Music

Watch on the Rhine

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› paulr@sfbg.com
If San Francisco were Europe, Divisadero Street would be the Rhine: the heavily traveled commercial artery that crosses a jigsaw puzzle of (sometimes) quarrelsome fiefs, duchies, and principalities on its way north or south. In this paradigm I make the stretch of Divis from California to Geary, more or less, to be our Alsace-Lorraine, the six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other province long the subject of a tug-of-war between greater powers. The contenders across the pond were (and maybe are) Germany and France; over here they are Pacific Heights, land of the rich blond hets, and a confederation of the Lower Haight, NoPa, and parts of the Western Addition — in other words, hipster lands.
Naturally I am not suggesting that Pacific Heights is our Germany; not at all. For some years, the most conspicuous outpost of Marina culture on the nether side of Pacific Heights has been Frankie’s Bohemian Café, a lively simulacrum of some Prague haunt filled with riotous American frat boys who take their Pilsner Urquell by the pitcher. But in recent months there has been southward creep and the establishment of a new outpost: Tortilla Heights, a Mexican restaurant for gringos that opened earlier this spring in the strange space that used to belong to Minerva.
The space is strange — to me — because I can’t quite decide if it more nearly resembles a sound stage or a gymnasium in a public school. If the latter, then the decor is now in the prom-night vein, with some kind of cantina theme: brightly colored lights hanging from the ceiling, booths along the wall sheltered by thatched faux-roofs, and salsa music. The design touches are enough to let you know you are in some kind of Mexican restaurant, but they also have an improvised, portable quality that doesn’t suggest permanence.
And yet … on a recent Saturday night, we found the place pretty well jammed, and it was early. And while the crowd had its share of blonds and fratty types, it also included an elderly couple with their walkers, along with several sets of young mothers whose small children clung to the legs of mommy’s jeans or were stowed under mommy’s arms; it was like a social version of Noah’s ark. There is a chance that this eclectic group was drawn by the restaurant’s witty name — which reminds us, simultaneously, of Tortilla Flats and Pacific Heights — but it is more likely they came for the food, which is surprisingly good. While the menu is very much in the American comfort zone, it includes a variety of regional Mexican dishes, and the kitchen’s preparations are careful and emphasize freshness.
The Yucatecan-style citrus marinade in the grilled citrus chicken burrito ($6.50), for example, is noticeable as both a hint of sweet-sourness in and a tenderizing influence on the poultry flesh. It’s a small detail, but good cooking is nothing but small details. Another such detail is the roasted garlic cream that adds a grace note of luxurious richness to the otherwise virtuous plate of Cabo-style fish tacos ($11), a troika of warm white-corn tortillas stuffed with grilled white fish and shredded cabbage.
A larger detail is that the bigger plates do not come larded with huge scoops of rice and beans — starch that most of us really don’t need, especially if we have stuffed ourselves with complimentary chips and salsa while waiting for the show to begin. (Tortilla Heights, not surprisingly, is swift and generous in replenishing the chips bowl; the salsa was pleasantly fiery on one visit, undersalted on another.) Big blobs of beans and rice do have a way of furnishing a platter, but when they aren’t there, it’s easier to see the dish you actually ordered: an Oaxacan tostada ($11), say, with a heap of wonderfully tender carnitas (along with cilantro-lime cabbage and shavings of parmesan cheese) atop a pair of crisped corn tortillas. Or the blue-corn enchiladas ($12) filled with grilled chicken and topped with melted white cheese and a tart tomatillo salsa.
My friend the cheddarhead, a reliable lover of all things cheesy, did not like the queso chorizo ($5), a small tub of melted mixed cheeses laced with chunks of chili sausage and strips of green chile. The cheese did have a certain Velveeta quality, but it was just the right consistency for dipping surplus chips into. The guacamole ($5), meanwhile, was mainstream but beautifully made, with fresh avocados still chunky from not being overmashed and a good jolt of lime juice for mood lighting. The cheddarhead lodged no complaints.
The contemplation of desserts in Mexican restaurants is usually a perfunctory business. You have flan, and maybe something else. At Tortilla Heights, the dessert menu is characteristically brief, but it does contain one extraordinary item: the churros ($4), a half dozen or so ridged torpedoes of cinnamon-dusted, deep-fried pastry, about the size of medium zucchini, with a ramekin of caramel sauce for dipping them in. The sauce is good, but if it weren’t there you probably wouldn’t miss it, because the churros are sufficient unto themselves: a divine combination of crunchy and tender, sweet but not too sweet, an exotic whisper of cinnamon, and — yes — the fattiness that makes pastry, pastry, particularly if deep-fried. You might well feel uneasy, maybe even guilty, about enjoying them so much, but don’t worry — you had the fish tacos and didn’t like the queso, so you’ll be OK. SFBG
TORTILLA HEIGHTS
Continuous service: Tues.–Sun., 11–2 a.m.
1750 Divisadero, SF
(415) 346-4531
www.tortillaheights.com
Full bar
AE/MC/V
Noisy
Wheelchair accessible

Mall of the metaverse

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› culture@sfbg.com
Suzanne Vega is waddling across the screen. Well, not the real Suzanne Vega but the quiet folk singer’s digital avatar on SecondLife.com. On Aug. 3, she — or it — claimed the proud position of being the first digital representation of a major-label pop star to give a concert in cyberspace. After an interview with public radio host John Hockenberry, she sings an a cappella version of her ’80s hit “Tom’s Diner,” then awkwardly straps on a guitar and plays a set for attending Second Lifers, members of the popular online virtual world.
Whoever’s controlling the Vega avatar hasn’t quite got a handle on her yet — unless the ungainly swaying is supposed to indicate that she’s had one too many. And the audience of online gamers, whose avatars you can see bobbing their virtual heads in the bleachers, barely reaches a total of 100. Some of them are also bald and unaccessorized: the avatar-attendees were instructed to remove all extraneous attachments — including hair — to reduce server lag time. But it’s a lovely sounding, intimate event all the same and fitting for Vega. Kids these days might not know her music, but the Grammy winner is renowned as the “mother of the MP3” — “Tom’s Diner” was used by a German engineer to invent the MP3 format.
The Vega concert is just the first in a series that Second Life is launching. Duran Duran, the first artists to use location shooting and Macromedia Flash in a music video, have just announced they’ve purchased an island resort in Second Life and will be the first band to perform live online through their avatars. Just think: the right code could take their hairstyles higher than Aquanet ever did. For more contemporary music fans, rapper Talib Kweli is also slated to make an online appearance. Along with violence, sex, and role playing, live concerts are finally being translated into moving pixels.
Online virtual worlds are nothing new. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have been around since the early ’90s and are rooted in games that have been around since the ’70s (yeah, like the one with the 20-sided die). So when San Francisco–based company Linden Lab created Second Life, a virtual 3-D world (or “multiverse,” coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi smash novel Snow Crash) now inhabited by some 550,000 residents, it had a firm jumping-off point. But while other MMORPGs concentrate on hunting and killing or solving elaborate puzzles, Second Life tries to replicate everyday experiences: shopping, hanging out, scoring a dream job, meeting new people. It’s a Sims-like experience in real time.
And it involves real money. The most staggering aspect of Second Life is its economy. Users are dropping actual ducats in exchange for clothing, real estate, cocktails, and even skateboards for their virtual representations. The currency of Second Life is called a Linden dollar — L$300 equals roughly US$1. During June alone, over US$5.3 million were spent on goods and services within Second Life. The SL digital continent is the size of metropolitan Boston — that’s a lot of virtual strip malls. At the current growth rate, Second Life projects 3.6 million users by the end of next year. Big-name businesses are starting to take note.
American Apparel was among the first “meat space,” or real-life, businesses to set up shop in the virtual world. Its SL flagship store sells clothing for avatars — at around L$300 a pop for T-shirts. And of course, no AA outlet would be complete without virtual billboards of half-naked avatars. The Adidas group just announced that it will begin selling footwear for avatars. W Hotels is opening Aloft, a virtual hotel. “As the population increases, I could see direct revenue, so long as we constructed experiences that mimicked the world that is Second Life, such as a browsable record store, not just banner ads,” says Ethan Kaplan Sr., director of technology at Warner Bros. Records.
And because a captive virtual audience offers a wonderland of name-brand recognition opportunities, celebrities are starting to take note as well. “Every celebrity who presently has a MySpace profile will eventually have an avatar on Second Life. A MySpace profile is an avatar,” says Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us, whose company snagged a contract with Toyota to offer a virtual edition of the Scion xB to SL residents. (A dealership is in the works.) Imagine a world where you can walk up to Paris Hilton in a bar and buy her drinks until she starts dancing on the tables. OK, so maybe that isn’t so hard to imagine, but in Second Life you can get a job as a bouncer and throw her drunk ass out. The future is now.
In an unsurprising development for an interactive game, some users are starting to chafe at the überconsumerist direction Second Life’s taking. Recently, a faction of residents calling themselves the Second Life Liberation Army entered the American Apparel store, pixel guns ablazin’, to prevent other residents from buying goods. The “terrorist attack” wasn’t intended to scare first-world business away though; rather, the SLLA wanted the citizens of Second Life to have a vote in Linden Lab’s business operations. But maybe some good ol’ rock ’n’ roll rebellion has been beamed up along with the live concerts. SFBG

Bringing Knives out

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Emily Haines is not known for keeping her thoughts to herself.
As part of Toronto’s Metric, the notoriously outspoken singer-keyboardist incorporates her political beliefs into wildly infectious synth-rock songs. On 2003’s Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (Everloving) and last fall’s Live It Out (Last Gang), Haines tackled such unlikely pop-song subject matters as war, Big Brother, and the emptiness of consumer culture with thrilling, often thought-provoking results. “Buy this car to drive to work/ Drive to work to pay for this car” — from “Handshakes” — is a typical sentiment. She’s even more articulate in Metric interviews, discussing everything from voter disenfranchisement to the futility of trying to create real change through music.
It’s strange, then, that Haines is tight-lipped when it comes to her solo debut, Knives Don’t Have Your Back, out Sept. 26 on Last Gang. During a phone conversation from England, where Metric performed at Reading Festival two days prior, she sounds annoyed by the mere idea of talking about her album’s lyrics. “Do you think you can put it in words?” she icily counters when asked to elaborate on the central theme. “If I have to name the narrative, then there’s no point in having had one there at all.” Clearly, she prefers to keep her own songs open to interpretation.
Thing is, Knives is such a huge artistic departure both musically and lyrically for Haines that some insight might prove helpful. Rather than rely on the propulsive energy and shout-it-out choruses that define Metric’s sound, Haines (who also moonlights in Broken Social Scene) has recorded an album of soft, piano-based hymns more intent on capturing a mood — and a seriously somber one at that — than whipping audiences into raucous, dance-floor frenzies. Recorded with help from members of Sparklehorse, Stars, and Broken Social Scene, the album is hardly recognizable as the work of the same feisty woman who fronts Metric.
Haines, however, insists she didn’t approach Knives’s songs any differently than those of her band. “I spend all my time at the piano,” she explains. “For Metric, we’ve always just adapted my piano songs into a rock ’n’ roll format. So it was interesting [for Knives] to keep some of them for myself and leave them as is. Because I’ve always written more music than anyone could be asked to digest, I just chose the songs that I realized it’d be kind of sad if I never, ever put them out. It’s taken me a while to get up the nerve to release them though.”
The product of a rather lengthy incubation period, Knives was written over four years and recorded in as many cities — namely, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, and New York. So it’s a bit surprising that the album comes off as such a cohesive collection of, as Haines puts it, photographs from her past. “It ended up feeling like snapshots over that period of time,” she says. “When I look back and listen to these songs, I feel like the last four years have been some of the most intense.”
As song titles such as “Our Hell” and “Nothing and Nowhere” suggest, the result is almost abysmally bleak. Turning her focus from political anger to personal turmoil, Haines ruminates extensively on pain, loss, loneliness, and despair. “Are we breathing? Are we wasting our breath?” she sings in “Crowd Surf off a Cliff.” Even more unnerving, “The Last Page” finds her cryptically singing, “Death is absolutely safe.” But while the entire album could pass as a heartrending document of one woman’s extremely troubled times, all Haines will say (and only after much prodding) is that Knives is “essentially about being grateful for what you have, even when your life is shit.”
When she comes to San Francisco this week — a sequel to her July 2004 Cafe du Nord appearance, where she offered a rare sneak preview of an in-progress Knives — Haines will be accompanied by bassist Paul Dillon and Sparklehorse drummer Scott Minor, whom she’s enlisted to help her “nail that Plastic Ono Band vibe.” She’ll then head back to England for another Metric tour and to start recording the band’s third album. Later, if time allows, she hopes to play more solo gigs and eventually perform again with Broken Social Scene.
In other words, while fans may find it odd that Haines is suddenly mum about her solo music, they can take comfort that she’s fast becoming one of the busiest artists in indie rock.
“It’s weird,” she says. “When people say to me how busy my life is, I suppose that I really am ridiculously busy. But to me, it just feels like being a musician. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s what I’m doing. I’m making music. It’s not a job. It’s my life. It’s my friends and my family. So the more the better.” SFBG
EMILY HAINES AND THE SOFT SKELETON
Fri/22, 9 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com

Live bait

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
Sneak a peak at the California Cereals factory — a gray, boxy concrete sprawl looming over an otherwise peaceful West Oakland neighborhood lined with wood frame houses and a sugary spray of Victorians — and you immediately expect that mulchy aroma of processed wheat products to assault the senses. So why do you detect … barbecuing oysters? But that’s the overriding scent du jour — and the improvisatory, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-fun nature of the Cereal Factory, one of many unpermitted party outposts where the city’s rock, improv, noise, and punk scenes have survived and even thrived in the Bay Area despite fin de siècle real estate insanity, party-killing neighbors, and ticket-threatening cops.
Scruffy, T-shirted kids lounge on the front steps of Jason Smith’s two-story home, dubbed the Cereal Factory for the genuine, sugar-coated article churning out Fruity Pebbles and generic raisin bran across the street. Down a side path, in the small backyard, music scenesters, fans, punks, indie rockers, and cool dudes mingle on the grass and down the canned beer and grillables they’ve brought as CF housemate Daniel Martins of Battleship throws more oysters on the barbie. Double back, and in the basement you find a dark, humid, tiki-embellished crash pad, not uncomfortably crammed with bodies shaking to Italian punk-noise band Dada Swing. Or you catch Bananas, Mika Miko, or Chow Nasty killing the rest of the early evening for gas money.
“My whole thing is to make it free, make it so that people can go to it,” the extremely good-natured Smith says much later. “If there’s a touring band, I always run around with a hat and kind of strong-arm people into coughing up some change or a couple bucks to give them some gas, but otherwise the bands all play here for free. I just provide the coals, and I buy two cases of beer for the bands.” As for the oysters, he adds, “shit like that happens! People are just, like, ‘I caught this huge fish — let’s smoke it.’”
Smith is one of the proud, brave, and reckless few who have turned their homes into unofficial party headquarters, underground live music venues. San Francisco and Oakland are riddled with such weekly, biweekly, and even more sporadic venues — some named and some known by nothing more than an address. But oh, what names: Pubis Noir, 5lowershop, an Undisclosed Location, Club Hot, Noodle Factory, Ptomaine Temple, and the Hazmat House. Some, like the Cereal Factory, are only active during the summer barbecue season; others, like LoBot Gallery, host shows and art exhibits year-round. Why go through the headache of opening your home up to a bunch of hard-partying strangers, music lovers, and the occasional psycho who trashes your bathroom? Some, such as Oakland’s French Fry Factory, have bitten the dust after being busted for allegedly selling beer at shows. Others, such as 40th Street Warehouse and Grandma’s House, have bowed to pressures external (neighbors, landlords) and internal (warehousemates), respectively. Why do we care?
CULTIVATING NEW AND UNDERSERVED SCENES
The Clit Stop can take credit for being one of the first venues in San Francisco to dream up the now-familiar cocktail of noise, indie rock, jazz, and improv. Ex-Crack: We Are Rock and Big Techno Werewolves mastermind Eric Bauer and Bran Pos brain Jake Rodriguez began booking shows in 1998 in Bauer’s 58 Tehama space, once dubbed Gallery Oh Boy. Shows began on time at 8 or 9 p.m. so that East Bay listeners could BART back before midnight, and as a result Bauer and Rodriguez would often open, under assorted monikers. A May 2000 lineup at the Clit Stop (named after Bauer’s band Planet Size: Clit by Caroliner’s Grux) combined scree-kabukists Rubber O Cement with improv rockers Gang Wizard, indies Minmae, and Bauer’s dada-noise Aerobics King; another bill matched the angsty indie-electronica of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone with the noise-guitar-funk of Open City and the jazz sax of Tony Bevan. The common thread? The fact that Bauer and Rodriguez both liked them. “It was kind of hard sometimes,” Bauer says today. “We got requests from tons of shitty bands, and it was, like, ‘No, no, we don’t like you guys.’”
A year after Clit Stop began, Kimo’s started showcasing the same combination of rock and noise characterized by such varied Clit Stop players as Cock ESP, No Neck Blues Band, and Nautical Almanac — a mix that has filtered to the Hemlock Tavern and 21 Grand and into the sounds emerging from Bay Area bands like Deerhoof, Total Shutdown, and the pre–Yellow Swans group Boxleitner, all of whom played the Clit. “The weirder and more fucked up, the better,” Bauer continues. “We wanted to push boundaries — we wanted to annoy people.” Bauer moved out in 2000, leaving Rodriguez to continue to book shows at the venue under, Bauer says, the name Hot Rodney’s Bar and Grill. Bauer went on to put on the first noise-pancake shows with ex–Church Police member and Bauer’s Godwaffle Noise Pancakes co-overlord Bruce Gauld at Pubis Noir, a former sweatshop at 16th Street and Mission. Gauld is expected to put out a DVD of Clit Stop performances this year.
GIVING UNDER-21 KIDS ACCESS TO CHEAP ART
“The cheapness factor is a huge part,” says Cansafis Foote, sax player for the No Doctors. “In Oakland right now, you have a lot of kids who are trying to make a go at being an artist or being a musician or whatever, and almost all of them are broke. But they’re all really excited about people making stuff, so they’ll go to Art Murmurs on the first Friday of the month or they’ll go to warehouse shows, and maybe at the end of the day they won’t have any money in their pocket — and we’re still going to let ’em in to see the show. That, or they’re underage.”
An improv seminar leader at Northwestern University and onetime music teacher in Chicago, Foote was accustomed to instigating music- and merrymaking when he took the lease in February 2005 at Grandma’s House in Oakland. “Everything was kind of funneling out of that experience and just having the background with Freedom From [the label the No Doctors ran with Matthew St. Germain] and free exploratory music.” Grandma’s House had already been putting on shows in the massive warehouse it shared with Limnal Gallery (and at one time the Spazz collective), and Foote threw his energy into doing two to three shows a month — including performances by Sightings, Burmese, Hustler White, Saccharine Trust, and Warhammer 48K — until March, when, he says, an especially loud show by USA Is a Monster brought the police on a noise complaint. Foote, a.k.a. Grandpa, was already bummed because housemates who had initially said they’d help with shows “totally weren’t coming through on that. So I was sitting in my car and watching the gate while everyone was watching the show and I was, like, ‘What’s the point of doing this? I don’t even get to see the show.’ So I took a ladder and put it outside the window. I thought it was fun too, because it was like a clubhouse and people could come up the ladder and through the window into Grandma’s House, and then the cops came, and one told me they’d unlock the seventh door to hell if I did it again.
“I was actually kind of excited — should I allow him to unlock the seventh door to hell for me? Is there going to be a special fire-breathing dragon there for me? It was amazing. It’s, like, ‘Dude, there’s some 16-year-old kid who’s going to shoot some other 16-year-old kid down the street — go deal with him.’”
The next show was the deal breaker: police returned twice to open that door as a brouhaha broke out at a Grey Daturas show between audience members and various warehousemates. Warehouse denizens put pressure on Foote to halt the shows, and now he’s moving out: “It was the only reason I was living there. It’s not real glamorous to be living in a warehouse with little mice and weird bugs in the summer.”
BRINGING ART, THEATER, MUSIC — AND STRAIGHT-EDGED VEGETARIANS TOGETHER
House-party spaces have come and gone, but one of the saddest passings had to be 40th Street Warehouse in Oakland, which put on rock, folk, and hip-hop shows, queer cabaret, and art events from 1996 until the collective shuttered last winter with a last loud musical blowout (This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb headlined) and a commemorative zine. From Monument to Masses guitarist Matthew Solberg lived there for three years and recalls that the onetime auto mechanic shop’s shows were initially started by members of the experimental Noisegate.
By 2003, Solberg says the Temescal space was putting on shows, plays, or benefits every weekend, with an emphasis on rock and metal: Parts and Labor, Tyondai Braxton, High on Fire, Ludicra, Merzbow, Masonna, Melt Banana, a Minor Forest, Lesser, Curtains, Neon Hunk, Hair Police, Deep Dickollective, Thrones, X27, Soophie Nun Squad, Toychestra, 25 Suaves, Monitor Bats, the Intima, Lowdown, the Coachwhips, Hammers of Misfortune, the Vanishing, Mirah, Gravy Train!!!!, Eskapo, and Microphones (last on the Microphones bill, beneath Loch Nest Dumpster, is Devendra Banhart, described as “acoustic ardor from San Francisco’s shyist [sic]”), with bands like Numbers getting a running start with multiple performances there.
The schedule, however, took its toll. “People would move into the warehouse and be really stoked to have that autonomous space, but they didn’t really know what they were getting into. They usually lasted six months, and then they’d be, like, ‘I can’t stand this anymore!’” Solberg says. “But certain people adapted because they were passionate about being able to create that sort of space and making it work: a DIY show space where 100 percent of proceeds went to the bands — and obviously, we’d cover some expenses, like electrical and providing food for the bands. But apart from that, the house didn’t take any money. It was all done out of, I dunno, community service.”
The collective itself got a reputation as a straight-edged vegan cabal that forbade hard drugs and meat in the fridge that sat on the outskirts of the barnlike communal show space. “We didn’t want to succumb to the crash pad–flophouse thing,” Solberg explains. “We just wanted to preserve sanity.”
All that came to an end when in 2004 the Oakland City Council passed the Nuisance Eviction Ordinance, which took aim at crack houses but covered “noise” as a reason for eviction. “The people at 40th Street all believed that was the reason we got so much police attention the last year we were there,” Solberg says. After joining his fellow tenants in a winning fight against their landlord, who had given them a month’s eviction notice in order to convert the space to condos, Solberg moved to Ptomaine Temple, which continues to stage experimental noise shows.
BACK AT THE FACTORY
And despite the rewards, good times, and appreciative bands that get play and earn gas money to their next show, shutdowns are still a threat, casting a shadow even over spots like the Smith-owned Cereal Factory. After a neighbor began objecting last year to the soused kids milling in the street and lined up out the Factory’s front door to go to the bathroom, the Mothballs drummer slowed the shows, built a discreet bathroom in the basement, and then carefully began the music once more. Why bother? The chuckle-prone Smith, who works in the live-music department at KALX, bought the house with the intention of having shows. “At the risk of sounding like a stupid hippie, I think it’s important to contribute things,” he says before the last show of summer 2006 on Sept. 16, with Them There Skies, Sandycoates, and Dreamdate.
This last show likely went off smoothly: the model property owner checked in with his neighbors that evening during his walk home. “I said, ‘Donny, we’re having a barbecue show this Saturday.’ And he said, ‘OK, OK, baby, you’re cool. You’re cool.’ I’m hoping to have everything done by 9 o’clock, and that’s pretty tame on a Saturday night,” Smith explains. It’s guaranteed there won’t be any problem on at least one side of his summer house party — “there’s this Argentinean woman named Pepper and she’s fucking awesome. She’ll be, ‘Aw, yeah, it better be fucking loud because that’s how I know you’re having a good time. You gotta live life!’ SFBG

Oral histories

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By Marke B.
› marke@sfbg.com
Thousands of fantastically perverse revelers (most of them gay) will flood San Francisco for the Folsom Street Leather Fair on Sept. 23, ensuring that every cranny of the city brims with wanton copulation — which really is the way it should always be in our famously lewd burg, no? Too bad that for the other 364 days of the year, good ol’ slutty San Francisco is considered by erotic tourists to be one of the most prudish cities in the world.
Unlike other civic dens of iniquity, San Francisco has no gay bathhouses, no sleazy back rooms in bars (well, none that the cops have sniffed out yet), and a dwindling amount of mischief in the bushes. This sorry state of affairs is due partly to the advent of Internet hookup sites in 1996 (thanks, AOL) and partly to the break in gay traditions caused by the loss of a generation to AIDS. But mostly it’s due to the “sex panic” of 1984, when well-meaning gay activists looking to protect gay men from their supposedly unsafe urges convinced the city to ban all bathhouses and enforce rules that separated public sex from any sort of alcohol consumption and unmonitorable activity. Gay folks would just have to go to Berkeley to get wet and have sex. That may have made BART more fun, but for many it seemed like a forced expulsion from SF’s sexual garden by Big Brother.
In 1996, gay city supervisor Tom Ammiano tried to get the baths reopened by proposing a set of HIV-risk-reducing regulations that included no private rooms, no alcohol consumption, safer-sex education materials and condoms on-site, brighter lighting levels, and the presence of staff monitors to ensure against unsafe activity. Pretty oddly, the city adopted most of his proposed regulations — leading to the rise of today’s slick, commercially licensed sex clubs — but kept the bathhouse ban. This means that it’s now OK to pay to have sex with strangers in a public setting, but if there’s any kind of water running other than from a broken toilet, you’re in trouble.
Whether or not gay men in San Francisco should be left to their own sexual devices is still a matter of polemical debate. Or is it? Not many people seem to talk about it anymore. But you can’t stop the party. From 1989, when the last bathhouse was closed by a city lawsuit, to 1997, when San Francisco began using commercial licenses to approve sex clubs, a vibrant sexual underground ruled. Often subject to raids by police, the underground included anonymous-encounter mainstays like Blow Buddies and Eros, both of which opened on a members-only basis in hopes of circumventing any legal trouble. It also included less formal play spaces like the Church of Phallic Worship and Orgasm, naughty nooks that live on only in legend.
This dark period — or golden age — of underground sex clubs (and with the lights off, it was probably both) has largely been forgotten. But exciting tales of the past still issue forth from it, and with the current revival of ’70s bathhouse nostalgia, it’s interesting to note that bathhouse culture extended well into the ’80s — yep, folks were dropping towel to Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake” — and poured out into the underground sex clubs of the early ’90s before being sucked toward the Ethernet of now. We asked a few of the scene’s regular, anonymous players for their memories of some clubs of the time.
NIGHT GALLERY, A.K.A. MIKE’S PARTY
“You’d ring a little bell at this house a few doors down from the Powerhouse — tingaling-aling — and they’d open the door, and at the top of this long flight of thickly carpeted stairs, there’d be this guy sitting in a chair who would say in this flat, uncommitted voice, ‘Welcome to my party. Friends tend to chip in $5 to help cover costs. My roommate’s in the kitchen if you want to check your stuff.’ That was Mike, and it was funny he said roommate, because you know no one really lived there.
“At the top of the stairs was this long hallway full of amateur erotic art — not like Tom of Finland, more like a horny Grandma Moses. I stole a drawing that I think was supposed to be of an S-M twink but more resembled a Christmas pixie in irons. I don’t remember much about the sex rooms, except there was a shoddy maze in the back and a sign that said ‘No talking in the fun zone.’
“In the kitchen there was a beer keg and a big aluminum bowl of shiny-looking Cheez-Its that I could just never bring myself to snack on. I knew where those Cheez-Its had been. There was also this kind of ‘Your Own Carnival Hot Dog’ maker that was more like a filthy aquarium with gray franks in tepid hot dog water that no queen would touch — despite the metal tongs provided ‘for your protection.’”
TROUBLE
“Conga-line dance-floor fucking was what I remember most about this place. Which is pretty darn difficult if you take varying heights into consideration. Trouble was a totally anything goes kind of club — after-hours alcohol served, a big dance floor with professional-looking lighting, out-in-the-open nasty sex. Like Studio 54 if Liza was a go-go whore and, you know, a sexy guy. It was in SoMa around Folsom and, I think, First.
“There were dark rooms and a maze upstairs — it was in a big warehouse space with a high ceiling. It got raided three or four times before they finally shut it down. It only lasted like eight months. During the raids the cops weren’t all, like, ‘Let’s get the faggots,’ they were more, like, bored, flashing their lights around and saying in a polite voice, ‘Please leave — you have to go now,’ like they were ushers and we had overstayed our welcome at the opera.”
THE BLACK HOUSE
“The Black House was freakin’ scary. It was this old Victorian off Castro painted completely black. I had just moved here — in 1994. I was 23 and thought the Black House was where Anton LaVey used to live and they had Satanic rituals there, but really it was just a bunch of naked guys fooling around in the basement. I don’t remember exactly where it was, but somehow my drunk feet took me there after the bars closed.
“Mostly the guys were cute in a hustler sort of way — this was when tweakers left the house to get laid. But there would be some letches. One guy followed me around telling everyone I looked like an Etruscan statue. I got really embarrassed and had to leave and go look up Etruscan. One time the hot young guy doing coat check took out his teeth to blow some other guy. I wonder whatever happened to him.”
ORGASM
“Orgasm was across the street from Endup on Sixth, so you could just stumble there and have sex at any time of the day or night, it seemed. There was this huge stage, 10 feet deep, where they had live sex shows and some really crusty Goodwill couches. One time I tricked with a guy who asked me to drop him off at Orgasm, and the minute he got there, he shed his clothes and got up onstage for a show. Where did he get the energy?
“Like most other clubs, it was in a warehouselike space, very minimal. There was a door guy and another guy inside with a clipboard, but that was just to look official — there was never anything on the clipboard. The space was divided by curtains for ‘privacy’ and had a long overhead shelf with candles on it, which added atmosphere to the ‘lovemaking.’ There were turntables, and I remember it was around the time that Boy George came out with ‘Generations of Love,’ which was a surprisingly good record.”
CHURCH OF PHALLIC WORSHIP
“I think the Church in SoMa used to have ads in the back of the Bay Area Reporter, but everyone just seemed to know about it. It had a real rough, underground feel. I don’t know if it was officially religiously affiliated, but maybe they got free parking out of it. They served beer after hours — it was like a one-stop shopping hub of gay socializing: backyard barbecue, glory holes, music, the works.
“It was run by a Santa Claus–type character called Father Frank, and every time you called the info line, he’d answer the phone by reciting a homoerotic limerick in this hilariously effeminate voice, like Rona Barrett on 33 1/3. It was a cross between a house and a warehouse — pretty big, but it could get way too overcrowded. What was so great was that it went all night, yet no one seemed like they were on speed. Everyone was just drunk and having a great time.”
1808 CLUB
“This was a big house down by Guerrero and Market near where the LGBT Center is now. I remember this huge door with a tiny window you had to knock on, like it was a speakeasy in Communist Czechoslovakia. This totally hot bald guy would answer, and I’d kind of be intimidated because he was so muscular. Years later he became my personal trainer at Gold’s Gym.
“The place was painted all black on the inside and was on two levels, one overlooking the other. Balconesque, as the French would put it. There were these little cubbyholes all over the place that two people could fit in, and maybe you could squeeze in three on occasion. On weekends it was packed. It was cheap too: $5 for the whole night, and they’d stamp your hand so you could get in and out. I didn’t go too much, because it was in my neighborhood and I like being a little incognito. That’s a little more classy.” SFBG

Notes from the underground

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
Looking for hints of San Francisco’s renowned underground nightlife? It pays to keep your eyes and nose to the ground — and to be textable. That’s one of the few subtle signs that the hottest underground party in town is happening right here on an early Sunday summer morning: reedy, peg-legged hipsters standing out by the curb on this barren, bulldozed Hunters Point artery, busily texting and talking up fidgety, insomniac friends about their next landing strip. Beats bang gently in the background as fashion-damaged kids dangle from the railings along the short flight of steps to the door, smoking and guzzling from sacks like it’s recess at their own semiprivate too-cool school.
Upstairs in a long, tall space lined with huge rectangular windows, the Sixteens are getting ready for a set. And everyone else — and that’s every-fucking-body — is madly dancing on the other side to stabbing electrotech beats that come off so metallic and grimy that you could slice yourself open and get a nasty infection on ’em. Is that arch-retro-candy raver actually swinging a stretchy glow stick with one hand while trying to hold on to a mixed drink in the other? Swirling moiré patterns, projections of flames, and found industrial footage lick the walls of the room and the faces of the dancers. A burnt-orange slice of summer moon is slung low in the sky as if already hungover from the shit-hot party raging below.
Closing time — you may not know whom you want to take home, but do you know where your next party is? Above-grounders might say “you don’t need to go home, but you can’t stay here,” but you needn’t turn into a pumpkin and pass out in your car just yet. Bay Area underground parties like this one — and of every imaginable stripe and musical genre — are where sleepless scenesters flock.
So why is the underground scene continuing to blossom like a hundred Lotus Girls on a dust-caked playa in a city chock-full of wholly legit clubs? This summer, as a series of humongoid dance clubs including Temple Bar SF, prepped to throw open their doors, one had to wonder: why bother going off the grid?
Perhaps that’s where you can find the sounds you crave, a frustrating chore when clubs book conservatively — and an experience that may end all too soon with the city’s 2 a.m. last call. DJs such as Jamin Creed of BIG are seeing their grime and dubstep parties, for instance, starting to blow up now both over- and underground after gestating in after-hours soirees. “It’s a music-orienting thing, to be honest,” says underground breaks party thrower DJ Ripple, né Lorin Stoll. Citing undergrounds in Big Sur as well as the Harmony fest in Santa Rosa, the ex-Deadhead sees continuity between the city’s Left Coast vibe and “the merging of the counterculture of the ’60s with the rave culture of the ’90s, merging with the experience and professionalism of Burning Man culture in the 2000s. It’s created this nice renaissance in underground music.”
Dub it an unintended fringe benefit stemming from the failure to change the city’s last call two years ago, an effort led by Terrance Alan, chairman of the Late Night Coalition and legislative chair of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission. That move failed — after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging the state legislature to make the change — when the proposed legislation got stuck in committee at the State Assembly. Despite the support of the city’s Entertainment Commission, Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Gavin Newsom, the bill was opposed by antialcohol groups and organizations such as the Oakland Police Department, whose officers testified that a later last call in San Francisco would create traffic accidents in Oakland. “Those observations were never supported in the data on changes in last call,” Alan says today.
The reality is that partly as a result of those quashed endeavors, the Bay Area underground party scene continues to flourish, via Tribe.net, lists, and those omnipresent flyers. Tomas Palermo — a DJ, Guardian contributor, and former XLR8R editor — thinks the underground warehouse and techno event circuit has been bubbling along nicely since 1988, with surges in house in the early ’90s and explosions in drum ’n’ bass during the dot-com years. And even a seasoned listener like him isn’t immune to the simple pleasures of an outdoor beatdown: “In the last two weeks I went to a free [breakbeat] sound system gathering in a tiny grassy nook of Golden Gate Park and a Sunset Party in McLaren Park,” he e-mails.
The latter gatherings, put on by Pacific Sound System, just may embody the resilient, oh-naturel vibe of the undergrounds in this area. DJ Galen began the daytime Sunset Parties on summer Sundays about a dozen years ago at Golden Gate Park. Old-school — yep. Family oriented — believe it. Ideal if you’re still tweaked the morning after — maybe. An outdoor dance floor of up to 3,000 — yikes. “I just feel events are very much the reflection of the people who put them on, and you can kind of tell when people are doing it for money or just the pure feeling of bringing people together through music and the outdoors,” says Galen, who co-owns Tweekin Records. When he started the parties, he was a shell of a raver, burned out from lifelong training as a swimmer for the 1996 Olympics. “I hadn’t felt like I lived life and came home and some friends took me to a party and just opened my eyes,” he recalls, citing the Wicked Crew’s Full Moon Raves as inspirational. “Looked at all these people having fun and a sense of community — I just got so excited that this whole other world existed and got immersed in it.”
He maxed out his credit card, bought a sound system, and began playing house music in the park as the audience grew. His three-person collective has since produced successful overground boat parties, but they’ve maintained that earthbound sense of perspective. “I think that’s one major reason why things have gone well — we’re not out of it for ego,” he says. “We are very respectful of everyone, and in turn people are respectful of us. When we leave these parks, they’re spotless, and a lot of people have told us, ‘Wow, that was a really crazy party, but everyone’s so mellow and nice!’ SFBG

More underground:


Live bait: the secret life of warehouse shows

Oral Histories: underground gay sex clubs of the early ’90s

Party primer: underground party web sites

TUESDAY

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Sept. 19

Dvd/Music

Bad Brains, Live at CBGB 1982

There’s nothing fancy about the new Bad Brains DVD, Live at CBGB 1982 (Music Video Distributors), but then again, there doesn’t need to be. The recently issued concert film captures the band onstage at the peak of their early hardcore era – performing classics such as “Redbone in the City,” “How Low Can a Punk Get,” and “Attitude” – with no annoying camera tricks or other distractions. (Will York)

9 p.m.
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
Free
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com

Visual Art

“Mexico As Muse: Tina Modotti and Edward Weston”

Intended as an archive for the monumental partnership between two major artistic figures, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “Mexico as Muse” serves more as a teaser to Modotti’s life and work. While Weston’s images of earthen pots, ancient pyramids, and Mexican skies build a foundation for later works, his portraits of his artistic partner are by far his most interesting contributions to “Mexico as Muse.” Modotti chose her subjects carefully, opting for the limitless possibilities of telephone lines stretching over the rural Mexican landscape and flimsy, partially ajar doors instead of the immobile and established nature of Weston’s content. (K. Tighe)

Through Jan. 2
Fri.-Tues., 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.-8:45 p.m.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third St., SF
$12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free under 13 and members (free first Tuesday; half price Thurs., 6-8:45 p.m.)
(415) 357-4000
www.sfmoma.org

SUNDAY

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Sept. 17

Music

The Queers

Thirteen-year-olds from all over will be flocking to this all-ages show to see the legendary lineup of pop punk sensations. But somewhat older, die-hard fans of the notorious old-school punk band the Queers now have an excuse to party all weekend. The original Joe Queer will be present, shamelessly trying to promote the band’s latest CD, the live slab Weekend at Bernie’s (Doheny). (Kellie Ell)

With Hard Ons and Groovie Ghoulies
8 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
www.thequeersrock.com

Music

Jaguares X Anniversary

After Saúl Hernández left the seminal Mexican rock band Caifanes in 1995, he had a dream that he was playing guitar inside the mouth of a jaguar. This image is the source of the band’s moniker and is an apt description of its sound. Los Jaguares, even in their quieter moments, play with an urgency and intensity that make it seem like every note could be their last before being devoured whole. (Aaron Sankin)

8 p.m.
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
$45
(415) 346-6000
www.thefillmore.com
www.jaguaresmx.com

SATURDAY

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Sept. 16

Music

Starlite Desperation

Where some psychedelic rockers come off passive and fey, the feral psych-garage trio the Starlite Desperation incite an intense and raw reaction with their signature blend of dirty blues and urgent guitar dissonance, all punctuated by singer Dante Adrian’s spooky yet alluring vocals. With their major-label debut, Take It Personally (Capitol), the band reach into a sonically darker realm with “I’m Ready Again,” whose modernized Cramps-like slither and frenetic bass line induce involuntary hip shaking. San Francisco’s own Bella Vista (featuring former members of Vue) bring a primal stomp and swagger to the opening slot. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

9:30 p.m.
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
$7
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
www.starlitedesperation.com

Music

Rainer Trüby

It’s been four years since producer-remixer-DJ Rainer Trüby last graced San Francisco – chances are he’s picked up at least one or two decent records in the meantime. One-third of the Trüby Trio (with Roland Appel and Christian Prommer of Fauna Flash), compiler of the essential Glücklich albums for Compost Records, and a friendly obsessive-compulsive who collected matchboxes as a child before switching to the slightly cooler records, Trüby is cited by none other than Gilles Peterson as one of the world’s best DJs. House, Brazilian, jazz, electro, hip-hop – Trüby drops it all into a mix that still manages to be more about dancing than name-checking. (Peter Nicholson)

10 p.m.
Poleng Lounge
1751 Fulton, SF
$15
(415) 441-1751
www.polenglounge.com

THURSDAY

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Sept. 14

Film/Music

“Indiecent Exposure”

One of many things “Indiecent Exposure” has going for it is an array of movies with good titles. In addition to live musical selections from Murdered by the Moore Brothers and food by the Tamale Lady, this evening showcases short works such as Shitty Cat (by Ray Potes of Hamburger Eyes) and another couple of man-gone-bad or man-gone-mad stories, Ryan Finnerty’s I Kill People for Money and Eric Noren’s Fish Tales. (Johnny Ray Huston)

7 p.m.
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna, SF
(415) 974-1719
www.myspace.com/indiecent_exposure_sf

Music

Tortoise

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Tortoise had much reason to feel admired in the late ’90s. The Chicago group’s hybrid sound – shimmering timbres propelled by shape-shifting rhythms – won over many collegiate rockers (this writer being no exception), and for a few years anyhow, it seemed as if every band in the world simply had to work a xylophone into the mix. With the post-rock wave well past its crest, Tortoise’s canonized albums don’t sound as fresh as they once did, but the band’s omnivorous taste and unquestionable chops have aged well – plenty of proof can be found on A Lazarus Taxon (Thrill Jockey), a recently released box set of previously unreleased and out-of-print material. (Max Goldberg)

8 p.m.
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
$21
(415) 885-0750
www.gamf.com

WEDNESDAY

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Sept. 13

Music

Oliver Mtukudzi

Ah, the power of the juxtaposition: a shaft of sunlight thrown against a patch of darkness; an instant of pure breathless beauty amid the grit and the grime of a humdrum day; a moment of clarity in the middle of swirling chaos. When touched by the thoughtful hands of a great artist, these juxtapositions leave us knocked out but wanting more every time. Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Oliver Mtukudzi is such an artist. With startling contrasts of raw, aching vocals against frequently breezy, lighthearted instrumentation, Mtukudzi’s songs address such heady topics as poverty, sexism, and the African AIDS crisis while lulling listeners with gently rollicking grooves, and the result is nothing short of mesmerizing. (Todd Lavoie)

8 and 10 p.m.
Yoshi’s
510 Embarcadero West, Oakland
$24
(510) 238-9200
www.yoshis.com

Discussion

Free minds

Attend a UC Berkeley panel discussion on national security, intellectual freedom, and constitutional rights in the post-Sept. 11 era moderated by Tom Leonard of the Graduate School of Journalism. Panelists include Michael Nacht, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy; Tom Campbell, dean of the Haas School of Business and former California state senator and US representative; and Professor Tom Goldstein, director of the Mass Communications Program. (Deborah Giattina)

6:30-8 p.m.
UC Berkeley
Free Speech Movement Café
Moffitt Undergraduate Library
Near University and Hearst, Berk.
Free
(510) 642-8197

Six-string samurai

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Discovering new metal bands worth their salt these days isn’t just hit-and-miss — it’s mostly miss. In fact, most kids now trying to crack the genre make me want to jump onstage, grab them by their greasy hair, and scream, “Satan is boring!” or “You are not Metallica!” into their prematurely damaged eardrums.
So when a friend slipped me the unmastered studio tracks of Totimoshi’s forthcoming album, Ladron, I was hesitant. After I explained to him that I was still mourning Bass Wolf and simply wasn’t ready for another Japanese rocker in my life, he rolled his eyes and told me to go home and listen to the thing.
Totimoshi, it turns out, is not a Japanese band.
In November 1997, Totimoshi singer-songwriter-guitarist Tony Aguilar had nearly given up hope in finding the right bassist to collaborate with: “I just couldn’t find anyone who wanted to work on the kind of things I was doing.” Meeting budding bassist Meg Castellanos at a warehouse concert in San Francisco changed everything. “I ended up teaching her a few things,” he says. “She got really good in no time and started writing her own stuff.”
And so began Totimoshi — a band that would go on to break the boundaries of multiple genres, build an innovative new framework for independent hard rock, and go through drummers like jelly beans.
Luke Herbst became the band’s seventh drummer in early 2005 and has proven to be the missing link in the Totimoshi sound. “He’s an integral part of the band,” Castellanos says. “He’s gotten a lot of very high praise. Everyone — even our past drummers — are really impressed with him.”
When the trio of Totimoshi walked into San Francisco’s Lucky Cat Studios to record, they came prepared to answer one burning question: what happens when you put one of the hardest-working, heaviest bands in the Bay Area in a studio with Helmet frontperson Page Hamilton and the Melvin’s sound engineer?
Pure fucking genius.
The group met Hamilton after he selected them to open the Helmet reunion tour last year. He was the obvious choice for producer. But working with your idol isn’t all fun and games: Hamilton started cutting things up right away. “He came in and cracked the whip,” Castellanos confesses. “We sat in the studio and went through every part of every song with a fine-tooth comb. It was a bit hellish.”
“It was really hard for me to give up the reins,” Aguilar adds. “But I swallowed all that. It turned out amazing.”
A quick listen to any of Totimoshi’s previous discs shows that they’ve had their chops for a long time. Ladron (meaning thief in Spanish) is due out Oct. 24 on Crucial Blast and marks a new stage in the band’s development. They’ve folded the grimiest parts of early Nirvana into the deepest, darkest depths of Sabbath, producing a wailing, slithering, flopping hodgepodge that’s purely Totimoshi.
In my attempts to pin down a description of Ladron, I keep coming back to an apocalyptic wasteland. Barren desert. Blazing sun. This is likely the result of one too many viewings of Six-String Samurai, but the image in my head is clear: Totimoshi riding a firestorm of worthy, working warrior bands (the Melvins, High on Fire, Neorosis) into the rock kingdom to reclaim the throne. Flicking tabloid pop stars and a domesticated, stuttering Ozzy aside, they loudly announce to their cohorts that metal once again rules. The people rejoice.
Hardly strangers to the road, Totimoshi tour the hardcore way: constantly. In a van. With little money and even less tour support. “What continues to drive us is the message, the music,” Aguilar says. “We care about our art so much we are willing to live in a van for months on end. It’s hard, but it’s what is necessary.” If some indie rock poster kid tried using this logic, this is the part where I’d tell him to crawl his whiny ass down from the cross and get a job. From Aguilar’s mouth, these are the inspired words of a man who lives for his craft. I can feel the passion bleed through when he tells me, “We’re not going to sit here and wait for Mr. Big to come and say, ‘You’re a great band!’ We’d rather get the message out ourselves.”
The group is about to spread that message on a very long tour with the help of Mastodon, the Bronx, Oxbow, and Year Long Disaster. “It has nothing to do with ‘making it,’” Castellanos says. “We just want to be working musicians once and for all. I think with this album the timing is right.” Their newest member apparently agrees. “Luke’s willing to sacrifice for these upcoming tours,” she continues. “I think he already lost his job.” He might not be needing it. SFBG
TOTIMOSHI
Sat/16, 9 p.m.
Parkside
1600 17th St., SF
$8
(415) 503-0393
Also Sun/17
Golden Bull
412 14th St., Oakl.
Call for time and price
(510) 893-0803

Turf’s up

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
First nicknamed the Rolling 20s in the ’70s, then the Twomps in the ’80s, the group of East Oakland avenues below MacArthur and between 19th and Fruitvale avenues received its present designation, the Murder Dubs, in the early ’90s, when a neighborhood hustler named P-Dub began a lethal reign of terror in an effort to control the local drug trade. Naturally, this didn’t endear him to the community, which locked its collective doors to him the night his number came up, leaving him to be gunned down in the street by pursuers circa 1994.
Yet despite this violent legacy, the vibe in the Dubs seems remarkably friendly, at least in the company of its most famous son, 23-year-old MC and producer Beeda Weeda. Head of the sprawling Pushin’ the Beat (PTB) camp — whose roster includes a half-dozen talented producers, as well as rappers like Lil Al the Gamer and veteran crew Under Survalance — Beeda is on familiar terms with most of the neighborhood, though this doesn’t prevent a nearby group of kids from treating him like a star.
“Are you really Beeda Weeda?” one boy asks. “My name’s Beeda Weeda too!” A girl asks for his autograph. “Go get some paper,” the rapper answers, and the kids race home for supplies, allowing us to finish our photo shoot before Beeda poses with his fans and surrenders his signature.
Far from letting it go to his head, Beeda Weeda seems merely amused at his newfound celebrity.
“People see you on TV and they think you rich and famous,” he says with a laugh, referring to his video for “Turf’s Up,” which has been in heavy rotation on VJ-TV (Oakland cable channel 78) for several months, in addition to receiving more than 70,000 plays on YouTube. There’s a vast gulf separating local access from MTV. Still, Beeda has already made inroads into MTV terrain, not the least of which is his contribution to E-40 and Keak Da Sneak’s “Tell Me When to Go” video.
Beeda explains, “40 heard about me and knew I was still in the mix in the town. He didn’t even know I did music when we first hooked up. They wanted to get the elements of the street, the whole sideshow thing, so I helped him do the casting in terms of the cars, the locations, things like that.”
Drawing on their extensive neighborhood network, Beeda Weeda and PTB’s in-house video guru, J-Mo, would end up exerting a considerable influence on the image of hyphy in the national consciousness, due to the video’s success on MTV. The experience also netted PTB some of the unused footage, not to mention high-profile cameos by E-40 and Lil Jon, for its “Turf’s Up” video. More recently, Beeda and West Oakland partner J-Stalin were filmed together in the studio working on their upcoming album, for a segment of an as-yet-untitled MTV reality show following cub reporters for Rolling Stone. (MTV exec Ryan Cunningham confirmed nothing save that the segment was likely to air. Presumably, some sort of Rolling Stone article will run.) At the time of our photo shoot, Beeda’s solo debut, Turfology 101, was about a week away from its Aug. 29 street date and had already been reviewed in the latest issue of Scratch. Released on Souls of Mischief–Hieroglyphics member Tajai’s Clear Label Records and distributed through Hiero/Fontana/Universal, Turfology has just enough major-label clout behind it to get itself noticed even on a NY magazine’s New York–centric radar.
He may not quite be famous yet, but as Beeda Weeda is forced to acknowledge, “My name’s starting to ring bells.”
WHAT’S THAT SOUND?
Some rap names are chosen; others, given. In this case, Beeda Weeda is the rapper’s childhood nickname, derived from his association with Peeda Weeda. “He was like my OG when I was a little kid,” Beeda says. In 1992, at age 15, Peeda was shot by the Oakland Police Department and left paraplegic, one of many victims of the neighborhood’s most violent period.
As the ’90s wore on and Beeda entered his teens, he began making tracks, inspired by neighborhood musicians who would eventually form the core of the PTB production squad. “Most of them are older than me,” he says. “They were into music before me, so I was looking up to them. We got Big Vito, GB, LG, Tre, Miggz, and G-Lite.”
“My partner from the neighborhood, J-Boog, was rapping, and I started making beats,” Beeda continues. “But I didn’t start getting serious until I did a track called ‘Hard Hitters’ for a little group I put together called Dying 2 Live. It came out on an actual CD.”
While “Hard Hitters” didn’t cause much of a ripple in Bay Area hip-hop’s late-’90s commercial doldrums, it was sufficient to establish Beeda Weeda as a neighborhood beatmaker, attracting the attention of up-and-coming rapper Lil Al.
“We hooked up, and I started slanging beats to him,” Beeda says. “He was, like, ‘Man, let’s be a group,’ so that’s when I started really writing. We put out a whole album, all original music, and pushed it in the streets. We pressed it up ourselves. Did all the artwork. I damn near engineered, produced, and mixed the whole thang. It was called Just an Introduction by Lil Al and Beeda Weeda.” Released on their own Young Black Entrepreneurs label in 2002, Just an Introduction would quickly sell out its 500-copy run and make the pair’s reputation in the streets as young rappers.
“At the same time,” Beeda confesses, “we wasn’t really eating off the music, so we had to do other things to make money. Bro got caught up in some bullshit, had to do a little time.” With Lil Al in prison, plans to press a more professionally packaged Introduction were abruptly shelved as Beeda was forced to evolve into a solo act.
“ROLLING MURDER”
“I did a few songs, and I was just pushing it through the Dubs,” Beeda continues. “My music has a lot to do with my environment, certain situations that happen to me or my people. I was basically just making music for me and my niggas.”
Such a local focus, crucial to the Turfology concept, is what gives the album its distinctive flavor. Granted, it mightn’t be to everyone’s taste: Scratch’s generally positive review faults PTB’s use of “the synthesizer,” which makes me wonder how the writer imagines hip-hop is made in the hood. If there’s sense to this remark, it’s in the fact that Beeda and company don’t hide the instrument’s “synthness.” They push big chords composed of the most unearthly sounds right in your face.
As for the suggestion that Turfology at times “sounds like one overlong track,” I can only guess the reviewer is accustomed to the 16-tracks-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other formula of most rap discs. Turfology has a sonic coherence sorely lacking in contemporary hip-hop, the stuff that makes for classic albums. The PTB producers are clearly riffing off each other rather than chasing the hyphy train, yet they don’t sound like they’re in a vacuum. The in-house tracks on Turfology blend seamlessly with beats by young North Oakland producer Jamon Dru of Ticket Face, Charlie O of the Hard Labor camp, and East Oakland’s Mekanix.
“Their music is real current and authentic,” says Clear Label Records head Tajai during a session for the upcoming Souls of Mischief album.
Tajai heard some of Beeda’s demos by chance in a friend’s car and immediately got in touch with PTB. Having dropped several of his own solo albums and collaborations, Tajai was looking to expand his roster with other artists. Along with Baby Jaymes and R&B singer Chris Marisol — both of whom are scheduled to release albums next year — Beeda Weeda and PTB made Clear Label suddenly one of the hottest imprints in the Bay. Tajai dismisses the notion that a hood rapper like Beeda is incongruous with Hiero’s “backpacker image.” “Hiero is from East Oakland. Beeda’s a real serious artist and student of rap in general, and I want Clear Label to be a forum for that kind of artist.”
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
In the months since signing with Clear Label and preparing for Turfology to drop, Beeda has busily maintained his buzz on the mixtape circuit. “Tajai gives us the avenues, but as far as promoting, we do that on our own. Since I’m a new artist, we did The Orientation, had DJ Backside mixing it. That had about 12 songs on there and two originals. The game out here is so saturated. I was, like, ‘Let’s give them away.’ So we started passing ’em out in different cities; next thing you know, my name started ringing.”
At the end of May, Beeda dropped a second mixtape, Homework, mixed by the Demolition Men and consisting of PTB originals. A classic in its own right, Homework, with its organ-driven title track by Jamon Dru, is still banging all over Oakland, unlikely to be silenced even by Turfology’s release.
As we wrap our discussion, the PTB house in the Dubs is virtually empty, prior to being sold. The organization is getting too big to stay in the hood, and the camp is shopping for an industrial space.
“I love this place,” Beeda says. “When our studio was outside the hood for a while, I used to find myself driving out for no reason. I just missed it.” Clearly, the MC is connected to his community, and even if PTB has to relocate, it’s clear that he and his crew have no intention of leaving it behind. SFBG
www.myspace.com/beedaweeda

T off

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER You scream, I scream, we all scream for … the black concert T. It’s the music-merch phenom that will always annoyingly outsell all other comers, as Brad Hudson of JSR Merchandising explained at SXSW earlier this year. Keep your bandeezys and doggie baseball jerseys — the black T-shirt is the Coke Classic of live-show sales, the fail-safe upon which Stones tours are built. Why? Well, as one multitentacled insider recently announced to me, you can’t download a T-shirt!
But what to wear after that? It wasn’t hard to figure that out during my struggles through the two recent diva releases, Beyoncé’s strident, backward-glancing sophomore full-length, B’Day (Sony BMG), and Paris Hilton’s microdermabrasioned lite-pop debut, Paris (Warner Bros.). Both CDs find the ladies busily hawking duds and assorted nonmusical product. Why even bother critiquing what lay embedded in the shiny plastic discs behind Beyoncé’s eerily blank Madame Tussaud’s wax cover image or Hilton’s sleek rich-bitch-slash-sexpot pose? Why celebrate Hilton’s easy, sleazy, ultimately unfulfilling musical grabs at the Grease soundtrack and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” or bash Beyoncé’s dog-note shrieks (she’s playing Diana Ross in Dream Girls, so why compete on record?) and frantic but intriguing ladies-first messages? These CDs are so clearly vehicles from which to launch clothing lines (in Beyoncé’s case, her mother’s Dereon by House of Dereon label, baldly peddled in the inside booklet) and perfume (Paris’s Heiress, as well as handbags and watches).
Too bad then that Beyoncé has simultaneously hit a fashion low point, modeling a hideous mod houndstooth swimsuit and bastardized Bardot milkmaid frills on her CD — B has been damaged by one too many Guess Jeans and Baby Phat advertising campaigns, I presume. All of which could have been forgiven if Beyoncé had coughed up a track on par with “Crazy in Love” — but no such luck. The emergency-siren sample of “Ring the Alarm,” echoed on Paris’s opening, “Turn It Up,” can’t save that siren’s single; I prefer the unexpected guilty pleasure kick-him-to-the-curb power ballad “Irreplaceable.” How telling that as the B girl declares war on good taste on B’Day, the worst faux-fierce track is titled “Freakum Dress.”
Amid all this accessorized insanity, we should thank our musical deities that when it comes to local clothes hos, we have been gifted with the gifted Music Lovers. The band’s singer-songwriter, Matthew “Ted” Edwards, has been much in demand of late. When he and drummer Ping Chu sat in last month at the Sonic Reducer DJ night at Hemlock Tavern, the Birmingham, England, native was psyched about the group’s rave reviews in Europe and was occupied writing the music for superfan Margaret Cho’s latest burlesque project, “Sensuous Woman Cabaret,” and rehearsing with Cho at the Plush Room. But who wants to get into details about the new Music Lovers’ Guide for Young People (le Grand Magistery) — and its songs of kebabs and lager (“Brother, I Am Walking”) and a certain Anglo avant-garde Marxist composer (“Thank You, Cornelius Cardew”)? Edwards would much rather discuss the Music Lovers’ love of shopping.
“We adhere to a pretty strict dress code, which is enforced by all of us,” he told me recently over the phone, “because it’s respectful to the audience. I want to say I made an effort and do the best I can. I’m not interested in seeing another group of lads in T-shirts.”
So the besuited Music Lovers are actually a little like — the Ramones?
“Except we’re tidier,” he replied. “I make no apologies for that. I’ll spend my last 60 bucks on a decent shirt.
“We’re a band apart.”
You have to admire such a hard stand on the seemingly superficial topic of style, but then Edwards does fall in line with a mod way of thought: dress sharp, seize that dream, and maintain a sense of dignity even if you have to spend every bit of your bellhop wages to do it. Likewise, the rangy, suave pop Guide, which boasts harder-rock moments than the Lovers’ debut, The Words We Say before We Sleep, maintains a subtle, knifelike edge and wit that a cultural connoisseur like SF-reared comedian Margaret Cho can appreciate. “I think that the Music Lovers are the greatest, and I love working with them because they have such a sophisticated sound, completely new yet strangely familiar,” she e-mailed me. “Listening to them feels like I’m stepping into a film like Purple Noon or Belle du Jour, and I have really long earrings on that almost touch my shoulders.”
It takes an effort to maintain that romantic mood: Edwards, 38, never quite recovered from his “horrific experience signed to Virgin as a fresh-faced 20-year-old” fronting an R&B and pop band. “We recorded an album with a guy named Pete Walsh who recorded Climate of the Hunter with Scott Walker, and we made this incredible album. And Virgin put it on the shelf. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, but I’ll never be on another major label.”
Since then, Edwards, now an occupational therapist, has been accruing the experience that comes in handy when writing songs about artful eccentrics like Cardew: he once called bingo numbers and sang covers aboard a Scandinavian cruise line and did a tour of Italian communist clubs. “We’re a band of Little Edies,” Edwards declares when I ask him for his favorite character from the brilliant Grey Gardens, the Maysles’ documentary that graced the cover of the Lovers’ 2003 EP, Cheap Songs Tell the Truth. “I probably veer between Little Edie and [handyperson] Jerry. Sometimes I’m Jerry and I mope around the garden. But I could also be Big Edie, because I do have a tendency to lie in bed covered with cats.” SFBG< MUSIC LOVERS Thurs/14, 8 p.m. Amnesia 853 Valencia, SF Call for price (415) 970-0012 Fri/15, 6 p.m. Amoeba Music 1855 Haight, SF Free (415) 831-1200

Death by satire

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› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION In honor of George W. Bush’s efforts to stop torture by setting up secret CIA prisons and promote freedom by expanding government surveillance powers, I think we should spend a few days contemputf8g another great thing this administration has done for the world: it has reinvigorated political satire.
What was The Daily Show before the USA PATRIOT Act? And where would international pranksters the Yes Men be today without this administration’s asshattish policies?
Thanks to the Internet, satire can be instant and lethal. Certainly it’s not always pretty, but it’s more effective as social criticism than it was in an era before jesters could respond within hours to current events and broadcast their pranks globally.
I’m still a big fan of the widely condemned fake execution video made by three San Francisco multimedia geeks in 2004. Benjamin Vanderford, who plays experimental music in several bands, decided to make the video in response to the media hysteria around the Nick Berg execution video. He’s said that the video wasn’t a partisan protest of the war itself, but instead a wake-up call to the media, which he criticized on his Web site (videohoax.ctyme.com) for doing “no fact-finding” and being so “centralized” that they’ll reprint anything from Reuters or the Associated Press without verifying it.
With the help of Laurie Kirchner and Robert Martin, Vanderford filmed himself tied up in a dingy room as if he’d been kidnapped in Iraq. He stated his real name and address and urged the United States to get out of Iraq. Islamic chants played in the background, and every few seconds a picture of a grisly execution appeared. “We need to leave this country alone or all of us will die like this,” Vanderford said before the video cut to a grainy image of somebody sawing his head off with a butcher knife.
He and his buddies made the video available on their hard drives to anyone using the P2P networks Kazaa and Soulseek. Because the Berg execution video was all over the news, thousands of people were scouring P2P networks for anything with the word “execution” in the title. The video soon turned up on an Islamic Web site, which is how the US media got wind of it. AP and several papers published stories about the video without ever bothering to look up Vanderford, verify his existence, or check the address he used in the video (which was his real home address).
Sure, the message was ugly and the video is actually quite disturbing to watch. But it was the very best kind of social satire — it proved Vanderford’s point that the media were so eager to lap up any news that could feed the terrorism frenzy that they weren’t bothering to do even the most rudimentary fact-checking. Of course, the news outlets whose shoddy practices had been unmasked by this prank were quick to condemn Vanderford and cover their asses. Fox ran a bogus segment featuring a “legal adviser” who said Vanderford had broken the law (he hadn’t), and AP deputy editor Tom Kent claimed that his organization did eventually check the veracity of the tape by “banging” on Vanderford’s door at 4 a.m. and filming him in his underwear answering questions about the hoax (you can see clips of this seminaked interview online).
Possibly the stupidest responses to the hoax came from people who claimed that it hurt people and therefore Vanderford and pals should be punished. Stanford professor of communications Ted Glasser told the San Jose Mercury News that releasing the video was “like bombing a building to see if security measures are in place.” Despite the foolishness of this comment, it reveals how strongly people are affected by well-aimed satire.
I’d rather watch a dozen fake execution videos if it would make the media more careful about buying into government and corporate propaganda. I live for the day when satire is like bombing a building — because nobody actually bombs anyone anymore.
See, that’s the beauty of satire — it hurts, but only in your conscience. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who can’t wait to watch videos of the Yes Men masquerading as HUD officials in New Orleans.

NOISE: Bingo! And bangin’, bizzy Deerhoof

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Taxes, zits, and coffee breath – these things are eternal. Add to that list “Rock ‘n’ Roll Bingo” at Blankspace in Oakland on Sept. 1. This third installment of the Oakland Art Murmur event featured the Bay’s winning bro-duo Moore Brothers and Santa Cruz chamber-goofers Antarctica Takes It (Bookends canceled, shoot). Most amazing – this writer took home an awesome prize (a fine alternative to the unicorn thrift scores): a tote bag design original by artist Tonya Solley Thornton. Bingo, indeed.

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Game? All photos by Kimberly Chun

A few days later on Sept. 5, we stopped by Great American Music Hall to catch Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog (with longtime local Ches Smith on drums) and our pals Deerhoof.

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Onetime guitarist-bassist Chris Cohen will be missed, but man, has John Dieterich stepped up, big time. The ‘Hoofies are approaching their songs from new, streamlined angles. Awesome, as usual. Before the show, drummer Greg Saunier had tales to tell from the road and Radiohead (Jonny Greenwood did their lights on their last show together in Europe, Saunier said).

Deerhoof was off to LA right after the show, he added, to finish mixing their forthcoming new album, Friend Opportunity, which the band worked on while out with Radiohead (it’s scheduled to come out Jan. 23, 2007). Next it was off to tour the East Coast with Flaming Lips.

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When will we see Greg, Satomi, and John again? Not soon – the trio was also in LA recording and co-composing a score for Justin Theroux’s new film, Dedication, starring Billy Crudup, Mandy Moore, Tom Wilkinson, and Amy Sedaris. And a Milk Man ballet, inspired by the Deerhoof album, is in the works in October at the North Haven Community School in North Haven, Maine. Their likes won’t be seen again till Nov. 11 at RIOTT! at Bill Graham Civic. So count yourself lucky, Deerhoofies, that you saw ’em before they scampered off into the wilds again.

Gala Symphonix

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The noses were small, the dresses were expensive, the Mayor was in attendance, and the music was sublime. Yep, I crashed the annual SF Symphony Opening Gala, chockful o’ Zellerbachs, Wilseys, DuPonts and whomever else rich-like, and lived to blog all about it (despite being almost kicked out for yodeling during the singing of the National Anthem, ahem.)

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“Pose for the Guardian? I’ve been in National Geographic, and I thought that was weird …” (actual quote)

MONDAY

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Sept. 11

Music

Spencer Day

Spencer Day is San Francisco’s own portal to the past: Old Blue Eyes has nothing on this kid. Hailing from a highly musical family in Utah, he commands a microphone and steers a piano into places seldom heard these days. Enchanting audiences, Day spins a room into flickering black and white, conjuring trench coats and pearls, finger weaves and cigar smoke. (K. Tighe)

With Same Shape and Joe Bagale
9 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$15
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
www.spencerday.com

Visual Art

“Terror? An International Interdisciplinary Project”

Five years on, the lack of localized art events directly responding to Sept. 11 is a little surprising. Count on Intersection for the Arts to weigh in with an exhibition that steers clear of the jingoism currently crowding movie theaters and television screens. Composed of hundreds of works on paper from around the world, “Terror?” takes on the title subject from myriad personal and political angles. The exhibition is augmented by other events at the space later this month, such as a “War on Terror” discussion led by activists Tram Nguyen and Sandip Roy. (Johnny Ray Huston)

6-9 p.m. reception; through Nov. 11
Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia, SF
Free
(415) 626-3311
www.thintersection.org

WEDNESDAY

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Sept. 6

Music

Chromatics

It’s easy to be confused about the Chromatics. The Portland group used to be a herky-jerky four piece made up of two men and two women, but the ladies left to form Shoplifting. Only Adam Miller remains from the original lineup, but all along Glass Candy’s Johnny Jewel, who has now joined the band, has produced their records. With Natty Miller rounding out the trio, today’s Chromatics have moved on from their kicking and moaning youth to the more grown-up and sophisticated world of disco. (Deborah Giattina)

With Glass Candy and Clipd Beaks

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

9:30 p.m.

$8

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

Stage

San Francisco Fringe Festival

Not every show worth seeing happens under the big top. That’s what’s so great about fringe festivals. They allow both the amateur and seasoned performer with a curious idea to put on a sideshow both offbeat and electrifying. At this year’s 15th Annual San Francisco Fringe Festival, theatergoers can enjoy edgy and creative spectacles of all stripes, as the SF Fringe has booked 49 acts to put on more than 200 performances in fewer than two weeks. Take a break from the banality of the everyday with Jack Halton, who will roll a rock up Powell in Sisyphus on Vacation, a Drive-By Theater Production. (Giattina)

Through Sept. 17.

Call or see Web site for showtimes, locations, and prices (festival passes, $35–$65)

(415) 673-3847

www.sffringe.org

Air Americana

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Madonna and her scantily-clad kabbalah practice may have been ousted by the Russian Orthodox Church, but rest assured, oh ye faithful, the Silver Jews are finally coming to San Francisco. The band, often mislabeled as a Pavement side project, actually coalesced before Pavement, though the two backstories share a history of caustic revelation.
David Berman, guitarist-vocalist Stephen Malkmus, and drummer Bob Nastanovich formed the Silver Jews in 1989 while students at the University of Virginia. After graduation, they took the budding project with them to New York. Their music thrived in that city’s frenetic air. The band’s roster has changed continuously, but Berman, a heartbreaking writer and constant innovator, has always been at the helm. It’s his project, his voice.
Berman will be turning 40 in January. Four awe-inspiring full-lengths, a host of smaller projects, and a well-received poetry book (1999’s Actual Air) have placed him firmly in the cultural spotlight, often against his will. Berman is a recluse in some ways, a natural wordsmith — and instantly demanding performer — in others. He’s given the Bay Area numerous poetry readings but never a rock show.
Until now. Berman has been through some tough, emotionally trying shit lately, but he’s back, with the eloquent deadpan that has made him the envy of songwriters, indie philosophes, and music junkies everywhere. Longtime fans may call this unprecedented tour a resurrection, but Berman laughs it off. “I’d always planned to be a middle-aged performer,” he jokes via an e-mail interview. “This year has just been the run-up to the start of my contract with the Missouri River Blues Barge’s Menthol Topaz Casino.”
Waiting for a new Silver Jews album is like waiting for John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats to take the stage: everyone is ready to be shattered and jubilant, lyric by lyric, tune by tune. On 2005’s Tanglewood Numbers, the first Silver Jews effort since 2001’s Tennessee (both Drag City), Berman’s voice sounds deeper than ever, as if it might break at any moment and never come back.
The Tanglewood crew is rather big — 13 folks including Malkmus and Will Oldham — but that’s just how they do it in Nashville, where the record was recorded and mixed. Other Nashville-ized albums by the likes of Cat Power and Oldham these past years have taken some getting used to. Tanglewood hits the heart instantly.
Berman’s vocal duos and duals with his wife, Cassie, who plays a variety of old-timey instruments on Tanglewood, are organic and intensely personal. “Humans have been failing Human Relationships 101 for half a million semesters straight now,” writes Berman. The ability to perform back-and-forth vocal lines is “one of the many things you can do more easily under a band name than as a solo artist,” he notes. “Different souls are in the music.”
On “I’m Getting Back into Getting Back into You,” the Jews sound trapped in a psychedelic small-town roller-skating rink, needing to raise their voices to be saved. But maybe we’re all trapped. “I’ve been working in an airport bar/ It’s like Christmas in a submarine,” Berman croons. An ominous “om” sneaks in at the end of the tune.
Since their first recordings, made on answering machines and Walkmans, Berman and the Jews have been proving that our main roads are really back roads and vice versa. He writes of those early days: “Getting the tape back after a good performance was hell — first the breaking and entering …” Americana, broadly defined, is sustained by such neighborhood trickery. When Lucinda Williams revisits childhood gravel roads or Darnielle sings about hearing the screams of football season, particularly American landscapes reveal what we had always thought were private obsessions. Such artists gain a universal appeal by taking local scenes and spraying themselves all over them. It’s sound graffiti and it feels so good.
Berman’s current plan is deceptively simple: “To keep making these different versions of the master Silver Jews album in the sky.” On Tanglewood, “How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down?” rocks hard but also highlights Berman’s tragicomedy: “Time is a game only children play well/ How can I love you if you won’t lie down?”
The Mezzanine performance will feature Peyton Pinkerton and William Tyler on guitars — Pinkerton played on 1996’s The Natural Bridge, Tyler on 2001’s Bright Flight (both Drag City) — Brian Kotzur on drums, Tony Crow on keyboards, and Cassie Berman on bass. Even the lineup gets Berman going. “Peyton is a descendent of William Henry Harrison…. I’m convinced that many of our country’s best electric guitarists are the far-flung descendents of mediocre 19th-century American presidents.” SFBG
SILVER JEWS
With Monotonix and Continuous Peasant
Sun/10, 8 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$19.99
(415) 625-8880
www.mezzaninesf.com

Back from the country

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› johnny@sfbg.com
At the end of our transatlantic phone conversation, I tell Vashti Bunyan to have a good night, and she tells me to have a good day. She’s relaxed at home in Edinburgh, Scotland, where her friend Jenny Wright — whom the first track on the new album Lookaftering (Dicristina Stair) is dedicated to — is staying for a visit. “We really haven’t seen each other at all over the last 30 years,” Bunyan says when I first ask about Wright, not knowing that she’s in fact sitting nearby. “She just happens to be staying with me right now! That’s really, really lovely.”
Reunions that span over 30 years — and ones that are really, really lovely — are something Bunyan’s devoted admirers fully understand. Defined by the forest flute-and-vocal duet of its singular title track, her first and for a long time only full-length recording, the Joe Boyd–produced 1970 Just Another Diamond Day (Dicristina Stair), is the rare kind of cult recording that deserves its cherished status. In essence, it’s an aural document of a horse-drawn journey to the Isle of Skye — a trip that she recently made once again for a film project by Kieran Evans, who first directed her in the real-life role of a native Londoner in Saint Etienne’s 2003 film Finisterre. “We went up to the Hebrides to film the end,” she says in a warm, soft-spoken tone of voice not unrelated to her singing. “It’s been quite a revelation to see all those places and have to think about that time again.”
Even Bunyan’s fans can’t be blamed for mistakenly thinking that she’s still living the magic-tinged pastoral life conjured by Just Another Diamond Day, her famed collaboration with members of Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band. The cover of Bunyan’s Lookaftering features a profile of a regal-looking hare (“You call it a jackrabbit, don’t you?” she says) painted by her daughter, the artist Whyn Lewis. It begins with the Wright-inspired composition “Lately,” which down to its very title suggests little has changed in Bunyan’s world of sound except some subtle alterations for the better: the new album’s pace is a bit more relaxed, the already unique dedication to exploring thought and feeling even deeper.
Lookaftering’s most gorgeous melody might be the one within “Hidden.” “I wrote it for my boyfriend,” Bunyan says when asked about the song’s roots. “When I showed it to him, he was quite upset by it, and I couldn’t understand why. I thought it was a very loving and tender song, but he thought it meant he didn’t understand me or I didn’t understand him. But now, whenever I sing that song — and I usually start the show with it — I think he’s really pleased.”
Some of that pleasure is partly thanks to Devendra Banhart, who is only the most dedicated and high profile of Bunyan’s current-day admirers, who also include Animal Collective and Piano Magic. “I was so frightened of performing live,” she admits when asked about her return to the public eye (if it is indeed that, considering her reclusive nature the first time around). “I couldn’t even record an answering machine message. I asked Devendra how he could do it, and he said, ‘You just have to do it — there’s no other way. You have to do it until it becomes normal.’ After 10 shows or so I realized that my knees weren’t shaking anymore and I was actually enjoying it. I’m so grateful to Devendra for just saying the truth — you do what frightens you until you aren’t frightened anymore.”
For Bunyan, both the advice and support from Banhart and his associates have been a revelation. As a young artist she felt an unspoken bond with French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy (“She was the only person with whom I felt any kinship at all”) and oft silently bristled against the patriarchal aspects of Svengali Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones, and the overall competitiveness of her then-peers from swinging London. “Fancy ball gowns were the things they wanted to put me in — no way!” she remembers with a laugh. “When I started out at 18 or 19, the recording process was fascinating to me. But because of the way things were then, a shy girl could never get access to the actual production method.”
Today, Bunyan’s using her home computer to perform mirror-perfect duets across the ocean with Banhart and to make her own music without interference. The descendant of John Bunyan (“I was never made to read Pilgrim’s Progress when I was young — thank goodness, because I would have rebelled”) has even discovered a certain rhythmic and lyrical connection within the writing of her famed family member. She’s also made peace with her traveling past: “Back in the time [Loog Oldham and I] were working together, I think we hardly exchanged two words. But now there’s so much to talk about, and he’s so helpful and wise and just brilliant to remember things with.”
The shy country girl of musical myth is a city woman with grown kids now — and all the wiser for it. “I was talking with Jenny Wright about that just today,” Bunyan says. “In a small community you can go a certain kind of mad, really — I think human beings need lots and lots of different kinds of people to relate to and communicate with, and they finally find their own way.”
“I did desperately turn my back on the world and go off with a horse and wagon,” she says. “But I didn’t stay there!” SFBG
VASHTI BUNYAN
Thurs/7, 9 p.m.
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
$20–$24 ($39.95 with dinner)
(415) 885-0750
www.gamh.com
For the complete interview with Vashti Bunyan, visit Noise at www.sfbg.com/blogs/music.

To live and cry in Albany

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Remember the first time you strolled into the Ivy Room? The rec room wood-panel walls, a bar with a clear shot of a view into a homey live space, a jukebox that spun 45s, a pinball machine, the regulars in cutoff T- and Hawaiian shirts (always accessorize with a bulbous gut, please) who warmly welcomed hoodies and strangers alike. The gun emporium down San Pablo Avenue was the first indication that you were in an interzone between then and now, us and them, where a free-speech, increasingly affluent Berkeley began to cave to a live-free-or-eat-hot-lead working-class East Bay. The down-low Albany spot has been one of the last bastions outside Oakland, nay, the entire Bay, where you could imagine yourself in the thrall of the red state blues once again. Where you could imagine peeling yourself off the floor and walking out into some Southwestern furnace to roast like a relleno.
When the late Dot and later her son Bill MacBeath first took on the ’40s-built Ivy Room in ’92 (moving up the street from the It Club, which Dot had watched over since 1978), a point was made in cultivating a roots, country, rockabilly, and blues scene that was slowly vanishing from the area — with the exception of Downhome Music, the Arhoolie label HQ down the street. At the time, MacBeath says, “it was a really scary old-man bar that I would never have thought of walking into.” But the Ivy proved a bigger tent than that — taking on indie rockers and hip-hop crews and providing a sweet little platform for performers like Jonathan Richman, Sugar Pie De Santo, Chuck Prophet, Kelley Stoltz, Neil Michael Hagerty, Jon Auer, Wayne “the Train” Hancock, the Lovemakers, the Loved Ones, Pinetop Perkins, Deke Dickerson, Gravy Train!!!!, and oodles of others.
“I tried to create a place where musicians could play and express themselves,” explains MacBeath, who booked the music until 1999, when Sarah Baumann took over. “People can appreciate that, and it was also a regular neighborhood bar at the same time.” Why hang in Albany if you don’t live close enough to stumble home in a drunk? These acts gave you a reason — along with the Ivy-clad crew and their genuine, rapidly vanishing, and all-too-often-remodeled-out-of-existence vibe, a relic of a time when the Embers in the Sunset served up sad clown paintings along with sloe gin fizzes and Mayes in the Tenderloin offered crab, cocktails, and comfort in ’20s-era wood booths.
But that was then — MacBeath is ready to move on and has sold the venue, which plans a final blowout weekend Sept. 15–17 showcasing Ivy fans and friends before the ownership changes Sept. 18.
MacBeath can’t say this chapter will entirely close on the club, yet one can naturally expect change to come to a beloved relic like the Room. “I’m trying not to be sad about that,” he says. “The bar is not going away.” However, he adds, “I don’t think it’s really current anymore.” We the flesh and blood relics appreciate it, but we’re “not really here as much as I think they should be — for how cool it is.”
DONDERO’S NOT DONE According to the online list of auspicious locals who have played the Ivy Room, stellar songwriter Dave Dondero has never graced the joint. But I’m sure he would if he could — and maybe even start a semistaged brawl with his drummer, Craig D, as he did at the Hemlock Tavern so long ago. True to the title of his 2003 Future Farmer album, The Transient, the man continues to wander: I caught up with him in Austin, where he had just completed the recording of his latest album for Conor Oberst’s Team Love imprint, tentatively titled When the Heart Breaks Deep.
The songs, Dondero says, revolve around his life in the last year when he was living and bartending in Alaska and San Francisco. “I actually tried to write a real love song,” he explains, prepping for a tour with Centro-matic. “It’s always been a smarmy, poking-fun-at-love song. I felt like trying out that side of my brain, love expression in music, though I’m not sure what side of the brain love comes out of, mixed in with heart and guts, all working together.” “Simple Love,” for instance, concerns an SF relationship that didn’t pan out due to Dondero’s rambling ways.
In all, he’s happy with the new countryish, more piano-oriented album, which reputedly continues to show off Dondero’s considerable writing choppage. “It’s got a folk song called ‘One-Legged Man and a Three-Legged Dog,’ inspired by a one-legged man walking a three-legged dog in Golden Gate Park,” says the songwriter. “A match made in heaven.”
Recorded in a studio called the Sweat Box, sans Pro Tools (the faux funk-metal-country record is next, he jokes), the disc was designed to tug the heartstrings, Dondero explains. “It sounds kind of beachy. Easy listening. Soft rock. Adult contemporary,” he observes. “I’m 37. I’m making music for myself and hoping to try and make my mother cry on this one.” SFBG
DAVID DONDERO
With Centro-matic and the Decoration
Wed/6, 9 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
IVY ROOM FAREWELL SHOWS
With Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days, the Moore Brothers, the Loved Ones, Carlos Guitarlos, Rusty Zinn, Mover, Ride the Blinds, Eric McFadden Trio, “Soundboutique,” and Nino Moschello
Sept. 15–17, call or see Web site for times and prices
Ivy Room
858 San Pablo, Albany
(510) 524-9220
ivyroom.com

Late-night luau

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS I mean, they were already practically married, but my friends Little Him and Little Her officially said they did in the Presidio last weekend, and there was a decidedly islandish theme to the event.
Hawaii, I mean — so technically I should have been playing the uke instead of steel pan. But I’m not a very technical person.
And this isn’t the society pages.
It’s the food section. You want to know about my week in Idaho, right, being a semiprofessional cook for the first and probably last time ever? Among other whimsical dishes, I invented angeled eggs. Instead of mayonnaise, you use, predictably, barbecued chicken. And instead of paprika, fresh salsa.
There was a barbecued squash stuffed with refried beans, sausage, and olives, and another sausage poked suggestively through cored zucchini slices. A pork feast marinated in unripe green grape juice (thanks, Chrissy), rubbed with fresh herbs and basted in pear barbecue sauce — everything but the pig courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. “Jack” Poetry’s garden.
I love using what nature and hecklers throw at you. Barbecued green tomatoes (because deer kept knocking them off the vines). Barbecued overripe cucumbers …
What else rolled off the grill was, of course, my signature dish, barbecued eggs. Which, so you know, have come a long way since I last wrote about them, last winter, I think. I think I was cooking them then in meat grease and barbecue sauce in a bread pan in the wood stove. Now I pour the beat-up eggs into cored bell peppers with chunks of sausage and/or whatever … toothpick a strip of bacon around the rim of the pepper, skewer the toothpick with a cherry tomato, olive, onion, and/or also whatever. And stand them up on the grill. It’s not quite perfected yet, because they fall and spill and take forever to set; but it’s getting there, and it not only tastes better but looks 10 times prettier than huevos Dancheros did.
I have a term for what I do, cooking-wise: nouveau trash.
There are other words as well. But the important thing is that, like Little League baseball, I had a lot of fun doing it. And I had, in Johnny “Jack,” Eberle “Jack,” and Georgie “Jack” Bundle, an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. They were working hard recording music all day, every day, and if not for the chicken farmer would have eaten nothing but toast and Cheerios for a week.
At the end of which week, I dropped Mr. Bundle off at the Boise airport so he could make it to his grandpa’s 90th birthday party and delivered his car full of gear to Oakland. The “Hawaiian Wedding Song” was already stuck in my head, and this was a week before the wedding.
In case you don’t know it, you can easily imagine: it’s a wedding song! The lyrics are unadulterated cheese, but the melody is spectacularly all-over-the-place. I was going to have to learn it, and I didn’t have anything better to do with my ears between Boise and Oakland, so I looped the recording and sang and whistled and hummed and yodeled and just generally drove myself crazy.
Next day needing something to eat in the Sunset, I thought of Island Café, that new Hawaiian joint where JT’s all-night diner used to be. Taraval and 19th Ave. Thematically, geographically, it just seemed like the thing to do. And I was all alonesome still, and they have a counter. A great one. An even greater one than it used to be, because there’s a big TV now, and women’s golf was on.
Women’s golf goes good with Hawaiian food. Who knew?
Instead of Spam and eggs or barbecued chicken soup, which I didn’t see until too late, I got Loco Moco ($8.65). That’s three hamburger patties, three scoops of rice because I didn’t want the macaroni (because of mayonnaise), some cabbage, and of course gravy. But not enough gravy. I distinctly remember reading the word “smothered” on the menu in reference to gravy, and neither the burgers nor the rice scoops were what I would call smothered. They were dolloped.
But besides that I have nothing bad to say about my new favorite Hawaiian restaurant. The service was good and friendly. Women’s golf. Uke. Surfboard. Good music. Good vibe. Nothing’s more than 10 bucks. A lot of things are a lot less.
And — and this is a big and — they’re open till 2 a.m., and all night Thursday through Saturday. SFBG
ISLAND CAFÉ
Sun.–Wed., 8–2 a.m.; Thurs.–Sat., 24 hours
901 Taraval, SF
(415) 661-3303
Takeout available
Beer and wine
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible

Vashti’s progress: More than just another diamond night in San Francisco

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Vashti Bunyan is giving a concert at Great American Music Hall this week. To give an idea of how rare this event is, Bunyan has played fewer shows here than she has released albums, and she’s released exactly two long song collections: 1970’s justifiably adored Just Another Diamond Day and last year’s equally exquisite Lookaftering. With a little help from a calling card, I spoke with Bunyan recently about her not-so-hidden current bond with Devendra Banhart, her rather more secret past kinship with Francoise Hardy, the artistic leanings and pilgrim’s progress of the Bunyan family bloodline, the making of a Diamond Day movie, the cruelty beneath Swinging London’s fun, the wonders of home recording, and some friendly coincidences.

vashti1.jpg

Guardian: I just ran up a hill to buy a calling card. How are you?
Vashti Bunyan: I’m fine. I’m comfortably at home at Edinburgh, [Scotland].

G: Have you been living in the same place for many years?
VB: Yes, we’ve been here for 12 years, which is the longest I’ve been anywhere in my life. I keep thinking, “Maybe it’s time to go?” But yes, I’m back in the city after many years of country living.

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