Music

To sleep, to dream

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I love to grab me some winks. And who doesn’t enjoy a blazing ray? Ergo, Sleepy Sun — bred in Santa Cruz but oh-so-appropriately bunked down these days in the Sunset — is my new cozy cuppa Vitamin D dream-psych — bursting with fuzzed-up, furry freak riffs, drums that skip and play freely in Ginger Baker–ed fields of jazz-inflected groove things, and dizzying layers of narcotic vocals.

Less noise-besotted and heavy on the heaviness than other once-‘Cruz-centered kindred like Comets on Fire and Mammatus, Sleepy Sun hit its own lazy-day high with Brightblack Morning Light–style blues-rock. The band drifts on the gnarly curlicues of guitar and limpid washes of organ before crashing headlong into what sounds like a simian love-in on "White Dove" from Embrace, due for worldwide release in May on ATP Recordings. I spoke to vocalists Brett Constantino and Rachel Williams as they sat in a tree and puttered around during a Golden Gate Heights Park video shoot for the aforementioned song. Next up: the band, which has barely toured, will live in a van for the next three months, playing South by Southwest and All Tomorrow’s Parties in England.

ON SF/SC PSYCHEDELIA


"I’d say our music is honest rock ‘n’ roll," says Constantino. "It’s a concoction of six different songwriters that pick up on different things and are attracted to different sounds. But we’re not going to shy away from the fact that there seems to be a psychedelic music movement. We don’t have a problem with being lumped in with that!

"The funny thing is when we all moved to Santa Cruz to go to school, Comets [on Fire] had just left there. Everyone would always talk about, ‘Oh, Comets on Fire — they’re the Santa Cruz flagship band.’ ‘But where are they and why aren’t they ever playing?!’ I always found that interesting."

ON SC WEIRDNESS


"[Santa Cruz] is a very unusual bubble, a beach bubble," opines Constantino. "I find that it’s the perfect place to develop as an artist and as a person, y’know — just because the culture there is so open and forgiving to weirdness, to eccentricity."

ON SLEEPY SUN’S BEGINNINGS


"We all met in school in Santa Cruz," says Constantino. "We wanted to make a career out of this or give it a shot, so we moved out of our house in Santa Cruz. We still do live together. It’s like a big giant family."

"Brett and I live in same room — it’s great," Williams says later. As a couple? "We just sleep in the same room — in two different beds. But we love rumors, so spread it!"

SLEEPY SUN

With Lumerians, True Widow, and Kings and Queens

Feb. 25, 8 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Hip-hop mixes it up: ‘We All We Got’ kicks off at Levende

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New weekly hip-hop mixer? Sure, you got it; here’s the word from the organizers:

“San Francisco – We All We Got, a new weekly mixer, hip-hop open mic, and live performance party in San Francisco is the place for Bay Area artists, musicians, producers, managers, designers, and creatives to connect. Hosted by Revolutionary Poet Sellassie, We All We Got is designed to expose interesting and determined talent, cultivate relationships, showcase independent hip-hop artists and keep the dance floor moving with KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio DJ Mike Biggz. Bring your CD, get on the open mic, discover and listen to new artists, build allies, and connect. We All We Got is every Wednesday at Levende Lounge, San Francisco.

“Advocates of independent music, Inhouse Talent’s Gina Gallo and Sellassie see the opportunity to contribute to the local arts community among ambitious, forthcoming artists and offer a platform to perform. Hip-hop artist Sellassie states, ‘We are the future’ and realizes the vast talent here in the Bay Area. ‘Local promoters bring in all these other rappers from all over the country for shows and have stars right here in the Bay.’

Raising Lazarus, contemplating the SF band’s dirty-faced realism

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By Brandon Bussolini

To borrow from writer Jessica Hopper, the nature of the Internet is to refer. Before I encountered San Francisco’s Lazarus as a Web entity, I’d seen them open for Beach House at the Swedish American Hall and had met the band’s vocalist-personality, Trevor Montgomery, a couple of times.

He’s super-tall, not a giant but approximately when dressed in a too-small trenchcoat buttoned up all the way to the top as he was when I first met him through my friend Yoni. A long face with attenuated features, he’s like a half-remembered Æon Flux character. The music I later heard Lazarus perform – the band started as a collab with Marty Anderson, but the lineup live and in the studio now includes Sacto natives Kelly Nyland and Kathryn Sechrist – was harrowing and gooey. Spacemen 3 can make opiate addiction sound like a religious experience. Lazarus, on the other hand, makes music where using, being broken down and waiting for redemption isn’t any more attractive or transcendent than, like, a John Ford rewrite of Waiting for Godot.

All ears

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ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS


Antony Hegarty’s got a delicate disposition and a hankering for the embrace of Mother Nature. His latest effort, The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian), extends the band in the direction of strange, rending meditations on life, love, and gender-line transgressions. Hegarty may never be described as a big-throated hollerer, but his are rousing intimations of human fragility that approach a chest-clenching volume of heartbreak, though he never raises his voice above a whisper. The vocalist’s got a slew of side-projects going on even as he fronts cabaret-pop mopers/maestros Antony and the Johnsons. Still, no project has achieved the Johnsons’ dimensions of fortune, fame, and critical acclaim, although Hercules and Love Affair became something of a local cause célèbre last year with its cerebral, minimalist — some would say undernourished — disco hymns. (Danica Li) Tues/24, 8 p.m., $32.50–$40. Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111, California, SF. www.masonicauditorium.com

DEERHUNTER


They’re breaking out of their kudos-drenched Microcastle (Kranky, 2008) — and a dwarfing arena slot opening for Trent Reznor. (Kimberly Chun) With Lilofee. Tues/24, 10 p.m., free with RSVP at www.uptheantics.com/noisepop. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

STEPHEN MALKMUS


"I’m really exited about the Malkmus show," Noise Pop co-honcho Jordan Kurland told me. "It’s the first time he’s doing a solo show." Amazing, since the Stockton-bred Pavement songwriter has hovered round these parts, band at hand, for so long. (Chun) With Kelley Stoltz, Peggy Honeywell, and Goh Nakamura. Feb. 25, 8 p.m., $20. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

FROM MONUMENT TO MASSES


The appeal of From Monument to Masses, like contemporaries Mogwai and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, pulls from a wellspring of aggressive melodicism, diverse instrumentation, and careening thrash rock one banana peel from going ass-up. Composed of Matt Solberg (guitar), Francis Choung (drums and programming), and Sergio Robledo-Maderazo (bass and synths), From Monument to Masses formed in 2001 after Dim Mak owner and fellow hardcore fan Steve Aoki took a look-see at one of the trio’s demos and decided to release it as the group’s first self-titled album, which came out the following year. And that’s not even touching on the band’s fierce dedication to activism: they’ve formed liaisons in the past with groups like Challenging White Supremacy and the Kalayaan School for Equity. (Li) With Crime in Choir and Built for the Sea. Feb. 26, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

GOBLIN COCK


Anyone who has seen a Goblin Cock album cover — giant, pierced cartoon penis, anyone? — may be compelled to think of the band as a Spinal Tap–esque side project from Pinback’s Rob Crow. With band members boasting pseudonyms like Lord Phallus and Bane Ass-Pounder, it’s easy to see why such a misstep would occur. The San Diego group, which performs shrouded in smoke and hooded black robes, describes its oeuvre as "beyond time and beyond space" and certainly has the chops to create a sinister grind. The dirge "Stumped" and the epic "Kegrah the Dragon Killer" sound like lost Sleep or Melvins tracks, and while Satan probably hasn’t invited Goblin Cock over for tea yet, the band is earnestly writing him love notes. Opener Warship will set the mood by laying down its aggro Brooklyn metalcore after Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band heats things up with its alchemic indie anthems. (L.C. Mason) Feb. 26, 8:30 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

KOOL KEITH


Taking the ill flow to the next level, Kool Keith, a.k.a. Dr. Octagon among other aliases, often rhymes about defecation and isn’t afraid to blurt out sex-related slang. Think a rapper with Tourette’s Syndrome. Still, this self-professed lyrical king comes off as silly, nonsensical, and, when his satirical content shines, poignant. His work has attracted a list of admirers and collaborators ranging from Dan the Automator to Prodigy to Esham. The Bronx native has been at it since 1984 as a founding member of the legendary Ultramagnetic MCs before breaking out on his own with 1996’s Dr. Octagonecologyst (DreamWorks/Geffen), showcasing remarkable scratching from Bay Area fave Qbert. Keith has been reportedly institutionalized, which might explain his knack for multiple stage personas, albeit word has it he went in for depression, which may explain so much more. (Andre Torrez) With Mike Relm, Crown City Rockers, and DJ set by Kutmasta Kurt. Feb. 26, 9 p.m., $18. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

MAN/MIRACLE


The Oakland band has been working the local scene hard lately, providing a barrage of stinging guitars with a pop catchiness reminiscent of Modest Mouse. Even the vocals recall Isaac Brock’s hysterics at times. But it would be unfair to limit these up-and-comers with such comparisons. See "Magpies" for proof that they have a creative musical range that goes beyond any formula. (Torrez) With Scissors for Lefty and Picture Atlantic. Feb. 26, 5 p.m. doors, free. Benders, 806 S. Van Ness, SF. www.bendersbar.com

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT


If life were a movie, Martha Wainwright would be a gutsy heroine with a potty mouth, an assortment of endearing underdog friends, and a ferocious right hook. Because it’s not, Wainwright’s merely Canadian. With three albums’ worth of golden folk ditties beneath her belt, Wainwright’s more than battled free from the albatross of her illustrious musical lineage, which includes big bro Rufus and daddy London Wainwright III. A medley of folk and alt-country with tendencies toward pop structures and cabaret-style torch, her newest album, I Know You’re Married but I’ve Got Feelings Too (MapleMusic/Zoe, 2008), highlights a flair for incisive songwriting and powerhouse vocals. There’s still enough feminine curve to the music to belie the lyrical content, as when Wainwright warbles in her sweetly girlish voice about a "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" — a subtle reference to her famous folk-singer father. (Li) With AA Bondy, Ryan Auffenberg, and Karina Denike. Feb. 26, 8 p.m., $12. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

DEAR AND THE HEADLIGHTS


Adenoidal passion at the juncture of emo and indie from the road-friendly Phoenix, Ariz., fivesome. (Chun) With Kinch, Big Light, and A B and the Sea. Feb. 27, 8:30 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, SF, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

MAUS HAUS


Grab that opp to get a taste of the proggily imaginative power-sixpiece. (Chun) With Sugar and Gold and Tempo No Tempo. Feb. 27, 5 p.m. doors, free. Benders, 806 S. Van Ness, SF. www.bendersbar.com

THE MORNING BENDERS AND THE SUBMARINES


We’re all familiar with the addictively creamy indie of the ‘Benders — less so with the glittering Cali pop of the co-headlining duo. (Chun) With the Mumlers and Rademacher. Feb. 27, 8 p.m., $12–$14. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

ST. VINCENT


With her pale face, crazed hair, and beautiful bone structure, St. Vincent — née Annie Clark — looks something like a classically trained musician gone a little deranged in the headspace. The sense of leashed zaniness exerts an eerie tension in her music, which is all conventional pop balladry cracking open to rushes of pure weirdness and hellcat rock outros. Strictly speaking, the songwriter makes chamber pop. But it’s dissonant — with bang-a-pot dins and lyrical quirks galore. Clark centers the chaos on the strength of her deep, dark voice, bewitching in its balletic femininity. Originally a guitar player for the Polyphonic Spree and a member of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band, she composes songs in layers of euphoric instrumentation. From the sleekly nightmarish "Paris Is Burning" to the hair-raising child’s plea of "Now Now," the music’s got harpsichords, horns, plinking piano, children’s choruses, and sun-drenched synth riffs in spades. Fingers crossed that she’ll show up with the whole orchestra in tow. (Li) With Cryptacize, Rafter, and That Ghost. Feb. 27, 8 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

BOB MOULD AND MARK EITZEL


Watch the ‘craft soar. "Unplugged" and straight-up acoustic from the Hüsker Dü muck-amok and OG of noise-pop — with Eitzel joining in, accompanied solely by a pianist. (Chun) With Donovan Quinn and Jason Finazzo. Feb. 28, 7:30 p.m., $20. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

PORTUGAL, THE MAN


Youthquakin’ and shakin’ up its hometown of Portland, Ore., Portugal, the Man loves itself a fresh blend of wide-scope pop, orchestral indie rock, and tens-of-years-after psychedelia: "I was born in 1989," wails John Baldwin Gourley. (Chun) With Japanese Motors, Girls, and Love Is Chemicals. Feb. 28, 9 p.m., $13. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

RAINBOW ARABIA


Don’t heave those stony accusations of cultural colonialism at the Los Angeles duo of Danny and Tiffany Preston. Though the project spun off on Danny’s love of Middle Eastern music and his collection of microtonal keyboards from the region, the husband and wife have plundered quite varied aural booty in the past: Danny was in the dubby Pigeon Funk and Tiffany in the math rock Pink Grenade. In fact the Eastern sounds of Rainbow Arabia’s The Basta EP (Manimal, 2008), inspired by Sublime Frequencies releases, will likely morph into something poppier, more "tropical new wave," more Cambodian, and more Congotronics-esque in the near future. "We’re going wherever it works. We’ll mix it up," Preston told me from L.A., where Rainbow Arabia finds kinship with the recently relocated High Places. Of their globetrotting musical mix, he said, "It was weird to eat sushi in the ’80s — now we’re eating everything, and music and film is the same. It’s just weaving together, and everyone is taking pieces, just like other countries take pieces of our culture." For a more ethereal pop vibe, look to opening SF duo Boy in Static and their forthcoming Candy Cigarette (Fake Four). (Chun) With Themselves and Yoni Wolf. Feb. 28, 2 p.m., free. Apple Store, 1 Stockton, SF. www.apple.com

NO AGE


Get ready to be blown away by the experimental punk sounds of these L.A. darlings on the Sub Pop label. Guitarist Randy Randall’s and drummer Dean Allen Spunt’s DIY outlook includes shows at nontraditional venues like the Los Angeles River and L.A.’s Central Public Library, and Randall’s guitar parts range from simplistic and jangly to downright assaulting. Nevertheless the duo — less than four years old and two albums along — maintains an unassuming degree of minimalism, which is why the music seems to work so well. (Andre Torrez) With White Circle Crime Club, Infinite Body, and Veil Veil Vanish. March 1, 1 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, SF, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Johnny on the spot

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

"Hello, I’m Johnny Cash." Anyone who’s listened to the Man in Black’s 1968 live album At Folsom Prison (Columbia) knows that’s how the record kicks off. What you may not know, before watching Bestor Cram’s Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, is that the crowd of prisoners was coached not to applaud the vocalist when he appeared onstage, but rather to save their hollerin’ until he greeted them first.

I kind of expected Cram’s doc to simply let the album roll alongside images from the day — though the concert wasn’t filmed, San Francisco–raised rock photographer Jim Marshall took reams of still photos — but it reaches way beyond the music. Cram, whose filmmaking credits include episodes of Frontline and other politically themed works, emphasizes the record’s importance to Cash’s career, drawing on interviews with Merle Haggard, Cash bandmates, and others, and focuses in particular on how it bolstered his regular-man image as a prison-reform advocate, although the performer himself had never spent significant time behind bars.

Of particular interest is Cram’s investigation into the life of Glen Sherley, an aspiring musician who was jailed at Folsom when Cash came to play. The night before the show, unbeknownst to the inmate, Cash crash-coursed Sherley’s song "Greystone Chapel." He then performed it live as a stunned and flattered Sherley watched from the front row. The two men, who looked and sounded alike, formed a bond that led to Cash guiding Sherley’s music career after his release. But as Sherley’s children recollect, it’s one thing to be a famous, if bedeviled, star singing about prison, and another entirely to be an ex-con trying to grapple with the music biz.

Also among this year’s Noise Pop Film Festival offerings: a Wilco concert doc; a look at the career of Andre "Mr. Rhythm" Williams; a short film about Bible-flinging ’80s rockers Stryper; a tribute to indie record stores; and a "cinebiography" of Os Mutantes’ Arnaldo Baptista.

JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON

Feb. 25, 7 p.m., $9–$10 (Noise Pop Film Festival continues through March 1 at Roxie Theater and Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF)

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

Sing, memory

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How to push misty, watercolored memories of home and a past forged on the other side of the globe through the filter of today and still hold onto the mirror shards of identity? There’s a bittersweet irony to the idea that now, with the release of Sholi’s evocative, impressively detailed self-titled album on Quarterstick, the Davis-born Bay Area band might be forever known in some parts of the Iranian American community for its take on Iranian pop icon Googoosh’s "Hejrat (Migration)," a song of mourning to a departed lover.

"We kind of reinterpreted the song and framed it as being about the Iranians who left Iran and that whole migration," vocalist-guitarist Payam Bavafa. He grew up listening to Persian music with family at home and to Western sounds among friends. "When some of my relatives heard it, they said, ‘Omigod, when I heard this I started crying. This is the song of our migration.’ I was like, "Really? That’s how you think about it, too?"

The quickie recording — tracked to tape by Greg Ashley in his home, made in response to the anti-Iranian rhetoric of November 2007, and eventually included on a Believer comp — stands in contrast to the careful, lengthy process Bavafa, drummer Jonathon Bafus, and bassist-vocalist Eric Ruud undertook in creating their first full-length. The graceful, ever-growing, and seamless-seeming full-length was assembled in part at Eli Crews’ New and Improved Studios in Oakland and in part at various members’ homes, with the help of co-producer Greg Saunier, who began his contributions to Sholi in 2006 via e-mail while on tour with Deerhoof. Much like "Hejrat," the album revolves around memory and the way we construct it, a focus of Bavafa’s work as an engineer in a neuroscience lab.

Songs like "Spy in the House of Memories" embody the disc’s overall "spirit of fragmented recordings and recycled ideas," as Bavafa puts it, though others such as "November Through June" play with the "idea of wanting to be where you’re not currently. This idea of wanting to be somewhere else or someone else — and essentially everything is right in front of you."

All of which sounds like no small amount of the immigrant experience of Bavafa’s parents is making its way into the music of Sholi, a moniker taken from the vocalist’s childhood nickname. Elements of an exiled culture also pop up in the puckishly po-mo "Hejrat" cover art, which depicts Bavafa’s parents watching a hulking, fireplace-like TV appearing to air a YouTube video of Googoosh. "Our parents look at Iranian TV and radio — they have their own portal," muses Bavafa, "and I have mine."

SHOLI

With the Dead Trees, Everest, and Jake Mann

Feb. 28, 9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Take off

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

N.A.S.A.

With Flosstradamus, Wallpaper, and DJ Morale

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

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Another blue world

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"Cinematic" is one the most overused adjectives in the music reviewer’s lexicon, practically guaranteed to appear at the first sign of a Morricone-like expanse of sound. And yet, how else to describe The Blue Depths (Jagjaguwar), the lush new album by Odawas steeped in the stormy synth scores of Vangelis (Blade Runner) and Joe Serra (The Big Blue)?

Meeting the duo for a beer in Berkeley, where they’ve recently relocated from Chicago, the talk was as likely to turn on a scene from Neil Jordan’s film Mona Lisa (1986) as the baroque night flights of Scott Walker. "There was actually a [keyboard] setting I used on the demos called ‘Movie Soundtrack,’" vocalist Michael Tapscott confesses, though his partner Isaac Edwards’ glacial arrangements plunge deeper than any prefab setting. "I’m not an engineer or programmer by any stretch of the imagination," Edwards tells me, "but that’s exactly what I was doing on this album. A lot of it was me doing things you’re not supposed to do with the synthesizer."

The duo’s first two records indulged concept album excess, but for The Blue Depths they made a conscious effort to have each of the songs stand on its own before embedding it into the swirling synth architecture that Edwards repeatedly describes as a "world." It worked: the hooks of "Harmless Lover’s Discourse" and "Swan Song for the Humpback Angler" lodge in your brain for days, but the actual listening experience is submerged in the narrative of the arrangements — the way a Neil Young–ish harmonica rises from the mists of "Moonlight/Twilight," for instance, or how a processed guitar lead punctures the drifting "Secrets of the Fall."

Tapscott and Edwards first met at Indiana University, bonding, appropriately enough, over film reviews: Tapscott was an editor of the school paper and took a shine to Edwards’ taste in movies. Neither had experience in other bands before Odawas, perhaps providing some of the innocence required to skip straight to crafting epic recordings.

The desire to set out over unknown terrain underlies the duo’s name, which has autobiographical resonance for Tapscott. "When I was little, my family would spend summers up in northern Michigan, and off in the distance of the lake there was an island named Beaver Island," he explains. "We’d take our little blow-up raft out, but it was 20 miles away, and we were never going to get there. And that’s where the Odawa [tribe] lives, on Beaver Island…. It’s a nod to the distortion of childhood memory."

When I talked to M83’s Anthony Gonzalez last spring about his John Hughes–inspired album Saturdays=Youth (Mute, 2008), he drew similar parallels between daydream memories and imaginary soundtracks. Who knows what dizzying heights Odawas might reach in their new home by the Bay, where movie love is nothing but a case of Vertigo.

ODAWAS

With Port O’Brien and Dame Satan

Fri/27, 9 p.m., $13

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

The Tao of Thao

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Coping with the backhanded compliments are just one pre-occupational hazard for musicians as they take stumbling baby steps toward the mighty kingdom of mad skills — and Thao Nguyen, she of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, is no exception.

"I used to sing even more off-key, if you can believe it," says the 24-year-old matter-of-factly. She’s hunkered down behind a cup of green tea, knuckle-length sweater sleeves shielding her fingers from the chill wafting in the door of a Haight District café. When Nguyen first slung on a guitar and began to find her voice as a Lilith Fair–inspired teen, one of her uncles would respond to her performances by offering her a plate of food. "Which is terrible to do to a kid," Nguyen recalls with amusement. "He’d say, ‘Here, you’re moaning as if you’re very hungry. I brought you food so you would stop.’ Which is funny but also terribly demoralizing when you’re 15!"

"So all that to illustrate that I’ve never considered myself a vocalist," Nguyen continues, not feeling sorry for herself in the slightest. "I started singing because I started writing." The sensuous, alto rasp of Lucinda Williams and Nina Simone are her vocal models today. "But yeah, I’d never call myself a singer. A taxpayer, tax evader, maybe," she jokes, "but…"

Taxes are at the forefront of the songwriter’s noggin: she’s just back from Portland, Ore., where she and the Get Down Stay Down–ers Willis Thompson and Adam Thompson recorded the unvarnished beginnings of her followup to her 2008 Kill Rock Stars debut, We Brave Bee Stings and All, with that recording’s producer Tucker Martine (the Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens). Now she’s content to settle briefly into a Haight sublet, though amusing yarns about her tour adventures, sprinkled with charmingly self-effacing, witty asides, spill from the songwriter. With her hair spraying in spikes from a rough bun atop her head and a slender build beneath thin layers of knits, Nguyen is the poetic pal you’d happily rope into a larky day trip, an impromptu art project, or simply a mug of tea: smart (she successfully graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies in 2006, despite following her performing muse throughout with fellow student Willis), slightly distracted, and surprisingly grounded (women’s advocacy work is a passion; she’s worked at domestic violence shelters and yearns to volunteer at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls; and then there’s those taxes).

Bee Stings reflects its maker in its sprawling, multi-hued, shambling assemblage of tunes. Loose, lovable, and surprisingly hook-laden, this album sets Nguyen and her hungry-ghost wail in an inviting landscape resplendent with frisky banjo and jittery rhythms, rubbery moments of spare twang, slouching blues guitar, and a lazy horn section plucked from the swampy South. She describes her little-distributed first album, Like Linen (Trust Me Incorporation, 2005), as folkier — with Bee Stings one can imagine an attempt to capture the mercury glimmers of Nguyen’s very essence.

"I’ve always had a very low attention span, and playing music is the only thing that has ever … adhered," says the vocalist, who grew up helping out at her mother’s Laundromat in Falls Church, Va. When she returns, she still helps fold other people’s clothes. "The one gratifying thing about tour is that it serves short-term memory. As far as anything you experience — whether you like it or not — it’s done in an hour, and you can either aim for that experience again or avoid it. So it’s an interesting way to spend your time, like a fruit fly."

And fly she has, by playing music and penning eloquent, intelligent lines like "You are mine / So I never would mind / I work my arms so hard / Just to give you an airplane ride" from "Feet Asleep," a song written from the perspective of Nguyen’s hard-working, self-sacrificing mother. That tune, as well as the feisty, thrumming "Swimming Pools" and the CD’s very title, Bee Stings, testifies to the strong women who raised Nguyen, in addition to her own quirky travels and travails.

Bee Stings has literal and figurative roots: stemming from an incident in which Nguyen jostled a bee hive, felt a bee crawl up her shorts, ran into a house, pulled down her pants, and was, as she puts it, "stung in the ass" for her trouble. Likewise, she adds, her mother, grandmother, and aunts have taken the stings and pricks of life on a daily basis. "I’ve seen them absorb so much," the songwriter says. "They’re all incredibly resilient women, and it’s a tribute to them and to just being a woman in the world, which is sometimes incredibly difficult and very specific and idiosyncratic." Nguyen sounds like just the woman to encapsulate that.

THAO NGUYEN

With David Dondero, Sean Smith, and Colossal Yes

Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m., $14

Swedish American Hall

2174 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

Days of being wild

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER A much-floggied, foggy notion worth repeating: if the natural creative energy coming off John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees could be harnessed, we’d all be muttering, "What global warming? When’s the next Oh Sees show? Mama needs to warm her digits with some superheated, Grade-A crudo rock ‘n’ roll."

Yep, dude has been in a grillion bands including the Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, OCS, the Hospitals, and now Thee Oh Sees and the Drums. His artwork pops up in the legit exhibits like last year’s "Bay Area Now" installment at Queen’s Nails, and hell, he’s even talking about writing a feature film centered on his folk-garage-noise amalgamation Thee Oh Sees. Entire scenes are forged from this kind of go-go gumption — and yessiree an argument could be made that the San Francisco underground music and art whirls would be the sadder, sorrier, and definitely less shit-stirring if Dwyer never moved here a decade ago. If Noise Pop aims to home in on independent culture, it need look no further than this man, who I checked in with as he prepped the perfect chilly-weather meal, chili, on the brink of his Noise Pop shows.

Sick or sad? Taking the temperature of the San Francisco music scene

"I think there’s a lot of great stuff from veterans — also new young shit, the second wave from when I’ve been here. I think there will always be something rad under the covers.

"I think there’s a lot of generator shows under freeways, people playing every night. For younger people it’s same thing I had when I moved here: those house parties where people get wasted and all the bands are playing."

The way to the next great house party

"I don’t find myself at house parties every week anymore. I’m not as apt to dig in as hard as I did in the past. I did get older. Sometimes you find, ‘Shit, I’m 32. I don’t want to be here. I gotta go home.’ It’s cool, though."

Thee way of the Drums

"The Drums is mostly Anthony Petrovic [Ezee Tiger, the Hospitals] and me sharing a drum kit and playing unison drums, prep-rally style with vocals. It’s exhausting." I wonder, do you two have much experience with prep rallies? "Anthony was a cheerleader. I’m totally serious."

Thee Oh Sees SOS

"There’s a new album coming out on In the Red called Help. We just finished it with the same guys and same production: Chris Woodhouse in the Mayyors. We recorded in a hangar in Sacramento where Tape Op is made. I think it has a similar value as the last one except we recorded on two-inch tape rather than half-inch so the sound is lush." Is it Beatles-inspired? "I listen to the Beatles all the time. I guess it might be a Beatles tribute — why not? Except it doesn’t have an exclamation point and we haven’t worked on a film yet."

The way of Castleface

"I love vinyl, and it’s nice to put out people’s first record, too. And it’s an honor to put out records by people who are making good shit."

THEE OH SEES

Feb. 26, 9 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

THE DRUMS

March 1, 8 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Foot Village

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PREVIEW As if it were a sovereign nation of drum-toting, megaphone-wielding musical savages, Foot Village bears its own two-pronged manifesto, stating "Our national language is drumming, our national pass-time is screaming." This declaration aptly sums up the Los Angeles group’s polyrhythmic sonic attack, which is studded with explosions of feral hoots and hollers, and three drum sets’ worth of cataclysmic crashing, hissing, and banging.

The band’s witch-doctor blend of hardcore punk and noise rock is at its best on "Bones": visions of bloodthirsty, amphetamine-fueled jungle warriors out to collect heads come to mind via Grace Lee’s wild yawps over the rest of the Village’s battle cries and death-drum rolls. Foot Village’s forthcoming album of "drum essays," titled Anti-Magic (Upset the Rhythm) and out June 2009, will be the young collective’s blueprint for its war upon the ethereal as its avows to "embrace the physical and the physical alone." Considering the group’s aggressively carnal approach to music, god help anyone who gets in its way. The ensemble will perform with the Drums — a new project with John Dwyer, ex of the Coachwhips and currently of Thee Oh Sees — at Bottom of the Hill, making it a blitzkrieg of eardrum assault with no electric guitars or bass in sight. This isn’t the usual clamor we San Franciscans are fed, but the citizens of Foot Village are clearly ready to shovel their bristling wall of sound down our hungry throats.

FOOT VILLAGE With the Drums, T.I.T.S., and Casy and Brian. Wed/18, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

“Every Sound You Can Imagine”

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REVIEW Art is in the air at City Hall, thanks to Bill Fontana’s "Spiraling Echoes" installation. In contrast, an ambitious exhibition at New Langton Arts explores the visual properties of musical pieces. Curated by Artforum contributor Christoph Cox, "Every Sound You Can Imagine" is rife with inkjet or offset prints of compositions — Morton Subotnick’s smudgy pencil jottings are an exception. A hefty percentage of works avoid standard notation to create sight-based sonic suggestions. To glean from just one small segment or wall, devoted to late-1990s works: Ryoji Ikeda’s Variations for Modulated 440hz Sinewaves is wonderfully nauseating in its op art effect, the score for Signal’s Lines conjures clouds in the sky, and William Basinski’s Shortwavemusic suggests the jagged lines of a seismograph or Richter scale.

These works are strictly black-and-white, but Cox’s survey contains many small rainbows of playful pencil and Magic Marker musicality. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Cosmic Pulses isn’t alone in its crayon radiance — Jim Hodge’s Sea of Love, Leon Kirschner’s Study for "String Quartet No. 3," Allan Bryant’s Pitch Out, Yasuo Tone’s Ten Haikus of Basho, and John Cage’s Aria (which likens jazz to dark blue and Marlene Dietrich to the color purple) all deploy the color chart as musical chart. Barry Guy’s Witch Gong Game includes felt-tip images of mandalas, pointed stars, graphic diagrams, and moon slivers, while Rainer Wehringer’s responds to Györgi Ligeti’s Artikulation by creating black and brown combs or hair clippers. Kinetic geometric designs — the circles of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise, the bird flock of check marks that is Cage’s Study for Piano and Orchestra — aren’t far from the graphic potency found in Jonny Trunk’s handsome 2005 monograph of LP covers The Music Library.

Splicing songbooks to fuse Mendelsohn to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the collage aesthetic of Hodges’ A Line Drawn in the Dark is, along with a piece by Steve Roden, one of the more inventive works here. The late Bruce Conner’s Untitled (music) has an effect similar to Will Yackulic’s recent experiments in drawing with a typewriter, while his contemporary, Wallace Berman, mines language and numeric systems. Downstairs, Christian Marclay’s video, Screenplay, sets many of these free-thinking compositional concepts into motion.

EVERY SOUND YOU CAN IMAGINE Through March 28. Tues.–Sat., noon–6 p.m. New Langton Arts, 1246 Folsom, SF. (415) 626-5416, www.newlangtonarts.org

Speed reading

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AGAINST HAPPINESS

By Eric G. Wilson

Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

166 pages

$12

Contemporary perkiness has an enemy and timeless melancholia has a defender in Eric G. Wilson, whose Against Happiness is a largely poetic and occasionally prosaic screed. Wilson is quite clear that he doesn’t want to romanticize clinical depression — if anything, his characterization of those who might genuinely need prescribed pharmaceuticals as "lost souls" oversimplifies in the other direction. His book isn’t an expansive survey so much as a personal rumination. That said, it wastes no time identifying and successfully critiquing the Protestant Pilgrim (via William Bradford) and capitalist (via Benjamin Franklin) roots of the inhumane and all-American smiley face. For Wilson, such perkiness reveals definite undertones of necrophilia.

Wilson has a flair for the alliterative binary opposition. He pithily notes the contemporary tendency to confuse pixels with people, observing that "We carry with us the world wherever we go; we don’t need to go anywhere." Though he doesn’t present the argument in a flagrant manner, it isn’t hard for a reader to infer that this sort of passive colonizing of experience characterized George W. Bush–era brainwashing. Against Happiness might have been more provocative if Wilson charted or demonstrated the political aspects and post-human fallout of American contentment at greater length, and spent less time celebrating the already well-established dolor of William Blake and John Keats, or pop culture corollaries such as Joni Mitchell in her Blue period and Bruce Springsteen in Nebraska. But this is his book, not mine, and for the most part it is zestful in its love of sadness.

A FIELD GUIDE TO MELANCHOLY

By Jacky Bowring

Oldcastle Books

240 pages

$19.95

Early in A Field Guide to Melancholy, author Jacky Bowring makes the first of a few references to Robert Burton’s 1621 tome The Anatomy of Melancholy, stating that "rather than achieving any kind of precision," the 783 pages of its first edition only "served to further emphasize the complexity of melancholy." As it’s title makes clear, Bowring’s carefully structured book is more modest in aim and more sympathetic to its subject — it aims to "extol the benefits of the pursuit of sadness, and question the obsession with happiness in contemporary society."

In doing so, Bowring avoids the biliousness that dates back to ninth-century characterizations of melancholy, instead favoring a gentle instructive tone that, while academic in basis, is never sterile. Her field guide is a particular one, by no means definitive — in the realm of contemporary music, for example, she calls upon the Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, and especially Nick Cave as exemplars and never mentions a perhaps more famous Pope of Mope. In the realm of cinema, she foregrounds Ingmar Bergman, but still has time for less obvious and perhaps more compelling figures such as Tacita Dean. Though he enters and exits the text seemingly at whim, in some ways the most resplendent melancholic species is the Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran, who might very well be the true Oscar Wilde of misery thanks to a Bible-size collection of primary aphorisms. Bowring’s book is a worthy introduction to Cioran, and that is but one of its merits.

Solo album

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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS John Campbell’s Irish Bakery is famous for its scones and pasties. My friend the Maze is famous for grinding his way through medical school and then choosing to work in publishing — freelance, at that. A feat of audacious and lively present-tensitivity for which he will forever be cemented into my heart, no matter how many crumbs he leaves in my car.

We have this sweet new routine where he runs across town to USF, where I play soccer Sunday mornings, and that way we can both be smelly and sweaty when we go out for breakfast. The camaraderie is killing me. But what are you going to do? If it wasn’t that, it would be the bacon.

Which reminds me: I’ve been challenged by my current favorite online suitor to write a song about bacon. And I use the word challenge loosely. This guy has no idea! By the way, I am famous online, completely separate from my in-print and on-stage famousnesses, for being one hot bacon-obsessed chick.

Datingwise, I have an unfair advantage over my g-g-girlfriends, and it isn’t that I stutter. Having been on both sides of the surface of the pond, I know exactly what bait to use. Bacon. The advantage is short-lived, however. I get all the bites in the world, but can’t keep anything on account of tiny tits.

I keep three very very separate mailboxes in my e-mail program: one for friends, one for Cheap Eats, and one for online dating. When that so-called "bacon explosion" rocked the Internet a couple weeks ago, all three mailboxes filled up simultaneously with links, invitations to barbecues, and pictures of the divine rolled-up weave of sausage-stuffed bacon, which, I admit, was one of the sexiest things I ever saw.

Me? Write a song about bacon? That’s like asking a kitten to be cute. As anyone lucky enough to have heard Sister Exister’s obscure first album, Scratch (available at cdbaby.com, ahem), knows, my songwriting has been, shall we say . . . a wee bit chickencentric, with occasional brave forays into eggs, and butter.

Predictably, my second solo album, about one-third written, is all about heart disease. But not the kind that comes from high-fat diets, no, the kind that comes from online dating.

Whateverwise, as much as I would love to bring all three of my bacony famousnesses together by writing a date-commissioned bacon song right here in Cheap Eats … well, to be honest I would but, incredibly, I’m drawing a blank.

So by way of stalling for rhymes, John Campbell’s Irish Bakery is famous for its scones and pasties, and me and the Maze stocked up on both. We got three scones ($1.50 apiece), a sausage roll ($3), and a beef pasty ($5).

They have glass cases just filled with piles and piles of these delicious looking things, and other things, like bread, sweet tarts … They have soup, breakfast sandwiches.

What they don’t have is anywhere to sit, except for the bar next door, the Blarney Stone, which is a great bar, so you know, with soccer on TV and all, but we were both running low on dollars and didn’t feel like feeling like we had to drink, so we took our greasy brown bags of goodness around the corner to my car. My new car. My beautiful new car. My clean and beautiful new car.

And I put on the classical music station and we ate and talked and passed the pasty and talked and laughed and just generally steamed up the windows. Everything was great! Actually, I didn’t think the scones were anything special.

They are "traditional" scones, and, I know I know, we’re people. We tend to dwell on the past, to go on living in it. Ergo: traditional = special. But I personally can’t afford to think that way or I will dry up and blow away. To me they were scones, and great, and the pasty, by virtue of being something new, was special: ground beef in gravy with carrots, onions, and potatoes all wrapped up in this sopping greasy flaky crumbly pastry dough.

Which I am still picking out of my seats.

And the camaraderie is killing me. But what are you going to do? I live in a world that defines itself, and its parts and people, historically. It’s a song. About bacon. And it’s over now, so stop dancing already and wish me weight.

JOHN CAMPBELL’S

Daily: 7 a.m.–8 p.m.

5625 Geary, SF

(415) 387-1536

Full Bar next door

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Hear, here

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› johnny@sfbg.com

As I walk into City Hall, I hear a horn from the street — not a car horn, but a single trumpet. Further inside, what might be a few notes from a harpsichord hover in the air, followed by the twitters and chirps of swooping birds. A man sits on the steps at the foot of the rotunda stairs, looking up in slight bewilderment, wondering where in the hell the trees and small jungle might be. The source of these sounds is above him, by the rotunda’s dome — eight transducers installed by sound artist Bill Fontana that employ echolocation as part of a site-specific sound sculpture titled Spiraling Echoes.

A few days later, I step out of the rain and onto a wet 22 Fillmore bus, with a persistent hum, drone, or whine in my ears. I’m wearing headphones and listening to Jacob Kirkegaard’s latest recording, Labyrinthitis (Touch Music/Fonik). I hear hearing: Kirkegaard produced the piece by inserting tiny microphones into his ears to record the frequencies — otoacoustic emissions — produced by hairs within the cochlea. Labyrinthitis is both a recording and a live performance, and the live version, during which the audience’s ears are transformed into an orchestra conducted by Kirkegaard, might be even more radical and inventive.

While one work might seem vast and exterior and the other almost infinitely interior in nature, these two sound projects have more than a few things in common. The CD version of Kirkegaard’s Labyrinthitis includes a short piece by the composer Anthony Moore, who conducted an extended interview with Fontana in 2005 that surveyed Fontana’s projects. Labyrinthitis comes with a more extensive essay written in San Francisco by Douglas Kahn. A deeper resonance, however, stems from audio and visual correlations between City Hall’s rotunda and the human ear. Photos of the rotunda’s dome visibly echo the images of the spiraling interior roof of the Medical Museion in Copenhagen, where Kirkegaard created Labyrinthitis, a roof that plays a central role in the recording’s material packaging. Both structures evoke the interior of an ear.

Spiraling Echoes is a more playful work. It’s in keeping with some of Fontana’s other pieces in iconic sites — through sound, he’s taken apart Big Ben’s timekeeping, replaced the traffic noise around the Arc de Triomphe with sea ambience, and brought Niagara Falls to New York City’s Whitney Museum. For more than thirty years, Fontana has made a practice of bringing the "natural" into man-made realms — there is a potent current of environmentalism within his aesthetic. This is true of Spiraling Echoes‘ quicksilver collage of bird chatter, trickling water, and streetcar and church bells, which darts up and down four public-access floors of City Hall in a manner that magnifies the beauty of the architecture and plays with historical markers, such as the smile on a statue of Harvey Milk. (One can imagine Milk enjoying this piece and, eventually, being driven batty by it.) The infusion of nature is a subtle hint to not trash monuments, and in turn the environment, in order to create newer architecture. It’s tempting to suggest prankish unauthorized versions of Fontana’s project in commercial sites such as downtown malls.

Another characteristic that Spiraling Echoes and Labyrinthitis share is the ability to produce disorientation. Fontana’s piece brought out the Scotty Ferguson in me through its combination of surprising sound and potentially dizzying height. Kirkegaard incites a similar lack of balance no matter where one is standing — the title of Labyrinthitis refers to a balance disorder that can be related to tinnitus. It’s easy to imagine a Pekingese ripping out its owner’s jugular upon encountering the recording’s relentless low-key yet high-pitched intensity, what musicologists might refer to as "Tartini tone." With Labyrinthitis, Kirkegaard has given new and revelatory meaning to the idea of a cochlear implant. I hope he performs his piece in San Francisco one day. Recombinant Media Labs, for one, would be an ideal setting.

SPIRALING ECHOES

Through May 8, free

City Hall

www.sfacgallery.org

Money talks

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› news@sfbg.com

The economy’s a mess, and the housing crisis, financial meltdown, and skyrocketing unemployment rates have left a lot of San Franciscans short of cash. But the flow of big downtown money into political campaigns hasn’t slowed a bit.

In fact, a tally of all 2008 monetary and in-kind political contributions logged in the SF Ethics Commission Campaign Finance Database shows that even in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, money spent on local political campaigns in the city swelled to a whopping $20.6 million. That grand total, which does not include loans or so-called "soft money" like independent expenditures, is higher than that of any previous year recorded in the Ethics database, which tracks campaign spending back to 1998.

A review of the entire database paints of picture of how influence money flows in San Francisco: Six of the top 10 donors over the past 10 years are big businesses and downtown organizations that promote the same conservative political agenda. The campaign cash often wound up in the same few political pots — a handful of supervisorial campaigns and some coordinated political action committees.

And despite spending ungodly sums of money, downtown lost more races than it won.

More than half the total money spent in 2008 came from one source: Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which plunked down $10.2 million last fall for the No on Proposition H campaign against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. That November ballot measure, which lost under PG&E’s barrage, would have paved the way for public power, initiating a process to make the city the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco with a goal of 50 percent clean-energy generation by 2017.

The powerful utility wasn’t only the biggest spender last year — it claims the No. 1 slot on a list of all campaign contributions spanning from 1998 to 2008, which the Guardian compiled using Ethics data. PG&E dropped a juicy $14.7 million into local political campaigns over that period, beating out runner-up Clint Reilly by more than $10 million.

Below are brief introductions to the 10 biggest spenders, 1998-2008.

They’ve got the power. The colossal sums PG&E has forked over to influence ballot measures over the years puts the utility in a category all its own. SF isn’t the only municipality where the company has poured millions into defeating a public power proposal. In 2006, when Yolo County put measures on the ballot to expand the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which would have edged PG&E out of the service area, the utility spent $11.3 million to try and keep it from happening.

Pay to the order of Clint Reilly. Reilly, the former political consultant, now runs a successful real estate company. While his name routinely comes up on the roster of campaign contributors, he owes his status as No. 2 to his 1999 campaign for SF mayor, into which he poured some $3.5 million of his own money. "Most of the money we give is for Democratic candidates or progressive politicians, or neighborhood-oriented issues," said Reilly, who also served as president of the board of Catholic Charities.

Committee on really high-paying jobs? Third in line is the Committee on Jobs, a political action committee that aims to influence local legislation affecting business interests. The PAC is bankrolled in part by the Charles Schwab Corporation, Gap, Inc., and Gap founder Don Fisher — all of whom surface on their own in our Top 30 list. With a grand total just shy of $3 million, the committee coughed up about $100,000 in campaign-related spending in 2008. Much of that funding went to similar political entities, including the SF Coalition for Responsible Growth, the SF Chamber of Commerce 21st Century Committee, and the SF Taxpayers Union PAC (see "Downtown’s Slate," 10/15/2008). This past November, the COJ also backed the Community Justice Court Coalition, formed to pass Proposition L, which would have guaranteed first-year funding for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s small-crimes court in the Tenderloin. Prop. L failed by 57 percent.

Bluegrass billionaire. San Francisco investment banker and billionaire Warren Hellman has dropped nearly $1.2 million over the years into local political campaigns, our results show. Dubbed "the Warren Buffet of the West Coast" by Business Week for his sharp financial prowess, Hellman co-founded Hellman and Friedman, an investment firm, in 1984. Hellman is known for putting on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, an annual SF music festival. While he tends to contribute to downtown business entities such as the Committee on Jobs and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in 2008 he devoted $100,000 to supporting a June ballot measure, Proposition A, that increased teacher salaries and classroom support by instating a parcel tax to amp up funding for public schools.

Fisher king. Don Fisher, founder and former CEO of Gap, Inc., is another one of SF’s resident billionaires. While Gap, Inc. turns up in 17th place in our results, Fisher himself has poured more than $1.1 million into entities such as the Committee on Jobs, SFSOS, the San Franciscans for Sensible Government Political Action Committee, and other conservative business groups. Fisher’s total includes money from the "DDF Y2K family trust," a Fisher family fund that shows up in Ethics records in 2000. In that year, $100,000 from that trust went to support the Committee on Jobs’ candidate advocacy fund, and another $40,000 went to a pro-development group called San Franciscans for Responsible Planning.

Not a very affordable campaign, either. Sixth up is Lennar Homes, the developer behind the massive home-building project at Hunters Point Shipyard, which the Guardian has covered extensively. The vast majority of its $1 million reported spending was directed to No on Prop. F, a campaign sponsored by Lennar to defeat a June ballot measure that would have created a 50 percent affordable-housing requirement for the Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard development project. The measure failed, with 63 percent voting it down.

Chuck’s bucks. Charles Schwab Corp., which set up shop in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, is an investment banking firm that reports having $1.1 trillion in total client assets. The corporation ranks seventh in our Top 30 list, with some $973,000 in donations. In 27th place is Charles R. Schwab himself, the company’s founder and chairman of the board (and the guy they’re referring to in those "Talk to Chuck" billboards posted all over SF). If Schwab’s individual and corporate donations were combined, the total would be enough to bump Warren Hellman out of fourth place. Schwab’s dollars are infused into the Committee on Jobs, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, SF SOS, and other downtown-business interest organizations. "We’re a major company here in the Bay Area and a major employer," company spokesperson Greg Gable told the Guardian. "We’re interested in political matters across the board — it’s not limited to any one party." But it’s limited to one pro-downtown point of view.

The brass. The San Francisco Police Officer’s Association is another major player, spending some $913,000 since 1998 on political campaigns. The organization backed candidates Carmen Chu, Myrna Lim, Joseph Alioto, Denise McCarthy, and Sue Lee for supervisors in 2008, contributions show. All but Chu lost.

At your service. SEIU Local 1021 and SEIU 790 crop up frequently in Ethics data, with a grand total of about $860,000 in spending over the years. SEIU representatives recently turned out en masse at a Board of Supervisors meeting to urge the supervisors to support a June 2 special election to raise taxes in order to boost city revenues and save critical services from the hefty budget cuts that are coming down the pipe.

Friends in high places. No real surprises here: the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library contributed its money to, well, ballot measures that would have affected the library. In 2000, for example, the F and F plunked $265 thousand into an effort called the "Committee to Save Branch Libraries — Yes on Prop. A."

Top 30 San Francisco campaign donors, 1998-2008

1. Pacific Gas & Electric $14,831,486
2. Clint Reilly $4,138,089
3. Committee on Jobs $2,970,857
4. Warren F. Hellman $1,191,970
5. Don Fisher (incl. Don & Doris Fisher Y2K trust) $1,164,286
6. Lennar Homes $1,002,861
7. Charles Schwab Corporation $973,176
8. S.F. Police Officers Association $913,834
9. SEIU Local 1021 & SEIU Local 790 $860,979
10. Friends & Foundation of the S.F. Public Library $858,082
11. California Academy of Sciences $818,154
12. Residential Builders Association of S.F. $753,857
13. Steven Castleman $665,254
14. S.F. Association of Realtors $647,299
15. S.F. Chamber of Commerce $614,824
16. SEIU United Health Care Workers West & Local 250 $585,937
17. Gap, Inc. $573,959
18. California Issues PAC $556,238
19. Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums $541,474
20. Wells Fargo $464,899
21. Building Owners & Managers Association of S.F. $464,027
22. Bank of America $429,316
23. Golden Gate Restaurant Association $422,685
24. SF SOS $407,491
25. AT&T Inc. and affiliates $404,704
26. Clear Channel $391,783
27. Charles R. Schwab (individual) $362,250
28. Yellow Cab Cooperative $344,907
29. S.F. Apartment Association $280,376
30. San Franciscans for Sensible Government PAC $279,009

Upbeat indie: Scissors for Lefty and Vox Jaguars prowl Bottom of the Hill

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By L.C. Mason

I’m willing to bet that on a wall somewhere in this city of ours there’s a message emblazoned in loopy, florid handwriting purring, “For a good time, call Scissors for Lefty,” because there is nothing about their exuberant, glammed-up indie sound that suggests otherwise. The San Franciscan group’s newest self-released EP, Consumption Junction (Pepper Street Music), evokes a night-is-young idealism that speaks to the party kid in all of us.

The tight set of athemic, body-moving tunes opens up with “Ornamental,” a song sporting a giant, lung-busting chorus interspersed with ennui-tinged lead vocals by Bryan Garza and bullet-train drums. “Long Distant Love” sounds like the Cure drank a whole lotta Love Potion Number 9 and highlights a buoyant, Unicorns-esque keyboard melody that dips and bends to jaunty, optimistic lyrics about the pitfalls of loving someone a world away.

‘Core corps: Wildbirds and Peacedrums take flight with ‘Heartcore,’ opens for Lykke Li

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Wildbirds and Peacedrums‘ pristine and primal music is a hybrid of reverent pop, bare blues, and ecstatic soul music with a twist of pitch and tone that creates an undefinable sonic experience. This sparse expressive pop by Scandinavian vocalist Mariam Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin bouncingly builds with just enough simple percussion and vocal intensity to allow space and silence, like unanswerable questions, to hang between sound, asking to be filled in by the listener’s interest and intent.

Powered by feeling-infused drums and goosebump-invoking vocals, W and P’s debut, Heartcore (Leaf, 2008), is a powerful, emotive invitation into the minds of these music school drop-outs/masters.

Firestarters

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"I’ve always been a serious musician," says drummer and multi-instrumentalist M.E. Miller, "so I hate to be thought of as some fool who just created havoc."

Miller’s old band the Toy Killers created plenty of havoc with their music, as showcased on the recent CD retrospective The Unlistenable Years (ugEXPLODE), which draws on live and studio recordings from their early 1980s peak.

Co-founded by Miller and fellow percussionist Charles K. Noyes in 1979, the Toy Killers created a squirming, clattering din that encompassed no-wave noise, free improv, and even the mutant dance music of downtown New York City peers like Material and the Golden Palominos. Their shifting lineup included such future avant-garde all-stars as John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Elliott Sharp, as well as a post-DNA Arto Lindsay on guitar and vocals. But fairly or not, the Toy Killers were as notorious for their confrontational live performances as they were for their music. Miller was responsible for many of their live antics, which included a penchant for setting things on fire and igniting M-80s, dynamite, and other explosives.

There’s a Zen-like calm to the way Miller describes people’s reactions to his group’s brand of "anti-performance art." Asked how the outfit’s (literally) fiery performances went over with their Lower East Side audiences, Miller, speaking over the phone from his home in Alameda, flatly responds, "Not well." He recounts one gig at Soundscape in which audience members set up a barricade of chairs to separate themselves from the band.

Then there was an incident that took place at the Kitchen during an Elliot Sharp concert. "He just said, ‘At one point, Miller, I’m gonna turn to you, and you just make somethin’ happen,’<0x2009>" the drummer recalls. "So I just made an incendiary go from the drums straight up about six to eight feet. It just went ‘fa-foom,’ and I got all burned." The house lights came on, and the show was over.

"I think I probably pissed a lot of people off, but it was … purely for amusement. It was funny," he summarizes. Miraculously, no one, apart from Miller, was ever injured at the Toy Killers’ shows, and they never burned any venues down — an achievement that prospective show bookers might keep in mind.

The Unlistenable Years won’t cause your CD player to burst into flames, and there’s undoubtedly a visual element that’s lacking on some of the live recordings. But for the most part, the music holds up on its own, conveying a sense of near chaos that’s in keeping with their reputation as a live entity. In fact, ugEXPLODE label head and Oakland resident Weasel Walter didn’t know a thing about the band when he first encountered them in the late ’80s via Speed Trials (Homestead), a 1983 compilation that highlighted the band alongside Sonic Youth, Swans, Lydia Lunch, and the early Beastie Boys, who once opened for the Toy Killers.

The Toy Killers’ contribution, "Victimless Crime," caught Walter’s attention due to Noyes’ peculiar style of drumming. "I was really into free jazz drums and stuff like that," Walter said by phone. "But he seemed to approach drumming from a point of total disruption…. It’s like the Shaggs or something." (On his bandmate’s unique drumming style, Miller marvels, "It sounds like there is a rationale, but I’ve never been able to figure it out…. You either have to be incredibly bright or severely retarded to play like that.")

Walter filed away the band name in the back of his mind for nearly two decades. Miller, meanwhile, had been off the radar for years: it turns out he’d been playing in a wedding band since moving back to the Bay Area in the early ’90s — he grew up in Sunnyvale and later attended UC Santa Cruz — before finally connecting with fellow Bay Area improvisers like Henry Kaiser and ROVA’s Larry Ochs a few years ago. When Walter found out, he sought out Miller and persuaded him to hand over all the old tapes he could get his hands on so he could put together their long-overdue "debut" — some three decades after their first live shows.

Not content to stop there, the group — or at least a new incarnation of it — is working on a new album that showcases founders Miller and Noyes along with newcomers Kaiser, Walter, and others. They plan on unveiling a new live Toy Killers later this year, although the elusive Noyes, who still lives on the East Coast, probably won’t be involved. Still, Walter is excited at the chance to work with these battle-scarred veterans. "I feel like part of my job is to encourage these older guys to not be in the middle and not hold back," he says. "People who have counted these guys out for one reason or another are not gonna be able to count them out at all."

nowave.pair.com/ugexplode

The color purp

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

G-Stack and Dotrix4000 of the Mekanix arrive for our interview clad in Oakland’s signature purple. The color looms large among the town’s dread-locked youth, owing to the purple weed so popular here: in local slang, assorted leafy greens become "grapes," and references to "Urkel" proliferate for rhyming purposes. Forget Dipset’s Harlem and OutKast’s Atlanta — Oakland is Purple City. And although a nonsmoker, G-Stack is its mayor.

As half of the Delinquents — with partner V-White — Stack went purple early, putting out the 2003 mixtape The Purple Project (Dank or Die). For his solo career, Stack has plunged deeper into the hue with his new persona, Purple Mane. A pot-dealing, wisecracking superhero, Purple Mane has documented his adventures on five discs for Stack’s 4TheStreets label: Welcome to Purple City (2007), Tha Color Purple (2007), George W. Kush (2007), My Purple Chronicles (2008), and Abraham Reekin (2008). These have been among the hottest recent albums in the Bay — no small feat for a rapper whose career began with the Delinquents in 1992.

"I’m trying to stay in this game," Stack says. "I’m a mistake or two away from cats being like, ‘I don’t want to fuck with this dude.’ You can’t think, ‘I’ve been doing this so long — I’m great.’ "

Such realism is rare in the hyperbolic rap world, but Stack prides himself on being real. To invent Purple Mane, moreover, Stack acknowledges inspiration from Mac Dre, who released his own presidential-themed Ronald Dregan (Thizz) shortly before his 2004 murder.

"Dre was dropping numerous records and started coming with characters," recalls Stack. "I’m not trying to finish where he left off, but he was onto something. Without seeming like I’m biting, I’m doing me." This strategy allows the MC to incorporate humor into his music without sacrificing gangsta rap cred.

"Everyone knows I crack lots of jokes," he says, "but I don’t want cats to think I’m a joker. I’m everything I say I am. What we did with Purple Mane was come with my funny side."

If Stack speaks as "we," it’s to credit the role of his team in building his buzz. Besides Chronicles, a solo EP, his compilation-style purple projects have featured key collaborators like Deev da Greed, R&B songstress Naté, and producers Mike D, Quinteis, and the Mekanix. Among these, Dotrix4000 deserves special mention. Largely unheralded, he’s played a vital role in recent Bay rap, having a huge hand in the careers of popular post-hyphy acts J-Stalin and Eddi Projex. Stack’s success makes Dot three for three.

"Dot convinced me to go solo," Stack says. "V-White wasn’t ready for another Delinquents album, and Dot was in my ear, ‘You got fans out there. Why don’t you do something?’ "

In the process of helping to develop the Purple Mane persona, Dot’s been all over Stack’s releases, adding a beat here, a hook there, even demonstrating hitherto hidden rap talents. In the ultimate Bay accomplishment, he ghostwrote Too $hort’s hook on "Purple City," among a handful of prior tracks resurfacing on Stack’s latest, Dr. Purp Thumb, which is due Feb. 17 from SMC.

A full-blown national release, Purp ups the ante: it’s true to the Bay yet expands into more commercial fare and even includes love songs such as "Me N My Chick," an unusually emotional display of passion. "Talk of the Town," with Deev and Stalin, is probably the funkiest groove from this region in years, while Stack’s humor is evident in tracks like "I Fell in Love Wit a Hoe," a sort of AA meeting for gangstas tasting the infidelity they usually dole out. There’s plenty of Purple Mane, but Purp showcases unmediated G-Stack as well.

"I gave them more of me than before," he says. "It’s more Stack meets Purple Mane than Purple Mane meets Stack. You can see how they come together."

www.myspace.com/4thestreets

Speed Reading

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SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS

Edited by Peter Maravelis

Akashic Books

300 pages

$15.95

San Francisco has many legacies, including the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s. But before more recent utopian impulses, SF was the Barbary Coast — and Chinatown, North Beach, and the Financial District were havens for gambling, prostitution, and crime. This gritty, nefarious reputation was enhanced in the ’30s by Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon, and in the ’40s by John Huston’s film version, among other SF-set stories. SF was a noir city, defined by hard drinking and hard living. This is a legacy that the current city perhaps would prefer to forget, much like a blackout during a drunken binge.

In his excellent introduction to the first San Francisco Noir anthology in 2005, editor Peter Maravelis writes, "Crime fiction is the scalpel used to reveal San Francisco’s pathological character." With San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, Maravelis does more than pick up the scalpel once again. Using a timeline, he reprints some of the grainiest SF snapshots by Barbary Coast writers. He starts with Mark Twain’s hard-boiled description of the infernal Hall of Justice in the late 19th century — a rogues gallery of vermin, where judges drop like flies from stress-induced heart-attacks. He then traces these noir elements to a doppelganger tale by Jack London, on to Hammett, and to contemporary authors such as William T. Vollmann, who writes what Maravelis calls "splatter-noir, where plutocracy has won and the dispossessed give graphic descriptions of the tears in the social fabric." Through recent stories by Janet Dawson, Oscar Penaranda, and others, Maravelis ups the ante, as if to say: this is the real San Francisco. Always has been, always will be. (D. Scot Miller)

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY NOIR

Sat/14, 8 p.m.

Ha Ra Club

875 Geary, SF

(415) 362-8193

www.citylights.org

———-

WARHOL LIVE

Edited by Stéphane Aquin

Prestel

272 pages

$75

Roger Copeland has his claws out at the very beginning of "Seeing Without Participating," an essay in Warhol Live, the LP-size silver-covered brick of a monograph accompanying an exhibition of the same name devoted to music and dance within Warhol’s gargantuan oeuvre. The target of his attack isn’t as noteworthy as the argument that follows, which is in sync with Peter Gidal’s recent writing on Warhol’s distinct repositioning of traditional forms of participation and spectatorship. From there, Copeland reveals filmmaker and choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s influence on Warhol. Some other musings within Warhol Live spotlight obvious or over-familiar aspects of Pop or rock history. But John Hunisak convincingly argues that Warhol shared Ondine’s love of Maria Callas and recognized her as a punk pioneer; Branden W. Joseph digs up uncommon information about Warhol’s brief stint as a member of a band called the Druds; and Melissa Ragona perceptively taps into Warhol’s (by way of Brigid Berlin’s) recordings.

The book’s vibrant and powerful visual presentation hints that the exhibition — which opens this week at the De Young Museum— might be more rewarding in terms of organization than content. Fluorescent 1980s portraits and Interview covers don’t flatter Warhol, who had fallen into embracing the past-prime Cars and talent-less groups such as Curiosity Killed the Cat by the time of his death. Still, it’s refreshing to see a gathering of sleeve art for his albums, and here and there there’s a surprise pleasure, such as the potent pages devoted to the color slides used at Exploding Plastic Inevitable events. (Johnny Ray Huston)

WARHOL LIVE

Sat/14 through May 17

De Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive

Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 750-3600

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ANDY WARHOL: BLOW JOB

By Peter Gidal

Afterall Books

86 pages

$16

It’s too easy, really, to say that an 86-page appreciation of Andy Warhol’s Blow Job is the critical equivalent of the film’s title. One potentially funny — though also provocative — aspect of Blow Job is its 36-minute length, a span of time that would make any jawbone, even a purely imaginary one, ache. As filmmaker and writer Peter Gidal points out, that time span is partially achieved through projection — like Warhol’s screen tests, Blow Job is presented at the silent-film speed of 18 frames per second, though it was shot at 24 or 25 frames per second.

The temporal is one main focus of Gidal’s heady interpretation of Blow Job, which comes and goes much like the many-reeled subject, and which is art historical and philosophical more often than theoretical, and never vogue-ish when it tends toward the latter. One of the unexpected rewards of this book is Gidal’s discussion of paintings in relation to Warhol’s films, in particular Diego Velázquez’s sinister Luncheon or Three Men at a Table and Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). His passage about Warhol’s Shadow series of silkscreens is revelatory. Gidal persuasively removes Warhol from mere camp interpretation, even if his recognition of or devotion to the sensual aspects of Blow Job and Sleep (1963) is fleeting at best. At times, one wishes he could mirror rather than admire and explicate Warhol’s knack for expressing complex ideas in simple, monosyllabic terms. Like Roger Copeland in the new monograph Warhol Live, Gidal is most insightful when addressing the mortal themes and pull of Warhol’s art, and the challenging — and not merely transgressive — manner in which he reframes notions of acting and watching. (Huston)

Low camp

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Is there any phrase lamer than "the future of dance music"? Every time I hear it, I flash unflatteringly back to the tagline for some horrid 2k5 Dutch hardcore trance Internet station: "The future of dance music … pzew! pzew! … is now — on Osterpoopen Trance-Radiogeschmacken Internet Stream-Schmeirtz!" Apologies, poi-twirling Netherlanders, but I do.

Future bass, a.k.a. lazer bass, a.k.a. turbocrunk, has willingly been saddled with the "future" burden — but if you haven’t hitched your hover-wagon to its woofer-cracking, hip-hop-deconstructing bleeps from the Death Star, you may really need to. Laptop dubsteb, future bass’s quaalude cousin, turned its back on hip-hop when Burial drowned Todd Edwards’ clunky house beats and got moody with the two-step diva samples in 2k7. Future bass ups the tempo and reinjects blingy rhymes, but runs them through the Ableton Moebius strip — so much so that San Francisco’s own Lazer Sword can flip Lil’ Flip’s "I’m a Balla" chorus into an Obama chant.

Until last month, alas, there’d been no regular party here to rep the baby genre. And with the general disarray of hip-hop nightlife, you’d think any sound that twists together T-Pain and Flying Lotus would be bong hits to those exhausted by the hip-pop vs. indie rap divide. Tired. Welcome, then, Bass Camp, a third-Thursday monthly at 111 Minna, brought to us by ArtNowSF’s Joseph Gross, Mochipet from Daly City Records, Josh Pollack of Euphonic Conceptions, and indie promoter Aaron Ketry. Although future bass is the highlight, this cluster of ravenous-eared rumblers, along with residents like Quitter, Shane King, MC Buddy LeRoy, and the totally crushable Epcot and Salva, just want to slap up SF’s low-end. Because, as the old saw goes, "Where’s the fookin’ bass?!?" The next Bass Camp on Feb. 19 takes a metal-crunk-mashup turn with Ludachrist, Kill the Noise, and Hookerz and Blow.

Bass Camp every third Thursdays, 9 p.m., $10. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

———–

THE ID LIST

"NIGHTLIFE"

Proof of intelligent nightlife in the universe? The brand-spankin’ new Cal Academy of Sciences gets batty every Thursday evening with primo local DJs in a laid back atmosphere, paired with informal talks with the biggest scientifical brains out there. First up on Thurs/12: Darwin gets OMmed, with OM Records’ DJ Fluid and J-Boogie, plus renowned natural historian Keith Thompson. Smart! Thurs/12, 6–10 p.m., $10. California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., SF. www.calacademy.org/nightlife

ALY AND FILA

If trance should come from anywhere, it should be Egypt — where they used to fatten you up with honey before they ate you. Cairo’s Aly and Fila, current princes of that most globalized, if not diversified, dance genre, will satisfy any cravings for the blam-blam, plink-plink-plink, blam-blam — and should be worth braving the usual weekend 1015 crowd for. SF’s Taj leads up. Fri/13, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $20. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com, www.alyandfila.com

MY BOOTY VALENTINE

OK, new nightlife rule: after this party, anything with the word "booty" in it gets gacked. But — and this is a big but — I’ll make this one exception, if only because Miami’s DJ Craze, despite his Kanye associations, kicks serious cheek with his three-time World DJ Championship skills. Vinyl’s got back. Sat/14, 10 p.m., $10–$15. 330 Ritch, SF. www.330ritch.com, www.hacksawent.com

SOLO

"This Valentine’s Day, use those tears for lube" reads the tagline to this Homochic and Herrera Brothers succor for lonely alternaqueer boys. How could I improve upon that, except to tell you that DJ Jason Kendig will unleash some erotic disco at new hotspot Triple Crown. Bring your own towel. Sat/14, 10 p.m., $5. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com, www.homochic.com

UNICRONS

Is electro dead? Maybe, but let’s raid its grave. New local electro label Unicrons, of the energetic Work parties, still generates neon hearts from a spark. Its launch party includes superstar signatories Futuristic Prince, Media, and my current fave raves the Tenderlions, whose "In Addition" track makes me believe in life everlasting. Feb. 21, 9 p.m., $8. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

BALKAN MARDI GRAS

Wow, I’m totally not going to even touch on the similarities between the Balkans and New Orlean’s Ninth Ward — except to say they both sure know how to party, and there are usually a lot of tubas involved. The outrageous Kafana Balkan crew team up with puff-cheeked Brass Menazeri to celebrate Fat Tuesday with woozy Romani stomps and hyperkinetic reeling. Feb. 24, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com, www.myspace.com/kafanabalkansf

>>View more Super Ego columns here.

True colors

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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Red. Green. Yellow. Dark green. Orange. Light green to the point of being almost yellow. Earl Butter was showing me his peppers, which is not a euphemism. If it were, I wouldn’t know what it meant. So lucky for all of us, this was literal Truth. There they were, true peppers, in all their shapely and colorful glory, on Earl’s kitchen table. Some of them were in bags.

"Weren’t you born in Texas?" I said.

"No no," he assured me. "I lived there when I was little."

I said I hoped he didn’t intend to ever go back, because they might not let him in if they knew the way he made chili. As many kinds of peppers as possible, no meat.

For my part, forgiveness was automatic, not only because I love my buddy Earl, but because I wasn’t staying for dinner anyway. What a guy! When he cooks, he cooks for the whole floor, and some of the people on his floor are vegetarian.

Sure, I would do things differently. Either cook for myself, or move to a different floor. But I’m not Earl Butter, and this is an important point: I don’t know who I am.

Not the chicken farmer, that’s for sure. I gave my girls away and moved to a fancy-pants neighborhood in Oakland, arguably Oakland’s fancy-pantsiest: Rockridge. I’m mobile (new car), I’m upward (new car); if only I were young, I would be a yuppie.

And, to the extent that yuppies are kind of antithetical to, say, hippie new-age energy healer/poet types, I would embrace my new identity so hard its ribs would crack. I love where I live, and I love the people around me. On the other hand, I’m still as poor as pickle juice. I can afford to live in Rockridge because my apartment is free, in exchange for taking care of the kids sometimes, like picking them up at school, playing music with them, kicking a ping-pong ball in the park, and other things I love to do anyway, like helping with dinner.

Which reminds me: Earl Butter was making chili. But you can’t make chili on an empty stomach. I needed me a bath. But you can’t exactly bathe on an empty stomach either, if you’re me. So I tugged on his shirt sleeve until I’d tugged him out of the kitchen, clear out of his apartment, down the stairs to the Mission District, and into my car.

And we drove off in aimless search of cheap eats.

Found ’em! On Ocean Avenue, of all the crazy places, riding off into the Sunset. Eat First. What are you gonna do, name like that? We ordered hot and sour seafood soup, spicy chicken wings, kung pao chicken, and sliced pork with preserved mustard green.

But they wouldn’t let us have that last one. "It’s Chinese food," our waitressperson kept saying, shaking her head.

I countered with the unassailable argument, "And …?" But it wasn’t until I’d persuaded her that I’d had the dish before, many times, and loved it, that she agreed to include it in our order.

Reluctantly. Mutteringly.

Earl Butter pointed out that we were the only whities in the place, that everything else we’d ordered was classic whitey fare, and that no matter how badass I felt on the inside, I looked "irretrievably dainty" — even all sweaty and disheveled from back-to-back soccer games.

Waitressperson came back and said they were out of the pork with preserved mustard greens. Earl thinks she was lying. I believe her.

New favorite restaurant.

As for my new-age trucker mother … maybe you guessed already: he turned out to be more energy healer than truck driver, damn him. On our first date we walked and danced on the sidewalk, looked over a railing into a stream, then sat on a bench and kissed like crazy.

What a wonderful woman I was, he whispered in between things. Deep, oniony, complex, cute …

I had to say what else, and that was, more or less, it. He showed his true colors. I don’t know what shade of pale would describe them. Maybe new-age gray. He was not the color of peppers.

EAT FIRST

Daily: 5–9:30 p.m.

1540 Ocean, SF

(415) 587-1698

Beer

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Iran here

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER One can tumble into the disconnect between the reactionary brouhaha last year regarding then-candidate Barack Obama’s proposed engagement with Iran, and the reality, as Iranian-born, Indian-raised vocalist Azam Ali knows it.

"I always tell my American friends, ‘People love America so much in Iran, you wouldn’t be able to pay for a meal — they love Americans that much,’" says the Niyaz frontperson by phone from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and bandmate Loga Ramin Torkian and their year-old son Iman Ali. We talk days before Vice President Joe Biden proffers an olive branch to Tehran during the Munich Security Conference. "The one thing that the majority of Americans should realize is that the only country where people are pro-U.S.A. in the Middle East is Iran. The government, of course, is something very different."

"I hope this administration will start some kind of dialogue with the government of Iran," she adds. "It’s really unfortunate that my country is where it is. I’d like to see it flourish and become a part of the world."

Springing from the ashes of Ali’s old band Vas and Torkian’s former ensemble Axiom of Choice, Niyaz is doing its part in bringing together a few seemingly divergent communities: fans of electronica awash with Eastern beats, trance heads, and listeners of traditional Persian, Indian, and Turkish sounds. Their most recent double album, Nine Heavens (Six Degrees, 2008) is the ideal musical unifier for all those parties. One disc unfurls nine electronic originals ornamented with Sufi poetry in Farsi, Urdu, and Turkish, including several by 13th-century mystic and poet Amir Khosrau Dehlavi — who’s credited with inventing the Qawwali and, like Ali, was born in Persia and raised in India — and renditions of Persian and Turkish folk songs. The second, my favorite, delivers acoustic versions of the first disc’s tracks — eons away from the ecstatic pop of Googoosh, but as lush and appealing as the recordings by influential ’80s world-music crossover stars like Najma.

For her part, Ali clearly opens the emotional floodgates on numbers like "Tamana" — something to anticipate when she performs with her multi-instrumentalist husband, oud virtuoso Naser Musa and tabla player Salar Nader at Palace of Fine Arts Feb. 13.

It’s a talent she may not have been able to offer to her native country — "women are not allowed to perform there," she demurs — though Niyaz has played in Dubai and Turkey, where Ali and Torkian plan to relocate soon, and it’s made her popular with soundtrack composers looking for a sonic dose of the so-called Orient. Ali has sung on scores for films like The Matrix: Revolutions (2003) and TV shows such as Alias — all of which was accomplished without an agent.

"You really can’t support yourself doing the music we do," she confesses. "You don’t do world music for money. I’ve been fortunate. I’m not proud of all the projects I’ve worked on, but it has worked for me, though I don’t get to express myself doing that work. For the most part [clients] want the flavor — they don’t want something that is culturally specific. What a lot of Eastern music brings is just that kind of emotional intensity, that depth, they’re looking for."

Instead she looks to Niyaz for that artistic fulfillment. "We work totally backwards from people who do most electronic records," she explains. They record all their acoustic elements, then deliver the tracks to producer-collaborator Carmen Rizzo (Coldplay). "Sometimes we’re not able to incorporate all the acoustic elements because there’s not enough sonic space for them." The group realized halfway through the making of Nine Heavens that they had a rich acoustic album as well an electronic one. "A lot of times when you add electronics it seems like you’re trying to mask something that’s not there," says Ali. "But this reveals us."

NIYAZ

Fri/13, 8 p.m., $27–$53

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon, SF.

——-

MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA


Brian Jones imbued the maestros with rock ‘n’ roll glamour, but it was the mesmerizing music that made an impact on figures like Ornette Coleman and William S. Burroughs. Live Volume 1 (Jajouka) ushers in the forthcoming films The Hand of Fatima and Boujeloud on the music, the musicians, and their influence. Wed/11–Thurs/12, 8 and 10 p.m., $30–$35. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. www.yoshis.com. Also Sat/14, 2 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com

NOFX


Party with them, punkers, in honor of the SF band’s 25th anniversary. The problem: getting into these sold-out blowouts. Wed/11, 8 p.m., $23. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com; Fri/13, 8 p.m., $22.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. www.livenation.com; Sat/14, 8 p.m., $22. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com; Sun/15, 8 p.m., $23. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

THE WHORESHOES


The Bay’s honky-tonk and old-time honeys bring out the uke and spoons for the SF Bluegrass and Old-Time Festival. Thurs/12, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Café Du Nord, 170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

YO MAJESTY


"Kryptonite Pussy," anyone? Giving that electro a good hard God-fearing, out, and feminist twist, Shunda K and Jwl B will accept your tributes now. Fri/13, 10 p.m., see Web site for price. 103 Harriet, SF. www.hacksawent.com

THE MUSIC TAPES


A haunted symphony comprising singing saw, old-time banjo, magic tape organ, euphonium, and an NBA-size metronome materializes on Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes (Merge). Tues/17, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

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