Music

SXSW: Touch down! Plans, schplans…

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Won’t you listen to Cassettes Won’t Listen.

“Punk rock – we don’t have that category in this country.” Oh, the quotables already emanating from Austin, Texas – albeit from a boomer-rock-oriented radio commentator interviewing aging Aussie punk vets.

SXSW, here we go again. The plane was packed on the way from Denver to Austin. Baggage claim was filled with checked guitars and black-garbed hollow-eyed scenesters. Todd P already had a Juicebox show going at 2 a.m. at his party central, Ms. Bea’s. And rumors are already swirling – has Dolly Parton cancelled? Is it possible to squirm into the already-closed-guestlist Playboy afterhours party Thursday night? Where is Perez Hilton having his ssseeecccret soiree (with Robyn no doubt working her rework of Snoop Dogg’s “Sex Eruption”)? Rachel Ray is having a party – huh?! You can spend more time planning your sked than actually seeing music, but the one-man band sounds of Cassettes Won’t Listen drew me into the Austin Convention Center’s dark, semi-depressing, school-caf-like Daystage.

Most disturbing news: so many longtimers aren’t making it this year due to industry cutbacks. Most disturbing stuff in the fest bag o’ fliers: an Armed Forces Entertainment card with a little green toy soldier attached (“Plug in your weapon, turn up the power and fire away. Your limo is a Humvee and your ride is a Blackhawk”). War is so cute – and glamorous! And a card announcing a casting call for Blue Man (I guess the blue face paint fits any ole one – except maybe women?).

What’s up tonight? Free Yr Radio is throwing a bash with Simian Mobile Disco, Yeasayer (all the buzz here, natch), and Times New Viking (Ohio-ans do it so good) at La Zona Rosa, a black rock showcase with Lightspeed Champion courtesy of Vice, a Kills show at the Fader Fort, an Emusic showcase, White Williams at the Gorilla vs Bear party. Also drool-worthy is the Terrorbird/Forcefield PR party with Yacht, Raveonettes, Why?, These New Puritans, the Blow, Radar Bros., Bowerbirds, and the return of the Mae Shi. Kimya Dawson will likely be at the Keep Austin Good event at San Hotel’s parking lot, and Dan Deacon and Deer Tick are making some very late-night noise – shhhh! – at one o’ UT Austin’s quads at, oh, 2 a.m. And most of those events aren’t even official.

Desperately seeking cinema

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Jennifer Reeves’s movies are personal wishing wells, each a repository of dreams and worries. As we see ourselves reflected in the water’s surface after tossing in a coin, so too is Reeves’s presence apparent in the handmade, fussed-over quality of her moving pictures. I use that broad designation pointedly, as her films are as varied in material and form as they are prosaic in mood and temperament. Over 15 years of independent filmmaking, the New York–based artist has created hand-painted films in the style of her mentor Stan Brakhage, freewheeling shorts, fiction fantasias, 16mm double-projections, feature narratives, and experiments in high definition. San Francisco Cinematheque hosts the formally restless filmmaker for a three-program tour.

Reeves’s early shorts channel riot-grrrl spark with scratched-up film stock. Elations in Negative (1990) is a good sample of the celluloid-mad sexual politics of these 16mm beaters, though Taste It Nine Times (1992), with its vivid pickle-biting innuendos, will be missed from the Cinematheque run. In painted films like The Girl’s Nervy (1995) and Fear of Blushing (2001), Reeves’s appropriation of Brakhage’s technique conveys playful femininity in color, pattern, and music.

Though Reeves toyed with narrative early on, most notably in 1996’s psychodrama Chronic, 2004’s The Time We Killed represented a kind of breakthrough. An unhurried 94 minutes passes through the dark mirror of an agoraphobic poet keeping to her New York apartment during the buildup to the Iraq War. "Terrorism brought me out of the house, but the war on terror drove me back in," Robyn (Lisa Jarnot) says in her peripatetic voice-over, adding later, "I’m afraid of catching the amnesia of the American people." Reeves’s magnetically immersive filmmaking is such that the political situation neatly folds into an extended experiment in subjectivity — besides being an unstinting portrait of madness (it’s everywhere in this film: in a record’s spin and neighbors’ voices echoing through the walls, in dogs’ faces, bathwater, and masturbation), The Time We Killed also serves as an understated chronicle of the collateral psychic and moral damage of our country’s manufactured warmongering.

The Time We Killed is heavier than Reeves’s other work, though it’s not without humor; she finds the ridiculous, unwieldy side of depression in Robyn’s litany of death fantasies and a painfully misguided interaction with a curious neighbor. Robyn’s locked in, but Reeves is formally unfettered, mixing conventional 16mm footage with lyrical, associative streams of inner life shot in high-contrast black-and-white. The filmmaker raids her home-movie archive for the film, in addition to using her own apartment and acting as Jarnot’s body double during the extended shooting. This air of transference makes The Time We Killed weirdly transparent, so we feel as intimately connected to Reeves’s isolated work in the editing room as we do to Robyn’s experience in the apartment.

Since The Time We Killed, Reeves has returned to more typically experimental filmmaking. Her 2006–07 Light Work variations strike an ideal balance of abstract and representational visions, in the process cataloging the changing textures of cinema. In the affecting He Walked Away (2007), Reeves dissects, refracts, and abstracts footage from her older movies to create a tri-tipped memorial piece in which the intrinsically elegiac nature of cinema is connected to the dissolution of film technology, which is then tied to the disappearing loves and friendships that shadow personal lives.

As with Guy Maddin — another filmmaker who favors overheated evocations — one has the sense that Reeves could make a hundred interesting movies from the same scraps of footage. "I want to counter the turncoats who say film’s dead," Reeves announces on her excellent new blog. "Try telling a painter that she can only use digital paint on a Mac for the rest of her life. She’d be pissed." But if she were Jennifer Reeves, she certainly wouldn’t slow down.

IMMERSIVE CINEMA: JENNIFER REEVES

Artists’ Television Access, Sat/15, 8:30 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sun/16, 7:30 p.m.;
Tues/18, 7:30 p.m.; $6–$8

See Rep Clock for venue information

Youth gone wild

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It’s hard for a contemporary reader to fathom why — indeed, it was probably hard for many non-Eire readers to fathom even then — but when Edna O’Brien’s debut novel, The Country Girls, came out in 1960, she was considered a disgrace to all of Ireland. Priests burned it in churchyards and denounced it from the pulpit. Her books — soon to include two Country Girls sequels, as the original was a hit everywhere else — were banned from the Emerald Isle as late as 1977.

Just what could have been so offending about a book now described in reference books as "comic and charming," in contrast to her more "somber and sophisticated" later works? Not a whole hell of a lot, by current standards. In The Country Girls, O’Brien’s two young female protagonists drink, disrespect the clergy, use bad language, and flirt with men. Actually, only the naughty one commits most of these "sins." But even the "nice" one becomes dangerously attached to a married man. Painted as boozy, abusive, and unreliable, Irish manhood in general doesn’t come off too well in the boisterous yet coolly told chronicle of these Girls. Which might be the real reason that it incited such public condemnation, notwithstanding all expressions of moral outrage.

In addition to her literary fiction (which got a whole lot more sexually frank in subsequent years), O’Brien has written screenplays and teleplays since the early 1960s, and stage scripts for many years as well. Lately she’s developed a rather simpatico relationship with the Magic Theatre. Tir na nóg, a nearly-half-century-later theatrical adaptation of The Country Girls, is her third Magic premiere. It follows the rather dreadful hair-pulling lady fight over one husband in Triptych (recurrent focus on such male-companion neediness is why O’Brien is a major female author seldom embraced by feminist academics or critics) and the structurally conventional, enjoyably juicy imploding-family melodrama Family Butchers.

Tir na nóg is something else, "a play with song" (its initial title) that tries mixing music, dance, a source narrative boiled down to rapid-fire outline, and yea more elements into a meta-theatre experience. It doesn’t entirely work, due more to the text than any failings in departing Magic artistic director Chris Smith’s resourceful production. But it’s still an arresting evening, with fine work from the largely multicast nine-member ensemble.

The "country girls" here are two authorial alter-ego halves. Kate (Allison Jean White) is the only child of a long-suffering mother (Cat Thompson) and drunken, abusive pa (Matt Foyer). Baba (Summer Serafin) is only child to the western village’s wealthiest couple, a flame-haired bratty terror.

Once the two girls are later sent off to convent school, the bad girl predictably gets them both expelled. After intermission, they make a first stab at adult life in big-city Dublin: serious-minded Kate as a working student carrying on a fitful affair with ardent-yet-married-to-a-mental-case "Mr. Gentleman" (toweringly suave Robert Parsons); Baba as an aspiring vamp stealing thrills from her own less-discriminatingly-chosen cheating beaus.

The book isn’t exactly a blur of incident. But in its first half O’Brien’s adaptation too often feels like a careless cinematic downsizing of highlights into too-short scenes, glue-gunned together by variably vocalized song snippets.

After the break, however, Tir na nóg (which translates as "land of youth") slows down for several poignantly deep scenes, notably between Kate and her stern Austrian landlady (Darragh), as well as a couple of unsuitable suitors. Beautifully handled by Smith and his design collaborators, the play goes off-rails a bit when O’Brien imposes as ending a flashback-memory montage, with principal characters (including dead ones) drifting back onstage to speak prior best lines in echo! echo! echo! recollection. Yet there’s a certain charm to ex-Riverdance choreographer Jean Butler’s ensuing ensemble step-dance finale.

If the novel’s Kate came off as a guileless blank slate — passively dragged down again and again by Baba’s misdeeds — White fills out that character with impressive gravitas. Serafin is a marvel as the antsy-panted best friend who simply can’t repress her disrespect for authority, or precocious aspirations as a va-voom mantrap.

TIR NA NÓG


Through March 23

Wed-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2:30 and 7 p.m., $40-$75

Magic Theatre

Fort Mason Center, Marina and Buchanan, Bldg. D, third floor, SF

(415) 441-8822

www.magictheatre.org

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players

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PREVIEW While electronics have transformed the very core of contemporary dance music, rap, and pop, so-called art music of the concert hall persuasion still centers on acoustic instruments reverberating in real time. But some of the earliest feats of sound manipulation, predating the Beatles’ trippy tape loops and even the ’60s soul tracks destined for an afterlife in eternal sampledom, were achieved by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was decidedly not a populist. In current terms, "electronic" music tends to denote the limitless reorganization of beats and breaks, but Stockhausen dispensed with regular rhythms altogether, turning his attention to the most basic components of sound itself, using now-primitive equipment to generate sine waves and splice magnetic tape. The most famous result of his experiments, aside from a nod from the Fab Four on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s, may be the 40-minute tape-based work Kontakte, for piano, percussion, and electronics, premiered in 1960. Pianist Julie Steinberg, who also moonlights as a percussionist for this performance by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, emphasizes the prohibitive complexity of performing Kontakte live. "We have to know the electronics perfectly," she says of playing along with Stockhausen’s original four-channel futuristic noise collage, now a digital version realized by a sound projectionist as the performers play. Conceived in recognition of the late composer’s 80th birthday by percussionist Willie Winant, whose cutting-edge creds include work with Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Wilco, and the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, this is a rare realization of what Winant calls "a masterwork" and a "seminal piece."

SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS Mon/17, preconcert talk 7:15 p.m., concert 8 p.m.; $10–$27; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; 978-ARTS, www.sfcmp.org

Reveille in reverb

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The first thing fans will notice about Beach House’s second album, Devotion (Carpark), is that it hews to the same gauzy sonic architecture of their 2006 eponymous debut. An elegant combination of keyboard beats, organ drones, apparitional electric slide guitar, and Victoria Legrand’s molasses vocals gave Beach House a golden glow that sent music scribes running to their thesaurus for "autumnal" synonyms. These elements sound thicker on Devotion, though a few spins down the line it becomes apparent that the difference lies more in the compositions themselves than in any studio trickery.

This isn’t a small distinction, given our tendency to fetishize certain sounds. Phil Spector productions, Dusty Springfield laments, and Lee Hazelwood bonanzas all have brilliant surfaces, but they also have the depth of classical songwriting, complete with bridges, vamps, and theatrical flourishes. Legrand, the niece of French film composer Michel Legrand, grew up in a musical atmosphere. The two of us have a phone date, but work and a sick dog interfere, leaving her to e-mail me from her Baltimore home about her glam-rocking father ("My papa wore tight purple satin pants, with hair down to ‘there’<0x2009>") and her studies at Paris’s International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq ("I was trained classically, and I know Alex [Scally, her Beach House bandmate] also has an affinity towards the classical, old-fashioned world, so I think it’s a given we’d be into the Zombies and . . . watered-down show-tune buildups").

And so we get a folded gem like Devotion‘s "Heart of Chambers," in which Legrand breathily asks, "Would you be my longtime baby?" On "Holy Dances," a drowsy, shaker-spurred verse flowers into the sunburst of Scally’s arpeggios. The centerpiece chorus of "All the Years" echoes with the same kind of distant regret running through the best of old girl-group records. Still, the purest pleasure on Devotion might be its sole cover, a version of Daniel Johnston’s "Some Things Last a Long Time": Beach House distills the song to a plucked melody, lolling drum beat — it’s like listening to a "Be My Baby" single at 33 rpm — and Legrand’s barely there inflection. "We felt compelled by the fragile essence of the song and merely wanted to capture it, if only for a brief moment," she writes.

Across Devotion, Legrand’s phrasing emerges as a major shaping force. She knows how to pause — inserting the breath before the chorus in "Turtle Island" and a delicious lingering note over at the end of "You Came to Me." And her sometimes slumberous drawl gives the 1960s pop orchestrations a European edge — Nico comes to mind — and from that same era Legrand also seems to have picked up the special knowledge that spelling a word out, as with "D.A.R.L.I.N.G.," always makes it sexier.

"We don’t have full rock band power, but that can also be detrimental to songwriting," Legrand writes. "Being a duo enables us to start simply and build from there." It also allows the twosome to maintain a key measure of intimacy. Though their preproduced effects emulate yesteryear’s studio magic, listeners never lose sight of the modest means of this music. Devotion‘s cover image strikes a similar balance, signaling formality — Legrand and Scally sit at a candlelit table — while admitting a homegrown touch: the album’s title is spelled out in a cake’s icing, and Legrand’s casual bare foot peeks out at the bottom of the frame.

If Beach House established the group’s palette, Devotion sees the duo working more confidently with the brush. When I describe some of the new disc’s brightest passages as "Technicolor moments" to Legrand, she replies: "I personally heard Technicolor in ‘Turtle Island’ during the bridge because all of a sudden the voices burst out, and it feels literally like paint and light are bursting through . . . a soft burst like a bubble in slow motion." That beats "autumnal" any day.

BEACH HOUSE

With Anaura and Best Wishes

Sat/15, 10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Freedom is a ’69 Dodge

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When searching for recent signs of life in and recognition of country music’s biracial heritage beneath the rhinestone crust of NashVegas culture, I became an unwitting fan of Tupelo, Miss., singer-songwriter Paul Thorn via his "Mission Temple Fireworks Stand," as covered by Sawyer Brown with black sacred-steel whiz kid Robert Randolph. Then there were the good words passed on from Thorn’s participation last year at a Birmingham, Ala., medicine show for my friend Scott Boyer of Cowboy. Nor does it hurt that my all-time hero, Kris Kristofferson, has claimed, "Paul Thorn may be the best-kept secret in the music business. He and writing partner Billy Maddox turn out songs like a Mississippi Leiber and Stoller that put me in mind of Harry Crews’s creations — absolutely Southern, absolutely original." And when I finally caught up with this paragon last month at Manhattan’s Living Room, it was clear from the intimate set that Thorn lived up to the promise.

The goodwill extends to Thorn’s eighth album, A Long Way from Tupelo (on his Perpetual Obscurity imprint), although it gets off to an underwhelming start. Openers "Lucky 7 Ranch" and "Everybody Wishes" sound like subpar Bruce Springsteen — sans polemical stridency. Yet the slow-building, smoldering third cut gets to the heart of Thorn’s voice. "A Woman to Love" is an instant soul classic, and a great retro-nuevo standard for the postmodern South. His muse proceeds to get happy on the funky gospel of "I’m Still Here" and the passionate, torchy "Burnin’ Blue." Grammy darling and rockist hard-liver Amy Winehouse could make hay from "Crutches" — and should be encouraged to heed its message closely. And even soul twangmaster Travis Tritt’s recent The Storm (Category 5, 2007) could have been improved by including a cover of Thorn’s title track with its brimstone-full blues-rock power and tale of illicit romance. Thorn, raised by a preacher father in the Church of God, gets back to sanctified roots on "What Have You Done to Lift Somebody Up." Yass, y’all, the song comes quick with the holiness as it spreads a simple message of human kindness. Tupelo is an interesting case of an album getting stronger as it goes on, instead of kicking off with the expected fury. The later songs are suffused with soul and spirituality, as well as Thorn’s lyrical mix of home folks’ vernacular and trademark offbeat tragicomedy previously seen on beloved Thorn compositions like "Burn Down the Trailer Park." And the references to other artists demonstrate his creative possibilities and reach across roots-regarding genres. In this tricky transatlantic cultural moment, Thorn seems poised to emerge strong from his decade of steady toil at the margins of assorted scenes, including the Americana ghetto. Whereas in the past he has benefited from rich mentoring — friend and collaborator Delbert McClinton, Police manager Miles Copeland, late outsider artist the Rev. Howard Finster — Thorn may finally make it big purely on the strength of what’s unique to him. He charmingly makes his down-home allegiances plain by donning a Piggly Wiggly muscle T on Tupelo‘s back cover.

Thorn is prescient and fortunate enough to be releasing this effort amid what’s starting to look like another boom of magnificent Southern expression and genius — as demonstrated by a range of recent releases from Donnie, überATL-ien Janelle Monáe, Thorn’s homeboys the North Mississippi All-Stars, current toast Bettye LaVette, her producers the Drive-by Truckers, and Gnarls Barkley. Yes, such industry moves as appearances at South by Southwest and a Late Night with Conan O’Brien debut await Thorn this month, but what ultimately seems likely to put him across is the flexibility to open for and vibe with Toby Keith while reifying the wisdom of a black roadside Pentecostal preacher.

Right now, in their desperation, the music business and the scenes that orbit it seem more open to sounds beyond the overprocessed mainstream — even if the art boasts elements that tend to induce coastal prejudice like Thorn’s thick-as-molasses accent and his statement to Lone Star Music that "my music’s kind of like going to church with a six-pack." As for me, I’ll be down at the Piggly Wiggly preparing to tote a bouquet of pig’s feet and some RC Cola to this Renaissance man’s South by Southwest show.

PAUL THORN

March 25, 8 p.m., $15–$17

Little Fox Theatre

2215 Broadway, Redwood City

(650) 369-4119

www.foxdream.com

Big “Footprints”

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Since its inception in 2004, the SFJAZZ Collective has changed out six of its eight original members. But now in the midst of its fifth season, the band sounds and, more importantly, interacts more cohesively than ever.

"All the people we’ve had, have been very beneficial to the band," says pianist and original member Renee Rosnes, during a recent rehearsal at the Masonic Auditorium. "They just bring another color to the music." Veteran saxophonist Joe Lovano, who joined last summer and replaced Joshua Redman, now nominally serves as resident sage, the position formerly held by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. Also last summer, youthful Stephon Harris took Hutcherson’s slot, and this spring trombonist Robin Eubanks was added for the San Francisco residency and both the national and European tours. Despite the shifts, the ensemble’s firepower hasn’t diminished and the members are especially eager to tackle Wayne Shorter’s quixotic music, which they’ll be playing along with their own.

Saxophonist Shorter’s career has evolved from writing and playing on the front line of hard-bop standard-bearing Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers to a similar position with Miles Davis’s great shape-shifting quintet of the early ’60s. While playing with Davis, Shorter compiled one of the most distinguished solo careers ever with an incomparable series of albums on Blue Note (1964’s JuJu and Night Dreamer and 1965’s The All Seeing Eye) that forever cemented his stature as a major composer. Subsequent turns as the cofounder of Weather Report and now the leader of an exquisite quartet have simply embellished Shorter’s reputation.

Rosnes considers her time playing with Shorter a revelation. "It was such an impactful experience," Rosnes explains. "The intensity and passion that he played with literally took my breath away."

On the brief 1988 tour that took the all-star band through the United States and Europe, Rosnes played a nightly duet with Shorter on his Brazilian ballad "Diana." "There was complete spontaneity from night to night. He cherishes a lot of freedom within the music, and that really opened up my mind," she says.

Since each Collective member arranges a tune from the season’s composer, Rosnes has written the chart for "Diana" as well as Shorter’s classic "Footprints." Other arrangements include "Armageddon" by saxophonist Miguel Zenón, "Aung San Suu Kyi" by trumpeter Dave Douglas, "El Gaucho" by bassist Matt Penman, "Yes or No" by drummer Eric Harland, and "Infant Eyes" by saxophonist Lovano. Rosnes says the arrangements give the band a more personal voice, which is appropriate when considering Shorter’s considerable body of work. "He plays life," Rosnes says, "through his horn."

SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE

Sat/15, 8 p.m., $34–<\d>$52

Zellerbach Hall

UC Berkeley, near Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk.

www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

Dress sharp

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REVIEW Don’t tell anyone, but I have a secret fetish. Nothing turns me on like a new pair of shoes, and few bring me to shoegasm like sexy stilettos. So I put on my favorite pair of Gucci patent-leather tuxedo shoes and headed down to Stiletto, clubutante Parker Day’s arty party at Asia SF, in search of the perfect footwear.

Day named the night after the seductive heels, but it also alludes to the discreetly slim knife — both of which are deadly in the hands of the Pam Anderson B-movie character Barb Wire. "It’s sharp and it’s sexy," Day said. "It gets to the point." But it was The Warriors, a 1979 cult classic about New York City street gangs at war, that set the theme for that night’s party. As footage from the film was projected onto a side wall, the music morphed genres, from hip-hop and hit pop to electronic and indie-rock remixes for an audience as diverse as The Warriors‘s cast — and equally reminiscent of the early-’80s Big Apple. Fab Five Freddy, Blondie, and Madonna occupy the same turf without incident.

The crowd’s footwear was just as varied, but cowboy boots and Converse All-Stars were the most heavily represented in The Warriors–inspired fashion show. Taking cues from the movie, models worked leather vests and gunmetal belts into fierce ensembles, which they paraded down the runway like gangsters. A bit later, audience members were able to participate in a Warriors–themed costume contest. Not to ruffle anyone’s fab feathers, but I think my own shoes were the ultimate winners.

STILETTO

Third Friday of the month, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $8

Asia SF

201 Ninth St, SF

http://www.myspace.com/stilettosf

There won’t be blood

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Michael Haneke would likely be offended if you said you enjoyed his movies — though no doubt he would enjoy hearing you were offended by them. The chill surface neutrality of a Haneke feature such as Caché (2005) is designed to intrigue and then frustrate — by depriving extreme situations of their usual sensationalism and neat narrative resolution so that we end up implicated by our own thwarted expectations. Even as a scold, Haneke is too disciplined to let us join him on his soapbox. The whole point lies in being discomfited.

The "normal" boy who kills a girl in Benny’s Video (1992); the bourgeoisie unraveling due to exposure of their own race and class prejudices in Code: Unknown (2000) and Caché; and an entire society reverting to primitive behaviors after unspecified catastrophe in Time of the Wolf (2003) are all so disturbing because they’re so banal. Even when portrayed by movie stars, these figures are willfully ordinary, observed at length performing dull tasks or making poor decisions for petty reasons. The one time he approached a conventional melodramatic arc and larger-than-life protagonist (if an antiheroine) was in the Elfride Jelinek adaptation of The Piano Teacher (2001) where Isabelle Huppert’s character embodies the masochistic role usually played by his viewers themselves.

None of these films are exactly date movies, but they still orbit an audience’s comfort zone more closely than Haneke’s most notorious film, the original 1997 Funny Games. Now, Haneke has made the seemingly perverse choice of creating a shot-for-shot remake as his first English-language feature. Actually, it’s a decision as coolly logical as any he’s made, since he has said more than once that the original is more a comment on US society and media than their Austrian equivalents.

Beyond its sheer unpleasantness, both language and subtitling prevented the original from reaching his target audience. Still, it’s unlikely people will be turning out en masse for Funny Games U.S., as the movie is being called everywhere but here. Those who do take the plunge are likely going to hate, hate, HATE it — which will be one way of gauging that Haneke’s subversion of standard genre rules is working as planned.

We meet the Farber family via eye-of-God aerial shots following their car to the exquisitely leafy countryside where their expansive lakeside summer home resides. With little Georgie (Devon Gearhart) in the backseat, Ann (Naomi Watts) and George (Tim Roth) play guess-the-classical-composer. It’s too perfect and we know it, because Haneke incongruously interrupts their banter with a jarring blast of cacophonous death metal (actually a John Zorn piece) — the only music heard in the film that’s not ostensibly played from CD by an onscreen character. Horror, it suggests, might just be a dial flip away from intruding on this cozy trio.

Stopping short of their own electronic gate, the Farbers greet strangely uncommunicative neighbors standing on their lawn with two unknown men. Later, while father and son prep the sailboat, Ann gets a visit from Paul (Michael Pitt), who says he’s staying with the aforementioned neighbors and has been sent to borrow some eggs. Apologizing profusely, he nonetheless quickly manages to turn her hospitality into sputtering rage. Meanwhile, the dog disappears. Soon Paul is joined by Peter (Brady Corbet), his doppelgänger in tennis whites and floppy bangs. They look like consummate squeaky-clean preppies — or Hitler Youth. They have a not-long-hidden agenda. Things degenerate very quickly.

For all their sadism, Peter and Paul aren’t so much conventional villains as they are abstracts — tools to indict the viewer for participating in these games, or expecting anything like the usual fictive payoffs. The casting of the instantly recognizable Watts and Roth distracts at first, but Haneke’s approach (which employs agonizingly long takes, including one extreme instance that approaches 10 minutes in duration) and the actors’ grueling expressions of physical and emotional distress hit the right note of violated ordinariness.

It’s worth noting that perhaps Haneke’s most ingenious (and frequently overlooked) gambit is that there is almost no onscreen violence. As much as Funny Games feels like particularly merciless, graphic torture porn, the actual moments of assault are almost always cut away from or just out of frame. The one exception turns out to be Haneke’s single cruelest joke — and naturally, it’s on you. Without coming right out and saying it, Funny Games is now very much an answer to Hollywood norms and a larger cultural denial: here, violence is all suffering and no spectacle. *

FUNNY GAMES

Opens Fri/14 at Bay Area theaters

wip.warnerbros.com/funnygames

Kewl Tun3: Santogold gets LES Artistic

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I’ve made no secret of my audiolust for Brooklyn grime-pop chanteuse (and former punk band Stiffed frontwoman) Santogold, but the new vid for her “LES Artistes,” directed by Nima Nourizadeh, is blowing me away:

Santogold’s heavily related to the stripper-loving Spank Rock scene, sharing some producers, remixers, track appearances, and party bills, although on a much higher intel tip (everyone kind of over “bitches and ho’s” DJ Assault circa 2002 ripoffs say “He-eyyy!”) — and look for many, many tired comparisons to MIA to follow in the wake of the release of her self-titled album Santogold (Downtown), which drops on April 22, and her performance at Coachella this year — because, you know, freaky women artists of color sure are similar. Still, her already-legendary bass-heavy ragga crawler club jam “Creator” has swept people onto the same global-hop dancehall dancefloors as Ms. MIA, and the more like that (and the above) the merrier, say I …

And this quote from a recent NYT article on her is priceless: “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”

Santogold, “Creator” (live at Fader 51 party)

Buddy Miles RIP – play on Brother Gypsy, sing on drummer

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By Kandia Crazy Horse

Roughly two decades after Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s fruitful pairing showed rock could still be danceable in the emerging hip-hop era, negroes remain nonetheless officially skurred of guitars. Endless samples later, it’s not unusual for hot tracks to be powered by a skillful blend of beats and rock volume. Yet when a young black artist emerges from the community (or outside of it) desirous of doing a different thing, he or she is often still accused of wanting to play “whiteboy music.”

And so, we loop straight back to 1969 and the central sonic and social dilemma of rock history’s greatest black rock superstar: Jimi Hendrix. Before the eve of New Year’s 1970, electric magus Hendrix had attempted to free himself from the harsh realities of Jim Crow America by eschewing the strictures of the Chitlin’ Circuit – where he supported stars like Little Richard and the Brothers Isley – for music scenes and venues in Greenwich Village and then (swinging) London. Oftener than not, the response his career elicited in regular blackfolks was resentment that he left the Black Bottom to move to London and return as “white” and his proto-metal sound was baffling (as were his two white sidemen – the British rhythm section’s simulated Afros or no).

Meanwhile, the Panthers were already putting the touch on him, urging shy, spacey, “music has no race” Hendrix to come out strong on the side of blackskin chauvinism and actively support the revolution. This ish would plague Hendrix for the rest of his short life – and, in many ways, the ever-burgeoning afterlife of his career. Yet with the sequential formation of both the ill-fated big band Gypsy Suns and Moons (who accompanied him at Woodstock) and the power trio Band of Gypsys, he attempted to resolve the racial conundrum sonically as fitting for the manchile who’d slept with his guitar since youth.

Beating the drum for Nation Beat

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By Todd Lavoie

The name might not set your world on fire, but damn these guys are on to something good: Brooklyn’s Nation Beat will bring their one-in-a-billion blend of Brazilian Maracatu, Appalachian roots music, and New Orleans-style funk to the Elbo Room this Saturday, March 8. What – scared at the prospect of such brazen genre-colliding, are you? Ah, don’t be, sweet cheeks. By the time the night’s over, you’ll have long forgotten about silly little things like musical genre-pigeonholing. Honestly, why over-think when you can just follow your feet instead?

First, an explanation to the band’s name. In northeastern Brazil – the birthplace of the percussion-heavy Afro-Brazilian dance/performance style known as Maracatu – practitioners of the genre identify their ensembles with the word nação (“nation”), a reference to the African countries from where they (or their ancestors) originally came. Most groups in Recife – the epicenter of Maracatu – begin their names with the words “Maracatu Nação,” usually followed by some form of geographical reference.

Now, Nation Beat plays a variant of a traditional Maracatu known as “Maracatu de Baque Virado” – literally, “Maracatu of the Flipping Beat” (baque is “beat” in Portuguese). So, the band whittled down the name from these origins and translated it back to English rather than keeping it in Portuguese. What the moniker lacks in flow, it at least compensates for in cultural reverence.

What does Alpine jazz sound like? Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin comes to Yerba Buena

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By Erik Morse

What was Orson Welles’ scene stealing line in The Third Man? Oh yes, it goes like this: “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Never mind that the contraption in question was actually invented in the Black Forest of Baden-Württemberg or that Welles egregiously absented the Zurich-based dada movement from his glib verdict. But this bitch slap at the Swiss’ expense has now become an ecumenical platitude: nothing cool has ever come from the land of Helvetica.

Well, burn down the chalet and throw out the flugelhorn! Composer-pianist Nik Bärtsch and acoustic quintet Ronin have departed from the craggly bluffs of Switzerland and landed on the snobbish jazz shores of America. Despite establishing themselves in the ’90s, Bärtsch and Ronin only came to prominent attention in 2006 with Stoa, their first release for experimental jazz label ECM.

No doubt playing on the architectural definition of its title, Stoa was a magnificently open affair with tinkling melodies underpinned by floating, Can-style grooves and large swathes of quiet space. In order to christen Ronin’s new direction, Bärtsch dubbed his sound “zen-funk” with tongue most likely placed firmly in cheek. Reviews at the time compared Stoa’s compositional structures to those of Steve Reich and James Brown, and one critic noted it was “digital-age music performed with analog sensibility.” And, in fact, you can hear within the precise bass ostinatos and repetitive keyboard figures the postmodern electro-jazz of Jaga Jazzist or Squarepusher. No small feat for a cadre of musicians reigning from Alpine country.

Live ‘n’ kicking at the Raveonettes

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The Raveonettes
Independent, March 5

By Chris DeMento

Minimalism is a science too often associated with badly played and poorly written rock ‘n’ roll. That inane, barely listenable mush can become noise art in the burning hearts of burrito-munching garage enthusiasts. You know, of course, that burrito means “Hey, you in the little donkey costume.”

Thankfully, the Raveonettes‘ brand of minimalism is by no means a consumptive joke, but the enchilada proper, drowning in truth: three great good chords; a sweetly sexed, girl-on-boy approach to harmonizing whose average results in unfailingly lusty melodies; a trusty, persistently quaternary time signature; and, to my surprise, nary a kickdrum. Sune Wagner, Sharin Foo, and a would-be Taiko drummer – standing in a sleeveless T behind a tom and a snare – created a steady stream of sleepy homage to the early days of rock on Wednesday night. Lingering perhaps a bit too long on their old stuff, they eventually got around to new cuts like “You Want the Candy” and even a Stereolab cover, “French Disko,” to boot. New, old, or other, the music they play comes deadeningly [sic], unmistakably alive in its solemnity.

Their 4’s, 8’s, and 16’s are layered to taste and well loved by the San Franciscans who packed the house, one of whom couldn’t restrain his zealous “Welcome to San Francisco!” between the first and second numbers of what was to be a compact, though nonetheless decorous set. A quiet “thank you” was returned by the 6-foot, superduper-Cholula-hot Foo, who proceeded to slay the same three chords over and over to the indolently unanimous enjoyment of the audience. They even played a song in 6 (or was it 3?) towards the end of the set: good news for fans who’d like to see them expand their horizons just a bit.

Poking Silver Jews: Why’s Yoni Wolf on jogging for self-esteem and on nudging David Berman

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Why?’s “Dumb Hummer.”

Yoni Wolf of Why? is a card – and full of great tales of adventures here and away. Here’s more from his interview; for the first part, see this week’s Sonic Reducer. Why? also performs tonight at Great American Music Hall.

SFBG: How did you get into jogging? And where do you jog?

Yoni Wolf: I jog in the hills behind Piedmont Avenue usually.

SFBG: What about Mountain View Cemetery?

YW: Everyone seems to know about that shit. I’m not telling anyone exactly where I’m jogging because I look like a fucking idiot. Actually my ex-girlfriend told me an incredible story. This is the girl that a lot of these songs are about and shit.


Why?’s “Rubber Traits.”

Liam Finn sends hearts a-flutter

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By Todd Lavoie

Sweet sufferin’ divine, I’m smitten! Liam Finn‘s just-released debut, I’ll Be Lightning (Yep Roc), is quite the fully formed, sure-footed opening howdydoo – nothing but pure shiver-me-timbers falsetto flutters and endearing pop-thrills melodies, frequently offered with disarming vulnerability. It’s an honest-to-goodness gem – the musical equivalent of a late-night get-together with an old friend. It’s warm and comfy and familiar, yet still pulsing with the potential to surprise. Most impressive of all, Finn practically orchestrated the whole thing himself: guitars, drums, keyboards, you name it. And apparently our man knows how to work the same go-at-it-alone magic onstage – see for yourselves Friday, March 7, when the veritable one-man-band headlines the Bottom of the Hill.

Diehard Kiwi-pop fans will be quick to point out that I’ll Be Lightning isn’t Finn’s first charge out of the gates: prior to going solo, the 24-year-old son of Crowded House crooner Neil Finn was the lead vocalist of Betchadupa, a New Zealand band specializing in oddball pop. Good luck finding any of their stuff over here in the States, though, and if you do, expect a hefty import-price sticker slapped on the front of that baby. And if we’re going to indulge in any further hair-splitting, I might as well mention that Finn’s solo spin has been available in Australia and New Zealand since August of last year. For most of us, though, it’s a fair bet to say the guy’s only just now sliding within the reach of our radar. Hell, last night I even caught one of his videos on MTV while flipping channels – and I didn’t even think they still played music on MTV anymore!

First off, I’ll address the inevitable question sure to be a-popping in the minds of many: yes, Liam does indeed share a few vocal similarities with his dad, the honeyed tenor gliding atop such timeless swooners as Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” “Better Be Home Soon,” and “Private Universe,” as well as Split Enz classics such as “I Got You.” Finn the Younger is hardly a dead-ringer for Finn the Elder: Liam appears more willing to show off his rougher edges than Neil ever was, but it doesn’t exactly require much straining to pick up on the likeness, either.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Michael Pitt, Kira Lynn Cain, Ex-Boyfriends get you outta the house

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Dreamy Dreamer: Michael Pitt breaks out of Pagoda mode to perform solo.

Ah, SF, gotta love your live music. There’s more music than we can shake a stick at in the next few weeks, SXSW or no SXSW. Hark, are a few more ways to get into trouble:

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Kira Lynn Cain

Track The Ideal Hunter (Evangeline), singer-songwriter Cain’s forthcoming album, live as “Class of 2007”’s noirish class act opens for her paramour Jeffrey Luck Lucas and American Music Club player Danny Pearson. Wed/5, 8 p.m. doors, $5. Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk, SF. (415) 921-1695.

Keeping it raw

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Who took the sex outta my rock ‘n’ roll? You gotta wonder, watching the Virgins — looking all of 12, collectively, and working the style and charisma of boys whose mothers still dress them — who played a Noise Pop show March 1 at Mezzanine. Sure, the New York City combo can write a good song — far better than those by the old-enough-to-know-better Gutter Twins, who were messing with almost two-decades-old, decayed grunge tropes across town at Bimbo’s 365 Club that same night. But they weren’t kidding when it came to picking a name: far be it from the Virgins to be mentally undressed. They looked like they were safely tucked into fresh, clean underwear — no holes bitten through by groupies — much like those other hotties in prep clothing, Vampire Weekend.

Where to find lusty, lascivious pop? Even Mariah Carey is giving brain cells top billing with her upcoming album, E=MC2 (Island). When it comes to the once-squeaky-clean Jacksons, "Don’t go there" Michael tops "Yeah, that’s sexy, sexy, sexy" Janet with his 25-year-old classic Thriller (Sony) — despite the former’s hopes in picking up where Control (A&M, 1986) left off by focusing on the dance floor with her likable, pillow-talking Discipline (Island). Sex? There are no bejeweled nipples in sight — and as for Jacko, the gloves are off and Neverland Ranch has been foreclosed. And the Vampires and Virgins definitely aren’t providing any.

Perhaps it’s time to turn to more wholesome pleasures like, say, jogging. Yoni Wolf of Why? — a self-proclaimed member of the Bronson Pinchot Fan Club, Anticon stalwart, and stealth heart-rate-raiser — will turn you around. "I can tell you right now, if you don’t know the power of endorphins, it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing," raves Wolf, 28, on the line from his Oakland abode. "I’ve never been a jock because I’m not coordinated. But to jog, you just have to move your legs around. You don’t need to catch a ball or hold a ball and get knocked down. I don’t even remember why I started doing this — probably ’cause I got a little gut and I gotta knock this off. Yeah, eat a midnight snack … "

Yep, it’s funny how passion plays out. Why?’s new disc, Alopecia (Anticon), returns to the lost love pined over on Why?’s last album, the breaking-through-after-breaking-up Elephant Eyelash (Anticon, 2005), and settles happily into its own sense of resignation — or as Wolf puts it, "hopeful frustration" — about that girlfriend and about life. Honestly, Wolf bedazzles with bared-belly, gutsy rhymes about jerking off in museums, "blowing kisses to disinterested bitches," a childhood fear of that ShowBiz Pizza bear, "eating pussy for new fans," "sucking dick for drink tickets at my cousin’s bar mitzvah," and "using Purell till my hands bleed and swell" — and that’s just in one track ("Good Friday").

Working with Why? cohorts — brother Josiah and Doug McDiarmid — as well as Fog’s Andrew Broder, Mark Erickson, Thee More Shallows’ D. Kessler, and ex-Beulah-ite Eli Crews, Wolf has stripped off the stray mustaches he’s been hiding behind to fully expose his pungent, punchy, stream-of-consciousness rhymes. Highly specific, yes; weirdly sexy, uh-huh — right down to the CD title, named for the mysterious disorder in which hair follicles halt production.

"You don’t suffer from alopecia?" I venture.

"What are you trying to say, I’m hairy?" jokes Wolf. "I’m a monkey? I actually suffered from it for a minute — on my penis."

Nah, nah, nah, the vocalist actually had a coin-size patch of affected skin for two years: "I have a theory why mine started happening — the hand of god came down and touched me on this one spot — no, I stepped on a bottle in a river and I got some sort of infection." It lingered throughout the period that Why? wrote, recorded, and mixed the new full-length, like an uninvited sweetheart. "It was looming and ominous and weird. At first I thought it was a fucking STD," Wolf says.

Slug of Atmosphere ended up setting him straight at a show in Baton Rouge, La., Wolf continues, and in the end, the bald patch "symbolized that period of my life for me, the creation of this record. For me, it was this little patch of honest skin: honest flesh with no covering or pretenses of an attempt to cover itself up, a little patch of baby skin that was really soft. That’s what I was thinking, a return to the raw." Oh, and it’s a tad sexy: "It’s a pretty word," Wolf adds. "It sounds like a flower." *

WHY?

With Dose One, Cryptacize, and DJ Odd Nosdam and DJ Jel

Thurs/6, 9 p.m., $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

DOING DAMAGE

MINMAE


The Portland indie-psych outfit love them some land of the dead — and some Robotech. Thurs/6, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. www.thehotelutahsaloon.com

WILDILDLIFE


SF’s Crucial Blast ambassadors resurrect classic rock, post-punk, and sludge for giggles. With Old Time Relijun and Tea Elles. Thurs/6, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

HEAVENLY STATES


Libya rocks — thanks to the Bay’s Heavenly States, who invest a whole lotta soul into their forthcoming Delayer (Rebel Group). With Citay. Fri/7, 9 p.m., $12. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

XNOBBQX AND TOMES


The atonal Aussie Siltbreezers eschew bone meat, instead cutting to the ‘core with militant vegan deconstructo-noise. Opening as Tomes, Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson delve into the dark, dank folk flip of Thuja. With Curse of the Birthmark. Sat/8, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF.

Shen Wei Dance Art

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PREVIEW It might be just as well that Chinese choreographer Shen Wei didn’t start dancing until quite late — at the ripe old age of 20. But what he may have missed in early dance training, he more than made up for in other artistic endeavors. The son of Chinese opera performers in Hunan, at age 9, Wei followed the parental path and began studying opera, and by 16 he was performing with the Hunan State Opera. He also studied, and became recognized in, the demanding art of Chinese watercolor. So when Wei became a founding member of Guangdong Modern Dance Company, China’s first contemporary dance group, he brought an exceptionally well-honed visual sensibility to dance. To this day, his choreography shows a rare ability to unite the visual and the kinetic, not to mention the East and the West. He eventually moved to New York and created Shen Wei Dance Art company in 2003. Last year he won a MacArthur Fellowship, and this summer his company will perform at the opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He’s having that kind of explosive career. But then why wouldn’t mysteriously staged, musically intriguing, visually stunning dance theater lure in audiences? For its Yerba Buena appearance, the company performs Map (2005) to Steve Reich’s 1985 sprawling orchestral suite The Desert Music, and on a more intimate scale, Re-(Part 1) (2006) to Tibetan chant. (Rita Felciano)

SHEN WEI DANCE ART Thurs/6–Sat/8, 8 p.m, $26–$45. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Spundae 15-Year Anniversary

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PREVIEW When they founded Spundae in 1993, Peter Beckers and Guiv Naimi pioneered America’s electronic superclub a full two years before New York’s legendary (and sadly departed) Twilo. The duo managed to mix distinguished San Francisco talent — Jerry Bonham, Jondi and Spesh, Alain Octavo, Scott Carelli — with international superstars such as Pete Tong, Felix da Housecat, DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, and Christopher Lawrence. After all the downs (a partnership-turned-rivalry with UK superclub Godskitchen, a stalled record label) and ups (an offshoot in Los Angeles, a partnership with luxurious Ruby Skye, international acclaim), Spundae stands firm as a distinctly American dance music bastion. Sasha and Digweed’s upcoming stop in late April demonstrates Spundae’s undiminished drawing power.

To celebrate 15 years of success, Spundae attracts (what else?) local and international talent for a two-day celebration. Qoöl masterminds Jondi and Spesh prepare the opening course of progressive house on Thursday, setting the table for two young coheadliners: Canadian Deadmau5, who creates a signature sound by pouring energy into coolly-synthed numbers and epic electro productions; and Brit James Zabiela, who combines glitchy effects and acid bass lines with nuanced drum patterns that betray a leaning toward intricate, sound-warping gear.

San Francisco takes the stage Friday, as longtime Spundae resident Alain Octavo and promoter extraordinaire Dr. Syd Gris fill the floors early with house and progressive trance. Reigning "Best American DJs" Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden blend popular rock remixes, euphoric vocal tracks, and grittier, techno-based projections into a four-hour headlining set sure to showcase why they’ve become international favorites.

SPUNDAE 15-YEAR ANNIVERSARY Thurs/6, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., with James Zabiela, DeadMau5, and Jondi

and Spesh, $15; Fri/7, 9 p.m.–4 a.m., with Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden, Syd Gris, and Alain Octavio,

$20 ($30 for both days). Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF. (415) 693-0777, www.spundae.com

Local Live: Pinhead Gunpowder

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LOCAL LIVE On the wall behind the stage at the 924 Gilman Street Project, someone has scrawled in green paint among the other graffiti, "Punk: Do It Yourself" — words that most of the volunteers, bands, and show-goers at 924 Gilman seem to live by. One longtime habitué, Billie Joe Armstrong, appeared to have abandoned the idea and the venue the day his band Green Day signed a record deal with Warner Bros. more than a dozen years ago. However, on Feb. 10, Armstrong was back on the Gilman stage for the first time in aeons in a rare appearance with his side project of 17 years, Pinhead Gunpowder.

The band sounds something like Insomniac-era Green Day, but they play at an even faster pace. And while Pinhead Gunpowder’s music reflected the sounds of so many other pop-punk bands that frequent the Gilman stage — La Plebe, Carnal Knowledge, and Zomo also performed that night — Armstrong stood out from the rest of the punk vocalists. His famously raucous showmanship transferred flawlessly from the arena to this smaller space. Here, without spotlights and pyrotechnics, his flair and drive to entertain became even more apparent.

At one point, someone in the crowd tossed a black fedora to Armstrong, who put it on his head, tilted it down over his face, and yelled, "Do I look like Michael Jackson?" Yet for the first time in years, he didn’t look like a star: the eyeliner and black suit–red tie combo of late were conspicuously missing. Dressed down in a striped shirt and sporting matted bleach-blond hair, he looked much like he did in 1994 when he stumbled on fame as a teenager. He was in his element, playing loud, fast punk.

Behind him sat Pinhead Gunpowder lyricist and drummer Aaron Cometbus, also well known for his longtime zine Cometbus. Cometbus’s lyrics and prose include tales of squatting in abandoned houses and dumpster diving, and since his stories continue to jibe with his lifestyle, he continues to be welcomed with open arms by the East Bay punk community. Nonetheless, Pinhead Gunpowder’s lyrics might as well be fiction when tumbling out of a millionaire rock star’s mouth. But this seemed to worry no one as the audience yelled along and cheered between songs.

“My Name is Albert Ayler”

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REVIEW My Name Is Albert Ayler offers a close reading of the titular musician, a saxophone colossus who pushed the emotional limits of free jazz, but it also tells a broader story about the strange currents of American avant-garde music. Interviews with Ayler’s churchgoing Ohio family, New York City compatriots, and Scandinavian admirers trace a particular, though by no means atypical, passage. The tenor saxophonist first achieved renown in Stockholm, Sweden, where he began to experiment with the wailing, explosive runs that would some years later turn even John Coltrane’s head. ‘Trane specifically asked for Ayler to play at his funeral, and the photographs and live sound from the memorial service included in the film are searing enough to make even the staunchest defender of melody reconsider. Rather than employing warts-and-all tactics, first-time Swedish director Kasper Collin keeps a respectful distance from Ayler’s mysteries, nowhere more hauntingly than in a few late sequences regarding the musician’s purported tendency to stare into the sun. There is so much we will never know about Ayler, Collin seems to tell us, but watching former collaborators listen to his music through cracked expressions of pain and amazement is revealing enough.

MY NAME IS ALBERT AYLER runs Sun/9–Tues/11 at the Red Vic Movie House. See Rep Clock for showtimes.

“Speaking Fierce”

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PREVIEW The first time I discovered feminism wasn’t just for white women who ate organic produce, I was eavesdropping on one of my mom’s phone calls. She was going off about some ex-boyfriend and a few "lazy-ass mothafuckas" before declaring that neither her mother, nor her mother’s mother, nor her mother’s mother’s mother had taken any bullshit and she didn’t plan to break the chain now. Put in those terms, my 10-year-old brain started to think that the word feminism might just apply to every woman I knew who had the nerve to survive in my Fillmore neighborhood. Years later, I picked up Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press, 2002), coedited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman, and read about how other women my age were piecing together their own narratives of empowerment. Nowadays, Brooklyn-born Rehman is probably best known for writing on-the-road adventure stories about runaway Desi girls. She’s featured in this evening of art, spoken word, humor, and music in celebration of International Women’s Day. The night also includes performances by Bay Area soul diva Jennifer Johns and poetry collective Climbing PoeTree. Aside from celebrating stories of creative resistance, the event supports the Women of Color Resource Center, which works with war vets and teaches media production to low-income women of color in Oakland.

"SPEAKING FIERCE" Thurs/6, 7–9 p.m., $10–$25 (no one turned away for lack of funds). First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakl.; (510) 444-2700, ext. 305, www.coloredgirls.org

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