Jazz

Demy more

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Jacques Demy’s raindrops keep falling on the heads of French filmmakers. While Jean-Luc Godard has to be the French new wave’s historical and critical favorite, the legacy of Demy has arguably inspired more imitation or homage. In the past decade, François Ozon (2002’s 8 Women) and Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (1998’s Jeanne and the Perfect Guy) have mined or mimed Demy’s distinct use of color and musicality, though even Ozon’s bright red is blue-blooded, and the charms of Ducastel and Martineau’s effort don’t include Demy’s graceful staging and assured storytelling. Now, with his third feature Love Songs, new wave lover Christophe Honoré has forged an uneasy marriage. He’s set out to connect and update the romantic wisdom and classical dramatic structures of Demy with the arch political wit of ’60s Godard.

Love Songs proves few movies are entirely terrible or terrific. Its crushworthy final half-hour is touching and sometimes magnificent. But much of its initial hour is maddening. It begins well, because Honoré is attuned to the mood-setting power of well-deployed credits. Handsome, last-name-only opening titles are the first of the film’s textual nods to Godard, which continue when various books play cameo roles much as they do in Godard’s 1961 musical A Woman Is a Woman. Tomes by Henri Michaux and Hervé Guibert become effective shorthand for characters’ desires. But novelist and playwright Honoré’s sole moment of spine-chilling — as opposed to groan-inducing — wordplay takes place when he simply makes his protagonist Ismaël (Louis Garrel, attempting to channel Jean-Pierre Léaud) read the nighttime signs of the 10th Arrondissement.

Garrel’s character is the focal point of Love Songs, but the film’s hidden star is Honoré’s longtime musical collaborator Alex Beaupain, who appears in a pivotal scene, performing the lovely piano ballad "Brooklyn Bridge." Beaupain is stuck with the job of bringing Michel Legrand’s jazz-inflected pop orchestrations for Godard and Demy into the 21st century. Melodically, he’s up to the task, especially when evoking the neo-Gainsbourg rock of Benjamin Biolay. But he isn’t helped by Honoré’s libretto contributions, because Honoré seems to misinterpret the pop opera of 1964’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg as a basic copying of old Hollywood musical traditions, when in fact it was a radical yet classical revision. Honoré assumes the casual multigenre musicality of Love Songs is more contemporary, but that’s arguable.

In their previous film together, 2006’s Dans Paris, Honoré and Beaupain discovered naturalistic, inventive intersections between drama and music sequences. Love Songs is more traditional in form, saving its radical aspect for a view and presentation of sexuality that’s far more fluid than one finds in contemporary cinema, straight or gay. Honoré is out to disavow exactly those kinds of divisions, and if he’s not helped greatly by Garrel, he’s aided immeasurably by Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, whose arrival in the film’s second half takes the story out of a tritely fatalistic ménage-a-trois realm. He’s also saved by Chiara Mastroianni. Her presence is Honoré’s ultimate invocation of Demy, since she’s the daughter of signature Demy star Catherine Deneuve. (She also brings the off-camera baggage of a recent breakup from chanson specialist Biolay to her part.) Her role might appear secondary, but her solo number signals the return of the melody at the film’s heart. Her melancholic understatement testifies that Honoré hasn’t lost the attraction to eroticism that inspired his brash attempt to bring Georges Bataille to the screen with 2004’s Ma mère. He’s just made it as pop as he possibly can by setting it to music.

LOVE SONGS

Opens Fri/6 at Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at sfbg.com

www.ifcfilms.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: DJ Spooky, Dethklok, Moby, Joan of Arc, and more

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Rock ‘n’ roll clowning with Metalocalypse‘s Dethklok. Happy. Birthday.

Ye gads – too much as usual, especially on this very bizzy Saturday, June 7. Here are more worthies that unfortunately didn’t make it to print – but made it, happily, here.

DETHKLOK
They started a joke that set a whole world of ex- and present metal heads laughing. TV yuk phenom-turned-metal phenom, Dethklok of Adult Swim’s Metalocalpyse sets Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Pickles the Drummer loose on an unsuspecting Bay Area – The Dethalbum in hand. Be sure to also catch hard-luck, yet still raging opening band Soilent Green. Thurs/June 5, 8 p.m., $26.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000.

joanofarc.gif

JOAN OF ARC
The martyred girl hero takes her latest form – as the ambitious Chicago rockers, returning with a new album, Boo!Human (Polyvinyl). Math rock? Post-punk post-structuralism? Ask Cap’n Jazz – or better, Tim Kinsella. Thurs/5, 8 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

No self-indulgence for SF’s Mitch Marcus Quintet

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Mitch Marcus in repose.

By Dina Maccabee

The Mitch Marcus Quintet sounds so confident, so full of easy attitude and laid-back strut on the group’s latest release, The Special, (Jazzcubed, 2007), you could almost mistake this mile-a-minute jazz record for an easy ride.

Each track unfolds with a bounty of melodic and structural invention, though the mix of influences – from Eric Dolphy to the Meters – is practically seamless. With saxophonists Mitch Marcus and Sylvain Carton up front flying in tight formation through some impressive mid-air turns, it’s the quintet’s simmering rhythm section that’s responsible for continuously building, tearing down, and rebuilding The Special’s beat-driven foundations. As drummer Ches Smith and bassist George Ban-Weiss man all the bases from swaggering swing to idiosyncratic odd meters and loping six-eight time, guitarist Mike Abraham romps out in left field, lobbing passages of inspired insanity, such as his distorted surf-raga shred-a-thon on “Inditranego,” psychedelically into play.

Like those groundbreaking records by Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman that still shine as irresistible beacons for straight-ahead boppers and free-jazzers alike, The Special has the potential to appeal to both lovers and haters of the jam paradigm. While nearly every tune follows a tightly orchestrated opening with an expansive field of spontaneous solo and ensemble exploration, the improvising feels so honest and un-forced, the vibe so rooted and right, there’s not a self-indulgent note to be heard.

Mitch Marcus Quintet
June 9, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., $6-$12
Yoshi’s
510 Embarcadero W., Oakl.
(510) 238-9200

Nuclear fusings

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Jazz has always been about fusing rather than fusion. But there’s a new generation of improvisational players from around the world who are effortlessly blending wide-ranging cultural and generational ideas in their music. These artists are equally conversant in Ben Webster, Kanye West, and Fela Kuti. They might cover Coltrane and Radiohead, but using contemporary Western instruments. It’s jazz with a global scope, modern sensibility, and an intimate, personal feel.

One musician who is naturally engaging a world of influences in his music is Puerto Rico–born saxophonist David Sanchez. When he brings his new sextet to the Herbst Theatre June 13 to debut music from his just-released album, Cultural Survival (Concord), Sanchez will cap an expansive run of so-called multilingual jazz artists coming through the Bay Area. Preceding Sanchez at venues across the region are saxophonist Charles Lloyd, pianist Marc Cary, bassist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Edward Simon, who are all bringing variations on the theme of modern jazz as a genre informed by worldwide cultures.

It all starts next week with SFJAZZ’s "Miles from India" concert at the Palace of Fine Arts, a live presentation of the recent Four Quarters album of the same name. Producer Bob Belden and Indian keyboardist and co-arranger Louiz Banks reworked the music of Miles Davis and recorded it with such Davis alumni as bassists Ron Carter, Michael Henderson, and Marcus Miller; keyboardists Chick Corea, Adam Holzman, and Robert Irving III; drummers Jimmy Cobb and Lenny White; and such Indian musicians as Ravi Chari on sitar, Vikku Vinayakram on ghatam, and V. Selvaganesh on khanjira. The composer himself used sitar and tabla on numerous sessions throughout the 1970s, when he began making funkier and more layered, open-ended music.

Davis and numerous jazz musicians before him — from Duke Ellington and Yusef Lateef to Randy Weston and John Handy — integrated musical elements from non-Western cultures into their work. So it’s not surprising that a younger player like Sanchez, who is equally at home improvising with Latin jazz piano legend Eddie Palmieri as he is touring with guitarist Pat Metheny, would meld ethnic nuances of his Caribbean heritage with a postmodern jazz sensibility.

SONG CYCLES


Sanchez’s Cultural Survival is a cycle of seven original songs and one Thelonious Monk ballad. The disc culminates in the 20-minute "La Leyenda del Canaveral," inspired by a poem written by Sanchez’s sister Margarita about African and Caribbean sugar cane plantation workers. It’s a relatively new and spare, though lyrically rhythmic, sound for Sanchez, forged during a three-year immersion in African folkloric recordings from Tanzania, Cameroon, and the Congo, and his impromptu tour with Metheny. "Doing the tour with Pat was really a confirmation for me that there are different sounds out there," Sanchez said from his Atlanta home. The saxophonist has mainly played with a pianist but now works with guitarist Lage Lund in his band.

"In some ways there is more space for me there," he added.

Also exploring new concepts is veteran saxophonist Lloyd, who performs at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival May 31 with his Indian-music–inspired Sangam Trio, which includes percussionist Zakir Hussain and drummer Eric Harland. The band uses its ethnic edges as stepping stones. "It’s really what propels the music," Harland said of the intuitively improvisational trio during an SFJAZZ rehearsal in the city.

Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon also mixes new and old approaches: he studied classical piano at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and jazz at the Manhattan School of Music before joining trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s band. His new Ensemble Venezuela, which plays the Herbst Theatre June 8, is a sterling gathering of major young players including Mark Turner on saxophone, Marco Granados on flute, Aquiles Báez on cuatro, Ben Street on bass, and Adam Cruz on drums. Báez will also perform with his own band while the local VNote Ensemble (formerly the Snake Trio) offers its take on jazz and Venezuelan traditional sounds.

FRESH FLAVORS


Such explorations vary conventional presentations and inject unexpected aural flavors. "Jazz is one of the most immediately gratifying art forms there is because it’s spontaneous development," pianist Marc Cary explained from New York. "It documents a moment, and that’s the moment you want people to hear."

Cary’s Focus Trio performs in Healdsburg June 5. His partners onstage are Bay Area musicians Sameer Gupta on drums and tablas and David Ewell on bass. "Sameer is from India and David is from China," said Cary. "I didn’t pick them because of that. I play with them because they’re good, but they’re bringing that too." On his 2006 album Focus (Motema), Cary wanted to get out of the standard chorus-solo-chorus cycle that has sometimes straitjacketed jazz. "I like continuous movement, a straight line, and I like to color that line," Cary mused. Gupta cowrote one song with Cary and contributed the reflective ballad "Taiwa," and his tablas close out the last three Cary originals with a distinctive flourish.

Cary played behind the übervocalist and band leader Betty Carter and has toured with hip-hop vocalist Erykah Badu, whose influences find their way into his work. "If you’re really going to play this music in today’s times, you have to bring in elements of the past, the present, and what you consider to be the future," Cary said.

That future is now with 23-year-old bassist Esperanza Spalding. The Portland, Ore., native, who graduated from and now teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, recorded her 2006 full-length Junjo (Ayva) with two Cuba-born colleagues from the school: pianist Aruán Ortiz and drummer Francisco Mela. Their rhythmic approaches subtly imbue the recording’s sound as Spalding sings wordless, hornlike runs in a bright, fluttery alto. Her latest album, Esperanza (Heads Up), includes flamenco guitar virtuoso Niño Josele, drummer Horacio "El Negro" Hernández, and saxophonist Donald Harrison. She brings her new band to Yoshi’s in Oakland June 12.

Why have all these players connected with sounds so far afield? The world has not gotten smaller — it’s just better connected. Through technology even the most obscure genres find new and far-flung listeners. The communal spirit informing jazz performance and appreciation also transcends differences: jazz musicians have to be open; otherwise they can’t play the music. "At the end of the day, jazz is about how you relate to things happening at the moment," Sanchez said. He heard a reality in the African tribal drumming music he listened to and wanted to bring it to his own playing. "You have this feeling when you hear it that the music is like water or air for them."

"MILES FROM INDIA"

Sat/31, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon, SF

www.sfjazz.org

CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET AND LLOYD’S SANGAM TRIO

Sat/31, 7:30 p.m., $45–<\d>$70

Jackson Theater

Sonoma Country Day School, Santa Rosa

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

MARC CARY’S FOCUS TRIO

June 5, 7 and 9 p.m., $26

Barndiva

231 Center, Healdsburg

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

EDWARD SIMON AND THE ENSEMBLE VENEZUELA

With Aquiles Báez Ensemble and VNote Ensemble

June 8, 7 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

ESPERANZA SPALDING

June 12, 8 and 10 p.m., $10–$16

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl

www.yoshis.com

DAVID SANCHEZ SEXTET

June 13, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

Cluster luck

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Lünenburg Heath is a vast, moorland-like tract in northwest Germany, between Hamburg, Hanover, and Bremen. Its low-growing vegetation, gnarled shrubs, and dry soil form the scar tissue left by medieval deforestation. SS leader Heinrich Himmler was secretly buried there. And despite its springtime swatches of wildflowers and family-friendly theme parks, it is a landscape whose beauty stems from its air of desolation.

"Don’t get lost on Lünenburg Heath," intones Brian Eno in a nursery rhyme monotone atop a cortège of synth chords. They are the only words sung on Tracks and Traces, a 1997 Rykodisc reissue of a 1976 collaborative recording session between Eno and Harmonia, the veritable ’70s German supergroup composed of Neu! guitarist Michael Rother and kosmiche godfathers Cluster.

I have always pinned Cluster as the dark stars in the krautrock universe, based on the drifting, feverish, synthesizer-rich improvisations of core duo Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. So I can easily imagine their protean music whistling across Lünenburg at dusk, haunting the ears of daytrippers — a strange and seductive admixture of sprightly pop and forlorn ambient improv reflecting the landscape’s more recent transformations and less-than-sunny history.

Having regrouped in 1997 after a decade-long hiatus from working together, Moebius and Roedelius are once again touching down for a rare series of US dates, including a May 23 trancefest at Henry Miller Library in Big Sur and a May 25 show at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. And despite Eno’s cryptic warning, it’s hard not to lose one’s way amid the hazy vistas and plaintive melodies of Cluster’s music.

Their expansive discography — which includes a recombinant cast of regular, notable collaborators such as Eno, Can bassist Holgar Czukay, and überproducer Conny Plank — provides a few signposts. Roedelius and Moebius initially teamed up with fellow electronic musician Conrad Schnitzler in 1969 as Kluster, releasing three explosive documents of improvisation that rapaciously incorporated elements of 20th-century classical music, jazz, and rock. Important Records’ recent release, Vulcano: Live in Wuppertal 1971, paints a vivid picture of this early period.

Schnitzler left the group in ’71, taking the hard "k" with him. From then on, Cluster recalibrated its keyboards toward a more subdued and, at times, even pretty and poppy aesthetic. Improvisational jams gave way to shorter songs, and the lurking menace of 1972’s Cluster 2 (Brain/Water) was followed by the double about-face of drum machine confections on Zuckerzeit (Brain/Lilith, 1975) and the pastoral miniatures of Soweisoso (Sky/Captain Trip, 1976).

Still, dark patches are a consistent hallmark of Cluster’s terrain, even when they choose to let the sun shine through. The superficial pleasantness of their two collaborations with Eno released at the time, 1977’s Cluster & Eno (Sky/Water) and 1978’s After the Heat (Gyroscope), belies the affective force — what could be described as a low-simmering melancholy — of certain songs. The slow progression of blue notes that form the woozy melody of "Für Luise," from Cluster & Eno, linger long after they have decayed into the Gershwin-like piano of "Mit Simaen." Cluster & Eno‘s cover photo returns us to a field — though not Lünenburg. A lone microphone stands at attention against a faint mother-of-pearl sky, which ends at the smudge of shadowy foliage at the bottom of the frame. It’s near twilight. Cryptic and evocative, meditative and inexplicably sad, the image provides a visual analog to Cluster’s chimerical output. The visual is also suggestive of Moebius and Roedelius’ openness to the chance encounters and unforeseen possibilities that arise from improvisation, as if to say: if you find yourself lost in a dark wood, just stop and listen. *

CLUSTER

With Wooden Shjips and Arp

Fri/23, 7:30 p.m., $22

Henry Miller Library

Highway 1, Big Sur

(831) 667-2574

www.henrymiller.org

Also with Tussle and White Rainbow

Sun/25, 8 p.m., $19–$22

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Strange powers

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Witch! The accusation — or is it rallying cry? — that slices through Goblin’s pounding score for Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria is newly pertinent. Witchery reigns within strains of black metal and the long-awaited third chapter in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (which began three decades earlier with Suspiria), this summer’s invigoratingly zany naked bloodbath Mother of Tears. It’s tempting to credit film curator Joel Shepard with a sorcerer’s clairvoyance, because the "Witchcraft Weekend" he has programmed for the screening room at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is so damned prescient.

The centerpiece of "Witchcraft Weekend"<0x2009>‘s imaginatively and near-immaculately selected quartet of movies — the dark void or blinding light around which the other three orbit — is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1943 Day of Wrath. I’ll be brazen enough to admit that my first encounter with this masterpiece occurred one evening while flipping channels, when its flaming dramatic core — a harsh counterpoint to the heroic final stakes of his peerless 1927 The Passion of Joan of Arc — flickered before my eyes and basically branded my psyche (and soul?) for eternity. There are few scenes in cinema as bluntly harrowing as the demise of accused witch Herlofs Marte (Anna Svierkier): her defiance and her fear of death — but not of God — rage as forcefully as the man-made inferno that consumes her.

Day of Wrath might be the most quietly terrifying or suspenseful art film ever made (though it shouldn’t be blamed for the form’s current crimes against patience or intelligence), because Dreyer seamlessly connects realism with a deeply ambiguous understanding of spirituality and fate. That is no small achievement, and one that’s been increasingly rare with the passage of time. The fate of Herlofs Marte is evident from the film’s first scene, where she hands herbs from a gallows garden to another woman, stating, "There is power in evil." Seconds later the bells begin to toll for her and — thinking of a past secret — she flees to seek refuge in the household of Absalon (Thorkild Rose); his bear of a mother, Marte (Sigrid Neiiendam); and his young wife, Anne (Lisbeth Movin), who seems to possess strange powers.

In the feline, fiery-eyed Movin, Dreyer finds this lonelier film’s answer to Falconetti from The Passion of Joan of Arc: in other words, an actor whose face becomes (to paraphrase André Bazin quoting Béla Balasz) a timeless and more ambivalently transcendent "document." Critics have pointed out Day of Wrath‘s abundant visual similarities with Italian Renaissance and Flemish painting, particularly the works of Rembrandt (James Agee went so far as to point out one sequence’s resemblance to Rembrandt’s 1632 Lesson in Anatomy), and Bazin is intuitively and perhaps more insightfully correct in invoking the film’s influence on Robert Bresson’s equally classic 1951 Diary of a Country Priest. But it takes Pauline Kael to sympathetically hone in on the feminine "erotic tensions" of what she deems "the most intensely powerful film ever made on the subject of witchcraft." As she puts it, "Dreyer dissolves our terror" as characters are "purified beyond even fear." But the sense of fear and terror he instills is purer than that engendered by the horror genre’s gleeful scare tactics.

"Witchcraft Weekend"<0x2009>‘s trio of other films steer clear of Blair Witch and Harry Potter terrain as well as the easy, if extremely enjoyable, kitsch of Teen Witch (1989) or The Craft (1996) to explore and connect less obvious instances of celluloid sorcery. In a manner that magnifies the resonance of Day of Wrath‘s austere use of black and white, Shepard brings in a pair of contrasting Technicolor sights: the Queen or Witch (spine-chillingly vocalized by Lucille La Verne) from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the scorpio-rising bikini sacrifices of William O. Brown’s 1969 cult obscurity The Witchmaker. The program’s series of spells begins with the wicked Witchcraft Through the Ages, a 1968 abbreviated revision of Benjamin Christensen’s energetically episodic 1922 silent work Häxan, featuring a frenetic and playful jazz score by Jean-Luc Ponty and mordantly misogynist narration by William S. Burroughs. *

WITCHCRAFT WEEKEND

Thurs/23–Sun/25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Do you know the way to Jose James?

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The Dreamer by Jose James is one of those rare debut recordings that is going to grow in popularity due to people’s genuine love for it rather than paid-for hype about James being a major talent. No doubt about it, James is talented, and in a manner not so common these days. James isn’t getting a Clive Davis kind of hype; his album’s on Gilles Peterson’s label Brownswood. Those trappings hint at a type of acid-jazz shallowness that the instrumentation sometimes skates near but generally averts. As for James, he’s a vocalist who loves the music of Pharoah Sanders. There should be more singers like him.

The video for James’s version of Freestyle Fellowship’s “Park Bench People” is an unaffected extension of the track’s lyric. This version of the track is abbreviated, and the song itself doesn’t vie for my favorite moment on The Dreamer. The two songs I keep returning to are the title track and “Winter Wind,” where James’s tenor reaches its highest (almost young Jimmy Scott-like) androgynous realms and also the moments when his phrasing is most reflective and measured. Both of those ballads are lovely, suggestive of a 21st century Gil Scott-Heron (though James has yet to touch Scott-Heron’s political profundity) or at least the spirit of Jeff Buckley. Calling all bookers: I don’t see San Francisco or Oakland on James’s list of upcoming tour dates.


Jose James, “Park Bench People”

More than just Mirkarimi’s kickoff

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ross.jpg
Image from sfgreenparty.org

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi kicks off his campaign for reelection this evening at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in the heart of the Fillmore. The Board of Supervisors’ only Green Party member is popular in his District 5 — made up of the super lefty Haight and crime-plagued Western Addition, where Mirkarimi has shown real leadership in pushing police foot patrols and other reforms — and is expected to cruise to a relatively easy victory.

But today’s event carries a far larger symbolic significance: it is the beginning of a long campaign to create a progressive narrative for San Francisco that counters the centrist and fairly superficial approach of Mayor Gavin Newsom. And that’s a struggle that will carry through this fall’s high-stakes supervisorial elections, into the vote for a new board president in January, and on into the next mayor’s race — all of which could feature Mirkarimi in a starring role.

Summer 2008 fairs and festivals

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Grab your calendars, then get outside and celebrate summer in the Bay.

>Click here for a full-text version of this article.

ONGOING

United States of Asian America Arts Festival Various locations, SF; (415) 864-4120, www.apiculturalcenter.org. Through May 25. This festival, presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, showcases Asian Pacific Islander dance, music, visual art, theater, and multidisciplinary performance ensembles at many San Francisco venues.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Third St at Mission, SF; (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct, free. Nearly 100 artistic and cultural events for all ages take place at the Gardens, including the Latin Jazz series and a performance by Rupa & the April Fishes.

MAY 10–31

Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St, Oakl; (510) 637-0462, www.oacc.cc. Times vary, free. The OACC presents hands-on activities for families, film screenings, cooking classes, and performances throughout the month of May.

MAY 15–18

Carmel Art Festival Devendorf Park, Carmel; (831) 642-2503, www.carmelartfestival.org. Call for times, free. Enjoy viewing works by more than 60 visual artists at this four-day festival. In addition to the Plein Air and Sculpture-in-the-Park events, the CAF is host to the Carmel Youth Art Show, Quick Draw, and Kids Art Day.

MAY 16–18

Oakland Greek Festival 4700 Lincoln, Oakl; (510) 531-3400, www.oaklandgreekfestival.com. Fri-Sat, 10am-11pm; Sun, 11am-9pm, $6. Let’s hear an "opa!" for Greek music, dance, food, and a stunning view at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension’s three-day festival.

MAY 17

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Japantown; www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. The largest gathering of Asian Pacific Americans in the nation features artists, DJs, martial arts, Asian pop culture, karaoke, and much more.

Saints Kiril and Methody Bulgarian Festival Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga; (510) 649-0941, www.slavonicweb.org. 4pm, $15. Enjoy live music, dance, and traditional food and wine in celebration of Bulgarian culture. A concert features special guests Radostina Koneva and Orchestra Ludi Maldi.

Taiwanese American Cultural Festival Union Square, SF; (408) 268-5637, www.tafnc.org. 11am-5pm, free. Explore Taiwan by tasting delicious Taiwanese delicacies, viewing a puppet show and other performances, and browsing arts and crafts exhibits.

Uncorked! Ghirardelli Square; 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $40-45. Ghirardelli Square and nonprofit COPIA present their third annual wine festival, showcasing more than 40 local wineries and an array of gourmet food offerings.

BAY AREA

Cupertino Special Festival in the Park Cupertino Civic Center, 10300 Torre, Cupertino; (408) 996-0850, www.osfamilies.org. 10am-6pm, free. The Organization of Special Needs Families hosts its fourth annual festival for people of all walks or wheels of life. Featuring live music, food and beer, a petting zoo, arts and crafts, and other activities.

Enchanted Village Fair 1870 Salvador, Napa; (707) 252-5522. 11am-4pm, $1. Stone Bridge School creates a magical land of wonder and imagination, featuring games, crafts, a crystal room, and food.

Immigrants Day Festival Courthouse Square, 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) 299-0104, www.historysmc.org. 12-4pm, free. Sample traditional Mexican food, make papel picado decorations, and watch Aztec dancing group Casa de la Cultura Quetzalcoatl at the San Mateo County History Museum.

MAY 17–18

A La Carte and Art Castro St, Mountain View; (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. The official kick-off to festival season, A La Carte is a moveable feast of people and colorful tents offering two days of attractions, music, art, a farmers’ market, and street performers.

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, El Sobrante; (510) 869-4946, www.bayareastorytelling.org. Gather around and listen to stories told by storytellers from around the world at this outdoor festival. Carol Birch, Derek Burrows, Baba Jamal Koram, and Olga Loya are featured.

Castroville Artichoke Festival 10100 Merritt, Castroville; (831) 633-2465, www.artichoke-festival.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $3-6. "Going Green and Global" is the theme of this year’s festival, which cooks up the vegetable in every way imaginable and features activities for kids, music, a parade, a farmers’ market, and much more.

French Flea Market Chateau Sonoma, 153 West Napa, Sonoma; (707) 935-8553, www.chateausonoma.com. Call for times and cost. Attention, Francophiles: this flea market is for you! Shop for antiques, garden furniture, and accessories from French importers.

Hats Off America Car Show Bollinger Canyon Rd and Camino Ramon, San Ramon; (925) 855-1950, www.hatsoffamerica.us. 10am-5pm, free. Hats Off America presents its fifth annual family event featuring muscle cars, classics and hot rods, art exhibits, children’s activities, live entertainment, a 10K run, and beer and wine.

Himalayan Fair Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 869-3995, www.himalayanfair.net. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-5:30pm, $8.This benefit for humanitarian grassroots projects in the Himalayas features award-winning dancers and musicians representing Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Mongolia. Check out the art and taste the delicious food.

Pixie Park Spring Fair Marin Art and Garden Center, Ross; www.pixiepark.org. 9am-4pm, free. The kids will love the bouncy houses, giant slide, petting zoo, pony rides, puppet shows, and more at this cooperative park designed for children under 6. Bring a book to donate to Homeward Bound of Marin.

Supercon San Jose Convention Center, San Jose; www.super-con.com. Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 10am-5pm, $20-30. The biggest stars of comics, sci-fi, and pop culture — including Lost’s Jorge Garcia and Groo writer Sergio Aragonés — descend on downtown San Jose for panels, discussions, displays, and presentations.

MAY 18

Bay to Breakers Begins at Howard and Spear, ends at the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, SF; www.baytobreakers.com. 8am, $39-59. See a gang of Elvis impersonators in running shorts and a gigantic balloon shaped like a tube of Crest floating above a crowd of scantily clad, and unclad, joggers at this annual "race" from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean.

Carnival in the Xcelsior 125 Excelsior; 469-4739, my-sfcs.org/8.html. 11am-4pm, free. This benefit for the SF Community School features game booths, international food selections, prizes, music, and entertainment for all ages.

BAY AREA

Russian-American Fair Terman Middle School, 655 Arastradero, Palo Alto; (650) 852-3509, paloaltojcc.org. 10am-5pm, $3-5. The Palo Alto Jewish Community Center puts on this huge, colorful cultural extravaganza featuring ethnic food, entertainment, crafts and gift items, art exhibits, carnival games, and vodka tasting for adults.

MAY 21–JUNE 8

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues, SF; (415) 399-9554, www.sfiaf.org. The theme for the fifth year of this multidisciplinary festival is "The Truth in Knowing/Threads in Time, Place, Culture."

MAY 22–25

Sonoma Jazz Plus Festival Field of Dreams, 179 First St W, Sonoma; (866) 527-8499, www.sonomajazz.org. Thurs-Sat, 6:30 and 9pm; Sun, 8:30pm, $40+. Head on up to California’s wine country to soak in the sounds of Al Green, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, and Bonnie Raitt.

MAY 24–25

Carnaval Mission District, SF; (415) 920-0125, www.carnavalsf.com. 9:30am-6pm, free. California’s largest annual multicultural parade and festival celebrates its 30th anniversary with food, crafts, activities, performances by artists like deSoL, and "Zona Verde," an outdoor eco-green village at 17th and Harrison.

MAY 25–26

San Ramon Art and Wind Festival Central Park, San Ramon; (925) 973-3200, www.artandwind.com. 10am-5pm, free. For its 18th year, the City of San Ramon Parks and Community Services Department presents over 200 arts and crafts booths, entertainment on three stages, kite-flying demos, and activities for kids.

MAY 30–JUNE 8

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Check Web site for ticket prices and venues in and around Healdsburg; (707) 433-4644, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com. This 10th annual, week-and-a-half-long jazz festival will feature a range of artists from Fred Hersch and Bobby Hutcherson to the Cedar Walton Trio.

MAY 31

Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival North Shattuck, Berk; (510) 548-5335, www.northshattuck.org. 10am-6pm, free. Create chalk drawings and sample chocolate delights while vendors, musicians, and clowns entertain the family.

Napa Valley Art Festival 500 Main, Napa; www.napavalleyartfestival.com. 10am-4pm, free. Napa Valley celebrates representational art on Copia’s beautiful garden promenade with art sales, ice cream, and live music. Net proceeds benefit The Land Trust of Napa County’s Connolly Ranch Education Center.

MAY 31–JUNE 1

Union Street Festival Union, between Gough and Steiner, SF; 1-800-310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. For its 32nd anniversary, one of SF’s largest free art festivals is going green, featuring an organic farmer’s market, arts and crafts made with sustainable materials, eco-friendly exhibits, food, live entertainment, and bistro-style cafés.

JUNE 4–8

01SJ: Global Festival of Art on the Edge Various venues, San Jose; (408) 277-3111, ww.01sj.org. Various times. The nonprofit ZERO1 plans to host 20,000 visitors at this festival featuring 100 exhibiting artists exploring the digital age and novel creative expression.

JUNE 5–8

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa; www.harmonyfestival.com. $30-99. One of the largest progressive-lifestyle festivals of its kind, Harmony brings art, education, and cultural awareness together with world-class performers like George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Jefferson Starship, Damian Marley, Cheb I Sabbah, and Vau de Vire Society.

JUNE 7–8

Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center; 383-7837, www.crystalfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $6. The Pacific Crystal Guild presents two days in celebration of crystals, minerals, jewelry, and metaphysical healing tools from an international selection of vendors.

BAY AREA

Sunset Celebration Weekend Sunset headquarters, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park; 1-800-786-7375, www.sunset.com. 10am-5pm, $12, kids free. Sunset magazine presents a two-day outdoor festival featuring beer, wine, and food tasting; test-kitchen tours, celebrity chef demonstrations, live music, seminars, and more.

JUNE 8

Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight and Ashbury; www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Celebrate the cultural contributions this historical district has made to SF with a one-day street fair featuring artisans, musicians, artists, and performers.

JUNE 14

Rock Art by the Bay Fort Mason, SF; www.trps.org. 10am-5pm, free. The Rock Poster Society hosts this event celebrating poster art from its origins to its most recent incarnations.

BAY AREA

City of Oakland Housing Fair Frank Ogawa Plaza; Oakl; (510) 238-3909, www.oaklandnet.com/housingfair. 10am-2pm, free. The City of Oakland presents this seventh annual event featuring workshops and resources for first-time homebuyers, renters, landlords, and homeowners.

JUNE 14–15

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, 1200-1500 blocks of Grant and adjacent streets; 989-2220, www.sfnorthbeach.org. 10am-6pm, free. Touted as the country’s original outdoor arts and crafts festival, the North Beach Festival celebrates its 54th anniversary with juried arts and crafts exhibitions and sales, a celebrity pizza toss, live entertainment stages, a cooking stage with celebrity chefs, Assisi animal blessings, Arte di Gesso (Italian street chalk art competition, 1500 block Stockton), indoor Classical Concerts (4 pm, National Shrine of St. Francis), a poetry stage, and more.

BAY AREA

Sonoma Lavender Festival 8537 Sonoma Hwy, Kenwood; (707) 523-4411, www.sonomalavender.com. 10am-4pm, free. Sonoma Lavender opens its private farm to the public for craftmaking, lavender-infused culinary delights by Chef Richard Harper, tea time, and a chance to shop for one of Sonoma’s 300 fragrant products.

JUNE 7–AUG 17

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove, 19th Ave and Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. Sundays 2pm, free. This beloved San Francisco festival celebrates community, nature, and the arts is in its with its 71st year of admission-free concerts.

JUNE 17–20

Mission Creek Music Festival Venues and times vary; www.mcmf.org.The Mission Creek Music Festival celebrates twelve years of featuring the best and brightest local independent musicians and artists with this year’s events in venues big and small.

JUNE 20–22

Jewish Vintners Celebration Various locations, Napa Valley; (707) 968-9944, www.jewishvintners.org. Various times, $650. The third annual L’Chaim Napa Valley Jewish Vintners Celebration celebrates the theme "Connecting with Our Roots" with a weekend of wine, cuisine, camaraderie, and history featuring Jewish winemakers from Napa, Sonoma, and Israel.

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14480 Hwy 128, Boonville; (917) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com.Three-day pass, $135; camping, $50-100. Camp for three days and listen to the international sounds of Michael Franti & Spearhead, the English Beat, Yami Bolo, and many more.

JUNE 28–29

San Francisco Pride 2008 Civic Center, Larkin between Grove and McAllister; 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Celebration Sat-Sun, noon-6pm; parade Sun, 10:30am, free. A month of queer-empowering events culminates in this weekend celebration: a massive party with two days of music, food, and dancing that continues to boost San Francisco’s rep as a gay mecca. This year’s theme is "Bound for Equality."

JULY 3–6

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Quincy; (510) 547-1992, www.highsierramusic.com. Ticket prices vary. Enjoy four days of camping, stellar live music, yoga, shopping, and more at the 18th iteration of this beloved festival. This year’s highlights include ALO, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Built to Spill, Bob Weir & RatDog, Gov’t Mule, and Railroad Earth.

JULY 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July Waterfront Celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach; 705-5500, www.pier39.com. 1-9:30pm, free. SF’s waterfront Independence Day celebration features live music by Big Bang Beat and Tainted Love, kids’ activities, and an exciting fireworks show.

JULY 5–6

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy; www.fillmorejazzfestival.com.10am-6pm, free. More than 90,000 people will gather to celebrate Fillmore Street’s prosperous tradition of jazz, culture, and cuisine.

JULY 17–AUG 3

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues; (415) 392-4400, www.midsummermozart.org. $20-60. This Mozart-only music concert series in its 34th season features talented musicians from SF and beyond.

JULY 18–AUG 8

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton; www.musicatmenlo.org. In its sixth season, this festival explores a musical journey through time, from Bach to Jennifer Higdon.

JULY 21–27

North Beach Jazz Fest Various locations; www.nbjazzfest.com. Various times and ticket prices. Sunset Productions presents the 15th annual gathering celebrating indoor and outdoor jazz by over 100 local and international artists. Special programs include free jazz in Washington Square Park.

JULY 26, AUG 16

FLAX Creative Arts Festival 1699 Market; 552-2355, www.flaxart.com. 11am-2pm, free. Flax Art and Design hosts an afternoon of hands-on demonstrations, free samples, and prizes for kids.

JULY 27

Up Your Alley Dore Alley between Folsom and Howard, Folsom between Ninth and 10th Sts; www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, free. Hundreds of naughty and nice leather-lovers sport their stuff in SoMa at this precursor to the Folsom Street Fair.

AUG 2–3

Aloha Festival San Francisco Presidio Parade Grounds, near Lincoln at Graham; www.pica-org.org/AlohaFest/index.html. 10am-5pm, free. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association presents its annual Polynesian cultural festival featuring music, dance, arts, crafts, island cuisine, exhibits, and more.

AUG 9–10

Nihonmachi Street Fair Japantown Center, Post and Webster; www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Japantown’s 35th annual celebration of the Bay Area’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities continues this year with educational booths and programs, local musicians and entertainers, exhibits, and artisans.

AUG 22–24

Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival Golden Gate Park; www.outsidelands.com. View Web site for times and price. Don’t miss the inaugural multifaceted festival of top-notch music, including Tom Petty, Jack Johnson, Manu Chao, Widespread Panic, Wilco, and Primus.

AUG 25–SEPT 1

Burning Man Black Rock City, NV; www.burningman.com. $295. Celebrate the theme "American Dream" at this weeklong participatory campout that started in the Bay Area. No tickets will be sold at the gate this year.

AUG 29–SEPT 1

Sausalito Art Festival 2400 Bridgeway, Sausalito; (415) 331-3757, www.sausalitoartfestival.org. Various times, $10. Spend Labor Day weekend enjoying the best local, national, and international artists as they display paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and more in this seaside village.

AUG 30–31

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae; (650) 697-7324, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-5pm, free. The "Big Easy" comes to Millbrae for this huge Mardi Gras–style celebration featuring R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and soul music, as well as arts and crafts, food and beverages, live performance, and activities for kids.

AUG 30–SEPT 1

Art and Soul Festival Various venues, Oakl; (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. 11am-6pm, $5-$10. Enjoy three days of culturally diverse music, food, and art at the eighth annual Comcast Art and Soul Festival, which features a Family Fun Zone and an expo highlighting local food and wine producers.

SEPT 1–5

San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area locations; www.sfshakes.org. This nonprofit organization presents free Shakespeare in the Park, brings performances to schools, hosts theater camps, and more.

SEPT 6–7

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival Castro between El Camino Real and Evelyn, Mountain View; (650) 968-8378, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Known as one of America’s finest art festivals, more than 200,000 arts lovers gather in Silicon Valley’s epicenter for this vibrant celebration featuring art, music, and a Kids’ Park.

SEPT 20–21

Treasure Island Music Festival Treasure Island; treasureislandfestival.com. The second year of this two-day celebration, organized by the creators of Noise Pop, promises an impressive selection of indie, rock, and hip-hop artists.

SEPT 28

Folsom Street Fair Folsom Street; www.folsomstreetfair.com. Eight days of Leather Pride Week finishes up with the 25th anniversary of this famous and fun fair.

Listings compiled by Molly Freedenberg.

Dance, horn dogs and damsels, dance

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Warning: listening to the Brass Menazeri is addictive — once they start, you can’t stop. After a sold-out show at Ashkenaz in Berkeley last month, the band of nine was dragged out for an encore or six — not an easy feat for an exhausted group of horn players. Meanwhile, the crowd got busy losing their minds the old-fashioned way: dancing and moving any way they knew how.

Though unquestionably exciting, brass band music from Serbia, Macedonia, and Greece sounds exotic to most American ears. But vocalist and baritone horn player Rachel MacFarlane isn’t concerned about being written off as an novelty act.

"It’s not a flash in the pan," she says of the growing interest in Eastern Europe and Romani, or Gypsy, culture in the wake of successful acts like New York City’s punked-out, spectacle-oriented Gogol Bordello. She sees the band’s success as part of a wider public engagement with cultures of the world, with roots in the folk revival of the 1970s.

Not that Balkan brass music has become mainstream, exactly. When vocalist Briget Boyle signed up for a college course on music from the former Yugoslavia, she says she had never even heard of the Balkans. Then she listened to the music. "Once I got it in my head," she remembers, "I couldn’t stop." Boyle developed a serious cultural crush, not just on a collection of poignant melodies, but on a way of life in which music, rather than being a commodity, represents a "life-giving force."

I knew what she meant that evening at Ashkenaz as I unselfconsciously sang along to refrains in the Romani language, without a clue as to what I was saying. That vitality, though, is part of what makes the flair and pathos of native Romani and Slavic performers so hard to replicate. Though band member Peter Jaques has cultivated phenomenal stylistic command on both trumpet and clarinet, he’s the first to admit this. In his efforts to learn from some of the region’s master musicians, he resembled a nonnative speaker trying to shed a foreign accent: "No one needed to tell me that there were nuances I just didn’t have," he explains. Still, Jaques says his teachers encouraged him, sending the message: "This is our music. We love it. You should play it, too!"

Moving toward a musical identity of their own, the Menazeri plans to include original tunes alongside the traditional picks on their second, still-untitled CD, which is slated for recording in May. It seems the group is feeling justifiably emboldened by steady support from wildly disparate Bay Area audiences, from folk dance enthusiasts and Balkanophiles to supporters of Romani culture and urban tastemakers like the Monterey Jazz Festival and Amnesia proprietor Sol Crawford.

Indeed, every band member I spoke with singled out Amnesia as a tinderbox for just the kind of music-driven near-rioting Brass Menazeri encourages. And it turns out the song I joined in with, "Opa Cupa," translates as a colorful invitation to work it out on the dance floor. So whether or not you can find Serbia on a map, the rat-a-tat of the tupan (a Balkan drum) mixed with sparkling, agile trumpets, unabashedly soulful vocals, and the gut-rattling throb of the low, low sousaphone is likely to send the same unignorable message as a New Orleans brass band during Mardi Gras. That message is: no matter who you are or what you know, dance!

BRASS MENAZERI

With Rupa and the April Fishes

Sat/3, 1 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival

Mission and Third streets, SF

(415) 543-1718

www.ybgf.org

Also the Herdeljezi Roma Festival

Sat/3, 6:30 p.m., $15

Ives Park, Sebastopol

(707) 823-7941

www.voiceofroma.com

Do you know the way to Plug?

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"Honestly, I’ve found a lot more talent in San Jose than I have up here in the city." Plug Label boss, MC, and producer Kero One (né Mike Kim) isn’t afraid to call it as he sees it from his San Francisco studio. At the top of the list of South Bay talent sits kindred SF transplant King Most, a producer and DJ otherwise known as Patrick Diaz, whose palette ranges from this year’s Genius Music mixtape, built from rare tracks by mainstream producers like Kanye West, Timbaland, and the Neptunes, to his upcoming Kingstrumentals album, which promises to honor influences as diverse as Alex Attias’ broken beats and Donald Byrd’s jazz fusion.

Kero sees the foundation for King Most’s talent in the knowledge gleaned from a ridiculously large record collection. "I remember going to his house and he’d have records in the bathroom, in the hallway, in the garage. You’d open the fridge and a record would fall down from the top. Production-wise, he has all the chops, the samples, and he knows how to work it."

Party people regularly get a chance to hear selections at Uptempo’s How We Keeps It, a monthly gig that finds King Most and Kero One rocking electro, disco, and a little hip-hop at the Madrone Lounge. Some fans of Kero’s debut, Windmills of the Soul (Plug, 2006), which mined a solidly jazzy hip-hop vein, might be surprised to hear a house set when he’s behind the decks. But the sprightlier pace and broader range of genres reflect the direction Plug Label is heading with its upcoming releases.

This year will see albums from Greentea, Kero, and King Most, all designed to cause consternation among record store clerks who have to decide where to file music that swerves between hip-hop, disco, Latin, and electro. Reflecting the listening journey that he and King Most have made over the years, Kero says he wants to blur the lines. "One of my biggest goals is to turn heads and open eyes for people who are not just into hip-hop. I wanted to make an album for someone who used to be into hip-hop and now is into something else to go back and say, "Oh, I can listen to this."

KING MOST AND KERO ONE

Fri/25, 10 p.m., $10

Pink

2925 16th St., SF

(415) 431-8889

www.pinksf.com

SFIFF: Critic’s choice

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SFIFF J. Hoberman — trenchant weekly critic, book author, programmer, teacher — is celebrating his 30th year at the Village Voice, an unheard-of stretch for a film writer. (Pauline Kael’s famous tenure at the New Yorker lasted 23 years.) Freshly garlanded with a three-week program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and an Anthology Film Archive screening of his early forays in experimental filmmaking, Hoberman continues his prize tour with this year’s Mel Novikoff Award.

The recent programs at BAM and Anthology highlight attributes that made Hoberman an essential buttress against the sycophantic rivalries flowing from Kael’s 1960s showdowns with Andrew Sarris. Over the phone from his New York office, Hoberman told me about his early days at the Voice: "I created a beat of things the other critics weren’t particularly interested in, and that took in a lot of stuff. Originally they had brought me on to write about avant-garde and experimental film, but pretty soon I was writing about documentary, animation, revival series, foreign films that weren’t from France … all kinds of things."

Hoberman’s BAM program was accordingly unwieldy, covering Andrei Rublev (1969) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Ernie Gehr and Martin Scorsese. Cinephilia Hoberman-style seems to be everywhere at once, encompassing Looney Tunes, No Wave New York, Jeanne Dielman (1975) and Yiddish cinema. It’s eclecticism with a program, matched by a willingness to chase the rabbit down its hole — but never at the expense of analytical rigor.

Although Hoberman is a professed admirer of the puzzling jazz in Manny Farber’s criticism, his prose is solidly explicatory and instructive. He knows how to open a discussion: "In its tireless attempts to mean everything to everyone and empirical willingness to try anything once, the American culture industry intermittently generates its own precursors, parallels, and analogues to local or European avant-gardism." He’s an apt profiler: "Pain and Fear — and the convulsive desire for public recognition — are Scorsese’s meat." And he’s not afraid to take a stand, as with a recent rave for David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007): "From Videodrome (1983) through A History of Violence (2005), neither Scorsese nor Spielberg, and not even David Lynch, has enjoyed a comparable run."

He’s also an accomplished facilitator of Jean-Luc Godard’s idea that the history of cinema is synchronous with the history of the 20th century. We can count on Hoberman to connect Terror’s Advocate (2007) with La Chinoise (1967), to draw a line from a prescient film like A Face in the Crowd (1957) to Watergate and Nashville (1975). When his interests come together — as with an appreciation of Southland Tales‘ (2007) avant-gardism, midnight movie appeal, and socio-political currency — sparks still fly. Talking about an upcoming "prequel" he’s penning to his 2005 decoupage of ’60s cinema, The Dream Life (New Press), Hoberman muses, "I think that now, or at least since [Ronald] Reagan, it’s sort of customary to see movies as political scenarios." To the extent that this is true, Hoberman is due significant credit — his meditations on that movie-land president, for one, are as adroit as that of any policy wonk.

Historical markers notwithstanding, Hoberman’s film selection for his special night is likely the most unabashedly sensuous movie not starring Asia Argento to play this year’s festival. Spanish director José Luis Guerín described In the City of Sylvia (2007) as a "simple" film at last fall’s Vancouver International Film Festival, and it certainly does offer a distilled vision of cinematic paradise: gazing and grazing faces, old Strasbourg, and a slow stitch of sound and image.

Our inlet to Sylvia is a whiskered young man, haunting the city at a dreamy remove. He sits in an outdoor café with his notebook, sketching the faces of radiant women while Guerín orchestrates fractal cutting, multilevel staging of faces, and intricately gradated sound design into a sun-dappled symphony. After changing seats, the dreamer recognizes a woman sitting behind a pane of glass. She leaves and he follows, locked in an ambiguous reverie inscribed with resonant detail and sweet ambiguity.

Sylvia fulfills the cinephile’s dream of disembodiment. "It’s a narrative that comes organically from the fact of making the movie rather than dramatizing a story situation," Hoberman opines. "There’s a real love of cinema, the process of it." Each of the film’s handful of extended passages is distinct in its precise design, but this blissful lucidity Hoberman describes is Sylvia‘s central melody and romance.

Late in Guerín’s film, after a yearning bar scene set to Blondie’s "Heart of Glass," the young man sits at a tram stop, considering the waiting women and rushing window reflections for some clue as to his own loss. In a virtuosic eliding glimpse of a passing bus, Guerín dissolves the sounds and images of shots already superimposed by the panes of glass. A quick succession of several more multi-tiered, unexpectedly conversant portraits of women ("Elles," the dreamer notes in his book) finally lands on a mesmerizing rear-angle of a woman’s hair blowing wildly in the wind. The young man can’t put pencil to paper. He’s as enamored as we are with this siren song from what the director calls "the continent of cinema," a place J. Hoberman knows all too well.

AN EVENING WITH J. HOBERMAN (includes screening of In the City of Sylvia), Sun/27, 6 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA Tues/29, 4 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 9 p.m., Kabuki


>SFBG goes to SFIFF 51: our deluxe guide

7 spring flings

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San Francisco is such a gosh darn charming place, it often seems as if there are more romantic dining options than available dates. To which we say: Never! Spring has sprung and frisky hormones are back in motion after cozy hibernation. Grab the nearest eligible and hit up the following delightfully intimate (and reasonably priced) eateries, if only to test-drive the menu.

BAR BAMBINO


Mouth-watering charcuterie for your cutie, an extensive wine list to revel in, and an atmosphere that, while occasionally heavy on the decibel level, will douse any diminished conversation expectations in attractive lighting — so at least the potential partner across the table will look irresistible. Factor in a nifty little patio in back and an olive oil tasting menu to lubricate the cooing (plus a plethora of lip-smacking Italian dishes) and the mood is set for, if not love, then perhaps a memorable evening in the Mission.

2931 16th St., SF. (415) 701-8466, www.barbambino.com

CAFÉ ANDRÉE


You, of course, have absolutely no problem "closing the deal" — but it’s always good to have a secret weapon on hand, just in case. Café Andrée is mine. Every time I usher a hottie into Andrée’s intimate, well-appointed librarylike setting in the Rex Hotel downtown (bookshelves line the walls and there are globes galore), I know the rest of the evening will be silky smooth. Executive chef Evan Crandall creates incredible pan-global dishes that never fail to tickle. And his new spring menu is on fire. The best part: if your date bores you to tears, you don’t have to bring a book. Café Andrée does it all!

562 Sutter, SF. (415) 217-4001, www.jdvhotels.com/dining/sanfrancisco_cafeandree

COULEUR CAFÉ


Perfect for a leisurely luncheon prelude to any early-evening nuzzling, this Portrero Hill café’s generous outdoor patio and savory dishes may be responsible for more than a few calls into work begging for the afternoon off. The theme is laidback French with some Mediterranean kick, which is actually the description of many a dream date as well. A come-hither combo that always works for me: assiette de merguez with harissa for starters, followed up by the mussels mariniere and pommes frites. Enjoy.

300 De Haro, SF. (415) 255-1021, www.couleurcafesf.com

1550 HYDE CAFÉ AND WINE BAR


Nob Hill: the dating double-entendres are endless. So is the romance, especially if you duck into the intensely cozy 1550 Hyde for an adventurous wine flight and delectable cheese plate or main dish. (If 1550 is featuring its wondrous Provençal fish stew while you’re there, try it and thank me later). The emphasis here is on locally produced goods — the better to draw you closer — and the restaurant discourages cell phones, so your tête-à-tête is guaranteed to be restricted to sweet nothings.

1550 Hyde, SF. (415) 775-1550, www.1550hyde.com

L’ARDOISE


I can’t lie to you. I’m eating a can of Campbell’s tomato soup while I write this, but I’m dreaming of the escargots in garlic parsley sauce and almond-crusted barramundi at this brand-spanking new French delight near Duboce Park. Needless to say, I’ve already spent many a cherished hour there with my lover-of-the-moment. The space is warm and inviting, and the friendliness of the service puts any haughty stereotypes of the French to rest. "L’Ardoise" means chalkboard, so be sure to check the specials, which usually include a number of creamy cheeses as well as unique entrées that’ll have you’re your date shouting "oui, monsieur."

151 Noe, SF. (415) 437-2600, www.lardoisesf.com

TANGERINE


"Tangerine — she is all they claim / With her eyes of night and lips as bright as flame." So begins the famous jazz song, "Tangerine" — and the Castro restaurant of the same name seduces with an equal amount of yummy crepuscular abandon. Asian influences dot chef Sean Pattansuvoranun’s menu — and a recent pairing of the lemongrass lamb lollipops appetizer with a drunken duck entrée had me begging for Pattansuvoranun’s home phone number. But he knows better. Tangerine’s decor is crisp-yet-amiable, and the service is fluid, allowing you enough privacy to lick each other’s plates.

3499 16th St., SF. (415) 626-1700, www.tangerinesf.com

BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE CAFÉ


If "bittersweet" describes the tenor of your evening together so far, tune up the ol’ heartstrings with a chocolate-flavored valentine at this cute café, with locations in Upper Fillmore and Oakland. A cocoa cornucopia of tastings, pastries, and specialty drinks — hello, hot steaming cup of chocolate chai — Bittersweet stays open pretty late, and will end any evening on a sumptuous note (even if your sheets remain uncrumpled).

2123 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-8715; 5427 College Ave, Oakl. (510) 654-7159, www.bittersweetcafe.com *

8 spots for outdoor dining

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San Francisco and dining al fresco aren’t necessarily allies. But they’re not exactly enemies. We do have those gorgeous sunny spring days and plenty of places to enjoy them while we drink and dine. If you’ve been heartbroken over the closed kitchen at Zeitgeist, or if the rooftop deck at Medjool feels more like a frat party gone wrong than an afternoon social gathering, you can rest assured there are even places outside of the Mission that serve food and cocktails outside. So hop on your Yamaha, Bianchi, or Muni and check out some of these fabulous places to catch some sun with your buzz. Keep in mind these spots are best for brunch and lunch. And bring a hoodie in case the sun subsides — San Francisco fog is about as forgiving as a hangover.

PIER 23 CAFE


Check out views of the Bay Bridge and Coit Tower from this waterfront café with surfboard decor. Rain or shine, this dive gets packed with beer guzzlers and sunbathers. Enjoy buckets of Pacificos and top-shelf margaritas alongside pub grub like burgers, nachos, and the best fish tacos in town, until your vision’s blurred and skin is blistered. Then enjoy the live music on warmer nights and heat lamps on cooler ones.

The Embarcadero, SF. (415) 362-5125, www.pier23cafe.com

CAFÉ FLORE


The faint of heart need not attempt Café Flore — sharking a table here takes more nerve than buying booze underage. But there’s a reason to steel one’s resolve: this Castro hotspot, voted Best Café in our 2004 Readers’ Poll, is ideal for any occasion, be it brunch, coffee, or an afternoon brew. With breakfast served daily until 3 p.m. and a full bar, there’s no better spot for sun-drenched boozing and cruising.

2298 Market, SF. (415) 621-8579, www.caféflore.com

LA NOTE


The garden patio at La Note is worth the wait — and wait you will, because they don’t take reservations for weekend brunch. Grab a java beforehand to stave off caffeine withdrawal as you watch other patrons enjoy their succulent crème fraîche pancakes. And don’t worry, you’ll get your turn. Complete with blue-and-white checkered tablecloths, this is the perfect spot for brunch bliss or an afternoon assiette de charcuterie.

2377 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-1535, www.lanoterestaurant.com

PARK CHALET


If bike rides through Golden Gate Park leave you craving a wet one to quench your thirst, this spot — located behind the oceanfront Beach Chalet and just steps from Queen Wilhelmina’s Windmill — offers the perfect spot to rest on your laurels and soak up some sun. Choose from an extensive list of beers from the onsite brewery, and when the fog rolls in, head inside to cozy up to the stone fireplace in the glass-ceilinged dining room. On weekends you can nurse a hangover and get a head start on your day’s drinking with crab benedict and a Bloody Mary.

1000 Great Highway, SF. (415) 386-8439, www.beachchalet.com

CAFÉ CLAUDE


Located in a secluded alley between Union Square and the Financial District, Café Claude is a scrumptious substitute to the crowded Belden Lane. This quaint sidewalk café is reminiscent of Parisian bistros, and is therefore the perfect spot to nosh on a Niçoise salad and sip Sancerre. Plus there’s jazz on weekends.

7 Claude, SF. (415) 392-3505, www.cafeclaude.com

EL RIO


For those days in deep summer when everywhere but the Mission District is covered in heavy fog, there’s no reason to look farther than El Rio for a bit of sunny respite. Its multilevel back deck, barbeques, margaritas, and live salsa bands draw a mostly gay male crowd on Sundays, but you can get down with the ladies every fourth Saturday of the month, when the line to get in snakes down the block.

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

SAM’S ANCHOR CAFE


If the summer fog has taken even the Mission captive, escape to Sam’s via the Tiburon ferry. From here, you can sip margaritas on the waterfront deck while viewing the cloud-engulfed city. Snack on fried calamari or head inside post-sunset for fine dining and seafood.

27 Main, Tiburon. (415) 435-4527, www.samscafe.com

PILSNER INN


The Pilsner doesn’t serve food, but its state-of-the-art cooling system, which keeps draft beers chilled to 31 degrees, makes this Park Chow neighbor a Castro gem for gay and straight clientele. Expect to throw back a few on the garden patio with cleated patrons just back from the fields, because Pilsner Inn supports a handful of sports teams, including softball, soccer, bowling, and pool.

225 Church, SF. (415) 621-7058, www.pilsnerinn.com *

Songwriter Tony Scherr dances with Waifs

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A recent clip of Tony Scherr performing “I Could Understand.”

By Todd Lavoie

So so so many choices of what to do this weekend, I know, but let me throw another one your way: this Saturday and Sunday, April 19 and 20, the Independent will be hosting a mighty fine double-bill for fill all your strummed-up twang-age needs. As part of the Green Apple Festival, Brooklyn singer-songwriter and endlessly versatile collaborator Tony Scherr and Australian roots-folkies the Waifs will be playing two nights of rustic goodness at the adventurously booked Divisadero joint.

Now, the Waifs are a marvelous folk-rock group; their latest, sundirtwater (Compass), was just released over here after hitting it big back home in Australia last year. The disc offers a looser, dustier version of their familiar harmony-rich folk meditations, instead opting for deeper forays into the blues and country-soul. Particularly ear-catching is the title track, a swampy little rumba driven by Josh Cunningham’s jazz-sweating guitar slinks and Vikki Simpson’s lusty vocals:

I want to focus on Tony Scherr, though: the guy boasts a massively impressive resume, as a band member, collaborator, and solo artist. Before eventually heading down the dirt roads and rolling fields of country- and blues-flavored songwriting, he was a jazz bassist, adding both acoustic and electric low-end to a variety of ensembles. Scherr started off – and only a teenager at the time – as a member of one of Woody Herman’s latter-day lineups, and then went on to perform with Russ Gershon’s Either/Orchestra, an ensemble well-known for its anything-goes approach to interpreting the work of others. (Bob Dylan, Bobbie Gentry, Robert Fripp, and Duke Ellington have all at one point or another been given the Either/Orchestra overhaul.)

Bumping and thriving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLACK SPADE

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

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

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Offbeat direction

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When successful actors turn to directing, you can often gauge how long they’ve been immersed in fiction by the degrees of condescension and cliché in their movies. Ethan Hawke is an unfortunate recent example. I’d say John Cassavetes is the classic one … but then people would hunt me down and kill me.

Of course, some actors can think outside themselves behind the camera: George Clooney, Sarah Polley, and Ben Affleck (who knew?) provide recent testimony. Even Mel Gibson might qualify. Though his films reveal a sadomasochistic freak flagelutf8g himself and us for God, they still express something beyond the cumulative wisdom acquired from drama school scene study and that aerial view of society one gets from the top of the entertainment industry heap.

Tom McCarthy isn’t as famous an actor, despite working steadily (on Boston Public, The Wire, and several Clooney movies) for a decade. This low profile may be an asset: while his 2003 writing-directorial debut, The Station Agent, sounded too precious, it turned out to be wonderful. McCarthy’s directorial follow-up, The Visitor, isn’t as successful. Still, it’s an unforced, gracefully crafted, emotionally rewarding (to a point) miniature that suggests he has a reliable second career option.

Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is an Ivy League economics professor who is as dour as a spreadsheet. He fires his fifth piano teacher in a row (stage great Marian Seldes) because he’s frustrated about poor progress at his chosen hobby. He’s a bone-dry lecturer whose office hours are coldly unwelcoming and lives in a Connecticut house too big for anyone with such a shrunken soul. His department forces him to deliver a paper at a New York University–sponsored conference, and thus he reenters, for the first time in years, his large Manhattan apartment.

Walter is surprised to discover Senegalese émigré Zinab (Danai Gurira) in his bathtub; her screams nearly bring Walter a beat-down from Syrian boyfriend Tarek (Haaz Sleiman). Once it’s sorted out that a scam artist has rented Walter’s prime piece of real estate to the couple in his absence, they set off, though they have no immediate berth.

Rousing from emotional slumber, Walter eventually invites the couple to stay. Then he starts to enjoy their company, or at least that of Tarek, a percussionist with an ingratiating personality who starts teaching him how to drum — a better musical option for Walter than the piano, even if he is the stiffest white guy attempting funkiness this side of Jad Fair. Tarek invites the stuffy 60-something to his jazz club gigs and introduces him to Fela Kuti CDs. It’s all good — until the NYPD profiles Tarek one night and he’s thrown into a windowless, characterless, Queens correctional facility, with deportation imminent.

The Visitor is beautifully acted and admirably sculpted. But in the last laps, McCarthy has Walter deliver a big speech to low-level governmental authorities, complete with an ironic fade-out on Old Glory and gives Walter a too-convenient, thwarted romantic interest.

It all leads to a routine, uplifting ending that would play better if Jenkins (of Six Feet Under and myriad supporting roles) had developed some drumming chops. This movie is a respectable follow-up to The Station Agent. But its suit-finds-groove response to globalization and deportation ultimately feels like a formula McCarthy should have already seen beyond.

THE VISITOR

Opens Fri/18 in San Francisco

See Movie Clock at sfbg.com

www.thevisitorfilm.com

Here, my Dearie: Jacqui Naylor knows Blossom Dearie

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By Johnny Ray Huston

SFBG When was the first time you saw Blossom live on stage? What impressions or favorite memories do you have from her performances?
Jacqui Naylor I first saw Blossom with my vocal teacher, Faith Winthrop, in 1997 in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall. I fell in love with her unmistakably sweet voice, quirky delivery and unmatched style.
Blossom’s voice was small and large at the same time and she used her nice range to tell the story of a song with sincerity, rather than over singing it, sometimes with a little sweet vibrato at the top and sometimes with an almost speaking quality in her middle and lower register. I appreciated that she made the most of every lyric, especially with such a diverse repertoire, everything from lovingly sung ballads to wit-filled swing tunes and songs that she wrote. I was also struck by the fact that she was selling her CDs herself and taking the time to sign them for people. I have a few that I cherish from that evening. She is the only artist from whom I’ve felt compelled to get a signature.

SFBG Did you know Blossom?
JN I saw Blossom on a number of occasions in New York and met her through my distributor, John Nustvold, from Ryko/Warner. He is also a big fan of her work and was hopeful to get her music out to more people. We dreamed that maybe there were even some unreleased tracks that we could help bring to market.
I should say here that Blossom not only inspired me musically but also in her business savvy, since she was one of the first artists to own her own label, Daffodil Records. It was great to meet her and tell her how much she had affected me, inspiring my own Ruby Star Records and my determination to find a sound that was uniquely mine. It is because of her that I stopped worrying about whether I sounded like a traditional jazz singer and instead focused on telling the stories of the songs I chose to sing in a ways that felt true to me. Because of her, I also began to imagine bringing humor to my music and shows by reinterpreting the idea of modern cabaret songs, and by writing songs that might inspire people. Many of the songs Blossom chose to sing touted words of spring, birds, love, flight, and yes, blossoms. And even when she sang the most cruel and humorous cabaret song, she did so with a sense of compassion, humility and good fun. Famous for refusing to sing unless her audience was quiet, Blossom did so politely and without malice. A true talent with a lot of grace and charm.

Blossom Dearie sings “Surrey With the Fringe on Top”

After the jump: Schoolhouse Rock, grape-peeling appeal, great live clips, “Blossom’s Blues” and Dearie’s musicianship,

Take a stanza: Verse and song for National Poetry Month

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ken nordine.bmp

By Todd Lavoie

Guys, commence with the stroking your beards in thoughtful poses! Girls, grab your journals and set yourselves a-scrawling! April is National Poetry Month, so now’s the time to start looking deep and sensitive and positively brimming over with penetrating insight. Spring is in the air – the flowers are blooming and birds are chirping – so why not summon your muse and whip up an ode or a sonnet to celebrate all this marvelous rebirth? No way, you say? OK, how about a haiku, then? A limerick? Something cribbed from a restroom wall, perhaps?

If putting words to paper isn’t your thing, or if reading poetry doesn’t float your boat, either, fret not. All hope is not lost for giving April the rune-and-rhyme lovin’ it deserves. How about a little poetry-in-song, then? Sure, I suppose you could say most songs are poetry, in a sense – I mean, you don’t need an MFA to take the average pop song and dissect it into meter, rhyme, verse structure, and all of its other little bits ‘n’ pieces – but strip away the music and much of the power of the argument is lost.

Put it this way: if you simply read aloud the lyrics of most songs, unaccompanied, they’d sound like pretty weak excuses for poetry. Embarrassing, even. And no, I’m not hatin’ – I’m just sayin’, that’s all. Nah, you won’t catch any poetry snobbery from me – hell, I adore Marc Bolan, but you won’t sneak me passing off any T. Rex ditties as shining examples of poetic form. Still, I’ve always been fascinated with intersections of poetry and song; I did a little scraping around in my thought-box and here are a few successful experiments of music/poem collisions which came to mind:

Ken Nordine, Colors (The Nordine Group/Asphodel)
“Word Jazz”, he called it – in fact, the rumbling, rich-baritoned radio/television voiceover maestro liked the phrase so much that he used it as the title of his 1957 debut. Over the course of a series of inventive, parameter-pushing Word Jazz recordings made in the ’50s and ’60s, Nordine married loose, free-association musings to bongo-friendly bohemian-jazz – yep, very Beat Generation, daddy-o.

Jovino Santos Neto and Harvey Wainapel Duo

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PREVIEW “You know, Brazil is a huge country,” points out Bay Area clarinetist and saxophonist Harvey Wainapel. He should know – Weinapel has been making yearly musical pilgrimages to the world’s fifth largest nation since 2000, and has no plans to stop. The variety of musical traditions across cultures and regions is practically inexhaustible, he says, with perhaps only a single common thread: “they all swing like hell.” Naturally, that irrepressible, infectious rhythmicality will be on display as Wainapel partners with native Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto for a wide-ranging exploration of their favorite musical territory. “Every jazz musician plays a little Jobim now and then,” explains Wainapel, referring to that ever-present “Girl from Ipanema” and her bossa nova companions in the jazz Real Book. But few possess as deep an understanding of Brazil’s disparate musical influences as this duo, who revel in the unique mingling of African, European, and indigenous elements. While Wainapel’s penchant for Braziliana has led him to perform with defining artists like Airto Moreira, FloraPurim, and Guinga, Brazilian-born Neto is literally the professor, having worked with Brazilian jazz legend Hermeto Pascoal for twenty five years and now teaching Brazilian music history. The lecture-demonstration format of this performance promises a lively education from two lifelong students of Brazilian music. “Hopefully,” adds Neto, “people will have a lot of fun.”.
JOVINO SANTOS AND HARVEY WAINAPEL DUO: “BRAZILIAN MUSIC FROM YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW” Fri/11, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15. Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 228-3218, www.lifemarkgroup.com

Done wanderin’

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It isn’t easy being a Chosen One. Rootsy singer-songwriter Jackie Greene — formerly a big fish in the relatively small pond of Sacramento who now lives in San Francisco — has had great things expected of him since he was a solo troubadour fresh out of high school in Placerville. Rolling Stone critics named Gone Wanderin’, his first album for the indie Dig Music label, one of the best of 2002 and the follow-up, Sweet Somewhere Bound (Dig Music, 2004), was another critical favorite. The excitement led to Greene being signed by Verve/Forecast, and his first disc for that company, 2006’s extraordinary American Myth, seemed to confirm this guy was going places. Produced by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, the album was a diverse and confident showcase of Americana styles, from blues to driving rock to Dylanesque rambles. But a not-so-funny thing happened to Greene on the way to certain stardom: his label started to fall apart in the middle of promoting his album, tours were cancelled, and the blush of early success faded.

Yet Greene’s upward trajectory continued. A spellbinding and charismatic performer, he kept playing wherever he could, with his band or acoustic with a partner. It wasn’t long before he had a new label in place, this time with 429, a subsidiary of the Savoy jazz imprint. In the meantime, out of the blue, former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who leads the popular Deadish jam band Phil Lesh and Friends, fell in love with American Myth and invited Greene to join the group as lead vocalist and co-lead guitarist alongside the great Larry Campbell. Though Greene hadn’t listened to much Dead beyond the records his parents owned — and frankly he preferred his folks’ Ray Charles and Big Bill Broonzy discs — he quite naturally fell into the mix. The songwriter was quickly accepted by Dead Heads for his passionate renditions of the band’s tunes, as well as cover songs and a sprinkling of his originals.

"I love playing in Phil and Friends," he says as he sits in the control room of Mission Bells, the Bernal Heights recording studio he shares with Tim Bluhm of the Mother Hips. "Playing those Jerry [Garcia] songs, I kind of feel like I love a lot of them like they’re my own songs."

In the midst of touring with Lesh last fall, Greene and Steve Berlin somehow managed to find time to record the superb, just-released Giving up the Ghost (429). Using both his regular touring band and the same group of hip Los Angeles session cats who sparked American Myth — collectively they’re known as Jackshit, with Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas as their best-known member — Greene and Berlin painstakingly put together the album from sessions in Sacramento, Los Angeles, SF, Chicago, and Brooklyn. Greene rightly calls the recording "darker" than its predecessor. That said, it is still filled with sharp lyrics, bright melodies, memorable riffs and hooks, and typically soulful vocals. In keeping with Greene’s and Berlin’s affection for off-the-wall sonics, there are literally dozens of different guitar and keyboard textures, unusual treatments on vocals, and a zillion little touches that give the disc a wonderful variety and depth. It’s easy to picture several songs being embraced by rock radio, but this music is still not exactly at the forefront of the current mainstream.

"Certainly I want to have some successful records — who doesn’t?" Greene confesses. "But I’m not willing to make anything other than what I want to make it sound like. If this is not considered commercially viable, then so be it."

JACKIE GREENE

Thurs/10, 8 p.m., $22.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

“No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema”

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PREVIEW In 1960s Japan, Nikkatsu meant a new kind of action. Promotional materials for the studio even spelled "action" in katakana, the syllabary used for borrowed foreign words. Indeed, the studio’s super-stylized films — only a smattering of which are showcased in this all too brief series presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Outcast Cinema — reflected many of the postwar period’s cultural sea changes. Played by an exclusive line of marquee names including boyish rake Watari Tetsuya and the chipmunk-countenanced Joe Shishido, Nikkatsu’s lone wolves and hit men hang out at rock and jazz clubs, drive hotwired foreign cars, get in brawls with white devil sailors, and possess the kind of smoldering cool that Elmore Leonard thinks he copyrighted. Similarly, directors such as Toshio Masuda, Takashi Nomura, and the better-known Suzuki Seijun developed a kinetic visual style that cribbed from Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, and Frank Tashlin in equal measure (Suzuki’s extreme stylistic bravura eventually got him canned). It’s the first two directors who merit closer looks. Nomura’s awesomely titled A Colt Is My Passport (1967) stars Shishido as a sniper on the lam, and its finale — both desolate and explosive — tops any spaghetti western’s final showdown. Shishido makes another appearance in Masuda’s The Velvet Hustler (1967), this time sporting a creepy Chaplin-stache. His quarry is Goro (Tetsuya), a Tokyo hit man and all around playboy who is forced to lay low in the international port city of Kobe after a botched job and becomes the city’s slacker underworld kingpin. But even a poor little rich girl (the perfectly coy Ruriko Asaoka) from the capital can’t hold Goro’s fickle attentions for long. In Nikkatsu action, it’s a man’s world. Dames come and go, but these boys only have eyes (and silent tears) for their fallen brothers in crime.

"NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960S NIKKATSU ACTION CINEMA" Thurs/10–Sun/13, $6–$8. See Rep Clock for schedule. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

WMC: Om Records whoops it up in Miami

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Vikter Duplaix and Daz-I-Kue (Bugz in the Attic) get down at the Om party. All photos by Robin Russell.

Contributing photographer Robin Russell swung through Miami’s Winter Music Conference, which ran from March 25-29, and sent these dispatches. First up: the fete thrown by SF-based Om Records at Y Ultralounge on Thursday, March 27.

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Cobblestone Jazz settles in.

omparty.jpg
Things heat up at the Om party.

Metal Mania: The return of the kings

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It’s a Sunday night in late February, and the facade of Slim’s is shrouded by the shadow of a monstrous black tour bus. Inside, middle-aged bikers rub shoulders with teenagers in skin-tight jeans and garish print hoodies. At the bar, tattooed hipsters vie for position against glowering heshers and balding suburban fathers in polo shirts. As New Orleans black metal band Goatwhore kicks into a crescendo, the masses teem, pumping their fists and offering devil-horn salutes. Song finished, vocalist Ben Falgoust gulps for air before raising the mic to his mouth: "Are you guys ready for Exodus!?"

The multitude roars. They are ready for Exodus; ready to rock out to a band that formed in San Francisco 28 years ago, before many of them were even born. They are ready to help write a new chapter in the bloodstained tome of American metal and ready to crank their iPods to 11. After the winter of the ’90s, when the genre hibernated through grunge, boy bands and rap-rock, metal is back in bearlike force, packing halls across the nation and charting albums with astounding frequency. (Most recently Lamb of God’s Sacrament (Epic) hit number eight on the Billboard charts in September 2007, and the Bay Area’s Machine Head reached no. 54 with The Blackening [Roadrunner] last April.)

While it’s true that some of this success is due to the work of our nation’s talented young headbangers, it is the reinvigoration of the genre’s veteran warriors that makes the renaissance so momentous. Almost three decades ago, the Bay Area witnessed the birth pangs of thrash metal: a frantic mixture of hardcore punk and the burgeoning new wave of British Heavy Metal that would come to define heavy music in America for much of the ’80s. This generation of thrashers produced Metallica, who need no introduction, but it also produced a pair of massively influential bands that never quite garnered the spotlight they deserved: Exodus and Testament.

After years of strife, drug addiction, illness, and disregard, these two titans are both back on the road, promoting brand new albums to brand new fans with the same fury they mustered in their youth. As Exodus guitarist Gary Holt puts it over the phone while taking a well-earned respite from the road: "We’re proving that the founding fathers still know how to do it better than anyone else."

Rob Flynn — guitarist for the vintage Oakland thrash band Vio-lence and current frontman for local groove-metal crowd-pleasers Machine Head, who were recently nominated for a Grammy — has witnessed the thrash revival from both sides of the stage. Speaking by phone from his tour bus, he lauds the two bands’ success: "Exodus and Testament are appealing to an entirely new generation of kids, as they should." This appeal is the result of a national hunger for musical authenticity that both outfits are eager to sate. Similarities between Reagan- and George W. Bush-era politics have fueled a new wave of thrash polemics, and the bands’ undiminished ability to slay from onstage has won them a new legion of supporters.

EARLY SUCCESS


Exodus was the first of the two bands to coalesce. Holt joined forces with childhood friend Tom Hunting on drums and Kirk Hammet on guitar; Hammet would play on the band’s early demos before leaving in 1983 to join Metallica. In 1985, the group released Bonded by Blood (Torrid), an incendiary full-length filled with breakneck tempos and anthemic, shout-along choruses, eminently deserving of its place on the short list of best metal albums.

Testament got off to a slower start, forming in 1983 under the name Legacy, which had to be scuttled after a jazz combo of the same name complained. Joined in 1986 by a man-mountain of a singer named Chuck Billy, the group released their debut, The Legacy in 1987 on Megaforce Records. While they retained the pummeling tempos that defined the thrash idiom, they drew heavily on the progressive leanings of lead guitar player Alex Skolnick, a prodigy who joined the band when he was just 16. Their third album, Practice What You Preach (Megaforce) was extremely well-received, with the title track garnering video plays on MTV throughout 1989.

When interviewed by phone, Billy is quick to point to two catalysts for the music’s early success. The first was its combative nature, which pitted ascetic thrashers against their mortal enemies, the so-called posers. Groups sought out ever more extreme tempos and tunings in order to alienate the hair-sprayed acolytes of glam metal, whose temple was located on Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip. Beyond distinguishing themselves from their gussied-up foils in Mötley Crüe, bands strove to out-do each other: "It was all friendly competition, the desire to be bigger and do better," explains Billy.

Flynn sums up the impact of Testament and Exodus memorably: "If it wasn’t for those bands, there wouldn’t be a Machine Head. When I was a kid, Exodus was my favorite band of all time. Bonded by Blood was like my life. I once punched some kid in the face for saying that Gary Holt sucked."

In addition to Vio-lence, local outfits like Death Angel and Forbidden released classic albums during this period, taking advantage of a record industry shopping spree that was triggered by the success of the Big Four — Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer — during the years 1988 to 1990. This success had its consequences as the towering reputation of those four groups began to overshadow the lesser-known acts that had helped pioneer the thrash idiom. The slight sticks with Holt to this day: "We were one of the first thrash metal bands ever, and it certainly sucks when you hear people referring to the ‘Big Four’ and you’re left out, considered by some to be a ‘second-tier’ band."

THE DARK AGE


For Exodus and Testament, things would get much worse before getting better. As the airwaves clogged with one metal band after another, the genre’s countercultural status began to erode. Diagnosing the problem, Holt recalls the beginning of the music’s slow implosion: "I’ve always thought metal needed a common enemy. It became a parody of itself." On Jan. 11, 1992, Nirvana’s Nevermind (DGC) hit No. 1 on the Billboard’s album sales chart, neatly coinciding with Capitol Records’s decision to drop Exodus from its lineup, and ushering in a long winter for metal in America. Exodus broke up. Testament sustained itself by touring in Europe, where, as Billy explains, "they didn’t have that grunge thing, so it’s been all metal, all the way." Faced with uninterested record executives and a fan base that was buying flannel, thrash retreated into the underground.

Financial struggles were soon compounded by medical woes. In 1999, Testament guitarist James Murphy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Although he made a full recovery, Murphy was forced to rely on a number of local fundraisers to afford treatment. In 2001, lightning struck twice, and Billy developed a rare form of cancer known as germ cell seminoma, which also necessitated extensive and expensive treatment. In August 2001, San Francisco’s dormant thrash community banded together for "Thrash of the Titans," a benefit concert to raise money for Billy and Death frontman Chuck Schuldiner, another metal god battling cancer (Schuldiner passed away in December of that year). The concert showcased reunions by Exodus, Death Angel, and Legacy, the pre-Billy incarnation of Testament.

As the metal community united around its stricken heroes, old grudges were put aside, and the two bands began making tentative comeback plans. The reinvigoration of Exodus was tragically put on hold in 2002 when original vocalist Paul Baloff suffered a stroke while riding his bike and lapsed into a coma, eventually being taken off life support at his family’s request. While Holt was pained by the loss of his old friend and bandmate, he was determined to soldier on: "I felt like I still have something to prove, even if I don’t. I still keep a chip on my shoulder."

Billy recovered fully in 2003, and Testament was offered a slot at a metal festival in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Reenlisting the participation of Skolnick, who had left the band to pursue his interest in jazz, Testament rediscovered the pleasures of touring for new audiences and found itself poised to regain some of its past glory. As Billy explains, "The whole music business is all about timing. The reunion show that brought people together again enabled people to put their problems aside, to do it for the music. The reason those bands weren’t touring was that the climate of metal wasn’t right.

"I think the bands like Shadows Fall, Trivium, and Chimaira — all these bands making names for themselves by bringing back our style of music — its perfect for a band like us," he continues.

By the time this article is published, Testament will have played two sold-out shows at the Independent, a triumphant homecoming in a city eager to acknowledge its extensive thrash history. On April 29, they will release their first album of new material in nine years, The Formation of Damnation, on Nuclear Blast, a label that is also the new home of Exodus, who released The Atrocity Exhibition … Exhibit A in October 2007.

Billy describes the Testament release as a return to form, with more traditional thrash elements replacing the midtempo brutality that defined their ’90s material. "We hadn’t written a record that had lead guitar sections," he says. "We have Alex Skolnick back in the band — it was feeling good, like it used to. I wanted to sing more, not do death metal vocals. I wanted it to be heavy, but have catchy melodies." The few tracks that Nuclear Blast has divulged to journalists confirm his analysis: they include scorching Skolnick shred and singing that is at times almost hooky.

The Atrocity Exhibition is a more modern-sounding recording, appropriating the blast beats and Byzantine song structures of death metal and continuing the trend established by the act’s two other recent releases, 2004’s Tempo of the Damned and 2005’s Shovelheaded Kill Machine (both Nuclear Blast). This evolution has its detractors, much to Holt’s frustration. "Some people want me to write Bonded by Blood over and over again," he says, "But I can’t." Despite the protestations of the purists, Exodus’s recent material is invariably successful at adapting the techniques and innovations of a new generation of metal without compromising the group’s essential sound.

Both bands will continue to tour voraciously throughout the spring and summer, eager to win over new fans with their daunting chops and undimmed energy. According to Holt, their hard work on the road is already paying off. "It’s a change for us to look out in the audience and see kids that are 17 or 18 years old," he says. "In the last five years we’ve been beating ourselves to death on tour and we’ve acquired a new audience. The old guys all have mortgages and their wives won’t let them go to shows anymore." This time around, even the subprime lending crisis is unlikely to deter Exodus and Testament. Far from being nostalgia acts, the two bands have relied on their competitive natures to keep their music on the bleeding edge of metal, refusing to sacrifice even a lone beat-per-minute to old age. Buoyed by fans both old and new and revered by a rapidly expanding metal world eager to give them their due, the new order is bonded by the blood of the past — but looking toward the future.

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