International

Sonic Reducer Overage: Ghostly, M. Ward, Har Mar Superstar, and so much more

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Woof! Har Mar Superstar’s “DUI.”

You’re stormy, San Francisco – yet you still partay like no other city. Here’s even more worthy music – more than we could squeeze into print.

Har Mar Superstar
Sean Tillmann, Sean Na Na – hey whatever your name is: we know you got the stuff to write songs for the Cheetah Girls. With the New Trust and the Limousines. Wed/5, 8 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

M. Ward
She and Him? No, him! The former South Bay teacher has made a pretty swell name for himself – though I’d love from him to break out of his Hold Time (Merge) shell.
Wed/5, 8 p.m., $29.50. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. (415) 563-6504.


Color me evocative: Christopher Willits’ “Colors Shifting.”

Ghostly International Live
Michna, Tycho, Christopher Willits, and other phantoms party like it’s the label’s 10-year anniversary. With the Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko, Deru, and Eliot L. Fri/6, 10 p.m. doors, $15-$20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.

wfmu ram tribute

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hi Kimberly,

Just a heads up about a breaking music news item that involves Hank IV, our side-project The ThemeWeavers and a star-studded cast.

The annual WFMU fundraiser marathon starts on Sunday, March 1st. For people who pledge at least $75 to Tom Scharpling’s “The Best Show on WFMU” program, one of the premium prizes is a various artists track-by-track cover of Paul McCartney’s classic 1971 album, Ram, featuring:

Danielson Family
Death Cab for Cutie
Dump (James McNew from Yo La Tengo)
Hank IV
Ted Leo
Aimee Mann
Portastatic (Mac from Superchunk)
The Spider Bags
ThemeWeavers LLC

plus a couple of other top-shelf acts that can’t yet be announced.

This RAM tribute will only be available for two weeks only. It won’t be sold anywhere nor will it be available anywhere after the conclusion of the WFMU Marathon.

If you want more info on this, just let me know.

best,

Tony

==

WFMU is 100% listener-supported freeform radio and a linchpin entity in American and international independent music and culture.

http://www.wfmu.org/marathon/index.shtml
http://www.wfmu.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Show_on_WFMU
http://wfmu.org/playlists/BS

Red Hot and getting brighter: ‘Dark Was the Night’ AIDS/HIV benefit comp stirs the fire

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darkwasthenightsml.jpg

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Dark Was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation
(4AD)

By Todd Lavoie

Benefit albums have always been a noble but iffy prospect for the music buyer. Unfortunately, too many well-meaning compilations have seen their intentions unfairly matched with either a glaring lack of cohesion or a failure to procure decent songs from the artists involved. More often than not, charity discs tend to come across as sonically and/or thematically disjointed, thanks to the piecemeal fashion with which they’re frequently put together – with each artist contributing without any sort of direction or instructions, the resulting collection runs the risk of ending up a jumbled, unfocused mess and an awkward start-to-finish listen.

Worse yet, many of these benefits seem to be cobbled together with whatever scraps have been previously tossed aside by the artists involved: lesser B-sides, uninspired live tracks, or sonic afterthoughts that never received a full fleshing-out for one reason or another. Considering the labor of love that goes on behind the scenes in assembling such a disc – contacting musicians and agents and record labels to convince them to join the cause, for example – it’s a shame that the end product often fails to project an equivalent amount of passion and fire. Scan the bargain bins at any CD shop, and you’ll see what I mean.

Not so for the Red Hot Organization, however – the culture-savvy international charity has spent the past 20 years fighting AIDS and raising HIV awareness through releasing countless inspired compilations. Unlike many other heart-of-gold organizations, Red Hot tends to do much more than merely compile a bunch of donated tracks to disc.

Ridin’ the synergy

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Listening to Keelay & Zaire’s debut, Ridin’ High (MYX Music Label), is like being transported back to Bay Area hip-hop in the early ’90s. Remember those glory days? Hobo Junction and Hieroglyphics battled for supremacy; the Invisibl Skratch Piklz and Bomb Records sparked the turntablism movement; and Celly Cel, Spice-1, Richie Rich, and the Click created mob music.

Production team Tim "Zaire" Lewis and Kyle "Keelay" Pierce evoke that era with balletic numbers such as "I’m on Swerv," with its Zapp-style — not T-Pain style — Auto-Tunin’, and laid-back gangsta soul like "Alright with Me" and "Nurf to the Turf." The cast itself isn’t Bay-specific. Its geographical makeup — a product of connections made through MySpace pages and online community forums — ranges from Raleigh, N.C. (Phonte Coleman and Darien Brockington) to Bloomberg, N.J. (rising producer Illmind’s group Fortilive). It’s a result of Internet hustling, and the chorus line raps, sings, swaggers, and jostles for attention. But the smooth, breezy, Dayton-tires-rolling-on-concrete tone remains.

"We really just wanted to make something that would give the listener the feeling of riding around in a car," says Keelay by phone. A Salt Lake City transplant, he enrolled at San Francisco State seven years ago. "After college, I just didn’t want to leave," he remembers. "I loved it in the Bay Area. It quickly became my home."

Keelay met Zaire on the UndergroundHipHop.com — once ughh.com — message boards. Both work 9-to-5 gigs: Keelay is a computer technician for Wells Fargo. Zaire, who lives in Newport News, Va., is a government contractor who mysteriously performs "intelligence work." ("I don’t know what he does!" answers Keelay when pressed for details.) Without a label deal, they painstakingly cobbled together Ridin’ High over two years, paying for the guest appearances themselves, though, Keelay adds, "a lot of people were really generous," and did it for free. "Me and Zaire had to send beats and sessions back and forth" via e-mail, he says. "We did it all through the Internet."

Now MYX Music Label (MML), who signed Keelay & Zaire to a deal last fall, has chosen Ridin’ High as its first major release. MML is a subsidiary of ABS-CBN Global, a Philippines media company that launched a U.S. version of MYX TV in 2007. According to Karim Panni, who manages the imprint, the "music lifestyle channel" can only be seen on DIRECTV in the Bay Area. But it is working on various deals that will widen its reach. Meanwhile, Comcast carries MYX’s most popular show, Built from Scratch, through its On Demand channel.

"There’s a lot of work that goes into getting added onto Comcast. But we’re working on it," says Panni, also known as Nightclubber Lang, one-third of the Seattle group Boom Bap Project. "I was on tour with Brother Ali, and the owner [of MYX] asked me if I wanted to run his record label."

It seems odd that a multimedia company with international ambitions would choose an indie rapper to launch a record label. And judging from MML’s release slate — including 20 C Energizers, described in press materials as a "hip-hop CD produced solely by Asian MCs, producers, DJs and singers," and MYX TV-affiliated DVDs such as Slanted Comedy, which showcases Asian American comedians — MYX appears to target Asian youth culture. But when asked about MYX’s Asian identity, Panni bristles. "I’m not trying to be typecast as an Asian label," he says. "We’re not trying to market to a niche audience. We’re reaching out to everybody."

"These days, with the Internet, the lines between major and underground are really fine. So instead of looking for this type or that type of rapper, I just look for the people who are making really good music that I would like," Panni adds. His expectations for Keelay & Zaire are modest: "Really, to establish themselves in the Bay Area, in the California market, and then become one of the elite production duos in the game. This is a good jump-off to show what they can do."

KEELAY & ZAIRE

With Blue Scholars, Grynch, and DJ Vin Roc

Sun/1, 9 p.m., $12–<\d>$15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 522-0333

www.slims-sf.com

Rights way

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Ask any filmmaker: facts and figures may horrify, but images are what leave the most lasting impression. With raw and shocking footage of worldwide atrocities, the movies featured in this year’s Human Rights Watch International Film Festival speak multitudes — even when their narrators are silent. Rather than attempt to encapsulate the entirety of the injustices committed, these films focus on the human side of things. And so we get glimpses: a mother weeping over the daughter taken from her, a student cradling her bloody head as she leads a protest.

Two particularly effective films restrict their focus to the women involved in these struggles—as perpetrators and as victims. Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling (2007) avoids such labels and focuses on female Israeli soldiers as individuals. Some might criticize the film for its apolitical tone. While many of the women lament war crimes, they have little to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. But the story that emerges from these interviews is a unique one, and a valuable addition to the ongoing debates. To See If I’m Smiling doesn’t seek to justify the actions of the Israeli Army, but rather to give its subjects space to reflect — both on their rights and on the rights they served to protect.

The scope of Julie Bridgham’s The Sari Soldiers (2008) is considerably wider. Her female subjects are the civilians of Nepal, the Maoist rebels, the Royal Nepal Army soldiers. Some are loyal to the king, while others march in protest. Bridgham wisely avoids coming down on one side or the other, allowing us to see that these women are united not by ideologies, but by their shared belief in a better Nepal.

One film can’t sum up a human rights quandary — and it surely can’t solve it either. At the very least, though, this festival gives a voice to people in dire need of speaking, whether through pictures or words.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Wed/27–Fri/27, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.

March 5–26, $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

www.hrw.org/iff

Bringing back Barbie

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By Laura Peach

This year, our favorite star of the Fashion Week runway happens to be both an international style icon and an old childhood friend: Barbie.

To pay tribute to the famous doll’s golden anniversary, designers such as Tommy Hilfiger, Nicole Miller, Derek Lam, and Nanette Lepore created dreamy doll designs for Barbie’s runway debut.

barbiedressup_0209.jpg

Grey way: Recombinant Labs re-emerges

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News from Recombinant Media Labs, over the transom yesterday:

“As some of you may or may not know, the Recombinant Media Labs facility located south of Market on Brannan Street in San Francisco closed its doors last spring. No formal announcements were made at that time due to legal complexities surrounding the closing. No further remarks will be made on this matter, but I think we can all agree that the RML Soma facility will be greatly missed. For those who are curious about what the future hold for Recombinant Media Labs please be on notice: RML is back in view.

“After Asphodel, Ltd. gave birth and support to the worldwide Recombinant Festivals of the ’90s, and then to the artist residency lab from 2005 through 2007 the RML nomadic initiative re-emerged after traveling in ’08 between Europe and North America, seeking new nodes of operation for performance, installation and exhibition. RML has moved on with fresh partnerships and independent alliances to resurface in a number of international configurations, which will be announced in the seasons to come.

Take off

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With more than two dozen headliners mashing and hanging together, The Spirit of Apollo (Anti-) promises pop ecstasy of the heavenly, spatial variety. DJ Zegon and Squeak E. Clean, the two wheelers and dealers behind the project, aspire toward a greater good, namely, bringing together people of disparate musical and geographical backgrounds — hence the name North America–South America (N.A.S.A.).

The Spirit of Apollo arrives a decade after Prince Paul’s double whammy of all-star concept albums, A Prince among Thieves and his collaboration with Dan "the Automator" Nakamura, Handsome Boy Modeling School’s So, How’s Your Girl? (both Tommy Boy). At the time, A Prince among Thieves — praised in a memorable Guardian essay by Oliver Wang titled "A Great Day in Hip-Hop" — towered as a complex opera of friends turned enemies, a Greek tragedy performed in the urban street.

N.A.S.A. seems inspired by that earlier era of overstuffed musical junkanoos. But they don’t get too deep. After all, the global village should be fun, right? So instead of dense narratives on international privatization, outsourcing, and proxy wars, Zegon and Squeak produce party fodder such as "Samba Soul," with Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Q-Bert, and "There’s a Party," with George Clinton and Chali 2na. The songs emphasize good, clean fun. A few of the rappers — notably Method Man on "N.A.S.A. Music" — sneak in f-bombs, but most are on their best behavior. Even Amanda Blank, notorious in club circles for waxing lyrical about poontang and peckers, keeps it PG on "A Volta."

The Spirit of Apollo appears safe for urban bourgeoisie with small children, but will anyone else find it listenable? Squeak built his name producing albums for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — he’s a producer of the engineering-and-microphone-placement variety, not a beatmaker à la Kanye West. Zegon’s musical career in Brazil is less known. As a result, the music doesn’t really boom and bump, instead opting for peppy skitters of funky hip-hop.

The duo soars, however, by launching incongruously great combinations. As two artists devoted to grotesqueries of the criminal and pornographic kind, Tom Waits and Kool Keith make a perfect match, even if the Gorillaz-like lurch of their "Spacious Thoughts" is hardly provocative. And the hipster dream pairing of West, Lykke Li, and Santogold over the Madonna-lite electro-pop of "Gifted" makes for a shining pop moment.

It’s that all-celebrities-are-friends-with-one-another myth that makes The Spirit of Apollo an intriguing dinner party — or, more accurately, a VIP-clogged backstage at Coachella or South by Southwest. Naturally, West and company talk about how cool they are and the burdens of fame. But with an hour-and-20-minute runtime, The Spirit of Apollo talks your ear off. It’s as if you got to the party early, got stuck cleaning up afterward, and at the end could only conclude, "Damn, that was a long-ass album."

N.A.S.A.

With Flosstradamus, Wallpaper, and DJ Morale

Feb. 28, 9 p.m., $18 advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Notes from the Politics blog

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If you’ve been reading the Guardian‘s Politics blog, you know that battles between and within some major California labor unions — including Service Employees International Union, SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers, the newly formed National Union of Healthcare Workers, and the California Nurses Association — are dividing the movement at a crucial time for progressive politics.

From important federal legislation such as the landmark Employee Free Choice Act to state legislation like the single-payer healthcare bill that Sen. Mark Leno plans to reintroduce in the coming months, philosophical and turf battles between unions have hurt labor’s ability to successfully counter corporate power.

"The fight inside SEIU [involving all four unions mentioned above] is one that is going to hurt our ability to pursue and pass legislation important not just to health care workers but workers in general," labor writer David Bacon told the Guardian. "There’s lots of energy going into jurisdictional battles and I think employers will use this fight against us … Sometimes it feels like we’re going backward."

But the battles continue. On Feb. 18, NUHW plans to picket outside UHW’s Oakland offices, protesting SEIU’s efforts to hinder NUHW organizing efforts (which we discuss more online). Philosophical differences between SEIU (which has close relationships with national corporate and political leaders) and unions like NUHW and CNA (which take more adversarial roles with employers and push for fundamental reforms such as single-payer health care) animate the debate.

Meanwhile, even more radicalized unions such as the International Longshore Workers Union have increasingly taken strong stances on immigrant rights and social justice issues like the BART police shooting of passenger Oscar Grant, which they discussed at a Feb. 14 rally that featured UC Santa Cruz professor and activist Angela Davis.

For more on the unfolding labor movement battles and what it means for progressive politics, keep reading the Guardian‘s Politics blog.

Attention: New Mexican revolution scheduled

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MEXICO CITY — Never before has the contrast between the World Economic Forum (WEF), the annual clambake of the capitalist class in Davos Switzerland, and the World Social Forum (WSF), created a decade ago to beat back the corporate globalization of the Planet Earth, been quite so stark.

While the moribund masters of the universe met on their ice mountain in the midst of the most chilling world-wide depression in a century, largely triggered by the overweening greed of those in attendance, tens of thousands samba’ed in the tropical heat of the Amazon city of Belem to celebrate the demise of capitalism. Among those on hand at the WSF dance party were presidents Chavez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, and Brazil’s Lula da Silva. Lula, who is usually a devoted Davos-goer, eschewed this year’s funerary event to avoid the stench that inevitably results from rubbing shoulders with mummies.

“The God of the Market has been broken,” the one-time Sao Paolo metalworker proclaimed to tens of thousands in Belem. Writing in the Mexican daily La Jornada, Luis Hernandez Navarro pointed out that it was precisely the social forces represented by the WSF that propelled Latin America’s social democratic presidents into power.

Indeed, the only two Latin heads of state to attend the caviar and champagne-laced charade in Davos were Colombia’s widely-disparaged Alvaro Uribe and Mexico’s questionably-elected president Felipe Calderon, both of them Washington’s darlings. Not even freshman U.S. president Obama, who recently lambasted the machinations of the same breed of bankers who gather each year on the ice mountain as “shameful,” showed up in Switzerland, an event that his predecessor in power George Bush never missed.

Felipe Calderon’s trip to Davos got off on an inauspicious foot. On the very day he flew out to the WEF, Bank of Mexico president Guillermo Ortiz confirmed that his country was in full-blown recession. For months, Calderon and his obscenely obese Secretary of Finance Augustin Carstens have characterized Mexico’s economic health as only suffering from “a little cough” (“catarrito.”) According to Bank of Mexico prognostications, the Aztec Nation will suffer negative growth in 2009 (-0.8% to -1.8%.)

The news hit Felipe like an ice ball from hell.

Seeking to put a happy face on his country’s dismal future, Calderon championed Mexico’s 1.5% 2008 growth rate but fooled few – Mexico’s anemic performance last year put it in 24th place out of 24 Latin American economies in the International Monetary Fund’s rankings, even behind Haiti, the basket case of the Americas. The IMF is predicting 1.1% growth for Latin America in 2009 and, like Ortiz, calculates that Mexico will fall into negative numbers.

The Mexican president’s delusional optimism in the face of so bleak an outlook played to incredulous audiences at Davos. Calderon also sought to blunt the recent blockbuster report of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff that Mexico is a potentially “failed” state by handing out trinkets like baseball caps bearing the ambiguous legend “It’s All In The Trust.” The giveaway (“magic spikes” to keep the mummies from slipping on Davos’s icy streets were also distributed) came during a session at which Calderon flogged Mexico’s chances of weathering the current economic turmoil – the Mexican president’s talk was slugged “Riders On The Storm,” a title plagiarized from the Doors’ 1971 apocalyptical anthem about a cowboy spree killer. Lead singer Jim Morrison was reportedly heard thrashing about wildly in his Paris grave.

As a bonus attraction, Calderon teamed with former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, now head of Yale University’s Institute for Globalization Studies, in an act conducted entirely in broken English that verged on tragicomedy. Zedillo, who coined the term “globalphobics” in reference to WSF types at the 1996 Davos get-down, revealed that the bank bail-out he sponsored during Mexico’s mid-1990s meltdown and dubbed FOBAPROA, has drained 20% of his country’s gross domestic product (PIB), bragging that the 400 trillion peso outlay was triple that of what the Bush-Obama bail-out has cost U.S. taxpayers.

As might be anticipated, the Calderon-Zedillo act did not play well on the homefront. While the Mexican presidents cavorted with the living dead in Davos, a half million of their compatriots were marching through the streets of Mexico City to protest the economic wreckage the neo-liberal ethos has wrought here. On January 25th, former left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, from whom Calderon stole the 2006 election, and his Movement to Defend Mexico’s Oil & The Popular Economy assembled upwards of 200,000 in the great central Zocalo plaza. Five days later, farmers and trade unionists matched that outpouring to denounce the damage done by the current crisis.

Among the crisis indicators: 6% inflation, the highest in ten years, and 340,000 jobs lost on Calderon’s watch. (Calderon campaigned as “the president of employment.”)

Just what Mexico’s unemployment numbers are is deeply obfuscated. Government bean-counters at the National Statistical and Geographic Institute (INEGI) claim it is no more than 4% – but under INEGI parameters, anyone who worked for more than an hour in the informal economy during the previous week is considered employed.

Utilizing such criteria, the emblematic apple sellers of the 1930’s Great Depression would not be determined to be jobless.

On the other side of the ledger, Enrique Galvan, who authors La Jornada’s “Money” column, calculates that 70% of the nation’s 45 million-strong workforce does not have a steady job. A maquiladora industry that assembles consumer goods for the ravished U.S. market and which generated a million jobs in the best of times has gone kaplooy and the Big Seven automakers (including Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Volkswagen) have shut down their plants for the duration of the downturn.

Meanwhile, workers’ pensions, privatized under Zedillo, have gone up in smoke, with those paying in losing up to 30% of their retirement funds in the past six months. To compound the devastation, the peso has sunk to record lows, having been devalued by 32% since last August 4th when it weighed in at 9.87 against the dollar. At this writing, 14.78 pesos will buy you one dollar Americano and the exchange rate is climbing toward 15.

Nonetheless. Mexico’s banks, rescued by Zedillo’s 15-cypher bailout and subsequently sold to transnational financial conglomerates, registered a 38% profit increase in 2008.

The current blasted economic landscape here bears striking similarities to another period of devastating downturn a hundred years ago. The 1907-08 depression was trip-wired when commodity prices collapsed and money dried up, casting tens of thousands of Mexican workers into the streets and accentuating the monstrous divide between rich and poor. To counter working class rage, dictator Porfirio Diaz cranked up repression, massacring hundreds of striking textile workers in Rio Blanco Veracruz and miners in Cananea Sonora. Synchronistically, workers at Cananea, the eighth largest copper pit in the world, have been on strike for the past 18 months in spite of Calderon’s efforts to break the walkout.

Despite the shattered economy and his deep-rooted unpopularity after 34 years in power, Diaz decided to run for re-election in 1910, stealing the vote that June and jailing opposition leader Francisco Madero, a role model for Lopez Obrador. To celebrate his “victory,” Porfirio Diaz threw a huge party to mark Mexico’s first 100 years of independence from Spain, expending the nation’s entire social budget on useless monuments, many of them lined up along Mexico City’s Champs D’Elysie, the Paseo de la Reforma.

The pageantry culminated on Independence Day, September 16th with the installation of a gilded Angel of Independence on that glittering boulevard. Two months later, the Mexican revolution, led by Madero, exploded, and Diaz was forced to flee the country.

Just before Felipe Calderon took off to tete-a-tete with the dead in Davos, amidst patriotic bombast and flowery fireworks, the Mexican president announced the construction of the Arc of the Bicentennial to be inaugurated September 16th 2010, commemorating both the 200th year of Mexican independence and the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican revolution. Following the Porfirian model, the Arc of the Bi-Centennial, whose cost was unannounced, will be built at the foot of the Paseo de la Reforma.

Mexico’s political metabolism seems to break out in insurgencies every 100 years on the 10th year of the century. In 1810, the country priest Miguel Hidalgo launched the struggle for independence from the Crown. In 1910, Francisco Madero ignited the fuse of the epoch Mexican revolution.

At this writing, there are less than 330 days until 2010.

Lit: What about Iraqi women?

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By Marke B.

liberation0209a.jpg

To a slightly lesser extent than the invasion of Afghanistan — where Taliban assholes are still spraying young girls’ faces with acid — the occupation of Iraq was touted as a women’s liberation project. We were the white knights coming to tear the veils off and throw open wide the doors to fancy new schools, theaters, community centers, and business opportunities.

Boy, that turned out to be quite a bit of presumptive hash. In the giant WTF that followed “shock and awe,” many learned the limits of such blanket assertions — but of course the deaths of tens of thousands are still seen here as nothing but a big fat lesson for Westerners. What about the people who had to live through it all?

One incisive complaint is that the West has failed to include enough voices from Iraq to give a fuller picture of the occupation’s effects — both the disastrous and the hopeful. Iraqi women, especially, seem even more invisible now than before the invasion.

Co-authors Nadje Al-Ali, Reader in Gender Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and Nicola Pratt, Lecturer in Comparative Politics and International Relations at the University of East Anglia, just released a new UC Press book that attempts a corrective. What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq is the first book to examine how Iraqi women have fared since the invasion, and attempts to “expose the gap between rhetoric that placed women center stage and the present reality of their diminishing roles in the ‘new Iraq.'”

SEIU preaches unity while trying to divide and conquer CNA

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By Steven T. Jones

Service Employees International Union is caught in the position of decrying efforts by breakaway leaders of the new National Union of Healthcare Workers to steal away SEIU members during a critical moment for the labor movement, while at the same time SEIU is meddling in the internal affairs of another union, California Nurses Association.

On Thursday, CNA blasted SEIU for “impersonating nurses in a multimillion dollar campaign” to topple current CNA leaders and replace them with candidates closer to SEIU and its incremental approach to health care reform. The charges echoed those by Sal Rosselli and other NUHW leaders, who say SEIU under President Andy Stern has sacrificed member interests and rights in its drive become a national powerhouse that works closely with elected officials and large corporate employers.

SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette responded dismissively: “CNA has made wild and untrue charges against SEIU members before. This release is more of the same…It is true that there are CNA members that are unhappy with the direction their union is taking. We have spoken with a number of them, and we support the CNA nurses who want to hold their union’s leaders accountable.”

But the next day, after the Guardian identified SEIU members from other states who have been contacting CNA members in an aggressive campaign to unseat CNA leadership, Ringuette admitted to the campaign, defiantly saying SEIU would do everything in its power to protect its interests.

CNA’s leaders say SEIU’s campaign is illegal. And it certainly belies claims that SEIU leaders have made about the NUHW situation, in which Ringuette and others have repeatedly said union infighting now is major distraction from efforts to pass the landmark Employee Free Choice Act and stave off deep cuts threatened by the dire budget situation in California and its cities and counties.

Labor war widens

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By Steven T. Jones

On a day when the labor movement rallied in cities across the country in support of the federal Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for employees to form a union, bitter infighting involving the nation’s largest union, Service Employees International Union, also escalated today.
The California Nurses Association today charged SEIU with launching an illegal, multi-million-dollar campaign to take over their organization using what that they call a phony nurses group called RNs for Change to take over the leadership of CNA and affiliate it with SEIU, which calls the accusations “wild and untrue.”
CNA spokesperson Chuck Idelson called SEIU head Andy Stern corrupt and power hungry, echoing criticisms from Stern-ousted United Healthcare Workers leaders who last week formed the new union National Healthcare Workers Union. NUHW spokesperson John Borsos said the new union has now gathered petitions from about 25,000 workers in 101 facilities who want to leave SEIU and join NUHW.
I’ve been doing interviews and research on these related issues all day, so check back here tomorrow for a more complete report.

Wave your hands in the air

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Parisian hottie and Disco Death Tour headliner Arnaud Rebotini sports the slicked-back pompadour and vintage-shirted ensemblage of a primo rockabilly daddy — right down to the fifth of Jack Daniels he usually stashes behind his onstage equipment — augmented by the handlebar mustache of a ’70s porn star.

The music he makes, however, both as the vocalist with "frozen Balearic gay biker house" heroes Black Strobe and on his own as an analog electro-warrior in a laptop landscape, suggests more a canny backroom raver than a rhythm-and-blues or retro-disco traditionalist. Not to say that the rumble of souped-up engines and the salacious whir of Super-8 skin flicks don’t stream through his ancient electronics, but he’s definitely more about raising hands in the air than laying down steamy riffs.

Rebotini’s last solo release, Music Components (Citizen, 2008), was a valiant and largely successful attempt to build an solid dancefloor set around analog fanboy fetish instruments like the Korg Monopoly, Juno 60, and TRs 909 and 808 — no laptops or external sequencers allowed. What emerged was a MIDI wet dream that stomped the jambox and inverted the Valerie and Ghostly International camps’ Ableton-driven nostalgia formula — this man who looked like he walked right out of Can made actual music of the moment on his tinny machines.

Meanwhile, Black Strobe transformed from a witty electroclash-like DJ-vocalist duo into a full-blown live four-piece, which, confusingly, will be performing a DJ set on the tour. Also on hand will be earnest acid-disco hipsters In Flagranti — but my dream of dreams would be for Rebotini, French king of the analog 808, to someday team up with Alexander Robotnik, Italian king of the acid-generating 303, for a mind-blowing all-night session of laptopless hiptwisters. Rebotini and Robotnik in 2010!

DISCO DEATH TOUR

With Arnaud Rebotini, Black Strobe DJ set, and In Flagranti

Sat/7, 10 p.m., $10 advance

103 Harriet, SF

www.blasthaus.com

Hot pink

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Filmmakers like Jonathan Demme who worked for Roger Corman in the early 1970s were delighted by their freedom to include just about anything — radical political issues, wild tonal shifts, etc. — as long as the basic drive-in requirements of gratuitous T&A and violence were shoehorned in. That moment was brief. But something similar has lasted decades in Japan’s "pink film" milieu, where often youthful talent cut teeth on low-budget softcore features typically an hour in length.

With genital display and graphic sex illegal — we’ve all seen Japanese private parts obscured by a digital fogblot — "pink" makers must exercise a little more imagination than Western pornmeisters. No doubt there’s been much unwatchable dross among the diminished but still-active genre’s thousands of titles to date. But there’s also been inspired, sometimes just-plain-weird stuff, like Godardian Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969), extreme nunsploitation School of the Holy Beast (1974) and 2003’s Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (a.k.a. Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice), which played the San Francisco International Film Festival.

In a rare moment of retrospection, this year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival sidebars "I am Curious (Pink): The Second Wave of Japanese Sex Cinema, 1986–Present." Offering two double bills at a sum length barely more than that of one bloated Hollywood prestige flick, this sampler ranges from the goofy to the gloomy. There are some constants — ironic use of Western classical music, variably consensual abuse of women, vigorously mimed sex acts — but these singular films aren’t much like each other, let alone most adult entertainment you’d see here. Even their misogyny often feels like an in-joke at men’s expense.

Not so in The Bedroom (also known, rather misleadingly, as Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture), a 1992 feature by Hisayasu Sato of gay "pink" Muscle — a dismemberment fantasia that set the gold standard for walkouts when bizarrely chosen as 1990’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival opening nighter. This cold, morbid, semi-abstract objet d’art queasily mixes identity blur, voyeurism, tranquilizer excess, marital ennui, homicide, and lewd consumption of chopped lettuce. It’s notorious for giving a small role to one Issei Sagawa, who’d committed real-life murder and cannibalism — only to be just briefly institutionalized before becoming a still-popular multimedia "celebrity" back home. Ick.

On a less appalling note, the other three IndieFest "pinks" take themselves less seriously. Osamu Sato’s New Tokyo Decadence: The Slave from 2007 is supposedly based on the experiences of star Rinako Hirasawa, who discovered early on that she was into masochism — though not averse to playing professional dominatrix. She finds fulfillment under the thumb of her eventual office boss, only to discover he’s a wuss in sadist’s clothing. Often funny, New Tokyo Decadence views its heroine not as victim but a sometimes ambivalent power bottom who actually pulls the strings.

For full-on silliness there’s Motosugu Watanabe’s 1986 Sexy Battle Girls, whose schoolgirl protagonist has an anatomical irregularity her father is hell-bent on using to avenge a long-ago wrong. "The Venus Crush is your secret weapon! Love is not an option!" he insists. Sent to a private school where "bad" students are sold to politicians as sex slaves and ballpoint pens are shot like deadly arrows, she combats perils including one highly exotic dildo you won’t find at Good Vibrations.

Shuji Kataoka’s same-year S+M Hunter features a titular character outfitted spaghetti western–style with cowboy boots, priest’s collar, a skull’s-head eyepatch, Morricone-type musical theme, and extraordinary erotic-lassoing abilities. But he and fellow "Pleasure Dungeon" habitués meet their match in the Bombers, a man-hating (and gay-man molesting) girl gang à la H.G. Lewis’ She-Devils on Wheels (1968). If you’ve yearned for a battle of the sexes encompassing gratuitous Nazi regalia and pervasive retro disco woo! woo! — well, prepare to be satiated.

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 5–22, most shows $11

Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF; and Shattuck, 2230 Shattuck, Berk.

www.sfindie.com

Fallout from the union clash

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› steve@sfbg.com

Fallout from the power struggle between Service Employees International Union and its Oakland-based local, United Healthcare Workers, has been felt particularly strongly in the Bay Area since SEIU took over UHW and ousted its leaders Jan. 27 (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09).

After SEIU replaced UHW head Sal Rosselli and more than 70 elected leaders of that union for defying SEIU demands, Rosselli and his team formally resigned from SEIU Jan. 29 and formed a new union, National Union of Healthcare Workers, hoping to draw thousands of current SEIU members disgruntled with the top-down management style of SEIU head Andy Stern.

It took a few days for SEIU to take physical control of UHW’s Oakland offices, where Oakland police officers were called Jan. 30 to mediate a final showdown between UHW loyalists and the new SEIU management team, which is under the direction of two SEIU executive vice presidents that Stern appointed as trustees: Eliseo Medina and David Regan (see "SEIU seizes last holdout: UHW’s Oakland headquarters," Guardian Politics blog).

"It’s not about the building, it’s about the members," Regan told the Guardian Jan. 30, later adding, "At the end of the day, the members of the union get to decide if they want to be in the union or not be in the union."

And after a weekend when Rosselli said SEIU was aggressively trying to close outstanding contracts with many employers, a move that would make it difficult for members to disaffiliate from SEIU and join NUHW, he filed petitions showing that many members do indeed want to leave SEIU.

"We don’t trust them with our contracts and we don’t trust them with our dues," Shayne Silba, a psychiatric technician with Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, told reporters during a Feb. 2 teleconference announcing that about 9,000 workers at 62 medical facilities have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board asking to leave SEIU and join NUHW.

Rosselli said that more than 50 percent of workers at most of these facilities signed the petition, and he’s asking SEIU to honor the request and let them go.

The list of facilities includes some prominent Bay Area medical centers such as Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Alta Bates, and California Pacific Medical Center and other entities run by Sutter Health. Sutter has clashed with union members and community leaders over numerous issues, including the future of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission District.

"The Sutter Healths of the world are colluding with SEIU just like they did before the trusteeship," Rosselli told reporters, echoing his persistent theme that SEIU is too cozy with employers and doesn’t negotiate good contracts.

SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette disputed that characterization and the accusations that the union was trying to quickly sew up outstanding contracts with employers to forestall moves to NUHW. "There were an astonishing number of contracts left incomplete," she said. "It’s callous to leave contracts open for whatever purpose."

Regan said SEIU will challenge the NUHW petitions. "We are not going to let these discredited, deposed members weaken UHW," he said, adding that the petition drive "is incredibly cynical and reckless in this economic climate."

But the wheels are now set in motion for a protracted fight over who will lead UHW’s 150,000 members, as well as the question of whether Rosselli’s highly democratic management style might be attractive to members of other unions.

"We’re getting calls from other SEIU members from other locals about joining NUHW," Rosselli said, citing Alameda County Medical Center, whose employees are part of the San Francisco–based SEIU Local 1021, one of many locals that have been reformulated in recent years by Stern, who then appoints its leaders.

Rosselli plans to hold a founding convention for NUHW in March, when members would vote on bylaws and a constitution, and elect their leaders, while Regan said SEIU will work to win the confidence of its members: "We have to show people that we’re on their side and we care about the work we have to do together."

>>Read more union struggle coverage here.

Valentine’s Day events

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Click here to see all Valentine’s Day listings on one page


PARTIES, EVENTS, AND BENEFITS

Black Valentine Masquerade Club Mighty, 119 Utah; www.mighty119.com. Feb. 13, 10pm-3am, $15. Sunset Promotions and Blasthaus present this all-out party extravaganza, featuring UNKLE’s leading man James Lavelle, Evil Nine, and revelers dressed in dastardly dark costumes.

Bootie — A Special Valentine’s Party DNA Lounge, 375 11th St.; www.bootiesf.com. Feb. 14, 10pm, $12. Celebrate the holiday mash-up style with DJ Freddy, King of Pants, twisted love songs by house band Smash-Up Derby, and a midnight mashup show by Valentine.

CockBlock Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, cockblocksf.com. Feb. 14, 10pm, $7 . Get your Valentine’s groove on at this queer dance party for lezzies, queers, lovers, and friends, featuring DJ Nuxx.

Date and Dash Noc Noc, 557 Haight; www.dateanddash.com. Feb. 14, 8pm, $35 (free to first 20 people). Speed-dating with a Lower Haight twist. RSVP for red drinks, trendy beats, and a faux auction.

I Heart the Utah Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St.; 546-6300, www.thehotelutahsaloon.com. Feb. 14, 9pm, $8. Celebrate the kind of love that lasts — that between a bar and 100 years’ worth of patrons — with oyster shooters, champagne, a costume contest, and live music by El Capitan and Let’s Make Something.

Love on Wheels Dating Game Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. Feb. 13, 6-9pm, free for SFBC members. Join this dating game exclusively for two-wheelers, where bike bachelors and bachelorettes quiz a panel of three cyclists to select their date — and then roll to hip local spots.

Milonga de Amor Ferry Building; 990-8135. Feb. 13, 5:30-8pm, free. Celebrate V-Day, sensuous tango, and slow food.

Sexy Tour of SF Strip Clubs for Singles or Couples (510) 291-9779, www.slinkyproductions.com. Feb. 13, 6-10pm, $99/person or $190/couple, includes entry to all clubs, two drinks, and full-course dinner. Peek into a world of fantasy, glamour, and intrigue with the safety of a fun group and a guide whose expertise is leading women and couples.

Shindig 69 Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. Thurs/12, 8:30pm, $10. Start your weekend off with a tribute to the sexy ’60s, featuring The Devil-Ettes, Kitten on the Keys, and DJs from Bardot a Go Go and Teenage Dance Craze — all to benefit the Keep a Breast Foundation.

Supperclub Suicide Girls Afterparty Supperclub, 657 Harrison; 348-0900, supperclub.com. Feb. 14, 7:30pm, $100 for dinner and party. Have someone you’re trying to get in bed? Invite them to share a four course menu, bottle of champagne, and special afterparty with Suicide Girls.

Thousand Faces Misera-Ball OmniCircus, 550 Natoma; 701-0686, omnicircus.com. Feb. 14, 8pm, $10. Celebrate the lovelorn with a multifaceted performance and afterparty. Special discounts for the lonely.

Valentine Art and Wine Tasting Party for Singles The Artists Alley, 863 Mission; winesocials.com. Feb. 13, 7:30pm, $20–$30. Sample appetizers and a fabulous selection of wines from California and around the world at one of SF’s premier art galleries, co-sponsored by the Society of Single Professionals.

Valentine’s Day BikeAbout San Francisco Zoo, Sloat at 47th St.; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Feb. 14, 8:30-11am, $25–$30. Woo at the Zoo too rich for your blood? Bring your bike and your sweetie for a leisurely, guided pedal around the zoo followed by a continental breakfast. Discount for tandem cyclists!

Valentine’s Day Poetry Luchadores Sub-mission, 2183 Mission; 863-6303, www.poormagazine.org. Feb. 14, 7pm, $20 to fight, $10 to watch. Your favorite revolutionary poets, poverty scholars, mediamakers, and cultural workers at POOR Magazine mash up poetry, gender, and wrestling for their second annual Battle of ALL of the sexes.

Valentine’s Eve for Singles Orson, 508 Fourth St.; 777-1508, www.orsonsf.com. Feb. 13, 5:45pm-closing, price varies. Choose your own adventure (and price range) at Orson by attending either the Cupid’s Arrow Dinner Party four-course meal or Aphrodisiac Dessert After Party, with dancing for all starting at 10pm.

Woo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo, Sloat at 47th St.; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Sat/7, 6pm; Sun/8, 12pm; Feb. 14, 12pm & 6pm; $75. Enjoy the 20th annual zoo sex tour with Jane Tollini, featuring new animals, new positions, and new kinky information — plus brunch or dinner.

BAY AREA

Charles Chocolates Tasting J Vineyards and Winery, 11447 Old Redwood Hwy, Healdsburg; (707) 431-3646, www.jwine.com. Sat/7, 12:30-3pm, $20. Join the premium artisan chocolatier for a special Valentine’s Day-themed chocolate and wine tasting at J Vineyards.

Family Valentine’s Play Party River of Light Massage & Healing Arts, 256 Shoreline, Mill Valley; (415) 846-8181, laughplayhug.com. Feb. 14, 10am-12pm, $10–<\d>$20. Enjoy heartfelt family fun, sensory games, movement, laughter, and drama with your extended family.

Progressive Dinner for Single Women and Men Ristorante Don Giovanni, 235 Castro, Mt. View; (510) 233-9700, www.meetinggame.com. Sat/7, 7pm, free for newcomers. Find your Valentine among the 20 other singles enjoying a three-course meal.

Sweetheart of the Year Dinner Point San Pablo Yacht Club, 700 W. Cutting, Richmond; (510) 232-1102, www.pointrichmond.com/methodist. Feb. 12, 6:30pm, $35. Honor Pat Dornan at the First United Methodist Church of Richmond’s fun-filled evening of memories and laughter.

Valentine’s Dance 707 W. Hornet, Pier 3, Alameda; (510) 521-8448, www.uss-hornet.org. Feb. 14, 8pm, $40–$75. Don your best ’40s or ’50s attire and dance to jazz and big-band classics aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

FILM, MUSIC, AND PERFORMANCE

Dating, Marriage, Dating Farley’s, 1315 18th St.; www.farleyscoffee.com. Feb. 14, 7:30pm, donations welcome. Get hopped up on coffee while previewing Liz Grant’s new love-and-romance themed stand-up comedy show.

Love Bites Pop Rocks: LGCSF Sings Top-40 Hits of Bitterness and Betrayal Women’s Building, 3543 18th St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.womensbuilding.org. Fri/6, Sat/7, adults-only show Feb. 13, 8pm, $15–$30. Cupid takes a well-deserved beating when the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco presents its sixth annual Valentine’s Day cabaret and musical extravaganza.

Mortified: Doomed Valentine’s Show Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St.; www.makeoutroom.com, www.getmortified.com. Feb. 12, Feb. 13, 8pm, $12–$15. Share the pain, awkwardness, and bad poetry associated with love as performers read from their teen-angst artifacts.

Origins of Love with John Cameron Mitchell Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St.; 863-0611, www.victoriatheatre.org. Fri/13-Sun/15, times vary, $25. Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron presents a romantic potpourri of song, prose, poetry, and film, including a rare chance to hear Mitchell sing selections from Hedwig.

Sexy Valentine’s Erotica Reading Good Vibrations Polk Street Gallery, 1620 Polk; 345-0400, events.goodvibes.com. Fri/6, 6:30pm, free. Enjoy a glass of wine while talented group of local writers read their sexy short stories, frisky flash fiction, passionate poems, and hot haikus.

Spookshow A Go-Go Kimo’s, 1351 Polk; 885-1535, www.kimosbarsf.com. It’s a Valentine’s Day massacre with performances by Dottie Lux, Alotta Boutte, Kitten on the Keys, Lady Satan, Ruby White, and DJ Miz Margo, and films by Val Killmore and Shadow Circus.

Sweet Cookbook Reading and Eating Red Hill Books, 401 Cortland; www.dogearedbooks/redhill. Feb. 13, 7pm, free. Red Hill welcomes chef Mani Niall to read from his new book Sweet!: From Agave Nectar to Turbinado, as well as share some of his treats.

BAY AREA

Hearts Gathering King Middle School Auditorium, 1781 Rose, Berk.; Feb. 14, 8pm, $15–$20. Enjoy an evening of poetry and music with Diane di Prima, Michael McClure, California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, and former Poet Laureate Al Young performing with bassist Dan Robbins.

ART/FASHION EVENTS

I Love You Because … Design Guild Gallery, 427 Bryant; www.ilyb.org. Feb. 14, 8pm, $10. Celebrate V-Day at the closing party for photographer and TransportedSF visionary Alexander Warnow’s collaborative photo project exploring why people love who they do. (You can also view the photos at the gallery Wed.-Sat., 12-6pm, starting Feb. 5.)

Love Sick II Muse Studios, 224 Sixth St.; www.lovesickfashion.com. Feb. 14, 7pm, $15–$20. Find flirty fashions and lascivious lingerie at this trunk-and-runway show featuring Hide & Seek Lingerie, Ape’ritif Lingerie, Miss Velvet Cream, and more. A portion of proceeds from tickets and kissing booth benefit The Riley Center, a local domestic violence shelter.

CLASSES, LECTURES, AND WORKSHOPS

Cooking Crush for Singles Crushpad Winery, 2573 Third St.; 1-888-907-2665, www.partiesthatcook.com. Feb. 12, 6:30-9pm, $95. Singles in their 30s and 40s are invited to mix and mingle as they tour the winery, share a nibble and a glass of wine, and pair up for cooking lessons.

The Origins of Love and Love’s Expression Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; 561-0360, www.exploratorium.edu. Feb. 14, 2pm, with museum admission. Dr. Thomas Lewis offers a Darwinian twist on modern romance, exploring the psychobiology behind human intimacy.

Valentine’s Aphrodisiac Chef Joe’s Culinary Salon, 16 a/b Sanchez; 626-4379, www.theculinarysalon.com. Feb. 14, 11am-1:30pm, $75. Join expert (and hilarious) Chef Joe for a course in cooking food that’ll get you in the mood, including oyster’s mignonette, asparagus in puff pastry, and chocolate fondue.

BAY AREA

Sound Healing for Relationships and Interpersonal Communication Tian Gong International Foundation, 830 Bancroft, Lotus Room 114, Berk.; (510) 883-1920, www.tiangong.org. Feb. 13, 7-8:30pm, $5–$10. Get ready for reutf8g at this qigong practice dedicated to energetically healing relationships, including Celestial Song and Love Activations for soul-to-soul communication.

Revolutionary Love Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, UC Berkeley campus, Berk.; ewocc.berkeley.edu. Explore the foundations of self-love with workshops, music, dancing, discussion, and a keynote address by Cherrie Moraga during the 24th Empowering Women of Color Conference.

Valentine’s Day at Habitot Children’s Museum 2065 Kittredge, Berk.; (510) 647-1111, www.habitot.org. Mon/9-Feb. 14, regular admission. Young children can create heart-themed art for loved ones. Visitors who bring craft supplies get free adult admission.

Wholeness Thru Relationship Center for Transformative Change, 2584 Martin Luther King Jr., Berk.; (510) 549-3733, transformativechange.org. Feb. 14, 7am-4pm, $35–$50. Invite a friend, ally, or someone with whom you’re having a hard time to this daylong workshop about developing relationships with yourself, your loved ones, and your community.

Check out more Valentine’s Day events listings on our SEX SF blog.


>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

SEIU vs. UHW, a ringside seat

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Guardian intern Joe Sciarrillo was at Friday’s takeover of the UHW by SEIU and has these words and images:
seiu-sign.jpg
Friday afternoon at the United Healthcare Workers headquarters, eight Oakland Police officers mediated a dispute between UHW members resisting the takeover by Service Employees International Union and SEIU representatives who showed up to take custody of the building. Both sides sought to convince the police to let their respective groups stay in the building.

Lover Joyce, a former UHW Executive Board member and medical assistant at Kaiser Walnut Creek, explained to reporters what the SEIU representatives had done around 11am. “They broke into the building, pushed our members” after using bolt-cutters to open the doors. Joyce and several other members had been sleeping at the office for a little over a week, so when SEIU leaders arrived, they called the Oakland Police Department. “We have the deed to the property!” he continued to assure the police and reporters. “It belongs to the Unity Healthcare Workers Corporation, not UHW or SEIU.”

Tara Gorewitz, a contract specialist for UHW at Walnut Creek Kaiser, later explained the history of why the building was legally given to the Unity Healthcare Workers Corporation and not to UHW or SEIU. She noted that Shirley Ware, the late Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU UHW- West Local 250, set up the deed in this manner so that the members, rather than the union, could retain rights to use the building in the case of a split.

‘Because you showed your ass’: ‘Black Lips in India’ peek

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Culture clash? The trailer for The Black Lips in India

This in from peeps with the Black Lips (known for their adventurous wandering in Israel and about):

“Like the Sex Pistols’ January ’78 tour of the Deep South, the Black Lips recent expedition to India was marked by a series of fairly seismic culture shocks. Everything from bottle-throwing fans at a gig in Pune, to livid show promoters in Chennai, all in response to a bunch of full-frontal punk rock provocateurs from Atlanta. For those that still haven’t heard the story, the band was booked to play on India’s equivalent of American Idol, The ‘Campus Rock Idol’ Tour, a big-ticket televised series with large corporate sponsors.

“Last Saturday, in Chennai, the band entertained the crowd with what stateside fans would consider a typically raucous Black Lips show, replete with intra-band lip locking, and Cole de-pantsing, mooning the crowd, and attempting to play his six-string with, well, his privates. Barely OK in America, definitely not OK in India, the band was subsequently chased out of the country and the sponsors pulled the plug, effectively canceling the rest of the tour and the television season. The events have caused an international wave of news coverage, rounded out by everything from defensive “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll” stories to meatier pieces that tease out the more nuanced concepts at play here, namely artistic freedom versus cultural respect.

Why newspapers won’t die

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By Tim Redmond

But before I get into that:

Doesn’t the Chronicle’s new design look awful? I mean, it’s cluttered and backward-looking and I don’t think it’s going to save THAT newspaper from its financial problems. Why doesn’t the Chron just take local news seriously, cover San Francisco, and hire just one, just one progressive urban political columnist to balance the suburban Chuck Nevius?

Okay: But newspapers aren’t going to die. I try to explain this to people all the time. I tell students that journalism is going to be around forever, even if we stop killing trees to make paper and the internet morphs into a consensual hallucination or people screw sockets into their brains to learn things or whatever. There will still be communication, and some of it will still involve journalists.

I don’t always agree with Bill Keller, the editor of the NY Times, but in a recent column answering readers’ questions, he got this one just right:

First, there is a diminishing supply of quality journalism, and a growing demand. By quality journalism I mean the kind that involves experienced reporters going places, bearing witness, digging into records, developing sources, checking and double-checking, backed by editors who try to enforce high standards. I mean journalism that, however imperfect, labors hard to be trustworthy, to supply you with the information you need to be an engaged citizen. The supply of this kind of journalism is declining because it is hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work. The traditional practitioners of this craft — mainly newspapers — have been downsizing or declaring bankruptcy. The wonderful florescence of communication ignited by the Internet contains countless voices riffing on the journalism of others but not so many that do serious reporting of their own. Hence the dwindling supply. The best evidence of the soaring demand is the phenomenal traffic to the Web sites that do dependable news reporting — nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors to the site you are currently reading, and that number excludes the burgeoning international audience. The law of supply and demand suggests that the market will find a way to make the demand pay for the supply.

And it doesn’t take that much money to create a news operation on the web. The giants in the industry (and some of the not-so-giants, like the SF Chronicle) may fall by the wayside, and we may see much more web-based local reporting from a larger number of smaller and more diffuse news outlets (already happening in SF) and that won’t be such a bad thing.

But newspapers, in the traditional sense of organizations that pay staffers to report and deliver news and charge people (in our case, by showing them ads) to access it … that’s not going anywhere.

mills college music

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Because the Bay Guardian is the go-to source for Bay Area audiences, I thought your readers would be interested to know about the latest happenings at Mills College with the opening of its new concert hall and exciting all-star contemporary music festival.

From February 21-April 5 Mills will celebrate their rich music legacy with a six-concert festival, Giving Free Play to the Imagination. An elite group of musicians who have helped shape contemporary music around the world, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Roscoe Mitchell, Joan Jeanrenaud, Muhal Richard Abrams, the Arditti Quartet, and Fred Frith, among others, will perform pieces of their own design, including several world-premiere pieces, and of Mills composers past and present. At this time Mills will also celebrate the reopening of the Mills Concert Hall, a venue that has inspired audiences for more than 80 years. Oliveros will play the first sounds in the Hall on February 21.

Mills College is the international leader in contemporary music, which is why musicians from around the world come to Mills, and how Mills has become an incubator for the evolution of contemporary music, with the likes of Dave Brubeck, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Burt Bacharach, Darius Milhaud and Phil Lesh among students and faculty. As the Bay Guardian has covered Mills’ music in the past, I think your readers would be interested to know about this exciting festival, the Bay Area’s latest greatest concert venue, and what’s new in the world of Mills as its musicians inspire communities in the Bay Area and around the world.

Please let me know if we can arrange an interview with Mills music leadership or the performers to help you build your story. A summary of the Festival program is below, with further details available at www.mills.edu/musicfestival.

Best regards,

Victoria Terheyden

Victoria Terheyden

MacKenzie Communications, Inc.

600 California Street, Suite 1590

San Francisco, CA 94108

Tel: 415.403.0800 ext. 30
Fax: 415.403.0801

www.mackenziesf.com

Media Contacts:

Quynh Tran, Mills College

Media Relations Manager

510.430.2300

qtran@mills.edu

Victoria Terheyden

MacKenzie Communications, Inc.

415.867.2516

vterheyden@mackenziesf.com

Mills College Celebrates 80 Years of Musical Innovation with

Giving Free Play to the Imagination Music Festival

OAKLAND, CA—Feb. 3, 2009. Mills College celebrates 80 years of musical innovation as it reopens the historic Mills Concert Hall after an extensive 18-month renovation with a music festival featuring some of the world’s leading contemporary musicians. The six-concert series, Giving Free Play to the Imagination, runs from February 21 through April 5, 2009.

Musical innovators such as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Joan Jeanrenaud, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, the Arditti Quartet, and Fred Frith, among many others, will celebrate Mills College’s leadership in defining contemporary music.

At the heart of the aesthetic and educational mission of music at Mills is a tradition of experimentalism. Breaking free from preconceived notions about music, Mills composers and performers embrace new sounds and musical forms while pursuing creative, exploratory, and individual approaches to music. It is this unique approach that has made Mills College the destination for sonic pioneers. And it is why some of the top names in contemporary music—Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Joëlle Léandre, Phil Lesh, John Cage, Anthony Braxton, and Pauline Oliveros, to name just a few—have been part of the faculty and student population at Mills.

“Because of our long history of support for an experimentalist tradition across barriers of genre, cultural identity, or perceived hierarchy, Mills is uniquely placed to cultivate, appreciate, and celebrate musical pioneers,” said Fred Frith, head of the Music Department and internationally known composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser.

Mills music faculty, students, and visiting artists from varied musical traditions come from as far away as Argentina, China, France, and Turkey to study musical forms from electronic music to classical performance to jazz improvisation.

“Ever since renowned French classical composer and Mills’ professor Darius Milhaud encouraged soon-to-be-renowned jazz pianist composer and Mills’ student Dave Brubeck to ‘be himself,’ our students have been discovering how to ‘be themselves’ with single-handed determination,” said Frith. “As a Music Department that encourages experimentation while respecting tradition, we are second to none.”

“We are continually inspired by the influence and impact of our music graduates in their artistic pursuits,” said Janet L. Holmgren, president of Mills College. “Whether they are composers, performers, professors, or music producers or whether they are working in the film, video game, or music industries, or in leading technology and digital media companies, our graduates reflect the College’s mission to encourage creativity and experimentation, all within a global context.”

Giving Free Play to the Imagination also marks the completion of the $11 million renovation of the Mills College Concert Hall, to be renamed for well-known Bay Area philanthropist and Mills alumna Jeannik Méquet Littlefield, MA ‘42. Designed by noted California architect Walter Ratcliff Jr., the Mills Music Building has received widespread acclaim since its opening in 1928.

Improvements to the Concert Hall include new acoustic panels for enhanced sound quality, an expanded stage area for larger performances, installation of a dedicated mixing station, soundproofing for performance and recording quality, new seating and improved layout for a better audience experience. The multicolored frescoes and murals created by California painter Raymond Boynton were restored by two teams of art conservators to return them to their original vibrant colors.

The festival’s name, in fact, derives from Boynton’s vision for his murals, “to produce a scheme of decoration that would give free play to the imagination.”

Mills Music Festival Honorary Committee:

Charles Amirkhanian* – composer, percussionist, sound poet, radio producer

Laurie Anderson* – performance and visual artist, composer, vocalist, musician

Dave Brubeck*+ – jazz and classical musician, pianist, composer

Robert Cole – director of Cal Performances

Merce Cunningham – choreographer and founder of Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Evelyn Glennie – percussionist, composer, motivational speaker

David Harrington – violinist and founding member of the Kronos Quartet

Phil Lesh* – musician and founding member of the Grateful Dead

George Lewis – improviser-trombonist, composer, computer/installation artist

Jeannik Méquet Littlefield* – philanthropist and patroness of the arts

Annea Lockwood – composer, professor emeritus at Vassar College

Rebeca Mauleón* – Latin and world music pianist, composer, educator

Meredith Monk – composer, singer, director/choreographer

Michael Morgan – music director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, pianist, educator

Pauline Oliveros+ – composer, performer, first director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center)

Lauren Speeth* – CEO of the Elfenworks Foundation, member of the Mills Board of Trustees, violinist, recording artist

Roselyne Swig+ – philanthropist, activist, and patroness of the arts

Michael Tilson Thomas – music director of the San Francisco Symphony, composer, recording artist

* Mills alumnae/i

+ Mills honorary degree recipient

Program

Saturday, February 21, 2009 8:00 pm

OPENING NIGHT: Pauline Oliveros with Tony Martin; Terry Riley; Joseph Kubera performs Roscoe Mitchell; Joan Jeanrenaud

Solo performances of works by pioneers in the experimentalist tradition. Oliveros will play the first musical sounds in the renovated Concert Hall. A champagne reception follows.

Sunday, February 22, 2009 3:00 pm

A CELEBRATION OF THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

More than 40 years of electronic innovation featuring Pauline Oliveros, Tony Martin, Maggi Payne, Chris Brown, William Winant, Joan Jeanrenaud, James Fei, and John Bischoff. Pre-concert talk with performers at 2:00 pm.

Friday, February 27, 2009 8:00 pm

LEGENDARY COMPOSER AND IMPROVISER MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS with special guest Roscoe Mitchell

Saturday, February 28, 2009 8:00 pm

DARIUS MILHAUD’S BRAZILIAN CONNECTION

Dazzling orchestral works conducted by Nicole Paiement. A celebration of the renaming of the Concert Hall in honor of Mills alumna Jeannik Méquet Littlefield follows.

Sunday, March 8, 2009 3:00 pm

ARDITTI QUARTET

The world-renowned string quartet plays works by Mills composers past and present

Sunday, April 5, 2009 3:00 pm

THE MUSIC OF FRED FRITH

A rocking birthday concert of new music with Fred Frith and Cosa Brava (Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, Zeena Parkins, The Norman Conquest), Liz Albee, Minna Choi, Beth Custer, Joan Jeanrenaud, Myra Melford, Roscoe Mitchell, Ikue Mori, Larry Ochs, Bob Ostertag, and William Winant.

TICKETS / PUBLIC INFO:

General admission: $20/concert; $100/series

Seniors: $12/concert; $60/series

For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.mills.edu/musicfestival

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, one of the Best 368 Colleges by the Princeton Review, and ranks 75th among America’s best colleges by Forbes.com. Visit us at www.mills.edu.

SEIU seizes last holdout: UHW’s Oakland headquarters

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By Steven T. Jones

The takeover of United Healthcare Workers by Service Employees International was completed today as SEIU finally took physical control of UHW’s Oakland headquarters and changed the locks following a final standoff that had to be mediated by Oakland Police officers who were called to the scene.

“We went to the office and we asked to be able to do the work we need to do,” David Regan, who SEIU appointed as a trustee overseeing UHW, told the Guardian. But they were turned away by UHW members still loyal to ousted president Sal Rosselli, who has formed a new rival union. “The police came and we sorted it all out.”

“We have been contacting tens of thousands of our members from all over the state over last few days and talking to them about the core work we should be doing,” Regan said, noting how important it is right now to present a united worker front to counteract deep proposed budget cuts by the state and its 58 counties.

SEIU took possession of UHW’s Los Angeles office shortly after the trusteeship was imposed on Tuesday afternoon, “and it’s a mess,” said SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette. In their calls to members, she said that “a silent majority” are anxious to get past this union turf and aren’t likely to disaffiliate and join Rosselli’s new union.
But John Borsos, a spokeperson for the ousted UHW leaders, said members want a say in their union and “I believe thousands of current UHW members will seek to become part of this new union,” known at National Union of Healthcare Workers.

Both Ringuette and Regan downplayed the Oakland standoff, saying members are more important that offices. “But at the day, the reason the office is important is because it has tools we need to run the union effectively,” Regan said, citing membership data, payroll records, and files on ongoing contract negotiations as examples.

Check back here last and look in next week’s Guardian for more, including a report from Guardian intern Joe Sciarrillo, who was at the scene in Oakland (but who’s now following another protest of the murder of BART rider Oscar Grant after the officer who shot him was paroled)

Ousted UHW leaders form the NUHW

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rosselli.jpg
Sal Rosselli, Guardian Photo by Charles Russo.

By Steven T. Jones

There’s a new union in town, National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which was formed today by the United Healthcare Workers leadership team that was yesterday ousted by UHW’s parent union, Service Employees International Union. NUHW might as well stand for the New UHW.
SEIU has imposed a trusteeship on UHW, which involved suspending local bylaws, taking over UHW lists and contractual obligations, formally kicking out more than 70 elected UHW leaders, and appointing as trustees two SEIU executive vice presidents: David Regan and Eliseo Medina.
But UHW leaders continue to occupy the union’s Oakland headquarters, which they’ve used as the base of operations to launch the new union that they hope will be populated by many of UHW’s 150,000 members, who must vote to disaffiliate with SEIU to join the new union.
“As a healthcare workers union, NUHW is committed to continuing the tradition of a member-led, democratically controlled union,” ousted UHW head Sal Rosselli said in a prepared statement. “There are lot of things that we still have to figure out, but we know NUHW will be all about accountability to the members, democratic-decision-making, organizing the unorganized and winning improvements for healthcare workers and the patients and residents we serve.”
In a conference call with reporters, Regan and Medina blasted the Rosselli team for promoting the schism with SEIU, which had sought to transfer 65,000 long-term care workers from UHW to another SEIU local, something Rosselli says his members urged him to resist. “That battle ended yesterday,” Medina said, while Regan noted that, “It’s sad when a group of local officers lose their way.”
SEIU leaders hope to put the conflict behind them and move forward together to fight deep cuts being proposed in California’s budget, but it’s an open question how many UHW members are going to resist the change and follow Rosselli out the door, something that will become more clear in the coming weeks.

Gloves on

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

PREVIEW Leslie Seiters entered college as a visual artist — and left it as a choreographer. Or at least that’s what her MFA diploma from Ohio State University says. Seiters prefers to call herself a director. "I am allergic to ‘choreography,’<0x2009>" she says from her home in San Diego. "When something looks ‘choreographed,’ it turns me off."

Seiters, who lived and worked in the Bay Area between 2002 and 2007, has nothing against the craft of choreography, of course. In fact, her own works are exquisitely crafted. But she doesn’t want to see the hand of the maker because she feels it keeps her from entering a piece and having it speak to her in an unmediated manner.

Seiters left Ohio right after graduation and relocated to San Francisco, where she worked and performed with Jo Kreiter, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Jess Curtis, and Sarah Shelton Mann. All the aforementioned artists have a strong commitment to contact improvisation, which is characterized by its immediacy and the performers’ ability to remain present in the moment — an approach that has influenced Seiters’ own work. The physicality of things — an object, a move — continually fascinates her. Seiters differs, however, from her colleagues — and just about any other dancer working in the Bay Area — in her acute and exceedingly refined interest in using objects beyond their function in dance as props.

In a Seiters’ piece — she calls them installations — the edge between the animate and inanimate material is often blurred. She might have dancers double each other’s movements so precisely — as they did in such tiny danger (2003) and an attic/an exit, which premiered at last year’s San Francisco International Arts Festival — that they begin to look as if they had been set in motion by an outside force. Or they might appear like a single image that, for some mysterious reason, split in two only to merge again. "I love repetition," she explains. "This may go back to my visual background, where I would sculpt by wrapping and wrapping or cutting and cutting over and over again."

At the same time, the objects — all quite ordinary — often acquire a life of their own. Sometimes this can be quite disconcerting. When two dancers slide their arms into suspended jackets, the garments begin to manipulate the women. Dozens of suspended teacups keep up their clinking chatter long after their users have left them behind. Huge shoes move people who step into them. Dancers in paper dresses recede into and are swallowed by identically patterned wallpaper. And what about the woman on a swing, seen through a hallway, who never alters her trajectory? At what point does she become the pendulum of some unseen time machine?

Seiters’ work is both immensely playful and physically sturdy in the way she treads that thin line — she confesses to an affinity with magical realism — between the everyday and the fantastic. The process allows the familiar to become more so, even as it grows strange. For her, dance must not be pinned down, but kept open-ended. "I like it when dancers can take a movement, and turn it into a question," she says.

For the Bay Area premiere of Incidental Fear of Numbers at CounterPULSE this weekend, Seiters and her Little Known Dance Theater is partnering with Lux Borealis, a modern dance company from Tijuana, Mexico, whose "intelligence and physicality in the way they use weight and motion" Seiters admired. It’s her first full-evening performance and her most ambitious work yet. Included as part of the performance will be lots of tops and at least one very tall stack of yellow pages with a turntable on top. She also loves the sound of gloves on a cardboard floor.

INCIDENTAL FEAR OF NUMBERS

Fri/30–Sat/31, 8 p.m., $10–$15

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org

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