones of Black Flag, Thin Lizzy, and Queens of the Stone Age, can we up the rock ante any further? Yep: headliners Red Fang, also hailing from Portlandia, culminate a rawk-ous, piss-beer soaked night. Lordy mama, light my fuse. (Kat Renz)

With Danava and Lecherous Gaze

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

DANCE

“Dance Repertory 2011 Showcase”

As a professional dancer and educator, Donnette Heath became painfully aware of the gap between student dancer-choreographers and the professional world. So for the last 11 years, her dRep company has offered young artists performance opportunities through the yearly Vision Series Dance Festival. Participants are chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, and the festival has attracted participants from Northern California high schools, private studios, and colleges from as far as Modesto. What was initially a modest event has become an intriguing showcase for those interested in what the next generation is up to. Now Heath is taking the next step by putting four of these high-caliber student groups — chosen by adjudication — on the same stage with professionals such as Kunst-Stoff. (Felciano)

8 p.m., $15–$20

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 345-7575

www.fortmason.org

 

MUSIC

Slough Feg

Cultivating a vaudevillian approach that knows no equal or analog in the world of metal, Slough Feg is a San Francisco treasure. Though the strength of its recent album Animal Spirits has seen the band’s profile rise toward a more deserved apex, you can still catch the quartet in the close confines of the Hemlock Tavern, where the inimitable Mike Scalzi — the Lord Weird Slough Feg Himself — will be within spitting distance. The promised presence of incendiary Washingtonian NWOBHM troupe Christian Mistress and Portland, Ore., doom merchants Witch Mountain just adds to the already burgeoning excitement. (Ben Richardson)

With Christian Mistress and Witch Mountain

9:30 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 9

DIY bike building Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California, SF; www.howtonight.com. 7pm, free. If you’ve ever thought about custom building a bike and wonder what exactly is involved, come to this latest workshop in the “How To Night” series. Tonight, bicycle and skateboard designer Peter Verdone will show you how he builds custom frames from raw materials.

THURSDAY 10

“Beneath the Pacific Ocean” USF Fromm Hall, 330 Parker, SF; (415) 422-6828, www.pacificrim.usfca.edu. 5:45pm, free. Dr. Stephen R. Hammond of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will take you on a visual journey 20,000 leagues beneath the Pacific Rim as he presents his adventures and amazing discoveries from just the first year of a five year study. Learn about the diversity of animal communities, magnetically driven hot springs, underwater volcanoes, and more. Reservations are strongly encouraged.

FRIDAY 11

“History of the Animation Industry in California” California Historical Society Museum, 678 Mission, SF; (415) 357-1848, www.californiahistoricalsociety.org. 6pm, free. Join the California Historical Society and Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago as he presents his latest book The Looney Toons Treasure – a celebration of classic cartoons that have entertained generations. See how he breathes new life into such iconic characters as Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny, with behind-the-scenes memorabilia straight from the Warner Brothers vault.

SATURDAY 12

St. Patrick’s Day festival and parade Festival: Civic Center Plaza, Polk and McAllister, SF. 10am-5pm, free; parade starts at Second and Market, SF, 11:30am, free. www.sresproductions.com. San Francisco’s yearly St. Patrick’s Day festivities are the largest of any city west of the Mississippi, so be sure to attend this year’s 160th annual celebration of Irish American culture. The parade begins at Second and Market at 11:30am and will merrily march toward Civic Center Plaza, where many colorful festivities for the whole family awaits – cultural displays, a petting zoo, pony rides, and much more.

Asian American film festival forum Japantown Peace Plaza, Post and Buchanan, SF; www.caamedia.org; 12-10pm, free. Help kick off the Asian American film festival at this all-day showcase of live music, dancing, food, and fun. On this year’s bill are Taiwanese pop sensation Hola Sisters, indie rockers Soft Knife, dance crew Illest Villains, as well as slam poets, fine art exhibitions, film screenings, and more.

Urban foraging Meet at 7th Ave. and Lawton, SF; (415) 731-5627, www.gardenfortheenvironment.com. 1-3pm, free. Bring your walking shoes – and your appetite – for this eat-your-way-through-San-Francisco tour with local non-profit Garden for the Environment. Learn how to identify the abundant wild foods growing all around us and the best time to harvest as you hoof it up Sutro Hill. The tour is approximately three miles, half of which is uphill, so expect to get a good workout as well. Don’t forget to call ahead to register.

SUNDAY 13

Slingshot turns 23 Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck, SF; (415) 863-8688, www.slingshot.tao.ca. 7-9pm, free. Wish Slingshot Collective a very happy birthday at this party featuring live acoustic bands, tons of food, good people, and fun. Slingshot, in case you don’t know, is the quarterly, independent, radical newspaper that’s been published in the East Bay since 1988. You may have seen their cute handy organizers chock-full of radical info, including a menstrual calendar, info on police repression, and more – very handy indeed. They’ll have back issues available as well as a discussion about the future of the collective.

“Breathed…Unsaid” film festival SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 863-1414, www.somarts.org. Noon-8pm, free. Come check out this all-day mini film festival to accompany SOMArts most recent show “Breathed…Unsaid,” the multi-disciplinary exhibit featuring the work of 20 Bay Area artists exploring such themes as geography, origin, borders, and cultural diaspora. Today’s festival includes City of Borders, a film about an underground gay bar in Jerusalem that stands as a symbol of peace in a land divided by war; Crepe Covered Sidewalks, on one woman’s journey back home to New Orleans after Katrina; The Wall, a film about the complicated US immigration issue and the border patrol as well as shorts, previews, and more.

TUESDAY 15

Persian New Year festival The Persian Center, 2029 Durant, Berk.; (510) 548-5335, www.persiancenter.com. 6-10pm, free. Jump over a bonfire for Chahr-Shanbeh Souri to shake off the darkness of winter and welcome the lightness of spring, a Persian ritual passed down since ancient Zoroastrian times. Persian music, food and craft vendors, cultural organizations, and children’s activities add to the experience.

 

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Jackie Andrews. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

 

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