New Music

Holy crap is there a lot of good new music coming out of the Bay this week

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Looking for something to get you past the hump of Hump Day? Well put down that “which Disney princess is your dog” quiz right this second, for a straight-up ridiculous amount of good new music was unleashed upon the world this week, with a disproportionate amount of it coming from our very own home turf.

Listen up, burst with pride, and let us know what else you’re listening to.

The debut Rich Girls EP we’ve been waiting for all year, Fiver,  is finally out on Breakup Records (full record here) and the Luisa Black-led trio has a release show tonight (Wed/8) at the Rickshaw Stop. Here’s album-opener “Worse.”

The Bay Area punk forefathers in Rancid, to whom we must admit a highly specific regional allegiance, will put out Honor Is All We Know, their first record in five years, at the end of this month. Here’s the first studio track they’ve released, “Face Up.”

The chilled-out Afro-electro-future-soul-tastic sounds of The Seshen, a Guardian GOLDIE winner from earlier this year, are lush and plentiful on their EP Unravelstream the whole thing right here — with UK label Tru Thoughts. Release show this Sat/11 at Leo’s in Oakland. Here’s the first video, for “Unravel.”

We’ve listened to this bit of jangly lo-fi sweetness from SF’s The Mantles at least a half-dozen times since they premiered it yesterday; they’ll have it out on a 7-inch next month via Slumberland Records.

And The Tropics, fresh off a win at the Music Video Race (with a rather different sort of aesthetic), released this video for “Fireproof” — a shot-by-shot remake of Marky Mark’s “Good Vibrations.” More, please. The Tropics’ Wind House is out Oct. 28 on Breakup.

And, lastly: Do you need convincing to watch a new tUnE-yArDs video? Didn’t think so. Ms. Garbus just announced she’ll be home for a show at the Fox Theater Dec. 11, with opener Cibo Matto (!).

 

Two-fer Tuesday: New music videos from Cathedrals and The Stone Foxes

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Because nothing showcases the breadth of music being made in the Bay Area better than some chilled-out electro R&B followed by a driving blues-rock sprint of a song: Here are the latest music videos from local faves Cathedrals and the Stone Foxes. 

The Cathedrals‘ first music video, for their song “Unbound,” marks one year since the duo began releasing music online — beginning with that tune, with Brodie Jenkins’ seductive singalong of a chorus over a layered symphony of Johnny Hwin’s guitar and synths. For the video, released today, the pair recruited Maria Kochetkova, a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, to perform in front of a light sculpture called Sugar Cubes, by SF artist Alex Green. Cathedrals’ debut EP came out this month on Neon Gold, and they’ll play Treasure Island Music Festival Oct. 19.

And in an entirely different vein, The Stone Foxes,  who are home this week after a whirlwind tour of the West Coast, gave us this brand-new video for “Locomotion,” in which our heroes — showcasing a good sense of humor alongside their lack of physical prowess — challenge a bunch of guys who actually know how to play basketball to an ill-fated game. “We thought, what kind of video could encapsulate the song’s story of the [band members] Koehler Brothers’ great grandfather running away from the authorities in newly communist Russia? A sports movie of course!” wrote the band by way of explanation. Gonna call that one a slam dunk.

The band promises to release new music the first Friday of every month for the next year, building up to an album in late 2015. For now, the Stone Foxes will kick off a residency at The Chapel Nov. 1 with Strange Vine. 

 

Double Duchess is back, and this time they’ve brought Kelly Osbourne

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Is the drab Friday weather outside getting you down as you gear up for a weekend full of leather- and whip-filled debauchery?

Never fear! You just need a dose of Double Duchess, the Bay’s favorite queer electro duo, who invited Kelly Osbourne to do a Jem and the Holograms-style bit in this video for “Good Girl Freak Out,” which also features LA’s Future People.

Check it out below, and catch the fabulousness that is DD — made up of emcee-producer davO and charismatic vocalist Krylon Superstar — when the duo performs live at the Elbo Room Oct. 3.

 

 

WATERS sign to Vagrant, drop new single “I Feel Everything”

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Van Pierszalowski, the songwriter and primary ringleader of SF’s WATERS, has always seemed like a guy on the brink of wide(r)spread stardom. The band’s music is an ear-pleasing mix of guitar-driven rock riffs and power pop hooks the size of Buicks; it’s radio-ready without feeling squeaky-clean, in no small part thanks to Pierszalowski’s plaintive vocals.

This may be the year it happens for WATERS. The band announced yesterday that it signed to the LA-based Vagrant Records, which will release its forthcoming EP, It All Might Be OK, on Oct. 14. And today we have this album-opening anthem, “I Feel Everything,” which has the deliciously raw feel of Pinkerton-era Weezer but with a fuzz-laden, wall-of-guitar chorus that seems ready for a stadium stage. Give it a listen below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7twqkSTUNI

 

Watch: Lil B’s “No Black Person Is Ugly”

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Because we’ve all been proving in this space lately that we’re intelligent, forward-thinking adults who can talk about ethnicity with nuance, sensitivity, and a deep understanding of the history of class issues and race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere, I’m just going to go ahead and post this new video from the 24-year-old East Bay rapper Lil B, aka Brandon McCartney, aka the Based God — who I am morally and perhaps legally obligated to mention is a product of the fine, tiny Albany public schools that (years before him) nurtured yours truly, among others — without too much commentary.

Suffice it to say that the song, with lyrics that straightforwardly call out how far this country has to go in its representations of African American people in pop culture and elsewhere, while simultaneously condemning street violence and rape  — I wish hearing a rapper say “no means no” wasn’t so damn surprising on the ears, but it is — basically overflows with warmth and positivity. It’s also a good reminder that the kid’s really got a decent flow, despite having made a gimmicky name for himself with songs that mostly got attention for being weird, like “I’m Miley Cyrus.”

That being the case, it’s tough not to wish he would put his obvious talent to work just a little more often. Vice called the track nothing short of “revolutionary,” and Pitchfork just named it best new track of the day. We’ll have to wait see what else is in store on the forthcoming mixtape that this new track is from, an album apparently, hilariously (while we’re discussing all this positivity) called Ultimate Bitch. Such is the enigma of Lil B.

 

This Week’s Picks: July 9 – 15, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 9

 

 

‘A Hard Day’s Night’

In 1964, Beatlemania thoroughly swept America. Fifty years after the Fab Four’s stateside and film debuts, San Francisco’s celebrations seem like a blast from the past. Aside from Paul McCartney’s August concert at Candlestick Park — coming full circle to where the Beatles played their last official show — the band’s 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night returns to U.S. theaters this month. Old age may be sneaking up on Macca, but the Liverpudlian boys’ moptops, music, and mockery of Paul’s grandfather are timeless. Stay in your seat for the second feature — the 1978 film I Want to Hold Your Hand chronicles some fans’ Beatlecentric shenanigans. (Amy Char)

5:30pm, 7:30pm, $11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

 

 

THURSDAY 10

 

 

Nicole Kidman Is Fucking Gorgeous at ‘Gorgeous’

Arty art-pop-performance-party mavens Nicole Kidman Is Fucking Gorgeous (John Foster Cartwright, Maryam Rostami, and Mica Sigourney) show up at the Asian Art Museum this week to host one night’s worth of grand gorgeosity on the occasion of the museum’s current exhibit — Gorgeous (June 20–September 14) — which delves into its permanent collection as well as that of SF MOMA for a cache of 72 fabulous pieces ranging across more than two millennia. Who better to “activate the spaces” of the museum with dance and performance than special guests Fauxnique (Monique Jenkinson), Fatima Rude, La Chica Boom, and DJ Hoku Mama Swamp. Casual dress? I don’t think so. But TopCoat Nail Studio will handle the mani with designs inspired by the artwork. (Robert Avila)

6–9pm, free with museum admission, $5 after 5pm

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF

(415) 581-3500

www.asianart.org

 


FRIDAY 11

 

 

Cynic

The world was not ready for Cynic when they first emerged in the late ’80s. The band’s jazzy prog-metal and anti-macho stage presence (inspired in part by members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert’s sexuality — Reinert calls their music “some gay, gay metal”) made them equal parts influential and reviled. On their first national tour opening for Cannibal Corpse, the extreme audience hostility they experienced was enough to make them call it quits for 12 years — during which time their reputation and influence grew. Since the crew’s 2006 reunion, they’ve enjoyed success and reverence, releasing two more albums and playing major festivals in the U.S. and Europe. Their upcoming Fillmore gig is a chance to see one of metal’s coolest influences rock a venue as comfortably and thoroughly as they deserve to. (Daniel Bromfield)

9pm, $22.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

 

Lia Rose

Formerly of Or, the Whale, San Francisco singer-songwriter Lia Rose has the kind of voice that seems like it could cut steel with its clarity — but instead, she’s going to pick up a guitar and carve you a lovesick, honey-and-whiskey-coated lullaby, with pedal steel or upright bass or banjo or all three helping to lull you under her spell. The timeless quality of her indie-folk pairs well here with opener We Became Owls, an East Bay Americana outfit that’s been gaining devotees like a steam train for the past year, despite not having an album out (this is their record release show). Gritty, Guthrie-esque sing-alongs are a distinct possibility here; maybe do some vocal warm-ups? (Emma Silvers)

9pm, $15

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

 

 

 

Hot Chip (DJ set)

Hot Chip’s catchy brand of electro-funk has buoyed the group’s five critically acclaimed albums. Their most recent release, 2012’s In Our Heads, is perhaps their best yet — “Don’t Deny Your Heart,” a harmony-heavy party anthem with irresistible vocals from Alexis Singer that capture all the melody of the Britpop era, was one of the most unique and danceable singles of its year. The group comes to the glitzy Mezzanine for a DJ set that promises to be full of mixing, subtle live instrumentation, and mash-ups of prior releases. The band has a penchant for debuting new music at their gigs (or else subverting their old tunes to an extent that they’re effectively entirely new tracks) and a smaller-scale dance club provides the perfect location for them to run wild. Also performing is local legend and Lights Down Low host Sleazemore and DFA records mainstay The Juan Maclean, who just dropped a stinging new single called “Get Down (With My Love).” (David Kurlander)

8pm, $16-$25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

 

SATURDAY 12

 

Sonny and the Sunsets

San Francisco’s Sonny Smith is a scattered man. He is a singer-songwriter, playwright, author, and curator who honed his musicianship in piano bars and travelling between the Rocky Mountains, the West Coast, and Central America. The music of Sonny and the Sunsets, his SF-based pop outfit with a revolving-door lineup, reflects the patchwork nature of Smith’s mind and talents, melding aspects of pop, doo-wop, indie rock, surf, and folk. Smith is a gifted storyteller and his compelling and wonderfully strange lyricism lends itself well to the demure Ocean Beach vibes of his music. The Sunsets’ most recent album, Antenna to the Afterworld, reflects on Smith’s experiences with the paranormal, and presents some of his strongest and most wonderfully weird material to date. Tonight’s show will feature a brand new lineup and material that’s never been heard before. (Haley Zaremba)

With The Reds, Pinks, and Purples, Bouquet

9pm, $15

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

 

 

 

The U.S. Air Guitar Championship Semifinals

The times, they are a-changin’. Now you can put “professional air guitarist” on your LinkedIn profile and actually justify the position. Unlike most artists who usually take the stage at the Independent, tonight’s stars left their instruments at home, but they’re ready to shred. Hear — or see, rather — contestants breathe new life into some of your favorite songs, including hits from years past. It’s time for a classic rock revival. AC/DC’s and Van Halen’s riffs inspire fans to rock out, sans guitars, as past contestants can attest to. No offense to Bob Dylan, but his brand of folk just isn’t that conducive to replicate on air guitar. (Amy Char)

9pm, $20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

 

Xavier Rudd

Xavier Rudd is a music festival’s wet dream. He’s a handsome, frequently shirtless, habitually barefoot Australian surrounded by dozens of instruments over which he has complete mastery —and he plays them all at once. Since debuting in 2002 with the album To Let, the one-man band has had a platinum album in Australia (Solace, released in 2004) and gigs at festivals across the Anglophone world, in addition to slots opening for fellow stage hounds like Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, and Ben Harper. Though he’s been sticking more to indoor venues on this leg of his American tour, his style should be well suited to the Fillmore — home to all manner of hippie-leaning, improv-happy artists since the heyday of the Dead. (Daniel Bromfield)

9pm, $25

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

SUNDAY 13

 

Darryl D.M.C. McDaniels

Neck of the Woods becomes a time machine on Sunday as Darryl McDaniels, better known as D.M.C., drops in for a nostalgic journey through the annals of 1980s rap. One third of the explosive rap innovators Run-D.M.C., McDaniels has kept busy since the dissolution of the group more than ten years ago, playing a full festival circuit, doing extensive charity work, and covering Frank Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp” with Talib Kweli, Mix Master Mike, and Ahmet Zappa for a pulsating track on a birthday compilation put out by the Zappa Family Trust. It’s hard to say whether D.M.C. will pull out anything quite as wild during this set, but expect zeitgeist-defining songs like “It’s Tricky” and “Walk This Way,” and hopefully some deeper cuts from the group’s later work (2001’s Crown Royal has some underrated tracks) and D.M.C.’s only solo album, Checks, Thugs, and Rock and Roll. Joining McDaniels on the mic are local groups the Oakland Mind and Jay Stone, each of whom have decidedly D.M.C.-inspired beats and flows and will offer up both politicized and party-themed bangers centered around the Bay. If you’re feeling like “Raising Hell,” then head over. (Kurlander)

9pm, $18

Neck of the Woods

406 Clement, SF

(415) 387-6343

www.neckofthewoodssf.com

 

MONDAY 14

 

BAASICS.5: Monsters

These aren’t the monsters that haunted your childhood nightmares. No, these monsters have matured alongside you, escaping their fantasy story homes and creeping into the minutiae of everyday life. A group of scientists and artists serve as their caretakers tonight, enthralling audiences with accounts of honey bees’ transformation into “ZomBees,” vampires’ affinity for the best coast (namely, California), Sasquatch sightings (guaranteed to be more terrifying than the music festival), and glow-in-the-dark plants (mundane, yes, but at least you won’t wet your pants in fear). Still, the multi-media presentation finds the delicate balance between artistic and hair-raising, while maintaining a somewhat spooky aura to keep you on your toes until Halloween. (Amy Char)

7pm, free

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odcdance.org

 

TUESDAY 15


The Dwarves

 The Dwarves came into the world as we all do, screaming and covered in blood. Formed in Chicago in the mid-’80s as The Suburban Nightmare, the hardcore punk outfit has since relocated to our fine city to wreak havoc. In their three decades of existence, the Dwarves’ lineup and sound have shifted from hardcore to shock rock. The twin pillars of the Dwarves, singer Blag Dahlia and guitarist He Who Cannot Be Named, however, have stood the test of time, and continue to deliver some of the most insane live shows and stunningly tasteless lyrics punk rock has to offer. Infamous for their short, bloody, and often nude live shows, the Dwarves are a legendary part of punk history and the San Francisco rock scene. Also featuring the equally notorious Queers, this show is going to be a doozie. (Zaremba)

With the Queers, Masked Intruder, the Atom Age

9pm, $20

Bottom of the Hill 1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

Liz Grant

Local stand-up comedian Liz Grant has gotten divorced twice and gone on an astonishing number of dates in the interim. Additionally, she has served as a “ghost online dater” for a busy executive. In her show “Dating Is Comedy,” she breaks down the contemporary SF dating scene and gets brutally honest about her various misadventures and heartbreaks along the way. While the show isn’t expressly designed for singles, Grant hopes that her words of wisdom will resonate with those who “have dated, are dating, or want to date.” With a thematic scope that large, Grant is sure to strike a funny bone (or perhaps a more fragile Achilles’ Heel) for anyone who has survived the rough seas of the dating world. Fresh off a 23-week run of another dating rumination, “Deja Wince: Lessons From a Failed Relationship Expert,” Grant is no stranger to baring her soul about the most universally distressing of all societal practices. (Kurlander)

8pm, $15

Punch Line

444 Battery, SF

(415) 397-7573

www.punchlinecomedyclub.com

 

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Live Shots: Burger Boogaloo 2014, Take #1

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About 30 minutes into this year’s Burger Boogaloo, I noticed a guy walking around in a Tool shirt. Ten minutes later, I saw another dude walking around in a Meshuggah shirt. This wouldn’t be so remarkable at most concerts, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this was ostensibly an indie rock concert. Most fans of progressive metal wouldn’t dare enter that often rigid and snobbish universe, just as most indie fans would consider those heavy-but-impeccably-produced bands well outside the accepted parameters of “cool.”

But Burger Babes, Burger Boppers, Burger Bitches, Burger Boys, and Burger Heads are not most indie fans. This is a community that has room for 5-year-olds and 70-year-olds, for classic-rock bar bands and summery beach-pop groups, for queer-as-fuck punk rockers and dudes with handlebar mustaches and chain-link guitar straps. In the often overly cool-conscious world of indie rock, it was not only refreshing but relieving to see a community this accepting. Messrs.Tool and Meshuggah might have been wearing those shirts ironically, but at an event like Burger Boogaloo, it would have been less cool to do so than to wear them with pride and earnesty.

boo

Burger seemed to be willing to throw anything at the audience. And at a single-stage festival with ample seating and few extraneous distractions (a “music & arts festival” this was not), there wasn’t much reason to ignore any of the bands. Given how few of these artists were recognized names outside of very underground regional circles, it seemed like the primary purpose of such a diverse lineup was to introduce the audience to as much new music as possible.

The most striking thing about the Burger Boogaloo lineup was how much older the artists were than at most indie showcases. Of the four headliners, none had a frontperson under 30.  Shannon Shaw of Shannon & The Clams is 31; Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer is 39; OFF!’s Keith Morris is 58; Ronnie Spector is 70. Milk ‘n’ Cookies have been around since 1973, The Gizmos since 1976, Phantom Surfers since 1988, the Muffs since 1991, and Bananas since 1993. Danny James’ Pear and Reigning Sound both seemed like middle-aged ensembles stuck in the rock era, and they could have as easily opened for Santana as Thee Oh Sees — yet this was not to their detriment, as they were all incredible musicians.

But with the exception of Spector (and Morris to some extent — more on this later), these artists weren’t cross-generational juggernauts or revered influences but rather veteran bands who had honed their craft in obscurity for years.  Though the audience could roughly be split into hip kids and older music-scene stalwarts, it was interesting to see both sides of the audience devour such unhip music with equal relish.  This indicated to me that Burger fans aren’t looking for the coolest, most cutting-edge music.  They’re just looking for a solid supply of rock ‘n’ roll to dance and party to, and Burger Boogaloo provided that and more.

* * *
DAY 1

The first day opened with White Fang, who were either the best or the worst festival opener I’ve ever seen. Frontman Erik Gage walked out in an American flag T-shirt, kissing his guns like the most cartoonish male lover imaginable, before tearing into a short set of songs chiefly about partying and marijuana.  Though they were sloppy and lacked any semblance of self-seriousness, they all but blew the two bands that followed offstage. Though Terry Malts and the Trashies were both competent bands with fine instrumentalists, their singers lacked any of White Fang’s charisma.

Wand upped the energy substantially; though they were a good band, I could not get past their uncanny sonic resemblance to Ty Segall, particularly his Fuzz project. But it was Thunderroads that pumped the energy back into the festival. Hailing from Japan, the trio rolled through a set of unhinged, ’50s-style rockabilly songs sung through thick accents that rendered most words incomprehensible except for rock’s great buzzwords — “rock ‘n’ roll,” “tonight,” “everybody.” Needless to say, they didn’t need much more to get their point across.

thunderroads

Next came the aforementioned bar band Reigning Sound, the extremely good surf band Phantom Surfers, and Sacramento punk band Bananas, whose caterwauling vocalist culled the crowd enough to secure me a prime audience position for Nobunny. Though his spirits were significantly lowered by the audience’s refusal to catch him were he to jump from the amplifier stack, the man in the bunny mask still put on one of the best shows of the night. He more than made up for his admittedly lacking vocal skills through a menacingly cartoonish stage presence, ample crotch-bulge display, and above all else, a set of great rock songs.

nobunny

Next came Milk ‘n’ Cookies, a ’70s power-pop band who could not distinguish themselves from the festival’s more pedestrian pop acts despite their clout. Finally, the big two headliners: OFF! and Thee Oh Sees.

OFF!, the current project of Circle Jerks frontman and founding Black Flag member Keith Morris, was by far the most interesting act at the festival. Morris has long given up adhering (or pretending to adhere) to punk’s staunch anti-commercial aesthetic, evident in his recent promotions with major brands like AOL and Vans (and Burger — OFF! isn’t actually on the label).  But he plays punk because it’s the music he loves — and he performs it with as much fury as in any of his previous projects.

And what fury. Despite his short stature, Morris seemed to tower over the sea of moshing kids at which he directed his harangues. It was an invigorating performance in part because of how tight the band was and in part because of how in love with the music Morris seemed — as pissed-off as his songs were, he looked genuinely happy to be up there.

off

Even better were Thee Oh Sees, whose recent departure for L.A. sent waves of dismay through the Bay Area music community but who are showing no signs of abandoning their hometown fans. Bar none, Thee Oh Sees were the best live band I’ve seen all year. Despite being a relatively new incarnation of the band (singer/lead guitarist John Dwyer being the only constant), they rocked as hard as ever, with Dwyer’s almost Hendrix-like guitarwork carrying the bulk of the sound this time around. But the true star of the show was Dwyer’s voice, a tiny coo that can nonetheless hold an entire crowd captive. He can scream as well as anyone, but why would he need to when he can do so much with so little?

thee

Thee Oh Sees’ music seemed to transcend genre. It was hard to say exactly where the roots of such music lay — there were elements of punk, metal, garage rock, and grunge, but none seemed like an apt signifier. Rather, the hallmarks of each genre combined into a monolithic slab of rock ‘n’ roll that encouraged the audience to move and engage with it rather than analyze it. This focus on rock as a form of music rather than an aesthetic or a concept unified all the bands of the day. At Burger Boogaloo, it didn’t matter how old or how uncool a band was — at the end of the day, it was all about getting down. And isn’t that what a rock show is supposed to be about?
 
DAY 2
 
After the head rush of Day One, it was hard not to be a bit disappointed with Day Two. The lineup pulled a lot of the same tricks to diminished effect. A lot of the bands seemed to be the equivalents of bands from the first day. Pookie & The Poodlez played White Fang’s role as the silly, punky opening act; Meatbodies played Wand’s role as the heavy, grooving jam band; The Gizmos filled Milk ‘n’ Cookies’ role as obscure power-pop legends unearthed from the annals of history. But the day also brought with it some pleasant surprises — not least of which was Ronnie Spector, whose dynamite set ran completely contrary to my expectations.

Pookie, a member of Nobunny, showed up onstage still brushing his teeth. (Apparently he’d overslept but luckily lived a few blocks away–though this is a fun story, the aesthetic appeal of a cute, skinny man walking out onstage with a toothbrush in his mouth to open a festival is just a little bit too good.)  His set was brief but fun, though the similarities to White Fang’s set were a bit obvious — especially after he introduced one of the songs as being about “Slurpees and kissing and marijuana cigarettes.”

The next run of bands was thoroughly disappointing. Summer Twins were, if possible, even more generic than their name suggests. Though my friend theorized they would sound like “Best Coast but less mainstream,” they sounded more like a Best Coast ripoff hastily assembled for a commercial by someone whose grasp on indie aesthetics was limited to 500 Days Of Summer. I was surprised a label like Burger (or any label) would sign such a band. The beach-rock fad has been over for over three years, and it’s easy to tell when a band is still clinging to it — usually they have words like “Summer” or “Twins” in their name.

Dirty Ghosts were interesting only because they were difficult to pin down in a genre — their music wasn’t quite funk, rock, punk, or psychedelia, but it was largely forgettable and didn’t benefit from its implacability. Danny James was similar to the previous day’s Reigning Sound but a lot tighter. La Sera was essentially a better version of Summer Twins. Meatbodies sounded like a less heavy Wand, while the Gizmos played with little effort or enthusiasm and could only have been there because of their clout as an obscure but veteran protopunk band.

Of the mid-day acts, folk singer Juan Wauters was the most enjoyable, but it was hard to tell if it was because of the quality of his music or because he was by far the most unique attraction of the day — he initially performed as a solo artist before being augmented by a bassist, a guitarist, and a percussionist. San Francisco band Personal & the Pizzas were likewise entertaining, but their schtick–pop songs about pizza and brass knuckles played by three tough-looking dudes–got old very quickly.
 
The Muffs ramped up the energy substantially. Fronted by Kim Shattuck (best-known these days for her brief stint in the Pixies), the group started out playing tough yet grooving pop songs driven by Shattuck’s ferocious voice. (She screamed an average of about 10 times per song.)  Yet their set never recovered from an ill-advised mid-performance slow song, which disrupted what could have evolved into full-on moshing but never progressed beyond a lot of enthusiastic bouncing and head-nodding.

shannon

Shannon & The Clams were a fine act, but they were disappointingly low-energy for their late placement in the lineup.  Their show was better because the crowd, desperate to mosh, took it upon themselves to have a good time. The result was a bizarre sort of mix of moshing and slow-dancing that mainly entailed a bunch of people shoving into each other at very deliberate speeds.  Being in the mosh enhanced the performance substantially; the Clams’ girl-group balladry was best suited for slow dancing, and brushing up against a bunch of random strangers with romantic music in the air is pretty much the second-best thing to that. Nonetheless, the fast-paced “The Cult Song” was the undoubted highlight.

I was expecting Ronnie Spector‘s set to be mostly just a glorified celebrity appearance from the woman whose run of Sixties records with the Ronettes inspired a substantial chunk of the festival’s acts.  Instead, I was surprised to be treated to the night’s most electrifying performance.  Over a top-caliber band of stern, professional-looking musicians, Spector let loose with her vocals in a way she was never able to do as part of the homogeneous Wall of Sound her ex-husband/producer Phil Spector pioneered.  Some of her vocal turns were absolutely haunting.  Though she may not sound like the twenty-year-old starlet she once was, she sounds now like what she is–an incredibly gifted vocalist with a natural presence as an entertainer and a long and tumultuous life behind her.

ronnie

But the true star of Spector’s set wasn’t her or her beehive hairdo but the songs, and one song in particular.  The words “Be My Baby” had been placed over the stage in gold balloons hours before, and the inevitability that she would perform it created a natural climax to the festival.  Either directly or indirectly, that song had inspired nearly every act there.  Its maelstrom production practically launched psychedelic rock, while its unmistakable drum opening has become an obvious way for backwards-looking pop acts from The Jesus And Mary Chain to Girls to pay tribute to their influences.

True, that drum opening was the most scream-inducing moment of the entire festival.  But I felt she played it too soon.  Her set was much shorter than it should have been, and deploying the ultimate weapon after only five songs ruined a bit of the song’s climactic nature.  Furthermore, her shout of “my favorite part!” over the reprise of the drum opening defused its impact. But I forgive her — I don’t know if she realizes how revered that song is in the indie community. 

ronnie

Furthermore, treating that song like a sacred artifact would be incongruous with what made Spector’s set so effective — that she wasn’t treated like a sacred artifact. As massive as her influence pop music is, I believe she was there because of her skills as a performer, not for the baggage her name carries. It would be contradictory to Burger’s ethos to bring such a revered artist on if she wasn’t a great performer. Burger Boogaloo isn’t about the mythology of old-school rock ‘n’ roll, but about the sound — and just how great it is to hear that sound live.

crowd

A benefit series aims to keep the unique Meridian Gallery afloat

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In 2001, interns at Powell Street’s Meridian Gallery planned and painted a 13×48 foot mural on the wall of the SRO Hartland Hotel, a few blocks away in the Tenderloin. The mural, a colorful and sunny street scene showcasing the multiculturalism of the neighborhood, was revered by residents and and left untouched for 10 years until it was vandalized by graffiti. In response, former interns who had worked on the project came back together and, alongside the current kids in the program, repainted the piece. The artists’ lasting willingness to help Meridian in times of need reemerges in a broader sense this week, which marks the climax of the gallery’s June Benefit Series (tonight’s entry: “16 Years of Meridian Music,” a diverse program of new music). 

Meridian Gallery, whose name comes from its mission to focus on hemispheric and cross-cultural interactions, is facing eviction. As rent around Union Square has skyrocketed, from $400 per square foot in 2007 to up to $3,000 today (according to retail consultant Helen Bulwik, quoted in a KQED report), many galleries have been forced to close their doors. The stately Perine Mansion, the three-story French Second Empire brick building where Meridian makes its home, is an especially attractive and lucrative piece of property. Instead of throwing in the towel, Anne Brodzsky, the dynamic co-founder of the gallery who has overseen its operations for over 25 years, has reached out to her friends. 

The original eviction notice was handed down in April. Some close to the gallery are convinced that despite any efforts, the rent will be impossible to pay. Others, Brodzky chief among them, think that the response to the bad news suggests a potential long-term rally from Meridian. Her optimism is fueled by two forces. First, on May 13, the SF Board of Supervisors beefed up affordability programs, including supplemental displacement funds and health benefits, for struggling art non-profits in the city. “I’m amazed by how they’ve managed to come together to help arts programs,” Brodzky exclaimed. 

More effective and instantly helpful than any bureaucratic assistance, however, have been the programs put together by artists affiliated with Meridian. Around the time of the Supervisors’ decision, Brodzky asked her gallery-mates if they were willing to stage an auction. The response was staggering; over 60 artists put up works. More astonishing to Brodzky, though, was the kind of excitement many of the participants exhibited for further events. “Bob Marsh, among many others, approached me and asked if they could stage fundraisers.” 

 Tonight, Marsh is one of the main attractions at the “16 Years of Meridian Music” showcase. An avant-garde visual artist and musician, Marsh discovered Meridian shortly after his arrival in San Francisco 14 years ago. “I started visiting galleries and found that Meridian had a wonderful monthly music series,” he says.

Marsh was inspired by the political sharpness of the organization. “I thought early on, ‘They’re not purveyors of bourgeois wallpaper,’ like so many galleries can be.” For Marsh’s offering, “The Visitor,” he’ll don his Sonic Suit #9, a wearable sculpture made from empty water bottles and other modern detritus, and engage in narrative movement to a musical accompaniment.

“He’s a visitor from another dimension,” Marsh says. “He arrives here, looks around, and has different reactions to the confusing environment that is our world.” Marsh debuted the ever-changing character at the Meridian and feels that its a fitting tribute to the openness and experimentation that the gallery fosters. 

Despite his excitement about the benefit, Marsh turns somber when discussing its necessity. “They have given so much with such passion,” he says. “It’s sad to see them persecuted by blind greed … I don’t think its personal, but everyone just wants a lot of money. Everybody thinks that’s some kind of virtue.”

Neither Brodzky, Marsh, nor other performers and Meridian affiliates with whom I talked  were quick to link the gallery’s financial troubles to a larger ill in San Francisco. They seemingly eschew that brand of macrocosmic victimhood and instead zoom in on what they can do to stay open, one step at a time. Their optimism may be healthier, but it does not mask the sad fact that rising rents are making grassroots galleries a thing of the past. If the artists continue to come together with the intensity of the mural renovation, auction, and benefit series, however, Meridian may just buck the trend.  

 

16 Years of Meridian Music: Composers in Performance

With Bob Marsh, Andrea Williams, Bryan Day, Phillip Greenlief and Jon Raskin’s 1+1, David Samas, Tom Bickley, and the Cornelius Cardew Choir

Thu/26, 7-10pm, $35

Meridian Gallery

535 Powell, SF

meridiangallery.org


Rep Clock: June 25 – July 1, 2014

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Schedules are for Wed/25-Tue/1 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ANSWER COALITION 2969 Mission, SF; www.answersf.org. $5-10 donation. Two Spirits (Nibley, 2009), Wed, 7.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7-10. “Rotterdam VHS Festival,” short videos, Thu, 8. “Mission Eye and Ear #5,” new music/sound and film/video collaborations by Dominique Leone and Brenda Contreras, Kyle Bruckmann and John Slattery, and Gino Robair and Bryan Boyce, Fri, 8.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Bonita, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $10 suggested donation. Born This Way (Tullmann and Kadlec, 2012), Sat, 7:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. Frameline 38: SF International LGBT Film Festival, June 19-29. For tickets and schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013), Thu, 8:45. Presented sing-along style.

JACK LONDON FERRY LAWN Clay and Water, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Thu, sundown.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema:” Mother Joan of the Angels (Kawalerowicz, 1961), Wed, 7; Innocent Sorcerers (Wajda, 1960), Fri, 7. “Kenji Mizoguchi: A Cinema of Totality:” The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), Thu, 7; The 47 Ronin, Parts I and II (1941/42), Sat, 6. “Rude Awakening: American Comedy, 1990-2010:” Waiting for Guffman (Guest, 1996), Fri, 8:50; Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993), Sun, 6. “Picture This: Classic Children’s Books on Film:” “Take Aways,” short films, Sun, 3:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. Frameline 38: SF International LGBT Film Festival, Wed-Sun. For tickets and schedule, visit www.frameline.org. Ping Pong Summer (Tully, 2014), Wed-Thu, 6:30, 8:20. Breathing Earth: Susumu Shingu’s Dream (Riedelsheimer, 2013), Fri-Sat, 6, 8; June 29-July 3, 7, 9. “Roxie Kids:” Panda! Go, Panda! (Takahata, 1972), Sun, 2.

SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. Breathing Earth: Susumu Shingu’s Dream (Riedelsheimer, 2013), June 27-July 3, call for times.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. Thy Womb (Mendoza, 2012), Thu and Sat, 7:30; Sun, 2. *

 

Fuck Buttons on their wildly visual live show, the writing process, and bringing “fuck” to the world stage

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“I think I’ve heard of them before,” is the kind of spineless response you’ll never hear if you ask someone about Fuck Buttons.  If you’ve heard them, you’ll most definitely will remember.  With music that elicits feelings of wonder and rebellion, intense live shows, and of course an, err — catchy name, Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung leave a lasting impression.

If you didn’t catch them when they played at The Independent last October, chances are you heard Fuck Buttons in 2012 when the band received arguably the most widespread kind of exposure — their tracks “Surf Solar” and “Olympians” were featured separately during the London Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Their self-produced third effort, Soft Focus, has earned the band a multitude of accolades, including an 8.7 and Best New Music honor from persnickety Pitchfork, as well as the #3 Dance Album Of The Year 2013 from Rolling Stone.

I got the opportunity to chat with Fuck Button Benjamin John Power about the process behind the band’s unique live performance set-up, as well as the AV show they’re bringing to the US for the first time.  The English experimental-electro duo are currently in the middle of a monthlong tour, coming back to The Independent this Fri/27.

San Francisco Bay Guardian So you just played North By Northeast. Taking some time off on the West Coast right now?

Benjamin John Power Yeah, that’s right.  Andy had to go home to a wedding so there is a slight break in the tour, but it’s cool.

SFBG I’m sure the time off to before the shows next week is welcomed.

BJP I get a week off in LA and my wife is coming out to join me for the time off. It’s nice to take a breather.

SFBG NXNE has such a diverse lineup, between all the acts and comedians.

BJP NXNE was great. Quick turnaround, but a really amazing crowd. I didn’t get a chance to see anyone else on the lineup, but I wish I could have seen Tim Hecker.

SFBG It’s funny you mention him. You’re familiar with Steve Hauschildt, yes?

BJP Yep, from Emeralds? I’m a fan.

SFBG I liken his and Tim Hecker’s music to your solo project, Blanck Mass. They form a genre I refer to as “lunar planning music.”

BJP Oh yeah? That’s a nice term.

SFBG I mean that in the best way possible.

BJP It is welcomed — fear not.

SFBG You recently played a show with Mount Kimbie that involved some some special visuals.  Can the stateside crowd expect anything like that?

BJP Yes, 100 percent. We have brought our full AV show with us this time — for the first time in the USA — so that’s totally in the cards. We wanted to make sure that the visual aspect wasn’t just a bunch of video loops, as a separate focus.  The visuals are interactive and in real time, so it’s a more interesting show and it’s working out really well.

SFBG Sounds great. I saw you last year at Primavera Sound, and your music translates really well on stage.

BJP Thank you. The live show and the recorded output go hand in hand, so when we write, we write in exactly the same way that we do when we play live — across the table from each other, with all the gadgets in front of us — so it translates easily into the live performance.

SFBG You also produced the last album (Soft Focus) yourselves — have other people been contacting you regarding production work?

BJP Yeah, a few people have.  We like to keep ourselves busy, and I think from working on the last record primarily by ourselves we have picked up some pretty helpful production tricks.

SFBG Last question — do you feel the word “fuck” is losing its potency?

BJP I don’t really think too much about the word fuck losing its potency. If anything, it probably makes my life easier, haha.

SFBG I can see that.  Being featured in the Olympics, you guys are like ambassadors of “fuck.”  Bringing “fuck” to the world stage.

BJP Yeah! Well, in those instances, everybody just seems to go with “F Buttons.” It’s really fine. What’s in a name anyway?

FUCK BUTTONS
With Total Life
6/27, 9pm, $20
The Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
www.theindependentsf.com

 

Doo-wop (that thing): talking with the cast of ‘Jersey Boys’

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The backstage musical that turned the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — known for 1960s doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen Fri/20 thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. 

Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). 

Still, the cast — including 2006 Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. I spoke with Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits) when the trio made a recent visit to San Francisco to promote the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tC1yOUvvMo

SF Bay Guardian This must be a crazy time for you guys.

John Lloyd Young It’s a very exciting time for all three of us, and including our fourth colleague Vincent Piazza [who plays Four Season co-founder Tommy DeVito]. This is our first major studio feature film, and we got to be directed by Clint Eastwood. 

SFBG Did he ever break into song on the set?

Michael Lomenda [Laughs.] It was very interesting, actually, to see him between takes trying to capture that Frankie Valli falsetto. I think it was an ongoing challenge for him the whole 38 days that we shot, to try and figure out how to manipulate his voice in that way.

JLY It was a tongue-in-cheek challenge, because it was all playful. He knew he wasn’t gonna sing like Frankie!

SFBG Few can! Though, you’ve been able to do it for several years. How do you keep your voice in shape to hit those notes?

JLY Well, you either have a falsetto or you don’t. If you have it, you just keep it in shape the same way any singer does. Obviously, singers, there’s certain things we can’t do. We can’t go out and yell all night in a bar. We shouldn’t smoke, we shouldn’t drink. The voice is very delicate. Those are very delicate muscles. Anything you do that’s not good for your body in general won’t be good for your voice. But, basically, just living a clean life. And Frankie Valli himself will tell you the same thing.

SFBG It’s interesting that you bring up clean living. I hadn’t seen the stage show, and I didn’t know much about the group before I saw the movie. But in every show-biz biopic, there’s always some kind of vice (usually drugs or booze, as in Walk the Line) that threatens to ruin the performer’s success. Here, it’s the mobster subplot — mobsters are not the typical vice.

Erich Bergen I think that’s one of the things that’s very interesting is that Frankie didn’t get into [drugs or alcohol]. That’s sort of the reason why he’s still around and he’s still on the road, because he’s been able to preserve not only his gift, but his life. Of course, he went through some harsh things in life. He went through a couple of marriages and divorces, and obviously he lost a daughter. Actually, and we don’t go into this in the movie, but he’s lost two daughters. He’s lived a very hard life. He didn’t need drugs or alcohol; that hard life came to him naturally. 

I think that’s what makes this story so interesting: we’re watching someone whose life is hitting him in the face. And we sort of identify with that. I don’t know about you, but for me personally, when I watch a lot of biopics and they start to get into the drugs and all that type of stuff — that’s where I sort of lose them a little bit, because that’s just sort of the generic story at this point. What makes Jersey Boys work is that we really connect with these guys because we identify with them. It’s written in a way that even when they’re not at their highest point, when they’re doing things that aren’t so great — especially the character of Tommy DeVito — we still root for them, and we still want them to succeed. 

SFBG The movie really shows how hard they had to work to be successful. It’s a stark contrast to the music business of today, where someone can become famous overnight thanks to a YouTube video.

EB That’s exactly what we talk about when we’re asked the question, “What makes this story so interesting?” If you look at the groups of today, whether it’s a One Direction or a Justin Bieber, before we actually know their songs, we know what they had for breakfast. But [the Four Seasons] really came at a time when you were trying to hide your real story and project out a shiny, clean image, because that’s what everyone wanted. That’s why Jersey Boys can exist today, because the story was never known. 

JLY I have a thought about that, too, which is that nowadays — without naming anyone by name — a lot of successful music acts are created as an idea in a marketing boardroom first, and then they find someone to fit that image. You know what I’m saying? It seems like the marketers are the stars nowadays. The more you can get an audience to feel there’s something really exciting there, and then get them there, then you’ve won. But when they get there and they don’t have a great experience, well, you already got their money, so who cares?

But I think at the time of Jersey Boys, to succeed you had to work really hard. There were only three networks, and there were very few print outlets. If you actually got on the cover of a magazine, or you got on a network, you made it. But you had to have something to show for it. You had to have talent, and especially that generation of Baby Boomers — the biggest generation we’ve ever had in American history. That’s a lot of people competing for which of the talented ones among them would become known. And the Four Seasons had the talent, but they also had that special, very distinctly East Coast, riveting-to-an-audience kind of thing, with that Mob connection that makes their story unique among that era of bands.

SFBG The movie makes it clear that they had to succeed, because they didn’t have anything to go back to.

ML It’s true. These guys are from the wrong side of the tracks. You have some choices. You can go in the army, you can get mobbed up, or you can become famous, as they say in the film. We also sort of say that they did two out of the three. But I think their music spoke for itself. They broke when their music had to speak for them, and that’s what made them successful.

EB The proof of that is that everyone knows these songs, but not the band. There are so many songs we don’t even get to in this movie, because we’d run out of time! That tells you how much talent they really had as performers, writers, producers — all of those things. Their catalog is endless, and yet nobody knew they were all by the same group.

JL I just saw Clint Eastwood on the Today show, and when they introduced him, they said the Four Seasons had 71 chart-topping hits. 71! I think that’s incredible for that band, coming out of that decade.

SFBG They were also commercially savvy. The songs were so catchy. No wonder people liked them.

ML I think that’s they key to why their music has stood the test of time. Maybe it’s commercially viable, and it is good pop music. But if you did a little deeper into some of the lyrics — for example, “Dawn” is one of my favorite songs, and they’re singing, “Dawn, go away, I’m no good for you, think about what the future would be with a poor guy like me…” It’s that kind of lyric that brings depth so what initially could be perceived as just pop, bubblegum music. It spoke to an audience that I think was sort of the fabric of America.

JLY Their early attempts at marketing are sort of outlined in the movie. You got [producer] Bob Crewe giving them advice on how to get their songs out there. You have Bob Gaudio figuring out how to get his songs out there. I know, and am friends with, the real Bob Gaudio, and it’s funny, he’s a hugely successful songwriter, but he almost seems more proud of his business successes than he does of his songwriting. He gets pumped by being smart in business as he gets pumped by writing a good song.

SFBG As actors, does it present a particular challenge to play a real person, a famous person, particularly if that person is still living? Or were you able to put your own stamp on the characters?

EB I think John had the most pressure out of all of us, because he’s playing someone that’s so well-known, and John can tell you about that experience. But for the rest of us, we really did invent these characters. Even though they were real people, and while we wanted to pay respect to these people, and their families, we did have the luxury of not having to play John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They’re not well-known to the public. So we did get to use our skills as actors and create characters from the ground up.

JLY One of the benefits as an actor approaching the role of Frankie, even in the beginning in the original cast, is that he is known. People know what he looks like and they know what he sounds like. He did some talk show stuff, so they kind of know how he moves. So I knew that I needed to get his physical attributes down. I needed to evoke his sound, look like him, talk like him. But outside of those physical things, the internal life of Frankie Valli, we don’t really know. We didn’t know. 

When I was researching the original Broadway show, all I could find were maybe 12 minutes of footage of him at the Museum of Television and Radio. That was, like, the year before YouTube broke, so now there’s footage of him everywhere, but I didn’t have the benefit of that. But now I have seen a lot of YouTube and everything. So I thought, as long as I get those physical characteristics down, the story of the Four Seasons, the story of Frankie Valli, is still largely unknown to audiences. So I had free reign to kind of build the psychological reality of the character using my own imagination, and the cues that I had from the script. And knowing Bob Gaudio, Frankie Valli’s real-life best friend, and the things he told me about Frankie, and knowing, of course, the man himself. 

But I didn’t feel pressure so much. The pressure I felt was to honor the people who put this movie together, which was Frankie and Bob, and to portray the character in a way that was compelling and riveting to an audience so that we’d have as successful a show as we could have. And now, I think that I feel very proud of what we’ve accomplished with this movie, and I think it’s an enhancement, actually, of what has been out there all these years, with the successful stage musical across the world. 

SFBG How true is the movie to the stage production?

ML It’s actually very similar. We were lucky to work with [screenwriters and musical authors] Marshall [Brickman] and Rick [Elice] on the film, which I think we were all very grateful for, because it meant that we didn’t have to learn too many new lines. [Laughs.] But it was great. I think when I first found out that the movie was being done, I was really concerned that the final product would be true to the stage, because the script is so fantastic. But beauty of film is that you get to flesh out certain relationships, and certain storylines. I think fans of Jersey Boys are going to love a lot of the scenes that they loved from the stage version, but they’re also going to go crazy over the other stuff, the extra stuff that is put into the film.

The stage production is directed in a very slick fashion, but logistics dictate that you have to move from scene to scene very quickly to keep up the energy going in the two-and-a-half hour show. But what Mr. Eastwood does so beautifully with this movie, and with all of his movies, is create a real environment that’s rich and tangible, that you can really sense in the theater. I think Jersey Boys fans are going to love that as well.

JYL If people love the stage show of Jersey Boys, the movie is going to give then a much deeper, more thorough, and much more detailed experience.

SFBG I did not realize, until I was reading up on the movie, that there were Jersey Boys superfans who have seen the show hundreds of times.

EB Michael and I opened the national tour of Jersey Boys in San Francisco, and six years later Michael closed that tour in the same theater. This was my first discovery with anything remotely like that. I remember seeing these fans come in over and over again. At first I thought, “What are they doing?” and “Where are they getting the money that they’re buying such great seats three times a week?” I remember I got a letter one time, we all got these letters, from a fan who said, “I know you probably think it’s crazy that I’m here all the time, but this is the first time I’ve felt happy in 10 years.”

When we get things like that, we don’t really know what to make of that. But we are so thrilled that it’s had an impact. I don’t know if it can be explained. People often ask us, “What is it about Jersey Boys that keeps people coming back?” I don’t know if I know. I don’t know if anyone knows. I know that when people come to see the show, they’re affected by it for whatever reason. It moves them, it changes them. They are really passionate about it, and we’re just sort of lucky that we got to be a part of that somehow. I don’t really know what else to say about it!

JYL I have something else to say about it, and that is: if a person has seen the stage play of Jersey Boys 100 times, let them know, please, on our behalf, that for the price of one Broadway ticket, they can see this movie 10 times! [All three laugh.] So we hope that they decide to make their investment in 10 tickets for the movie. 

SFBG What’s up next for you guys? More musicals?

ML I think we’ve all been bitten by the movie bug. To start on a Clint Eastwood set, we’ve been a bit blessed and totally spoiled. So, I think certainly, we would all like to dive further into this genre and explore it.

EB I agree. My album comes out next week, some new music that I just recorded down in Nashville, and I’m in a new series on CBS this fall called Madame Secretary. I will also be hosting lots of Jersey Boys viewing parties once the DVD comes out. [Laughs.]

JLY I have a new album that I just released, My Turn — it’s R&B hits from the 60s in my voice, not Frankie’s, and it’s on iTunes and Amazon. I’m also a recent appointee by Barack Obama to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. So I’ll be working with kids in the lowest-performing schools, re-inserting arts into their curriculum to increase their school performance and their school culture. The actor Kal Penn and I will be sharing a school district in Des Moines, Iowa. I’m really looking forward to it.

JERSEY BOYS opens Fri/20 in Bay Area theaters.

Listen: Katie Day’s anti-tech bro jam “San Francisco (Before the West Falls)”

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Between POW!’s “Hi-Tech Boom,” the schticky “Google Bus Song” from Cachebox, and Violent Vickie’s “Fuck You!!!!!”, it’s safe to say San Francisco musicians — the ones that are left here, haha! sorry — are currently leading the nation in anti-gentrification music.

This is a good thing, of course. It means the city still has a pulse. You know what we’ve been sorely lacking, however? As Emma Goldman basically said, give the people a summery, socially conscious anthem we can fucking dance to.

Enter Katie Day, who self-released her new EP, Burn It to the Ground, yesterday. There’s a lot to like here, including a love song for the Lower Haight, but the instant earworm is a semi-tongue-in-cheek indie-electro-pop jam called “San Francisco (Before the West Falls),” with shimmery, bubble-gum synths and keys layered with lyrics that lament the bygone days when coffee was 80 cents, and give serious side-eye to the tech bros moving into her neighborhood: “Someone told me about the boys next door/They put the boards on the window of the record store/And now the kids don’t get to play no more…”

“The extreme wealth disparity we’re experiencing in SF as a result of tech can make living here as an artist straight-up oppressive, but I think having a song that speaks to that oppression and makes you want to get up and dance anyway can negate any feeling of self-pity, even if you’re living under constant threat of eviction while there’s trained German Shepherd acting as an elevator operator at the Google office,” Day wrote me when I asked about her inspirations. “It’s something they can’t take away from you.”

Get your un-gentrifiable dance on when she plays with Stages of Sleep, New Spell, and Memory Motel this Sat/7, 8pm at Amnesia.

 

To the desert and back

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arts@sfbg.com

The early May Sunday afternoon when I meet up with Fresh and Onlys frontman and songwriter Tim Cohen, he’s has just reached a milestone in his career: His firstborn child has just seen his band play for the first time in her life. The day before, Cohen and co. played the Hipnic IV festival in Big Sur to a seated audience. The mainstays of San Francisco’s garage rock scene were able to catch the attention of the one-year-old for a bit before her interest evaporated into the air like pot fumes at a music festival. It’ll likely be years before the child knows she had a profound influence on her dad’s band’s newest album, House of Spirits, due out June 10 on the Mexican Summer label.

Our rendez-vous is set at Cafe Abir on ever-buzzing Divisadero Street, which of course is being consumed with another hot new opening. This time, it’s 4505 Meats, which is making a splash of a debut with its inviting smells wafting over from salacious BBQ concoctions. The unofficial fogline of San Francisco feels foreign to Cohen, who’s been a resident of the adjacent Alamo Square neighborhood for almost 13 years. That’s because he’s just spent 15 months in rural Arizona. When we reach the inevitable topic of San Francisco’s recent changes, Cohen remarks, “I was gone for 15 months and almost everything changed in that time. I can see six places that weren’t here when I left. It’s a culture shock.”

For those 15 months, Cohen decamped with his wife, newborn baby, guitar, Korg keyboard, and drum machine to a horse ranch 10 miles outside of Sedona, Arizona. Later on during his stay, he picked up an eight-track recorder from a kid on Craigslist to record his demos on. “It’s simple and gives me a lower-quality song; it’s my favorite device to record on.” says Cohen.

The storyline behind House of Spirits lends a feeling of concept album, thanks to the songwriting’s foreign backdrop. It’s still very much connected to the feel, themes, and sounds of earlier Fresh and Onlys productions, but the intrigue lies in how noticeable an effect the desert environs had on the record.

Cohen ventured to the desert of Northern Arizona expecting a new jolt of creative energy and a deviation in his songwriting, but underestimated the effect absolute desolation — amplified by its contrast to San Francisco’s bustle — would have on himself and the album. “I went there knowing I would have a lot of time to myself, [but] I didn’t know how much or how dire that solitude would become, which definitely fed into my creative process…If you’ve ever spent any time in the desert or anywhere that’s just your environment, there’s no people walking by, trains, cars, planes, it’s just where you’re at and you. I had no way to contest the silence and openness of it all. I just sat there and took it in. Finally after living there for a months, I figured how to manage my space in the environment, and just dug out my space,” says Cohen.

Part of the reason for Cohen’s retreat was the idea of not raising a baby in a big loud city. He does concede that, in addition to learning how to negotiate the vacuum of the Arizonan desert, the album was significantly influenced by his other major learning experience, that of understanding how to be both “a parent with someone and to someone.”

Like a friend coming back from a sweet vacation, Cohen highly recommends the rural experience for fellow artists. “It made me more of a prolific artist, because I came back with tons and tons of material. I worked. I say if you can afford it, give yourself that emptiness and blank agenda.”

But Cohen’s foray into the desert wasn’t all artistic introspection and exploration. The lack of constant and face-to-face communication with his bandmates exacerbated tensions already simmering in the band. That inevitable and familiar dilemma of young parents trading time with their lifelong friends for time with their nascent families provided another strain.

“People were being pulled in a lot of different directions. It began with me moving away. When your buddy has a kid and moves away, a lot of times you can feel a sense of abandonment. In a lot of ways we think of this band as our own baby,” he says. “It was almost like running off and having a baby with someone else.” Not to mention, other bandmates were dealing with evictions and layoffs.

Did the stress ever seriously threaten the album? “Absolutely, at almost every turn,” says Cohen. “We had a limited amount of recording days when I came back to SF, which created a sense of urgency and contributed to inflammation of the issues afflicting the band. These were my songs and demos. [Normally] I send the demos to guys way in advance, they think ‘How can I hear this and contribute to it?’ and that’s how it pretty much works. This time around it was a little less of that.”

For all his recounting of the hurdles and “external and internal issues,” Cohen presents a stoic demeanor, and seems confident that the band has escaped its stormy period.

“In the end we won the big victory,” he says. “This album is definitely a grower.”

Fresh and Onlys record release show

With Cold Beat, Devon Williams

July 5, 8pm, $15

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

www.thechapelsf.com

Thick as blood: Sibling duo Broods are the next kiwis on the rise

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“Kiwis tend to hold back and be too humble. They don’t want to be over-confident, but I think people are starting to realize that a little bit of confidence can go quite well,” says Caleb Nott, the elder brother of the sibling sensation from New Zealand known as Broods. He sits comfortably next to his sister, Georgia, in the back of The Independent, several hours before their show.

The brother-sister electro-pop duo didn’t get that confidence until the release of their first single, “Bridges,” on SoundCloud, created waves on the world wide interwebs last October. “Bridges” became a hit in the blogosphere and in this hemisphere alike, earning over 200,000 streams in a week.

“It all happened at once,” says 19-year-old Georgia. The singer has an innocent face, giving her the appearance of a much younger teenager. “We went from nobody really knowing us to people on the other side of the world wanting to meet us.”

Later that night, the band starts the night off with “Never Gonna Change,” a deep-synth track with correspondingly morose lyrics. “You’re pushing down on my shoulders, and emptying my lungs,” sings Georgia, lyrics reminiscent of a certain internationally-acclaimed Kiwi. Georgia moves slowly around the stage while Caleb creates layered synths and hypnotic beats. The two remain relatively reserved both on stage and in private. Georgia’s voice is sweet and breathy to the likes of Imogen Heap and Romy Madley Croft of The XX. Caleb brings more energy during the upbeat tracks, bouncing up and down behind his keyboard while Georgia skips around stage in a printed corset crop top and white billowy shorts.

broods

Georgia, a self-proclaimed depressing music lover (“I love sad songs,”) falls deeply into “Taking You There,” a personal favorite and one of the strongest songs from the self-titled EP. Caleb gently strums an acoustic guitar and offers deep vocals to accompany his sisters’ silvery, dream-like hums. The audience moves to the soft beat and sings along. Most of the audience knows the words to every song on Broods’ EP, which the siblings admit to still be adjusting to.

“Seeing people wearing our T-shirts in the crowd,” says Caleb before the show. “That’s so weird and crazy, you’ve got my face on your T-shirt.”

Since October, Broods — the name obviously referring to the band members’ blood relation but also the melancholic nature of their songs — has played two US tours, spent a brief stint touring with Haim, and is scheduled as the opening act for Ellie Goulding’s Australia/New Zealand tour this summer.

“Over the last couple of years, people have started to look over to Auckland and to New Zealand as a whole for new music.” Caleb explains. From LadyHawke, to The Naked and Famous, Lorde and now Broods, the New Zealand music scene is a treasure trove of indie talent. Caleb says the music scene remains relatively tight-knit where everyone supports each other in their own music genre but doesn’t reach out beyond, reminiscent to a private high-school. “It’s pretty cliquey, because it’s very small.”

“This one’s for Lorde,” says Georgia in between songs. She dives into the gentle lullaby “Sleep Baby Sleep.” The mesmerizing beat and soft vocals is characteristic of Lorde’s debut album.

The band is clearly following in her footsteps, from the grassroots release of the Broods EP, to the dark coming-of-age tones, to the producer who discovered them. Joel Little found Caleb and Georgia while a judge for a music competition in 2011 but the band wasn’t formed until early 2013 in Auckland. After producing Lorde’s Grammy Award-winning debut album, Joel Little began work on “Bridges.”

broods

Broods closes the show with its first single, “Bridges,” a moody track about broken relationships. Georgia starts out with muted piano chords and an ethereal voice that builds into Caleb’s rich synth soundscape. Georgia’s voice is exceptionally developed for her age. She plays a soft version of a song from their upcoming album. She’s most comfortable behind the piano, her instrument of choice. “And I’m trying hard to make you love me, but I don’t wanna try too hard,” she sings moodily about falling in love with the perfect man.

Broods has played in San Francisco twice now but has yet to play a show in New Zealand. The siblings will head home next week to work on their debut album with Joel Little. Then, they will play their first proper show in their hometown of Nelson with their 17-year-old sister, who is set to open with her folk band. Clearly, talent runs in the family.

Swimming solo

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LEFT OF THE DIAL As rock ‘n’ roll narratives go, it’s a rather familiar one: Singer and bandleader who has achieved moderate success with one full-band sound announces that he’s been repressing his true musical instincts for far too long, decides to go solo, and puts out an album that’s a sonic 180 from what fans are used to. History tells us that this is either the moment when stars are born (Michael Jackson, Lou Reed), or the moment when everyone goes, “Oh, maybe the other band members are responsible for way more of the stuff I like than I previously realized?” (Hall, without Oates).

Birds & Batteries frontman Mike Sempert doesn’t seem overly concerned about this fork in the road. For one, when the singer-songwriter began teasing new songs out into the world last month in anticipation of releasing his first solo effort, Mid Dream (out May 6 on Blue Velvet), it became clear that longtime fans of his old band — a San Francisco staple of the last five years that blended Sempert’s husky vocals and Americana influences with an indie electro-pop danceability (aka plenty of synth) — weren’t going to be upset. Far from it: While the album is a clear departure from the heady, airy detachment of Birds & Batteries’ oeuvre, the element that brought those songs down to earth — the understated soulfulness of Sempert’s vocals and songwriting — has emerged in full force on Mid Dream.

 

A richly introspective album written and recorded in the months before Sempert left the Bay Area for LA last year (to be with his now-wife — SF music scene doomsdayers, calm down), Mid Dream is equal parts wistfulness and hope, uncertainty and a surprised sort of satisfaction about growing up; in other words, it sounds exactly like those rare, heightened moments when you can actually feel one chapter of your life coming to an end and another beginning. Stripped bare of synthesizers and most other electronic elements and loaded up on melody, wall-of-feeling choruses, and ocean imagery, the album also serves as a kind of coming-out party for Sempert’s love of ’70s folk-rockers like Tom Petty, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman. Sempert will play these songs for the first time on home turf at the Rickshaw Stop May 14.

“I always had two personalities that I was exploring with Birds & Batteries. Initially it was this merging of the folk-Americana-singer-songwriter thing with the synthy art-pop stuff,” says Sempert. “But I’d gotten to a point where I wanted to zero in more on a sound, and instead of taking my singer-songwriter stuff and trying to adapt it, I just started putting those songs to the side…so I’ve had this stack of songs I wanted to try developing for a while.”

After a few years in a row of hustling full-time in B&B, the timing felt right last year to take a breather and consider the pile, he says. “That’s a hard-working band, and we had a lot of good times and successes, but frankly I got pretty burned out…especially with the kind of ‘take over the world’ thing we were trying to do. I got married, I moved to LA; it just felt like time to focus on making music for the right reasons and from the heart, without a big agenda.”

To be clear, that shouldn’t be read as a dig at his old bandmates — two of whom, drummer Colin Fahrner and bassist Jill Heinke, he invited to make up his current rhythm section. Sempert emphasizes that the entire record is a family affair of sorts, with regulars from the Bay Area folk scene and many an Oakland friend-band — including Sonya Cotton, Kacey Johansing, Emily Ritz, Andrew Maguire, Anton and Lewis Patzner, and more — adding backup vocals, strings, percussion; the list goes on. Sempert gives an extra-special nod to TaughtMe songwriter-engineer Blake Henderson, who helped him shape his vision for the record.

“I had so much help, so many supportive people around me in the songwriter community in the Bay Area,” he says. “Honestly, at the beginning of deciding to make [the album], I was just thinking ‘I bet my friends will like this.’ And for this one, the idea of just getting to share it with them — that was enough.”

Mike Sempert (CD release)
With Farallons and Kacey Johansing
Wed/14, 8pm, $20
The Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com

 

What kind of person looks at a massively expensive three-day music festival whose inaugural year was widely considered an organizational failure and public relations nightmare, not to mention one that cost the city in which it took place thousands of dollars, and says “Hey — I want to be in charge of that next year”?

Dave Graham, it turns out. As the CEO of the brand-new BottleRock Napa Valley — a festival now in its second year, spanning May 30 to June 1, with headliners OutKast and The Cure, but, as Graham emphasizes, one owned and run by entirely different people than those responsible for last summer’s debacle — Graham has gotten used to answering the question: Why the hell would you want to take this on?

“For one, I had an amazing time last year,” says Graham, a Napa native and entrepreneur. “I was born and raised here, this was just the coolest thing that I’d ever experienced, and I couldn’t believe it was going on in my own backyard.” He noted what mistakes had been made, he said, and when the chance arose to invest in a partnership for 2014, he saw an opportunity to make something great. The only problem(s)? A boatload of debt, and the task of trying to find investors for this year’s festival in a community of merchants still stinging from 2013. Then there was the fact that, at the time of signing on in January, Graham and his partners had less than three months to book a lineup.

“It’s been challenging, to say the least,” says Graham. “Once we bought the rights to the name BottleRock, it was difficult, and understandably so, for people in the music industry, creditors, and just the general population to understand that we had zero to do with the mess that was created last year, and that we had no obligation to make a bad situation better…but we’re committed to doing just that. The main thing was, we just wanted to keep it local.”

Time will tell whether or not Graham and his team succeed in winning back the hearts of Napa residents and business owners. Given the time period they had for booking, the lineup they pulled off is pretty impressive on its own — if a little ’90s-tastic, stacked with alt-rock staples like Cracker, Weezer, Third Eye Blind, and Blues Traveler. But hey, if your idea of a good festival is getting super nostalgic with a slightly older set over a nice glass or two of pinot noir (note: nothin’ wrong with that) and you have the dough to spare (single day: $149), it’d probably be worth your while to see what else the new guys can pull off.

BottleRock Napa ValleyMay 30 – June 1
$149 and up (way up)
www.bottlerocknapavalley.com
 

Two other shows you should probably go to this week: San Francisco’s Cool Ghouls, who make some of most unpretentiously happy, jangly, beach-brat garage pop you’ve ever heard, are headlining The Chapel Thursday/15. And A Minor Forest, SF math rock veterans who made lots of people very happy when they got back together last year, will be there Saturday/17.

In case you hadn’t noticed, The Chapel’s bookers are killing it lately. And despite lots of angry internet buzz about noise complaints from The Chapel’s neighbors — let’s be real, our reaction over here was something like “If you rent an apartment next to a music venue on Valencia and then complain that there’s music coming out of it, you are everything that is wrong with everything, please leave,” — a representative from the venue says there’s really no news, nothing to get up in arms about.

“The Chapel had the normal, required Planning Commission ‘look back’ hearing [May 8] where they make sure the business is in compliance with Planning conditions,” Patricia Dedekian, a manager at The Chapel, told us. “There was only one neighbor who has done 99 percent of the complaining and he appeared at the hearing. We passed the hearing with flying colors, with unanimous support from the Planning Commissioners.” Still, you know. Support your local venues. It’s not hard to do when they’re putting on several rad shows a week.

This Week’s Picks: May 7 – 13, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 7

 

Science Talk: “The Mysteries of Sleep”

Wonderfest, “the Bay Area Beacon of Science,” is a nonprofit that has been organizing fun, funky science events and meet-ups for nearly two decades, and best of all, most of them are free. This talk, presented at the SoMa StrEat Food Park (with all of the delectable food truck and beer options that entails) will tackle one of the last great biological mysteries — something we spend one-third of our lives doing, yet something scientists still understand very little about. Matthew P. Walker, an associate professor of psychology at Cal, will describe the latest research that suggests sleep is actually a highly active process, necessary for improving our learning processes, memory, creativity, and emotions. So grab a friend, grab some grub and get your education on, then go home and get a good night’s rest — you’ll be smarter for it. (Emma Silvers)

7pm, free

SoMa StrEat Food Park

428 11th St, SF

www.wonderfest.org

 

THURSDAY 8

 

Bike to Work Day 20th Anniversary

Got a bike? Ride it. Today marks the 20th anniversary of San Francisco’s Bike to Work Day, and it’s never been more rewarding to be a two-wheeled commuter. With thousands of cyclists on the road today, not only do tailpipe emissions decrease dramatically, but the visible presence of cyclists encourages motorists to share the road. What’s more, many small businesses will have special treats for bikers, and the SF Bicycle Coalition will have safety classes, workshops, parties, raffles, and energizer stations (snacks, beverages, and goodie bags) throughout the city. If you’re a two-wheeling newbie, don’t fret. The Coalition will also have Commuter Convoys leading you through the city. Keep an eye out for bike-friendly businesses: Yoga Tree is offering a free class to anyone who shows up on two wheels. Don’t forget your helmet! (Laura B. Childs)

All day, free

Various locations throughout SF

www.sfbike.org

 

 

“The New Forty-Niners” and “Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure-Hunting”

For centuries, stories of treasure hunters and great explorers have dominated American history. From the Gold Rush millionaire Samuel Brannan to Huck Finn to Lewis and Clark, the thirst for adventure and wealth is a building block of the American Dream. Tonight, Rayko Photo Center presents two exhibits based on this dream. “Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting,” by Jenny Riffle, documents one man’s treasure hunt, accompanied by his metal detector. Riffle romantically captures the mythical adventurer as he ventures out into rural Washington like a 21st century Mark Twain character. The second exhibit, Sarina Finklestein’s “The New Forty-Niners,” is a four year-long photo project chronicling modern-day gold prospectors in California. In gritty and rugged photographs, the exhibit reveals a small self-sustaining society dependent on gold mining, reminiscent of the original Gold Rush. (Childs)

Opening reception 6pm-8pm, free

Exhibits on display through June 21, 2014

Rayko Photo Center

428 Third St, SF

(415) 496-3775

www.raykophotocenter.com

 

FRIDAY 9

 

 

Katherine Hawthorne’s ‘The Escapement’

Last November choreographer Katharine Hawthorne premiered Timepiece at the Joe Goode Annex. Bringing a background in physics and dance to her artistic practice, she had created an intricately structured and intriguing piece of choreography in which she explored the concept of time — not just dance as a time-based art, but time as a way of structuring the way we live our lives and think about the world. In the new The Escapement, she continues that process by examining the way clocks have enabled us to divide time into regular intervals. The invention of the “escapement” mechanism, apparently, was central to the process. Performing with Hawthorne will be Jesse L. Chin, Katherine Disenhof, Suzette Sagisi, and Megan Wright. (Rita Felciano)

May 9-10, 8pm, $15-25

Joe Goode Annex

401 Alabama St., SF

www.theescapement.eventbrite.com

 

 

 

#GIRLBOSS book signing with Sophia Amoruso

With advice like “money looks better in the bank than on your feet,” #GIRLBOSS is one giant kick in the butt. The CEO, founder, and self-proclaimed “chief troublemaker” at the online fashion retailer NastyGal, Sophia Amoruso isn’t your typical CEO. Before reaching meteoric fame with her $100 million brand, Amoruso was an anarchist who survived off dumpster-diving and shoplifting. Dubbed the “Cinderella of tech,” Amoruso started an eBay store while living in San Francisco, selling old clothes; some eight years later, it’s a global marketplace specializing in scandalous and trendy clothing for 20-somethings. Filled with quick-whips and snarky illustrations, #GIRLBOSS covers all the nitty-grittiness of owning a company, and demystifies any ideas that because you were popular in high school, you’re guaranteed success — you have to work for it. (Childs)

7pm-9pm, free

Books Inc. Bookstore Opera Plaza

601 Van Ness, SF

(415) 776-1111

www.booksinc.net

 

 

Kadavar

Black Sabbath may be past their prime, but Berlin’s Kadavar is keeping the ’70s heavy metal dream alive — psychedelic, snarling, seething, dope-smoking, and very hairy. Drawing heavily —very heavily— from Sabbath and Pentagram (with some nods to Zeppelin), Kadavar have joined the time-travelling ranks of Electric Wizard and Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats in producing some seriously killer heavier metal tunes. Though Kadavar wears its influences on its sleeve, as these guys are singing through their prodigious facial hair about wizards, witchcraft, and lost souls, they are undeniably genuine. Their love for the music is clear, and entirely impossible not to headbang to. (Zaremba)

With The Shrine, Mondo Drag, DJ Rob Metal

9:30pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

 

SATURDAY 10

 

Cat fight: Battle of the feline film fests

If you are a cat fan — or simply fond of Internet kitty videos — today is basically Christmas, Hanukkah, your birthday, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and every other awesome holiday rolled into one. In SF, the Roxie rolls out its “First Annual San Francisco Intergalactic Feline Film and Video Festival for Humans,” a meow-thful of a name befitting a fest that promises “a two-week film festival in the span of 12 hours.” In Oakland, OakCatVidFest presents an entire day of pussy magic; in addition to outdoor screenings, there will be cat-themed bands and dance performances, plus adoptable cats and the chance to sign up to be a kitten foster parent. Superstar Internet feline Lil Bub (of documentary, talk-show, and tongue-wagging fame) will appear at both events. And so should you! (Cheryl Eddy)

Intergalactic Feline Film and Video Fest

Noon, $12 ($30, all-access badge)

Roxie

3125 16th St, SF

www.roxie.com

 

 

 

20th Anniversary Serial Mom Tribute with Ricki Lake

“I don’t like to read about movies. They’re so violent,” picture-perfect suburban hausfrau Beverly R. Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) tells a couple police officers during a brief non-lethal moment in Serial Mom. John Waters’ 1994 comedy about a secretly demented wife and mother with very, very high etiquette standards — you really do not want to wear white after Labor Day around he r— remains his personal best since the breakthrough of Hairspray (1988). That film’s discovery Ricki Lake, cast as Sutphin daughter Misty, will appear in person for Peaches Christ’s “Mother’s Day celebration to die for,” also featuring a pre-show performance with D’Arcy Drollinger and “the erotic dance stylings of SexiTude.” There will be blood. (Dennis Harvey)

8pm, $35-55

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.peacheschrist.com

 

 

Old 97’s

Reassuring us all that growing up doesn’t mean you have to lose your sense of humor, the Old 97’s — the solid, steady fathers of alt-country, who never quite exploded (or imploded) like some of mid-’90s their counterparts did — are currently touring the country with their tenth studio album, Most Messed Up. The tour also functions as a 20th anniversary party for the band, and the record serves as perfect accompaniment: Never have songs about the ravages of road life and the slights of middle age sounded so fun. The band’s die-hard fans know they’re in for a helluva rocking live show, too, though the guys claim to never rehearse; if you’ve only heard a few radio singles, this is your chance to see what the fuss is actually all about. (Silvers)

With Nikki Lane

8pm, $25

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.thefillmore.com

 

 

SUNDAY 11

 

RiFF RAFF

Let’s start with the burning question: Is this guy for real? Part of the intrigue of Riff Raff’s over-the-top, ultra-campy hip-hop persona is that it might be totally genuine. This caricature-like white guy from Houston with a BET tattoo, a grill, and cornrows, who raps about Dolce and Gabbana, could be an elaborate joke. Nut authentic or not, Riff Raff is a hot commodity; “Feat. Riff Raff” seems to be the most popular phrase on iTunes. He’s tight with Drake, Justin Bieber, has over 50 million views on YouTube, and scored some seriously solid guests for his upcoming record Neon Icon — Action Bronson, Childish Gambino, and Diplo, to name just a few. Love him or hate him (it’s one or the other) Riff is undeniably fascinating, and this performance won’t be one you forget any time soon. (Zaremba)

With Grandtheft

8pm, $25

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

MONDAY 12


The San Francisco Moth StorySLAM

You know the upside to life’s hideously embarrassing moments, right? Like that time you broke your ankle by slipping on a banana at the Muni station, at rush hour, and had to have Muni employees help you off the platform while covered in banana mush? And also you were headed to a job interview? (Note: this recently happened to an actual friend.) The upside, of course, is that you have an awesome story to tell, and this monthly “story slam,” based on the award-winning New York-based series The Moth, rewards naked honesty as much as it does storytelling flair. Fact-checkers won’t be on hand, but stories must be true and take five minutes or less to tell; contestants can’t use notes or cheat-sheets of any kind. But beyond that, anything goes, so start your storytelling engines.(Silvers)

7:30pm, $8

The Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St, SF

www.rickshawstop.com

 

Ms. Lauryn Hill

Sure, she’s had her share of troubles over the years: prison time for tax evasion, comments about race that gave PR people across the nation simultaneous heart attacks, a laundry list of tardiness and other diva-tastic behaviors. But at the end of the day, Lauryn Hill is still among the most gifted musicians of the last two decades; her Grammy-sweeping album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which turns 16 this August, still graces many a Top 10 list (this critic’s included). Live, she’s been experimenting with a more reggae-fied and big band sound over the last few years, giving hits like “Doo Wop (That Thing)” the weight of a pseudo-religious revival experience. And if the new music she dropped following her release from prison in the fall of last year is any indication, this tour should be a good one. She might be late, she might be ornery — she won’t be boring. (Silvers)

With Daniel Bambaata Marley

8pm, $49.50-82.50

The Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com


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The shaman, the oracle, and the engineer

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MUSIC Two bra-clad figures peek through a shroud of fog onstage that’s every bit as thick as the shrieking white noise at Oakland’s Night Light. The sound is a perfect accompaniment for the sadomasochistic display before the audience. One woman’s lips press against another’s flesh, but if you lower your glance, you’ll notice among the chaos that one is slicing a blade across the other’s stomach like a ritualistic-looking sacrifice. Blood is drawn, even though they seem to be intimately embraced.

This was how Replicant, the live music/performance/visual art series with a penchant for the weird, chose to kick off the new year at their January showcase; Bad News, an industrial duo consisting of Sarah Bernat and Alex Lukas from Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, headlined. On this night, they had also invited experimental conspirators Greer McGettrick (formerly of The Mallard) and Shannon Madden (Chasms) to join them during the performance. Madden said just a day before this gig that her relationship with Bernat had ended.

So was this arousal, anguish, or both? The audience, mostly in frozen silence by this point, was left to their own devices and had to interpret the definitive sensory overload for themselves. “We were bouncing a lot of ideas off each other, like ‘What can you do besides karaoke to your own music; make it transformative?'” said Madden, referring to conversations with Bernat, during a recent interview.

Bernat writes lyrics and plays guitar in her band and is usually tethered by her instrument, but she seemed possessed enough to become unleashed during this set. Somehow she maintained a straight-faced gaze throughout the cutting, even if she trembled a bit.

“It was totally emotional. We both knew that the only way to say goodbye was to do it on stage. I think there’s a reason why Chasms and Bad News are connected and I think it has something to do with suffering.”

pMadden said this was her last real interaction with her ex, but the two bands (who are on the same labels) will share a bill May 10 at Thee Parkside when Sleep Genius, the independent record label “born of the San Francisco fog” throws a showcase of its acts: Five mostly-local bands will give their own intimate and brooding examples of how new music is emerging from the underground — and what they’re doing to manifest a new direction.

There was nothing subtle about the bodies on stage that night in Oakland, nor the heavily-processed sound that came with it. Along with her collaborator, Jess Labrador, Chasms has a new LP, Subtle Bodies, due this June. Their live show is taking on a slightly different direction, sounding more blown-out and less concerned with pop-song sensibility time constraints. They’ve upped the ante on noise elements and are beefing up on drone.

“I’m using Alex [Lukas]’s gear. There’s a reason,” Madden said. “Alex is my shaman, oracle, and engineer.” She explained that the pedals she’s been using are not meant for her bass guitar. “It’s the first time Jess has ever kept a live take of mine and not edited it.” Labrador is the songwriter, vocalist, guitarist, and sometime drum programmer in this dark duo. “I could never do any of that without experiencing Alex or Sarah.”

Alongside a DX7ii synthesizer and other assorted gear, we’re huddled — Lukas, Madden, and I — inside his tidy Bayview District trailer. Other like-minded artists reside on the property, but his studio hasn’t been completely set up since he was priced out of his old 18th and Mission space, after his landlord raised the rent by 40 percent.

“The cost of living here is so high. People funnel so much of their money into rent,” he said. Having weathered two tech booms as an artist in the Bay Area — he’s been here since 1998 — Lukas knows what it’s like to sell CDs at Amoeba for “a brick of cheese.”

His dwelling is, nevertheless, a cozy hideaway, well-stocked with cassettes and a pretty chill black cat. We chat about how his ties with Madden run deeper than just his influence over how she plays. For one, they spent much of 2013 together at the helm of The Lab, a long-standing visual and performance art space near 16th & Mission that has seen many incarnations over the years.

“There aren’t a lot of spaces like [The Lab] in San Francisco anymore. When Sarah and then [Shannon] kept it active with shows and performances, it sort of compromised The Lab’s role as a venue for visual art, but made it more important than ever as a performance space,” he said.

Under their collective watch, The Lab hosted a variety of underground or emerging acts, like Wreck & Reference, Some Ember, Austin Cesear, Marshstepper, Disappearing People, and Dorian Wood.

Madden claimed the types of shows she was booking weren’t “artsy enough” for a visual arts space to be left alone by the city’s Entertainment Commission. Finding a platform for these types of acts is, she says, the bigger concern in the current “cultural economy” in San Francisco.

“People work high-paying jobs that require their brain. When they get off work, they wanna get shitfaced and hear Toro Y Moi. They don’t wanna go deep in some experimental avant, industrial shit. They want their brains to be massaged and they want to go to sleep, wake up, do it again and eat some fuckin’ food-truck food.”

She notes Oakland is sustaining as an impressive platform for the underbelly of electronic music. “They have a fortified interest in outsider stuff.” She hopes the culture in San Francisco shifts underground again, but in the meantime is happy to book at more traditional venues including Brick & Mortar, The Night Light and Elbo Room.

“It’s not about the space, even as intimate as it was. I want to give the local bands the best deal that I can and not risk it getting broken up. Lots of rad shit’s going to have to happen in a bar space.”

Sleep Genius Presents: Ringo Deathstarr with Sleep Genius artists Bad News, Chasms, Never Knows, and Cry

May 10, 9pm, $10-12

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St, SF

www.theeparkside.com

Listen: Yesway’s “Howlin’ Face”

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Emily Ritz and Kacey Johansing aren’t exactly strangers to the Bay’s indie-folk scene — Johansing’s second solo LP, 2013’s Ghosts, has spread like lush acoustic pop wildfire around the city since its release, while Ritz is part of the Oakland-based experimental “noir pop” outfit DRMS, which put out the ambitious American 707 earlier this year, a hypnotically weird and weirdly delightful short film and accompanying soundtrack.

But together, they make something else entirely: Dreamy harmonies layered with guitar are shaped by odd time signatures, beats that sound like they’ve stopped by to visit from the electronic/chillwave world, and vibraphone apperances (they’re often accompanied by Andrew Maguire, who also backs Thao Nguyen); it’s music for the last hazy hour of a party, when the stragglers decide to watch the sunrise, or a long slightly stoned solo walk with a lot of things to think about, maybe, or if you have the technology to listen to music underwater, it’s also be great for a swim. The duo’s debut album’s not out until June 3, but this single should tide you over.

Check Yesway online here.

José James on Ice-T, moving forward, and stone-cold jazz

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By Micah Dubreuil

You might not be alone if you do a double-take when hearing José James’ new single for the first time. The song, “EveryLittleThing,” off the singer’s forthcoming album on Blue Note Records (While You Were Sleeping, out June 10), recalls a grinding club hit more than the effortless mix of jazz and neo-soul that made him famous. It is a surprise, to say the least — the driving, electric sound is nothing like the mellow and easy cool of his previous record, No Beginning No End, released in 2013.

And that’s just fine with James. The 36-year-old singer is a perpetual denier of expectations. He was born and raised in Minneapolis, maybe not the first city that comes to mind when you think of jazz. After appearing as a finalist in the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Vocal Competition in 2004, James released two albums with a heavy influence of electronic house music, produced by British DJ Giles Peterson. His third album was a duo set of jazz standards with pianist Jef Neve, but it wasn’t until he recorded the groove-based single for No Beginning No End that he was signed to the legendary Blue Note Records.

That album and platform brought him to a broader audience worldwide, compelling listeners with its sophisticated grooves and his rich tenor voice. The presence of some of the modern messiahs of cool (the band included Grammy-winning keyboardist Robert Glasper and bassist Pino Palladino — the later revered for his work on D’Angelo’s Voodoo), cemented James’ place at the forefront of the hip young jazz and soul scene.

But even on that album there were hints of a broader agenda. Landing right in the middle of the record was a track that could only be described as guitar-driven acoustic pop, a left turn in a career of left turns. Perhaps the defining trait of his generation is the habitual rejection of genre boundaries, and James has no intention of letting up. As part of his tour to promote the new record, James will hit The Independent Saturday, April 26. We spoke over the phone while he was in Chicago.

San Francisco Bay Guardian You’re on tour previewing your new album which, based on the single “EveryLittleThing,” has a very different sound from your previous work. What was the inspiration to go in this direction?

José James A lot of people don’t understand the lifespan of a project. It was three years from the start of writing No Beginning No End to the last tour. By that point we had gotten really comfortable with the material. I wanted more energy. I love neo-soul and R&B, but I wanted to go back to how I used to feel about music as a teenager, when it was all about the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and Nirvana.

SFBG For this album you’ve started writing on guitar. What sparked that decision?

JJ The guitar came back into my life when I was recording the song “Sword + Gun” in Paris with Hindi Zahra (off No Beginning) because we didn’t have a band at that session. It’s how we came up with the initial riff. From that moment on I thought: “I should play guitar again.”

SFBG What’s different about the band on this tour?

JJ No horns, just keys, bass, drums and guitars. Almost everybody is doubling. If they’re not alternating on two instruments they’re singing as well. It really feels like a band now, instead of just a jazz band.

SFBG Every album you make sounds really different. Is this an intentional decision or product of musical exploration?

JJ I think it’s both. I would never be happy just doing the same thing. Whatever I release an album I have to tour it for a year, maybe two, which is a long time. Coming from a jazz background I really need things to be fresh night after night, so it has to be material that can grow.

After working on No Beginning No End for three years, I had explored every option in a hip-hop/groove/neo-soul/jazz project that I wanted to do. It was the same with Miles and Coltrane: they would exhaust all the possibilities of a certain style, so moving on wasn’t really a choice. It’s not like I’m sitting there thinking “I’m going to mess up people’s heads with the next one” — it just kind of happens like that. For me it’s such a natural progression, but when you release a single or album it takes people by surprise, especially if they haven’t been with you for the journey.


SFBG How has the response been so far?

JJ It’s been really great. I think people are surprised by the sound and hearing me in that sound on Blue Note Records. It was cool of them to drop “EveryLittleThing” as a single. People are curious when they hear it — it makes them more interested in what the album’s going to sound like. I think honestly it’s the best album I’ve ever made. The songwriting and production are way above anything I’ve ever done, so I’m super excited.

SFBG So Blue Note has been supportive of your decision to make this kind of music?

JJ There are a lot of people who work at Blue Note. Don Was is super supportive and he’s the president, so that energy flows from the top down. There are definitely some stone-cold jazz people, both at the label and in the community, but honestly Blue Note hasn’t been a stone-cold jazz label for a long time. I think the single took everybody by surprise, especially because they were so in love with “No Beginning No End,” which is an easy album to fall in love with.

SFBG There’s a young generation of Blue Note musicians (yourself, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Takuya Kuroda, etc.) that are redefining the terms of modern jazz. Do you feel like you guys are part of a community, in terms of exploring and expanding what jazz can be today?

JJ Yeah, absolutely, we all help each other along. It’s just a generational shift. It’s not such a huge deal for us; I don’t even know if it’s expansion. Hodge and Glasper play with Maxwell, and they play with Mos Def, and then they play their own stuff. It’s just the normal reality of musicians of that level now. We just want to play music. It’s different for me, because I’m not an instrumentalist, so it always comes under my name and that brings a little bit of pressure, you know what I mean? But it’s a cool scene and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

SFBG Do you expect to reach a wider audience with the new sound?

JJ I mean, that’s always the goal for anything, really. I think there’s a core José James fan who understands I’m going to do something different on every album. With each album I definitely hope to bring in different people. When I did Blackmagic, I connected with Flying Lotus and other DJs and producers. It’s not necessarily a conscious effort but the music takes it in different directions. We’re still playing some jazz clubs in the US — which is kind of funny, hearing a song like “EveryLittleThing” in a jazz club. You’d be surprised: we played at a jazz club in Boston two nights ago and people loved it. It’s all in the presentation. I don’t start with that song. I lead people to it so they understand it musically.

SFBG What shows did you go see when you were growing up?

JJ Mostly I would see any hip-hop show I could get to, like Das EFX or De La Soul or basically anybody who came through Minneapolis. It was a good music city to grow up in; First Avenue was still pretty fresh and Prince had a club downtown where he would play sometimes. I remember seeing Ice-T perform “Colors,” and he came out for the second set and did the Body Count stuff. It was cool to see Ice-T do heavy metal. I think people forget about that because now it’s so straight-laced: bands just do one thing. But back then people were really mixing it up in cool ways. I remember Digable Planets touring with horn players.


SFBG Did you listen to jazz?

JJ I didn’t see jazz live, but once I discovered the archives – Blue Note, Prestige, impulse! – I turned into a crazy record-buyer. I bought everything I could and became obsessed with getting the whole catalogue. It was something that nobody else knew about at my school, and I thought I was that much cooler because I was checking out all the music that Q-Tip and those guys were sampling.

SFBG What do you think about the future of jazz?

JJ Jazz is a at place where it’s going to be firmly museum-music, and there’s something to be said that as much as people can hate on new music, it’s music that people like. It speaks to them. This is the point where jazz artists need to decide whether we are going to be keepers of the flames or we’re going to stay current. I know that people like Herbie Hancock or Quincy Jones were able to take their jazz skills and make amazing music. Anytime I listen to “Off The Wall” or any of the Al Green stuff I think to myself: a jazz mind is responsible for this.

SFBG Do you have any influences that might surprise people?

JJ Kurt Cobain. I know it’s the anniversary of his death, but he’s one of the artists who really had an impact on me at an early age. His influence is like a John Coltrane or a Marvin Gaye. I think the unplugged album that Nirvana made shows what a great band they were and what a great songwriter he was.That’s what I’m focusing on right now. More so than a sound I really want to write great songs that have meaning and really mark a time and place.

José James
With Moonchild
9pm, $18
The Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
www.theindependentsf.com