Music

Live Shots: Stepology at Herbst Theater, 8/21/2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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At most performance rehearsals, there isn’t the need to do a sound-check with the drummer and the dancers. At a tap show, it’s a must. The beats are coming from both parties, so those amps better be set to pitch perfect.

This past weekend, metal-soled kicks took the stage, for a performance by the very talented Stepology, a local tap dance organization who is trying to preserve those classic tip-tappity steps through its annual Bay Area Tap Fest program. I stopped by the Stepologists’ final rehearsal to get a taste of what they were up to, and was very glad I did. 

As a child, I had a large portrait of Fred Astaire in my bedroom (no joke!) and remember spending hours watching classics like Holiday Inn and Swing Time with my grandmother. They were such entertaining and silly movies. Those classics definitely had an influence on me, because I too took tap lessons and started dressing in long vintage skirts that made a perfect bell shape when I twirled.

Stepology is keeping that genuine spark of classy foot moves alive, while adding in some modern sensibility, with live contemporary music and clever originality. I’m sure anyone who sees the troupe perform will feel just a bit of nostalgia — and excitement for the future of this art form.

Fred, showing off the moves in Holiday Inn:

Maximum Consumption: Singing and slinging with One Ring Zero

Tony Robles
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This is the first installment of our new series, Maximum Consumption, an unseasoned look at the increasingly overlapping fields of music and culinary arts. So if you’re in a band and looking to talk chop, or a chef that moonlights as an acoustic guitar-playing busker, we’d like to talk to you.

An enticing little book landed on my desk last week. It’s part cookbook, part music journalism, part rock opus, and hell, part coffee table book. The Recipe Project (subhead “A Delectable Extravaganza of Food and Music) is a concept spearheaded by New York-based gypsy-klezmer act One Ring Zero. The band’s co-founders, Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, created songs using the recipes of well-known chefs (Mario Batali, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Chris Cosentino) as the word-for-word lyrics. The meals themselves served as musical influence; each recipe inspired a different sound.

While the songs are not likely ones you’d listen to say, on a long lonesome drive, they do have a certain childlike glint of glee. It’s conceptual. The true genius of this project is its overall cohesiveness. It’s an all-in-one package. Follow the recipe, listen to the song, get some interesting background factoids. There’s also the starpower — and that goes for both rockers and chefs.

Celebrated vegan author Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a.k.a one-half of Post Punk Kitchen, offers her recipe for peanut butter brunettes, and to match it One Ring Zero brought in singer Tanya Donelly (of Belly, the Breeders, and Throwing Muses) to add dreamy pop vocals. Donelly also makes another appearance later in the book as the author of a recipe called the ugly muffin.

San Francisco’s Cosentino, of Incanto, includes a recipe for brains and eggs and One Ring Zero matched it with a hyper Beastie Boys-esque rap song, as Cosentino suggested. In the preface, the reader learns that Cosentino’s brains and eggs recipe was the original impetus for the project, given its lyrical instructions. I, however, am particularly fond of the song matching Mark Kurlansky’s recipe for a raw peach. With the whisk-whisk-whisk of an old record scratch kicking off the song, it naturally leads to a sweet vintage Parisian-style ditty, you might as well be wandering the Champs-Élysées munching some ripe fruit.

But it’s not all just matchy-match recipes with songs, The Recipe Project also includes full recipe playlists, articles rock journalists, and some pretty interesting interviews with chefs, along with “A Wine Lover’s Guide to Mexican Music.” Those in-between articles start off with headlines such as “Raspberries, Moussaka, and Metallica” in which we learn that chef Michael Symon is “America’s MVP of pork” — and that Stevie Ray Vaughan is the musical equivalent.

It’s a cookbook that’s worth a spin. The Recipe Project is out Oct. 15, 2011 on Black Balloon Publishing.

Deep in the heart

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Deep in the heart

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss.

Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives.

And although One Day‘s story belongs to both characters, the too-easily dashed desires and hopes of a young woman spunkily attempting to surmount age-old class barriers spoke to Scherfig, who immediately thought of her 16-year-old daughter when reading the script. “Emma’s insecurity is an important element for me,” she says now, selecting her words delicately in her interview suite at the Ritz-Carlton. The director hadn’t been outside all day, yet it’s obvious from the way she looks out the long windows before her that she’d love to be free to wander the city.

“There are so many girls who, because of their insecurity, get too little out of life,” Scherfig continues. “You’re so worried about how you look at some family event you almost forget to enjoy looking at everybody else, and what you learn over the years is that people aren’t as critical as you think. The more you get out of whatever surroundings you’re in the happier you become. I think that’s something in your 20s — you sort of have to grow up one more time, which is a major theme of this film.”

In contrast, Dexter is the cute, rumpled brat who can’t be bothered to figure out who he is or what’s truly important to him. “He neglects himself, and he doesn’t try to find out what it is love can be,” says Scherfig. “And it’s meaningful, much more meaningful than your generic romantic comedy where the characters are very much alike, though it’s a different kind of pleasure to see those films because it’s almost like a dance. It’s the variations that you enjoy.”

Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). From where she’s sitting, she has few preconceptions about rom-coms in general, and how they can sometimes seem like a cashmere-lined ghetto, the cinematic equivalent of a Jane Austen writing corner, for U.S. women directors such as Nicole Holofcener, Nora Ephron, and Nancy Meyers.

“The love itself is what the film’s about, and the facets of it, and where it’s meant to be. Hopefully, [it’s] a classic, emotional love story,” she says. “That, I’ve never done. And this time, it was, let’s go for it. I didn’t feel like I had to fight it at all. Of course, this film has a substance that I felt when I first read the script. But yeah, I wish romantic comedies would attract the best possible directors, the best possible writers because it can be a wonderful genre.”

Her kinship still appears to lie with Dogme moviemakers and their embrace of the unpredictable and dismissal of lighting, props, and costumes (just try to picture a Pretty Woman-style shopping orgy working within those guidelines). “[Dogme] gives me a confidence that I can work on much lower budgets, so I enjoy the luxury of having a higher budget,” she says with a chuckle. “With this film I felt so fortunate that we could get that many period cars and that many music tracks and that caliber of actors in bit parts, so I really feel grateful, because I’m not used to it. This is the biggest budget I’ve ever had.”

Scherfig sounds genuinely humbled, giving off just a glimmer of the young woman that once had to scrape together state funding for her debut, The Birthday Trip (1990). “With [One Day] — even the crew would talk about it as we shot it — we felt privileged to work on a film that had the ambition of being nuanced, in a year when a lot of films had to make money.”

Filming love in the cold climate of the Great Recession has been less of a challenge after An Education, and Scherfig’s not ready to leave Europe yet. She’s set to direct Music and Silence, based on the novel by Rose Tremain, which brings together an English lute player and a Danish servant in the court of Christian IV of Denmark. But after that, America looms in the horizon: namely, a mafia project with Jessica Biel set in New York’s Lower East Side in the ’60s. “I know I’d like to do genre,” she exclaims. “It’ll been great to do something that’s even more cinematic, less character-based, more technical, and more plot-oriented. You won’t be seeing a romantic comedy!”

ONE DAY opens Fri/19 in Bay Area theaters.

Drag me from hell

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Drag me from hell

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Noah “DJ Dials” Bennett Cunningham wants to galvanize your pleasure center.

“You know how you can think back to that one night? That punk show or cool house party or the first time you saw Björk, and it’s just, the night you’ll never forget? I want to do that for other people. I want to make lasting memories,” he says from his perch in Four Barrel Coffee as he grabs Rosamunde french fries from his bag.

A DJ since age 12, the 27-year-old also works as a producer and video artist. His next big gig, in collaboration with Tri Angle Records and 120 Minutes club night, is an event likely to stir brain waves: it’s a showcase of witch house — a controversial genre also known, interchangeably, as grave rave, based goth, drag, or “pop music for the unconscious,” as San Francisco producer oOoOO has been known to describe his own sound.

It’s contentious because it’s all over the map. At its most basic, a combination of hip-hop and goth cultures, many music snobs and bloggers declared it dead on arrival. Even those associated with it seem to at least avoid using the term “witch house” itself. It’s said with an apologetic shoulder shrug.

This may be due to its murky origins. Essentially, it was coined by Denver’s Travis Egedy, a.k.a Pictureplane, sometime around 2009, partially as a joke, to describe his own music. Years later, the name remains and the scene is still burgeoning. There are some skilled musicians and producers creating this sound, including a smattering of national acts, and, locally, oOoOO (pronounced “oh”).

The August 19 showcase at 103 Harriet marks the first local live show (not just DJ set) for oOoOO — newly returned from an international tour — along with Clams Casino, White Ring, Shlohmo, Babe Rainbow, Water Borders, and D33J.

For this particularly significant event, Cunningham is working behind the scenes as the producer and co-host along with Marco De La Vega, the mastermind behind year-old witch house club night 120 Minutes at Elbo Room. Both agree that the biggest misconception about this type of music is that it’s already dead.

“It’s still new, it’s what’s happening right now,” says De La Vega. “The goth scene has a tendency to focus very strongly on the past, so all this music was the first kind of stuff where I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually happening, this makes sense for now. This is contemporary.'”

This much we know: those associated with witch house often make use of darker rhythms with creepy melodies over top, chopped and screwed hip-hop or slowed-down pop music samples, along with hypnotic and dark droning synths and howling, reverberated female vocals.

And yet, many musicians identified with this mutating, nearly indefinable genre wage battle against it. They, understandably, eschew the label for fear of pigeonholing.

“The way we look at it is that there are a few bands that were doing stuff independently and have been grouped by people trying to make it in to one cohesive term,” says Bryan Kurkimilis, one half of New York’s White Ring. “It’s nice and flattering to be part of something like that, but we had no genre in our head when we started. We’re consistently trying to evolve our sound.”

The music itself, of course, varies greatly, especially in this particular showcase. While oOoOO samples sputtering pop vocals, Shlohmo is more associated with L.A’s avant-garde beat scene, and Clams Casino’s repertoire includes making beats for based god Lil B. Toronto’s Babe Rainbow creates dark chopped and screwed hip-hop; White Ring bleeds more toward 80s synth and includes the lush, eerie voice of singer Kendra Malia.

“What motivates me, is putting Shlohmo and Babe Rainbow — who aren’t really considered witch house — next to oOoOO, White Ring, and Water Borders even, to show that it doesn’t really matter what the genre is; it’s that feeling, it’s the mood. It’s the place where it comes from,” Cunningham says. *

 

TRI ANGLE RECORDS SHOWCASE: 2011 REALITY TOUR

With oOoOO, White Ring, Clams Casino, Shlohmo, Babe Rainbow , Water Borders, D33j

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

103 Harriet at 1015 Folsom

1015 Folsom, SF

1015.com

‘West’-ward ho

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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‘West’-ward ho

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC There’s a certain irony to the fact that Wooden Shjips’ forthcoming Thrill Jockey long-player is titled West, considering the once firmly SF-based foursome has started to scatter across this storied region. Guitarist-vocalist Ripley Johnson has resettled in Colorado — when he isn’t touring the globe with wife Sanae Yamada as Moon Duo — and drummer Omar Ahsanuddin recently relocated to LA. All of this gives West — its cover art depicting the symbolically loaded Golden Gate Bridge — a particularly powerful charge for this band of musicians who grew up in the East Coast and Midwest and share a fascination with Left Coast mythology, culture, and music.

“Looking at the bridge, I don’t look at it as ‘goodbye’— I see it as ‘hello,'” explains organist Nash Whalen, paging through Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf and sunning himself on an Astroturf-clad parklet, in front of Farley’s on Potrero Hill. “Being from San Francisco certainly means something to people in the rest of the world — because of the mystique of California and the San Francisco music scene in particular. We all found our way to California — it’s the land of opportunity that I wasn’t going to experience in Vermont. Those are just some of the themes touched on in the songs.”

Those songs are transmitted with amplified immediacy and in-yo’-ear clarity on West —much like the cover image’s picture-postcard familiarity is imbued with a surreal strangeness. Notably, West signifies the first time the combo had worked in a studio with an engineer, a contrast to previous recordings, which were documented on eight-track in the outfit’s practice space. “We didn’t necessarily have good mics, and the room doesn’t necessarily sound good,” Whalen offers. “So there were a lot of elements to our recordings that frustrated us after a while.”

On West, the heavily distorted crunch of opening track “Black Smoke Rise” is beautifully separated from the shaker death-rattle, textures that seemed inextricably entangled in the past. Through the headphones, the effect is less lo-fi garage grind than a well-defined, clear shot of a speedway toward Wooden Shjips’ crossroads of hip-bobbing psychedelia, dream-drone, and charging Krautrock. The dance floor cleared, you hear the Leslie speaker tremelo, tripindicular echo, and spacey backward masking that the Shjips got to use for the first time in the studio, as well as Johnson’s airy vocals, more discernable than ever before and bidding you to take him on a nightmarish ride on the high-propulsion “Lazy Bones.” “Now when you hear a shaker, you don’t just think of it as a shaker,” says Whalen. “You hear it as a shaker in space, it’s going some place, and it’s more dynamic.”

Farley’s was a place Wooden Shjips would regularly sail into when recording West in February with Phil Manley (Trans Am, the Fucking Champs). The base of operations was Lucky Cat Studios, perched at the foot of Potrero’s slope, just steps away from the Guardian.”Yeah, the hardest thing about it was that the studio is at the bottom of the hill, so if we wanted to come up and get some coffee, it was ‘Oh, we have to walk up the hill…,'” quips Whalen, a former engineering geologist who has switched from studying rocks to rocking out full time.

Now, on this seemingly carefree sunny day, Whalen is most concerned with the fires in London: last week, flames consumed the distribution warehouse that housed the new LP. It’s uncertain how many, if any, were lost —”it’s a huge blow to all these businesses, not only bands and labels, but stores and everyone involved,” worries Whalen, who adds that the album will be available at this week’s SF show, ahead of the Sept. 13 release date. “It might be a small inconvenience for us, getting our record out on time, but for a lot of other people, it could be a lot bigger hassle — and devastating.”

WOODEN SHJIPS

With Night Beats

Thurs/18, 9:30 p.m., free (RSVP at tour.sailorjerrypresents.com)

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF.

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Familiar but strange

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Familiar but strange

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER In 1934, Broadway hosted its longest-running opera to that time, the serenely unconventional Four Saints in Three Acts. The brainchild of writer Gertrude Stein and composer Virgil Thomson, the production famously featured an all–African American cast (for the first time in roles not geared to depicting African American life), a scenic design covered in cellophane, music that mingled hints of Parisian modernism with a boisterous collage of vernacular American forms, and a libretto of unfathomable if evocative wordplay that merrily eschewed narrative — or even consistency with the title (acts were actually five, saints were many). It was weird. And people liked it.

In deciding upon a topic for the opera, Stein had taken on the lives of saints (especially Theresa and Ignatius, who figure prominently) as representative of the lives of artists. It was a secular work, and apotheosis, that ultimately concerned both her and Thomson, neither of them otherwise religious. As it turned out, the opera not only hailed the arrival of avant-garde ideas into the mainstream, but catapulted Stein into the stratosphere of celebrity.

“In Stein’s personal story the opera was a very large chapter,” explains Frank Smigiel, associate curator of public programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, currently presenting The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. “In addition to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, [Four Saints] radically transformed Stein from an experimental writer known for collecting other artists into a popular artist in her own right.”

One good apotheosis deserves another. This weekend SFMOMA, in association with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, presents Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation, as part of The Steins Collect. While the exhibition already includes footage and ephemera from Stein and Thomson’s landmark opera (with even more footage on view in the concurrent Gertrude Stein exhibition at nearby Contemporary Jewish Museum), audiences will now have the chance to see a full staging of the work. Meanwhile, the production’s team of collaborators promises as much a re-envisioning as a revival.

This is as it should be, suggests Smigiel, who spearheaded the idea for the revival about a year ago as he and his colleagues were asking themselves how they might expand on the exhibition.

“If you look at all the other artists in the Steins Collect exhibition, they’re all working not just on canvases,” he says, speaking by phone from his office at SFMOMA. “It was a creative community that was crossing disciplines in ways people might not always know about. One of our aims was to rev up the avant-garde energy of the exhibition. There’s a way, when you go to a show with Matisse and Picasso, they can just look canonical now to us. One of the hopes is that there’s still something about Stein’s language and the opera that’s going to have a bit of shake-up to it. It won’t just appear as a rolling out of a canonical piece, and people wondering, ‘What was this again?'”

To that end, Smigiel approached local company Ensemble Parallèle, acclaimed specialists in contemporary chamber opera, having been impressed by their recent production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, including its shrewd use of visual media. He also sought out Italian-born, San Francisco–based composer, performer, and musicologist Luciano Chessa, an expert in the period whom he had worked with before. Equally inspired was Smigiel’s call to Kalup Linzy, whose video-performance practice mixes soap opera genre with drag, original songs, lip-sync, and themes of family, community, sexuality, and otherness through the prism of his African American Southern upbringing and later Brooklyn milieu.

After a process of deciding how they might re-approach the work, Chessa landed on the idea of resetting the text that Thomson had excised in his own 1950s version of the opera. The result is its own piece, entitled A Heavenly Act, which will immediately precede Four Saints without an intermission (the entire program will run a fleet 90 minutes). Linzy developed video projections as the predominant visual element in the production.

Chessa and Linzy offered further insight into the collaboration, and their respective processes, during a break from a rehearsal last week. Although neither knew the opera very well before embarking on the revival, each found points of contact and familiarity with their own work.

“I knew it mostly because of [Canadian filmmaker] John Greyson’s [2009 operatic documentary] Fig Trees,” explains Chessa. In conceiving A Heavenly Act, Chessa says he wanted to account for both Thomson’s own musical influences as well as the legacy he has left in the work of later composers.

“I couldn’t be approaching the text naively as if I was discovering it for the first time,” he says. “There is a history of setting Stein in the 20th century, which I ended up discovering by analyzing the work and also the development of Thomson’s fortunes in the 20th century. Because Stein’s text is very wordy, Thomson used the technique of having it chanted. So my idea was to bring this element of chant, but do it in a different way, using different lines of text moving at different speeds, creating clusters of textures.”

Adds Linzy, “We kept things very loose and abstract, kind of organic. It didn’t have to be so strict.” Linzy — who in the production also performs a song Chessa wrote for him set to Stein’s words — shot a cast of friends as angels against a green screen, usually with movement informed by music tracks Chessa had forwarded. But in at least one case, Linzy didn’t receive the track for a corresponding scene.

“There’s a dance scene [in A Heavenly Act] where [Chessa] did a waltz, but we danced to Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls,'” explains Linzy. “But seeing it against the waltz, really slowed down, it’s almost like the angels got high off LSD and just went too far. But we were moving to Donna Summer, we were discoing. That’s what I like. He had sent the tracks but somehow I didn’t get that particular one. So I was like, ‘Oh, we’ll just disco it out.’ And so that’s what we did, and it’s the most amazing thing.”

FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS: AN OPERA INSTALLATION

Thurs/18, 7:30 p.m. (preview); Fri/19-Sat/20, 8 p.m.; Sun/21, 2 p.m., $10-85.

Novellus Theater

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

Stark raving mod

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Stark raving mod

TRASH One of the longer-running Holy Grail pursuits among a certain type of movie fan finally ended last month with the official DVD release of Otto Preminger’s Skidoo, a legendary 1968 boondoggle that was the veteran Hollywood prestige director’s attempt to tap the new “youth market.” Someone deemed those crazy kids might be magnetized, in the year of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary’s Baby, and Yellow Submarine, by a gangster farce starring the fossilizing likes of Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Mickey Rooney, and 78-year-old Groucho Marx (as God).

Possibly impressed by the dancing-trash-cans production number, a presumably well-paid Timothy Leary opined “I think this movie’s going to ‘turn on’ the country.” But between the script’s attempted surrealism, Preminger’s cement-block flair for levity, and the cast’s general bewilderment, Skidoo could only become Hollywood’s most grotesquely square attempt to groove with the Now Generation. A major flop, notoriety made it a sought-after curio for later generations who mostly had to dig its bad trip in crappy 10th-generation TV dupes. Now that it’s available through above-ground channels, everyone can experience the satisfaction of finally seeing something they’ve always wondered about, even if Skidoo will always be better in theory than actual viewing.

But how to see such yea more obscure relics of cinema’s most flailingly adventuresome era as Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (1971), The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970), or B.S. I Love You (1971)? What about the umpteen “kinky” pre-porn sexploitation epics and Pop Art-flavored spy spoofs from Europe that never achieved the cult (let alone the budget) of 1968’s Barbarella? Or those early TV movies which scarred late-wave boomer kids’ memories, then were left to gather studio library dust?

Good luck — considered to be of no remaining commercial value, most of the above eluded salvage even at the height of the 1980s VHS craze, when it seemed almost anything shot on celluloid (or not) got shunted out to hungry renters. What is the fan of post-“Golden Age,” pre-mall flick moviegoing to do?

Fortunately, meeting the demands of a discerning, frequently obsessive few have been such variably gray-shaded online market purveyors as Video Search of Miami, Something Weird, Subterranean Cinema, and Modcinema. Modcinema (www.modcinema.com), currently celebrating its third year anniversary of “exploring ’60s/’70s culture through rare and hard to find films,” is run by Los Angeleno Dante Fontana. He blames the no-show of some psychedelic relics and Me Decade titles on music rights issues — before VCRs, soundtracked songs were licensed for very limited use, and can now be very expensive to renew.

Things are looking up, however. Warner Bros. and Sony/Columbia have launched on-demand DVD-R services, Fontana says, noting “we’ll see many rare movies become available over the course of the next several years. Many studios are in debt and they want to make money off of their titles currently being sold on the gray market by people such as myself.”

He’s not worried about the competition, however. “I love these films and want them to become available on an official level. I consider what I do preservation, [selling] titles that are in danger of being completely forgotten about, raising awareness so that the studios will see there is in fact a fanbase of people who’d buy a DVD of a movie like Skidoo if they saw it.” Still, there remain “thousands and thousands of movies out there being neglected. Films that simply don’t have any known stars in them, or experimental-art films, made-for-TV movies, international films that never got any U.S. distribution.”

Among the nuggets Modcinema has unearthed in such categories are vintage telepics like The Feminist and the Fuzz (Barbara Eden as middle America’s then-idea of a Women’s Libber — forever fuming at imaginary sexist offenses, requiring a he-man to settle her down), vanity biker flick J.C. (as in Jesus Christ, which is how producer-writer-director-star William F. McGaha’s character humorlessly sees himself), or leeringly Italian crime caper You Can Do A Lot With Seven Women. And those are just from 1971.

Fontana also has a particular fondness for vintage Franco pop. In his collection you’ll find plenty of showcases for Françoise Hardy, Serge Gainsbourg, etc., plus multiple episodes of the incredible monthly 1965-70 TV program Dim Dam Dom, which made the best use of a go-go dancing ensemble this side of Shindig! while offering musical guests both native and imported (from the Bee Gees to Jimi Hendrix).

Modcinema has also packaged some unique compilations: The “Colorspace” series is a party sampler of movie trailers (“Now you’ll know the thrill of wrapping your legs around a tornado of pounding pistons, like The Girl on a Motorcycle!”), fashion promos, commercials (007 Deodorant), and whatnot. Hearing Nancy Sinatra trill “Shake that cola drag/Try the one that’s really mad!” for RC Cola — well, it can really blow your mind. (Dennis Harvey)

Our Weekly Picks: August 17-23

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 17

FILM

Better than Something

Before his death in 2008 at the age of 29, Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., a.k.a. Jay Reatard, released more material in ten years than most musicians dream of in a lifetime. He was at the peak of his career, and documentarians Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz were able to spend a week filming with Reatard just before he passed. The result is Better than Something, a feature length film about the life and death of Jay Reatard with footage culled from live performances, interviews, and the personal time the crew spent with him. Catch a glimpse into the mind of a man who rocked hard, lived fast, and, unfortunately, died young — the essential rock and roll fable. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

7:30 and 9:30 p.m., $10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

 

MUSIC

Diamond Head

Formed in 1976, U.K rockers Diamond Head would go on to become one of the leaders of a musical movement known as the “new wave of British heavy metal.” Diamond Head heavily influenced bands like Metallica, which covered Diamond Head tunes such as “Am I Evil” in its early days, and continue to do so today. Lead by founding member and guitarist Brian Tatler — who has been cited as a major influence by metal titans including Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine — the band’s current lineup is hitting the states for the very first time. In Europe, Diamond Head plays huge festivals; don’t miss this rare headbanger’s dream show. (Sean McCourt)

9 p.m., $15–$20

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

THURSDAY 18

COMEDY

SF Improv Festival

Making shit up. It’s become a serious job skill in the new non-economy, where bullshitting, winging it, and blind leaps have taken the place of an industrial base and steady employment. What I’m saying, I guess, is that you can totally rationalize going to the SF Improv Festival on economic grounds. But you don’t have to treat it like career day, even if it is a local and nationwide convention of expert improvisers where anything can happen. It’s must-see, or might-see, as is the case with New York’s famed Improv Everywhere, popping up in Union Square earlier this week. Founder Charlie Todd appears in conversation tonight as part of the festival. Improv festival highlights include group performances and workshops for careerists. Check the website for the complete program. (Robert Avila)

Through Aug. 27, most events $10–$25

Eureka Theater

215 Jackson, SF

www.sfimprovfestival.com

 

PERFORMANCE

Henson Alternative: Stuffed and Unstrung

Brian Henson started working with his dad Jim Henson when he was just a child. As fans know, he has gone on to be an incredibly talented artist in his own right, and has worked on a wide variety of well-known projects. His latest creation is the hilarious stage show Henson Alternative: Stuffed and Unstrung, which features a cast of 80 puppets and six puppeteers, and combines the imaginative world of puppetry with the mapcap world of improv comedy. In the adult-oriented show, audience members will offer story suggestions while the skilled puppeteers will bring the zany action to life on stage — with the amount of guaranteed laughs in store, even Statler and Waldorf would be impressed. (McCourt)

Thurs/18 and Aug. 25, 8 p.m.; Fri/19-Sat/20 and Aug. 26-27, 7 and 10:30 p.m., $30–$65

Curran Theatre

445 Geary, SF

1-888-746-1799

www.shnsf.com

 

MUSIC

EDAN

In Edan’s perfect world, hip-hop probably never would have evolved past the old-school beats and playful lyricism of late 1980s rappers like Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick. A shaggy-haired, Berklee College of Music-trained white kid from the suburbs of Baltimore, Md. might seem like an odd choice to carry the retro torch in a world of auto-tune and over-polished production, but he pulls it off with impressive conviction, showcasing his quirky delivery and clever wordplay along the way. Beauty and the Beat, Edan’s 2005 LP, is an underground classic overflowing with 1960s rock and psychedelia-inspired beats, dusty funk grooves, eclectic samples, and the lighthearted sense of humor that has made him one of the more interesting personalities in alternative, vintage-minded hip-hop. (Landon Moblad)

With Cut Chemist and Mr. Lif

9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

MUSIC

James Pants

Skipping out on prom to go record shopping with Peanut Butter Wolf in his hometown of Austin, Tex. led James Pants to an internship at the idiosyncratic Stones Throw record label. Apparently, he learned a lot over there. Since his debut album Welcome (2008) — supposedly culled from 100 demos — initially pegged him as a DIY weirdo with a serious fetish for cheap 70s soul and cheaper 80s hip-hop, subsequent releases have been surprising in the best way. (2010’s New Tropical EP is a summer dance party essential.) His latest, a self-titled album, focuses on a creepy, 50s-style Twin Peaks pop rock sound, with anachronistic synths and krautrock beats thrown in according to Pants’ unpredictable logic. (Ryan Prendiville)\

9 p.m., free with RSVP

Clift Hotel

495 Geary, SF

www.morganshotelgroup.com/rsvp/clift-sessions.html

 

MUSIC

U.S. Bombs

U.S. Bombs have cultivated an incendiary reputation thanks to singer, legendary skateboarder, and all around “Master of Disaster,” Duane Peters. Combining sounds culled from old school influences like the Clash and mixing them with the raw adrenaline pumping attitude needed to attack a half pipe, the band’s lineup has gone through several variations, but no matter which members of punk rock royalty he has behind him, Peters is guaranteed to steal the spotlight and make for a show you won’t likely soon forget. (McCourt)

With Meat Sluts and Johnny Mapcap and the Distractions.

9 p.m., $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

FRIDAY 19

MUSIC

RUN DMT

Things I learned this week: English muffins are better cooked on the stovetop, kites are fun, there are two acts with the name RUN DMT. One is from Baltimore, Md. plays psych rock, and is sometimes covered in maple syrup. The other is from Austin, Tex., DJs electronic, and has a good hand for dubstep or just plain bass heavy remixes across genres (having reworked Busta Rhymes, Butthole Surfers, and Cutty Ranks). It’s the second, producers Lemiwinks and Parson, that will be making their SF debut after a tour including sets at NY’s Camp Bisco and Portland, Ore.’s Fire in the Canyon festivals, so leave your waffles at home. (Prendiville)

With DJs BOGL vs DIALS

9 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

SATURDAY 20

FILM

Labyrinth

For those of us that grew up in the 1980s, it may be hard to believe, but it has now been 25 years since the beloved film Labyrinth was released. Although the movie’s human actors — including David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly — were great in their roles, to us kids back then, the real stars were the amazing puppets that were brought to life by the geniuses at the Jim Henson Company. At tonight’s screening and celebration, puppeteers Brian Henson, David Goelz, and Karen Prell will appear in conversation with Adam Savage of Mythbusters for a look behind the scenes at how they created creatures and characters such as “Hoggle,” “Didymus,” and “The Worm.”(McCourt)

5 p.m., $15

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.sfsketchfest.com

 

MUSIC

Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger

Last month may have marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison, but his band’s powerful music has lived on for both original fans and the multiple generations that have come since his passing. Celebrating that mythical force, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger of the Doors are on tour performing the group’s classic songs, giving audiences a taste of what it was like back at the Whisky A Go Go circa 1966. No one will ever be able to really fill the shoes (or leather pants) of the Lizard King, but guest vocalist Dave Brock does a great job singing alongside the original guitarist and keyboard player, keeping the Doors’ music and spirit alive and well in 2011. (McCourt)

9 p.m., $45

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

SUNDAY 21

MUSIC

“Daytime Realness”

“It’ll be the perfect way to spend a lazy gay Sunday,” says Hard French gadabout DJ Carnita of his and Heklina’s shiny new drag patio dance party. Daytime Realness’ second installation wants to sun-soak your soul in 30 years of backyard jams — yacht rock, early ’90s Top 40 hip-hop, disco, funk — brought to you by Vienetta Discotheque’s Stanley Frank, DJ BootieKlap, and DJ Rapid Fire. Did I mention drag? Hourly performances to keep your ass stationed in the El Rio backyard, served with a side of chicken ‘n’ waffles. “It’s really amazing seeing all these queens in full face in the middle afternoon. I mean, it’s a little jarring,” chirps Temprano. Step into the light, y’all. (Caitlin Donohue)

3-8 p.m., $6-8

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

 

MUSIC

Apache “What can you say about a band with songs like “Fingerbanger” and “Faster Louder” that doesn’t speak for itself? Apache, from Oakland, likes rock ‘n’ roll. And fingerbanging, apparently. (Also, really, MS Word? Fingerbanging isn’t in your spell check repertoire?) Apache plays long hair-sporting, flared jean-wearing, sunglasses at night rock music that’s heavy enough to satisfy garage purists and snotty enough to keep it fun. Stripped down and straight-forward, Apache is a no-duh addition to Burger Record’s ever expanding empire and a credit to the East Bay’s reputation as one of the last frontiers for the “fuck you” punk attitude we’ve all come to know and love, even when it means getting kicked in the shins every now and then. (Berkmoyer)

With Daddy Long Legs and the Fever Machine

9 p.m., $6

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

www.theknockoutsf.com

 

TUESDAY 23

MUSIC

Steve Lake When word got round that Steve Lake, founding member of seminal anarcho-punk band Zounds, was still touring, the news left many a little surprised. I think we’ve gotten so accustomed to the idea of “growing old and settling down,” of the people we admire packing it in at 27 or fading away, that we’ve forgotten how vital a musician can be even as his youth dwindles. Zounds was one of the more inspired and intelligent bands of the early British punk scene, and Steve Lake was at its heart. Although his solo material sounds more like Billy Bragg than Crass or Omega Tribe, the man that wrote “Subvert” and “Dirty Squatters” is still going strong. (Berkmoyer)

With Tommy Strange

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

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

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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OPENING

Exit, Pursued By a Bear Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Previews Thurs/18-Fri/19, 8pm. Opens Sat/20, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat (Aug 24-27 and Sept 7-17), 8pm. Through Sept 17. Crowded Fire performs Lauren Gunderson’s new play, a feminist revenge comedy.

Waiting for Giovanni Decker Theater, New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-36. Previews Fri/19-Sat/20 and Aug 24-26, 8pm; Sun/21, 2pm. Opens Aug 27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 18. This world-premiere play by Jewelle Gomez in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr. imagines a split-second of indecision in the mind of author James Baldwin.

BAY AREA

Toke Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Opens Thurs/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 11. Swirl Media presents Deedee Kirkwood’s pot-fueled comedy.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Bedtime in Detroit Boxcar Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $15. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 4pm. Boxcar Theatre’s first-ever Directing Lab Performance is of Ellen K. Anderson’s drama, set in Detroit on Devil’s Night.

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Wed/17-Sat/20, 8pm (also Sat/20, 2pm); Sun/21, 2 and 7:30pm. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong. The second act is not as strong as the first, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Aug 28. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

Gilligan’s Island: Live On Stage! 2011 Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Sat-Sun, 8pm. Through Aug 28. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts presents this updated, ribald take on TV’s classic castaways.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Steve Silver Theater, 1101 Eucalyptus (on the Lowell High School campus), SF; www.bathwater.org. $20. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 7:30pm. Bathwater Productions performs an acrobatic version of the Shakespeare classic.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: McLaren Park, Mansell St, SF; www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sat/20-Sun/21, 2pm. Performances continue at Bay Area parks through Aug 28. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

The Nature Line Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $17-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 27. With The Nature Line, Sleepwalkers Theatre concludes playwright J.C. Lee’s ambitious apocalypse trilogy, “This World and After.” Now well into the post-apocalyptic age, Aya (Charisse Loriaux) buries her miscarriages in the hardscrabble earth, tended by a blind one-breasted s/he named T (Amy Prosser) who plants a would-be garden and collects tattered love letters from a past when people could still physically — and emotionally — touch one another. All that’s been banished now, Aya’s friend Arty (Ariane Owens) tells us, along with the onetime plague of “sadness.” The few humans remaining huddle in the antiseptic arms of a corporate entity represented by a bossy nurse (Janna Kefalas) and her spacey assistant (Lissa Keigwin), who manage an artificial insemination clinic fueled by a stable of four comic-book–reared studs, or “dudes” in the argot of the future (a sensitive crooner smitten with Aya, played by Joshua Schell, and a boisterously adolescent fantastic three played by the roundly hilarious Roy Landaverde, Jeff Moran, and Jomar Tagatac). This all takes place at the edge of a vast, reportedly menacing frontier. Lured by an enchanting dream, and urged by T, Aya crosses over into this forbidding land, followed willy-nilly by everyone else, only to find another Eden of sorts, inhabited by the, at first, unrecognized figures of Aya’s lost and future familia (Soraya Gillis and Carla Pantoja) — a poignant moment comes in a bilingual reunion that magically erases barriers of language and time. Indeed, if Lee’s title suggests “line” as both lineage and division, the play recovers a timeless order by challenging the artificial lines between persons; people and “nature”; past, present, and future; or dream and reality. Director Mina Morita’s staging is fleet and at times poetic, while she gets generally solid performances from her cast (the more comical parts working best). Imaginative, just a little risqué, and reminiscent in its heightened vernacular, low humor, and romantic optimism of word-struck apocalypto-dramas like Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act, Nature is a well-constructed narrative with a theme and dialogue that can feel alternately eloquent and heavy-handed. That said, its final image remains an apt conclusion for the trilogy as a whole, amid another Eden where the first kiss, and first heartbreak, starts the beating all over again. (Avila)

Peaches en Regalia Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $12-24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 27. The new comedy by Bay Area playwright Steve Lyons borrows its title from a Frank Zappa instrumental and stamps it on the menu of a local diner (tangibly evoked in Wes Cayabyab and Quinn J. Whitaker’s spiffy set design), where new employee and recent college graduate Peaches (an endearingly offbeat Sarah Moser) revels in her impulse decision to leave a job at an investment bank to work at a place with such an auspicious side dish. We meet Peaches, as well as best friend Joanne (Nicole Hammersla), nebbish customer Norman (Philip Goleman), and confident guy’s guy Syd (Cooper Carlson), through a set of discrete monologues, each illustrated with mute help from the other characters. Philosophies of life and hidden desires are all on display but the plot is a prix fixe menu of romance, marriage, and parenthood as deliberate encounters lead to unexpected matches. Sharp performances crisply directed by Sara Staley add zest to otherwise average comic fare, but the writing has several inspired flights of zaniness too. Questionable whether the second act’s course is warranted, however, since it’s plot to pull into parenthood a reluctant Norman — for whom the pace of events collapses nine months and more into a dizzying time warp — is a bit too I Love Lucy to concentrate on without itching to change the channel. (Avila)

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

2012: The Musical! This week: Washington Square Park, Columbus at Union, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/20, 2pm. Also Sun/21, 2pm, Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission at Third St, SF. Continues through Sept 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

Candida Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 3, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through Sept 4. Cal Shakes artistic director helms this taken on George Bernard Shaw’s classic about a housewife torn between her husband and a new suitor.

Communicating Doors Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Alan Ayckbourn’s “time-travel-battle-of-the-sexes comedy.”

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through Aug 25. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Reduction in Force Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/20 and Aug 27, 5pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 28. Central Works performs “an economic comedy about back-stabbing, ass-kissing, and survival of the sneakiest.”

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Seven Guitars Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Aug 25, 1pm; Sat/20 and Sept 3, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 4. Marin Theatre Company performs August Wilson’s 1940s-set entry into his series of plays about the African-American experience.

Strange Travel Suggestions Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Aug 27. Jeff Greenwald returns with a new version of his hit show of improvised monologues about travel.

“2011 New Works Festival” TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1355 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-29. Schedule varies. Through Sun/21. TheatreWorks presents its annual festival of new musicals and plays, performed in workshop or staged-reading form, plus a panel discussion.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation” Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Previews Thurs, 7:30pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. $10-85. SFMOMA and YBCA present this new production of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera.

“Free Preview of SF Fringe Festival” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; RSVP to carrpool@pacbell.net. Sat, 8pm. Free. Check out excerpts from Fringe-bound works by local companies.

“Help is on the Way XVII: Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.helpisontheway.org. Sun, 7:30pm. $50-125. Performers including Lea Salonga, Shirley Jones, Kim Nalley, Paula West, and more join forces to raise money for local AIDS service organizations, presented by the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation.

“House Special” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org. Sat, 8pm. $15-18. Julie Caffey, Christine Bonasea, and Raisa Punkii present works-in-progress as part of ODC’s summer shared-residency program.

“A Mix Tape for Ophelia” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $20. CounterPULSE and Collage Theater present this multimedia exploration of adolescence through a Shakespearian, queer lens.

“SF Live!” 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. Mon, 9:30pm. Free. Ongoing. Comedy and music showcase.

“2011 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $17-25. Stepology presents this tap dance festival, featuring Melinda Sullivan, Channing Cook Holmes, the Barbary Coast Cloggers, and more.

“The Wounded Stag” Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. Tues, 7:30pm, $10. Musical performance and monologues with multi-instrumentalist Andrew Goldfarb (a.k.a. the Slow Poisoner) and absurdist performance artist Dan Carbone.

 

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

Tim Carr is a “Fame Whore” (maybe)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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We were tickled earlier this year by local songsmith Tim Carr’s clever “Shake Your Caboose” video — now comes a Gaga-ripping, kiddy-hip clip for “Fame Whore” from his forthcoming album The Shadows, due out in December. How many infantilized SF club kids can you spot? 

Music for hackers: Nebakaneza’s “Ascending into Madness” mix

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Music for hackers: Nebakaneza’s “Ascending into Madness” mix

While we await the latest apocalyptic intimations from the Anonymous v. BART showdown, let us merrily pull up our virtual balaclavas, gather around ye olde Soundcloud, and rev it to this wicked mix by SF’s own V for Vendetta-masked turntable master. Eternally anonymous DJ Nebakaneza, basshacker extraordinaire of the massive Ritual Dubstep weekly, every Thursday at Temple, just dropped the sublime “Ascending into Madness,” a “new mix of some darker stuff I’m into.” It’s a perfect soundtrack for those conflicts underground, hey no cells allowed:

 

Ascending Into Madness by NEBAKANEZA

Picture yourself gay dancing

Andrew Lam
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Picture yourself gay dancing

arts@sfbg.com

SOUND TO SPARE For some gays the definition of a good night out dancing isn’t Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, or whatever else is making it in music’s top 40 these days. Instead, we go against the grain, defy the unwritten rules, and satiate our dance floor needs to more primal, aggressive tunes. Enter Erase Errata.

Listening to the San Francisco rock trio recalls a time in my youth when I transitioned out of baggy JNCO cargo pants and tingly, mind-numbing pills into the stark contrast of a much grittier, more realistic yet still liquor-soaked world of sounds. Through them I was encouraged to picture myself alive and dancing. Though I was thousands of miles away from the creature they so vividly described in the song “The White Horse if Bucking,” I somehow knew that greener pastures lay ahead, bucking and all.

Launched in Oakland in 1999, categorized as lesbian post-punk anthem-makers or no-wave revivalists, and responsible for some of the most contagious dance-rock albums (Other Animals from 2001 and 2003’s At Crystal Palace), Erase Errata is back, sharing a bill with longtime friends, local trio Bronze, at the Fri/12 release show for Bronze’s first full-length, Copper (RVNG Intl. Records), coming out September 13.

I recently sat with Erase Errata’s Jenny Hoyston and Bronze’s Rob Spector at the bustling Duboce Park Café, sipped tea at an outdoor tables. I imagined it must be a little weird for Hoyston, who just spent three years in Portland, Oregon living life as a full-time “upper-lower class accountant,” to return to music and live in a slightly different San Francisco. We touched on the recent changes the city has gone through since her absence — local music institutions like KUSF and the Eagle Tavern’s Thursday Night Live are either struggling for existence or have disappeared altogether. However, they both agree that there are too many creative types in the Bay for the scene to be successfully shut down.

They shared horror stories of Erase Errata’s otherwise triumphant reappearance at Public Works during San Francisco Pride, when New Orleans sissy bounce queen headliner Big Freedia was (not surprisingly) revealed to be a dressing-room diva who needed the backstage area cleared before entering. Even Hoyston got sissy bounced. Freedia then turned on the sound man, they said, nitpicking to the point where he was allegedly told to leave. The two witnesses could only cringe.

“People don’t care what you sound like,” Spector said. Hoyston agreed that it was unfortunate to “flip-out” on the sound guy. She should know, now that she’s running the sound board at El Rio, and on some nights playing the role of part-time DJ. When I asked if she had a secret-weapon jam in her arsenal that packs ’em on the dance floor, she shook her head and referred to the type of aforementioned top 40 hits. I joked that her moniker should be DJ Malice, since she admits to doing this to sort of torture her audience. (Alas, “Malice” was already taken by a stripper she recalls from her time in the Pacific Northwest.)

For now, we’ll just have to look forward to thrashing about as Hoyston and her band mates entertain us with relentless bass lines, swarms of guitars, and lyrics that alternate between simplistic and complex, delivered with Hoyston’s peculiar intonation.

Speaking of intonation and vocal delivery, I pussy-footed around a bit when it came to addressing what I consider to be Spector’s androgynous voice. I told him that when I first heard Bronze’s “One Night In Mexico” his genderless voice entranced me. He said he gets a lot of comparisons to Nico.

Bronze’s new album features that weird custom-built synthesizer that has caused a lot of fascination at live performances. As a bonus, the designers of the album’s sleeve actually incorporate a thin strip of copper that can be bent in the shape of a ring and worn. It’s pretty slick for rough and charming sounds, a bangle for a future recovered. 

BRONZE w/Erase Errata, Nature, Loto Ball

Fri/12, 9 p.m., $7

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF.

www.elriosf.com

 

Hot sexy events: August 10-16

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: August 10-16

As the world comes tumbling down around our ears, it can be difficult to think about getting it on. Just kidding. People are as freaky as ever in San Francisco, which is good ’cause pretty soon that Big One will come and we’ll all fall into the ocean, the flames, a cravasse-abyss where the San Andreas Fault used to be — naked. Hopefully it won’t be this week, though. We’ve got a lot of filthy sex events to go to.

“Bawdy Storytelling: Queer”

How hip is queer right now? From Hard French to New York’s recent triumph to Queen Latifah, all you gotta do is add a LGBT to the front of your event title and bam! Your crowd will be a. hotter and b. hotter. Perhaps, then, you should not miss this edition of Bawdy Storytelling, fresh off its triumphant receipt of our Best of the Bay award for “Best Titillating T.M.I.” The pervy share sesh is trotting out sexy dykes ‘n’ fags galore to share the more, er, colorful side of living over the rainbow. 

Wed/10 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


“SSEX BBOX: It’s Complicated”

You’ve got lots to say about sex, don’t you? SSEX BBOX is counting on it – that’s why the alternative sexuality web series is hosting this dance party-fundraiser-filming (we know what you’re thinking, it’s not like that. Okay, maybe it’s kind of like that) at El Rio. They’ll be looking for your views on gender, relationships, and sexuality – all while DJs Booty Klap and Miss Pop shuck and jive. 

Thu/11 8 p.m.-1 a.m., $7

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.ssexbbox.com


Lick It

This poster for this party asks “what do you have a taste for?” It’s really, really hoping the answer is go-go dancers. The menfolk will be gyrating under the black lights for this one, and you’re invited to bust your tongue out, all over them. Brush your teeth before you come, yes you. 

Fri/12 10 p.m.-1 a.m., $5

Powerhouse 

1347 Folsom, SF

(415) 552-8689

www.powerhouse-sf.com


Arty Shoe Party

“You know how picky I am about shoes, and they only go on my feet!” Ah Alicia Silverstone, how you right you were: it simply doesn’t do to be Clueless about footwear. Alas, many of us are – hell, I’m wearing waterproof boat shoes as we speak. Not so at this weekend’s Center for Sex and Culture fundraiser bash, where nude models will be strutting about in artistically accomplished heels and flats. Worship them, foot fetishers – that’s kind of the point. 

Sat/13 2-7 p.m., $20

Center for Sex and Culture 

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


Burlesque and Brass 

Cafe Van Kleef’s cozy climes, crowded with mysterious tchotchkes and cocktail-wielding friendly strangers, seems ready-made for Louisianian jazz. It’s a busty sort of music, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s why Hot Pink Feathers’ floorshows seem to go so well with Blue Bone Express’ robust aural stylings at Burlesque and Brass. Of course, New Orleans has long been known as a top-notch melting pot of colorful characters – small wonder that this show features Italy’s Scarlett Martini, Germany’s Hedo Luxe, and Switzerland’s Koko La Douce. 

Sat/13 9:30 p.m.-1 a.m., $10

Cafe Van Kleef

1621 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.cafevankleef.com


“How To Have Sex With a Transguy”

A special somebody caught your eye on the dancefloor last weekend, but you backed off after the initial make-out session because you weren’t positive you’d know what to do with it once you got it? To the uninitiated, having sex with a transperson can seem very mysterious. And no one likes to look like a first-timer (unless that’s like, your thing). Enter Liam “Captain” Snowdon, poet-activist-educator. Snowdon will be giving not-super-straight talk on gender reassignment surgery and its results on getting down – strategies, and ways to communicate so that you and Mr. Lust can skip to the bedroom, sans baggage. 

Mon/15 6-8 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

 

 

 

Black secret technology

Andrew Lam
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0
Black secret technology

Detroit. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Maybe someone forwarded you a link to a fascinating ruin porn slideshow of its abandoned skyscrapers and crumbled mansions. Or you’ve clicked on one of the innumerable feature stories about young, homesteading pioneers plowing new fields among the wind-blasted industrial decay. Maybe your grandfather has shook his head at the glory that used to be the Big Three, a multi-billion dollar auto industry now propped up by government funds. Or perhaps you’ve appeared in a sequined gown and endless gloves in one of your black-and-white snooze-button dreams, backed by Mary and Flo, cooing out “Where Did Our Love Go?”

If you’ve been anywhere near a good club in the past year, you’ve definitely heard Detroit — one thing those strangely same-y media narratives always seem to omit is the other huge industry that Detroit has spawned, namely techno. That’s fine, real techno should always fly beneath the mainstream eye, a Cybertronic bird with tingling feathers and a killer beak-beak-beak.

Yet even in the underground Detroit’s techno legacy was threatened with obliteration: the explosion of bedroom producers who came of age during the minimal era of the late 2000s looked to Berlin for inspiration, rather than the Midwest. The wave of original Detroit innovators had become diffuse. You could sense a struggle for a Grand Unified Theory of Detroit Techno Now to present to newcomers who, after all, couldn’t exactly consult a textbook on such things. To them, “Detroit” was more of an archetypal ideal than an actual sound, let alone one created by Black people. And there was only so much jawing on about the good old days us dance floor seniors could do without being put out to the House Nation pasture. (There are Smart Drinks, nappy dreads, hoop earrings, Maurice Malone overalls, and a lot more bass there.)

Berlin has every right to claim the techno megalopolis crown — it’s done more as a civic entity to promote the music than Detroit could afford — and, hearteningly, it takes pains to venerate its Motor City forebear. No coincidence that one of Germany’s freshest acts is Motor City Drum Ensemble or that the brilliant Berlin club Tresor greets entrants with a giant “Detroit” sign. And it’s not as if Detroit went away — minimal was balanced out by the disco-funk re-edit scene, pioneered by Detroit techno heroes Moodymann and Theo Parrish.

Luckily, the smart kids will always be curious, and Detroit has been thrust back into the spotlight by a yearning for history, depth, and basics in the global techno scene. An awesome, corresponding glut is now upon us of touring DJs from the D to satisfy that need.

In the past two months alone San Francisco has seen appearances by Kevin Saunderson, Mike Huckaby, MK, Scottie Deep, Stacy Pullen, Dan Bell, and honorary Detroiter Richie Hawtin. Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, and Moodymann were here last year. And, this weekend, Parrish himself comes, along with fantastic unsung hero of the early years Claude Young, who isn’t afraid to scratch things up a little. Just announced? Two of techno’s Big Three, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson (who along with Juan Atkins invented and popularized the whole damn thing) performing together in November in their Hi Tek Soul guise.

One of the real joys of this latest Detroit resurgence, and one it would be most painful to lose: the reclamation of techno as a black musical form, a poetic permutation of soul, rejiggered by freaky sci-fi nerds with one ear attuned to space-jazz, another to krautrock and synthpop, and a third to down-and-dirty electro-funk. Or, as May’s famous formulation has it, “a complete mistake … like George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company.”

As commercial techno claims larger and larger arenas and the Motor City slips further into media cliché, it’s the perfect time to gather back at the roots. Oh, and dancing.

THEO PARRISH

Fri/12, 10 p.m.-3:30 a.m., $10–$20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF.

www.publicsf.com

 

CLAUDE YOUNG

at the Sunset Boat Party

Sun/14, 5 p.m., $45 advance

Pier 3 (Washington and Embarcadero)

www.pacificsound.net

 

HI TEK SOUL

w/ Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson

November 12, 10 p.m.-late

Public Works

 

 

YOSHI’S PRESENTS TALKING TAIKO

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YOSHI’S PRESENTS TALKING TAIKO

Talking Taiko, a book party/show featuring poetry and music to celebrate Yuri Kageyama’s book The New and Selected Yuri Writing From Peeling Till Now, by Ishmael Reed Publishing Co. Kageyama herself will perform her works of poetry, and taiko masters Eric Kamau Gravatt (McCoy Tyner, Weather Report, Source Code, Charles Mingus, Stanley Clark, Wayne Shorter) and Isaku Kageyama (Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku, Toshinori Kondo and fusion trio Hybrid Soul), guitarist Makoto Horiuchi and bassist Hiroyuki Shido are also featured.  Special-guest poets include Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed.  

Monday, Aug 15, 8pm at Yoshi’s San Francisco, 1330 Fillmore St., SF

Return of the rock

Andrew Lam
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0
Return of the rock

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Outside Lands has stepped up its game in its fourth year. The mix of bands this time around is truly inspired — if a bit pilfered from old lineups at other fests like Treasure Island. No matter, it’s riding high in 2011.

This was not always the case. Last year, the Golden Gate Park festival seemed lackluster in the music department; the lineup wasn’t as solid as it had been previously, and it lacked that one giant-but-dependably-awesome act like Radiohead (or this year’s Arcade Fire). In the process, it may have lost a festival-goer or two.

It also went down to just two days in 2010 (it was three in 2008 and 2009), which Another Planet Entertainment vice president Allen Scott says was originally the plan. He later added, “[Last] year there weren’t a lot of touring headliners because of the recession. A lot of bands and artists decided to take last year off.”

This year, however, it’s back to long-weekend status. Saturday is already sold out, unless you want to do it up big and invest in a three-day pass or VIP tickets. That leaves, as of press time, the option of going either Friday or Sunday.

The highlights below are meant to help you more easily maneuver your way through the thick bustle of crowds and trees when you get out to those green fields. For the most part, I steered clear of headliners, since those are the artists who likely inspired your decision to attend in the first place. Here’s how to get the most (audio) bang for your buck.

 

FRIDAY

Do not miss:

Big Boi: Despite Big Boi’s arrest for drug possession last weekend, Scott says, “We are expecting Big Boi to be performing at Outside Lands this Friday.” Chances are, you were not one of the lucky few who jumped on tickets to see Big Boi at the Independent earlier this year — a venue far smaller than his usual digs. Needless to say, that show was way, way sold out. While the Outside Lands stage is far larger, his presence with silky-smooth vocals and casual flowing skills are big enough to dominate.

Joy Formidable: The acclaimed Welsh trio has been lauded for ushering a return to ’90s-era pop and shoegaze. With driving guitar riffs and strong female vocals, there’s a definite glint of Breeders in there. Dave Grohl, a man well familiar with the grunge decade, chose the band to open for Foo Fighters later this year.

Toro Y Moi: South Carolina native Chaz Bundick, known as Toro Y Moi on stage, is one of those talented genre smashers. His sophomore album Underneath the Pine, which came out earlier this year, has elements of dance, funk, and dream pop; Bundick is said to be influenced by French house, ’80s R&B, and Stones Throw hip-hop. And you can throw a little Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson in there as well.

Worth checking out:

Kelley Stoltz: He’s got connections with Sonny Smith (of Sonny and the Sunsets) — he appeared on the Sunsets’ album Tomorrow is Alright — but Kelley Stoltz is a talented musician to watch in his own right. The singer-songwriter-guitarist is at the heart of San Francisco’s garage scene, has been compared to Brian Wilson (Beach Boy, not Giant), and will likely perform tracks off his excellent 2010 Sub Pop release To Dreamers.

 

SATURDAY

Do not miss:

Black Keys: With just two members, the Black Keys has a notoriously big sound. This will travel well, even if you’re stuck towards the back of the crowd, and that deep soul will likely cause some uncontrollable shoulder shaking.

Old 97s: One of the early pioneers of alt-country, Old 97s was at the forefront of a new classification of music in the early ’90s. Since then, singer Rhett Miller has struck out on his own with well-received solo albums, but catching his sound where it all started is a rarer treat.

Worth checking out:

STRFKR: Portland, Ore.-based dance pop quartet STRFKR (pronounced “Starfucker”) injects emotion into live electronic dance music. Call it that now-retro genre electro pop, call it the LCD Soundsystem effect, call it whatever you wish: just dance.

 

SUNDAY

Do not miss:

Beirut: Beirut doesn’t play very often — the last time it stopped in San Francisco was at the Treasure Island Festival in 2008 — but when it does, it’s imperative that you watch. The result is an inspired jumble of brass horns and ukulele, Balkan folk, and Eastern European-influenced torch songs. Band leader Zachary Condon’s vocals soar live and he emotes convincingly at each stop.

Deadmau5: The tripped-out lights, lasers, and holograms of the show are worth sticking around for regardless of sound. But Deadmau5, nestled in a lit-up diamond cube and wearing an oversize foam mouse head, does bring music as well; it’s haunting yet danceable electronica with moving beats and breakdowns.

tUne-YarDs: Colorful, paint-streaked Merrill Garbus (a.k.a. tUne-YarDs) could likely be dubbed acid queen of 2011 — minus any actual drugs. Her looping drums, ukulele, and bass compositions are a dizzying work of art. And if you’ve seen her weirdo video for “Bizness,” you know she’s got a few unique ideas floating around. All that brain power manifests itself into a superior live show. Plus, she brought “two free-jazzing saxophonists” to the Pitchfork Music Festival, so here’s hoping she’ll do the same in her adopted Bay Area home.

Worth checking out:

Fresh & Onlys: The band may on the verge of outgrowing this place, but for now, Fresh & Onlys can be described as very San Francisco. As in, its music is one of a few local favorites to be included in the Hemlock Tavern’s meticulously selective jukebox. The garage rockers play moody, ’80s-tinged rock ‘n’ roll — soundtrack music for backseat teenage make-out sessions.

Major Lazer: You know Diplo, that guy who made M.I.A. good? He is also a member of Major Lazer, along with another producer you may know through M.I.A., Switch. Diplo has described Major Lazer’s sound as “digital reggae and dancehall from Mars in the future,” which: yeah. The show includes eye-popping costumes, hype men, and a refreshing bent towards live audio.

 

OUTSIDE LANDS MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL Fri/12-Sun/14, noon, $85 Golden Gate Park, SF www.sfoutsidelands.com

Tasty tunes

Andrew Lam
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Tasty tunes

virginia@sfbg.com

FESTIVAL Outside Lands has been descending on lush Golden Gate Park for three years now. As the music lineup continues to feature some of the biggest acts on the summer tour circuit, the festival’s local food and drink offerings have been steadily increasing their profile. A Taste of the Bay Area, OL’s edible arena, hosts 54 food vendors, and 30 wineries and winemakers pour 100 different wines amid whimsical barrel seating under the big tent of Wine Lands. As if our dancecards weren’t already full of all the music we want to see!

To maximize your opportunities to stuff yourself, we’ve compiled an eating-drinking guide for the weekend that pairs just a few of each day’s musicians with harmonious eats. Also included: suggestions for your inter-set hydration intervals. (Read: the best booze and caffeine on offer.)

 

FRIDAY

New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, noon, Land’s End Stage Take traditional Jewish klezmer, amplify to the power of New Orleans, and suddenly you have New Orleans Klezmer Allstars on your hands. As you’re gyrating wildly to the sounds of the group’s clarinet and accordion, snack on some fried kosher dill pickles. Those Fabulous Frickle Brothers will be serving deep fried “frickle” chips and fried green tomatoes perfect for dipping in the booth’s cukaracha Sriracha, or perhaps its tasty curry mustard.

Drink interlude Avail yourself to a range of Kermit Lynch’s imported wines — the Berkeley local (a musician himself) was a key player in the introduction of French wines to the United States.

Phish, 6:30 p.m., Land’s End Stage Call us hippies, but what could go better with the ultimate jam band high than sweet summer produce? Full Belly Farms will be offering plump melons, peaches, tomatoes, corn, green beans, and bell peppers. Another farm-fresh pick: cucumber-melon spritzers from Flour + Water’s soon-to-open Salumeria. Pick up a porchetta sandwiches there to counteract all that good health.

Big Audio Dynamite, 7 p.m., Twin Peak Stage Don’t call it a comeback. With the return of Big Audio Dynamite (BAD), playful good times are sure to ensue — a perfect pair for Hayes Valley restaurant Straw’s Outside Lands carnival game, (also called Playful), which will be taking place in the Corral area of the festival. Don’t worry if you don’t win any prizes — Straw’s sweet potato tots and its falafel and schawarma snow cones will be reward enough.

Erykah Badu, 7:50 p.m., Sutro Stage Maybe you won’t be at your sexiest while slurping Split Pea Seduction’s soups, but sounds from the sultry Ms. Badu make a creation like sweet corn and smoked trout chowder oh-so-alluring — not to mention the stand’s spit-roasted lamb and Puerto Rican pork pernil sandwiches.

 

SATURDAY

Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, 12:05 p.m., Sutro Stage Nicki Bluhm’s lazy sunny day tunes will make it feel like summer, even if (when) the fog rolls into Golden Gate Park. Fresh seafood can also bring out that summer shine, particularly Woodhouse Fish Co.’s BBQ or fresh oysters. Even better for when that condensation does convene is its excellent clam chowder.

Drink interlude Elegant Rhône varietals and Chardonnay from the central coast’s Qupé winery have made many a fan forget the next set they wanted to see.

The Black Keys, 6:15 p.m., Land’s End Stage The guttural blues rock of Ohio natives Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney is sure to be one of this year’s highlights. The group is the first ever act to play multiple years at Outside Lands, so you’ll want real crowd pleasing snacks at its show. Nombe’s ever-satisfying Japanese izakaya eats should fit the bill — its popular chicken wings, honey-sweetened, lime-and-fish-sauce perky, rarely leave their audience underplussed. Nombe will also be serving up odango (fried rice balls) and fried tofu for vegetarian music lovers.

The Roots, 6:50 p.m., Twin Peaks Stage The Roots have been interjecting ensemble musicianship into the hip-hop scene since 1987. You know what else is keeping it real? American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. We look forward to seeing what multi-voiced sandwiches it will be grilling up — will the Jalapeno Popper with chèvre, jack, applewood-smoked bacon, and apricot-jalapeño relish make an appearance? What about the Mousetrap, with its sharp cheddar, havarti, and jack?

Drink interlude Wind Gap’s grapes are grown from the Sonoma Coast down to Paso Robles, resulting in earnest, heartfelt wines that express a sampling of California’s terroir. Known for its syrahs, the winery also produces Chardonnay, grenache, and pinot gris.

Muse, 8:10 p.m., Land’s End Stage All of Muse’s dramatic intensity and rock opera influences mean you’ll need to lube up your vocal chords if you want to hit those soaring vocals alongside frontman Matthew Bellamy. Down a cup of Juice To You’s energizing green juice, watermelon juice, or Thai young coconut water before you belt it out.

 

SUNDAY

Drink interlude Hedge your energy for the last day of festivities with Ritual Coffee Roaster’s iced joe or a strong coffee brew from Philz.

Mavis Staples, 1:45 p.m., Land’s End Stage From her days with the Staples Singers to her latest Grammy-winning, Jeff Tweedy-produced album You Are Not Alone, this woman bleeds heart and soul. You’ll taste both in 4505 Meats’ raved-about chicharrones and hot dogs, Namu’s Korean tacos, or Rosamunde’s beer, chicken-cherry, and apple-sage sausages.

Drink interlude Manhattan restaurateur and sommelier Paul Grieco of Hearth and Terroir Wine Bar will be at the festival on his Summer of Riesling tour, touting — you guessed it — refreshing, crisp rieslings.

Julieta Venegas, 3:50 p.m., Sutro Stage Tijuana native Julieta Venegas has earned fans globally with her Spanish language rock. Augment her Latina vibes with El Huarache Loco’s huaraches or Little Chihuahua’s dreamy fried plantain-black bean burritos. For dessert skip to the Southern Hemisphere for mouth-watering Argentinean treats: Sabores del Sur’s dreamy alfajores, powdered sugar-dusted butter cookies sandwiched around creamy dulce de leche.

John Fogerty, 4:45 p.m., Land’s End Stage Creedence Clearwater Revival’s frontman is a living legend. No one epitomizes roots rock like Fogerty — who, despite CCR’s famous Southern sound, is a Berkeley native. His one-of-a-kind local vocals make a happy pair with Little Skillet’s fried chicken, Maverick’s pulled pork sandwiches, or Criolla Kitchen’s shrimp po’ boys.

www.sfoutsidelands.com/taste

 

Doom resurrection

Andrew Lam
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Doom resurrection

arts@sfbg.com

Pentagram has had more members than many bands have songs. You could see the band three times and see 10 different people, with singer Bobby Liebling and his spooky, howling voice the only constant. But when Liebling takes the stage in San Francisco August 16, guitarist Victor Griffin will be beside him. Over the course of 30 years, their relationship has endured enough hardship and heartbreak to last a dozen lifetimes. When they stand together onstage, however, nothing can stop them.

Liebling, who founded Pentagram in 1971, grew up an only child in D.C.’s tony Virginia suburbs. When a high school guidance counselor suggested he take some time off before starting college, the goggle-eyed vocalist threw himself headlong into the two activities that would come to define the rest of his life: music and drugs.

Like Liebling, Griffin embarked on his rock ‘n’ roll career right out of high school. With friend and bassist Lee Abney, he had founded an outfit called Death Row, which gave voice to his thunderous, Sabbath-inspired guitar playing. In 1980, needing a drummer, the pair moved to D.C., where they linked up with Joe Hasselvander. The trio then began searching for a singer; with some trepidation, Hasselvander mentioned Liebling. He played Griffin a seven-inch single featuring two Pentagram classics: “Livin’ in a Ram’s Head” and “When the Screams Come.”

Reached by phone from his home in Tennessee, Griffin remembers that moment: “I was just blown away. To this day, that’s still one of my favorite recordings of Bobby.” Despite Liebling’s talents as a singer, however, Hasselvander had his doubts. “I was pretty much all for it,” continues Griffin, “but he went into a little more detail. He’d played with Bobby around ’78, and Bobby had blown some deals because of the drug use.”

Death Row decided to take a chance, inviting Liebling to try out. “We hit it off right away,” Griffin recalls. The guitarist had written lyrics for his songs, and rough vocal melodies, but he told Liebling to “just take it and do your thing with it.” The results were impressive. “What I can remember from that audition is just smiling from ear to ear,” Griffin says with a chuckle.

The pair formed a friendship and musical relationship that would last for three dramatic decades. Liebling was notoriously difficult to get along with, combining prickly pride and erratic, drug-induced behavior, but in Griffin, he found himself a partner, both in music and in crime. “Bobby and I have never had a problem with each other,” the guitarist allows. “We kind of share a weakness for drugs and alcohol. We kind of fed off each other.”

Liebling is enthusiastic: “We’re the same person in a lot of ways and nearly exactly the same person musically,” he wrote in an email interview.

Though the quartet initially performed as Death Row, it soon adopted the Pentagram moniker, losing two members, Hasselvander and Abney, in the process. Liebling and Griffin became the core of the band. But though they were producing some of the best Pentagram material to date, the duo never made it far outside the D.C. area. “Back in the olden days, we just didn’t really care,” says Griffin, ruefully. “It was the whole sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll attitude.”

Throughout the 80s and early 90s, the drugs continued to exact their toll. “We were our own worst enemy,” admits Griffin.

“I made a lot of bad decisions. I regret the ones that I made that hurt people. Especially people that I loved,” Liebling adds.

In 1996, after a seemingly endless litany of acrimonious disputes, Griffin quit the band. He eventually succeeded in ending his long-running addiction to drugs and alcohol, emerging in 2000 at the head of Place of Skulls, a new band heavily informed by the guitarist’s embrace of a fervent Christian faith.

Liebling was left, as he had been at many times in his career, with a band name, a collection of songs, and not much else. Even his storied voice was beginning to decay, thanks to nearly forty years of heroin and cocaine abuse. It wasn’t until he met his now-wife, Hallie — 27 years his junior — in 2006, that he was finally able to get clean. When guitarist Russ Strahan quit a patchwork version of Pentagram the day before the start of the band’s 2010 tour, Liebling called Griffin.

Now sober, the guitarist was interested, but skeptical. “I wasn’t sure I believed it. I’ve heard every story Bobby’s ever had to tell. I know him as [well] — or better — than most people.” Still, Griffin agreed to rejoin the band on the condition that Liebling remain clean.

Since that fateful decision, Pentagram is arguably more secure and more successful than it’s ever been. In April 2011, the band released the thunderous studio album Last Rites. On the road, Liebling and Griffin look out for each other, supporting each other’s efforts to stay sober. “There’s a lot of people out there who would like to screw you up,” explains the guitarist. “I think that both of us being on the same page with all this stuff is definitely a help — to know that you’ve got a brother there with you, who’s gonna back you up.”

Liebling agrees. “The band is stronger when we are together,” he says. “I am so lucky to have him back.”

When asked if he thinks Pentagram might finally be getting a second chance, Griffin is cautiously optimistic: “Sometimes it seems like we never really got a first chance. We’re trying to take advantage of it now, and make better decisions than we used to make back then. Live better lives.” 

PENTAGRAM

With Pelican, Alpinist, Masakari, Early Graves, Baptists, and Aeges

Tues/16, 6:30 p.m., $25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

Our Weekly Picks: August 10-16

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 10

MUSIC

Outdoorsmen

Seeking some pissed-as-shit garage rock from San Francisco? Eschewing the contemporary lyrical idiom of pizzas, fun, and friends, the band Outdoorsmen has more in common with early GG Allin (minus the racism, sexism, and other things about the baddest of rock ‘n’ roll’s bad boys that were generally inexcusable, no matter how good he was otherwise) than the Seeds or 13th Floor Elevators. If you want the raging fury of punk run through too many pedals and spat out in songs like “Summer of Hate” and “Decapitated,” these cats are here to save you from the paisley wave of vintage rock wannabes. Get angry! (Cooper Berkmoyer)

With San Francisco Water Cooler

9 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

MUSIC

Breakestra

I’ve never quite been able to wrap my head around L.A. band Breakestra. With a tendency to change members and labels as frequently as it switches from one break beat to another, the expectation is inconsistency. But instead, its collective effort manages to reach a level of esteem that puts them somewhere between other encyclopedic genre bands like the Roots and the Dap-Kings (or to go back further, the J.B.’s), reliably grooving across funk, hip-hop, and soul. Its last album, 2009’s Dusk Till Dawn, saw the band resurrecting the feel of a Norman Whitfield-era Temptations track one moment, only to later lay down a proper beat for Chali 2na. (Ryan Prendiville)

With California Honeydrops

9 p.m., $15

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

 

FRIDAY 12

COMEDY

Dave Attell

Often regarded as the epitome of a “comedian’s comedian” while paying his dues in the New York City stand-up circuit, Dave Attell finally caught his well-earned break in 2001 with the debut of Insomniac, his late night reality show on Comedy Central. His blunt and unabashed style, blue-collar looks, and approachability made him the perfect comic to maneuver the run-ins with all the drunks and freaks on that show, and those same qualities translate to his live performances. As a former writer for Saturday Night Live and contributor to The Daily Show, Attell’s credentials run deep, and his balance of the lewd and the incredibly clever has helped make him one of the best and most-respected comics around. (Landon Moblad)

Fri/12-Sat/13, 8 and 10:15 p.m., $35

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

MUSIC

Sadies

Comprised of guitarists Dallas and Travis Good (who are also brothers), drummer Mike Belitsky, and bassist Sean Dean, the Sadies have recorded and toured with everyone from John Doe and Neko Case to Andre Williams and Heavy Trash — all for very good reason. The Canadian rockers seamlessly incorporate country, surf, rockabilly, garage rock, and more into their musical foundation, creating a wide sonic pallet to work with. The band shines just as brightly on its own as in its collaborations, as was the case with its latest excellent release, 2010’s Darker Circles — so expect nothing short of an amazing live set tonight. (Sean McCourt)

With Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter

9 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

MUSIC

Javelin

Though you may hear descriptors like electro and hip-hop bandied about to describe Javelin’s music, neither really captures the wide-eyed charm of the group’s eccentric cut-and-paste style. Originally from Providence, RI but now rooted in New York City, the duo is comprised of two cousins who are just as intrigued by MPCs and old, dusty vinyl samples as they are by homemade instruments and beat-up toy keyboards. No Mas, Javelin’s 2010 debut, showed off its ability to filter lo-fi psychedelia, playful electronica, and fractured R&B into a perfectly balanced, collage-style mix of live and electronic sounds. Its follow-up, Candy Canyon, is a 24-minute exercise in cowboy folk and spaghetti Western scores. (Moblad)

With Siriusmo, Pictureplane, Krystal Klear, Vin Sol, and Charles McCloud

10 p.m., $15

103 Harriet, SF

(415) 264-1015

www.1015.com/onezerothree

 

MUSIC

Trainwreck Riders

What do you get when you cross the epic guitar work of stadium rock and the audacity of punk with the drunken swagger of country? A trainwreck? Trainwreck Riders actually. This San Francisco four-piece will have you stumbling along in commiseration and drifting into rock heaven with its boozy lullabies, but that’s only half the equation. As genuinely beautiful and sad as Trainwreck Riders can be (just check out their single “Christmas Time Blues” — goddamn) it’s just as apt to slam you back to earth with leaden shredding and headbanging goodness. Sing along and dance or just let the melodies carry you away. Trainwreck Riders will make a fan of you yet. (Berkmoyer)

With Pine Hill Haints, Mahgeetah, and Pops

8:30 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MUSIC

DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown a.k.a. Erykah Badu

Following a live performance at Outside Lands, Erykah Badu — the reigning queen of whatever genre she’s in — will be donning her DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown persona at Mezzanine. Whether you catch the soulful singer, who’s reportedly working on material with Flying Lotus, following Big Boi at the festival, or just the DJ set, she’ll be keeping the party going for the Ankh Marketing (the people behind Rock the Bells and plenty of Bay Area hip-hop) seventh anniversary celebration. Ankh has delivered on their events — the last time they brought the Roots’ Questlove for a set (which they’ll repeat Saturday at Public Works) Ghostface Killah popped on stage in the two o’clock hour. (Prendiville)

With D-Sharp

9 p.m. Doors, $25 Advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

SATURDAY 13

MUSIC

Inciters

Although it hails from Santa Cruz, the band known as Inciters sounds as though it could have come straight out of England circa the late 1960s, steeped in the rich sound and traditions of Northern Soul, albeit with an energy and attitude all its own. Currently recording its next album, the 11-piece outfit has been rocking stages both locally and internationally since 1995, and tonight finds it both performing an opening slot and also acting as the backing band for genre favorite Dean Parrish, known for 1960s hits like “I’m On My Way.” (McCourt)

With Champions, Soul Fox, Shawn and Miss T, and Mattie Valentine

9 p.m., $8

Rockit Room

406 Clement, SF

www.rock-it-room.com

 

VISUAL ART

“Scab-Free”

Is there anything more fun than a scab? Pick, pick, pick. The tension between patience and raw fulfillment makes them better than blackheads, dandruff, and ingrown hairs combined. And while blood streams through the gutters to the Bay from the tatted-up flesh of everyone from your barista to rock stars to your aunt, before the scabs and permanent skin art came the sketches and paintings. As the co-owners of Black Heart Tattoo, Scott Sylvia, Tim Lehi, and Jeff Rassier are globally renowned knights with tattoo-machine swords, swivel-stool steeds, and holy grails of pigments. Their canvases, and those of five other Black Heart dudes, may not bleed, but they’ll surely inspire your next inky scab. (Kat Renz)

Through Sept. 3

Opening reception tonight, 7 p.m.-midnight, free

Space Gallery

1141 Polk, SF

(415) 377-3325

www.spacegallerysf.com

 

FILM

Jaws

Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week wrapped up August 5. As a floundering nation collapses into Great White Withdrawl Syndrome, Bay Area residents can feed (-ing frenzy) their obsession with bloody, toothy good times at Film Night in the Park’s screening of 1975’s Jaws. One of the first-ever summer blockbusters, Steven Spielberg’s seaside classic actually doesn’t feature much fishy footage, thanks to a cranky mechanical shark that taught all involved a valuable lesson about stories actually being scarier when you don’t reveal too much of the monster. But since Discovery just served up plenty of savage shark porn (Top Five Eaten Alive!), bundle up and enjoy Jaws‘ human standouts: Roy Scheider as the sheriff trying to cope with the deadly waters off his beaches; Richard Dreyfuss as the nerdy ichthyologist; Robert Shaw as the crusty shaaak hunter; and composer John Williams, who spun epic menace from a few simple notes and created one of cinema’s most recognizable themes in the process. (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., donations accepted

Dolores Park

19th St. at Dolores, SF

(415) 272-2756

www.filmnight.org

 

MUSIC

“Incest Fest”

Incest is really bad if you’re a cheetah — one of the fastest species on Earth is nearly extinct because of its shrinking gene pool. Luckily, the Bay Area metal scene is not the African savannah. Here, such cozy relations are less about genetic mutations and all about a healthy synergy. Our local slaying skills are legendary throughout the headbanging realm, and Incest Fest is searing testimony: a dozen musicians composing five bands: Orb of Confusion (last show! CD release!), Hazzard’s Cure, Floating Goat, Owl, and Hellship. The night’s not only celebrating diverse permutations of heaviness; it’s also the birthday of one of the triple-duty guitarists. Buy the man a drink! And cheers to cheetahs, too. (Renz)

10 p.m., $5

Bender’s Bar and Grill

806 South Van Ness, SF

(415) 824-1800

www.bendersbar.com


TUESDAY 16

MUSIC

Heavy Hawaii

Heavy Hawaii aren’t really that heavy. Actually, they aren’t heavy at all. They are very “Hawaii.” What the hell does that mean, you ask? These minimalist weirdoes from San Diego tap into the same dream state that the islands and their beaches inspired in the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and a whole generation of vacation-going Americans. It’s surf-pop for a new generation, one reared on shoegaze and surrealism. The classic pop vocals are there, and catchy melodies abound, but the instrumentation is an exercise in simplicity and unsettling strangeness that will leave you swaying like kelp in a creepy underwater forest. (Berkmoyer)

With Bleached and Plateaus 9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern 1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

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

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blah Boutique, Love Axe, Genius and the Thieves Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Grady Champion Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $18.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Independent. 9pm, $20.

Outside Lands Night Show. Mad Noise Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $5.

Outdoorsmen, Mordecai, SF Water Cooler Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Personal and the Pizzas, X-Mas Island Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Return to Earth, Suggies, Symbolick Jews, Guitar Wizards of the Future Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Roundups 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Steinway Junkies, Shake Me!, Mick Leonardi, Prose In Rosette Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho with Tamar Korn, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Jazz organ party with Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Steve Taylor-Ramirez Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, free. Funk, swing, rare grooves, and more with Dr. Musco and guests.

Death or Glory Milk. 9pm, free. Punk rock dance party with Handsome Hawk Valentine and DJs Bazooka Jules and Queen-e.

English Pound Radio Otis Lounge, 25 Maiden Lane, SF; www.otissf.com. 9pm, $5. Reggae.

Mary Go Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

Megatallica Fiddler’s Green, 1333 Columbus, SF; www.megatallica.com. 7pm, free. Heavy metal.

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

THURSDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Best Coast, Eskmo California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr, SF; www.calacademy.org/nightlife. 6pm, $12.

Outside Lands Night Show. Eels, Submarines Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Equipto Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free. Evaline, Lite Brite, Fake Your Own Death Botttom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Alan Iglesias Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16. Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute.

Jésus and the Rabbis Blackthorn Tavern, 834 Irving, SF; www.blackthornsf.com. 10pm, free.

Memorials, Secret Secretaries, NIAYH Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Pins of Light, Young Lions, Hornss Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

White Pee, Birch Cooper and Polly Darton Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Zoot Woman Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $12. With Popscene DJs.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

SF Jazz Hotplate Series Amnesia. 9pm.

Soul jazz party with Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Shareef Ali and the Radical Folksonomy Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Kentucky Twisters Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free. Maxi Priest Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24-32.

Bradley Reeves 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Shannon Céili Band Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS 

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk with DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus guest Ursula 1000.

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

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

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

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

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

 

FRIDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alma Desnuda, Dogman Joe Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

Califone, Yesway, Sands Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Damned Things, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Fair to Midland, Hourcast, I Am Empire Fillmore. 8pm, $20.

Dex Romweber Duo, Ferocious Few, Touch-Me-Nots Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10. Moon Rockers, Lumps, Joy Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

“Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival” Golden Gate Park, SF; www.SFOutsideLands.com. Noon, $85. With Phish, Shins, MGMT, Original Meters, and more.

Sadies, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Soft Bombs, Aerosols, These Hills of Gold, Skystone Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Vetiver, Extra Classic Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $15.

Outside Lands Night Show. We The Kings, Summer Set, Downtown Fiction, Hot Chelle Rae, Action Item Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Gaucho with Tamar Korn Caffe Pascucci, 170 King, SF; www.caffe-pascucci.com. 8pm, $10.

Jazz Organ Party with Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Paula West with the George Mesterhazy Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25-35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kitchen Fire Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Song Preservation Society 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Torreblanca, Bang Data, Andrea Balency, DJ El Kool Kyle Elbo Room. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Blow Up vs. Popscene 8 DNA Lounge. 10pm, $20. With DJs Jeffrey Paradise, Fred Falke, Omar, and more.

Breakiosaurus: Elephant Bird Camp Fundraiser and Outside Lands After Party Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thefunkyones.com/breakiosaurus. 10pm, $5-10. Hip-hop.

No Way Back Public Works. 10pm, $15. With Theo Parrish, Conor, and Solar. Re:Creation Temple SF, 540 Howard, SF; www.templesf.com. 10pm, $20. With Polish Ambassador, Quitter, Dnae Beats, Samples, and more.

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

 

SATURDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Matt Berkeley Blackthorn Tavern, 834 Irving, SF; www.blackthornsf.com. 9:30pm, free.

Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Eilen Jewell, Zoe Muth and the Lost High Rollers Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates, Sean Smith Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $8.

“Elv-O-Rama King Size Variety Show” Knockout. 9:30pm, $10. With Elvis Herselvis, Quarter Mile Combo, Naked and Shameless, and more.

Forgotten Passage 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free. 

Heartsounds, Story So Far, This Time Next Year, Shotdown Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Hooks, Eastern Span, InterChords, Clash City Sirens Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $10.

“Jimmy McCracklin’s 90th Birthday Bash” Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20. With Ben Petry, BigCat, Bobby Cochran, and more.

Sid Luscious and the Pants, CH-3, Doormats Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

“Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival” Golden Gate Park, SF; www.SFOutsideLands.com. Noon, $85. With Muse, Black Keys, Girl Talk, Roots, and more.

“Rotfest III” Hemlock Tavern. 5pm, $10. With 3 Stoned Men, Natural Fonzie, Wiki Wiki Uke Band, and more.

“Swing Goth Presents: Bowie Ball 2: 2 Times the Bowie” Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20. With Scission and Tiger Club.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Carlitos Club Deluxe, 1511 Haight, SF; (415) 552-6949. 9pm.

Soul Jazz Party with Jules Broussard and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Paula West with the George Mesterhazy Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25-35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

DaMaDa Westside Art House, 540 Balboa, SF; www.westsidearthouse.com. 8:30pm, $5.

Mutineers, Misisipi Mike Wolf, Big Jugs Plough and Stars. 9pm. Sweet Chariot Riptide Tavern. 10 and 11:15pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4-6pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie SF: Eight Year Anniversary Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. With DJs Adrian and Mysterious D, Trixxie Carr, and more.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $8-10. With Natalie Nuxx. DJ Questlove, DJ Mark DiVita Public Works. 9pm, $15.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Electro-cumbia with DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro 11.

 

SUNDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bare Wires, Liquor Store, Natural Child Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Ronnie Baker Brooks Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Buck 65 Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Cosa Brava, Grex, Jack O’ the Clock Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

“Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival” Golden Gate Park, SF; www.SFOutsideLands.com. Noon, $85. With Arcade Fire, Deadmau5, Decemberists, John Fogerty, and more.

Solo and the Skyrider Band, Dosh Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Underground Railroad to Candyland, Arrivals Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Warren Haynes Band, Stone Foxes Independent. 10pm, $30.

Young Offenders, Airfix Kits, Only the Messengers Hemlock Tavern. 3pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Creative Voices Musicians’ Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, SF; www.noertker.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Jazz organ party with Lavay Smith and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free. Mezghoon Ensemble Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $35.

Sunday Jazz Jam 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Maria Fibush and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm. Javier Limón featuring Buika, La Shica, Sandra Carrasco, and Luisa Maita Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Zach Lupetin and the Dustbowl Revival Amnesia. 8pm, $7.

Saddle Tramps Thee Parkside. 4pm, free. Secret Sisters Café Du Nord. 8pm, $17.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludichris, and guest Roger Mas.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

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

 

MONDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bomb the Music Industry, Sidekicks, Blanks, Caps Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Kirby Sewell Band featuring John Nemeth Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Ovens, Culture Kids, Sourpatch, DJs Harkin and Chominski Knockout. 9pm, $5.

Winter, Noothgrush, Trap Them, Black Breath, All Pigs Must Die, Acephalix Elbo Room. 7pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

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

DJ Brian Turner Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, free.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

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

 

 

TUESDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bipolaroid, Nectarine Pie, Shrougs, DJ Tina Boom Boom Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Go Go’s, Girl In A Coma Fillmore. 8pm, $39.50. Heavy Hawaii, Bleached, Plateaus Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Milk Carton Kids, Andrew Belle Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Pentagram, Pelican, Alpinist, Masakari, Early Graves, Baptists Mezzanine. 6:30pm, $25.

Holcombe Waller, Mia Doi Todd, Garrett Pierce Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

 

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. 

The Performant: Cello rock!

Andrew Lam
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The Performant: Cello rock!

Rasputina at the Great American Music Hall

Somewhere at the intersection of the society for creative anachronism and the Wave Gotik Treffen resides the cello-driven, chamber-rock trio Rasputina. Founded by multi-instrumentalist Melora Creager in 1992, the band has long straddled the line between whimsy and steel, with songs that range in topic from giants to vampires, orphans to infidels, E equals MC squared to 1816, “the year without a summer.” 

Decked out in corsets, ruffles, and turn-of-the-last-century fantasywear, fronted by a woman who often speaks with a faux European-High Elvish accent, Rasputina is positioned as far as possible from the center of the pop music arcana without falling completely out of the deck. Eschewing categorization, the band floats effortlessly above petty pigeon-holing, embraced by steampunk creativists, glamour Goths, strings buffs, and plain old folk alike.

Playing for an attentive crowd at the Great American Music Hall on Sunday, show openers UK folk duo Smoke Fairies, was a sweet surprise to jaded ears. Two honey-tongued English roses, each bearing a guitar that they played gently but not tentatively, their finger-picking sure, their voices perfectly complementary. 

Each song contained a shimmering undercurrent of regional inflection. The delicately balanced “Storm Song” lilted like an Irish ballad sung by Moya Brennan or Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, whereas the down-home slide guitar and husky vocals of “Living with Ghosts” evoked a haunting Appalachian melody with a hint of the Indigo Girls circa 1989 in the harmonies. Touring to support their first full-length album, Through Low Light and Trees (V2/Cooperative Music, 2010), Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies have captured the attentions of Jack White and SXSW among others, securing some welcome street cred before their album even hit the shops this side of the pond.

Rasputina too has a newish album out, Sister Kinderhook (Filthy Bonnet, 2010), and mixed several of those songs into their concert set including “Sweet Sister Temperance” (an ode to one Emily Dickinson), “A Holocaust of Giants” (an ode to, well, giants), and one of my personal favorites, “Snow-Hen of Austerlitz,” a melancholy mountain ballad picked out on a half-sized banjo about a feral girl locked in a chicken coop. Older rockers, “Rats,” “Momma Was an Opium Smoker,” and “Saline, the Salt Lake Queen,” also found their way onto the setlist, as well as “Transylvanian Concubine,” (“the oldest song of the Rasputina canon,” Melora Creager pointed out). 

In addition to Melora, the lead cellist and songstress of the band, the group’s current lineup includes longtime Creager collaborator, classically-trained cellist Daniel DeJesus, and Jill-of-all-trades Dawn Micheli who plays the drums in a  more stately fashion than predecessors such as Cabin Fever’s Philosophy Major, or Jonathon TeBeest, which sucked some of the chaotic neutral vibe out of the harder numbers. 

In truth, it was the slower, more thoughtful tunes that rendered the evening triumphal, including a forlorn cover of “Bad Moon Rising,” and the equally mournful “Watch TV”. Creager’s distinctive vocals bent and snapped like the flexible boughs of spring saplings, her breathy vibrato a perfect foil for the mellow rumble of her cello. And though it seems unlikely that the cello will ever replace the electric guitar as the favored instrument of pouting rockers, with Rasputina to blaze the path, it will at least remain a fanciful option for the musical intelligentsia. 

 

Face time

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Face time

I never regret the morning after — but sometimes the night before can stick to my face like Ragu to Tupperware, child. It’s not always pretty! OK it is, but sometimes it’s slightly less so. So when I heard that the nifty new vintage-groomin’ F.S.C. Barber in the Mission was offering something called the Hangover Treatment facial, I leaped to try it.

I mean, I’m usually about as resistant to professional beauty treatments as I am to shaved chests on porn stars or pulmonary tuberculosis. I hope. But the rituals of modern manhood are startling — one day you’re lighting up a Cuban fedora with a baseball bat you shot at par nine while building your own Playboy smoking jacket. The next you’re lying back in a beautiful vintage barber chair (complementing F.S.C.’s 120-year-old restored mahogany barber stations from the Chicago World’s Fair) while an amiable, impeccably fashionable tattooed guy named Brett massages your face. 

It was bliss, a multi-part treatment of lavender and eucalyptus hot towels with a bubbling Malin + Goetz mask that really did make me feel like “a million buckaroos.” (It costs $25.) Who wants more cocktails?

F.S.C., which is all the rage in its Manhattan homebase where there are two branches already, may put out a men’s club vibe, but it’s not really that uptight or theme-y. It has a tasty little clothing shop attached called the Freemans Sporting Club, and manager Jonah Buffa, who opened the SF outpost (his brother Sam is the F.S.C. founder), is as sweet and laid back as they come, a true Missionite raising his kid in the neighborhood.

To all you tech guys who aren’t sure what to do with your look, or aren’t even sure you should have one: please go here. They will help you! It will help all of us!

F.S.C. Barber 696 Valencia, SF. (415) 621-9000, www.fscbarber.com

T.I.M.F. T.M.I. The lineup for this year’s ever-zesty Treasure Island Music Festival (October 15 and 16, www.treasureislandfestival.com) was announced last week, and as usual it’s unofficially segregated into a “dance” day (Saturday) and a “rock” day (Sunday). On my personal “dance day” must-see list? Flying Lotus, Buraka Som Sistema, Shabazz Palaces, Battles, and — hurray for random — Death From Above 1979. There’s no over-the-top pop-dance draw this year (although grime-rapper Dizzee Rascal’s latest “Bonkers” incarnation should please any, goddess help us, Steve Aoki or LMFAO fans).

Also as usual, there’s the merest appearance of Bay Area talent — lovely local chamber-pop outfit Geographer pops in to start things off on Saturday. It seems a shame, and a failure of nerve, since we have so much worthy homegrown dance talent. Could they set up a dance tent with continuously spinning local DJs, as an alternative to the stage acts? That would be dandy.

 

NIKE7UP

Monthly based-goth, witch house and deathrock party 120 Minutes goes darker than ever with a live set by Nike7UP, who melts the chirpy underbelly of chart-pop into a suicidal wish-blorp. GuMMyBeAR, Nako, WhITCH, Teams, and more haunt your earholes.

Fri/5, 10 p.m., $10 ($5 before 11 p.m.). Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

STEFFI AND MIKE HUCKABY

Huckaby was long the secret weapon of Detroit’s techno scene, a DJ’s DJ who was key in introducing a lot of the Big Names to new sounds. He’s finally getting the breakout recognition he deserves — in May, I saw him open the reconfigured garden of Berlin’s huge Berghain club, bringing a welcome dose of deep to that spring affair. (Listen to his awesome new mix for XLR8R here.) Steffi, whose hit “Yours” might as well be from Detroit in 1988, comes to us from Amsterdam via Berlin, and she’s aces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hCJrvfBdw0

Fri/5, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $15 ($10 before 10 p.m.) Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

DUB FILLMORE FESTIVAL

At last, a free, all-ages, daytime dubstep and reggae festival to wobble away the summer hours. One helluvalotta DJs and performers, including Mochipet, Jah Yzer, Nebakaneza, and Johnny5, bring the blaster to two outdoor stages in the Fillmore. Look out below!

Sat/6, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m., free, all ages. Corner of Fillmore and O’Farrell Streets, SF.

 

ESL SHOWCASE

Ready for funkytime? The ESL label brings out soulfully gifted DJ Nickodemus of sunny house party Turntables on the Hudson for a throwdown with the Afrolicious boys (featuring live drums!), and Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation. Plus: two of my fave clubs, Surya Dub and Dub Mission, duke it out on the upstairs dance floor of Public Works, with DJ Sep and Kush Arora taking turns at the tables. Kush tells me he’s breaking out some rare kuduro and deep afro-house, so get ready to drop.

Sat/6, 9:30 p.m.-3 a.m., $10 advance. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

SPEEDY J

The Dutch master of hard techno was famous in the 1990s for wigging crowds out, true to his name. He still brings the wiggy floor-stomp, but after moving to Berlin and embracing a few minimal and experimental tricks, he’s gone deeper and broader, killing it with painterly tech effects. He’ll be blowing the monthly Kontrol party away with opener M. Gervais.

Sat/6, 10 p.m.-6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

 

FOREVER’S GONNA START TONIGHT

Last month, the nightlife community lost one of its true legends, Vicki Marlane of the Hot Boxxx Girls revue at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge. At 76, she lived an incredibly rambunctious life and was thought to be the oldest continuously appearing transgender stage performer in the country. She gave every number her all — and considering her propensity for epic numbers like “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” that was a lot of all!

Come celebrate her gorgeousness on Sat/6 at the Castro Theatre, when the awesome and informative 2010 documentary about her, Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, screens at midnight with bonus performance footage that will bowl you over. It’s a benefit for the AIDS Emergency Fund — appropriate for Vicki’s generous spirit.

Sat/6, midnight, $10. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. www.castrotheatre.com

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