Punk

Cue the clowns

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› steve@sfbg.com

The circus doesn’t come to San Francisco, but its performers do, sexy and talented dreamers who bring a creative energy that has transformed the city’s nightlife and counterculture. Spinning aerialists and dancing clowns now proliferate at clubs and parties, and their number has more than doubled in recent years.

They come from towns across the country — often via Burning Man, where they discover their inner performers, dying to burst out, and other kindred spirits — to a city with a rich circus tradition, which they tweak and twist into something new, a hybrid of the arts and punk sideshow weirdness. It’s the ever-evolving world of Indie Circus.

One of the biggest banners these performers now dance and play under is Bohemian Carnival, which draws together some of the city’s best indie circus acts, including Vau de Vire Society, the clown band Gooferman, and Fou Fou Ha, acts that fluidly mix with one another and the audience.

Last Saturday, as families across the country shopped and shared Thanksgiving leftovers, this extended family of performers rehearsed for that night’s Bohemian Carnival. Fou Fou Ha was in the Garage, a SoMa performance space, working on a new number celebrating beer with founder/choreographer Maya Culbertson, a.k.a. MamaFou, pushing for eight-count precision.

"Do it again," she tells her eight high-energy charges, who look alternatively sexy and zany even without the colorful and slightly grotesque clown costumes they don for shows. I watch from the wings as they drill through the number again and again, struck by how the improvised comedy at the song’s end changes every time, someone’s new shtick catching my eye and making me smile.

"That’s what we love the most, the improv element to it," Culbertson tells me. "We see how far you can take it and not break character."

As Fou Fou Ha wrapped up and headed home to get ready for the show, Gooferman and Vau de Vire were just starting to rehearse and set up over at the party venue, DNA Lounge. Reggie Ballard was up a tall ladder setting the rigging, the dancers stretched, Vau de Vire co-founder Mike Gaines attended to a multitude of details, and Gooferman frontmen Vegas and Boenobo the Klown played the fools.

"I feel like I’m on acid," Vegas said evenly, his long Mohawk standing tall.

"Are you?" Boenobo said, perhaps a little jealous.

"No, I wish," Vegas replied. "But that’s why it’s weird."

"Huh," Boenobo deadpanned. "Weird."

Fucking clowns. I decide to chat up a dancer, Rachel Strickland, the newest member of Vau de Vire, who stretched and unabashedly changed into her rehearsal clothes as she told me about why she moved here from North Carolina in July 2007.

"I waited a long time for this. I always knew I wanted to come to San Francisco and work on the stage, doing something in the line of Moulin Rouge, with the costumes and that kind of decadence and debauchery," Strickland said, oozing passion for her craft and the life she’s chosen, one she said has met her expectations. "I danced as much as I could my whole life and I have an overactive imagination, so it’s hard to shock me."

Not that Vau de Vire hasn’t tried. Shocking people out of their workaday selves is what the performers try to do, whether through vaudeville acts, dance routines, feats of skill, or just sheer sensual outlandishness. Vau de Vire choreographer Shannon Gaines (Mike’s wife of 19 years) also teaches at the local indie circus school Acrosports and, with beatboxer and performance artist Tim Barsky, directs its City Circus youth program, which combines hip hop and other urban art forms with circus.

Gaines has been a gymnast and dancer all her life, skills that she’s honed into circus performances she does through five different agencies, often doing corporate events "that involve wearing a few more clothes" and other more conventional performances.

"The other seems like work to me. But this," she said, a wry smile coming to her lips, "is like dessert. This is what excites me."

She’s not the only one. With their growing popularity, San Francisco’s indie circus freaks are juggling an increasingly busy schedule and developing even bigger plans for the new year, including a national tour and an extravaganza called Metropolus that would reinforce San Francisco’s reputation as the best Big Top in the country.

As Boenobo told me, "It’s a moment in time when there’s something big developing in San Francisco."

MIMES AND PICKLES


The circus arts are ancient, but San Francisco’s unique role in morphing and perpetuating them trace back to the 1970s when Make-a-Circus arrived here from Europe — where circus traditions are strong — and the local, organic Pickle Family Circus was born.

Wendy Parkman, now a board member at San Francisco Circus Center, the circus school she helped develop in conjunction with the Pickles and legendary performer Judy Finelli, worked for both circuses and described how they derived from San Francisco’s vibrant arts scene and its history of grassroots activism.

"It was just a wonderful, spontaneous bubble, a renaissance of circus activity," Parkman told the Guardian. "It was an outgrowth of the fabulous ’60s and the involvement of people with community and politics and art."

Parkman and many others trace the local lineage of a renaissance that came to be known as New Circus back to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which in 1959 started doing political theater that incorporated comedy (or more specifically, Commedia dell’Arte), music, farce, melodrama, and other aspects of clowning.

"It really started with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and it flourishes here because of the rich arts culture that we’ve always had here," Jeff Raz, a longtime performer with both original SF troupes who started the San Francisco Clown Conservatory and recently had the title role in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, told the Guardian.

"San Francisco felt like a place where things could happen that were socially and politically relevant," Parkman said. "Circus has always been a people’s art form. It’s a great way of getting a lot of people involved because it takes a lot of people to put on a show."

Perhaps even more relevant to the current indie circus resurgence, both Make-a-Circus and the Pickle Family Circus reached out to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco, where they would do parades and other events to entertain the people and generate interest in the circus.

"It was happy, healthy, and accessible to people of all ages, classes, and backgrounds," said Parkman said, who noted that things began to change in the 1980s as funding for the arts dried up and Pickle hit hard times.

"The Pickle Family Circus was a grassroots circus that was part of a real renaissance. Unfortunately, it didn’t go very far," Dominique Jando, a noted circus historian who has written five books on the circus and whose wife teaches trapeze at the Circus Center, told the Guardian.

Still, the Pickle legacy lives on in the Circus Center and Acrosports, making San Francisco and Montreal (birthplace of Cirque du Soleil, whose influence has also propelled the indie circus movement) the two major hubs of circus in North America. Unlike Europe, Russia, and China, where circus training is deeply rooted and often a family affair passed from generation to generation, Jando said, Americans don’t have a strong circus tradition.

"We are really the poor children of the circus world. There is not the same tradition of circus here that there is in Europe," said Jando, a native to France who now lives in San Francisco. "Learning circus is like ballet, and it’s not really in the American psyche to work and train for seven years for a job that offers modest pay."

Homegrown spectacles like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus commercialized the circus and transformed it into the three-ring form that sacrificed intimacy and the emphasis on artistry and narrative flow. Traditionally in Europe, the clowns and music structured a circus performance, with the punctuation and interludes provided by the acrobats and other performers of the circus arts.

"It’s the superhuman and the supremely human, who are the clowns," is how Raz defines circus. "Clowns are becoming more central to the circus, the supremely human part, and that has a lot to do with our times."

Raz, Jando, and Parkman all pointed to the sterile excesses of the televised, digitized, Twittering, 24/7 world we live in as feeding the resurgence of circus. "It points to a demand by the audience to see something more down to earth and real," Jando said. "There is a need to go back to basics."

"It’s a response to the overly technological world we’re living in. People want to go back to what the human body can do and be in the same place as the performers," Parkman said. "One of the concepts of the Pickles was that it was drawing on the European model. I’d say what’s going on now in San Francisco is an offshoot of what the Pickles did."

Raz said the rise of Indie Circus and its influence on the local arts scene is consistent with his own experiences as an actor and clown. He used to keep two resumes, but performers today are often expected to be steeped in both disciplines, letting one inform the other and opening up new forms of creative expression.

"That melding that you’re looking at, from the club scene to Burning Man, is seeping into a lot of the world," Raz said. "Circus is very much a living art form."

Somehow," Jando said, "it has become a sort of counterculture on the West Coast."

INDIE, THE NEW NEW CIRCUS


Boenobo and Vegas haven’t done any real training to become clowns. They’re performers who use the clown shtick to build a fun and fantastical world off their solid musical base.

"There has to be whimsy. People take themselves so seriously," Boenobo said, noting that it was in response to the serious-minded Winter Music Conference in 2001 where he had the idea of having the members of his new band, Gooferman, dress as clowns. It was a lark, but it was fun and it stuck, and they’ve been clowns ever since.

"The clown thing floats my boat. It is a persona I really dig. And the band kicks ass. We’re all just super tight. The Bohemian Carnival is just a bunch of friends, like a family ejected out of different wombs," he said.

The band does kick ass. Setting aside the clown thing, their tunes are original and fun, evoking Oingo Boingo at its early best, particularly since the summer, when Boenobo and Vegas brought in a strong new rhythm section. But it’s the collaboration with Vau de Vire and the other groups that round out Bohemian Carnival and really bring it to life.

"People say it just blew my mind, and that is the immortality of it," Boenobo said. "It’s super-fucking gratifying, really. It’s just stupid."

They performed last month at the Hillbilly Hoedown inside a giant maze made of hay bales in Half Moon Bay, with the clowns and circus performers creating a fantastical new world for the partygoers. As Gooferman played, Shannon broke the rules and danced atop a hay bale wall behind the band, conveying pure danger and backwoods sex appeal.

"The Gooferman character is called Bruiser or Shenanigans," Shannon said of her performer alter egos. "She does the things that you’d get kicked out of a party for, but I can get away with it."

She considers herself more of a "fluffer" than a dancer, and while Gooferman plays, she gets the band and crowd charged up by pushing the limits of silliness and composure herself and seeing if they’ll follow. "So they’re thinking, wow, if she can do that, I can do all kinds of things."

Their world not only includes practitioners of circus arts (contortionists, aerialists, trapeze artists, clowns, and the like), but also the fashion scene (including outlandish local designers such as Anastasia), painters, sculptors, dancers, actors, fire artists, and DJs like Smoove who bring a certain zany flair to the dance parties.

"It’s hybridized. So it’s not just circus arts with some musical backing," Boenobo said. Instead, it creates a fun and whimsical scene that makes attendees feel like they’re part of something unusual, fun, and liberating. "Immersion is very important."

That’s why the Bohemian Carnival and its many offshoots try to break down the wall between the performers and the audience, who often show up in circus or Burning Man styles, further blurring the borders.

"When you break down that big third wall, there’s no pretense," Mike Gaines said. "It’s really about the party and the community."

Clowns circulate in the crowd, interacting with the audience while aerialists suddenly start performing on ropes or rings suspended over the dance floor. It draws the audience in, opens them up, makes them feel like they’re part of something.

"All of the sudden, people get to realize the dream of running away with the circus, but they get to leave it at the end of the night," Boenobo said with a wink, "which they generally like."

"The line of where circus starts and ends has been blurred," said kSea Flux (a.k.a. Kasey Porter), an indie circus performer who earlier this year started Big Top Magazine (www.bigtopmagazine.com) to chronicle the growing culture. "I love the old-school circus, but as with everything, it needs to be able to evolve to continue to grow."

When he joined the indie circus movement five years ago, performing with the Dresden Dolls, Flux said it transformed his life. He quit his corporate job and started developing his art and trying to make a living in the circus arts, including promoting the culture through the magazine.

"I found the circus and was completely filled with a new life," Flux said, noting that it was through his long involvement with Burning Man that he was exposed to the circus scene. "I think Burning Man gives a platform for it. People get stuck in their jobs and there’s this great week when you can let go and be what you want to be."

That’s also how the talented aerialist and hooper who calls herself Shredder got into this world, which she’s now explored in both the traditional circus and the indie variety, preferring the latter.

"I didn’t even know it was possible, but I just love it," said Shredder, who worked as a firefighter, EMT, and environmental educator before getting into performing through Burning Man, where Boenobo set up the Red Nose District in 2006 for all the many offshoots of the indie circus world that attend the event.

Shredder developed hula hoop and aerial routines, training hard to improve her skills and eventually was hired by the Cole Brothers Circus in 2006 to do aerial acrobatics and hooping. Founded in 1882, Cole is a full-blown circus in the Ringling Bros. tradition, with a ringleader, animals, and trained acrobats. Shredder toured 92 cities in 10 months until she felt the creativity and joy being snuffed out by the rote repetition of the performances.

"We did the exact same show everyday. It was like Groundhog Day but worse; same show, different parking lot," said Shredder, who later that Saturday night did a performance with more than a dozen hula hoops at once. "Then I heard about Vau de Vire through some fellow performers and I just heard they were doing really well and I wanted to be with a group like that … I was just so happy that they were willing to help me design my vision as an artist."

COMING TOGETHER


The Bohemian Carnival name and concept was actually an import from Fort Collins, Colo., where Mike and Shannon Gaines created the Vau de Vire Society as part of the performance and party space they operated there in a 100-year-old church that they purchased.

Mike’s background was in film; Shannon was a dancer; and the world they created for themselves was decidedly counterculture. So was their space, the Rose Window Experimental Theater and Art House, which they operated from 1997 to 2001 and lived in with 20 of their bohemian friends.

"It allowed us to really get to know ourselves. We had all day to just rig up any kind of performance we could imagine," she said. "If you had a crazy idea, you could just come on over at 3 a.m. and do it."

Their signature events were themed parties that would open with performances of about 30 minutes, usually combining music, dance, and performance art, followed by a dance party that was essentially an all-night rave. Initially the performances just drew off of the creativity of their friends, including those Shannon danced with. The themes were often risqué and sometimes included nudity.

The performances evolved over time, bringing in talent such as Angelo Moore of the band Fishbone, who is still a regular part of their crew. They were all attracted to the freaky side of performance art, which drew them toward sideshow, vaudeville, and circus themes and expanding what was technically possible. "We ended up getting a rigger in and just flying around the theater," Mike said.

In 2000, they did their first Bohemian Carnival event. "That’s when we started dabbling in the circus," Mike said.

While the events gained regional acclaim in newspapers and were supported by notables figures, including the town’s mayor, there was a backlash among local conservatives, including some who objected to how a traditional church was being used for raves by these bohemian freaks.

In 2001 they decided to search for a new home. "We looked around for the place that would be most accepting of what we were doing," Mike said.

San Francisco was known to be accepting of their kind, and there were groups here that were edging toward similar kinds of parties, including Infinite Kaos and Xeno (and its predecessor, Awd), as well as the band Idiot Flesh, not to mention the more serious circus being done at the Circus Center and Teatro Zinzanni.

"San Francisco, in this country, is a real hotbed for circus. So we were like, ‘Now we can bring in legitimate circus performers," Mike said. Shannon got a job teaching at Acrosports, allowing her to be immersed full-time in her art and to help grow her community.

Serendipitously, in August 2001, indie rocker Boenobo of the band Chub — a funky ska outfit whose members would wear different costumes to each of their performances — formed Gooferman, which wasn’t originally the clown band it is today: "The idea was you had to be in a costume and you had to be stoned." They morphed into a full-blown clown band, and began collaborating with circus performers.

"But it never coalesced until recently," Boenobo says.

That process probably began around Halloween 2004 at the Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas, when Vau de Vire Society was asked to fill eight hours’ worth of programming and turned to their San Francisco brethren for help, Mike said. They drove or flew about 100 people to the event.

It was also the year Boenobo staged the GoofBall in San Francisco, drawing together a variety of entertainment that helped change the nature of the traditional dance party. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the year that reviled President George W. Bush won a second term and when longtime Burning Man artists staged their ill-fated revolt against the event (see "State of the art," 12/10/04).

"When people get too serious, they need this shit even more," Boenobo said of the increasingly irreverent, naughty, and participatory parties he was throwing.

Meanwhile Fou Fou Ha was developing its act. Culbertson and Raymond Meyer were waiting tables at Rose Pistola in 2000 and decided to put their big personalities to work for them, bringing in other performers such as Slim Avocado and setting up routines to perform at CellSpace and other venues.

"We’re sort of like the children of Cirque du Soleil in a way, but we wanted to give it an edge," Culbertson said. "It’s sort of like the second wave vaudeville … now with more of a rock edge."

Fou Fou Ha’s shows play off the dark and surreal kind of performance that is more European than American, a style Culbertson was exposed to while studying choreography during her Fulbright scholarship in Holland in the late 1990s. When she returned to the United States in 2000, "I wanted to form a [dance] company." But she wanted it to be fun. "People really like the idea of serious dance combined with comedy, where you can fall out of your pirouette," she said.

"We’re kind of like guerilla circus," Slim, a trained ballerina, said. "It’s a whole new movement. It’s like ’30s cabaret, but edgier."

Boenobo started the Red Nose District on the playa at Burning Man in 2006, drawing together his Bohemian Carnival friends, a local group of stilt- walkers known as Enhightned Beings of Leisure, installation artist Michael Christian’s crew from the East Bay, the Cirque Berserk folks from Los Angeles, and others from the growing circus world.

"It’s a safe environment to be and do what you want," Gaines said of Burning Man, noting how those breakthroughs on the playa then come back home to the city. And that ethos carries into Vau de Vire, which is truly a collective of like-minded friends, one that eschews hiring outside performers for their shows. "They’re all just part of it," he said.

What they’re all part of — Vau de Vire, Gooferman, Fou Fou Ha, and the rest of the Indie Circus folk — has begun to make a strong imprint on San Francisco nightlife and counterculture. From a performer’s perspective, Boenobo said, it feels good. "Our local family is super comfortable with one another," he said, something he’s never felt before after 25 years as a indie rocker. "It’s rare to not have a lot of ego to deal with, and it’s super rare with this kind of high-quality performance."

But they want more. As Flux said, "We want to take over the world."

WHAT’S NEXT


Slowly, the circus collective members are moving toward becoming full-time freaks. Already, Mike Gaines said most of the 12 to 15 regular Vau de Vire performers practice their art full-time, subsidizing their performances by being instructors in dance or the circus arts.

That’s not to say the parties, with their large number of performers, are lucrative. "With circus, you get a million more people on your guest list, so circus is complicated from a promoter’s perspective," Joegh Bullock of Anon Salon, which incorporates circus acts into its parties, including the upcoming Sea of Dream party New Year’s Eve. "But we love it and wouldn’t do a show without it."

To pay the bills, "we also do a lot of corporate gigs," Gaines says, not proudly. Fou Fou Ha does as well, including performing at the Westfield San Francisco Centre this holiday season. They’re all dying to take their show on the road, but that, too, takes money. "Sponsorship is the key if we’re going to tour with 60 people," said Mike, who’s been working hard on a deal and said he feels close.

Boenobo’s latest plan is Metropolus, a circus-style extravaganza he’s planning (along with Bullogh and Gaines) for next Halloween, hoping to ferry guests (using buses or perhaps even art cars from Burning Man) among several venues in town (such as Mighty, 1015, Temple, and DNA Lounge) and a huge circus tent he wants to erect in Golden Gate Park.

In addition to circus-style entertainment drawn from across the country, he wants to precede the Saturday night finale with three days and nights of workshops and smaller-scale performances. His goal is for Metropolus to because a signature event for San Francisco and the indie circus scene, the equivalent of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas; the Winter Music Festival in Miami; or the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The time seems right, with the current financial meltdown creating opportunities even as it makes funding their world domination plans difficult. "Each time you have a crisis like we’re having now, it’s a ripe time for circus," Jando said, noting that circus boomed during the Great Depression and after each of the two World Wars.

And after going through years of pure absurdity in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street, Raz said the clowns of the world — from Stephen Colbert’s conservative television character (who Raz says employs clown techniques in his comedy) to a singer named Boenobo — now have a special resonance with people. As he said, "One of the things clowns do is they live the folly large."

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CLOWN’S EYE VIEW

I’ve been following Indie Circus for years, intending to add it to the profiles of various Burning Man subcultures (see www.steventjones.com/burningman.html) that I’ve written for the Guardian, but my reporting on this story began in May. And at the suggestion of Gooferman frontman Boenobo the Klown, I decided to start from the inside and let him turn me into a clown.

As makeup artist Sharon Rose transformed me into a happy clown backstage at DNA Lounge, I asked Boenobo what I should do (besides interview people). We just needed to clown around, keep the drunks from crowding the performers, help clear the stage between acts — whatever needed doing. "We’re the scrubs," he told me, clown-to-clown.

As we spoke, the acrobats stretched, a corpse bride goofed off as she prepared for her aria, members of the Extra Action Marching Band started to slink in, clowns applied their makeup, and female performers occasionally came back from the stage and whipped off their tops.

When Gooferman went on, I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, so I stood next to the stage, watched, and awkwardly tried to be a little goofy in my dancing. A tall, beautiful blond woman stood next to me, catching my eye. She was apparently alone, so after a couple songs, during a lull, I asked her, "So, do you like clowns?"

"I am a clown," she said with a grin.

"Really?" I said. "You don’t look like a clown."

"But I am," she said. "I even do clown porn."

She turned out to be 27-year-old porn star Hollie Stevens, who told me she "grew up as a clown" in the Midwest before moving to California and getting into porn seven years ago. She even starred in the film Clown Porn and still sometimes dons the red nose and face paint for her public appearances, usually just for her own amusement. Stevens once appeared on the Jerry Springer Show as a clown, even getting into the requisite fight on stage with a friend.

"Clowns, you either love them or you hate them," she said, and she loves them.

I asked why she was there and she said that she’d come to see Boenobo. They had talked but never met, and shared a sort of mutual admiration. It was a clown thing. Clowns … they get all the hot chicks.

While we talked, an acrobat worked the pole on the stage, followed by an aerialist performing above the dance floor, one scene woven seamlessly into the other. The clowns of Gooferman puttered around the stage, removing equipment to get ready for the next act, flirting with the girls, trying to scam more drink tickets, or simply entertaining others and themselves.

The life of a clown is rarely dull.

————

UPCOMING INDIE CIRCUS EVENTS

DEC. 5–6


Acrosports Winter Cabaret

639 Frederick, SF

8 p.m., $5–$15

www.citycircus.org

DEC. 12


Auditions for Acrosports’ City Circus

Call (415) 665-2276, ext. 103 for appointment

DEC. 12-14


Frolic: CircusDragBurlesque Festival

Featuring Fou Fou Ha, Anna Conda, and more

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

8 p.m., $100

www.counterpulse.org

1-800-838-3006

DEC. 20


Open House and Holiday Carnival

San Francisco Circus Center

755 Frederick, SF

10 a.m.–4 p.m., free

Pratfalls and Rising Stars

7 p.m., $12 adults, $8 children

San Francisco Circus Center

Tickets and info at www.circuscenter.org

DEC. 20


Storytime Festival, featuring Vau de Vire Society

4–7 p.m., "Tales of Enchantment," (G-rated show) 8–11 p.m., "Storytime for the Inner Child," (R-rated show)

$30–$50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

www.storytimefestival.org

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>>More: Read Marke B.’s club review of Bohemian Carnival

Kickin’ ‘bot

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER A mashed-up stock market and credit-crunked fiscal outlook be damned — just what does the music industry have to do to make you part with your overly stretched entertainment dollar? Pay you to buy, Joe Deflation? Bookended by the double-B bombshells — Beyonce’s Nov. 18-released I Am … Sasha Fierce (Sony) and Britney Spears’ Dec. 2-scheduled Circus (Jive) — this week is likely major-label ground zero for pre-holiday CD releases — ready to tantalize us, peering through Pepto Bismol-smeared turkey goggles, with toothsome collaborations, tempt us with superstar potential, and dazzle with gleaming newness.

I’m taking a cue from a future-focused Kanye West and feeding a few Nov. 24 (Island Def Jam got a jump on the traditional Tuesday release date) and 25 releases to the trusty Micro-Reviewbot, our neutral yet far from neutered critical assessment generator, which will hold these discs up against infuriatingly fuzzy expectations and objectively critique said recordings. The exception: Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy (Interscope) — because it’s hard to review an album when, at press time, the label allows Micro-Reviewbot to listen to only two tracks. But hey, why spoil the shock and awe? Careful now, Micro-Reviewbot can’t not tell the truth. Micro-Reviewbot only knows how to speak truth — to power and powerless alike. All systems go, Micro-Reviewbot!

KANYE WEST, 808S AND HEARTBREAK (ROC-A-FELLA/ISLAND DEF JAM)


Anticipation level: Smokin’ high, tempered with likely some ambivalence about Graduation‘s Daft Punk-Takashi Murakami-Chris Martin alliances. Has West hitched his wagon to one too many trendoids? Still, we are spared the faux drama of a 50 Cent feud with the advance of 808s’ release date.

Micro-Reviewbot’s pop-psych diagnosis: Frankly, Kanye sounds depressed. I know the self-proclaimed genius of rap is working through some deep shit: he broke up with his fiancée, and his mom died a year ago during cosmetic surgery.

Witness the way West has dug himself so deeply into his Afro-futurist themes and coolly digitized sonic landscape. This space-age ice-cold killer is taking the next spaceship from reality, pronto, while yodeling through a thicket of effects, "See you in my nightmares, suckers!" You wouldn’t know that the political/cultural change is breaking out all over this month — straight from the 808, a.k.a., native-born Barack Obama’s Hawaii, where West recorded this album using, a-ha, a Roland TR-808 drum machine. Instead, Kanye has taken refuge in something he can rely on: the love between a man and his Vocoder — or rather, a man and his Auto-Tune plug-in. Still, the songs on the dampened-down 808s and Heartbreak continue to grow on Micro-Reviewbot.

Alternative: Ludacris’ take-that, mob-inciting Theater of the Mind (Disturbing Tha Peace) — with a guest cast including TI, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Nas, the Game, Rick Ross, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, and Spike Lee — also out Nov. 24. It’s as if Ludi hadn’t ever abandoned the rap game for the cineplex — even if his references tend to ride a pop culture loop of I Hate Chris and Any Given Sunday more readily than anything resembling clichéd gangbanger reality.

THE KILLERS, DAY AND AGE (ISLAND)


Expectations: Fall Out Boy feuds and suits by ex-managers aside, it’s hard to gauge, considering their paean to Wal-Mart moms, Sam’s Town, surprised everyone by taking a left turn from the guilty-pleasure deca-dance-pop of "Somebody Told Me" toward Broooce-fearing Freedom Rock, a then-untapped ’80s retro vein — and shocked further by going Putf8um.

Micro-Reviewbot’s stays-in-Vegas assessment: are the Killers trying to tell us something by opening with a track titled "Losing Touch"? Somebody told the Sin City band they had to drop that Broooce crush that made them look like the girlfriends they had in February 1983. It’s not confidential. They’ve got potential, so they mixed touches of anthemic melody lines, glockenspiel, and sax appeal with more nods to the dance-pop crowd (the cringe-inducing "Joy Ride"). These new-new rock romantics want to have their epics (thundering "A Dustland Fairytale") and eat, too (U2-y pop hit "Human").

Alternative: Look for further throw-away kicks from English-New Zealand trash pleash Ladyhawke — not to be confused with stateside indie vets Ladyhawk — and her weird combo of DIY-rock trappings (the new self-titled Modular/Interscope CD sports rough sketches of a head-banded hipster chick and kittens) and slick electro-pop odes to lovers jetting over the Atlantic, whizzing synth details, and artificial hand claps.

DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAY (SELF-RELEASED)


Waxy critical buildup: a quiet storm has been building among graying ’80s-era fans and young ‘uns cognizant of the renewed relevance of the pair’s Talking Heads work and their last co-written full-length, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Sire, 1981).

Micro-Reviewbot’s "I Am … Fierce" take: the ironic-naïf act is wearing thin. Micro-Reviewbot wants to like Everything, but finds its attention consistently drifting, mid-listen. Likely the best Byrne album in years, though the promise of bitingly ironic opener "Home" and the C&W-laced "My Big Nurse" soon degenerates with obvious Radiohead dig, "I Feel My Stuff," a jab at the crit darlings’ chilly electronic bricolage, which goes terribly wrong in a Midnite Vultures-style Pro-Tools-is-crack kind of way. Except Midnite Vultures is actually more listenable. Sonically songs like "Everything That Happens" are lovely — scattered with plangent piano tinkles and aquatic guitar lines — but perhaps it’s too much to ask elders like Byrne and Eno to eschew the non-Viagra-like sax and trudging tempos on tunes such as "Life Is Long" and find some genuine energy.

Alternative: Shhh, how about giving Micro-Reviewbot a little quiet digestion time for a change? *

Sounding out on the Silent Comedy’s backwoods indie rock

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By Todd Lavoie

Bowler hats, banjos, backwoods hollers, and burlesque hawkers – sounds like old-timey goodness to me. San Diego’s mountain music-loving vaudeville-revivalists the Silent Comedy will be dishing out sepia-toned balladry and carny-shouted hootenannies to the Café du Nord crowd Friday, Nov. 21.

It should be one hell of a rompin’-stompin’, suspender-slappin’ shindig. Whether or not the band will share their homebrewed bathtub-gin onstage remains to be seen, but they’re certain to be generous with everything else you might need for a round or two of Prohibition-era revelry. OK, the bathtub-gin thing is pure speculation on my part; what else could possibly be fueling their deliciously unbridled rip-ups?

The quintet, formed in 2005 by brothers J. John and J. Benjamin from the remnants of their San Diego post-punk band Dehra Dun, is rooted in acoustic-based roots music – banjo, mandolin, and violin figure prominently – but indie rock has clearly played a significant role in shaping how they approach country and folk idioms.

‘Fight’ songs

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On the night of Nov. 4, while President-elect Barack Obama was giving his victory speech in Chicago, Flobots were performing at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

"We ended up performing just after McCain gave his concession speech, and then we stopped when Obama gave his acceptance speech," remembers Jonny 5, the rap band’s lead vocalist, on the road to New Haven, Conn. He calls the moment "full of euphoric disbelief." Outside the club "there were people everywhere in the streets, giving each other hugs, and impromptu parades."

It wasn’t the first time Flobots’ career path had intertwined with that of the president-elect. In September, when the Democratic Party held its convention in the group’s hometown of Denver, they participated in several ancillary events, including a concert with Rage Against the Machine. "The entire event was planned to support the Iraq Veterans Against the War, who had a march immediately after the event," says Jonny 5. "So we used the stage to rally people."

Flobots’ rise from regional upstarts to modern-rock radio stalwarts mirrors Rage’s emergence more than 15 years ago. Just as Zack de la Rocha and company did with their fuzzy emo-punk, Jonny 5 — along with rapper Brer Rabbit — adds rhymes to an exotic mix of jazz horns, funky breaks, and hard-rock guitar. And the six-member crew are equally consumed with progressive politics. Each song on Fight with Tools (Universal Republic/Flobots Music, 2007), the outfit’s second album, overflows with righteous anger and activist fervor.

Flobots, “Handlebars”

"We want money for health care and public welfare! Free Mumia and Leonard Peltier!" Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit offer on "Same Thing." "We say, ‘Yes,’ to grassroots organization, ‘No,’ to neoliberal organization! Bring the troops back to the USA and shut down Guantanamo Bay!"

"Handlebars," of course, was Flobots’ breakout moment. Much of Fight with Tools, which Flobots released independently last year, before Universal Republic signed them and reissued the album this spring, feels overwhelmed by earnest slogans. But on "Handlebars," Jonny 5 weaves a stream-of-consciousness allegory about American exceptionalism while the rest of the band build, like an orchestra, to a cacophonous conclusion.

Jonny 5 says his influences range from hip-hop collectives such as Project Blowed to organic music ensembles like Ozomatli. The unusual chart success of "Handlebars," which soared into the Billboard Top 40 last summer, helped Flobots sell more records than any of their inspirations.

"Personally, I had this obsession or insecurity about whether we were really hip-hop, and whether we were representing the hip-hop community correctly. I don’t know … I was hung up on it," Jonny 5 explains. "[Influential indie rapper] 2Mex was with us for four or five dates on the West Coast, and the minute we would mention any criticism we’d get, he’d say, ‘Fuck that, man. Keep expanding. That’s what hip-hop is.’<0x2009>"

FLOBOTS

Sun/23, 8 p.m., $27.50–<\d>$30

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.goldenvoice.com

Holiday Guide 2008: Seasonal sounds

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Thanks to the continued explosion of musically-oriented Web sites and blogs, you’ll probably be even more inundated than usual this year with "best of 2008" lists come January 2009 — far too late for your tuneful shopping needs. So we’re cranking one out early, organized by affinity groups — some slightly imaginary, some more concrete — in an attempt to cut through the loud hype and scattered bombast while amping up your gift-giving options. At the end is a suggested list of delectable upcoming live shows, if you’re more ticket-oriented.

FOR THE RETRO-FUTURIST DISCO HEAD


Electronic music is a good example of how griping about the state of a scene can sometimes release unexpected creativity. Syclops, nominally a Finnish fusion trio, is the latest we’ve heard from Maurice Fulton since his quasi-breakthrough electro-spazz project Mu. I’ve Got My Eye on You is the longest in a line of pretty epic wins for the label DFA and for electronic music generally: radiating out from "Where’s Jason’s K," the 10 tracks that make up the album tear ass from pharma’d-out Detroit techno to dreamy, lush deep space jazz.

Also: Shed‘s Shedding the Past (Ostgut Tonträger) if your giftee’s the type who longs for the halcyon days of high minimal glitch; Nôze, Songs on the Rocks (Get Physical) if his or her affection for tech house precision is matched only by a love of closing-time sing-alongs and Waitsian growls.

FOR LONG-LIMBED INDIE SCRAPPERS


It would be hard to write enough about "Black Rice," the best song on Canadian indie quartet Women‘s self-titled debut on Jagjaguwar. Starting from an absurdly unambitious guitar line, the song blossoms into something wildly and fiercely beautiful. It could be the impossible falsetto of the chorus, or the way the rhythm section comes unglued from the vocals and guitar, but the song condenses what makes the rest of the album — noisy, lo-fi interludes and all — so engaging. Everything seems held together provisionally on a song like the heartrending "Shaking Hand," but the chorus snaps into place with rubber-banded eagerness.

Also: Abe Vigoda‘s Skeleton (PPM) for its irrepressible youthful longing and controlled thrash; Benoît Pioulard‘s Temper (Kranky) for twining the threads of noise and surprisingly pretty, almost adult-contemporary songwriting into a neither/nor album that’s perfect for gray days.

WEIRDOS ONLY


Although more structured than anything they’ve done before, Saint Dymphna (Social Registry), the newest long player from New York’s mystical vibe crew Gang Gang Dance, still arrives packed with the otherworldliness that characterized its excellent predecessor, God’s Money (Social Registry, 2005). Three years in the making, the album itself is nothing if not well paced: the transitions between songs and the gradual build of rhythmic energy make it less kin to trad rock albums than to DJ mixes. When the swells crest, as on "First Communion" and "House Jam," electronic gurgles and processed sounds that might otherwise sound like trying too hard are transformed into pure pith: they’re as inviting and faceted as a just-split pomegranate.

Also: Paavoharju‘s Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal), since these Finnish folksters cover the dance floor with silt on "Kevätrumpu," bust some desperate torch techno on "Uskallan," and spend a number of other tracks sounding stuck between pagan classical radio and deteriorating field recordings; Rings is a trio of new primitives formerly known as First Nation — on Black Habit (Paw Tracks), the outfit sounds like it’s gotten into the Slits’ basements and started making music dictated from beyond.

POST-HIP-HOP BASS SEMANTICS


A DJ mix that stands alone as an album is a rare thing, but leave it to Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ/rupture, to make one, as he has with Uproot (Agriculture). Deeply, er, rooted in the bass plate tectonics of dubstep and cut with the finest in eclectic samples, ranging from experimentalist Ekkehard Ehlers to lazer bass don Ghislain Poirier, Uproot rolls deep with dubbed-out ambience, but DJ/rupture is just as happy to turn things upside down, as when he plunks down Ehlers’ gorgeous string loop, "Plays John Cassavetes, Pt. 2," around the mix’s halfway point. And if bangers of the future don’t sound like "Gave You All My Love (Matt Shadetek’s I Gave You All My Dub Remix)," which subs out dub’s organic space for Fisher-Price primary-color contrasts that split the brain evenly in two, I’m not sure it’s a future worth living in.

Also: for the more historically minded, Ragga Twins have released Step Out! (Soul Jazz), a retrospective that collects the work of a duo widely considered to be the inventors of that dubstep ancestor, jungle; Tank Thong Mixtape (Weaponshouse) by Megasoid happens to be free, so spend some money on a nice CD-R, decorate it with glitter, and watch exasperation turn to glee when your loved one blows out his or her speakers with this beast.

HEAVY STUFF


One of the year’s most life-affirming releases comes from a band called Fucked Up; its Chemistry of Common Life (Matador) is grounded in hardcore, and has hardness to spare, but makes its biggest impact when it lets a flute solo emerge from the tempest. With his basso profundo growl, singer Pink Eyes can sound like he’s gargling hot dogs, and harnessed to a song like "Black Albino Bones," with its cooing melody — the closest thing to pop the seven-year-old band has attempted — it makes for an unexpectedly moving juxtaposition. But the group’s real skill comes from mining the void left after the tribal affiliations of high school fall away; "Twice Born"<0x2009>‘s refrain, "Hands up if you think you’re the only one," could be the year’s Miranda July–esque rallying cry.

Also: if you’re wondering what Mick Barr’s been up to post-Ocrilim, the short answer, witnessed on Krallice‘s Krallice (Profound Lore) is black metal; Peasant (Level Plane), an all-encompassing slab of darkness by Baton Rouge–based Thou, is closer to trad sludge than to the transcendent drone of Sunn 0))), but no less impressively bleak.

SHOWS


The holiday season is not always a great time for shows (other than several Nutcracker incarnations), but for folks who want to gift live music this year there are plenty of sonic distractions. On the heels of Everybody (Thrill Jockey), its latest bout of sophisticated jazz rock, the eternally springlike Sea and Cake will make an appearance at Great American Music Hall just in time to counteract your seasonal affective disorder (Dec. 2, 8 p.m., $20). Sebastien Tellier rolls with the Daft Punk posse, so it’s no surprise that his music marries spot-on genre mimicry and a native sense of melody; check out the video for "Divine," in which the Beach Boys–meet–Lio jam turns into a global karaoke marathon of Tellier doppelgängers (Mezzanine, Dec. 4, 9 p.m., $15). There’s no rest for local workhorses Tussle and Jonas Reinhardt — they’ll be bringing their peculiar hot-cold takes on krauty electronics to the Hemlock Tavern (Dec. 6, 9:30 p.m., $7). And even if her music is not your cup of tea, Aimee Mann’s 3rd Annual Christmas Show should be a nice shot of seasonality in a city that tends to avoid big displays of Christmas spirit; consider it a good sign that Patton Oswalt, the stand-up comedian most deserving of your attention, will take part (Bimbo’s, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $40). His looks call to mind a peripheral character from The Catcher in the Rye, and his preternaturally gentle music is specially designed not to hurt babies’ ears, but the earnest beauty of Jonathan Richman‘s songs might pierce your heart (Great American Music Hall, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $15). Bearing a post-hardcore pedigree like whoa, San Francisco’s own Crime in Choir moves gracefully beyond its members’ backgrounds — At the Drive-In, the Fucking Champs — into (surprise!) instrumental prog territory (Hemlock Tavern, Dec. 13, 9:30 p.m., $6). *

Click here for more Holiday Guide 2008.

Holiday Guide 2008: Graphic gifts

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that the last few years have seen an impressive flowering of graphic novels and comic book art. These days, every self-respecting, well-read person should have a graphic novel or two on the shelf — and that makes this the perfect moment to give your fave loved one a comic as a holiday gift. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a present with both?

FOR THE SMARTY-PANTS IN UNDEROOS


Watchmen changed the world of comic books when it debuted in 1986, ushering in an era of more serious and ambitious storytelling. Written by the revered Alan Moore, Watchmen uses the trope of superheroes to examine American culture. It won the Hugo Award that year (the first time a comic book had ever won a major literary award in America), was later named one of Time Magazine‘s "Best 100 Books of All Time" (the only comic book on the list), and is now being made into an movie. Watchmen dissects the superhero, revealing the elements of fascism, nihilism, and sexual obsession inherent in the genre, while always maintaining a sense of empathy for its characters’ humanity. It is beautiful, incredibly dense and intricate, and profoundly moving.

Watchmen: The Absolute Edition (DC Comics, 2008, 436 pages, $39.99) is a magnificent large-format reissue that beautifully shows off illustrator Dave Gibbon’s meticulous art, is completely re-colored, and has plenty of additional material. This is something that any geek would be proud to own.

FOR THE TWEEN WHO STILL BELIEVES IN MAGIC


Forget Harry Potter, Bone (Cartoon Books, 2004, 1300 pages, $39.95) is the bomb! Jeff Smith’s magnum opus is something truly rare in comics — a fully realized, all-ages fantasy story that balances thrilling adventure, humor, and lovable characters that develop and grow.

Three cousins stumble into a new land complete with dragons, a super-strong grandma, a princess with a destiny, a terrifying lord of locusts, and stupid rat creatures. As in the Harry Potter series, Bone becomes darker and more serious as the story progresses, but it never loses a delightful playfulness, both in the moments of comic relief and in Smith’s light, masterful brushwork. Bone can be found either as a single volume in its original black-and-white form, or as a set of color books from Scholastic Press.

FOR SCI-FI FANS WITH POST-APOCALYPTIC DAYDREAMS


Perhaps the best science fiction comic book ever produced starts off the way the best sci-fi stories do, with a simple premise that creates a ripple-effect of expanding consequences. In Y: The Last Man, all the males on the planet except for two die off from a sudden, horrifying plague, leaving poor Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand the last creatures alive with Y chromosomes.

Writer Brian K. Vaughn, one of the best of a new generation of comics writers and one of the principle writers for TV’s Lost, cut his teeth creating the Y saga, which has been seeping out in one-volume installments since 2003. He imagines a world without men in fascinating ways, but never lets the setting get in the way of a gripping, fast-paced story. Pia Guerra’s art is competent and engaging, and propels the story along at the same clip as the writing. The entire breathtaking story comes in 10 soft-cover volumes from publisher Vertigo for around $13–<\d>$15 each. A just-published comprehensive deluxe edition (Vertigo, 2008, 256 pages, $29.99) comprises the first five volumes, with the second installation scheduled to come out in May 2009.

FOR TORTURED, BEAUTIFUL SOULS


There is a long, venerable history to comics biographies and autobiographies, from Art Spiegleman’s Maus to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (fabulous gifts all). I want, however, to point out an often-overlooked book that deserves its place in the canon, Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl (Frog Books, 2002, 312 pages, $22.95), which is one of the most compelling accounts of a troubled childhood that I’ve ever read.

Diary is not just a comic book. It weaves together graphic chapters with diary-form prose and illustrations to tell the story of Minnie Goetze, a 15-year-old girl who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend before spiraling downward into drugs and abusive relationships.

It all takes place in 1970s San Francisco, and the city is an integral part of the story, from Minnie’s home in a Victorian flat in Laurel Heights to the world of gay hustlers and runaways on Polk Street.

FOR ROCKET-POWERED LOVERS


Have someone on your gift list who loves the magical realism, multigenerational storylines, and fantastic characters of Gabriel García Márquez? How about someone who can’t get enough of cool-ass, punk-rock dykes? Well, I have the perfect graphic novels for you: Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (Fantagraphics, 2003, 512 pages, $39.95), which chronicles the adventures of the denizens of a fictional Central American village, and Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories (Fantagraphics, 2004, 712 pages, $49.95) by Jaime Hernandez, which centers around two punk girls in the Mexican barrios of Los Angeles.

Both collect stories originally serialized in what is arguably the greatest American comic ever produced, Love and Rockets (and yes, that’s where the band got its name), which has been published somewhat consistently since 1981.

FOR EPIC MEDICAL DRAMA QUEENS


Ode to Kirihito (Vertical, 2006, 832 pages, $24.95) will blow your mind. Created in 1969 by the stellar Osama Tezuka, godfather of manga and anime (Japanese comics and cartoons), it was markedly more sophisticated and accomplished than anything coming out of the United States at the time. In fact, American popular culture is only now catching up to Tezuka — we’re just now getting translations of his works. Luckily, the new American versions are well designed and nimbly translated.

Kirihito tells the story of a plague that turns people into doglike creatures, and reads like a combination of a medical drama (Tezuka was trained as a physician), a panoramic 19th-century novel, and an existentialist treatise à la Albert Camus. Maybe your loved ones think that manga is all melodramatic kids with big eyes, spiky hair, and cute pets that shoot lightning? Ode to Kirihito will expand their view.

FOR YOUR FAVORITE PERVERT


Best Erotic Comics 2008 (Last Gasp, 2008, 200 pages, $19.95) is trying to fill an important, ahem, hole in the world of alternative comics. As the current comics renaissance gains steam, it is becoming curiously less and less sexual. Compared to the wild antics of the underground cartoonists of the 1960s, today’s indie comics tend to be flaccid fare.

BEC 2008 aims to change all that, as the first of an annual series of anthologies devoted to showcasing the best of comics erotica and restoring sexuality as a centerpiece of the indie comics sensibility. Last Gasp, a venerable San Francisco–based comics and alt-media publisher and distributor, is putting out the series.

Impressively diverse on all levels, BEC 2008 features a young dyke’s first encounter with a vibrator, a dominatrix who hires a gay masseur to fuck her boyfriend, King Kong and Godzilla getting it on … there’s a little something here for every proud pervert to treasure. That’s the magic of the holiday season! 2

WHERE TO GET YOUR GIFTS

Isotope Comics 326 Fell, SF. (415) 621-6543, www.isotopecomics.com

Al’s Comics 1803 Market, SF. (415) 861-1220, www.alscomicssf.com

Whatever 548 Castro, SF. (415) 861-9428, www.whateverstoreonline.com

Comix Experience 305 Divisadero, SF. (415) 863-9258, www.comixexperience.com

Comic Relief 2026 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-5002, www.comicrelief.net

Justin Hall is a San Francisco–based comics artist and owner of All Thumbs Press (www.allthumbspress.com).

More Holiday Guide 2008.

Another punk: Love Is All has a lot of feelings

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By Brandon Bussolini

It would be hard to take someone seriously if they told you they were addicted to music. The notion of addiction might have more purchase for books or movies, but listening to music compulsively seems like a given for this generation. Music “helps” – in the broadest sense of that word: it can be restorative or push you into productive discomfort, and can help articulate feelings that might not get very far on language alone.

It’s easy to listen to Love Is All’s new album, A Hundred Things Keep Me up at Night (What’s Your Rupture), like water, two times a day easy, on the bus trying to calm down. With each listen, the disc becomes less like a collection of songs and more like a collection of vignettes, ones that seem to capture something important about what it feels like to be in the midst of your second adolescence.

Vocalist Josephine Olausson knows how to throw a good tantrum, but even amid the more blown-out sentiments of “Give It Back,” her delivery is so much more than merely spiteful as she delivers the lines: “All the love I gave you, give it back / Every time I praised you, I’m keeping track / Every minute on the phone / It was only cos I felt so alone.”

SF’s Mi Ami signs to Quarterstick

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mi ami live sml.jpg
Neon beat: Mi Ami live. Photo courtesy of the band’s MySpace page.

This in from Quarterstick Records:

“Quarterstick Records, Touch and Go’s partner label for the last 17-plus years, is pleased to welcome San Francisco drum punk trio Mi Ami to the fold. Featuring two key members of Dischord’s hyper-percussive Black Eyes (Daniel Martin-McCormick on vocals and guitar and Jacob Long on bass) as well as Damon Palermo on drums, Mi Ami builds on the promise of Black Eyes’ spastic energy and renowned live performances, but steers it into a more focused, volatile, and personal direction.

“Mi Ami’s first single on Quarterstick, “Echononecho,” will be released as a 12-inch and digitally Jan. 27, 2009, with the follow-up full-length, Watersports, out Feb. 17, 2009. The band fully takes flight and thrives in the live setting, with shows turning into all-out pulsating rhythmic throwdowns, so save up some energy and be sure to catch them on their extensive tours throughout 2009.”

I can’t get over you

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Few passions are more reckless than those of the ’60s garage-rock completist, so that just about any band that had one good song on a Nuggets compilation automatically becomes somebody’s idea of way better than those boring, overrated Beatles. Still, the era did have its tragically overlooked acts, few more so than the so-called "anti-Beatles" whose brief career is chronicled in Dietmar Post and Lucia Palacios’ documentary Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback.

The group originally came together as five US Army enlistees posted to Germany at the height of the Cold War. After their service stints ended, they decided to stick around as yet another "beat music" group covering Top 40 hits at clubs — at which point they were approached by Karl-H. Remy and Walther Nieman, two locals steeped in advertising design and conceptual art. They were looking to basically cast a band in a project whose packaging — from sound to attire — was already worked out.

Thus just when the world was starting to grow out its hair, string love beads, and sing folk harmonies about loving your fellow humans, the Monks were something else entirely: five guys clad in stark black suits with noose-like bolos, making nervous minimalist music that was "too little too fast" for comfort (though still danceable). Lead vocals caterwauled, backing ones were in unison. Percussion (played "with a certain amount of military discipline," the Fleshtones’ Peter Zaremba observes) consisted of pounded tom-toms plus harshly strummed banjo and Farfisa organ bleats; bass was cranked, guitar distorted. Staccato, nonsensical lyrics like "Hey I hate you with a passion /But call me!" trashed any pretense of romanticism.

These hard little pellets of avant-pop would be later considered by some "an early form of heavy metal," though Monks more closely anticipated the likes of the Contortions and Devo. Incredibly, they were doing this stuff in 1965.

Needless to say, popular acclaim did not ensue. Forty years later, reuniting for their first US gigs, the erstwhile Monks recall being actively "hated" by most audiences whenever they left their Hamburg home base. "Monk music" and its visual presentation was alienating even to the musicians themselves. They quit in 1967, returning to a United States drastically changed from the one they’d left six years before. All were amazed when the band’s tiny recorded output started accruing cult adulation in the post-punk era.

The Transatlantic Feedback is a great ’60s flashback, as well as a comeback saga of sorts. Original Monk bassist Eddie Shaw will be in attendance at the Red Vic’s opening night shows.

MONKS: THE TRANSATLANTIC FEEDBACK

Fri/14-Mon/17, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat/15-Sun/16, 2, 4:15), $6–$9

Red Vic, 1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

Flambuoyancy

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Phew! I just adore being a second-class citizen again, now that Proposition 8 has passed. It makes me feel so edgy, so alt, so very underground. Thank you, Pope Pius the 5000th and the Angel Macaroni! I finally get to break back out my favorite little victim pumps — you know, the star-spangled ones with exquisite ruby handcuff heels — and shove my overwhelming gayness down those tender asshole bigot throats once again. Confrontational! It seems the 1990s really are back at last, and I’m ready for some massive kiss-in action, minus the scuffed oxblood Docs and sleeveless Mervyn’s flannels this time, please.

11/4: never FGGT.

At least I still have the love of my dance floor brothers, sisters, and others — gay or straight — to help me keep my head up under the tacky 99-cent-store weave of despair. If they love me so much, why don’t they marry me? Oh, right. So here, in honor of losing my civil rights at the precise moment of gaining a black president, is a thuper-gay Thuper Ego thpectacular for you.

HONEY SUNDAYS Those sticky-sweet DJ darlings of the altQ scene’s squirmy underside — Pee Play, Ken Vulsion, Kendig, Robot Hustle, and Josh Cheon, otherwise known as Honey Soundsystem — have launched a weekly for party peeps into killer tracks that raise the tired genre house roof into a glistening rainbow of wondrous WTF. Lemme tell ya, it’s been a long time coming. Expect everything from Kendig’s trademark minimal techno and classic house glides to Hustle’s rarest disco, Vulsion’s echoey rave-ups to Cheon’s proto-new wave hoof-twisters, topped off by Pee Play’s bottomless crate-digging mindfucks. All with an ahistorical, four-on-the-floor hard homo energy and some ostentatious faggotty flair, and all going down every Sunday at the gorgeously remodeled Paradise Lounge in SOMA. Sundays, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., free. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 621-1911, www.honeysoundsystem.com

TIARA SENSATION There’s good drag, there’s bad drag, and then there’s drag so surreal it bends the arc of history into "holy shit!" The latter is surely the agenda at this paste-gem prom every Monday at the Stud, hosted by my all-time favorite gender clown DJ Down-E and House of Horseface’s Mica. Part DIY craft fair, part "oh no, she din’t" dance party, it’s all odd in a lovely way. With frequent appearances by the inimitable Glamamore, hands down the most creative queen in the city, and tunes from somewhere left of Pluto — still a planet in my heart — it’s a crackin’ good post-weekend jolt of incredulity. Too bad I missed the Obama, the Musical performance. Mondays, 10 p.m., free. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 863-6623, www.myspace.com/tiarasensation

MARICON This one’s not for a leetle while yet, but it’s hot enough to stuff in your pink Blackberry before the deluge of other Thanksgiving Eve throwdowns hits. If you miss DJ Bus Station John’s sadly departed Double Dutch Disco monthly or, for those with any semblance of long-term memory left, DJ Derek B. and Lady Bass’s early-aughts Off the Hook bashes, get ready to relive the freakin’ freestyle and electric boogaloo days you never really lived through to begin with, maybe. Derek B. — my long-lost sister — and the usually punk rock Trans Am crew are bangin’ the boombox with this one-off, fronting effervescent electro tunes and lavender-bandannaed performances by drag cholitas Kiddie, Glamamore, Hoku Mama, and Holly Peno, plus free churros. Get your womp on and Robocop. Nov. 26, 10 p.m., $5. The Gangway, 849 Larkin, SF. (415) 776-6828, www.myspace.com/transamtheclub

GOLDIES 2008

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Welcome to the other side. There’s got to be a morning after, and here it is. It brings 14 reasons why the Bay Area doesn’t just create its own political discourse — through art, it charts wonderlands and hells beyond any campaign promise.

The Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards turn 20 this year. The Goldie Awards have manifested as marathon-length award ceremonies, wild parties, and even as formal affairs. They’re usually rough around the edges, and always as great as the people they honor. Four years ago, in the immediate wake of George W. Bush’s reelection, Lifetime Achievement winner Bruce Conner exorcised a desolate awards night by dancing. This year’s awards, in part a celebration of all the winners of the last two decades, are dedicated to his memory.

This year’s Goldie winners were selected by the Guardian‘s Kimberly Chun, Cheryl Eddy, and Johnny Ray Huston, with valuable input from our writers and critics, including Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Glen Helfand, as well as members of the Bay Area arts community. The people in this issue turn apartments into stages and art galleries, transform entire theaters into stage sets, and bring the changing face of San Francisco to the screen. They make guitars sing, and in turn they sing like well-tuned strings. They write the history of modern art and poetry. They know the force of a cosmic ray. Join them, and us, on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 111 Minna — 11/11 at 111 — for a celebration. It’s free. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Click below for more on our winners. All winner portraits by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover Photography

The winners of the 20th annual Goldie Awards

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LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT



>>LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI AND CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
Anything but a vanity press
By Ari Messer


>>V. VALE AND RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS
The monkish punk elder of counterculture in the Bay
By Kimberly Chun

———-

DANCE



>>ERIN MEI-LING STUART
Focusing on the mess humans manage to create for themselves
By Rita Felciano
———-

FILM



>>BARRY JENKINS
Viewing the city — and its displacements — through the prism of a relationship
By D. Scot Miller


>>KINO21
Creating a lively forum for critical engagement with aesthetics
By Matt Sussmanr

———-

LITERATURE



>>BILL BERKSON
Fifty years of slow-dawning epiphany
By Julien Poirier

———-

MUSIC



>>CITAY
Sublimely interwoven acoustic and electric guitars and lushly appointed folk-rock
By Kimberly Chun


>>THE DODOS
Concocting a sound that verges on epic, minus muddle
By Johnny Ray Huston


>>JONAS REINHARDT
Wembley-sized dreams for the contemporary Krautrockers
By Michael Harkin


>>TRACKADEMICS
Different buzzes in different circles, consciously
By Garrett Caples

———-

THEATER



>>THE CUTTING BALL THEATER
It’s often the warped glass that furnishes the truest picture
By Robert Avila

———-

VISUAL ART



>>MATT FURIE
Endangered species to champagne-and-SpaghettiOs
By Johnny Ray Huston


>>KAMAU PATTON
Behold the warp of truth, infinite
By Marke B.


>>MARGARET TEDESCO
An approach that always includes inviting others into the fold
By Glen Helfand

V. Vale and RE/Search Publications

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Call him the monkish punk elder of counterculture in the Bay and fringes wherever they may fray. Behind a monochromatic, black-clad, black-banged façade and unassuming demeanor, V. Vale is a man of so many interests and accomplishments that it’s hard to know where to start. How about with Vale as Punk Showman?

"In 1984 I’m sure I put on one of the greatest shows ever to celebrate our J.G. Ballard book," the 50-plus publisher says. He’s tucked beside a thermos of tea in his book- and collection-crammed office-apartment in a North Beach edifice that, legend has it, Janis Joplin, Odetta, and Paul Robeson once dwelled in. Survival Research Labs and an S-M group were on the Fort Mason bill, and in honor of the occasion Vale visited the junkyard and had them deliver two cars that he selected. "I’m sure people had died in them — there was so much blood in the interior — and they were all crushed down. There’s no way you could survive that!"

Naturally, Vale and SRL rigged up the two bloody junkers to simulate a sex act — doggy-style — while yet another car with square wheels and a huge battering ram attacked the humping death-mobiles. The, ahem, climax: a performance by Public Image Ltd.

If that’s not punk — in the classic, highly original, high-low San Francisco style, full of hard-scrabble high spectacle and an edge you can lacerate yourself on — who knows what the fuck is?

It’s just one of many tales — about shooting pistols with "Uncle Bill" Burroughs or watching exotica innovator Martin Denny field a $25,000 royalty check — that emerge during an interview with this lifelong interviewer. His own narrative is just as riveting: he grew up, as part of a minuscule Japanese American minority, in a small town in Riverside County, raised on welfare by a mother who suffered from mental illness. The young Vale read voraciously, from the kitchen table to the bed, which led to his acceptance at Harvard, though an antipathy toward ivy made him choose to attend UC Berkeley instead. In the ’70s, he worked at City Lights, and in 1977, while ripping off the covers of unbought magazines and returning them, he formed the idea to start his own zine about the punk scene combusting right around the corner at Mabuhay Gardens. Search and Destroy was born, with $100 seed money from Allen Ginsberg and matching funds from his boss Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Now lauded as an invaluable document of early punk and a graphic design rule-breaker ("We’d do a layout meeting: ‘Here’s the text. Here are the pictures. Your job is to make this interview as rad as you can’"), Search and Destroy also became a way for Vale to make critical connections between the work and thoughts generated by punk groups and those formulated by artists in other media, as interviews with Vale’s mentors Ballard and Burroughs made their way into the zine.

When the Mabuhay scene turned toward servicing a younger, violent hardcore audience, the zine-maker’s interests shifted as well. Tapped to start a stateside headquarters for Rough Trade in 1980, he convinced founder Geoff Travis to fund a new tabloid, RE/Search, during an all-nighter. Three issues later, Vale moved on to launch a typesetting business, RE/Search Typography, which he ran in North Beach until he sold it in 1991 when he saw that the home computer had finally arrived.

In the meantime, the RE/Search series had become the equivalent of an ever-unfolding countercultural bible: essential reading not only for punks — all the books, Vale swears, are informed by that revolution — but artists, musicians, cultural fire-starters, and trouble-makers of every nonconformist stripe. In turn, Vale built a bridge with his paperbacks between the cultural movers around him and the world of books that has succored him. "I learned long ago that reading is not a passive process," says Vale. "I like to mark up my books. My books are heavily interacted with. I look at books not as books, but as conversations."

The RE/Search volumes Vale is most proud of, on Burroughs and Ballard, resuscitated the former author’s career and threw a proper coming-out party in America for the latter. Vale went so far as to help organize Burroughs’ tour with Laurie Anderson. Meanwhile, RE/Search’s sibling compendiums, Incredibly Strange Movies (1986) and Incredibly Strange Music (1993, Vol. 2 1995), were pivotal in placing filmmakers like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis and music-makers such as Yma Sumac and Ken Nordine in a new canon for culturally conversant hipsters, leading to crucial reissues and reappraisals of their work.

And then there’s RE/Search’s biggest hit. "The most influential of all the books is Modern Primitives [1989], which sparked the whole mainstream mass interest in piercing and tattoos and body modification," says Jello Biafra, who first met Vale in 1978 when Biafra was simply an admirer of Search and Destroy and the vocalist for a then-new band called the Dead Kennedys. "There was very little of that going on compared to what happened after that book came out. Of course, now even secretaries and bank clerks and Bush administration bureaucrats have tattoos, and who knows how many pierced penises are on the Republican National Committee!"

With a new publication, prOnnovation? Pornography and Technological Innovation, just out, and books on Timothy Leary, Burning Man’s Piss Clear newspaper, and steampunk on the horizon, Vale doesn’t have time to be bitter that so many have grabbed ideas from his tomes and run with them. "I would say I’ve had a disproportionate amount of influence," he says. "People tell me, ‘Your Pranks [1987] book inspired Jackass, Punk’d, and god knows how many other TV shows.’ You just keep thinking of your next project and never look back."

www.researchpubs.com

The Dodos

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At the beginning of 2008, San Francisco knew about the Dodos. Eleven months later, a lot more of the world does. This is largely due to Visiter (Frenchkiss), the group’s vibrant second album. Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, and a few dozen other musical arbiters have joined a chorus of praise for the 14-song collection decked out in kid-drawing sleeve art. Mention Led Zeppelin’s III (Atlantic, 1970) and Physical Graffiti (Swan Song, 1975) here, cite the influence of West African syncopation there, and you have the ingredients of a typical rave for vocalist-guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber. But the appeal and the rewards of Visiter transcend such reference points, tapping into something individually instinctive and collaboratively intuitive. It’s there in the spirit of Krober’s rhythms, a spirit which has nothing to do with the contrivances of the current indie Afrobeat vogue. It’s there in Long’s vocal melodies, which possess a rare, casually natural aplomb. It’s there in the way they work together.

"It’s a really slow process," Long says when asked about the sing-your-life quality of his tenor vocals. "Something has to sit with me for a really long time. I’ll happen on a rhythm or melody and take it with me wherever I go. It’s a practice."

Sequestered in his bedroom for much of the last month because of mono, Long has been writing new tunes in between the occasional trip to the corner store or walk around the block. "I have this [unfinished] song stuck in my head — it’s worked its way in and I don’t like it," he says. "But I’ll probably love it eventually and it’ll become my favorite song." While many critics might think that Robert and Jimmy or John and Paul are the songwriters Long aspires to match when he croons to a girl ("Jodi," "Ashley") or renders masculine foibles ("Men," "Beards," "Fools"), that isn’t necessarily the case. He’s just as likely to strive for the effect of a less canonical duo: Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. "I’ll know something is good because it reminds me of OMD," he enthuses. "It sounds like home."

The Dodos have recorded both their albums — Visiter and 2006’s self-released Beware of the Maniacs — in Portland, Ore., with John Askew. That producer’s past studio experience with the Northwest’s plethora of indie and punk duos informs the surprising scope and dynamics of his work with the Dodos. While labels like K and Kill Rock Stars and groups such as Beat Happening and the Spinanes have revealed the merits of a two-piece approach, the Dodos build upon that exploration, concocting a sound that verges on epic without ever becoming muddled. Long views the group’s initial formation as a matter of economic practicality as much as aesthetic tactics and, indeed, a third member, Joe Haener, has recently joined the group.

For much of this year, Long and Kroeber have been touring. "It gets to the point where you’re playing and performing and it’s all about muscle memory," Long says. The repetition of life on the road, of playing the same songs over and over, has something to do with that feeling. But Long and Kroeber’s music is physical — it gets down into the veins and bones and heart. It’s simple, really. The Dodos move you. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The Dodos play with Kelley Stoltz Thurs/6, 8 p.m., at Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

www.bimbos365club.com

www.dodosmusic.net

Citay

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"There’s lots of ways to be a Guitar Hero. I just think it would be cooler if people tried to be real guitar heroes. I want people to find their inner guitar hero."

Amen, Ezra Feinberg. The Citay songwriter freely admits he’s never played the game, but we know exactly what he means: why add the competitive veneer of a sporting match to something as inherently pleasurable as playing guitar? Feinberg needed no prod when he started practicing. "I was really nerdy," he recalls of his hermetic early music-making sessions. "I wanted to learn my instrument really well, and I was really into guitar technique, and I used to sit in my bedroom and learn complicated guitar parts like Van Halen."

Then one day he realized, "Wait a minute, it’s much more fun and interesting and cool to work on songs and work on playing with different people and in different styles rather than sit in my room."

Metal, classic rock, jazz, fusion, punk, indie, and "weirder" sounds all left an impression, but after putting in time with the Piano Magic collective and the "stonery" Feast, Feinberg seems to have finally found his voice amid Citay’s fragrant blend of psychedelia, folk, synth-rock, and AOR. Taking its name from a Feinberg mixtape of songs utilizing that only-in-rock pronunciation ("The Journey song is included, but there’s also ‘Living for the City’ by Stevie Wonder and ‘Fool for the City’ by Foghat"), the onetime home recording project assumed a life of its own after Feinberg’s move in 2004 from Brooklyn to San Francisco, in collaboration with Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, who had previously recorded Feast.

Seemingly bursting full-blown from the brow of a rock ‘n’ roll Zeus, Citay’s startlingly excellent 2006 self-titled debut found a home on Important Records, inspiring Feinberg to tell people "we were their Partridge Family, next to all the found sound shit, Merzbow, Axolotl."

Naturally, Feinberg adds, "The next challenge was to see if these songs could be pulled off live because it was a studio-centric project." But no worries, he managed wonderfully, with the help of, at various times, Green and members of Tussle, Ascended Master, and Skygreen Leopards. The latest additions — following the amicable departure of Jesse Reiner of Jonas Reinhardt and Crime in Choir, and Adria Otte of the Dry Spells (Feinberg also drums with that band of kindred Bard graduates) — are Sean Smith and Josh Pollock of Daevid Allen’s University of Errors. And how does he rope in such talented players? "I’m pretty gregarious," drawls Feinberg, sounding like those nerdy homebound practice sessions are far behind him.

Still, judging from the sublimely interwoven acoustic and electric guitars and lushly appointed folk-rock streaked with sweeping synthesizer found on Citay’s most recent long-player, Little Kingdom (Dead Oceans), perhaps the onetime bedroom-rocker’s guitar hero — and musical visionary — days are here to stay.

Citay perform at the Goldies party, Tues/11, 9 p.m., free. 111 Minna Gallery, SF. (415) 974-1719

www.111minnagallery.com

www.citay.net

Bonjour joie

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Zut alors, where is the joie, mademoiselles? Judging from the current pop charts, rage is all the rage: girls just want to "start a fight" is the message from Pink, Brit, and Katy Perry, even as pop’s queen Beyoncé, a.k.a., Sasha Fierce, chooses the somber rather than ferocious path with "If I Were a Boy."

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a recession-wracked America to find a battered vein of real happiness. And perhaps that’s why I’m looking for bliss overseas. You have to be a crusty old croissant to not succumb to the wholesomely sexy, gallic-girls-just-want-to-have-fun charm of Yelle, née Julie Budet. In a year when every pop thang coming out of Francophone music-makers seems to exude a freshness that escapes rage-aholic American pop, along comes Yelle with the cutest bob this side of Rihanna and those prep-cool dancing boys in "A Cause Des Garçons." Not for nothing does Budet’s acronym nom de plume stand for "You Enjoy Life." Could this be the new yé-yé?

Resembling a sprightly Feist onstage, the jeune fille also coughed up the catchiest bit of whistle(-along) bait since Peter Bjorn and John’s "Young Folks": "Ce Jeu." Yelle’s palpable ’80s-throwback aesthetic crossed with the twirly-girly, smiley-faced nouveau-rave dancefloor vibe in the "Je Veux Te Voir" video — squeaky-cute aerobics, girl-gang dance moves, and a crayon-bright pop aesthetic, oo-la-la — evokes the seemingly last microsecond of dance-pop innocence when Her Madgesty, Salt-N-Pepa, and J.J. Fad ruled the school canteen. Who needs to speak the language when confronted with the inexorable, happy-sad-but-mostly-happy sizzle of "Tristesse/Joie," given a Reebok commercial makeover this past summer?

So why France and why now? According to Budet, "maybe because France is well-located between English pop, German electro, and American production! It’s geography!"

Mais oui, Budet enjoys life — and exclamation points! Though our trans-Atlantic phone tête-à-tête didn’t materialize, I managed to connect via e-mail with the Bretagne-born vocalist, who’s more comfortable answering questions in writing when she isn’t slinking around onstage like a T-shirted electro-pop whippet. Of course, she isn’t quite as wholesome as she might appear: her first MySpace hit — "Short Dick Cuizi," a poke at Cuizinier of French hip-hop group TTC and an early incarnation of "Je Veux Te Voir," famously samples the bassline of "Short Dick Man." "The songs are about our lives and our productions," she writes. "I think about everything in Pop Up [her new debut on Source Etc/Caroline/EMI]: dildos, but death, too."

Some fans might be taken aback by Budet’s live appearances, which are low on the diva-esque antics and high on the every-girl bounce. "We naturally worked hard on our show," she writes, predicting ghosts onstage for her Halloween appearance. "It’s normal for us to give a real show, not only the songs like on the album. Drums bring a lot of energy, and we build our live set like a DJ set, mixing the songs together, adding production. We have a compromise that seems to work: we rock the dancers and we dance the rockers!" So get your fill of Yelle because 2009 will be "the year of the break," Budet suspects. "We have to take time at home or people are gonna hate us, ahah!"

YELLE

With Passion Pit and Funeral Party

Fri/31, 9 p.m. doors, $20–$25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS

Forget Uncle Sam: the post-punk superstar among us, Blixa Bargeld, needs you. The Einsturzende Neubauten frontperson, onetime Bad Seed, and current San Francisco resident has a new project — this after his wonderfully wry, dry-humored Rede/Speech performance here in 2006: The Execution of Precious Memories. Bargeld composes a new libretto for each performance, using memories gathered from questionnaires filled out by anonymous denizens of the performance site. To create this piece in its tenth iteration — and for the first time since 2001 — Bargeld plans to collaborate with the musicians of Nanos Operetta and the dancers of Kunst-Stoff. "It’s a poetical process," says Bargeld by phone. "There’s something fictitious about memories. The moment you give away a memory and fix it in a form and have it seen by someone else it becomes a piece of fiction. It’s not connected to yourself any longer." So let go and risk seeing intimate memories transformed: Bay Area residents are invited to go to www.blixa-bargeld.com/VKESF to fill out the 50-question survey — give it at least 30 minutes, cautions Bargeld — before the Nov. 1 deadline.

NO REST

THE SPINTO BAND


The revered indie rockers definitely weren’t sprinting when it came to getting out Moonwink (Park the Van/Fierce Panda). Sat/1, 10 p.m., and Sun/2, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

DIPLO, ABE VIGODA, TELEPATHE, AND BOY 8 BIT


Eclecticism? OK! The "Mad Decent" tour mixes the DJ-producer with NorCal’s art-punks, Brooklyn art-dreamers, and a London minimalist beatmaker. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

SECRET MACHINES AND THE DEARS


How do you turn a backlash around? Give a listen to the ambitious new space-psych Secret Machines (TSM). And the Dears continue to endear with Missiles (Dangerbird). Mon/3, 8 p.m., $22. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com

HUBERT SUMLIN


The blues guitar legend made a lasting impact on rock thanks to his work with Howlin’ Wolf. With Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, Buddy Guy, and others. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $45–$79.50. Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

Exuberance with bite

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They once were distant from the excitement, 40 blocks beyond 82nd Street — a dividing line that Erik Gage dramatically refers to as the "Berlin Wall of culture" in Portland, Ore. He and his bandmates in White Fang grew up in the PDX ‘burbs round 122nd Street, starting a CD-R — or, rather, "CD-Gnar" — label in high school. As popular as they were round the cafeteria — they’d hop up on the tables and sing — the attention they’ve lately received is even more impressive: MTVnews.com, XLR8R, and Billboard have all knocked at Gage’s phone line, over which he gladly engaged with the Guardian shortly before the launch of the band’s national fall tour.

Of all the coverage, the write-up that Gage, now 19, seems most proud of is the review they got in The Oregonian, which gave their new Marriage Records debut, Pure Evil, an A-. "My girlfriend’s mom read it," he exclaims. His enthusiasm speaks to White Fang’s whole deal: if they can excite those right around them, whether the numerous friends’ bands Gage mentions or his lady friend’s mum, they’re happy. This earnest eagerness was particularly striking at their summer gig at the Lobot Gallery in Oakland, where a crowd of less than 10 got utterly whomped with a two-drummer, extra-intimidating lineup including second kit-man Chuck Hoffand. White Fang’s core membership — guitarist Kyle Wolfgang, drummer Jim Leslie, and Gage, who sings — have had several members pass through their ranks, lately counting six members for their touring group. Only one drummer this time out, but Gage promises it’ll be great.

"It still gets pretty damn crazy every show," Gage says, citing a gutter-punk fistfight at a recent house show as a particularly frenzied example of this. Fang used to be more mild-mannered, he explains, playing "twee-ish, K Records-type stuff," before they picked up electric guitars to channel their "African tribal drum music" influence for "Pterodactyl," a contribution to the guilty pleasures-themed Grown Zone comp on States Rights last year. "Twee-ish" has since given way to Pure Evil, with a freewheeling energy that takes mere moments to adore: "Breakfast" hobbles from Black Flag riffing into an exuberant, infectious three-chord collapse.

After the tour, they’ll record an LP titled Cheerful Poetry of the Cosmos for States Rights, and alongside Gage’s Gnar Tapes and Shit label, Fang will initiate a new imprint under Marriage’s wing: Chips, which will be dedicated to releasing split singles. Evil? More like pure genius.

WHITE FANG

With Mount Eerie, Thanksgiving, and Common Eider King Eider

Sat/1, 8 p.m., $8

Million Fishes Art Gallery

2501 Bryant, SF

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

Parts and Labor

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PREVIEW The hiss and garble of a psychedelic seeker mid-acid trip, the righteous fury of a dad scolding a litterbug, and the sodden sadness of paranoiac who suspects secret agents are tailing him. All these sounds unexpectedly, remarkably crop up on Parks and Labor’s new Receivers (Jagjaguwar).

When I last caught the band, clobbering all in earshot with a propulsive, post-punk power-skronk, at South by Southwest a few years ago, I never imagined the Brooklyn-Union, N.J.-Milwaukee, Wis., combo would be going into interstellar overdrive and taking a page from the starlog of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (Capitol, 1973). In creating Receiver‘s prog-orchestral sound, Parts and Labor referenced not only the exploratory courage of Wire’s Chairs Missing (Harvest, 1978), but Dark Side‘s use of samples. Its overarching inspiration: the general glut of digital information, which spurred the group to invited listeners to submit samples for Receivers via its MySpace page. The combo used all 650 or so, of them — altering, pitch-shifting, and morphing the contributions along the way — vocalist-bassist BJ Warshaw assures me by phone from Indiana.

"We always got friends to appear on recordings, so Dan [Friel, vocals and electronics] and I thought, why limit this?" he recalls. "Why not ask the world and see what comes of it?" It led to an "intense but fun" mixing job. The satellite noise, say, at the onset of Receivers was created by playing every sample simultaneously. Still, one’s enjoyment of the album doesn’t depend at all on one’s appreciation of the band’s technical and conceptual machinations, which climax with the hurtling "Solemn Show World." And the world can continue to experience the disc’s sampling project on the road: "We’ve got a toll-free phone number [1-888-317-5596] that people can call, and we’ve been improvising, working the calls into the live show, which has been really fun," Warshaw says. "We’ve got 20 sounds so far, and it’s only the second day of the tour."

PARTS AND LABOR With Gowns and Curse of the Birthmark. Sat/1, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $6. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com
 

Budgin’

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Why so glum, Chun? Well, for starters, the economy is sucking about as hard as an insecure groupie attacking her/his fave-rave rocker head-case, and the stock market is making me more nauseated than the time I mixed deep-fried Twinkies and the Giant Dipper roller-coaster ride at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Oh, sure, we’re all gonna die giggling with sheer, unrepentant delight when the Barack Star pulls it off come Nov. 4. But in the very lean meantime, we gotta scrimp ‘n’ scrape to find the joy.

So why not mix good times and sound — arf! — financial advice from those adventurers in fabulously gritty lo-fi sonics and rock ‘n’ roll derring-do at Budget Rock Seven music fest?

Yes, I may be high. Ask rockers — oft dismissed as guitar-collecting, ramen-chawing spendthrifts lacking in fiscal acumen — for budget suggestions? Don’t you know that the sweaty, loud ‘n’ danceable rawk gathering has little or nada to do with tightened (white, skinny) belts during tough times — having plucked its name from a Mummies long-player, not its accountants? Sho’ ’nuff, impecunious stuff. Nevertheless, if a truly depressing nu-depression-style bottoming-out occurs — B-Rock or no — it can’t hurt to look to grassroots rabble-rousers for tangibles on living it up on little scrill.

"I have nothing to offer but bad tips," Darin Raffaelli — ex-Supercharger member and now in Budget Rock bands the Baci Galoopis and supa-group Mersey Wifebeaters — apologizes in a recent e-mail. "Go to the taco truck and don’t be afraid to get face meat if they run out of the standard meats. Don’t be a deadbeat weefie and carry your own load. Doesn’t matter how big your carriage is — just fill it to the tarp with whatever you can and the goodhearted folk will make sure you get by. Don’t get tattoos, and take care of your feet.

"Hope that helps."

It’s like pouring loose change, slugs, and paper clips into those supermarket counters: every little bit helps. Brian Girgus, who drums for rising Mantles-spinoff proj Personal and the Pizzas, has more low-dough advice: "Sneak a flask of whiskey in. Drink during Happy Hour. Make your pizzas at home. Roll out the dough really thin to make the pizza seem bigger. Buy used vinyl at the thrift stores."

"Budget? I’m not an expert on that. I’m up to my ears," opines festival co-founder and co-organizer Chris Owen by phone. He’s got more important things on his mind, like convincing Budget Rock performer Roy Head — renowned as "the white James Brown" for his crazy-agile dance moves, and his 1965 hit, "Treat Her Right" — to record "Just Head" by the Nervous Eaters and "Teenage Head" by the Flamin’ Groovies for his Hook or Crook Records. The dynamic Head — who Owen says is still amazing (The 67-year-old "is like Iggy Pop in the way he puts himself out there") — just might play those tunes live, if we’re lucky, when he performs here for the first time since the ’60s.

Owen says there was an attempt to move Budget Rock back to San Francisco — where it first laid down a beachhead at Thee Parkside — but, as we laugh, "the city wasn’t having it!" With assists from Bobbyteen Tina Lucchesi, Guardian staffer Dulcinea Gonzalez, and others, Owen threw the bash together again at the Stork Club. "Sometimes it’s worth it to just have a blowout in a smaller place," he explains. "At a smaller place, they’re happy to have you. I can’t imagine anyone drinking more than the people who go to these things!"

Budget planning? I got my BR grandma-panties in a bunch to catch In the Red combo the Lamps, Bare Wires, Nodzzz, Thee Makeout Party, the Pets, Hunx and his Punx, Ray Loney and the Phantom Movers, Sir Lord Von Raven, Hypsterz, Christmas Island, and Russell Quan’s 50th Birthday Party. As for Owen, he’s especially psyched about Human Eye (a Clone Defects variant that rarely plays Bayside), Haunted George, Seattle band Head (I see a theme emerging), and Personal and the Pizzas ("A MySpace band that suddenly became a real band — basically they wrote two of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard"), as well as the Top Dog-sponsored hot-dog-eating contest and the pancake breakfast aided and abetted by ex-Parkside honcho Sean O’Connor’s Batter Blaster invention.

"When I first announced the lineup people were, like, ‘Who the fuck are these bands?’" Owens says of the eclectic nature of this year’s festival. "There are a whole lot more bands that are more difficult — more influenced by New Zealand pop music and not necessary garage rock and punk."

But seriously, back to budgets? "I would say, don’t take any advice I’d give you — that’s the best advice," Owen says. "But with this thing: $5 beer and cheap food, 34 bands in four days. That’s pretty good. If you’re trying to maximize your dollar, that’s less than a dollar a band." *

BUDGET ROCK SEVEN

Preview with Lover! and Nobunny

Wed/22, 5:30–8 p.m., free

Eagle Tavern

398 12th St., SF

Festival runs Thurs/23-Sun/26, various times, $10–<\d>$30

Stork Club

2330 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.myspace.com/budgetrock

SIDEBAR

HEAD OUT

THE USAISAMONSTER

Maybe after Barack Obama wins, the Load combo can change its name to THE USAISINRECOVERY. Fri/24, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk St., SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

BRIDGE SCHOOL BENEFIT

Whoa, Nellie: Band of Horses is the latest add to the benefit helmed by Neil Young and family. Sat/25, 5p.m., and Sun/26, 2 p.m., $39.50–$150. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.livenation.com

AGAINST ME!

Do the Florida punks have a persecution complex? Mon/27, 8 p.m., $22.50. Grand Ballroom, Regency Center, Van Ness and Sutter, SF. www.goldenvoice.com *

Cosmic backlash

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> johnny@sfbg.com

Everyone agrees that disco is alive and proliferating. But is it devolving from au courant status into something that deserves the 21st century version of a stadium vinyl bonfire? Genres are vague in the realm of electronic music, and disco has become almost as ubiquitous and generic an overarching tag as techno. The neo-disco banner now stretches from the Fire Island revivalism of Hercules and Love Affair, and Escort to the cosmic expeditions of Lindstrom and his disciples. Clearly, it must be made of something synthetic.

Between the flaming diva pageantry of Hercules and the heterosexual prog geekery of Hans-Peter, one finds the languid romantic intellectualism of Morgan Geist. In recent interviews, Geist questions contemporary disco’s existence, though his rarity compilation Unclassics (Environ, 2004) and his work with Metro Area have played a major role in its formation. Yet technically speaking, he’s right. His new Double Night Time (Environ) kicks off with "Detroit," where instead of disco, the North American home of techno is evoked. Still, austerity aside, "Detroit" is a techno track as much as it’s a disco track, meaning not very. It is new romantic: an effete little brother of butch post-punk and femme disco, with a Motor City radio DJ heart that belongs to Mike Halloran as much as the Electrifying Mojo.

The late avant-disco pioneer Arthur Russell is often invoked in relation to Geist, but Double Night Time is cooler and more reserved. Guest vocalist Kelley Polar doesn’t croon with the mannered zeal that defines his own 2008 venture away from Metro Area, I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling (Environ). In fact, he’s hard to differentiate from the album’s other mannered vocalist, Jeremy Greenspan of the Junior Boys. While Russell’s music is cerebral, his tenor never seems detached. In contrast, when Greenspan declares that he wants to cry during "Most of All," it comes across as a come-on. That doesn’t mean it isn’t seductive, though, and Geist’s chiming sound reaches a chilly peak on the low-key yet bravura relationship post-op "Ruthless City."

Lindstrom’s first proper solo album — after a compilation, and a full-length collaboration with Prins Thomas — is a different neo-disco creature. Whereas Geist presents nine pop-inflected compositions in less than 50 minutes, Where You Go I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound) stretches three tracks to nearly an hour. Where exactly does Lindstrom go on the 29-minute title track? To my ears, he disappears into a Tangerine Dream and reemerges as Cerrone: a whirligig melody that echoes the motif of Cerrone’s 1978 disco classic "Supernature" adds whimsy to wave upon wave of arpeggio. But what do I know? One local music shop detractor has compared Lindstrom’s latest to the sounds of Paul Lekakis, the actor-model-vocalist who brought the world "Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)."

On Hatchback’s Colours of the Sun (Lo Recordings), San Francisco’s Sam Grawe steers clear of any Lekakis-isms, though arpeggio for arpeggio, there’s a definite Lindstrom-on-ludes feel to the penultimate track, "White Diamond." Hatchback drives right up to the exact spot — a couch at the edge of a dancefloor? — where disco slips off the term cosmic disco. Grawe knows krautrock and cosmiche music inside out, but like his pal Daniel Judd of Sorcerer, he’s at his best crafting soundtracks for cheesy movies that don’t exist but should. "Closer to Forever" is exquisite, and "Jetlag" is a slab of montage funk that could make Harold Faltermeyer jealous and even get David Hasselhoff to stop eating burgers off the floor.

If neo-disco and its cosmic substrata are courting a backlash the size of Paul Lekakis’ glutes, it’s because of an onslaught of opportunistic comps with "space" or "disco" in their titles. Especially when placed in close proximity to one another, those words — along with "Balearic" — are surefire groan inducers. Yet there are always a few exceptions to the rule. One is Cosmic Disco?! Cosmic Rock!!! (Eskimo), a mix co-created by the man who invented cosmic disco, Italian DJ Daniele Baldelli. While it doesn’t approach the euphoria of Baldelli’s 2007 Baia degli Angeli mixes, its strictly ’80s sources — further proof that neo-disco is new romantic — include some eccentric pleasures, especially "Ulster Defense," perhaps the world’s first and only pro-IRA dancefloor anthem.

Likewise, Alexis Le Tan and Jess’ Space Oddities (Permanent Vacation) transcends a generic title through a combo of irreverence and dedication that’s as rare as any of the European library grooves it rediscovers. The bloodless boogie of a track titled "Cloning" is hypnotic. Better still is "Black Safari," an electronic answer to Moondog’s jungle-sound freakout "Big Cat." If a 1977 disco track can cast its net wide enough to capture Moondog and roaring elephants and growling tigers, then surely a 2008 neo-disco track can find a sense of humor within its vast cosmic — or retro-homo — space. In fact, that’s exactly what 21st century disco will require to escape the hipster equivalent of a stadium bonfire. *

Take your time

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In this age of instant gratification, it feels excruciating to wait six minutes for something. In the case of the Notwist, fans had to content themselves with waiting six years. It’s been that long since the German quartet were ready to unleash more of the cottony, mellow glitch-pop that put them on the map. Their new album, The Devil, You + Me (Domino), is the result of just over half a decade of ships passing in the night, two years of recording, and one very concerted effort to get every last wisp of romantic longing down for posterity.

So, Guns N’ Roses aside, who the hell takes this long to make a record? I caught up with keyboardist Martin Gretschmann on the eve of the Notwist’s North American appearance in Toronto. Before I could politely ask if they were big fans of say, MMORPG gaming, Gretschmann explained that it’s enthusiasm for side projects that caused the big delay. Along with founding brothers Markus and Micha Acher, Gretschmann and new drummer Andi Haber are the most overextended musicians around, contributing to roughly five other bands, most notably 13 and God and Lali Puna.

"That’s why it took quite a few years for us to make a new record," he mused. "All the bands make records and do touring, and then it took around two years to record the new album, and before you wake up, it’s six years."

What inevitably brings these very busy gentlemen back together is the lure of the Notwist’s essence: a politely sputtering amalgam of samples, love songs, and bits of string section to tie it together. The band spent the last 20 years and six albums evolving from post-hardcore punk (their 1990 debut Notwist EP [Subway]) to indie trip-hop jazz (1998’s Shrink [Zero Hour]) to their current state of introspective electronic perfection.

Where 2002’s critically acclaimed Neon Golden (Domino) was a beautiful bouquet of freshly cut schizophrenia — a banjo leads off one song, barely there keyboards pepper another, lyrics have noticeable emotional range — The Devil, You + Me hovers like a question mark over the listener, asking "Why not?" in a steady stream of cloudy grey guitar chords and hiccups of static. Gretschmann explained: "Neon Golden is like a collection of songs. This one is rather stream of consciousness — more homogenic in a way."

Those semiconscious recurring themes of isolation and introspection are never more present than in their video for "Boneless," a downtrodden skateboarder’s reverie shot in Valparaiso, Chile. Gretschmann reveals their inspiration for the clip was none other than infamous cult-hero Donnie Darko. "The lyrics deal with growing up in a little town and always feeling different," he said. "You just feel like an alien somehow."

"Boneless" displays typical Notwist ingenuity: a deceptively bouncy piano loop that succumbs to Markus Acher’s lonely, searching vocals. The song is light and airy, borne aloft by a trace of tambourines and pop chords, but the effect is one of unmistakable fragility, of thoughts almost too sad to think.

On their new song, "Gravity," there are lyrics like, "I see the planets spinning faster / or is my body too slow?" The last six years have brought great changes for Notwist. Gretschmann was clear in the appearance of deep-seated emotion, of "some really heavy moments and sad moments" that found their way onto The Devil, You + Me: "That’s definitely one reason why some people say it’s very dark." He tempered this by sharing the jubilant mood of the band, who haven’t toured this continent since 2004. "[Toronto] is the first concert." He sounded a bit awed by his words, then laughed. "We have to see what comes out!" *

THE NOTWIST

With Jel and Odd Nosdam

Mon/27, 8 p.m., $20

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(415) 474-0365

www.bimbos365club.com

Sung and spoken wit

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PREVIEW Last year saw the re-release of performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut, Big Science (Warner Bros.). What a heady nostalgia its lo-fi cover invokes, a confidence now gone quaint with the one-time fad of robotic gestures, lab coats, and test-tube weirdness. It’s just cute the way the ’80s were catching up with the future.

But recently the recording’s opening track, the eerie and wacky "From the Air," has been on shuffle rotation in the iPod of the brain as one of the more apt commentaries on present madness. It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for the situation we find ourselves in than a surprise crash landing that seems somehow not to be a surprise at all. And while we’re at it, neither has time bled any of the force from "O Superman," the disc’s surprise chart-topper. How good to know Anderson is still successfully tackling this machine mother of an illusion, "America," in her latest venture: a witty, haunting, and even uncharacteristically irate collection of sung and spoken pieces under the spot-on title of Homeland. The tour makes its way to UC Berkeley this week. Possible bonus: punk rock’s grouchy godfather and Anderson’s companion, Lou Reed, reportedly has shadowed her shows and sat in on a couple of numbers.

LAURIE ANDERSON’S HOMELAND Fri/24-Sat/25, 8 p.m., $28–$56. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

Live bait

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Thirty-something British band Wire secured its place in rock history with three soberly brilliant LPs released in the late 1970s. Born Ruffians, a much younger Canadian combo, gets steady attention despite having only two uneven releases under their belt. Both groups will be playing likely well-attended shows this week, to audiences who either cut their post-punk teeth on Wire’s Chairs Missing (Harvest, 1979) or got really into Born Ruffians’ Red Yellow and Blue (Warp) since its release eight months ago. As different as these outfits appear, something about the expectations hovering around their shows seems to call for a slight recalibration of the rock-crit machine — what people are going to these shows for might not be what they actually hear. Even if you don’t read the reviews and haven’t scoped the scenes, someone lodged inside the Web marketing machine has done it for you. The more dimly aware you are of it, the better it works.

And this is what bothered me about Born Ruffians. I like Red Yellow and Blue fine, but before I’d even managed to really hear the band, I’d been blitzed with ancillary information. These three Torontonians, led by a thin, raw nerve of a man named Luke LaLonde, play a jangly form of indie with lots of off-mic huddle-chants — something like a summer camp take on Animal Collective’s harmonizing. In a way, the critical air support that followed the LP release seemed premeditated, hard-pressed to point out anything really compelling beyond a checklist of standard genre tropes. Still, listening to the album later, I was surprised that, while longing gets mentioned, nobody else noticed that it’s the engine of the music. Which can make even their best songs, like the scribbly "Hummingbird," a bit of a painful listen — not because they’re not afraid to look like fools, but because it cuts too close to the raw experience. Born Ruffians don’t dwell on pain as much as they let it seep in, an approach that makes me want to run at first but resolves into something modestly beautiful.

Wire, on the other hand, is in the unique position that even their most dedicated fans haven’t listened to the bulk of their discography. Their latest full-length is called Object 47 (Pink Flag) because it’s the 47th thing they’ve released. Wire’s initial trilogy — Pink Flag (Harvest, 1977), Chairs Missing, and 154 (Harvest, 1979) — remain the high-water mark against which they’re judged, and rightfully so: they invented a formal vocabulary for punk and rock in a hugely inspired fit of art school imagination. Yet one doesn’t get the feeling that anyone who has bothered to listen to their releases since then has actually heard anything other than a lack of those three albums, or subtle tweaks on the fecund language they opened up. The most interesting qualities of Wire’s recent recordings have little to do with their early shirt-and-tie experimentalism. Object 47‘s linchpin is "One of Us," a sweet pink heartbreak confection whose compassion is miles off from "The 15th"’s relationship semiotics.

All of which is to say that both concerts are worth going to for reasons that have little to do with the narratives swirling around each group. It shouldn’t be too difficult to let go of the stories anchoring these bands and experience them as something both more and less than the sum of their facts. *

BORN RUFFIANS

Wed/15, 9 p.m., $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

WIRE

Wed/15, 8 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

You can’t kill them

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They’re on the fringe, and they don’t plan to leave it. Though mostly overlooked in their home country of New Zealand during the last two decades, the free-rockers in the Dead C will be the first to tell you that they’re not terribly bothered.

"We are not seen as plausible cultural ambassadors," stated guitarist Bruce Russell by e-mail from his home Down Under, citing the failure of the "laughable New Zealand media" to cover what’s artistically adventurous as one of the reasons his three-piece rarely can make it abroad to play shows. One would hope that Russell, Michael Morley, and Robbie Yeats would be more seriously considered for Kiwi government arts grants: indie rockers of yesteryear and the narcoleptic noisemongers of today repeatedly cite the Dead C as an influence on what they do. Just look who’s opening for them on their upcoming US gigs: Thurston Moore (who hosted them at All Tomorrow’s Parties’ "Nightmare Before Christmas" in England two years ago), Blues Control, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance — all serious contenders on the experimental circuit, and all projects that garnered something, aesthetic or emotional, from the Dead C’s history of desperate clatter.

The Dead C got its start in Dunedin — members are located in Port Chalmers and Lyttelton today, about 225 miles apart — when the self-designated "AMM of Punk Rock" released its 1988 full-length debut, DR503, on Flying Nun, the infamous home to pop bands like the Clean, the Chills, Tall Dwarfs, and the Verlaines, for whom Yeats once drummed. A pop group the Dead C are not, but for an ensemble so ardently free-form and unmarketable, they’ve done nicely.

"The irony is, we’ve done very well in commercial terms by being ‘uncommercial,’" Russell explained. "I don’t know many of our contemporaries in New Zealand who are in better career positions than us. We make money. We can make any kind of record we like."

Much of their international clout was forged in their ’90s relationship with the Siltbreeze label, run and recently revived by Tom Lax of Philadelphia, with whom they released some of their most acclaimed discs, including 1992’s Harsh ’70s Reality, 1995’s White House, and 1997’s Tusk. This period saw them create what many consider to be their most vital material, flirting with darkly catchy riffs while always doggedly blazing space for noisy, alien buzz and scrape. Secret Earth is their brand new release, shortly following last year’s Future Artists (both Ba Da Bing) and recorded over two days, six months apart. Morley’s eerie exhale oversees a stupor-inducing slow grind that renders track titles a useless roadmap for proceedings: after a few minutes with the Dead C, one won’t notice such trifling details as the stops, starts, and riffs anymore. They are, after all, masters of mood. Morley and Russell’s guitars-at-odds and Yeats’ distantly mic’d drums consistently scare up an unsettling, deconstructed blues-groove that makes clear the precedent for Sebadoh’s stoned angst cassettes.

Regardless of influence, the upcoming US dates mark only their third outing to the States since getting together — damn! What do they do on the rare occasion they’re on a stage? "We approach live shows quietly, without undue fuss, so we can take ’em by surprise and wring their necks before they can fight back," Russell wrote, pointing out that there’s nothing static about a Dead C track — other than that staticky sound.

Any fan with the whoops and feedback screeches of "Driver U.F.O." committed to memory will hear something that sounds rather otherwise if that song shows up in the set. "We are ‘fully improvised,’ though every now and then we’ll attempt an item from our back catalog," Russell continued. "But we never, ever practice them."

This back catalog is becoming more available thanks to Ba Da Bing, their US label for the past few years, which will be reissuing DR503 and 1989’s Eusa Kills (Flying Nun) on vinyl. The band is, according to Russell, also hoping to reissue its pre-1990 work next year (working title: Complete ’80s Reality). Immediately available, however, is the tour-only 12-inch, which includes recent live recordings, and gives an added incentive to check ’em out this week.

Why not? It’s hard not to be charmed by their passive-aggressive, cavalier mode of operation. "We just do what we do and dare people to ignore it," Russell offered. "Which they duly do, and we could not care less."

THE DEAD C

With Six Organs of Admittance

Thurs/16, 8 p.m., $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Thrills a-plenty from New Thrill Parade, Judy Experience at Bottom of the Hill

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new thrill parade 2 sml.jpg
Skeleton crew: New Thrill Parade. All photos by Jen Snyder.

By Jen Snyder

I like to rediscover relics from my past. Whether it’s an old sweater left to die in a storage unit, or 20 bucks that made it through the wash, the reunions are always pleasant – mostly because you know you’re encountering something that you’ll like.

Similarly I remember seeing New Thrill Parade at a house show years ago during college. I recall a gothic, schizophrenic dog-pile best paired with sweaty air. When I moved I lost track of them. But guess what? They moved, too. It’s always fun to see what happens to bands that only hold reference in your mind as photo stills: the cast had changed slightly, but the scenery was better than I remembered. At Bottom of the Hill on Sept. 30, the outfit, which is now located in San Francisco, had some pretty excellent opening acts, too.

strip mall seizures sml.jpg
The new, new Strip Mall Seizures.

Kicking off the night was Strip Mall Seizures, another combo I hadn’t seen in years. I had been excited to see the klezmer-inspired punk band I had known and loved, yet as the first song ended and the second began, I began to feel like I was seeing a completely different group. I asked another listener in the crowd about my musical amnesia, and he said, “Yeah, they lost some melody but gained some power.” Then I realized that I don’t have a pair of Creepers anymore, and Strip Mall Seizures doesn’t play klezmer punk either. And you know what? I think we’re both better off.

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