Oakland

No castaways here

-
0

We drool over these Treasure Island jewels

CSS


Woman, oh, woman. We’re so not tired of these fiery São Paulo popettes’ brand of sexy. CSS rarely disappoint live — Spandex bodysuits, pop hooks courtesy of their latest album, Donkey (Sub Pop), and all. (Kimberly Chun)

8:25 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

DR. DOG


Dusting the crust off Southern rock grooves and biting into the apple of the tenderest harmonies, these unsung sons of the Liberty Bell, the Band, and ELO might be considered the Yankee brethren to My Morning Jacket. (Chun)

6:40 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

DODOS


Is anyone doing anything quite like what spunky San Francisco indie duo Dodos do? (Chun)

5:15 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

FLEET FOXES


Back in the ’90s, we used to be able to tell the indie rock from the rock proper by the singing: untrained, off-key, and adenoidal. This Seattle quintet are leading the charge to make the voice the center of indie rock-dom. On their self-titled debut and its forerunner, the Sun Giant EP (both Sub Pop), the band brings serious pipes and gorgeous multi-part harmonies like they were trying out for spots in CSNY or "Black Water"–era Doobie Brothers. (Brandon Bussolini)

3:50 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

FOALS


The brainy Oxford quintet has been tagged with both the "math rock" and "Afrobeat appropriationist" labels — both true, and gloriously so. Add in a heap o’ (not tired) post-punk reference and some boppy Cure-like atmospherics, and Foals bring dancefloor introspection to new heights. They’ve also gained a rep for missing festivals, so dedicated fans have their horseteeth on edge. (Marke B.)

3:45 p.m. Sat/20 Tunnel Stage

LOQUAT


Comforting and disquieting in equal measure, the Bay Area group’s knowing, ambivalent electro-pop will sound even better if the weather is gloomy and if you are in a ’90s mood. Playing music together for more than a decade and only on the cusp of releasing their second album, Loquat selects subject matter that rarely strays from post-collegiate romantic malaise. The combo’s tasteful, restrained playing and vocalist Kylee Swenson’s honeyed tone signals a perfectionism that sometimes gets the best of them: a song’s meticulousness can turn suffocating without warning, then just as suddenly return to a melody that almost justifies the occasional preciousness. (Bussolini)

12:45 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

NORTEC COLLECTIVE: BOSTICH & FUSSIBLE


As anyone who has spent a little time in his or her local Guitar Center knows, "fusion" is a deeply tainted word. The bastard genre — typically evoked when a performer sounds like other fusion artists — has untapped potential to refer to music outside the wanky Weather Report–aping scene. If you are not the type to go in for seven-string fretless bass guitars and deeply contrived chords, this Tijuana quartet’s music might help you imagine a future for the term. Synthesizing traditional norteño music with techno might sound like a dicey proposition, but the group’s crisp, tuneful productions make for an easily graspable mellow. (Bussolini)

3:50 p.m. Sat/20 Tunnel Stage

PORT O’BRIEN


In taking a wisp of personal narrative — songwriter Van Pierzalowski spends his summers helping his dad, a commercial fisherman, on Alaska’s Kodiak Island — as their starting point and main inspiration, this Oakland fivepiece compares with this year’s other rustic isolationist, Bon Iver. Sonically, the outfit’s blood runs a little hotter: they are at their best when confident enough to let their rickety songs — like their gold standard, the loose-limbed "I Woke Up Today" — get away from them. (Bussolini)

1:25 p.m. Sun/21 Tunnel Stage

RACONTEURS


Steady, as they go. The rock ‘n’ roll tricksters tried to dodge critical bullets — and blossoms — when they released Consolers of the Lonely (Warner Bros.). Whatever for, one wonders? The combo’s increasingly massive sound successfully invokes the Who and Britannia’s other ’60s and ’70s rock powerhouses, with an intentional whiff of the good times long gone. (Chun)

9:05 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

MIKE RELM


This guy makes A/V geeks look good. With Reservoir Dogs–like skinny-tie suavitude and fleet fingers on his editing gear, the SF mix-maestro mashes up songs and sights with the smarts of a pop-cultie compulsive. Can we expect more of the same Clown Alley–style burger-‘n’-vino fun with Spectacle, his studio debut on his own Radio Fryer label? (Chun)

6:45 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

SPIRITUALIZED


Beware: Jason Spaceman is more than capable of moving an audience to tears with his live, full-tilt psych-gospel orchestrations. (Chun)

4:30 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

TEGAN AND SARA


Twins do it better, if by better you mean attract insatiable hordes of fabulous haircuts with wistful tunes that lodge firmly in your earworm. Plus, they’re Canadian — something we all may wish we were soon. Yet the fabulous Quin sisters aren’t just standard keyboard-and-guitar hum-along-tos. They’ve got some curious curveball chops, as last year’s The Con (Sire) showed. (Marke B.)

7:25 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

Seasonal cool

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Brian Blade will say he’s just the drummer in the band. But Blade isn’t just any player, having credits ranging from Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell along with Joshua Redman and Wayne Shorter. His understatement neatly fits the carefully nuanced improvisation on his new record with the Fellowship Band, Season of Changes (Verve). Group founders-leaders Blade and pianist Jon Cowherd wrote all the material on the new record, which they’ll feature in performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival Sept. 21 and at Yoshi’s SF Sept. 22.

Season stresses the cool, cerebral resonance the ensemble has forged throughout their decade of playing together. "The core of the sound comes from Jon’s writing and his expression at the piano," Blade says by phone from Portland, Ore. Blade and Cowherd have been friends since meeting at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Somehow our songs fit together," Blade explains. "I think that has to do with our relationship and a bond we have that gives the music a cohesiveness as a listening experience."

Humility becomes Blade — and once again, he stresses that he’s simply the drummer with the Wayne Shorter Quartet. But that notion would minimize the amazing collective musicianship of the band led by the saxophonist-composer: It’s been together for eight years now with Danilo Pérez on piano and John Patitucci on bass. Shorter and the outfit make a series of rare club dates at Yoshi’s in Oakland beginning Sept. 30.

Blade seems to have struck the perfect balance between working with Shorter and finding his own voice within the composer’s music. "We want to be true to Wayne’s vision obviously," he observes, "and we try to submit to that. But he wants us to take our own way."

"’Take a chance’ is what he would say," Blade concludes. "It’s challenging to suddenly be thrown out there to walk the wire, so to speak, but we’ve grown into being each other’s safety net." 2

BRIAN BLADE AND THE FELLOWSHIP BAND

Mon/22, 8 and 10 p.m., $10–$16

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

WAYNE SHORTER QUARTET

Sept. 30–Oct. 4, 8 and 10 p.m.; Oct. 5, 7 and 9 p.m., $40–$70

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl

(510) 238-9200

www.yoshis.com

Daddy’s girl

-
0

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS My dad was here, and, like a lot of daughters, I tried to impress him. Like a lot of fathers, he worries about me, his far out (and up and away) California girl. I just wanted to show him that, look, I’m fine. I’m doing well. No need to worry. All quiet on the western front.

I moved all my garbage from the front seat to the back of my crumbling, windshield-cracked, transmissionally-challenged vehicle, and went to get him at the airport, calling several times on my cell phone to let him know that, essentially, I had a cell phone. Finally.

I also have an iPod Touch, so before I left I tickled up directions to the airport, even though I knew how to get there, and I wedged this into my ashtray to resemble, as closely as possible, a GPS device.

On our way away from the airport, windows rolled down against the 100-plus degree heat, I made sure to mention quite casually that, although my 22-year-old, three-cylinder pickup truck gets better mileage than his Prius, I am saving money to buy a new car.

I took him to work with me, just for three hours, and while he wasn’t paying attention I quite quietly lost that job. Or found out that I will have, come November. To my credit, I didn’t start crying until much later, after midnight, in the woods, trying to fall asleep in the hammock.

On the way home we’d stolen a chicken from a backyard in East Oakland. My dad had held the flashlight, and I’m pretty sure he was impressed with the speed, dexterity, and fearlessness with which I snatched the beast from its sleep and stuffed it beak-first into a cardboard box.

I know he was impressed with my shack because he said as much. He said he’d pictured it much smaller. And he liked my stuff. He hadn’t taken me up on my offer to stop at a drug store on the way home, boxed chicken squawking between suitcases, and buy a shower curtain for my shower-turned-litter-box-slash-storage-space. He’d take his baths outside on the porch, just like me!

What a dad. Jetlagged and overfed, he fell asleep as soon as his gray hairs touched the pillow on my fold-out futon. I made love to Weirdo the Cat on the carpet for a while, and then grabbed my sleeping bag and went outside. It was too hot for sleeping bags. Luckily, and weirdly, it was too hot for mosquitoes, too.

I lay in the redwood-strung hammock, where I usually sleep very soundly, thank you, and I tossed and turned and sniffed and sobbed and howled, albeit very quietly, at the moon. The chicken, which I’d moved from the cardboard box to a cat carrier on an old rusty oil drum next to me, peeked out of its air holes and tossed and turned and pecked at the moon.

Between the two of us, we woke up squirrels, but not my dad.

Who, when he saw my woods and ways in the refreshing (to him) daylight, was even more impressed! He kinda liked bathing outside, and marveled at my outdoor desk, and complimented my apples, which I love but most people find too tart.

Most impressively, though, and he, being his daughter’s father, elaborated at some (if not chicken farmerly) length … the old man couldn’t stop crapping the whole time he was here.

"I seem to have that effect on people," I said. It’s true. I have friends who call me when they’re constipated. They claim the sound of my voice has a laxative effect. Which I take as a compliment.

My dad, who leans toward constipation himself, attributed it more to my healthy diet. His word: "healthy." What we ate: jambalaya with three kinds of meat and two kinds of seafood in it. Omelets. Barbecued eggs. Smoked chickens. Fried clams. Clam chowder. And a Zachary’s stuffed pizza with anchovies.

And if that’s all health food, you gotta wonder, kind of broken-heartedly, what people are eating in Ohio.

—————————-

My new favorite restaurant is Guerilla Café in Berkeley. They have a waffle-of-the-day, and on this day it was cardamom, buckwheat, and dates. Couple of fresh organic strawberries, three or four thin slices of pear, a bloop of crème, one pat of butter, thimble of syrup … bam! $7.25. And a $2 cup of Blue Bottle coffee with no free refill. Justice, Berkeley-style. Hip, righteous, artsy, and expensive, it’s immersion therapy for a chicken farmer come to town.

GUERILLA CAFÉ

1620 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 845-2233

Tue.–Fri., 7 a.m.–6 p.m.

Sat.–Sun., 8 a.m.–6 p.m.

No alcohol

MC/V

Raiding Long Haul

-
0

› deborah@sfbg.com

Previously sealed documents related to the Aug. 27 police raid at the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley now reveal what the UC Berkeley Police Department was after, even if questions remain about its tactics.

The Statement of Probable Cause refers to e-mail threats against UC Berkeley researchers made by animal rights activists, sent from Long Haul’s IP address. Long Haul — along with its tenants Slingshot, a quarterly newspaper supporting radical causes, East Bay Prisoner Support, and Berkeley Liberation Radio — had several of its computers seized by an assortment of gun-wielding campus cops, Alameda County sheriff deputies, and federal agents who broke into the nonprofit locale, which has been providing office and meeting space for political and social justice groups since 1994.

During the raid, according to Kathryn Miller, one of the first Long Haul collective members to arrive on the scene, authorities wouldn’t show anyone the warrant until they finished breaking open cabinets and nabbing CDs and hard drives in pursuit of evidence. Miller says she even offered to unlock cabinets for them provided they show her the warrant, but the cops still refused.

That warrant explained little about the reasons for the intrusion, other than to refer to the Statement of Probable Cause affidavit filed with the Superior Court and to grant permission to confiscate property that could show a felony had been committed. Immediately after the raid, Robert Bennett, a staff member of Slingshot, expressed his suspicion that the raid was a form of "collective punishment" against left-wing groups, especially considering his publication’s support of the tree-sitters who have delayed a UC Berkeley construction project.

Carlos Villareal, who is part of a team from the National Lawyers Guild that will be representing the besieged nonprofit pro bono, told the Guardian that Long Haul and its tenants have grounds to contest the search as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

"I’m pretty confident that we have a good argument that the search was overbroad and the tactics were heavy-handed. Searches need to be limited in both their scope and how they’re done," he said.

Villareal didn’t even see the affidavit until Heather Ishimaru, an ABC Channel 7 news reporter, brought it to Long Haul seeking comment. Ishimaru obtained the document by accident from the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland on Aug. 8 when a clerk in training provided it to her even though it was under protective seal. If not for that lapse in procedure, Long Haul’s lawyers would have to petition a court to see the incriminating document.

The affidavit, written by Detective Bill Kasiske, details some alarming e-mails sent via free Internet e-mail accounts to a researcher at the university, like one demanding, "STOP TORTURING ANIMALS OR THINGS GET UGLY" or another that correctly stated the researcher’s home address and said, "im a crazy fuck and im watching YOU."

Kasiske concludes, "A search of the Long Haul’s premises could reveal logs or sign-in sheets indicating which patrons used the computers on particular dates." But he doesn’t draw a distinction between computers open to the public and those strictly for the use of tenant organizations.

Even if the search is limited to the public-access computers, not much information can be gleaned from them. Much like at the local public library, anyone — from the Unabomber and Osama bin Laden to an FBI agent — can walk in and use the computers without logging on or leaving any trace of their identity.

It’s unclear why Kasiske didn’t research Long Haul’s practices regarding patron use prior to filing the affidavit, and no one from UCBPD would respond to our calls for comment. Villareal, the legal spokesperson on the case, noted that, "there are less disruptive methods of law enforcement…. We don’t think they would do something similar to a business, Internet café, or library."

A house divided

-
0

› jesse@sfbg.com

Just as the US presidential election hits the home stretch, internal strife at one of the country’s largest labor unions appears to be diverting its focus from electing Barack Obama.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its 2 million members helped Obama defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Its ground operation and bulging political war chest are crucial to Democratic Party hopes in November, both in the presidential election and congressional races. But a recent corruption scandal and an ongoing internal dispute that threatens to blow up in the coming weeks could undermine the union’s political influence at the worst possible time.

"If SEIU didn’t have to deal with this distraction, it would be able to do more to influence the election," Dan Clawson, a labor scholar and professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told the Guardian. "California [where nearly all of SEIU’s recent turmoil has taken place] is not where they should be."

But according to several sources within SEIU, the union will be devoting resources to the Golden State this fall, even though the state is widely expected to remain a Democratic stronghold. The sources contend that the organization is preparing to deploy hundreds of its staffers to the region to take control of a local union affiliate and to deal with any potential fallout. At least some of those staffers, the sources say, would have been devoting their time and energy to the election campaign if not for SEIU’s internal troubles.

Last month the union’s international office was forced to "trustee," or take over, its largest California affiliate after the Los Angeles Times ran a series of articles exposing alleged corruption by its leader, Tyrone Freeman. Then, in late August, SEIU announced it was initiating a process to assume control of its second-largest California local, the Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers–West (UHW). For months, SEIU president Andy Stern has feuded with UHW head Sal Rosselli over Stern’s push to consolidate local union chapters into larger and more centralized units [see "A less perfect union," 4/9/08, and "The SEIU strikes back," 4/16/08].

Stern and the international have charged Rosselli and other UHW officials with misappropriating millions of dollars. In late July, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by SEIU covering these same charges. Now SEIU has scheduled its own hearings on the matter to decide whether to clean out UHW’s leadership. The hearings are set for Sept. 26-27 at the San Mateo County Event Center. A separate lawsuit challenging UHW leadership brought by individual UHW members is also moving forward. Rosselli and his supporters strongly deny the allegations of financial misconduct. They claim the upcoming trusteeship hearings are simply Stern’s latest attempt to stifle dissent within the union.

"It’s a kangaroo court," Rosselli told us. "It’s a purely political move to silence our members. And it’s a huge distraction."

SEIU’s turmoil is not welcome news to progressives. Federal election records show that the union’s political arm has dropped more than $10 million into Obama’s candidacy, as well as millions more for other left-wing candidates and causes. Beyond monetary support, Democrats are counting on SEIU organizers to hit the ground across the country, especially in hotly contested states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and Missouri. But because of the feud, a good number of those foot soldiers could be spending this autumn in safely blue California instead.

If the hearing officer hired by SEIU allows the union to take over UHW, another labor scholar, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, said, "It’s hard to see how [SEIU] would do it without bringing in a significant number of people." He explained that in the event of a trusteeship, some or all of the staff may need to be replaced. The union also might have to contend with a large number of extremely disgruntled people in its 150,000-member affiliate.

Officials at UHW told us that members are planning "massive" demonstrations at the two-day hearings in late September. And the upheaval could easily drag on through the rest of the campaign season if the trusteeship moves forward. Rosselli predicts there will be "major resistance" from his rank and file. He would not elaborate on what that resistance would consist of, but a resolution passed at a recent UHW leadership conference struck a decidedly militant tone: "UHW will fight to keep our members united in one statewide healthcare workers union and will use all available means."

Rosselli told us that resisting SEIU’s trusteeship would "dramatically" curtail his local’s political activities. During the primary season, he added, UHW dispatched teams of organizers to Iowa, New Hampshire, and other critical states. But for the general election, they will be staying home. "We’re in a civil war," Rosselli said. "We need everyone here to defend against Stern’s dictatorship."

The Guardian has learned that Obama and other progressive candidates may not just be losing valuable campaigners from UHW. Several UHW sources said they expect SEIU to send large numbers of union organizers to the Bay Area in the wake of the hearings — and two management-level sources from the international’s staff confirmed those suspicions to us.

The first source, who asked not to be identified, told the Guardian that numerous colleagues at the organization have been approached by "senior international staff, attempting to recruit them and other organizers to come to California … to implement the [possible] trusteeship." The source added that people within the organization believe the union is planning to send "hundreds" of people.

A second management-level source at the international, who also requested anonymity, told us that they have personally assigned several organizers to campaign work only to see those staffers reassigned to the UHW matter by international higher-ups. The second source reiterated the first source’s contention that the union is looking to send "hundreds" of what the source termed "troops" to Northern California to replace any UHW staff who quit or are expelled, and to quell any uprising by disgruntled UHW members.

"This has been deemed an imperative at the top levels of the union," the second source continued. "People have been told [the] numbers of people they need to assign [to the UHW feud] and been told to look over their staff lists to see who they can assign."

Michelle Ringuette, a spokesperson for the international in Washington DC, told us that "no one is being pulled off of political work" to deal with the UHW situation. While she wouldn’t deny that some organizers who might otherwise be involved in lower-level political activities "like get out the vote operations" might be sent to California if needed, she denied that staffers who specialize in politics would be diverted or that hundreds of staffers would be involved. Get out the vote efforts such as phone banks and door-knocking are often performed by union workers on behalf of Democratic candidates — and they can be decisive in a close election.

"Of course this [the trusteeship hearing] is unfortunate timing," Ringuette said. "But … we don’t believe this is going to affect out advocacy for Barack Obama. That is our top national priority."

But a third employee of the international we spoke with rejected Ringuette’s description of a division of labor within the union’s organizers. The longtime employee, who also asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, told the Guardian that a small number of international staffers may specialize exclusively in political activism, but virtually all organizers would be working on the fall campaign in a normal election year.

"If they’re sending organizers to California [to deal with UHW], they’re definitely moving them away from battleground states. California is not considered a battleground state."

Our other two sources at the international echoed the third source’s characterizations.

In a strongly worded letter to Stern dated Sept. 9, UHW’s secretary treasurer Joan Emslie stated that the trusteeship hearings "can only distract" SEIU from political activism and "hinder our ability to put the greatest possible efforts into this critical national election." The letter ended by requesting that the trusteeship hearings be postponed until "a date no earlier than Nov. 10," one week after the presidential election. As of press time, the international has not rescheduled the hearings.

Obama campaign officials we contacted declined to comment on what one called "an internal union matter." But some labor observers were willing to voice their displeasure with the timing of the dispute. Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara called the trusteeship hearings "a huge mistake." With the upcoming election, Lichtenstein went on, "the consequences could be enormous. What’s the rush?"

Bart Davenport

-
0

PREVIEW "I’ve never been into rowdy shit, you know. I’ve always been a softie."

Secure is the man who will own up to his inner — and aural — gentleness. But Bart Davenport is like that: a lover not a fighter, even as he talks about Egbert Souse’s, the W.C. Fields–themed bar in Oakland that he lives above. That "semi-rowdy" nightspot poses no danger to the East Bay–born-and-bred singer-songwriter: he prefers the sweet stuff to the hardcore — or to sour grapes. Lend an ear to the refreshing-as-iced-tea, silky delights of his new, fourth solo CD, Palaces (Antenna Farm), Davenport’s bid to give his ravenous listeners what they want. "Now you have MySpace, and you have a way for people from all over the world to ask you, ‘Where’s the new record?’<0x2009>" says Davenport, who of late rarely played solo and mainly focused on singing with Honeycut. "I thought I better make another one for these people or they’ll go away!"

Palaces will provide fans of the ex-Kinetics and Loved Ones frontman with the pure hit of pristine pop pleasure they’ve been hankering for. In pursuit of the earnest, 1960s- and ’70s-era AM-radio soft-rock pleasures of "Jon Jon" and "A Young One," Davenport enlisted the help of friends like Honeycut’s Tony Sevener and Hervé Salters, Persephone’s Bees’ Angelina Moysov, and Kelley Stoltz and Kevin Ink. The latter two worked on Ink’s 24-track, 2-inch tape machine, which Herbie Hancock’s "Rockit" was said to have been recorded on, and brought in a glockenspiel, which Stoltz purchased for the project. "Stoltzisms crept their way onto the songs," Davenport says, "and it was a welcome thing." The resulting Palaces finds the self-described "acoustic guitar–slinging troubadour" sounding perfectly comfy in his own skin, so hurl as many softie or soft-rock accusations as you wish. "I’ve never had a personal agenda to bring back soft rock," Davenport muses. "If it’s vilified by people who don’t like it, that just makes it cooler for me and the people who do. Really, who wants to be hip?"

BART DAVENPORT With Sugar and Gold, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, and Oakland Soft Rock Choir. Fri/19, 9:30 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: Bad Plus, Anthony Brown, Jennifer O’Connor, more

-
0


Snared: Bad Plus smell like teen spirit in Argentina.

Yep, the fact that Sept. 11 landed on a Tuesday didn’t deter many a musical artist from dropping their latest – so don’t let it make you stay home. And now for a few more intriguing shows, all happening this week…



BAD PLUS
Sound familiar? Sound like “Teen Spirit” or “Tom Sawyer”? The trio feels the tuck o’ the past. Wed/10, 8 and 10 p.m., $10-$16. Yoshi’s SF, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600.

l_0a12fc7a1f21f0ed399279c0c0cf8098.jpg

GENERALISSIMO
The Oakland army leads a “Reeducation Demonstration” with what they describe as “high concept, high modernist broken rock,” and compare to both Queens of the Stone Age and North Korea’s Mass Games. Yet mommy just called it “acid rock.” With Mariana Trench and Pegataur. Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk St., SF. (415) 923-0923.

Eccentric and unclassified

-
0

PREVIEW We — the proud, the few, the musical eccentrics besotted with both Michael Hurley and Harry Nilsson, both Hazel Dickens and Lee Hazlewood — have it good in the Bay. We’re at the ground zero of a highly unofficial appreciation society for the aforementioned, unclassifiable sounds. And that’s why nifty string-strewn, jangle-happy xylophone-plonkers like Okie Rosette exist and neato noise-loving, cacophony-cagy urban-rusticators like Little Teeth persist, alongside other neo-okies like Or, the Whale and Port O’Brien.

The restless, chaotic imagination of small children enraptured by rickety musical instruments and down-home noise-makers alike supercharges the manic locals of Little Teeth and the two-year-old threesome’s just-out full-length, Child Bearing Man (Absolutely Kosher). So where do the rousingly anthemic melodies of songs like "Between My Ears" and "Applegate" come from, blasting through the washtub thump, accordion bleat, and the banjo pluck? Makes me nuzzle Little Teeth as they howl at the moon, toss their untamed manes, and shake their small fists at the sky with tears of inchoate joy and rage in their wild eyes.

While Little Teeth seemingly sprung fully blown from the brow of hillbilly Zeus, the lyrically folk-rockin’ Okie Rosette rose gracefully from ashes of Bay Area critical fave Granfaloon Bus. Todd Felix Costanza initially got together with fellow ex-Granfalooners Jeff Stevenson and Ajax Green to make Okie Rosette’s new Leap Second (Monotreme) — though Costanza gives equal credit for the disc to background movers like Dee Kesler of Thee More Shallows: "We plugged away in his studio in west Oakland, and he turned my skeletons into people." And beauteous, quirk-filled people they are: imagine Grey Gardens‘ Little Edie warbling backwoods dancehall numbers when Costanza croons, "It’s starting to rain so put on your trash bag." So how to explain the okie label? "But my family tree has had more than one redneck fall from it," Costanza writes in an e-mail, "and I loved The Grapes of Wrath."

OKIE ROSETTE With Emily Jane White and Winters Fall. Wed/10, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com

LITTLE TEETH With Jel and Lovely Public. Sun/14, 9 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord

The grateful undead

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Looking back at Outside Lands and ahead to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and the last lingering Indian summer sighs and huzzahs of the festival express season, I’d say we all have plenty to be grateful for. At Outside Lands, I was thankful for Sharon Jones’ sass, Radiohead’s nu-romantic lyricism (amid two moments when the sound cut out and Thom Yorke’s jesting "OK, who put beer in the plug?"), Beck’s persistent pop groove as fence jumpers leapt the barriers, Regina Spektor’s and Andrew Bird’s old-time songcraft, Los Amigos Invisibles’ and Little Brother’s bounce, and Primus’ pluck. No doubt the bison are grateful for the quiet betwixt gatherings — and we all envy them after those night strolls through the cool, darkened park, passing kids listening to the music echo through the arboreal cathedral.

I could go on about how gratified I am for a somewhat chiller city now that burner getups on Haight Street are discounted and their would-be buyers are happily grilling on the playa. But the most grateful of all has gotta be Sam Adato, who I chatted up last week on the eve of practice with his hard rock band Sticks and Stones. The group has a Sept. 5 show at Slim’s, for which he’s likely grateful, but most of all he’s happy to be alive and not buried beneath some beater. He was on his way to his store, Sam Adato’s Drum Shop, July 31 when, he says, a woman driver running a red light at Ninth Street was hit by another car heading down Folsom. "The impact made her swerve and go directly into my shop," he says. "It had to be quite fast to crash through the storefront." Adato usually gets to the store by 11 a.m. — he missed colliding with the driver by about 15 minutes. "Thank god," he marvels. "I probably would have been dead." His wife rushed over thinking he was in the store when the crash occurred, and their tearful embrace outside was captured by at least one photo-blogger. "Thank god no one was hurt," Adato adds. "Walking on the sidewalk or in the shop — it could have been a bloodbath. Things can be replaced — people can’t."

Adato’s alive, but half the storefront was wiped out, and he estimates that about $10,000 in inventory was destroyed. Now everything is in storage, the store is boarded up, and repairs have begun. Meanwhile he’s been producing a CD for his other band, The Bridge, which opened for Deep Purple at the Warfield last summer. "That’s been keeping me busy, but the ironic thing is Oct. 12 will be my 15-year anniversary — it just might be the grand reopening, 15 years after I first opened," he says wryly. At that time he was at a crossroads. "Rather than audition for touring bands, which is great but it’s hard to make a living and more often than not you’re just a hired gun, I decided to open a drum shop. I had no doubt in my mind it would succeed," he says firmly. "There are no drum shops like it anywhere. A drummer can come in and say they need their drum fixed, and I’ll fix it right there and then."

Until a certain car crash, he was living the drummer’s dream. Though Adato now throws down his sticks in South San Francisco, he actually resided in his SF shop for its first two years. "It was great," he recalls. "Stay up late, get up, take a shower, turn on the lights, open the door, and you’re ready for business, surrounded by drums day and night. Thank god for giving me this life." *

STICKS AND STONES

Fri/5, 9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

www.slims-sf.com


——————————-

HOWLS IN THE WILDERNESS

CENTRO-MATIC AND SOUTH SAN GABRIEL


Will Johnson unites his two groups on the release of a two-CD set on Misra. With Sleepercar. Wed/3, 8 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

DESOLATION WILDERNESS


The Olympia, Wash., combo on K Records jangles brightly at the end of a dreamily desolate echo chamber. With Family Trea and Ben Kamen and the Hot New Ringtones. Wed/3, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MOMMYHEADS


Reunited and it feels like Mommy is home. After the 2007 passing of drummer Jann Kotik, the ‘heads decided to track old and new songs for the revitalized You’re Not a Dream (Bladen County). With Brad Brooks and The Mumlers. Wed/3, 9:30 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

DAEDELUS


Taz Arnold of Sa-Ra and rapper Paperboy make it onto the LA beat-R&D specialist’s new Love to Make Music To (Ninja Tune). Thurs/3, 7 p.m., free. Apple Store, 1 Stockton, SF. Fri/5, 10 p.m., $5–$10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

MORTIFIED


You know you like it — the pathos and chuckles of reading oh-so-private love letters and diary entries in public. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8 p.m., $12–$15. Make-Out Room, SF. www.makeoutroom.com

NINE INCH NAILS AND DEERHUNTER


Certainly one of the more unexpected pairings of late: the determinedly independent Trent Reznor meets the persistently raucous Bradford Cox. Fri/5, 7:30 p.m., $39.50–$55. Oracle Arena, Oakl. www.apeconcerts.com

DEATH VESSEL AND DAME SATAN


DV’s heartfelt folk meets its ideal match in SF’s DS, whose Andrew Simmons is planning to drop a haunting solo EP, Tabernacle Word, Pioneer (Ghost Mansion). With Micah Blue Smaldone. Sat/6, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com
ISE LYFE
The über-versatile Oakland MC recently cometh with Prince Cometh (7even89ine). With Bambu and DJ Phatrick, Do D.A.T., Power Struggle, EyeASage, and Emassin. Tues/9, 9:30 p.m., $10–$13. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

SF Electronic Music Festival

-
0

PREVIEW Five days, 18 performers, one ensemble, countless cords and magic boxes, and weird sounds times infinity. I mean, hell, if you’ve got an electric current and an instrument (in its broadest interpretation), you may as well use ’em together.

In this spirit, eight Bay Area sound-art wizards have organized the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival for eager electro-lovin’ ears for the ninth year in a row. Could there be a musical gathering more eclectic than this? Not likely. After nearly a decade of tapping into the electro-acoustic grab bag, the lineup is still stretching diversity to new levels, ranging the melodic-discordant gamut from drone to pop and contemporary chamber to industrial and then some. There’ll be internationally renowned pioneers such as sonic meditator Pauline Oliveros, and emerging artists like Oakland’s folklore-inspired pop duo Myrmyr. Many performances feature sfSoundGroup lending its modern improvisational twist. And don’t forget the science-derived computer music and harsh noise, synth-y innovations and rearranged Persian classics, electro-trombone and minimalism by way of New York City. You know you wouldn’t dare argue with an "intense noise artist" named Sharkiface.

SFEMF pummels the boundaries of your deconstructed notions of avant-garde postmodernism, then does it a few more times, till you’re left with the sharpened edge of experimental glinting through the soundwaves. Why not totally saturate your sonic-scape and save a few bucks with the five-day ticket? ‘Cause you love the Moog and the Mac, and for one week, you have it all.

SF ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVALWith Jen Boyd, Monique Buzzarté, Edmund Campion, Clay Chaplin, Ata Ebtekar, Hans Fjellestad, Christopher Fleeger, Phill Niblock, Tujiko Noriko, Carl Stone, Alex Potts, Akira Rabelais, Rutro and the Logs, Ray Sweeten, and Richard Teitelbaum. Wed/3–Sun/7, 8 p.m. (Sat/6 at 7 p.m.), $12–$17 per day; $55 all five days. Project Artaud Theatre, 450 Florida, SF. (415) 626-4370, www.sfemf.org

Inside Outside Lands fest: on music-loving and littering hordes and sustainable music gatherings

-
1

radiohead 3 outside 367.jpg
Heads gather round: Radiohead. All photos by Spencer Hansen.

By Kat Renz

I was in the throes of a particularly conflicted love/hate relationship last weekend. The first Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in Golden Gate Park – so much to appreciate (the music, scenery, intention), so much to loathe (the overlapping performances, long lines, the great green marketing strategy).

beck 3 outside 83.jpg
Scoping out Beck.

“We deserve a festival,” folk-rocker Matt Nathanson told journalists during a press conference on Saturday, Aug. 23, the second day of Outside Lands. And though he was being ironic, he echoed the sense of entitlement sweeping through Speedway Meadows on down to the Polo Fields, like the restless ghost of a spoiled brat. Between concert-goers tearing down fences and elbowing relentlessly (and pointlessly) through the audience, or getting so pissed they could barely make out Thom Yorke on the giant TV screens and littering like motherfuckers, the scene got pretty obnoxious.

But, duh, what else did I expect with 150,000 people?

sean hayes 9 outside.jpg
Hat club for men: Sean Hayes.

Let me diverge, briefly, from the rantings of my inner curmudgeon: Oakland’s bluesy outfit Howlin’ Rain struck an inaugural chord on the tiny Panhandle Stage, jamming through a half-hour set fueled by the soul rasp of front-howler Ethan Miller and Joel Robinow’s organ harmonies.

rupa spencer hansen outside .jpg
In the swim: Rupa and the Fishes.

Forecast: blackout

-
0

› superego@sfbg.com

Midtempo is the new uptempo, FGGT is the new AZN, and I just adore your hot ass plumping through that tight pair of Evisu No. 13 Lazy S Lefts, no homo — which is the old yay homo. Other topsy-turvy pre-fall clubland updates: drag goes glitch, DJs quit dressing like twins, and everyone drops their Marvel masks and flocks to the last great summer blockbuster, Final Destination: Kanye Glasses.

That smell you hear ahead is the slow-burn return of PLUR. Best new shriek from the stalls: "Whose line is it anyway?!" Five fantasy dance-floor jams: Rondenion’s drrrty D-house groove, "The Beautiful Memory," laidback dip-step to heaven "Stellar Way" by Acos Coolkas, Shy Child’s hyperactive meta-smackdown, "Astronaut," any remix by and of Flying Lotus, and deliriously simple rave-hop looper "Slave 1" from Mark E. (no relation). Relapses don’t count if they’re properly scheduled. You’ll be so over Cazwell’s "I Saw Beyoncé at Burger King" by the time you read this.

What else do you need to know? Oh, the below:

Ellen Allien If you missed the Berlin DJ queen of full-on old-school techno vibe’s triumphal appearance earlier this year at Mighty, complete with Fantastic Planet projections and water bottles squirted over the mushroom-shuffling crowd, you punched yourself in the blunder pants. Do not do this again. It hurts. With multigenre cut-ups Modeselektor, fresh from starring in your Burner headphones.

Sept. 5. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

BLOWOFF If this fall you choose to go to one giant party full of shirtless, hairy, gay musclemen (and straight friends!) put on by an alternative music superstar — no, not Perry Farrell — let Blowoff be it. Why? It’s not your normal circuit-lousy-techno mess: rock and electro are there in the mix, as Bob Mould, formerly of Hüsker Dü and Sugar, and cheeky producer Richard Morel bring their enormously successful traveling to-do to Slim’s, of all places. Weird, but true.

Sept. 6. 10 p.m., $12. Slim’s, 333 11th St., (415) 255-0333, www.myspace.com/blowoffevents

Digitalism No more rock, no more techno, only electro — I love that T-shirt! Gimme three in puce, and turn up Digitalism, the laptop-heroic duo of Hamburgers who in any other era but our electro-dominated own would be filed under "New Orderish" but, happily, give us kids DJ sets to die for, including chiming guitar lines, naff Brit-accented vocal lines, and enough buzz in the speakers to rise above contemporary genre bed-death. They perform with glammy stompers Midnight Juggernaut and kooky the Juan Maclean.

Sept. 12. 103 Harriet, SF. www.blasthaus.com

Black Market Techno A secret: the Black Market techno parties, every third Saturday at Oasis in Oakland, are one of the cutest all-around joints going right now for aurally adventurous fanboys and fangirls. I hope they’re legal, or I just fucked it up. September’s installment is superstacked with all-day and all-night edgy DJ delights, including Rich Korach of Detroit’s Paxahau club, Craig Kuna of local banging monthly Kontrol, and EO of Mouth to Mouth recordings. Yes, it is also free, so get on the damn BART already.

Sept. 19. Oasis, 135 12th St., Oakl. (510) 763-0404, www.myspace.com/blackmarkettechno

Ron Carroll Geez, I miss house. There are so many places in the city right now to jerk around ironically, wig out dub-steppingly, or punch the air like an American Apparel hesher. Yet the list of smooth-groove, soul-drenched dance-floor opportunities is thinner than, well, an American Apparel hesher. So is it true that Chicago legend Ron Carroll has somehow been convinced to do a residency at Temple? Could the man behind a wealth of ’90s orchestral house hits be at the vanguard of an SF house regeneration? Whether he’ll be a regular or not, his turntable domination on Sept. 13 promises to be a sweet revival meeting for househeds and fans of golden tunes.

Sept. 13. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

Dirty Bird Lovefest Pre-Party The enormous and consistently lovely Lovefest (Oct. 4) is no longer the same weekend as the Folsom Street Fair (Sept. 28) — farewell, gorgeous sight of hirsute leathermen in bunny ears! — and this year it’s really pumping its kind-of yawny Dutch trance headliner, Armin Van Buuren. But it’s still a primo time for our local lights to shine. If you can’t wait for the endearingly handmade floats to parade your favorite Bay beatmakers down Market Street, why not let your freak feathers fly early with SF’s current reigning dance label kings, minimal-goofy Dirty Bird Records, including Claude Von Stroke, Justin Martin, Worthy, and the aptly named Hookerz and Blow.

Oct. 3. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

Frisco Freakout Can we catch a break from all the gadgets, please — the Ableton–whatnots and Pro Tools paraphernalia? Fab. The all-ages psychedelic rock dance party Frisco Freakout is a whole day’s worth of swirl and twirl at the city’s "premiere dive venue" (their words, not mine), Thee Parkside. Unpack your wavy caftan, tie-dye your Converses, and jack the tab with a zillion chiming howlers like the Bad Trips, Wooden Shjips, Crystal Antlers, Earthless, and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound.

Oct. 11. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. (415) 252-1330, www.myspace.com/friscofreakout

>>More Fall Arts Preview

‘Daughter’ goes to the opera

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The most successful Asian American novelist of her generation, Amy Tan tests her penmanship as an opera librettist this fall, when the San Francisco Opera presents the world premiere of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, the operatic adaptation of the Oakland native’s 2001 Putnam bestseller with a score composed by Stewart Wallace.

While holding the utmost respect for the polish and clarity of Tan’s voice as a novelist, I have always been a bit skeptical of her writings. These often read suspiciously close to the admonitions and remembrances of parents and elder Chinese relatives, repackaged with great skill for maximum melodramatic impact. Most Chinese children raised by parents who survived the Sino-Japanese wars and the Cultural Revolution will tell you that they are keenly familiar with the gestalt of these tales — carrying unspeakable tragedy and suffering — which the aforementioned aged deploy with a numbing frequency as a tool to awe, preach to, strike fear in, and taunt offspring.

Still, Tan is decidedly correct when she points out that, melodramatic or not, the unarticulated truth of these stories is intensely evident in the endemic presence of depression and the dysfunctional intergenerational relationships that afflict the transplanted expatriate Chinese community of the war generation. "There are lots of tragedies in people’s lives," observes the Sausalito resident by phone from New York City. "Especially in [those of] people who decided to leave their country behind."

Local audiences have been exposed to Wallace’s music — most notably when his opera, Harvey Milk, premiered locally with the SF Opera in 1996 — but for Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter commission provided her with an in-depth exposure to the creative process of an entirely new medium. "When I was asked to do this opera, I was happy to turn over the story," Tan says. "I wasn’t thinking that I would be committing myself to doing a libretto."

Initially intimidated by the technical aspects, she soon found herself immersed in the process. "It’s a very free form, as a matter of fact," she explains. "It wasn’t about cutting back the novel, but rather to find the heart of the story and recreate it all over again."

At its core, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is the story of three generations of Chinese women whose secrets and unspoken traumas are carried forth between grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. In preparation for the work, Wallace and Tan traveled together to remote villages in China, attending religious ceremonies, and collecting inspiration in traditional folk music and rituals.

As a result, Wallace created a score — which will be conducted by Steven Sloane and performed by Zheng Cao, Ning Liang, Qian Yi, Hao Jiang Tian, Wu Tong, James Maddalena, and Catherine Cook — that is at times percussive and at other moments hauntingly lyrical, according to Tan. It also includes music written for the suona, a high-pitched, reedy Chinese oboe, as well as some fire-breathing drama. "We will see acrobatics," she adds. "In the beginning prologue there will be dragons: a water dragon and a fire dragon. I am a water dragon, and my mother is a fire dragon, and together we make steam." Far from the typical Chinatown parade dragons, "these will be beautiful, flying dragons made of light paper," she says, "and inside are these flying acrobats."

With martial arts and acrobatic elements integrated into the staging by director Chen Shi-Zheng, will Bonesetter carry close resemblance to a Chinese opera? "Not at all," Tan said. "There are parts of my life, which are based in China, that have been transformed into my American life. Stewart’s music includes, in the same way, those references. But they are part of Stewart’s voice now — and he has a very strong voice."

THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER

Sept. 13–Oct. 2, various times, $15–$290

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com

CHING CHANG’S TOP CLASSICAL AND OPERA PICKS

KATIA AND MARIELLE LABEQUE


Like Madonna, the Labeque sisters are past 50 now, and showing remarkable artistic longevity and re-invention. The virtuoso French pianists offer a rare performance of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos at the San Francisco Symphony’s season opener. Sept. 4–7. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org

PYGMALION


Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra opens its fall program with a gem of French baroque, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion. Paired on the program will be the Thomas Arne’s Comus, based on a masque by John Milton. Sept. 13–20. (415) 392-4400, www.philharmoniabaroque.org

ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN AND THE MANITOBA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA


Overachiever Bayrakdarian has an engineering degree and speaks five languages, yet it is in singing that this freakishly talented young Canadian shines most brightly. The soprano perform works by Bartók, Ravel, Gideon Klein, Nikolaos Skalkottas, and Gomidas Vartabed. Oct. 4. (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org

MARSALIS BRASILIANOS


Saxophone virtuoso Branford Marsalis’ love affair with Brazilian music shows no signs of waning. Here he forges a vibrant musical dialogue across the Americas, joined by members of Gil Jardim’s Philarmonia Brasileira to perform works by Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, Bach, and Milhaud. Oct. 5. (650) 725-ARTS (2787), livelyarts.stanford.edu.

THE COAL-SELLER’S CONCERT


The Bay Area early music ensemble Musica Pacifica recreates a typical concert by coal-seller Thomas Britton, who presented the world’s first known public concert series in London around 1678. Oct. 31. (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org


>>More Fall Arts Preview

Olympic disc toss

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

 

SEPT. 2

Theresa Andersson, Hummingbird, Go! (Basin Street) Could this be the latest hair — or rather, heir — to Dusty Springfield’s not-so-dusty blue-eyed soul diva throne, aided by Allen Toussaint, Ane Brun, and Sweden’s Tobias Froberg?

Apollo Sunshine, Shall Noise Upon (World’s Fair) Bad album titles happen to even imaginative psych-poppers.

Lila Downs, Shake Away (EMI/Manhattan) New York-Oaxaca singer-songwriter doffs the Frida drag and bares some Shakira-style midriff along with a lively pop sound.

Donnie Klang, Just a Rolling Stone (Bad Boy) Making the Band 4′s broom-topped answer to Jon B and Justin T paraphrases Bobby D for the TRL set.

New Kids on the Block, The Block (Interscope) Old manager Lou Pearlman is going to prison, Donnie is headed for divorce court, and there are even rumors that one member is — gasp — nonheterosexual.

Underoath, Lost in the Sound of Separation (Tooth & Nail/Solid State) Rock me, sexy screamo Jesus-freaks.

UNKLE, End Titles … Stories for Film (Surrender All) Say “UNKLE” like Black Mountain and Josh Homme want you to.

Brian Wilson, That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol) He reunites with Van Dyke Parks and takes a trip down memory’s drag strip, covering Louis Armstrong and paying homage to SoCal.

Young Jeezy, The Recession (Def Jam) True dat. Producers like Eminem and Jazze Pha and contributors such as Kanye West and T-Pain feel Jeezy’s, erm, pain.

 

SEPT. 9

Calexico, Carried to Dust (Touch and Go) Dusted but darn pretty. Whispery. Poppy.

Cornelius, Sensurround (Everloving) Keigo Oyamada, 3-D sound specialist, returns with a video-and-remix DVD/CD, aptly titled after a quake-imitating movie gimmick.

Kimya Dawson, Alphabutt (K) Everyone poops.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, All Rebel Rockers (Anti-/Epitaph) The SF activist stalwart spit-shines a spunky-fresh blend of dub and funk.

Fujiya and Miyagi, Lightbulbs (Deaf, Dumb & Blind) Fresh from car and Miller Lite commercials, the English kraut-rockers with the Japanese name(s).

Gym Class Heroes, The Quilt (Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen/Atlantic) I hate gym.

Hatchback, Colours of the Sun (Lo) Dfa- and Prins Thomas–approved Sorcerer-buddy Sam Grawe sets the controls beyond cosmic into hypnotic with epic instrumental jams such as “White Diamond” and “Horizon.”

Okkervil River, The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar) The sweet sequel to last year’s novelistic The Stage Names.

Kardinal Offishall, Not 4 Sale (Geffen) The Clipse dispenses financial advice on “Set It Off.”

Jessica Simpson, Do You Know? (Columbia Nashville) Huh?

The Sound of Animals Fighting, The Ocean and the Sun (Epitaph) A dreamy Animal Collective meets a mathier-than-thou Dillinger Escape Plan?

Emiliana Torrini, Me and Armini (Rough Trade) In The Two Towers (2002), the Icelandic songbird serenaded the gruesome-cute ring-a-ding-dinger with “Gollum’s Song.”

Tricky, Knowle West Boy (Domino) The 40-year-old boy sings the body eclectic.

 

SEPT. 12

Metallica, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.) When they weren’t pissing off neighbors, the music biz titans and longtime friends of Bugs Bunny were recording — with Rick Rubin — outside of SF for the first time in a dozen years.

 

SEPT. 16

George Clinton, George Clinton and Some Gangsters of Love (Shanachie) The gang — Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and RZA — is all here, maggot brains.

Faith Hill, Joy to the World (Warner Bros.) The initial single off the C&W-pop vocalist’s first Xmas album: “A Baby Changes Everything.”

Ill Bill, The Hour of Reprisal (Uncle Howie/Fat Beats) Bad Brains and Raekwon the Chef cook up mischief with “La Coka Nostra.”

Musiq Soulchild, On My Radio (Atlantic) The spirit of Philadelphia, from behind soulful shades.

Nelly, Brass Knuckles (Derrty/Universal) Fergie, Ciara, and Lil Wayne get derrty right herre.

Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentleman (Def Jam) We’re waiting for “Year of the Ice Road Trucker.”

Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It (Columbia) Oakland will come out for its boy.

Alexander Tucker, Portal (ATP Recordings) Acclaimed UK fingerpicking maestro of murk-folk returns with a dissonant, symphonic mix of vibes, cello, and electric mandolin on his third album.

The Veronicas, Hook Me Up (Sire) The Aussie twins hope to hook up the Jonas Brothers’ tweeny audience with their sassy pop.

 

SEPT. 23

Blitzen Trapper, Furr (Sub Pop) The wild-eyed Northwesterners focus on a janky old piano found outside their studio.

Cold War Kids, Loyalty to Loyalty (Downtown/Atlantic) Chilly times call for tunes with titles like “Golden Gate Jumpers.”

Common, Invincible Summer (Geffen) Last sighted orbiting will.i.am’s Obama ad and now rotating with the Neptunes.

Charlie Haden Family and Friends, Rambling Boy (Decca) The jazz genius gets back to his Iowa-bound country-music roots with help from offspring Petra and Josh, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, and Pat Metheny.

Kings of Leon, Only By the Night (RCA) Brothers by day.

Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.) Elvis Costello really does get around, guesting here alongside She and Him and Lewis manfriend Johnathan Rice.

Mogwai, The Hawk Is Howling (PIAS/Wall of Sound) The Scottish instrumentalists move on from making music for Zinedine Zidane. Song titles include “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead,” and “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School.”

Peter Bjorn and John, Seaside Rock (Almost Gold/Star Time International) The trio from Sweden veer away from lyrical pop to lyric-free — and whistle-free, one hopes — compositions inspired by childhood.

TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope) Shining with radioactive adorableness.

 

SEPT. 29

Marianne Faithfull, Easy Come, Easy Go (Naive, UK) The queen of the nicotine rasp reunites with Hal Wilner to cover Dolly Parton, Neko Case, Judee Sill, Randy Newman, and Morrissey.

 

SEPT. 30

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue: 50th Anniv. (Columbia/Legacy) In marriage, the 50th anniversary is golden. In the music industry, the 50th anniversary is a two-CD plus DVD plus LP plus book plus poster.

Dungen, 4 (Sublimininal Sounds) The fourth studio album by Swedish foursome is divided into two sounds: raw guitar rock and jazz-inflected cinematic orchestration\

El Guincho, Alegranza! (Young Turks/XL) Born with the zestful zing! of an Esquivel sample, Pablo Diaz-Reixa’s irresistible 10-track burst of Barcelona beach boy 21st-century Tropicalia finally gets a US release — and, one hopes, a tour to go with it.

Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson (Arista) After an Oscar, various red carpet misfires, and the Sex and the City movie, her debut arrives, taking the s, the o, the l, and the o out of “solo“ via guest appearances or production by Diane Warren, Timbaland, Ne-Yo, T-Pain, Cee-lo, Pharrell, Ludacris, Akon, John Legend, and duet partner R. Kelly.

Mercury Rev, Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc) Melting the heels of the band’s seventh studio album is Strange Attractor, a companion collection of 11 free downloadable tracks.

Barbara Morgenstern, BM (Monika Enterprise) The operator behind effervescent bursts of multilayered electronic pop presents her fifth album and — attention SF club promoters! — hopes to the tour the states.

Nina Simone, To Be Free (Sony Legacy) A three-CD, one-DVD retrospective that spans more than four decades, from Dr. Simone’s earliest recordings with Bethlehem to her final recordings for Elektra.

Taj Mahal, Maestro (Heads Up) Forty years after his recording debut and five years after his last US release, he covers Otis Redding and works with Ziggy Marley.

T.I., Paper Trail (Grand Hustle/Atlantic) His house arrest album, narrowed down from 50 songs, includes production by all the usual big names, and cameos by Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Usher, and the dreaded Fall Out Boy.

XX Teens, Welcome to Goon Island (Mute) I see Paris, I see Toulouse, I see someone’s green and blue boobs.

 

OCT. 7

Black Sabbath, Paranoid (Deluxe) (Universal) The band’s biggest-selling album gets a quadraphonic update, along with instrumental versions of six songs.

Deerhoof, Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars) A pencil drawing by Tomoo Gokita of a half-naked mystery man graces the cover, and the first single has been released in the form of sheet music.

Jolie Holland, The Living and the Dead (Anti-/Epitaph) Norman Mailer wouldn’t be able to attract guests like M. Ward and Marc Ribot.

Morgan Geist, Double Night Time (Environ) In the wake of contributing cellist Kelley Polar’s second album, one member of Metro Area presents his own new romantic bouquet of Detroit techno-tinged disco pop, with guest crooning by Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys.

Gregory and the Hawk, Moenie and Kitchi (FatCat) Sweetly twee indie-folk prepares its latest world-domination campaign.

Lambchop, OH (ohio) (Merge) Chop, chop — Nashville rocks.

MSTRKRFT, title to be announced (Dim Mak) Isis brings the “Bounce.”

Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl) Do be a drag — with plenty of confetti.

Rise Against, Appeal to Reason (Geffen) Tried to reason with them about playing up the pirate metal.

Senses Fail, Life Is Not a Waiting Room (Vagrant) So why are we waiting for our hearing to fail?

Michele Williams, Unexpected (Columbia) The Destiny’s Child vocalist, not the actress, stops going gospel in favor of pop.

Women, Women (Jagjaguwar) Hope they get to hang out with Lesbians.

 

OCT. 14

The Alps, III (Type) Local music heads Scott Hewicker, Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, and Alexis Georgopoulos makes the leap from CD-R to “proper” album release, paying homage to the hallucinatory sides of Serge Gainsbourg, Ennio Morricone, and Terry Riley along the way.

I’m From Barcelona, Who Killed Harry Houdini (Mute) The Swedish — not Spanish — mega-band returns with 10 new songs, including at least one by the ill-fated famous illusionist.

Ray LaMontagne, Gossip in the Grain (RCA) And buzz in the barn.

Queen and Paul Rodgers, The Cosmos Rocks (Hollywood) We know guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May finally completed his doctorate, but that title will have Freddy Mercury’s ghost hitching it to the next galaxy.

T. Pain, Thr33 Ringz (Jive) After producing most of Ciara’s upcoming full-length, Faheem Najm recruits Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West for his own — if it doesn’t go putf8um, I’m gonna buy you a drank and fall in love with a stripper.

 

OCT. 21

Hank III, Damn Right, Rebel Proud (Curb/Bruc) The disc has been described as a “Jekyll and Hyde mix of disturbingly dark stuff and good ol’ country.”

Labelle, Back to Now (Verve) Their first full-length in 33 years brings Gamble and Huff, Lenny Kravitz, and Wyclef Jean out of the woodwork.

Lee Ann Womack, Call Me Crazy (MCA Nashville) She sang at the 2004 Republican National Convention, but redeemed herself as much as possible a year later with the “20 Years and Two Husbands Ago.” Now, unfortunately, she’s borrowing titles from Anne Heche.

 

OCT. 28

Cradle of Filth, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder (Roadrunner) The grimy tots say they were inspired by Joan of Arc’s aristocratic compatriot.

Cynic, Traced in Air (Season of Mist) The proggish metal outfit issues its first studio album since 1993.

Warren G, The G Files (Hawino) Quick, regulate before G notices.

It’s a Musical, The Music Makes Me Sick (Morr) Guitar-free Berlin duo craft harmonic pop in the key of Bacharach, with trumpets, vibraphones, and canonical choirs.

Grace Jones, Hurricane (Wall of Sound, UK) The most anticipated comeback of the season, since Glass Candy, the Chromatics and every other nu-disco act offering pale versions of her fabulous robot chick chic — includes contributions by Brian Eno and Sly and Robbie and a song called “Corporate Cannibal.”

John Legend, Evolver (G.O.O.D Music/Columbia) Kanye West, Andre 3000, and Estelle join the high-minded proceedings.

Pink, title TBA (LaFace/Zomba) She attempts to get the party started — yet again.

 

NOV. 4

Big Boi, Sir Luscious Leftfoot … Son of Chico Dusty (LaFace) Ouch, don’t hurt yourself on that title. The OutKast insider finds support in Andre 3000, Mary J. Blige, and Too $hort.

Dido, title TBA (Arista). “Thank You,” multi-instrumental wiz and producer Jon Brion for overseeing this long-time-coming album.

 

NOV. 11

Missy Elliott, Block Party (Atlantic) Was it really over a decade ago that the late Babygirl gave her a boost to fame? Keyshia Cole is a likely guest, and Timbaland is just one of many co-producers.

 

NOV. 18

Kelly Clarkson, title TBA (RCA) Everybody loves the Rachael Ray of American Idol pop! Don’t they?

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Vizzy with the possibilities

-
0

KATIE KURTZ PICKS


•"The Wizard of Oz" Not much has changed since L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz debuted over a century ago and gave Americans something we still crave: escape to a fantastical land free of wicked witches. These days it’s not the Emerald City that Dorothys everywhere are tripping toward but a place called "hope." The works in this group show curated by Jens Hoffmann, including more than 20 artists (Clare Rojas, Raymond Pettibon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, et al.), were made either in response to the classic tale or relate to the story’s many layered meanings.

Sept. 2–Dec. 13. Reception Sept. 2. CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 1111 Eighth St., SF. (415) 551-9210, www.wattis.org

•"Vocabularies of Metaphor: More Stories" In this group show of works on paper highlighting deconstructed narratives, all but two of the 16 artists included are women — one of Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls drawings makes an appearance. "Vocabularies" is a chance to see how women are considering the figure — female, male, and animal — in a postnatural world, though this idea is not the exhibit’s emphasis. Of note are Rachelle Sumpter’s gauzy gouaches, Canadian Yuka Yamaguchi’s dismembered turtles, and Pakistani Shahzia Sikander’s nature-inspired pattern-making.

Sept. 6–Oct. 18. Reception Sept. 6. Hosfelt Gallery, 430 Clementina, SF. (415) 495-5454, www.hosfeltgallery.com

•California Academy of Sciences The mothership of scientific and sustainable nerdiness finally opens! This Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified facility includes a planetarium, swamp, rainforest, and a living roof. If you prefer your nature virtual, you can always hang out with the PenguinCam.

Big Bang opening gala Sept. 25; free to the public all day Sept. 27. 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org

•"Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900" Scientific photography of yesteryear is a healthy reminder of just how long we’ve been trying to discover everything that can possibly be discovered and recording it for posterity. More than 200 photographs, American and European, scientific and pseudoscientific.

Oct. 11–Jan. 4, 2009. SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

•"The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres" Co-curated by Berin Golonu and independent curator Veronica Wiman of Sweden, this activist exhibition is intended to further the green dialogue through collaborations between artists and organizations, conversations with the public, and urban interventions.

Oct. 31–Jan. 11, 2009. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org

KIMBERLY CHUN PICKS


•"Barbara Holmes and Casey Logan" What a dump! The two artists’ four-month residency climaxes with 3-D work inspired by and composed of salvaged material. Sculptor Holmes worked with wooden lattice to create a series of kaleidoscopic forms in assorted states of weatheredness, while Logan morphed musical gear and other detritus into pieces that meld with his fascination with science and fiction.

Sept. 26–27. SF Recycling Art Studio, 503 Tunnel, SF. www.sfrecycling.com/AIR

•"Nikki McClure" The graphic rep of Olympia, Wash.’s riot grrrl scene is undoubtedly best known for her bold, iconic paper cuts revolving around nature, motherhood, activism, and community. Music cover-art, illustrations, and books have all found a place in a vision grounded in simple gestures, uncontrived pleasures, and everyday labors.

October–November. Needles and Pens, 3253 16th St. SF. (415) 255-1534, www.needles-pens.com

•"Outpost" Exploding the imaginary and futuristic dimensions of architecture, "Outpost" collects the apocalyptic planes and jagged rubble of Bay Area sculptor David Hamill and the dazzling grids and Spirograph-esque constructs of New York City artist Jeff Konigsberg.

Sept. 5–Oct. 18. Reception Sept. 5. Johansson Projects 2300 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 999-9140, johanssonprojects.net

•"Hilary Pecis" Folktronica, meet your maker: the SF artist creates her downright psychedelic panoramas by layering drawings with fragments sliced from glossy magazines. Pecis was also recently named as a recipient of the 2008 Murphy and Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts and will be showcased at SF Arts Commission Gallery.

Sept. 6-26. Reception Sept. 6. Receiver Gallery, 1415 Valencia, SF. (415) 550-RCVR, receivergallery.com. Also "Immediate Future: the 2008 Murphy and Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts," Sept. 6-Oct. 18. SFAC Gallery, 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 554-6080, www.sfacgallery.org

•"Yves Saint Laurent" Viva le smoking! The beloved groundbreaker may be dead, but Yves Saint Laurent has never been hotter, judging from this autumn’s many attempts at rich-hippie/gypsy folklorico, highly sexed men’s wear for women, and silky Parisian-lady drag. This major retrospective’s single US turn showcases more than 120 accessorized ensembles in addition to drawings, photos, and videos.

Nov. 1–March 1, 2009. De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF. (415) 750-3600, www.famsf.org/deyoung

JOHNNY RAY HUSTON PICKS


• "I Feel I Am Free But I Know I Am Not" See “Connect four,” this issue

Sept. 4–Nov. 1. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, 2nd floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

• "Double Down: Two Visions of Vegas" Olivo Barbieri looks at Vegas as toy town.

Sept. 18–Jan. 4, 2009. SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

•"Bayete Ross-Smith: Pomp & Circumstance" and "Jonathan Burstein: Visage" Ross-Smith’s prom portraits are fresh, and Burstein’s paintings of museum guards trampoline off the humor present in his handsome past portraits of himself.

Sept. 4–Oct.11. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary, mezzanine, SF. (415) 788-5126, www.patriciasweetwogallery.com

• "Lutz Bacher: ODO"

Oct. 31–Dec.31. Ratio 3, 1447 Stevenson, SF. (415) 821-3371, www.ratio3.org

• Open Studios A step outside the galleries, museums, and art fairs — for better, for worse, and for real.

Oct. 11–Nov. 2. Various locations, SF. (415) 861-9838, www.artpsan.org

• "Dustin Fosnot: Simmons Beautyrest" Fosnot’s comic inventiveness should be a relief.

Oct. 14–Nov. 15. Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 49 Geary, suite 411, SF. (415) 263-3677. www.stevenwolffinearts.com

• "LA Paint" A survey of 11 painters, sure to fan a variety of Bay-and-LA flames.

Oct. 4–March 8, 2009. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl. (510) 238-2200, www.museumca.org

• "These are the People in Your Neighborhood" Mr. Rogers is quoted for this 15th birthday celebration including work by Libby Black and Xylor Jane, among others.

Sept. 12–Oct. 17. Gallery 16, 501 Third, SF, www.gallery16.com

•"Artists Ball Seven: The New Party" Stanlee Gatti and Mos Def, together at last.

Oct. 3. YBCA, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2700, www.ybca.org

•"Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered" A prelude to "Warhol Live," which hits the de Young next year.

Oct. 12–Jan. 25, 2009. Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF. (415) 655-7800, www.thecjm.org

>>More Fall Arts Preview

‘He’s not going anywhere’

-
0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Minutes before two San Francisco police officers shot to death 25-year-old Asa Sullivan, their colleagues urged them to back off and call a hostage negotiator, newly released documents show.

Twice, cops on the scene suggested that officers Michelle Alvis and John Keesor back away from the Parkmerced attic where Sullivan was pinned down.

Recently released court records shed considerable new light on the June 6, 2006, shooting that ended with the unarmed Sullivan dead, his body raked by 16 bullets.

The records offer a narrative account of the early moments of an episode that’s taken a bizarre series of twists since Alvis and Keesor, saying they feared for their lives, killed the troubled young man who’d been working at Goodwill and had a young son.

The police communications log portrays a tense situation:

"Stand by, he’s gonna be a 148, stand by," San Francisco police officer Paulo Morgado says into his radio. Section 148 of the state Penal Code is radio vernacular for resisting arrest.

Moments pass before an unidentified officer makes an appeal over the air for a retreat. "Hey, why don’t we just pull back really quick, set up a perimeter, and just try to get him later?"

Instead, Alvis announces that she has Sullivan at gunpoint. "He’s not going anywhere," she says. He won’t show his hands or allow himself to be taken into custody, Alvis and Morgado say into their radios.

Minutes tick by. Sullivan is warned that a dog from the K-9 unit will bite him. Officer Erik Leung, on the floor below the attic, makes a second attempt at reason. "Why don’t we slow it down, see if we can get a hostage negotiator or something, because this guy’s not listening to us."

Then, "He has something under the insulation," a dispatcher types just as the K-9 unit arrives.

"Shots fired, shots fired!" yells Sgt. Tracy McCray. Alvis and Keesor empty their magazines, plugging as many as 26 rounds into the attic, with 16 hitting the target.

Sullivan had no gun, it turned out. An eyeglasses case was later found near his hip, but Alvis admits she didn’t wait to see what was in his right hand after Sullivan made a "sudden movement."

‘PRETTY STRONG EVIDENCE’


Reams of court records detailing the shooting became available earlier this month as evidence in a lawsuit filed by Sullivan’s family.

Early motions in the family’s federal suit, which names the city and county of San Francisco, Police Chief Heather Fong, and officers present when the shooting took place, were filed under seal. But some evidence previously marked confidential has emerged among publicly accessible court documents as the parties move toward an October trial date.

The records include transcripts of audio dispatch recordings, sworn depositions and declarations from the officers, reports from law enforcement policy experts, and photographs of the attic where the shooting occurred.

"The evidence is pretty strong [that] Asa did not point anything at the officers, that the officers had no reason to believe Asa was armed," the family’s Oakland lawyer, Ben Nisenbaum, told the Guardian.

A former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department hired as a consultant by the family’s lawyers argues in a report filed with the court that the officers exacerbated the situation by using repeated sharp commands and didn’t rely on proper diffusing tactics with a subject they knew was distressed and had a diminished capacity. The attic placed them at a tactical disadvantage, and there’s no logical reason why the officers didn’t pull away from it, notes the report by consultant Lou Reiter.

"Their presence in the manner they chose to deploy it simply invaded the zone of safety for Sullivan," Reiter’s report states. "This is known to further agitate the subject in these types of police encounters. No one coordinated the efforts to enable the dispatch of negotiators, which would have been consistent with San Francisco Police Department General Order 8.02 Hostage and Barricaded Suspect Incidents."

Officers in the attic that night say Sullivan refused recurring instructions to show his hands and acted aggressively. They testified that he threatened violent resistance, telling them, "I’m not going back to jail," "Shoot me, I’m not coming out of here," and "Are you ready to earn your medal?" They say leaving the attic and taking their attention off Sullivan would have made them vulnerable.

The officers were also unaware at the time that Sullivan had a no-bail arrest warrant. There’s still a dispute today over what grounds the officers had at the time to effect an arrest of Sullivan, or why they believed there was sufficient cause to enter the apartment.

Alvis, a six-year veteran of the force, did not return a message left at her home. A police spokesperson, Sgt. Wilfred Williams, confirmed for the Guardian that officers Keesor and Alvis are still employed by the department but he couldn’t provide any additional details, calling them personnel-related. He also couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

Several local agencies conduct parallel investigations when a subject is killed by police officers, including the department’s homicide and internal affairs units, the District Attorney’s Office, and if prompted, the Office of Citizen Complaints, an independent body that responds to allegations made by civilians of excessive force and other police misconduct.

Those findings in the Sullivan killing had not been available previously under the California Public Records Act and local sunshine laws due in part to a state Supreme Court ruling issued in late 2006 that blocks an array of law enforcement records from disclosure, including those stemming from disciplinary investigations.

A "DRUG HOUSE?"


Officer Morgado arrived at the townhouse address of 2 Garces Drive at Parkmerced, near San Francisco State University, around 8:40 p.m. June 6 after a neighbor called to report that the front door was swinging open and that it was a possible "drug house."

The unit hadn’t exactly hosted any church youth groups in recent months. Two men on the lease had supposedly given notice to move out the prior winter but hadn’t left, and management was charging them month-to-month.

Kathleen Espinoza, Asa’s mother, told the Guardian her son was struggling to find a place to stay and went to 2 Garces after she moved to Los Angeles in search of a lower cost of living.

Friends and acquaintances drifted in and out of the townhouse; some frequently smoked pot and meth, according to the deposition of one man who stayed there. The neighbors complained to police. One tenant testified that just before the shooting, he fought with another Parkmerced resident who occasionally came around the townhouse. The man allegedly hurled a bicycle at him, slicing open his elbow. A white shirt was used to soak up the gushing blood and police who saw it hanging near the front door relied on the stained garment to justify entering the apartment to check on the welfare of the people inside.

As back-up units arrived, Sullivan’s friend, Jason Martin, was discovered in a locked second-floor bedroom and placed in handcuffs. Keesor heard shuffling coming from above them and says he saw debris flaking from a ceiling entrance to the attic.

Three officers climbed into the cramped, pitch-black space before drawing their guns on Sullivan. Only their flashlights enabled them to see the darkly clothed man who appeared to be hiding amid the blown-in insulation and between a pair of two-by-fours.

"Let’s give the dog a nice bite on this guy," one officer said over the radio after a K-9 unit was called. The group considered using a gun that shoots beanbags but decided against it, believing that the space was too small and that the weapon could kill Sullivan by accident.

Officer Keesor took the lead in talking to Sullivan. "I asked him what was going on. I asked him who he was. Questions along that line," Keesor recalled in a deposition.

HISTORY OF DEPRESSION


Sullivan was responsive to most of the questions. He was sweating profusely, and the cops said they believed he was high on cocaine or meth. A medical expert later hired by his family’s lawyers testified that the amount of both substances found in his body through an autopsy were at very low levels and likely didn’t contribute to his behavior that night.

Sullivan did have a history of depression, and the consultant, Douglas Tucker, a psychiatry professor at UC San Francisco, described him as "an unhappy and volatile individual who acts impulsively." A man who stayed at the townhouse, David Russell, testified that Sullivan was quiet and well–mannered and excelled at chess.

What happened in the next few minutes is where the testimony conflicts.

Just as an officer announced over the radio that the K-9 unit had arrived, Alvis says Sullivan’s right arm moved suddenly. But the officer said she did not see his hands or arms outstretched or pointed at anyone. Morgado says he witnessed Sullivan’s right shoulder move, but never saw his hand come out of the insulation. Keesor, however, stated that Sullivan "punched his arms straight out and pointed an object, [a] long, black slender object, which at that moment I believed to be a gun, towards the direction of officer Alvis." The officers say their view of Sullivan was partially obscured by wide ducts passing through the attic.

Reached at his Bay Area home, Keesor declined to comment. "I can’t speak about this case, you know that," he said. A call to Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, which is representing the officers, was not returned.

Nisenbaum says Keesor "is the only officer there who claims that Asa had anything in his hand," meaning a weapon.

LOOKING FOR EXCUSES


Alexander Jason, a private crime scene analyst and former San Francisco patrol officer hired by attorneys for the city, contends the eyeglasses case may have been snapped shut, producing a sound interpreted as a gunshot. He also concluded that blood spatter on Asa’s right arm was consistent with his having stretched out his arm "as if aiming a gun."

But there was no gun, so it’s possible that one officer simply spooked another. "I heard gunfire and believed he was shooting at officer Alvis and I fired my weapon," Keesor testified. Bullets apparently pounded through the floor of the attic and narrowly missed an officer standing in the bathroom below Sullivan.

"At the end of the day, they’re looking for excuses," Nisenbaum said. "That’s all it is."

US District Judge Jeffrey White ruled Aug. 5 that there were enough unanswered questions for the case to be heard by a jury after both parties filed motions for summary judgment. The city has since taken that decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, meaning it may be well past October before a trial begins.

Asa’s mother, Kathleen Espinoza, says she has nothing against the police and that one of her close relatives works in law enforcement. "I’ve never been through something like this," Espinoza said. "I’ve never had anybody in my family die in such a horrible way. It’s been really hard. I’ve been on jury duty once in my life, when I was in college."

The funeral director told Espinoza he’d never seen a body in worse shape than Sullivan’s and that the reconstruction for an open-casket ceremony was tedious. Espinoza placed sunglasses on his face because his eyes were gone. She says Sullivan never wanted to die.

"I want Asa to be vindicated…. He never meant them any harm," she said.

PG&E’s blank check

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

For a complete list (2.35 MB) of everyone who signed on to a PG&E-paid ballot argument and a full list of all of the individuals, companies, and nonprofits that get PG&E money every year, click here (Excel).


It’s Saturday morning, Aug. 23, and at the plumber’s union hall on Market Street, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. employees are leading a rally in opposition to San Francisco’s Clean Energy Act. A table at the back of the room sags with urns of coffee and uneaten pastries. To the side are towers of glossy black "Stop the Blank Check" window signs. E-mails sent by event organizers said Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Mayor Gavin Newsom were expected to attend, but so far, there’s no sign of either.

"On behalf of the men and women at PG&E, thanks for giving up your Saturday," PG&E vice president John Simon tells participants, who will be spending the afternoon walking San Francisco’s streets passing out No on Proposition H propaganda.

But the audience isn’t listening.

Most of the people packed into the room are Asian kids, giggling and chatting and ignoring the English-only presentation. One group of boys playfully pushes each other, accidentally bumping into some stage lighting and earning a reprimand from a rally organizer. The kids ignore him. I ask some of the young people if they’re with a school or club, or if they’re part of JROTC, which has an informational booth in the vestibule. They look at me blankly and turn away, muttering in Cantonese. I question a few others and get similar responses.

Outside, I find a young man who speaks English. He tells me the kids aren’t really here for the rally. "It’s just a job," he says. They’re getting $15 an hour to hang flyers on doorknobs — flyers that read "hand-delivered by a Stop the Blank Check Supporter."

The Committee to Stop the Blank Check is the official campaign committee fighting the Clean Energy Act, which will appear as Prop. H on the November ballot. The group, however, is funded by a blank check from PG&E.

"They’ve pledged enough to educate every voter in San Francisco," the committee’s campaign manager, Eric Jaye, told the Guardian at the Saturday rally.

It’s no surprise that the campaign workers are paid for by PG&E — in fact, just about everyone who has come out against Prop. H seems to be getting money from the utility.

The Clean Energy Act sets ambitious goals for moving the city into renewable energy — goals that go far beyond current state mandates. It also calls for a study into San Francisco’s energy options and authorizes the city to issue revenue bonds to buy or build energy facilities.

An investigation into the elected officials, committees, and groups that oppose Prop. H shows cash from PG&E in nearly every coffer.

The official ballot argument against the Clean Energy Act is signed by Feinstein, Newsom, and three supervisors initially appointed to the board by the mayor: Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Sean Elsbernd.

Feinstein’s loaded with PG&E money. Since 2004, Feinstein has received $15,000 in direct contributions from PG&E, according to OpenSecrets.org. More significant, perhaps, is that Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, serves as chairman of the board of CBRE, a real estate firm that did $4.8 million in business with PG&E in 2007, according to an annual report the utility files with the state of California.

Campaign finance disclosure statements from Feinstein state that her husband receives fees and income from CBRE, and has $250,000 and $500,000 in investment holdings.

Feinstein’s spokesperson, Scott Gerber, said there was no conflict of interest. But Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics spokesperson Naomi Seligman added, "The ethics rules are so incredibly narrow that unless Senator Feinstein was pushing or voting for something that would impact only Mr. Blum, it doesn’t count as a conflict."

Still: Feinstein’s getting cash directly from PG&E, and then doing the company’s political bidding.

NEWSOM’S PG&E PARTY


Newsom, who has won campaigns with PG&E’s financial support in the past, is hosting a party called "Unconventional ’08" in Denver this week. Guess who’s one of the three listed sponsors? PG&E. (The other two are AT&T and the carpenter’s union.) And, of course, the person running Newsom’s campaign for governor is PG&E’s main man, Eric Jaye.

Sups. Alioto-Pier and Elsbernd? Both had PG&E money shunted through independent expenditure committees. Sup. Chu is currently running to keep her seat in District 4.

Former Mayor Willie Brown tops the list of endorsers on Committee to Stop the Blank Check’s Web site. PG&E paid Brown $200,000 in consulting fees during 2007.

Neither Brown nor PG&E returned calls for comment and clarification on what exactly Brown’s consulting involves, or how much he’s getting this year.

Of the 30 paid ballot arguments that will be listed in November’s Voter Information Pamphlet, PG&E bought 22 of them — many for well-funded organizations like the Bay Area Council, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and the Republican Party that could presumably pay for their own $2-per-word screeds against the measure.

The arguments all make the same points and parrot the same PG&E lines.

Jaye said that ballot arguments were routinely paid for by other entities, and of the groups that have healthy bank accounts, he said, "We’d rather those groups invest their money in capacity building for November."

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the Building Owners and Managers Association, and Plan C all paid for their own ballot arguments. In 2007 the Chamber received more than $350,000 from PG&E in the form of dues and grants. BOMA got a $26,500 grant from the utility company, which also hired the outfit for almost $100,000 worth of consulting work. Plan C’s Political Action Committee regularly receives deposits from PG&E during election season.

Other entities that signed arguments paid for by PG&E include: the San Francisco police and firefighter unions, which are constantly asking the city for more money (and now oppose a potential revenue source); the Asian Pacific Democratic Club; the Small Business Network; the Rev. Amos Brown, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Paying for their own No on H arguments: former San Francisco Public Defender and California Public Utilities Commission member Jeff Brown, the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, BART board member James Fang, and prominent small businessowner Harold Hoogasian.

PG&E spends millions each year on consultants — and at campaign time, that money turns into political support.

"PG&E’s philanthropy has been paying off into manipuutf8g a network of supporters who believe [Prop. H] is going to do something adverse to their interest when in reality it’s not," said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi.

Money isn’t everything for some organizations. Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights received a $10,000 grant from PG&E in 2007. Cofounder Van Jones has endorsed the Clean Energy Act.

There’s no paper trail for how much PG&E has spent to date on this campaign and the utility will be free to spend money without scrutiny until Oct. 6, when the first financial statements related to the November election are due at the Ethics Commission.

THE OTHER SIDE


But PG&E can’t buy everyone — and the coalition supporting the Clean Energy Act is large, broad, and growing.

Prop. H has been endorsed by eight of the city’s 11 supervisors, Assemblymembers Fiona Ma and Mark Leno, and environmentalist and author Bill McKibben. Groups with a variety of different interests, like the League of Conservation Voters, the SF Democratic Party, SEIU 1021, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and the Senior Action Network also have given it a green light.

"I think the coalition for it is a much broader coalition than has been for it in the past," said Susan Leal, former head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, who supports Prop. H. "Because of that, PG&E has ramped up the campaign and put a lot more money into it than in the past."

Mirkarimi, who authored the measure, called the early phone banking, mailers, and door knocking a "signature blitzkrieg campaign," similar to what he witnessed as the manager of the 2001 public power measure that also raised PG&E’s ire — and which lost by about 500 votes. "That’s why PG&E is working so hard now. We were so close in 2001."

John Rizzo of the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club said his group has already committed money and people to walk districts. But he noted that he has already seen Committee to Stop the Blank Check signs posted in windows on the west side of the city. "We expected it," he said of the resources PG&E has spent to date. "The only thing they have is money."

Rizzo said the Sierra Club has endorsed past public power measures and considers this an environmental issue. "We are finding it’s a pretty broad coalition of folks who might not be together on an environmental issue. The San Francisco Women’s Political Committee PAC just recommended endorsing it to their membership, and that’s not normally an environmental group — though they are a good group."

Leal says the Clean Energy Act really transcends arguments against public power. "I’m mystified why people would not be on board for something that’s cleaner and cheaper," said Leal. "I think I know why a number of others have gotten on board. They recognize that this is the path to clean energy for power."

Jaye wouldn’t assign a specific dollar amount to how much the company is willing to spend to defeat the measure — but he made it clear that there are no limits: "It could take $1 million, it could take $5 million." In 2006, when public power was on the ballot in Yolo County, PG&E spent almost $10 million keeping the 77,000 customers they would have lost to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The measure lost by one percentage point.

Jaye, who also manages Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign, is quick to point out that the committee has already received 12,000 signed cards of support. Still, he said, they weren’t asking for money from these potential campaign donors "because we have significant and sufficient resources pledged from PG&E."

Raphael’s “Way”

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Who can turn the Dogfather’s head with a tune, bring a melody to Mary J. Blige’s lips, and get Stevie Wonder out of bed in the wee hours? Raphael Saadiq, that’s who. And with good reason: the Oakland-born-and-raised vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer not only found substantial fame back in the day singing alongside bro Dwayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Christian in Tony! Toni! Toné!, he’s kept his chops honed over the years by lending his ear for stellar R&B and soul. He’s produced Joss Stone, 2Pac, the Roots, John Legend, Kelis, Mos Def, D’Angelo, and the Isley Brothers, among others. He’s collaborated with a who’s who of pop putf8um, including Blige, Snoop Dogg, Whitney Houston, the Bee Gees, Ludacris, and John Mellencamp.

Damn. Little wonder a legend like Wonder will rouse himself at short notice to assist on Saadiq’s fab, hip-shaking old-school soul disc, The Way I See It (Columbia). The way Saadiq, né Charlie Ray Wiggins, tells it — over the phone during a late-morn breakfast in Los Angeles — his protege CJ had just finished singing his part on the sinuous, ready-made hit "Never Give You Up," when he announced, midtrack, "I’d like to invite Stevie Wonder to my album." So Saadiq decided to call Wonder and ask for a harmonica solo: "[Wonder’s] usually traveling around the country, and he asked, ‘When do you need me?’ I said, ‘An hour.’ He goes, ‘An hour?’ And he showed up an hour and a half later at one at night."

Easy for him to ask since Saadiq had already worked with the rock ‘n’ soul icon and Beyoncé on a Luther Vandross tribute, but it’s clearly Saadiq’s down-to-earth charm, disarming ease, and all-too-evident talent that keeps those friendships alive. Oh yes, and Wonder is "his Taurean brother" — born May 13 to Saadiq’s May 14.

That casual vibe runs throughout Saadiq’s immaculately assembled, long-awaited followup to 2004’s Ray Ray (Pookie). "For the most part, I kind of played everything myself on the whole album, but I bumped into certain people," he says. He plucked Rocio Mendoza, the sensuous lead vocalist for "Calling," from his favorite LA breakfast spot and gave her a star turn. Stone — to whom Saadiq has been linked romantically, though he demurs, "We’re just friends" — also guests, on the creamy, dreamy, string-stung mélange "Just One Kiss." But star turns aside, what fully emerges from Way is its sweet, sweet soul songs — living, breathing throwbacks to ’60s Motown, as fleshed-out and vital as anything by current soul revivalists like Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson, and Duffy, and crafted by a luminary of the genre’s last resurrection. The cover image of Way, with a besuited, Marvin Gaye–like Saadiq, for instance, was taken two years ago at Oakland’s Sweets Ballroom.

The new album — out Sept. 16 on the heels of Saadiq’s Sept. 11 appearance at KMEL’s House of Soul show at Ruby Skye — began to come together two years ago. "Being away from home so long, on an island [the Bahamas, where he was producing Stone] — the next thing you know, you look down, and the album is done," Saadiq drawls. "But I’ve always heard music like that, since I was seven years old. Some of the first music that ever really opened me up was that music, so it wasn’t a stretch for me."

The R&B vet can also step back and break down why a new gen has gravitated toward old-school bounce. "For artists it’s coming back because a lot of DJs spin a lot of vinyl, and that’s all they’re really listening to," he explains. Nonetheless, he continues, "it never really went away. It’s the only thing that don’t leave the shelf. It’s always been in my player." And that’s the player without and within: "I hear music all day and all night," Saadiq says. "I hear music in my dreams." To get the songs out of his head, he says, "You go through the chords and progressions, play drums. I jump on all the instruments until I hear something I like."

Such mental agility — and such a work ethic — must come from his now-70-something guitar-player father, speculates Saadiq. "He was working two or three jobs since he was 10," says the songwriter, who regularly gets back to East Oakland to see family. "Now he owns some buildings, and he’s always trying to work on them and be helpful to tenants. He’ll say, ‘I gotta get back to Oakland, so I can take out the garbage,’ and I’ll say, ‘What garbage? Are you crazy!?’ He’s a different kind of guy." It goes without question that his pops must be able to relate to Way‘s sound? "It’s music," Saadiq comes back, "that anyone who lives under the sky can relate to right now."

RAPHAEL SAADIQ

Wed/20, 8 p.m., $22

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

www.bimbos365club.com

Sweetest taboo

-
0

PREVIEW The taboo has always had a special place in my heart. As a pre-adolescent, I was given a list of banned books from a rogue librarian and I hunted down and read every one of them. It may have seemed odd to find an 11-year-old black boy reading the likes of John Rechy’s City of Night (Grove, 1963) and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (Olympia/Grove, 1959), but these verboten tomes, along with the librarian’s free beer and porn, served as an illicit gateway out of my little coal-mining town into the larger, lustier world. If not for the innocence-stealing pederast posing as the coolest adult I knew, I might still be in that town, feeling like I was missing something but never knowing what. In short, banned books saved my life: I never would have read a single one had they not been banned.

That’s why it’s exciting, even titilutf8g, that the San Francisco Center for the Book, in collaboration with the African American Museum and Library in Oakland, presents "Banned and Recovered: Artists Respond to Censorship." The 63 installation, multimedia, and graphic artists showcased at the two sites don’t so much address the issue of banned books as celebrate their favorites, which happened to have been banned somewhere at one time or another — and what great book hasn’t? Among those praising the forbidden at the Center for the Book are Enrique Chagoya, who offers a 2000 diptych to Burroughs, and ex–Black Panther propagandist Emory Douglas, who brings Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) to light.

BANNED AND RECOVERED: ARTISTS RESPOND TO CENSORSHIP Through Nov. 26. Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro, SF. (415) 565-0545, www.sfcb.org. Also Sept. 5–Dec. 31. Tues.–Sat., noon–5:30 p.m. Reception Sept. 5, 6:30 p.m. African American Museum and Library at Oakland, 659 14th St., Oakl. (510) 637-0200, www.oaklandlibrary.org/AAMLO

The circle game

-
0

Say "Kumbaya," somebody. Despite vast differences in sound, intent, and commercial appeal, a thin yet unseverable bloodline connects the big, bold, Brill Building, pop-factory-perfect songcraft of Carole King, last heard coursing off the AM radio, and the stripped-raw, close-to-bare-bones rasp and moan of Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino, delivered to a small clutch of listeners at the Elbo Room last year. Eyes squeezed shut, plucking her acoustic guitar beside just one other guitarist, Ben Cissner, she was a small dark star, poured fully concentrated into the sparse minor key chords of "Swastika," and, as gutsy as the loudest reaches of the underground, she sang as if her life depended on it: "If I would let you into my heart / Would you thank the Lord / Would you tear it apart?"

Superficially, so far away — doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? — from King’s monumental oeuvre, which seems almost incidental amid the gushy, gossipy tidbits propelling Sheila Weller’s bio, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation (Atria), concerning King’s beleaguered marriage to her first husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, with whom she wrote such songs as "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," among many other classic pop numbers, even after he fathered a child with one of the pair’s vocalists. Likewise Weller makes much of Mitchell’s out-of-wedlock daughter and penchant for using her songs to seduce paramours like Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, and James Taylor — the last often credited with spurring the singer-songwriter movement and acting as a unifying thread between Mitchell, King, and Simon — and Simon’s uninhibited, proto-pro-sex feminist "eroticism"; read: sex in a cab was "no problem." Yet as remote as the early-’70s phenomenon of the singer-songwriter seems, the form appears to have returned: could this be the revival of core values of craft and voice, the intimacy and immediacy of a writer on a single instrument, during a tumultuous time for the music industry, post-Auto-Tuned disasters and Ashlee Simpson lip-synch blowouts — the adult flip-side to the bubblegum remnants of High School Musical, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers?

The initial energy of so many turn-of-the-millennium garage rock bands may have petered and innumerable hip-hop artists may have turned toward dully materialistic navel-gazing, so hail the return of the soft-spoken singer-songwriter who can break down a tunes to its bare, unadorned components. The stars are aligned; the signs, apparent: from Outside Lands headliner Jack Johnson landing at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with his latest album, Sleeping Through the Static (Brushfire/Universal), earlier this year, to ex–Castro Theatre ticket-taker, proudly folkie Devendra Banhart being adopted by Parisian couturiers and glitterati, from the MySpace-inspired success of Colbie Caillat and Kate Nash to the iTunes-buttressed popularity of Eureka native Sara Bareilles — hell, not to mention everyone and their dog documenting their solo acoustic version of "Bubbly" and posting the video on YouTube. This quiet flurry of activity undoubtedly whetted someone’s appetite for all things unplugged.

Those with eyes trained on pop cycles might point to the rise of antiwar sentiments throughout the country, coupling it with the renewed attention given to the softer, sincere sounds of singer-songwriters — a worthy theory, though apart from the many unfortunate CD-Rs of anti-Bush agit-pop that crossed my desk during the last two presidential elections, the generally apolitical vibe of the music from this crop of singer-songwriters seems to belie that notion: championing green issues are as didactic as these writers get. Instead this current wave of earnest songsmiths has more to do with both a reaction against the insincere, canned, possibly un-nutritious mainstream boy-band and Britney-centric breed of pop from the recent past — the likes of which could only be enjoyed with a semi-size dose of irony — and a response to an easy access of technology, which allows just about anyone and their mutt to make their own music at home, bypassing Brill Building–style hit-factories.

This time, the slew of sensitive men — solo fliers ranging from Iron and Wine, Conor Oberst, and Adam Green to Josh Ritter, Jonathan Rice, and Ray LaMontagne — sequestered behind acoustic guitars or pianos, working freak-folk, soft-rock, commercial pop, and Grey’s Anatomy–friendly veins, are being almost eclipsed by the multitude of womanly singer-songwriters. Natural women all, including Feist, Kimya Dawson, JayMay, Brandi Shearer, Yael Naim, and Ingrid Michaelson, among others. As much as King, Mitchell, and Simon are considered mothers of these singer-songwriters — along with predecessors like Woodside resident Joan Baez and ’60s folk hit mistress Judy Collins and successors like the many estrogen-laden ladies of the ’90s Lilith Fair outings — so too are indie sisters Liz Phair, Sarah Dougher, and Cat Power, a holy trinity to homemade, once-bedroom-bound DIY divas who make their own clothes, hope to carve out their own path, and find their own vox.

Of course, one can’t discount the release of resurrections and reissues of neglected and forgotten femme singer-songwriters such as Vashti Bunyan and Ruthann Friedmann and late greats Judee Sill and Karen Dalton, whose latest private recordings were unearthed via Green Rocky Road (Delmore) in June. And Mitchell’s unique guitar tunings, experimental mindset, and maidenlike purity of sound has made her one of the most oft-referenced artists of the last few years, thanks to such explicit shout-outs as Wayfaring Strangers’ Ladies from the Canyon (Numero, 2006). But no less influential is Phair, whose classic Exile in Guyville (Matador) got the royal reissue treatment this summer: her pro-sex, third-wave feminist, Midwestern rejoinder to riot grrrl writ large, with a gatefold sleeve and a slip of naughty nipple peeking through. At the same time, Dougher — cover girl in Johnny Ray Huston’s take on the last, more-riot grrrl-centered singer-songwriter movement in the Guardian about a decade ago — took a more polemical tack on the Northwest coast with her K Records releases, while working tangibly for greater female rock visibility by organizing the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and teaching courses on the history of women in rock at Portland State University.

But Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, appears set to be the Joni Mitchell of this generation — even as Marshall has largely turned her back on originals with her latest Jukebox (Matador). The Seattle-based Fortino’s almost gothic melodrama seems to draw more than a little inspiration from Marshall’s What Would the Community Think (Matador, 1996), while San Francisco transplant Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down borrows Marshall’s clarion-call, half-sung, half-spoken phrasing for her far more fancy-free, loose-limbed, and shambling songs. Nguyen sounds positively, happily tipsy on the old-timey bounce, finger clicks, and sandpapery soft-shoe shuffle on We Brave Bee Stings and All (Kill Rock Stars).

Yet Marshall’s most indebted sib might be Emily Jane White, 27, whose Dark Undercoat (Double Negative) evokes the former’s haunted and haunting, hollowed-out sensuality as well as her songwriting savvy and way with a hook. "Everybody’s got a little hole in the middle / Everybody does a little dance with the devil," the Oakland singer-songwriter croons on her "Hole in the Middle," sliding around the curves of this verb or the other and letting her voice drift off into the meaningful silences between the words.

The surprise is that this intensely eerie, closely miked singer-songwriter also turns out to be one of the more deliberately political-minded. Of "Hole," she said recently while breaking from the recording her second album with Greg Ashley, "I originally wrote that in response to the war in Iraq when that first started. Yeah, it’s about American imperialism."

And perhaps that’s the key to why the music by this former member of an all-girl band, the Diamond Star Halos — much like those seemingly apolitical numbers by other singer-songwriters — has increasingly relevance today: White and other crooners are foregrounding the everyday loves as well as the overseas skirmishes in a way that transcends the desensitizing glut and so-called objectivity of news headlines, sound-bites, and bloggable blurbs — and acutely personalizes it all. Call it the resensitizing of pop.

"I’ve always believed that your personal experience is political," says White, echoing the first wave feminist tenets, "and everyone has a story to tell, about how they’ve lived their lives and what has happened to them, and the experiences they’ve gone through. Not that what I think I do is revolutionary or anything, but one positive thing about being a singer-songwriter is people have contacted me and said they’ve felt a strong sense of encouragement or inspiration, so I think putting myself out there says something."

Emily Jane White plays Aug. 22, 8 p.m., $8, at the Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. www.uptownnightclub.com

Love songs

-
0

TYSON VOGEL OF TWO GALLANTS

* Hazy Loper (San Francisco)

* Ted The Block (Oakland)

* Michael Hurley (Northwest area)

Two Gallants play at 6:05 p.m., Sat/23, at Outside Lands’ Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow.

MICHAEL HILDE OF MOUNTAINHOOD

Locally I’m into David Enos. David is a filmmaker who also played keys in the Papercuts and did the art for their album. His songs are great, haunting, and unflinching.

Nicky Emmert from Mammatus plays solo acoustic as Misty Mountain. The songs are all superlong and unfold in slow motion. Incense [is] in his guitar. We’ve done a couple of shows together, the first was at the San Siern Holyoake and Wood Festival, May ’07.

I also want to especially mention Jonathan Arthur from the All Night Sunshine band in Seattle. He’s brilliant, and plays very, very rarely. As far as I know, the only two times have been with me when I go to Seattle. Maybe more. I hope more.

MATT NATHANSON

* Brett Dennen. He is so good, and he’s just beginning. He has decades of greatness ahead. It is inspiring. His phrasing makes me wish I had soul.

* Bill Foreman. Best songwriter I have known, period. I feel like he moves forward with every song. It is the most natural evolution I have seen. He has so many great ones. His stuff is hard to find, but it’s worth every step. The full band version of "St. Louis" will change you.

* John Vanderslice. His songs sound like they were beamed in from Mars. His records are sonic perfection. He doesn’t think like a normal person. His lyrics crush me.

* Steve Perry. Not really a singer-songwriter, I guess, but who doesn’t wish they had written "Don’t Stop Believing" or "Oh Sherrie"? And who doesn’t love yellow, sleeveless, zebra-striped T-shirts?

Matt Nathanson plays at 7 p.m., Sat/23, on Outside Lands’ Twin Peaks stage, Speedway Meadow.

BART DAVENPORT

(1) Thom Moore (Nevada City)

(2) Greg Moore (Nevada City)

(3) Mia Doi Todd (Los Angeles )

(4) Kelley Stoltz (SF)

(5) Brian Glaze (Oakland)

(6) Kacey Johansing (SF)

(7) Jesse DeNatale (SF)

(8) Mark Eitzel (SF)

(9) Miranda Zeiger (SF)

(10) Amy Blaustein (Berkeley)

Davenport plays 9:30 p.m., Sept. 19, Café Du Nord, 2174 Market SF. www.cafedunord.com

KIRA LYNN CAIN

My favorite singer-songwriters (who are not family members):

* Nico, circa Desertshore (Reprise, 1970), The Marble Index (Elektra, 1969), and The End (Island, 1974)

* Syd Barrett, circa The Madcap Laughs (Capitol, 1970) and Barrett (Capitol, 1970)

* Leonard Cohen

GARRETT PIERCE

"In all honesty, I think SF has been struggling to find a new batch of singer-songwriters to latch onto. I thought Daniella of Snowblink was going to be the next voice of SF, but she just moved to Toronto.

Favorite local singer-songwriters: Peggy Honeywell, Joanna Newsome, and Sean Hayes.

Fave nonlocal singer-songwriters: Diane Cluck, Bon Iver, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, M. Ward, Matt Bauer, Hayden, and Michael Hurley.

SONNY SMITH

Welllll, Jonathan Richman is nothing new under the sun, but he’s been one of my heroes for a long, long time.

Smith plays 7:30 p.m., Aug. 29, at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

BRITTANY SHANE

My favorite local singer-songwriter: Stephanie Finch (Chuck Prophet’s wife and keyboard player). I loved her band Go Go Market and their CD, Hotel San Jose (Evangeline, 2002)!

Other singer-songwriters I love: Kathleen Edwards, Liz Phair, Susanna Hoffs, Dido, Sheryl Crow, Fran Healy, and Josh Ritter.

Money for nothing

-
0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be feeling pretty confident in her reelection prospects this November, despite an independent challenge by high-profile peace mom Cindy Sheehan.

But that hasn’t stopped the San Francisco Democrat from raising big bucks from scores of interest groups who are contributing to her campaign committee and to the political action committee she controls, known as PAC to the Future.

Most of the money she’s raising is going toward assuring her continued power in Washington by giving it to the campaigns of other Democratic members of Congress, particularly those facing tough election battles that could threaten the party’s House majority.

Pelosi’s reelection committee has raised $2.36 million over the past two years, hundreds of thousands more than the average House member, according to federal campaign disclosure records and data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her PAC raised an additional $585,000 during the current election cycle and spent $769,000, much of which has also gone to other candidate committees in payments of $5,000 and $10,000.

Many newly elected Democrats in the House represent conservative constituencies, and with her blessing they sometimes vote with Republicans to distance themselves from the party’s perceived liberal leaders like Pelosi, according to a new book published this month, Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics (Perseus, 2008). Democratic leaders in the meantime have continued a phenomenal fundraising spree to help protect those House members.

"Speaker Pelosi’s extraordinary financial commitment to her party, and especially to her party’s vulnerable members, illustrates the overriding emphasis congressional parties and members place on money," writes author Marian Currinder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. "And her encouragement of selective ‘opposition votes’ demonstrates the complexity of governing in a highly partisan and highly competitive political environment."

Even the day-to-day reelection expenses of Washington’s unrivaled leading lady are outsize, as Pelosi’s spending records show. In June 2007, she celebrated her 20th year in Congress with a glitzy fundraiser held in the capital’s Union Station that cost at least $92,000 and featured a performance by soul singer Patti LaBelle.

The bill included $25,393 for a slick video production; $61,105 on catering, rentals, and securing the site; $2,000 for hairstyling and wardrobe assistance insisted on by LaBelle; $2,824 on flower arrangements; and $1,396 for chocolates from a Pennsylvania-based confection maker.

Pelosi spent at least $650 from her campaign on makeup for the steady string of appearances she made after being sworn in as House speaker in January 2007. An annual fundraiser held this year at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco cost $23,454 for catering and other expenses.

As for the top contributors to Pelosi’s reelection committee, they include several members of the Gallo family, proprietors of the E&J Gallo Winery, who gave a total of $23,000 through maximum individual donations of $4,600. The Modesto-based company has long made contributions to both parties, particularly enriching candidates who show a willingness to scale back or even throw out the federal estate tax, which affects the inheritances of the wealthiest American families.

The Corrections Corporation of America gave $2,300 to Pelosi and $2,700 to her PAC. CCA is part of a storied group of for-profit privatization companies in Nashville, Tenn. that are closely tied to former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and includes the Hospital Corporation of America and Ardent Health Services.

Just this year, the state of California hired CCA to house 8,000 inmates at six of the company’s facilities; a significant portion will go to a new $205 million CCA complex under construction in Arizona.

The nation’s largest private jail company suffered bad publicity during the 1990s due to a series of high-profile escapes and inmate killings inside its prisons. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after overbuilding jails without having enough inmates available to fill them, but the George W. Bush administration helped save the company with a new homeland security agenda that called for confining rather than releasing undocumented immigrants while they awaited deportation or asylum-request proceedings. The company’s revenue jumped nearly a half-billion dollars over the last five years and its lobbying activities in Washington, DC have increased similarly.

The entertainment industry has ponied up its share to Pelosi as well. The maximum $4,600 donation came from Aaron Sorkin, powerhouse writer behind the long-running TV series The West Wing and the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War. Christie Hefner, a regular donor to Democrats and heiress to Playboy Enterprises, contributed $1,000.

Steven Bing, a Hollywood producer who inherited a real estate fortune, and billionaire Las Vegas developer Kirk Kerkorian gave thousands to Pelosi over the last two years. Kerkorian has given to both parties, but he and Bing share a special relationship after having fought a nasty tabloid war.

Kerkorian allegedly hired private investigators to sift through Bing’s trash in search of DNA evidence that would link him to a child borne by Kerkorian’s ex-wife, whom he was divorcing, according to a lawsuit filed by Bing. Vanity Fair in July described Bing as part of a skirt-chasing entourage that ran with Bill Clinton and threatened to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid with its freewheeling bachelor reputation.

The wealthy Herbert and Marion Sandler, major supporters of MoveOn.org and other social justice causes, gave Pelosi a combined $9,200. The couple presided over the meteoric rise of Oakland mortgage lender Golden West Financial, which sold to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. The housing crisis led Wachovia to post staggering multibillion-dollar losses this summer, and some business writers have attributed its declining fortunes to the Golden West purchase.

In June, George Zimmer of Fremont, founder of the Men’s Warehouse, gave $2,300. Notable husband and wife political team Clint and Janet Reilly, both active as candidates and donors, contributed a total of $19,200 to Pelosi’s campaign and PAC.

"Essentially, raising money for the party and its candidates is required of leaders," Money in the House author Currinder told the Guardian. "Pelosi wouldn’t have been elected speaker if she wasn’t a stellar fundraiser."

So where is Pelosi’s money going if not to television ads for her own campaign? She divided $250,000 among the campaigns of approximately 70 congressional candidates, and disbursed about $532,000 more to them through PAC to the Future. The beneficiaries included $14,000 to Democrat Chet Edwards of Texas, whose district includes President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch. Pelosi has publicly recommended him to Barack Obama as a possible running mate.

In addition, about half of the money Pelosi has raised since the beginning of 2007, slightly more than $1 million, went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC. She also gave to the Democratic parties of key battleground states including Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. She singled out Democrat Travis Childers of Mississippi for extra cash totaling $21,000. In May, Childers stunned observers by defeating a Republican in a special election held when a representative vacated his House seat to take over for conservative icon Sen. Trent Lott.

"She has had prodigious success raising funds for individual Democratic candidates, for the DCCC, and for her own campaign and PAC," Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institute, told us. "Most party leaders represent safe seats but nonetheless try to set a high standard for raising money to advance their party’s broader objectives."

Pelosi’s Capitol Hill and San Francisco offices directed our questions to her fundraising operations at the DCCC. Her political director there, Brian Wolff, called the war chest "another vehicle for her to communicate with constituents in California." But he conceded that the pressure is on, "especially now that we have so many candidates and incumbents that need help. It definitely falls on her to be able to have a very aggressive fundraising campaign."

Wolff insists, too, that the Democrats revolutionized fundraising by seeking out smaller donations from large numbers of people instead of returning to the same short list of affluent contributors they had in the past.

In general, top donations to Pelosi still have come from lobbyists and lawyers, the real estate industry, insurance companies, banking and securities firms, and Amgen, a major biotech researcher based in Thousand Oaks. Officials from the labor movement’s biggest new power broker, the Service Employees International Union, also gave substantial sums, as did other major unions. But they fell far behind the contributions of large business interests.

Art Torres, chair of the California Democratic Party, told us that health care reform failed in 1990s at least partly because of political spending by drug companies. But he said that Democrats winning the White House and expanding their majorities in Congress would create a greater mandate to overhaul the health care system.

"It’s always been about issues" rather than fundraising, Torres said. "When I’ve talked to her, it’s always been about ‘How can we get this or that legislation through?’<0x2009>"

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the nation’s largest drug wholesaler, McKesson Corp., is based in San Francisco, and donors from pharmaceutical companies gave Pelosi more than $85,000 this cycle. Drug companies have given freely to Democrats in the past, but Democratic officeholders "still voted against their interests every time," Torres said.

Pelosi’s campaign spending on everything but her own reelection shows she doesn’t regard Sheehan as much of a threat. But the antiwar candidate did make it onto the ballot Aug. 8 and the Sheehan campaign has raised approximately $350,000 since December in small contributions after refusing to accept money from PACs and corporations.

"We didn’t have the party infrastructure going into this," said Sheehan campaign manager Tiffany Burns, adding that Pelosi’s campaign expenditures are "just another example of how Pelosi believes she is entitled to this seat."

Feed our elders well

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Conventional wisdom is that it costs more to eat well, but Alameda County Meals on Wheels has found real value in switching from processed foods to the kind of fresh, local, sustainable fare being touted at the upcoming Slow Food Nation conference, which begins Aug. 29 in San Francisco.

Bay Area Community Services (BACS), the nonprofit that manages Meals on Wheels, has been struggling with a perennial budget deficit, rising fuel and food costs, and a waiting list of 200 seniors eager to join the program.

Even though the easy, heat-and-serve method is the national model for feeding large amounts of people cheaply, BACS was finding that trying to supply 1,200 people a day with meals in their homes and at 21 different congregate sites through a contract with a food processing company just wasn’t working.

"Our solution to the problem was a social enterprise kitchen," Jenny Huston told the Guardian. The 20-year veteran chef and educator is director of Culinary Social Enterprise at BACS. She and her boss, executive director Kent Ellsworth, took the program in a new direction. They went "farm to table," meaning they stopped serving frozen food and started serving meals made with fresh meat, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, and they did it by establishing a culinary arts training program with a curriculum based on the day-to-day work of preparing the Meals on Wheels fare from scratch.

"If you have a structural deficit, why are you spending more money on food?" Huston pondered, asking herself the question many critics might raise. "Sure," she said, "processed stuff is much cheaper, but you’re not seeing the full cost."

What is that full cost? That’s a hot topic for the Slow Food Nation forums, such as how far an avocado travels to become guacamole in Maine. Beyond aligning meals with produce that’s locally available, Huston and Ellsworth are attuned to what happens to a community when its most vulnerable populations — children, seniors, and the disabled — stop eating well.

"Good foods are not the privilege of people who have money. It’s the right of everybody," Ellsworth told the Guardian. "When we buy wholesale, local, and fresh, we get a better product for a good price. It’s the right way to do business."

But raw ingredients require more kitchen work. By partnering with a number of organizations, including the Pleasant Valley Adult School and Oakland Adult and Career Education Program, BACS was able to find budding cooks though a free, 12-week job training program.

They also connected with Community Alliance for Family Farms, a network of local growers and distributors who could provide up to 350 pounds of each raw ingredient a day. Just a few months into the new program, a typical Meals on Wheels lunch now includes all local milk, 10 percent local meat, and 19 percent local produce — and it’s made from scratch by workers who are learning enough food preparation skills to qualify for entry-level kitchen jobs.

And they’re doing it for just pennies more a day. "Our food cost has only gone up five cents per meal since we’ve gone farm to table," Huston said. Yet donations since April have increased 25 percent — about $20,000 — meaning that people who were once asked to give a dollar or two for their lunches are voluntarily giving more for better food.

Though the Meals on Wheels budget gap hasn’t disappeared, Huston likens it to the first few months of any business, when turning a profit is elusive. They’re hoping to expand catering services and market the meals to other day and residential programs.

At the Aug. 14 graduation dinner, Ellsworth announced that a foundation had approved a $200,000 program investment loan to purchase new equipment, remodel their kitchen, and grow the school. It was welcome news for the first class of five cooks. Reflecting on the experience, Geri Haas said, "It was really nice going there, knowing I was relied upon to provide fresh food for our elders."

Orlando De’Aguero, another graduate, announced that he got a job with a local organic food preparation company, eliciting cheers from the gathering of friends, family, and fellow classmates. He said, "I wouldn’t have traded the three months I had here for anything at a culinary school."

Pelosi can’t duck the next Bush war

-
0

EDITORIAL The last time the George W. Bush administration began the saber-rattling that would take the nation into war, the Democratic leadership in Congress was afraid to say a word in opposition. It was that period of fear-driven politics just after 9/11, but even then, the evidence was pretty clear that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had never attacked the United States. And every intelligent observer around the world predicted (correctly) that invading Iraq would be an expensive, bloody, and ultimately counterproductive nightmare.

Now there’s talk about sending US troops to Georgia to help the Georgian army fight the Russians. (There are, according to the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, 127 military trainers and advisors already in that country.) This time, there’s nothing resembling a national security threat; it’s just Cold War madness bubbling up again. And once again, there’s a resounding lack of protest from the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joined the two top Republicans in the House, John Boehner of Ohio and Missouri’s Roy Blunt, in issuing a militaristic and aggressive statement that reads, in part:

"The bipartisan leadership of the US House of Representatives stands united in condemning — in the strongest possible terms — the recent Russian invasion of the sovereign state of Georgia. The United States is committed to Georgia’s absolute sovereignty."

The speaker herself, according to her press office, has said nothing further on the matter. She has not, for example, said she would oppose sending US troops to the region.

The US news media has done a terrible job of covering the geopolitics of the conflict, but if you read the British press, particularly the UK Guardian and The Independent (London), and you review what progressive think tanks are saying, you get a very different perspective. This isn’t simply a case of Russian aggression. As J. Victor Marshall, of the Oakland-based Independent Institute, put it in a piece that’s posted on sfbg.com:

"There’s no real doubt that Georgia began the latest conflict by launching an artillery barrage against South Ossetia’s main city the night of Aug. 7, though it claims to have been provoked by armed militants from the tiny region’s 65,000 people."

That’s not to say Russia reacted properly, or that the United States shouldn’t condemn the invasion. But the situation is a lot more complicated than the simple spectre of Russian tanks attacking a purported US ally.

And the prospect of the United States getting involved in that conflict — with American soldiers fighting Russians — has the potential to ignite a serious military conflagration.

Pelosi can’t be allowed to duck this time. She needs to come out strongly and say that she will not support sending combat troops to Georgia and will work to cut funding for any such military adventure.

1...929394...115Page 93 of 115

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org