Music

Jewish vinyl: co-author Josh Kun’s book inspires new exhibit at Contemporary Jewish Museum

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

The records highlighted in Roger Bennett and former Guardian music columnist Josh Kun’s 2008 book, And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl (Crown, 240 pages), are delectable nuggets and kernels of history that, chronologically compiled together, tell the story of five generations of Jews in America. And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl – the inspiration for a new exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco – anecdotally informs the reader of a massive and swift movement from tradition to modernity, city to suburb, and poverty to affluence, through the music and album art of 12-inches rediscovered in the basement bins of thrift stores in Boca – as Bennett puts it, “the place Jewish vinyl goes to die” – and other parts of the U.S.A.

The text reflects what one might expect from a coffee-table book yet contains a wealth of information dealing with important shifts in Jewish American history, complemented by the ridiculous to awe-inspiring images that adorn more than 400 LP covers: cantorial images of beards and flowing robes of yore morph into visions of Israeli disco fever and mambo interludes at Bar Mitzvahs. Pointing to the permeability of communities and the fluidity of identity, the authors look to, for instance, a Jewish Latin craze with such gems as Bagels and Bongos (Decca, 1959) and Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos (Riverside, 1961).

mills college music

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

Victoria Terheyden

Victoria Terheyden

MacKenzie Communications, Inc.

600 California Street, Suite 1590

San Francisco, CA 94108

Tel: 415.403.0800 ext. 30
Fax: 415.403.0801

www.mackenziesf.com

Media Contacts:

Quynh Tran, Mills College

Media Relations Manager

510.430.2300

qtran@mills.edu

Victoria Terheyden

MacKenzie Communications, Inc.

415.867.2516

vterheyden@mackenziesf.com

Mills College Celebrates 80 Years of Musical Innovation with

Giving Free Play to the Imagination Music Festival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mills Music Festival Honorary Committee:

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

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

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

Robert Cole – director of Cal Performances

Merce Cunningham – choreographer and founder of Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Evelyn Glennie – percussionist, composer, motivational speaker

David Harrington – violinist and founding member of the Kronos Quartet

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

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

Jeannik Méquet Littlefield* – philanthropist and patroness of the arts

Annea Lockwood – composer, professor emeritus at Vassar College

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

Meredith Monk – composer, singer, director/choreographer

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

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

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

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

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

* Mills alumnae/i

+ Mills honorary degree recipient

Program

Saturday, February 21, 2009 8:00 pm

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

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

Sunday, February 22, 2009 3:00 pm

A CELEBRATION OF THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

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

Friday, February 27, 2009 8:00 pm

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

Saturday, February 28, 2009 8:00 pm

DARIUS MILHAUD’S BRAZILIAN CONNECTION

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

Sunday, March 8, 2009 3:00 pm

ARDITTI QUARTET

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

Sunday, April 5, 2009 3:00 pm

THE MUSIC OF FRED FRITH

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

TICKETS / PUBLIC INFO:

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

Seniors: $12/concert; $60/series

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

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

A marvelous party: SF Symphony can class up your new year’s

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A latex avalanche to begin the new year… Oh, SF Symphony, you really shouldn’t have!

It’s enough to make you rue all those New Year’s Eves past spent in sweaty bars and crowded living rooms. And I would imagine after ringing in a new decade while watching a troupe of masquerade dancers twirl to a Viennese waltz, watching the ball drop in Times Square loses some of that “center of the universe” feel.

But you can do just that tomorrow night. Tickets are still available for the San Francisco Symphony’s New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball– an gala evening that you won’t wake up regretting the next morning.

Onstage will be a mix of pieces from divergent time eras. Aforementioned baroqueness will ensue with a performance of some Johann “The Waltz King” Strauss, Jr.’s Vienesse pieces, with solos by tenor Alfie Boe, soprano Layla Claire, and 15-year old violin prodigy Chad Hoopes.

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Does solo violinist Chad Hoopes get to stay up til midnight?

As the program waxes on, the ditties turn more modern, including some by that dapper Noel Coward, including “I Went to a Marvelous Party,” a song of “frantic addle headed search for amusement” written by the British composer in the 1930’s after attending a highfaulutin’ soirée in the French Riviera.

And don’t think they kick you out on the stroke of midnight either- after the symphony performance, attendees will get down in the lobbies and hallways of the Davies Symphony Hall with complimentary bubbly, “savories” and music by 80s cover band Tainted Love. Plus a balloon drop when ’10 hits? Just the ticket for your yearly dose of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

SF Symphony New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball
Thurs/31 9 p.m., $80-195
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness, SF
(415) 864-6000 www.sfsymphony.org

Mash note for Music Lovers

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By Andre Torrez

Both menacing and beautiful at the same time, the lush strings and the precision piano and harpischord on the Music Lovers‘ new album, Masculine Feminine (Le Grand Magistery), make to a sound that’s rich and full enough to make Phil Spector cream his trousers.

The San Fran band definitely set a melodic mood on their latest release on the Detroit label. British-born Bay Area transplant Matthew Edwards’ haunting vocals evoke comparisons to early to mid-’70s-era Bowie with a hint of Morrissey. Musically the strings display a depth, darkness, and emotional power reminiscent of SoCal countercultural touchstone, Love. Lyrically, the songwriter and lead vocalist recalls past loved ones even giving a nod to the future with “A Girl from Space.” The solidly arranged long-player doesn’t disappoint.

“Wendy and Lucy” and Kelly

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

Ficks interviews Kelly Reichardt, director of Wendy and Lucy, which opens in the Bay Area Fri/30. (For Guardian reviewer Lynn Rapoport’s take on the film, go here.)

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Why are all the hipsters moving to Portland? They heard there were no jobs.  

Kelly Reichardt: That’s a good one. It’s actually not even a joke. Did you know 66,000 people moved to Portland last year? We (filmmakers) Todd Haynes, Gus (Van Sant), myself, we’re all ruining it for Portland by making films there.

SFBG: Both of your last films were shot in Portland. Why did you start making films there?

KR: Todd Haynes is a close friend and moved there about nine years ago. He kept calling me and saying, “These people are so great!” And I was like “Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up.” So I started visiting him out there and started making some short films. Then Todd introduced me to Jon Raymond who ended up writing Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy and now we’re working on a new film together. Jon also wrote a novel that I really fell for, The Half Life. If you don’t want to take my word for it, it’s one of Thurston Moore’s favorites. In any case, Jon’s writing is so region specific (born and raised in Portland) and his writing ties people into their surroundings in a way that is really appealing to me. There’s also a lot of space in his writing, which makes it easy as a reader to bring your own self to the table. I’m making films again because I found a writer that really fits with my filmmaking style. And the films are so much the better for it.  

SFBG: While watching Wendy and Lucy I kept thinking this film is the perfect antithesis to Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007).  

KR: It’s funny, when I saw the trailer for Into the Wild I was like, “oh no, that’s our movie!” But his film is more like, Nature on Speed.

SFBG: Michelle Williams was so wonderful in Wendy and Lucy, especially her scenes with the older man who played the security guard.

KR: The security guard is an interesting guy in real life too! His name is Walter Dalton — Wally. I can’t even remember what the character’s name was suppose to be in the script but it just became Wally because he so embodied it. His other life before Wendy and Lucy was that he was a writer for TV like [for] the Smothers Brothers, Laverne and Shirley and Barney Miller. I love the Smothers Brothers. Plus he’s a total lefty, awesome guy. And he just came down from Seattle to read for us one day. He’s such a good guy, that when he would leave the set, we would all go, “Oh Wally.”

SFBG: Wendy and Lucy, like Old Joy, feels like the answer to what’s dragging down the recent indie cinema scene. Do you make a conscious effort to take that step when making your films?

KR: That’s so nice of you. Come to my class and tell my students that. My students are all like “You’re gonna show us this again?”

Wendy and Lucy trailer:

 

SFBG: I really do think your films are that next step. A neo-indie scene, which is less marketed to them and can deliver something that they didn’t know they wanted.

KR: Well, I teach visual storytelling up at Bard College. It’s a very groovy place. I get to work with a bunch of filmmakers that I really admire like Peter Hutton, Jacqueline Goss, Peggy Ahwesh, Les LeVeque. It’s this hardcore, mostly avant-garde group who are all so badass. And that’s the funny thing with me there; I’m like the sell-out narrative person of the group! (Laughs)

SFBG: What a great role to play!

KR: I’m what they can handle as far as narrative goes. So I teach visual storytelling, and the gist of my class is kinda old school in the way of telling a story through camera placement and movement. I do sort of feel that this is going by the wayside, how to tell a story visually, just by the nature of video cameras and the whole mumblecore movement which is the opposite to what I’m trying to teach. Though I can’t say that my students have embraced mumblecore as much as I feared they would.

SFBG: Are you attracted to working with other filmmakers, or working in a community like the mumblecore directors?

KR: (Laughs) I’m in a community. I swear I am! Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, 2005), Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter, 2006), and I all used to share an office back in the day so we all like showing each other our latest films. It’s true we don’t act in one another films or anything. I have Todd Haynes watch cuts of my films and give me notes as well as Phil Morrison who directed Junebug (2005). Actually Todd Haynes did make an appearance in one of my films once when he stopped by the Wendy and Lucy set, by walking into a really long take, wearing an Old Joy t-shirt! I was like, “Who’s that asshole? Oh Todd, thanks for stopping by.” I also keep up with So-Yong Kim (In Between Days, 2006). So yeah, I’m in a community.

SFBG: Why did you start teaching?

KR: They say, “Those who can’t do, teach” but they never talk about the actual teaching part. When teaching is good, it’s really, really good. Being at Bard College is a place I have wanted to be at for a long time. There’s eight students to a class and they don’t let you just major in film. When my students are coming into my class saying things like, “I just built a theremin in music class!” it really charges me. One of my classes is Intro to Moving Image and all these kids who are growing up with computers are suddenly getting to go into the Cascades with a Bolex in their hands for the first time and it’s awesome. Plus, I love to talk about film. As I said, I’m working on a new film, a Western with Jon (Raymond) and so I’ve been slipping Westerns into my teaching, which keeps me thinking about my own things in a new way. These kids who are studying avant-garde filmmaking more than narrative, will hear me say something I take perfectly for granted like “objective shot” and they’ll bring in a shot of a beetle and ask if it’s objective. And I’ll get to go, “I don’t know, let’s sit here and think about it!”

SFBG: How do you continue to make these little masterpieces?

KR: I haven’t put the burden of having to make my living on filmmaking. I mean it just didn’t work for me. I think these films, the way we’re making them really works because that burden isn’t there. You go off and no one’s paying attention to you and you have privacy and have six months to edit and then you can still go back and shoot and redo some things. There aren’t too many hands in the pie. It’s all just very small stuff. And since no one’s getting paid on these movies, we can take that burden off the filmmaking process and I’m able to be put in the realm that’s more feasible for me.

SFBG: Please just keep making more of these kinds of movies.

KR: Thanks, man.

Seeing starzzz

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Pitchfork Media has sort of become synonymous with junk-food news in recent years, sensationalizing almost every aspect of the independent music world for the hungry masses through dirt-dishing bites on the latest breaking headlines and scale-tipping — or dipping — album reviews. While some may see the Chicago online music publication as a rock-snob tabloid, there’s no denying the influence it’s had upon some independent musicians: artists such as Animal Collective and No Age have collared a kind of A-list celebrity status almost overnight thanks, in part, to the site of music sites.

But when I met with San Francisco group Nodzzz at drummer Eric Butterworth’s Upper Haight apartment, the three seemed averse to any hype they may garner from Pitchfork. When I mentioned that the publication had just reviewed the band’s self-titled, 10-song long-player on What’s Your Rupture? that very morning, the three met my remark with silence. Then Butterworth opined: "Pitchfork is lame, and it doesn’t even matter because that shit is stupid. If you base your musical interests on Pitchfork — fuck yourself."

Fair enough. While Nodzzz managed to capture an above-average 7.6 rating for its efforts, the outfit agreed, as vocalist-guitarist Anthony Atlas put it, that "[Pitchfork] reviews are always kind of contradictory" and "a positive review would be just as problematic as a negative review."

"It’s pretty fucking crazy how many people that goes out to," guitarist and backup vocalist Sean Paul Presley added. "It makes you feel pretty nervous because you already hold your own material pretty close to yourself and you wonder what’s gonna happen when you get a review like that, because Pitchfork is single-handedly responsible for making bands, what bands do well, and what bands sell records. It’s been an auspicious day not knowing what it actually means. I’m on the fence about whether it means anything more than just another review."

This review does come at a point not long after Nodzzz’s "I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)" single, issued on Butterworth’s Make a Mess imprint. That release ended up on quite a few best-of-2008 short lists. But while the group’s name has amassed a wave of chatter on the blogosphere, Nodzzz have obvious convictions concerning the objectification of its image and the commercialization of its sound — even going so far as to turn down an opportunity to play at this year’s South by Southwest festival.

"I like pop and punk music when they cater to an audience and to fun," said Atlas, who formed the band with Presley and original drummer Pete Hilton in the fall of 2006 after relocating from Olympia, Wash., to the Bay Area for school. "Something about SXSW seems too market driven — kind of like a rock ‘n’ roll tradeshow. There’s a ton of fantastic bands playing, and I’m sure it’s a fun time, but I don’t feel like asserting ourselves in this broader rock ‘n’ roll market is what we’re all about."

Released in November 2008, the album channels the slapdash garage-pop urgencies of ’80s groups like the Feelies and Great Plains. "Is She There" opens the recording with a burst of amp crackle and drum jolt that’s over before you know it. On songs such as "In the City (Contact High)" and "Controlled Karaoke," the bright-eyed harmonies of Atlas and Presley bait you with nagging, sing-along choruses that get lodged in your skull for days on end, while "Highway Memorial Shrine" and "Losing My Accent" smother you in fuzz and chaos with a scrappy, twin-guitar assault of chiming hooks and jangly lo-fi, as well as Hilton’s trash-can rumble.

As Atlas sees it, his band’s fortunes can be chalked up to simply "tunneling through the fog" as each of its "little goals" are accomplished.

"I have no agenda with this band, but I do have goals, and I just see them as they become possible," he explained. "I feel like we have to have a healthy relationship with it because it can just end quickly. It’s so rewarding, but yet it’s a rock ‘n’ roll band — it’s a project with three people. You can’t stake a life on it."

www.myspace.com/nodzzz

>>MORE GARAGE ROCK ’09

IV to the floor

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"We do rockcations," says Hank IV vocalist Bob McDonald, "which is trademarked, I believe, by Anthony." McDonald knows of what he speaks. The San Francisco underground dynasty of a band that he cultivates — alongside guitarist-vocalist Anthony Bedard, guitarist Andy Oglesby, bassist Chris Portfolio, and drummer Scott Jones — has been to Bologna, Italy, and back on the grand notion that, yes, you too can hold down steady, life-giving, lease-holding employment and still rock hard, hither and yon. Today’s revolutionary road, it seems, means playing outta town in, say, five-day spurts with a side of out-of-pocket relaxation, "because no one wants to go on an extended tour," McDonald continues over the phone from his day job. "Because we’re too old, or we have jobs we can’t leave."

The bonus is the word-of-mouth equivalent of an anniversary Rolex. During HIV’s sound check in Bologna, where the band was visiting friend and Fuck founder Kyle Statham, McDonald says, "this guy came up after we were done and said, ‘Everyone is so soft or so techno here. Finally, someone with some balls-ah!’"

Who knew this bastard offshoot of McDonald and Bedard’s Mr. and Mr. and Mr. and Mr. and Mr. Evil combo would take off like it has — HIV released its second long-player, Refuge in Genre, recorded in all its "high-fidelity bombastic rock" splendor by Tim Green (the Fucking Champs) and mastered by Bob Weston (Shellac), on the shitgaze-cool imprint Siltbreeze — and find its balls-ah in the process? This, after HIV’s furtive beginnings: its first show happened at the Dunes in Portland, Ore., a teensy bar owned by Valet’s Honey Owen. "We wanted to play somewhere where our friends weren’t going to see us," Bedard confesses by phone. Since then all the "good energy and crazy momentum" this proudly balls-ah-to-the-wall outfit has generated — inspiring comparisons to Country Teasers and the Saints, and garnering invites to perform live on WFMU — has surprised its music insider-y members. (McDonald is a veteran of Denver hardcore unit Bum Kon and a product manager at music distributor Revolver; Bedard, the Hemlock Tavern booker and ex-member of groups like the Resineators and Icky Boyfriends.)

HIV came about following the departure of Mr. Evil’s old drummer, amid a spate of drinking and brainstorming "dumb ideas," says McDonald. "We thought, ‘Hank IV — we’ll cut the lineage,’ and we wrote notes on a bar napkin. It was easy because we just told the guys [Portfolio and Oglesby] we were playing with that they were in this band. That’s the best way to do it, because if you ask them they might say no."

A few Hank fans, however, haven’t been able to take the tease. The group’s name is "definitely an idea that makes some people angry!" Bedard exclaims. "Like that Hank Williams III fan who called up Amoeba when we were doing an in-store: ‘They should change their name!’ It’s an absurd idea — thinking that our music has as much to do with Hank Williams as Hank III’s music has to do with Hank Williams, family lineage aside."

Rather, HIV takes its cues from the mind-blowing qualities of early Butthole Surfers, Volcano Suns, and other bands instrumental in forming the musical sensibilities of Bedard, McDonald, and Jones, who are in their late 30s and early 40s.

"We’re trying to make noisy, fun, abrasive, fucked-up rock ‘n’ roll," explains Bedard, clearly pumped to return to Portland for its Slabtown Bender festival on Feb. 7. "There’s so much medium rock out there. People settle for stuff that kind of rocks or maybe rocks. So they get taken aback a bit by the force of Bob’s vocals and how in-your-face and assaultive Hank IV’s music can be." Too bad for them, though not for HIV, because as Bedard puts it, "these are older guys who come from a generation of bands that want to see things get a lot more over-the-top."

www.hankiv.com

>>MORE GARAGE ROCK ’09

Rage onstage

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kimberly@sfbg.com

Yep, you too are essential to the band, especially your super-sweet triangle solos. But roughly speaking, garage rock — be it in, out, or lurking merrily on the fringes — often comes down to one visionary or prime mover, though in the tight local music scene, one never rules out the cosmic convergence of several git-‘er-done leader types.

GREG ASHLEY — THE GRIS GRIS, THE MIRRORS, SIR LORD VON RAVEN


The Gris Gris may be dormant, but the life this producer, solo artist, and guy-with-seemingly-a-jillion-bands-up-his-sleeve pulls out of his organ and guitar with Oakland’s psychy-garage Sir Lord Von Raven makes us sit up, rub our eyes, and wiggle our bee-hinds a little harder as we fetch ourselves another PBR.

www.myspace.com/sirlordvonraven

DREW CRAMER — THE MANTLES, PERSONAL AND THE PIZZAS


"I Can Read" — an excellent reminder. Personal and the Pizzas is not only the funniest joke band — and Dictators jab/mash note — in town, but Mantles dude Drew Cramer can’t stop writing catchy songs, even in the service of a Bowser-riffic group that began as an idea for a TV show. "We were going to do a sitcom — The Young Ones–style," Cramer told me this fall. "It just turned into a band. The idea is we sit around all day eating pizzas, listening to the Stooges, and drinking beer." Makes you wonder about the next warp in the more ethereal weave of the Mantles.

ANDY JORDAN — THE CUTS, THE TIME FLYS, BUZZER


The Cuts appeared to go out with a bang following From Here on Out (Birdman, 2006) and the Time Flys seemed to have flown, but don’t lose hope for this manic son of a record-store man: Buzzer takes its cues from the wild-child kicks of ’70s glitter punk and messes with hole-in-the-head stranger dangers à la "Trepanation Blues."

Buzzer with Photobooth and Die RotzZz. Sat/31, 8 p.m., call for price. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.myspace.com/buzzeroakland

TINA LUCCHESI — THE BOBBYTEENS, THE BACI GALOOPIS, TOP 10


The lady keeps the up-dos swinging at Down at Lulu’s, but she also finds plenty of time to pour a lotta love into the rock scene. Top 10 makes us wanna mix cornrows in our pop charts.

MATTHEW MELTON — SNAKEFLOWER 2, PHOTOBOOTH, BARE WIRES


Photobooth is now in the mustachioed, Oakland-by-way-of-Memphis rock ‘n’ roll maven’s past, Snakeflower 2 is still simmering, and Bare Wires — the Jay Reatard photog’s old band with his River City Tanlines cohort Alicia Trout — has risen once more, peopled by Paul Keelan and ex–Time Flys member Erin Emslie. Looking forward to BW’s Artificial Clouds LP (Tic Tac Totally).

Bare Wires with Static Static and Fun Blood. Feb. 5, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.myspace.com/thebarewires

RUSSELL QUAN — THE MUMMIES, THE DUKES OF HAMBURG, THE BOBBYTEENS, THE COUNT BACKWARDS, THE PHANTOM SURFERS, THE FLAKES, THE MERSEY WIFE BEATERS


He’s the OG of garage rock in the Bay, a madman on drums — and the dude can also whip out a mean rock ‘n’ roll DJ set. Does he get extra points because he’s a genuine garage rocker? Auto repair is his forte when he isn’t bashing out beats and generating positive vibes.

TY SEGALL — TRADITIONAL FOOLS, THE PERVERTS


The one-man rock-out machine fronts the Traditional Fools, temped in the Mothballs, and recently saw his super-energized self-titled solo debut come out on John Dwyer’s Castle Face label.

Feb. 6, 5 p.m., $5. University of San Francisco campus, SF. www.myspace.com/tysegall

SUPERCHARGED: MORE BANDS

MAYYORS


Everyone loves a mystery: the Sacto band has almost zero Web presence. Also no interviews and nada on promos. According to their kinda-sorta rep, Mark of the mount saint mountain (mt.st.mtn.) label, both of Mayyors’ mt.st.mtn. singles, Marines Dot Com and Megans LOLZ, were sold out in days and re-presses for show sales evaporated just as quickly. Tough, love. Yet somehow the chatter — the old-school mouth-to-mouth variety — is on, thanks to the blitzkrieg force of tunes like "Airplanes," bruising ultra-lo-fi Brainbombs allusions, and memorable performances like their set at 2008’s Budget Rock. About as garage rock as the Coachwhips or the Hospitals, Mayyors sports FM Knives’ Chris Woodhouse on guitar and Sexy Prison’s John Pritchard on the mic. Oh, and me likee the outfit’s soundtrack to Jay Howell’s The Forest City Rockers Motorcycle Club animation.

THE OKMONIKS


The Tucson, Ariz., terrors have a way of bending an organ to their will — and word has it they’re moving to the Bay Area. www.okmoniks.com

THE PETS


I’m in love — with the boy-gang vocals, delivered with the proper nasality and snot levels, on the Oakland band’s latest LP, Misdirection (Static Impulse). Midwestern proto-punk in the Dead Boys mode and bad-boy fast-loud-hard à la the Saints, with a dab of MC5 to do ya. With Buzzer and Bare Wires. Feb. 21, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, SF. www.myspace.com/thepetsoakland

SIC ALPS


The SF duo always had the pop chops and ideas but somehow they just keep getting better. Garage rock gone noisy and classic rock-y at the same time. www.sicalps.com

>>MORE GARAGE ROCK ’09

Revved up on garage rock

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Grease monkeys gotta scratch their coconuts and wonder: why have the words garage rock become so dirty? Especially when a garage-rock explosion of sorts seems to be going off all around us.

Few want to be tagged as such — though their affection for three chords; adoration of the square-one pleasures of guitar, bass, and drums; and love of a classic pop hook are out there for all to see. Does retro spell lame-o in a year beset with cultural, economic, and political change?

Not if you recall the last late-’90s/early-’00s garage rock resurgence, which arrived on the heels of a boom in tech-sector/dot-com creativity and coincided with a burgeoning home-recording underground — a rough, eerie corollary of the ’60s-era moment when British Invasion bands sparked a zillion garage-rock combos. No coincidence, I believe, that as digital home recording and online musical dissemination made it possible for every guy’s and girl’s band to reach a wide audience, so too did a world open up for vinyl and analog lovers of the most hidden and once-unheard-of musical niches, who were suddenly able to find newbie listeners.

So perhaps change, of the most DIY variety, is the very reason why so many bands in the Bay Area — and out past our waters where Wavves, Vivian Girls, and Jay Reatard ripple — are tapping into the garage-rock vein that oldsters like Legendary Stardust Cowboy (who bunks down in the South Bay) would recognize as similar to their own. Do you have an affinity for the early blues-based rock ‘n’ roll that can be traced from Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins to the Rolling Stones and the Kinks to their alternately upbeat and haunted progeny the Troggs, the Seeds, the 13th Floor Elevators, and San Jose’s Chocolate Watchband, then onto ’80s revivalists like the Lyres, the Scientists, the Cynics, and the Fuzztones, and further on to late-’90s wavers like the White Stripes, the Dirtbombs, the Detroit Cobras, and the Von Bondies?

Noisy, psychy, punky, gay, straight, sweet or grating — however you twist it, the current nu–garage rock explosion in the Bay is nowhere near as easy to tag, bag, and classify. How do you reconcile the ear-burning blast of Mayyors with the sweetly contrarian kicks of the Nodzzz’s "I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)"? The latter’s parentheses are crucial here because theirs is a cry against easy conformity, really, rather than drugs ("I don’t wanna smoke marijuana… I just wanna get high / On another drug!"). Subverting the white-straight-boy paradigm also seems to be part of the plan for outfits like Hunx and His Punx, and the LaTeenOs.

Eric Friedl — owner of esteemed Memphis garage rock label-shop Goner Records and ex-member of the Oblivions — has noticed the rock ‘n’ roll energy surge coming off of SF: Sic Alps and the Oh Sees played 2008’s Gonerfest, and Goner releases by Ty Segall and Nobunny are on the horizon. "For whatever reason we like the bands coming out of there," Friedl says of the Bay. "In the ’90s there seemed like a lot was going on, and then it kind of died out, but yeah, I think it goes in cycles. People got tired of the garage-rock bands in the late ’90s, and it took ’em another five or six years to get back to straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll."

Geoffrey Ellis, who puts out the zine Sadkids and documented Bay Area bands’ excursions out to Gonerfest, agrees. "It seems like in the last few years [garage rock] has hit its stride where it hadn’t existed for a while and was pretty relegated to undergroundish types of scenes," says the graphic designer whose garage rock images will be exhibited as part of "Rock Show," a group photo exhibit. "But now it’s just taken off everywhere."

Still, for all the new activity and faces, one of the pleasures of garage rock remains the breaking out of musty ole vinyl and listening to the San Jose–born Count Five’s "Psychotic Reaction," the Standell’s "Try It," and the Human Beinz’s "Nobody But Me" — and wondering where my Music Machine LP is. The last so-called garage-rock revival gave you the impression that the bands weren’t so much listening to the, er, originals as much as each other — many of those groups’ general raw sound seemed to be the main reason why they were dubbed garage rock, apart from some true believers and record collectors in Detroit. Garage rock was a somewhat commercial brand last time around. But this current surge seems content to ride tides far from marketable shores, melding garage rock’s ruff ‘n’ tough joys with surf riffs, hardcore aggression, proto-metal heavitude, or psychedelic exploration.

These bands seem closer to the scenario that Don Waller wittily sketched out in the liner notes to a Nuggets ’80s reissue: "The typical punkadelic band came from some suburban Anywheresville and consisted of one kid who’d grown up copying Chet Atkins licks on his uncle’s hollow-body, another who’d had 10 years of classical piano lessons, a hyperactive woodshop dropout on drums, a lead singer with a range of three and a half notes, and a bass player brought in for his ability to attract girls."

The garage may be gone, if altogether nonexistent, for many in the densely populated Bay Area. But considering that even the purportedly first garage-rock combo, Tacoma, Wash.’s fresh-faced Wailers (who made a big impression on the Kingsmen with their own "Louie Louie"), wryly made a big deal of recording in a "proper environment … namely a recording studio," in the liner notes of Out of Our Tree (Etiquette, 1966), the hands-on wherewithal of today’s bands isn’t so far from that of yesteryear’s ensembles.

"Pushin’ Too Hard"? For a while there "everyone was too self-conscious," opines Carlos Bermudez of Photobooth and Snakeflower 2, "but now there are a lot of bands that are doing well and playing sloppy again — all the garage stuff that people seemed to have grown out of. Schlocky fun party music is starting to happen again."

ROCK SHOW

Through April 7; reception Sun/1, 6 p.m.

Rite Spot Café

2099 Folsom, SF

www.ritespotcafe.net

NOISE ALLOYS

MAN/MIRACLE AND EAGLE AND TALON


The former plunges fists-first into ’00s-y sing-along fun and an ’80s synth-sensitivity vibe; the latter duo into grrrly lo-fi. With Railcars. Thurs/29, 9 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MATT AND KIM


Where’s the dance party? It’s wherever the pair’s primal pop is hopping. Their new Grand (Fader) sneaks up on you with its larger-than-life lowdown. With Hawnay Troof. Mon/2, 8 p.m., $10. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com


>>MORE GARAGE ROCK ’09

Punch drunkle

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Hola, age of change. My 2K9 nightlife motto: less musing, more cruising — just watch out for the bruising, child. A few blurry dawns ago, out of nowhere, I got bopped full-on in the kisser by some drunk fool outside the club. Tragedy struck.

Luckily, my impeccable cheekbones are fashioned from silky Teflon and my major Ukrainian modeling contract survived intact. But it was a good reminder, a "slap in the face," if you will — and you will: always be aware of your surroundings and don’t drink yourself too unfunctional. Hear me alike, dear macho bar queens, PBR fixie pixies, Bebe-clad bachelorettes, darling dragzillas, electro-spandex starlets, popped-collar wannabros, and pretend hip-hop producers. Let’s be careful out there. For more tips on surviving your midnights out, San Francisco’s guardian angels of the dark, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, are, as usual, eager to provide at their Web site under “features.” Now, let’s get it on.

————-

THE ID LIST

TINGEL TANGEL


This glorious cabaret monthly brings a touch of Weimar Berlin to San Francisco by way of NYC nightlife impresario Earl Dax. This time around, wacky Seattlean hostess Dina Martina wilkommens tunesmith Spencer Day, space-gother Kiddie, harpist Deirdre Egan, and more, ol’ chum. Wed/28, 9:30 p.m., $16. Café Du Nord, 2174 Market, SF. www.tingeltangelclub.com, www.cafedunord.com

SPECIAL DISCO VERSION


Part of LCD Soundsystem never dies? Not if the indie dance juggernaut’s members stay true to their retro-underground roots. LCD drummer Pat Mahoney keeps it fresh by pumping up the past as he DJs the West Coast debut of this roving club classic. Cheekbone bonus: a special Hercules and Love Affair DJ set. Thurs/29, 9 p.m., $10-$15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SHOWCASE


Don’t let the serious name put you off — that UK queen of intel freak-uencies, BBC Radio’s Mary Ann Hobbs, is flying in to curate a dance explosion of razor-sharp local talent, including Ghosts on Tape, Lazer Sword, Kid Kameleon, Disco Shawn, Shane King, and more. Now, if only the BBC would archive her streaming weekly broadcasts for more than a month. Thurs/29, 9:30 p.m., $5. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

HOTTUB


The electro-rap trio of trouble destroyed the Guardian‘s Best of the Bay 2008 party and sent Jello Biafra to the hospital. Now they’re inaugurating a new monthly by two solid party producers, Popscene vs. Loaded, at the Rickshaw — and celebrating their latest record release. Watch out for blood puddles. Fri/30, 10 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

AMON TOBIN


Proto-dubstepper? Future-glitch engineer? Global grooves genius? Let’s just say all three, then drool all over this singular Brazilian legend’s laptop. Stunned noggin-nodders at last year Treasure Island fest know he’s made a seamless live transition from vinyl to electronics — and teases serious dance breaks from the wizardly ambience. Fri/30 and Sat/31, 9 p.m., $23. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com, www.hacksawent.com

SUPPERVISION


Burning Man meets alternaqueer for a multimedia pajama party, with trippy visuals and outré drag performances. Wait! Don’t stop reading! Video artist III is truly talented, and his projections, combined with edgy queen antics, add up to more than the sum of my whole first sentence. Honey Soundsystem brings the noise. And, yes, wear pajamas. Sat/31, 9 p.m., $12 in pajamas, $20 without. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. www.supperclub.com

HERR-A-CHICK


Too many puns to count in the name, too many too-hot queer rock bigwigs involved to miss this new live showcase and dragstravaganza monthly at DNA. Charlie Horse’s Anna Conda teams up with the Trans Am boys and Revolver’s Lucy Borden for alterna-excess, with the Ex-Boyfriends and Ethel Merman Experience all plugged in. Feb. 4, 10 p.m., $5. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

JUICY LUCY


Swank Brazilian resto Bossa Nova, in the old CoCo Club space, just opened its lusciously remodeled basement up for late-night affairs — and is going big from the get-go with this kaleidoscopic affair. Detroit techno slayer Mike "Agent X" Clark headlines, with soulful spinner David Harness, funky househed Greg Eversoul, and live jazziness from Lovelight Liberation. Feb. 6, 9 p.m., $10. Bossa Nova, 139 Eighth St., SF. (415) 558-8004.

2562 AND THE GASLAMP KILLER


Those ambassadors of dread bass, Surya Dub, are bashing for their monthly club’s second anniversary, with Dutch dubstep (Dutchstep?) heavyweight 2562, who couches his rumble in deep techno soundscapes. Also reverbin’: Los Angeles low-low lover the Gaslamp Killer, who can rip a slice of perilous psy-hop quite rightly. Local boy Lud Dub leads the congratulatory proceedings. Feb. 7, 9 p.m., $15. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

Mom and pop lose their voice

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

Bank of America and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are quite the opposite of mom-and-pop operations, yet two of the seven members appointed to San Francisco’s Small Business Commission hail from these corporations, much to the chagrin of true small business leaders.

In a heated e-mail fired off to an assortment of City Hall staffers Jan. 13, Small Business Commissioner Michael O’Connor criticized the Mayor’s Office for diluting the commission — which was set up to go to bat for the little guy — with big business appointees.

Meanwhile, funding for the Small Business Assistance Center was almost eliminated last month by the Board of Supervisors. And a report that was supposed to streamline the unwieldy permitting process for small businesses, which the administration was required to complete under the 2007 measure Proposition I, never materialized.

At a time when small businesses are struggling in the face of a dour economic landscape, strong advocacy on their behalf is needed now more than ever. But even as former Small Business Commissioner David Chiu ascends to the presidency of the Board of Supervisors, small business leaders are decrying their lack of support in City Hall.

The Small Business Commission is a seven-member body composed of three members appointed by the Board of Supervisors and four appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Set up to serve as an advocate for the small business community, the commission was also chartered to oversee the Office of Small Business, a branch of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Last May, the office opened its Small Business Assistance Center, created to lend startups a helping hand with navigating the bureaucratic maze of permits, fees, licenses, and other hoops to be jumped through to legitimately set up shop in the city.

Regina Dick-Endrezzi, acting director of the Office of Small Business and one of four people staffing the center, says there’s a real need for the service. She said that about 99 percent of all San Francisco businesses fall into the category of "small," which she defines as having fewer than 100 employees, making it one of the most important sectors of the city’s economy.

Since the center opened, more than 1,300 small business clients have received assistance there, according to Dick-Endrezzi. Many lack the resources and capital that larger enterprises might have at their disposal, so SBAC case managers act as counselors for people who are trying to get a new business off the ground.

Entrepreneurs have sought help with things like obtaining a permit to open a vegan taco truck, acquiring a license to start a cleaning business, or filing for tax credits for an organic baby food business, to name a few examples. "This is something we really need," Dick-Endrezzi told the Guardian, "and this is something politics shouldn’t get in the way of."

Nonetheless, the center and the commission haven’t been spared from controversy. In December, the Board of Supervisors considered slashing SBAC funding. The $800,000 annual budget was ultimately granted, but it weathered midyear budget cuts of around 10 percent.

Now a new issue of contention has emerged: O’Connor has sounded the alarm that the SBC is becoming weakened by mayoral appointees who represent the large corporate interests that are often quite different from those of small businesses.

The conflict went public at the Jan. 12 SBC meeting when it came time to elect a new vice president. Richard Ventura, who heads a consulting firm and serves as executive director of the downtown-based Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, had just won commissioners’ approval to serve as president. Before a second round of votes were cast, O’Connor — who served as president for two years but declined to try for the post again — voiced his fervent opinion that "an actual small business owner" should be chosen for the other leadership slot.

"I think we need the balance of a small business owner in either the presidency or the vice-presidency position," said O’Connor, who owns the Independent music venue in the Western Addition. "If we have a president and a vice president that both come from downtown, and if three out of the four mayoral appointees on this commission are from downtown, I will be incredibly embarrassed to be on this commission. And I’m sorry, this is nothing personal — I like everybody on this commission — but small business is in a fight for its life, in this building and in City Hall."

Despite his plea, Commissioner Irene Yee Riley — a retired Bank of America executive — was elected. Although not a small business owner, Yee Riley told commissioners that she was qualified to serve as vice president thanks to her "many years of experience working with small business owners as a banker."

"I’m retired, and I have time, so I want to use this opportunity to give back to the community," she added.

Yee Riley won after receiving one vote more than Commissioner Janet Clyde, a bartender and general managing partner of Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach. "I live in the Mission District in a solid working-class neighborhood that is rapidly changing," Clyde told the other commission members during her pitch. "I know the challenges of small businesses operating far from the power and economic center of San Francisco, and I intend to work to recommend their interests … even in this difficult budgetary time."

The following morning, a dismayed O’Connor vented his frustration in an e-mail to mayoral staffers, typing "Small Business Commission … or … Big Business Commission" into the subject line. Installing commissioners with ties to large corporations rather than direct small business experience constitutes "a neutralization of the only real voice small businesses have in San Francisco," he charged.

The most recent mayoral appointee to the SBC was Darlene Chiu (no relation to David Chiu), a spokesperson for PG&E who formerly served as deputy director of communications for the Mayor’s Office. When the Guardian queried the Mayor’s Office last March on what qualifications a PG&E spokesperson brought to the Small Business Commission, Press Secretary Nathan Ballard responded with this statement: "Darlene has first hand knowledge of the challenges facing small businesses in San Francisco. She grew up working in her family’s … retail businesses in Chinatown, managing nine to l5 employees. She will also bring her knowledge of city government and communications to the commission, which will be important to the successful operations and promotion of the assistance center." (See "Newsom to small business: drop dead!" March 18, 2008 Bruce Blog.)

But since her appointment last March, public records show that Chiu has missed four of the monthly meetings. Excessive absenteeism at city commission meetings briefly emerged as an issue in September 2006, prompting Newsom to introduce a new standard with a working goal of 100 percent attendance for commissioners.

Meanwhile, not everyone agrees with O’Connor’s assertion that "San Francisco’s Office of Economic Development seems to believe small business is just an annoying little rock in its shoe."

"The Office of Economic Development is incredibly committed to keeping this commission strong," counters Jennifer Matz, managing deputy director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, who played a role in starting the Small Business Assistance Center. "Michael is very disappointed about what happened, but I don’t think it reflects a lack of commitment to small business on the part of the city or the Mayor’s Office."

Matz said the challenge to the SBAC came from the Board of Supervisors — not the Mayor’s Office — when they considered revoking the center’s funding. She also contends that the Small Business Commission’s voting record doesn’t demonstrate a downtown vs. small business split.

From January 2008 to this January, commissioners voted unanimously 34 out of 38 times, the record shows. But it’s on the divisive issues where small and big businesses differ that can have the most impact.

Sup. Chiu served on the Small Business Commission before being elected to the Board of Supervisors. He said commission members usually saw eye-to-eye on most items that came before the commission regardless of whether they were board or mayoral appointees. But for him, the frustration was that "it didn’t feel that either the mayor or the Board of Supervisors were focused on small business."

In his new capacity as board president, he said measures that aid small businesses will be moving up on the list of priorities. For example, he has asked for a hearing on why the report on streamlining small business regulations, which Prop. I required the Office of Small Business to complete by 2007, was never done.

Although doubts about the commitment to small business seemed to be cast on all sides, everyone we spoke with seemed to agree on one point: in these stormy economic times, San Francisco’s small businesses need all the help they can get.

Two reports released in December by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Automatic Data Processing (ADP) provide some insight into the challenges facing small businesses nationally. BLS reported that 524,000 jobs were lost during December, bringing the 2008 total to 2.6 million lost jobs — the highest since 1993.

The ADP report showed that 281,000 jobs had been shed from companies with fewer than 50 employees. This signifies a drastic increase in job losses from this sector: between October and November, small businesses cut just 79,000 employees, according to ADP, and between September and October, they let go of 25,000 employees.

"That was the first time since 2002 that small businesses had net job losses," says Scott Hauge, president of Small Business California. What’s frightening, he says, is that the small business sector traditionally acts as an economic stabilizer.

During the battles it the mid-1980s over accelerating downtown office building construction, the Guardian commissioned a study from noted MIT economist David Birch that found that small business accounted for most net job creation in San Francisco, and that catering to corporate demands downtown actually cost the city jobs.

Yet now, with the small business community sometimes serving as a political football tossed between downtown and City Hall, the city’s economic base is in trouble and hoping for help from political leaders who are now contemputf8g deep budget cuts.

————

Here’s a list of all the small business commissioners:

Commissioner Darlene Chiu
Occupation: Communications, PG&E
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Janet Clyde
Occupation: General managing partner / bartender, Vesuvio Cafe
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Kathleen Dooley
Occupation: Florist / owner, Columbine Design
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Gus Murad
Occupation: Owner, Medjool (restaurant) and Elements (hotel)
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Michael O’Connor
Occupation: Co-owner, The Independent (music venue)
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Irene Yee Riley
Occupation: Retired senior vice president and market executive, Bank of America
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Richard Ventura
Occumpation: Executive director, San Francisco Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Appointed by: mayor

————-

Previous Guardian coverage:

>>Volume 20.02 (PDF) An exclusive Bay Guardian study in 1985 challenges the convention wisdom that downtown development creates jobs. Instead, our study by an MIT economist shows that small business have created virtually all the new jobs in San Francisco since l980.

>>Volume 21.02 (PDF) Our updated study in l986 shows that as highrises have gone up, downtown San Francisco has lost jobs. In fact, all the net new jobs in the city have come from new and small businesses in light industrial areas and the neighborhoods

>>October 1, 2003 (PDF) The Guardian’s small business agenda for San Francisco

Lindstrom

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PREVIEW The epic dance track has had somewhat of a revival over the last few years, whether through the hipster strut of LCD Soundsystem’s "45:33" (DFA, 2007), or the obliquely historical morphing minimalism of Ricardo Villalobos’ "Fizheuer Zieheuer" (Playhouse, 2006). It isn’t all that surprising to find Hans-Peter Lindstrøm joining this mini-movement since he brings the same sort of transcendent musical facility to space jams of the non-Bugs Bunny kind that Villalobos brings to techno. In fact, it seems natural: prog-inflected electronic music is built upon monoliths such as Ash Ra Tempel’s epic "E2-E4." On Where You Go I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound, 2007) — his first proper solo full-length recording after a half decade of 12-inch singles, compilations, and collaborations — Lindstrøm presents a three-track, almost hour-long suite. The most audacious gesture is the 29-minute opening title track, which rides a midnight express on through the whirligig motif of Cerrone’s "Supernature" and the bicyclist-breaths of Kraftwerk’s "Tour de France" before reaching — and extending — a climax.

Elsewhere on Where You Go I Go Too, Lindstrøm flirts with gauche Euro trance sounds ("Grand Ideas") as much he does the seemingly chic-again disco touches (sublime closer "The Long Way Home") often associated with his recorded output. Redefining and fusing genres rather than obeying them, he’s a leader, not a follower, though this particular change in direction has been a divisive one. While the electronic music guru of one Bay Area music store listed Lindstrøm’s solo debut as his favorite recording of last year, another local shop trashed it. Rumor has it that Hans-Peter has been back in the studio with his sometime partner-in-crime, Prins Thomas. For now, he’s visiting the Paradise Lounge, which owes some of its current liveliness to the disco revival his music has helped spark in San Francisco.

LINDSTRØM With Beat Broker, Conor, and TK Disco, and visuals by AC. Sat/31, 9 p.m.–4 a.m., $15. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-5017, www.paradisesf.com

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen and John McEuen

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PREVIEW Country-rock pioneer and original Byrds bassist Chris Hillman prepares to throw down some bluegrass with longtime friend, banjo player Herb Pedersen, at Yoshi’s SF this week.

As a founding member of the Byrds and later the Flying Burrito Brothers, Hillman was a staple of California’s fabled Laurel Canyon music scene during the late 1960s. Although the musician’s roots are steeped in bluegrass, it wasn’t until meeting his eventual Byrds bandmate Gram Parsons in 1968 that the group took on a significantly unique direction. The Byrds’ critically acclaimed Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Columbia, 1968) was a product of the outfit’s expansion into country even if it failed to chart. Hillman’s full-fledged emergence into the genre has inspired a spectrum of artists, including collaborators such as Emmylou Harris and fans like Beck. I don’t think the pedal steel sound heard on Beck’s "Rowboat" was even possible without the Burrito Brothers paving the way.

Throw into the mix multi-instrumentalist and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band veteran John McEuen, a.k.a. "America’s instrumental poet," and expect Pedersen, who played with Hillman in the Desert Rose Band and paid his dues picking five-string banjo with the likes of Jerry Garcia, to do just that: play some banjo. After all, this is bluegrass we’re talking about. Just remember, it’s all about the twang.

CHRIS HILLMAN AND HERB PEDERSEN AND JOHN MCEUEN Mon/2–Tues/3, 8 p.m., $30. Yoshi’s SF, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600, www.yoshis.com

“Japan Dance Now”

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PREVIEW What does avant-garde Japanese dance look like? Butoh is 40 years old. Eiko and Koma have been working their version of slow dancing for three decades. What about dancers who have grown up in a high-tech, high-velocity, video-drenched urban environment? We at least get glimpses of the movies, comics, and pop music that are part of their lives. Once in a while, a company like the Condors will come through town on their way to somewhere else. But for the most part, our exposure to that type of edgy new dance — highly influenced by electronic media and sophisticated in its use of those elements — remains nil.

Now Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is making an attempt to open minds and ears to new moves from Japan. Next month they bring back Papa Taruhamara, and this weekend they present three companies in a performance titled "Japan Dance Now" on their first stop of a three-city tour of the states. Baby-Q, a multimedia company that includes a robotics specialist, is directed by choreographer Yoko Higashino. The group stages her solo E/G-Ego Geometria. Nibroll’s seven athlete-dancer-comedians are taking on the everyday in their excerpt of Coffee. Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club is an all-female ensemble with serious hair. The company describes The End of Water as an exploration of aspects of femininity from a pop butoh perspective.

JAPAN DANCE NOW Thurs/29–Sat/31, 8 p.m., $25–$30 (On Sat/31 audience members receive special entrance to the post-performance "Big Idea" party, 9 p.m.-midnight, in the Grand Lobby and Galleries). Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Sonic Reducer Overage II: Edwardian Ball, Unagi, Dragging an Ox Through Water, and more

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Motor-vated: Kinetic Steamworks at Coachella 2007.

Because once is never enough. More ear-teasers to tantalize…

Edwardian Ball
Break out the corsets and strap yourself in, girls. The ninth annual event – now three days strong – bids you to party like it’s 1899, follow the green fairy, and partake in music, art, burlesque, circus acts, and all things Edwardian and Edward Gorey-esque. (OK, Gorey was born a bit too late, but you get the general drift of the proceedings.) With Rasputina, Abney Park, Kinetic Steamworks, Rosin Coven, Vau de Vire Society, Jill Tracy, Cirque Berzerk, Agent Ribbons, and more. Fri/23-Sun/25, call for times, $25-$35. Regency Center, 1290 Sutter, SF. (415) 435-7527.

Thunderheist
The Toronto electro-funk party-starters gave a lil’ impromptu show in London in December (above). Tonight they do it the legal way, courtesy of Blasthaus. Next up: a new album on Big Dada, coming March 31. Fri/23, 9 p.m., $10. 103 Harriet, SF.

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Unagi
The slippery DJ brings the knowledge – “real hip-hop on real records all night long” – to his regular event, 442 Fridays, with DJ Animal. Fri/23, 9 p.m.-2 a.m., $5 after 10 p.m. Madrone Lounge, 500 Divisadero, SF. (415) 241-0202.

Scott Walker talk

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By Johnny Ray Huston

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man trailer

Stephen Kijak knows San Francisco at least as well as he knows the subject of his new movie, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. Kijak lived here in the 20th century, and he’s making a return visit in honor of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man‘s Bay Area theatrical premiere this weekend. The visit allows him an opportunity to play Walker songs at the Casanova Lounge this Friday night. I recently talked all-things-Walker on the phone with the handsome-voiced Kijak, who studied with Ray Carney, and whose past directorial credits include a drama starring Margot Kidder with a score by Kristin Hersh, episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the 2002 movie obsessive doc Cinemaniacs.

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Stephen Kijak. Photo by Mia Hanson.

SFBG: In making the film, what was the most surprising facet of Scott Walker that you discovered?
Stephen Kijak: To this day, it’s still a mystery to me. It might be his honesty and simplicity. His music sounds extreme and experimental and avant-garde – he’s been accused of being the emperor’s new clothes or being weird for weirdness’ sake. But the actual simple and focused dedication to narrative ideas within his music, and the seriousness of it, was extraordinary to witness. Witnessing it was the thing.
There is a lot of humor threaded throughout the process. It was revealing to see the relationship he has with the musicians, and his actual process in the studio. It seems unencumbered by angst or torment – he’s a very natural, easygoing, funny man, and they just have a good time in the studio making these records.
Of course, he does push himself to limits, to execute and achieve what he needs, but it all seems to be done with a great camaraderie and respect. The musicians will do anything for him. Instead of surprise, I had a sense of awe about being allowed this privileged peek into his process. We had limited access, but it was definitely quality over quantity.

SFBG: So you didn’t have a large amount of footage to work with?

Fresh jam

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER The perfectly passive postmodern approach to pop nostalgia? Allow the milky waves of 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s retro navel-gazer rehash to simply wash over you — like so many warm, narcotic jets of synthetic baby formula. The opposite tact is the one that San Francisco trio Mi Ami takes: reject the rockist, retread trappings of the old and stale and make new and likely original sounds from a place of authenticity and openness. Breathe. Good. An excellent example might be Mi Ami’s recent spasm of songwriting after the completion of their debut, Watersports, out Feb. 17 on Quarterstick: the jams weren’t quite "up to snuff," as vocalist-guitarist Daniel Martin-McCormick puts it. But the essential flow was restored after drummer Damon Palermo spoke up in favor of letting the songs flow and allowing the changes to happen naturally rather than getting clogged with details.

"We started opening the songs up and started letting the changes happen naturally," explains the clear-eyed Martin-McCormick on this clear-skied, brilliant, balmy winter day in the Mission District. "I feel like when it works, it’s really great because it doesn’t seem like something locked in by something like repetitions of four. But at the same time, when it doesn’t work it can be kind of frustrating because it’s just like trying to have a conversation when you’re just not feeling it. It has to be like a lived experience. You can’t fake it."

You might not know it from glancing at the tall, lanky, check-shirted bandmates stalking down Alabama Street in search of coffee and nutrients at Atlas Cafe, but Martin-McCormick — a former member of Dischord punk outfit Black Eyes along with Mi Ami bassist Jacob Long — and the soft-spoken Palermo are pop philosophers of sorts: amiable, laid-back, yet ready to hold forth politely and passionately on their favorite disco singles and free jazz LPs, the multiple meanings one might glean from the title Watersports, or the role African funk guitar might play in, say, pulsing workouts like "The Man in Your House."

It’s easy to get lost in Martin-McCormick’s high-pitched, keening vocals, equal parts no wave nervousness and androgynous nerve; his bursts of scratched-out guitar skronk; Palermo’s primal-power beats; and Long’s reassuringly melodic bass lines. But Mi Ami never over-thinks its lengthy forays into that anxious and pleasure-strewn interzone between improv and noise, space-is-the-place dub and neverending party jams. Like groups such as !!! and the Rapture and locals à la Tussle and Jonas Reinhardt, which Palermo also drums for, Mi Ami sounds as if it was bred on hardcore’s aggression and reborn on a seething dance floor.

Martin-McCormick and Palermo met two years ago, after relocating from the East Coast and Vancouver respectively, while performing at an Adobe Book Shop art opening. The one thing they were sure of: they didn’t want to be a rock band. "Boring!" blurts Martin-McCormick.

"We are a rock band," says Palermo mildly in Atlas’ noisy back patio. "But you know what we’re talking about. There’s a lot of cool bands that are rock bands but a lot of it is a default setup, the structure of the songs and instrumentation."

"I think we came to be a guitar, bass, and drums trio very much on our terms," Martin-McCormick offers. "I didn’t want to play guitar when I started, but I realized that was what I’m best at and began to find ways to play it that suited what I was looking for." Their resistance to rock habit was helped by the fact that Palermo didn’t own a drum set: at first the duo had only two drums between them. They acquired bits as they progressed, while relying on a janky drum machine prone to crapping out at crucial moments — like their September 2007 opening date for No Age at Bottom of the Hill.

The turning point arrived when the twosome ditched the drum machine and put out a Craigslist ad for a bass player in ’07. "We got a few responses," says Martin-McCormick. "One was super confrontational. I wrote that we’re into disco, gamelan, and no wave — and no old people. We wanted someone who was kind of our age-ish. I just didn’t want an 48-year-old dude who was like, ‘I just need to jam!’ This guy wrote back and said, ‘How do you think gamelan musicians learn? They respect their elders, blah-blah-blah. You should go fuck off and die!’ Whoa!"

The second response: a hip-hop producer working with an "awful singer-songwriter." The third: Long, who happened to be roaming Craigslist during his day job.

"There was no going back after that," says Martin-McCormick. Listening to the forward-facing future-rock of Watersports, I’d say there’s little fear of that scenario. *

MI AMI

Fri/23, 10 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

ROCK FOR LOVERS

THE ETTES


The primal beat band got theirs — where’s yours? Thurs/22, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

E-ZEE TIGER


One-man massive energy generator Anthony Petrovic rouses himself from dormancy. With Wooden Shjips and Hank IV. Thurs/22, 9 p.m., $7. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. www.sfeagle.com

WAVVES


Going big with bristly, lo-fi garage rock. Fri/23, 9 p.m., $16–$18. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

AZTECA


The sprawling fusion combo including Pete Escovedo and Sheila E. rocks for autism awareness. With War, El Chicano, and Los Cenzontles. Sat/24, 7:20 p.m., $45–$75. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. www.goldenvoice.com

THE PHENOMENAUTS


The selfless Oakland space-rockers dish out For All Mankind (Springman). Sat/24, 9 p.m., $13. Slim’s, 33 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

JAY REATARD


He’s watching you watching him. With Nobunny and Bare Wires. Sun/25, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

It’s a hit

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

I’m glad I finally got my mitts on the self-issued CD-R from San Francisco titans High Castle: I feel like I’m back in ear-bleeding country with the trio’s Unwound-ishly, damaged style of noisy rock, nursing an insatiable appetite for more tinfoil-scorched guitar scuzz, blown-out low end, and full-tilt drum thwackage. As each song unloads, three howling voices punctuate the maelstrom. Try if you can to pass on this seven-song album after just one spin. If the punked-out oomph of "Soloman" and "No Mind" don’t bite you hard in the ass, then the annihiutf8g whomp of "Small Town Gay Bar" will certainly dish out the finishing touches.

As surprising as it may sound, this shower of pandemonium comes from three individuals who had their hearts set on becoming a pop group when they first convened in the summer of 2007. I yapped it up with the threesome over bowls of fideo and garlicky steak fries in drummer-vocalist Shaggy Denton’s SoMa apartment, while bassist-vocalist Wilson Drozdowski explained that High Castle aimed at becoming an actual band within the trio’s large circle of noise-making friends.

"We were like, ‘let’s start a rock band,’ because I felt I hadn’t seen a drum-bass-guitar band with songs in a long time," he disclosed. "It seemed like it was either improv or noise, so we wanted to do the opposite of that to see what would happen."

"We actually wanted it to be a pop band," said guitarist-vocalist Erin Allen with a laugh.

"None of us knew how to write pop music, so what ended up coming out was the closest we could get to doing that," Drozdowski continued. "Even when we try to write something that we think is poppy, it’s not poppy in the traditional sense. We always try and make the vocals very apparent by singing together."

"I guess that’s the one pop element that surfaces," Allen added. "But it’s not like the Mamas and the Papas."

Before HC, all three resided in Southern California, meeting through tours in bands such as Duchesses, Saviors, and Child Pornography. As Drozdowski, Denton, and Allen became jaded with the SoCal lifestyle, each separately trekked up to the Bay Area because, according to Denton, "the option was LA or here — and it was not going to be LA."

Reuniting in San Francisco with each member’s respective group in limbo, the three formed HC, but not before putting the collaboration on hold because of an unfortunate encounter between Allen and a car.

"We had to take a break because this one got hit by a car," Denton joked, pointing to Allen. "He was supposed to come over to my house and have some fideo and play PlayStation. I was worried because I kept getting the answering machine, and then somebody from General Hospital calls me and is like, ‘Um, do you know an Erin Allen? He told me to give you a message: he got hit by a car.’"

Aside from Allen’s slight dinger, the combo has been very active during the past year and a half, playing in just about every performance space dotting the Bay Area underground music scene with the likes of K.I.T., Stripmall Seizures, and Death Sentence: Panda! HC is currently in the mixing stages of its 12-inch debut for the Zum imprint, and after embarking on its first national tour last summer, the group hopes to hit the road once again this year. Whatever avenue this threesome decides to explore in the future — be it noisesome or poppy — I know I’ll be all ears.

HIGH CASTLE

With Stress Ape, Didimao, and the Dawns

Fri/23, 9 p.m., call for price

Kimo’s

1351 Polk, SF

(415) 885-4535

www.kimosbarsf.com

Bringin’ on the heartache

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Twenty-year-old North London–born heartbreak crooner Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, or simply Adele to her fans, has had some big breaks amid her romantic woes. She appeared in 2007 on the BBC alongside Paul McCartney and Björk, and performed this past October on a Saturday Night Live episode that not only included Sarah Palin, Mark Wahlberg, Oliver Stone, and Tina Fey, but was seen by 17 million viewers.

Since then, her Burt Bacharach–styled symphonic pop hit "Chasing Pavements" has been ubiquitous, receiving constant airplay on local stations like Alice 97.3 FM. Her debut, 19 (XL/Columbia), is nominated for four Grammys, but Adele has had a tough time shaking comparisons to other British female neo-Motown vocalists such as Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and Lily Allen. "We’re a gender, not a genre," she quipped recently to London Guardian reporter Hannah Pool, revealing the same strong, honest qualities heard in her music. Adele’s songs revel in love’s bittersweet see-saw emotions ("Crazy for You," "Melt My Heart to Stone") while her equally elastic voice recalls Dusty Springfield and Jill Scott.

No telling if her luck will hold up, but with a new album for 2009, her formidable voice, and self-assured performances, Adele’s likely to outlast the trends.

ADELE

With James Morrison

Jan. 29, 8 p.m., $24

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.goldenvoice.com

Get behind him

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Oscar season is upon us. Amid sniping text messages from best actor contenders, I’d like to advance the idea that cinema’s most compelling and perhaps revelatory male stars of cinema in recent years aren’t even thespians. They can be athletes, such as Zinedine Zidane, whose day’s work on the soccer field assumes mythic properties in Douglas Gordon’s 2006 Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. More often, they are musicians. Think of Arthur Russell and Townes Van Zandt, tender ghosts who float through documentaries by Matt Wolf and Margaret Browne. Or the very-much-alive yet enigmatic subject of Stephen Kijak’s Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, a pop star, lyricist, and composer who was made to be a movie star — though one with, in the words of an observer, "Garboesque leanings toward seclusion."

Foreboding yet luminous in a manner that any film composer might envy, the first minutes of the songs "Big Louise" and "It’s Raining Today" are all it takes to prove that the chief glory of 30 Century Man is the lavish setting that it affords Walker’s recordings. Both the grand orchestration and vocal gestures of his late 1960s solo albums and the dark passages and shock tactics of his more recent ones — Tilt (Fontana, 1995) and The Drift (4AD, 2006) — are born again as they bloom and boom through a movie theater sound system. This music is truly majestic. The digital effects that Kijak sometimes uses to illustrate its sound can be cheesy, but another of his gambits hits paydirt. Instead of presenting David Bowie, Brian Eno, and a host of other figures as simple talking heads, he films their responses as they listen to Walker’s music. This listening party effect is intoxicating, and it triggers improvised, as opposed to rehearsed, insights.

Time stood still yesterday in the music Walker made with arranger Wally Stott (now Angela Morley, and one of the film’s most likable commentators), and it stands still today when 30 Century Man languishes in the songs from Walker’s quartet of self-titled Philips solo albums from 1967 through 1970. A welcome sense of ambiguity thrives throughout Kijak’s movie. Executive producer Bowie shares a back story about a competitive bond he felt he had with Walker, even if Walker wasn’t aware of it — namely, that one of Walker’s girlfriends never got over her love of Walker’s music, even as she was dating Bowie. The anecdote is a perfect illustration of the homo-social electricity that charges so much popular music, and Kijak is wise enough to let the inference speak for itself.

30 Century Man is unique simply for its on-camera interview and studio footage of Walker, who has spent more than a decade on a single album and gone 30 years between live performances. As a leading man, he’s conflicted. He may be a notorious film buff who is fond of Victor Erice and collaborated with Leos Carax, but the physical efforts on his part to cultivate an iconic mystique — hats and sunglasses, for example — come across as almost comic signifiers of a genuine unease about being on-camera. At the beginning of one of the film’s interviews, he jokingly refers to McCarthy-era forms of interrogation, and only truly loosens up past the point of obvious self-consciousness when he’s enmeshed in recording a song. Instead of a full-blown eccentric, Kijak’s movie puts forth a vision of a guy who’d simply rather make art than play the fame game. Of course, in Walker’s case, that art now involves using slabs of meat as rhythmic instruments — and instead of writing for the charts, he’s singing about Pasolini and Mussolini.

SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN opens Fri/23 in Bay Area theaters.

Department of Eagles

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PREVIEW Considering that the Brooklyn band Department of Eagles’ much-praised, tres delectable nugget of fast-forward/throwback rock, In Ear Park (4AD), resides so firmly in those lazy, hazy, haunted memories of youth, there’s something exquisitely fitting about the fact that 26-year-old East Bay native Fred Nicolaus is bringing his collaboration Grizzly Bear member and ex–New York University roommate Daniel Rossen back to the Bay for its first show at a venue frequented as a ska-loving Oakland kid. "I remember seeing a weird swing band there — Lee Press-On and the Nails?" he recalls from snowy Pennsylvania.

The Nails don’t crop up on the album — the follow-up to the group’s 2003 debut, The Cold Nose (The Whitey on the Moon UK LP) initially released by Oakland’s Isota Records and reissued by American Dust — nor do the years between NYU and today that Nicolaus spent toiling in the nine-to-five trenches of publishing ("The first magazine I worked for was Industrial Equipment News — the most doomed experience of all time!"). Instead DOE plunges into a many-pleasured, multitextured wonderland teeming with groaning cello, swooping samples, clattering toy pianos, and blissfully ethereal vocals — and tender backward glances to neglected classical LPs, childhood retreats, and the more ecstatic musical ruminations of Van Dyke Parks. "It was about taking that idea of using weird, amazing arrangements and applying them to music that’s more poppy," Nicolaus says of the band, once dubbed Whitey on the Moon UK after the protestations of the SF combo also named for the Gil-Scott Heron track.

The twosome worked on In Ear Park for years "in the margins of Grizzly Bear’s recording and touring schedule," with Nicolaus dreaming up with the raw ideas for the songs and Rossen molding them into shape. "When you work on something for five years," Nicolaus explains humbly, "you can afford to throw away stuff that isn’t up to par." Now the pair is tackling their studio creations live, assisted by a full band that includes Grizzly Bear’s Chris Bear, on an outing that Nicolaus believes "might be our only tour, really," since Grizzly Bear is committed to completing a 2009 full-length. Still, Nicolaus is delighted to find that DOE’s tunes can work without their aural finery: "It’s reassuring that with these songs, if you took their clothes off they’d still be able to stand up."

DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES With Cave Singers. Sun/25, 7 and 10 p.m., $15. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

Inauguration parties you can believe in

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>>>All parties take place tonight, January 20

ActivelyOUT.com Obama Ball

ActivelyOUT.com hosts an Obama Ball at Bruno’s Night Club, featuring plasma screens with highlights from Inauguration Day, a dance party with DJ Duarte and a free glass of champagne for the first 150 people. A donation from the evening’s proceeds will go to And Marriage for All, a collaborative partnership of African-American community leaders spearheading dialogue and public education about same-sex couples’ freedom to marry. “Gay fabulous, str8 friendly, no H8-ers!”

6 -10 p.m., $8 cover, $5 for activelyOUT.com members

Bruno’s Night Club

2389 Mission St., S.F.

www.activelyout.com

————

Rock Barack

Glide into a new era with budget-friendly drink specials at the Paradise Lounge. Rock Barack: The Obama Inauguration Party will featuring 99-cent drafts and 99-cent well drinks from 6 to 9 p.m. the event will benefit not just your budget but the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit working to end poverty.

6-9 p.m., $10 donation

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom St., S.F.

www.paradisesf.com/calendar.html

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League of Young Voters
LYV says: “No need for upscale dress attire for our BALL! We’ll have drinks, ginger bread cookies and a good crew celebrating Obama’s Inauguration! We need YOU to get the party really started!”

8pm -11pm; $5-25 sliding scale.

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.theleague.com/sf

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Obama mambo

Boogie down to support Amnesty International during its fundraising event, "Dance for Change." Music from hip-hop to house to rock will be spinning all night long, so prepare to shake it for Barack to the wee hours.

9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m., $10

Le Colonial
20 Cosmo Place, SF

www.amnestyusa.org

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Inaugural Ball

Electric Works gallery is hosting an Inaugural Ball featuring a rebroadcast of the inauguration followed by dancing. Formal dress is suggested but not required (changing rooms and borrowed finery will be available for those coming directly from work). Drinks and light hors d’oeuvres will be provided and proceeds benefit the San Francisco Food Bank.

6–10 p.m., $10 donation requested

130 Eighth St., SF

www.sfelectricworks.com

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Women, Democrats, and democratic women

The San Francisco Democratic Party and local women’s political groups — including Emerge California, Good Ol’ Girls, and the San Francisco Women’s Political Caucus — are throwing an Inauguration Night party in the swanky Green Room of the War Memorial Opera House, featuring hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and entertainment.

5:30–8:30 p.m., $25

301 Van Ness, SF

www.actblue.com/page/inaugurationsf

(415) 626-1161

info@sfdemocrats.org

———

Inauguration Skaters’ Ball

The California Outdoor Rollersports Association hosts a political roller disco featuring Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas on wheels. There’s even a chance that a live feed from the party will be broadcast at the Presidential Gala in Washington. Dress up as your favorite politician and resist the urge to knock out your rivals.

7–11 p.m., $10 adults, kids free. $5 for skates

Funkytown SF

1720 19th St., SF

www.cora.org/ObamaParty.htm

Sonic Reducer Overage: Meat Puppets, Devil Makes Three, Jeremy Pelt, and Mo!

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Alternate Nation statesmen: Meat Puppets.

Get out, SF – get out… and check out the music pouring the streets of Grog City.

Slough Feg and Hatchet
His majesty meets the teen metallists, thanks to Lucifer’s Hammer. With Passive Aggressive. Wed/14, 9 p.m., $7. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-7788.

Devil Makes Three
Devil lovers gathered round for the band’s set at Treasure Island music fest. Thurs/15, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 2455 Telegraph, Berk. (510) 549-1125.

Local Artist of the Week

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LOCAL ARTIST David Young

TITLE Untitled

BIO A San Francisco resident for just over five years, David Young draws inspiration from postapocalyptic films, punk music, street art, graphic novels, and war photography to present a damaged and hostile vision of SF and its place in America. All of the work in his "Live Forever" series is executed with Micron8 pens on Strathmore Bristol and American Masters paper.

SHOW "David Young: Live Forever," Thurs/15 through Feb. 14 (reception Thurs/15, 6–9 p.m.). Babylon Falling, 1017 Bush, SF. (415) 345-1017, www.babylonfalling.com

WEB www.myspace.com/dyoungv

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