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Why Brian Wilson’s next album will probably be a masterpiece

Steven T. Jones
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45
Why Brian Wilson’s next album will probably be a masterpiece

The name “Beach Boys” can refer to either of two bands.  The first is the happy-go-lucky surf rock band that does songs about cars and California, led by the conservative Mike Love; the second is one of the most audacious and avant-garde bands of the psychedelic era, led by the mad Zen master Brian Wilson. Though most of the music-listening world knows them primarily as the former, the latter has proven far more influential, pushing the Beatles’ creativity to breaking point out of rivalry as well as serving as a major touchstone for the last decade or so of indie rock.

This latter influence, coinciding with Wilson’s 2004 solo revival of his aborted 1967 album Smile, has allowed the psychedelic Beach Boys to enjoy a greater cultural standing among a younger, hipper generation. Wilson’s reunion with Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks on 2008’s That Lucky Old Sun was much-hyped by the music press; their previous collaboration, 1995’s Orange Crate Art, was barely even noticed by critics or audiences. Audiences want another psychedelic masterwork from Brian Wilson. And I would be unsurprised if he made one — in fact, I would be surprised if he didn’t.

There’s no doubt he still has the capacity to make music every bit as beautiful and daring as the pocket symphonies that graced Pet Sounds and Smile. The Wilson-written suite that ends the 2012 Beach Boys album That’s Why God Made The Radio is nearly as good as the one that ended Surf’s Up more than 40 years prior. And the version of “Live Let Live” Wilson recorded for the post-March Of The Penguins cash-in An Arctic Tale contains some of the most gorgeous backing vocals I’ve heard on any song, Wilson-penned or otherwise.

Since the 2004 solo Smile, Brian’s released a Christmas album, two covers albums, and That Lucky Old Sun. The latter is the only true Wilson album among these, and its song-cycle structure and bursts of experimental caprice make it undoubtedly the progeny of Smile. But its flaws are common to many, if not most, latter-day albums by aging rock stars. His vocals haven’t aged well; the production is sterile; he makes a lot of ill-advised tributes to the music and culture of his childhood (sample line: “Every girl’s the next Marilyn/every guy Errol Flynn”). There’s a strong sense he’s pandering to the crowd who grew up on “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (or God help us, “Kokomo”), and he tempers his far-out tendencies accordingly. 

But two events have happened since the release that should encourage Wilson to let his creative energy loose.  The first is the 2011 release of The Smile Sessions, a collection of incomplete Smile takes that’s the closest we’ll likely ever get to hearing the finished album. The second is the release of That’s Why God Made The Radio, purportedly the final Beach Boys album and universally acclaimed for the Wilson songs but nothing else. Without the commitment of The Beach Boys, Wilson never needs to write another song about cars and girls again; if he does, it’s up to choice. His fanbase is shifting from older nostalgics to younger music nerds, and it would be advisable for him to target that audience. 

Wilson’s currently working on his first new album since the release of The Smile Sessions. It appears to be a collaborative effort; Lana Del Rey, Kacey Musgraves, Zooey Deschanel, and Frank Ocean are all slated to appear on it. All of these artists but Musgraves are Los Angelenos, and Del Rey and Ocean explicitly tap into L.A. mythology in their music. The melancholy those latter two artists bring to their portrayal of the City of Angels is very much in line with the wistful nostalgia of Wilson’s best recent work. 

They’re also artists more in line with the indie world — the world that eats up Wilson’s poignant Pet Sounds-era work and disavows anything with even the most casual reference to surfing. They’ve more likely signed on to work with the man who made those great Sixties albums. And if they end up having any influence beyond merely contributing vocals, they’ll likely skew the album in that direction. If not, it’s still promising that Wilson would choose to work with these artists in the first place. It would be his first attempt to market himself to a younger audience since he loaded up Love You with synths back in 1977. And so far, he’s looking in the right place.

The current incarnation of the Beach Boys (sans Wilson, Al Jardine, and David Marks) play the Mountain Winery on August 1. Wilson’s new album does not yet have a release date, but much of it is complete according to Rolling Stone.

This Week’s Picks: July 23 – 29, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

WEDNESDAY 23

 

 

Man or Astro-Man?

Auburn, Ala.’s Man or Astro-Man? has spent decades perfecting their sprawling surf-rock. Incredibly imaginative and extremely prolific, the group has recorded and toured tirelessly since early 1990s. Drawing diverse influences from the likes of Dick Dale and Link Wray, punk and new wave, and science fiction and a fascination with space and extraterrestrial life, Man or Astro-Man? take surf rock in directions and galaxies previously uncharted. Largely instrumental and entirely captivating, the band’s nine-album catalog is a musically-stunning journey through sound and space. Known for their high-energy live sets, often performed in space-suits complete with astronaut helmets with intricate sci-fi set pieces, musicians Star Crunch and Birdstuff will shred their way into your hearts. (Haley Zaremba)

With The Ogres, WRAY

8pm, $20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

 

Cymbals

The cooler-than-thou French monologue on UK band Cymbals’s single “The End” might have you in the dark, but the intro’s melancholy melody should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent too many hours in a club. The faint, ringing tone stuck in ear the next day (or week), bringing back memories: “It’s the end of the night, you’ve been dancing too much. They’ve got to turn on the lights.” Smartly placed on a stellar album (The Age of Fracture) of arty synth-pop that’s in line with Metronomy, Passion Pit, and David Byrne, it’s a reminder that, for better or worse, some things don’t last as long as you want. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Astronauts, etc., The Wild Wild

8pm, $10-12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

THURSDAY 24

 

 

CAM & Co. Productions’ Spring Awakening

Once a high school theater kid, always a high school theater kid. After receiving their hard-earned diplomas from San Francisco’s School of the Arts, some of the city’s most talented teens realized they couldn’t abandon the pool of talent at the school. So instead of embracing the idea of a deadbeat summer before college, the members created their own production company. Their conception of Spring Awakening is financed through an online fundraiser they created, and is completely driven by efforts from School of the Arts family members. Support up-and-coming youth theater while wondering why you couldn’t be as cool as them when you were 18. (Amy Char)

Through Sat/26

7:30pm, $20

Phoenix Theatre

414 Mason, SF

(415) 336-1020

www.phoenixtheatresf.org

 

 

 

FRIDAY 25

 

 

RAWdance

With a decade of distinguished work behind the company, RAWdance has every reason to celebrate. Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein collaborations draw you in with the integrity of a highly structural approach that yet yields works that resonate emotionally. Their newest piece seems tailor-made to the kind of intelligence that they bring to their work. Turing’s Apple explores both the genius of the British scientist Alan Turing and his tragedy when he came out as a gay man. It will be joined by the final version of Burns that the choreographers describe as Rorschach-test driven, and film-noir inspired. RAWdance will be joined by a guest artists Gretchen Garnett + Dancers in a trio, and a grief-exploring sextet, Nawala (“Lost”) by Tany Bello’s Project B. (Rita Felciano)

July 25-26, 8 pm. July 27, 7 pm. $25-30

Z Space

450 Florida St. SF

866-811-4111

www.zspace.org

 

 

 

This Must Be the Place: The End of the Underground 1991- 2012

Named for an excellent Talking Heads song, This Must Be the Place is an annual summer celebration of rock docs, exploring the birth, life, death, and (depending on whom you ask) near-constant rebirth of punk rock through iconic moments captured on film. This third installment, curator Mike Keegan has announced, will sadly be the Roxie’s last, so get to it. Friday’s ’90s-tastic triple bill sounds too fun to miss, with 1991: The Year Punk Broke (featuring live performances from Sonic Youth and their then-opener, Nirvana), Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies (featuring the never sober, always charming GG Allin, who was dead before the film finished shooting), and What’s Up, Matador? (featuring three-minute bursts of rarely seen excellence from labelmates Guided By Voices, Pavement, Yo La Tengo and more). Don’t forget your flannel. (Emma Silvers)

Through Sun/27, prices and showtimes vary

The Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

 

SATURDAY 26

 

 

CoffeeCon 2014

Cursed with the personality of an ogre if you skip your morning coffee? Once you’ve gotten a head start on your caffeine fix Saturday morning, head over to this art gallery — for one day only, it houses an interactive latte art exhibit (arguably just as creatively esteemed as postmodern paintings). The coffee festival features a plethora of other hands-on lessons, including one titled “How to Review Coffee,” and unlimited coffee samples, so you can sound like a pretentious — but educated — coffee snob while you pine over an obscure roast when you’re with your friends at Starbucks. Local bands perform live to simulate a hipster coffeehouse vibe. (Amy Char)

9am – 4pm, $15-$20

Terra Gallery & Event Venue

511 Harrison, SF

(415) 896-1234

www.terrasf.com

 

 

Fritz Montana

The spike in blues-rock appreciation that came with The Black Keys and their various contemporaries may be losing its luster — the Keys’ newest LP, Turn Blue, hardly lived up to their previous releases. But Fritz Montana shows that the blues are alive and well in San Francisco. A blistering three-piece band fronted by high-octane vocalist and guitarist David Marshall, won Live 105’s local band contest last October, which led to them opening for Kings of Leon, Queens of the Stone Age, and Vampire Weekend at the station’s Not So Silent Night. Fritz Montana’s first album, Scaredy Cat, is ready to drop, and the group has chosen the Rickshaw Stop as the spot for their release party. The group will play their new release, along with their celebrated 2013 EPs, and sell copies of their debut full-length hot off the presses. Fritz Montana may not be reinventing the wheel, but the band’s songs pulse with an energy and technical grace that bodes very well for their dreams of airwave domination. (David Kurlander)

$10-13, 9pm

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

 

 

Rick Springfield

One of the biggest surprises in Dave Grohl’s 2013 doc Sound City — about the legendary SoCal recording studio where Nirvana’s Nevermind and other iconic works were recorded — was the inclusion of 1980s hunk Rick Springfield, the General Hospital star turned pop singer. Turns out he recorded the 1981 album Working Class Dog there, thus gifting the world with Grammy-winning radio jam “Jessie’s Girl.” Springfield’s kept busy since his teen-dream days; aside from offering up Sound City memories, he wrote a memoir (2010’s Late, Late at Night) and now, a novel: Magnificent Vibration, about a curious man’s unconventional spiritual journey. Book Passage touts his appearance as “featuring a live musical performance,” so get those lighters ready. (Cheryl Eddy)

4pm, free

Book Passage

51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera

www.bookpassage.com

 

 

SUNDAY 27

 

 

Waffle Opera

Waffle Opera, founded by a group of young local singers in 2012, has altered the glitzy opera house aesthetic using an unexpected prop: succulent, syrup-covered Belgian waffles. The company, which serves the treats after each of its shows, embraces a remarkably unpretentious approach to legendary works, using minimalistic sets and small houses to bring out the lyrical and musical subtlety of centuries-old classics. The group is presenting a concert version of Cosi fan tutte, the 1789 Mozart opera whose title translates roughly to “Women are like that.” An uproarious comedy about two Neapolitan officers who don disguises and try to woo each others’ fiancées to prove the inconstency of female affection. While still a archaic by the standards of contemporary gender politics, the women (spoiler alert) are presented as smart and capable; they quickly pick up their lovers’ plot, leading to a madcap phantasmagoria of mistaken identities and partially-broken hearts. Waffle’s semi-staged version highlights the soaring arias, clever quips, and intricate plot of Mozart’s funniest work. (Kurlander)

$15-$25, 3pm

Center for New Music

55 Taylor, SF

www.waffleopera.com

 

 

MONDAY 28

 

Andrew Jackson Jihad

In my mind, Phoenix’s Andrew Jackson Jihad is both the quintessential and the essential folk-punk band. With bitingly clever lyrics that toe the line between hilarious and heartbreaking, an unflinching confrontation of social justice issues and a willingness to examine and sing about their own privilege, Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty have created some of the most important and tenderly earnest albums in the folk-punk canon. The band’s unsteady, cracking vocals and mediocre musicianship lend a charming naivete, emotional sincerity, and accessibility to their music. The band’s frenetic energy and the fierce dedication of their fan-base make Andrew Jackson Jihad’s live shows a powerful experience. (Zaremba)

With Hard Girls, Dogbreth

8pm, $16

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com


Wolfmother

Wolfmother came roaring out of Australia in the mid-aughts with its self-titled debut, which went five times platinum in the band’s home country and did well enough abroad to secure them a position as one of the Anglophone world’s most formidable touring acts. Combining a shameless love for ’70s hard rock (Led Zeppelin in particular) with the sharp hooks of stoner rock, the trio struck a chord with both the classic-rock and alt-rock crowds, and just about any guitarist born in the mid-’90s can likely remember learning one of their songs early on. Though the band only records sparsely, Wolfmother has remained a regular on the international touring and festival scene — a position that this year’s New Crown should secure. (Bromfield)

8pm, $28

The Fillmore

1508 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

TUESDAY 29

Hundred Waters

Hundred Waters are signed to Skrillex’s OWSLA label, but don’t expect big bass drops from this Florida crew. Rather, they trade in a “digital folk” style that offers an intriguing rural perspective to the retro-futuristic conversation currently taking place in underground electronic circles. Birds chirp in unison with drum machines; Blade Runner synths support Tolkienesque fantasias. At the front of it all is Nicole Miglis, a one-woman choir whose voice seems as perpetually omnipresent as the sun and the sky. Though this year’s The Moon Rang Like A Bell suggests pop ambitions lurking beneath their idiosyncratic exterior, the band is still one of the most unique and fascinating bands in the electronic universe — as well as one of the few that can truly claim to sound like nothing else. (Bromfield)

8pm, $14

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

Alternative Ink discusses the flurry of SF ballot measures moving through City Hall

Sasha Cuttler
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6
Alternative Ink discusses the flurry of SF ballot measures moving through City Hall

Digging deep during the height of summertime fun and frivolity, we Guardianistas showed up in force last night for another lively and informative edition of our biweekly radio show, Alternative Ink, on BFF.fm. Listen to the podcast here (but don’t be fooled by the first minute from a past show, it’s a false front we used to hide this week’s treasure).

With the fall ballot being filled out inside City Hall in recent weeks, we discussed rival housing measures sponsored by Sup. Jane Kim and Mayor Ed Lee, as well as the anti-speculation tax. We also covered the Restore Transportation Balance (placed on the ballot by citizens) and Let’s Elect Our Elected Officials (which was narrowed denied a spot on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors) measures that have been burning up the SFBG comments section lately.  

We talked tech, prompted by our pair of long and insightful stories in last week’s issue, and we previewed an interesting story in our coming issue about how San Francisco is dealing with a flood of young immigrants who have showed up seeking refuge status. As always, the show was peppered with great music, this time with a decidedly international flair thanks for our award-winning Art Director Brooke Ginnard’s return from a three-week vacation in Europe (welcome back, Brooke).

After doing the show for a few months now, we’re starting to hit our stride — so much so that we’ve decided to do a live version of the show on the evening of Aug. 28 at the LGBT Center. So stay tuned for more information about the lineup for that show, and please tune in to our next radio show on Aug. 3. 

This Week’s Picks: July 16 – 22, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

Brrrr-illiant!

WEDNESDAY 16

 

 

Jessica Hernandez

Since Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas recorded a full set of tunes for an album two years ago, long stints of touring, writing, and other facets of life delayed their complete release. An excellent EP, Demons, came out last year, and gave fans a taste of what is to come when their new full-length album Secret Evil (Instant Records) is finally released next month. The Detroit-born band plays a tasty blend of blues, jazz, soul, rock and more retro-roots goodness, all building a perfect foundation for Hernandez’ gorgeous and powerful vocals. (Sean McCourt)

With Hungry Skinny, The Tropics

9pm, $12

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

 

 

THURSDAY 17

 

 

Summer Slaughter

While there are plenty of outdoor music festivals and tours crisscrossing the country this summer, metal fans with an aversion to the sun can rejoice that there is one such touring package that hits indoor venues — so you don’t have to worry about a searing sunburn on top of your ringing ears. The promoters of Summer Slaughter 2014 are billing it as the “Most Extreme Tour of the Year,” and it may well be, with death metal legends Morbid Angel headlining the day-long session of debauchery. Joining them will be Dying Fetus, The Faceless, Thy Art Is Murder, Goatwhore, Origin, Decrepit Birth, Within The Ruins, Fallujah, Unhailoed, and Boreworm. (Sean McCourt)

3pm, $29.50-$32

The Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

 

 

San Francisco Symphony: Pixar In Concert

While the films of Pixar Animation Studios may have revolutionized the way movies and cartoons are made with their innovative use of computer animation and their resulting reputation for gorgeous visuals, music also plays an important part in the company’s artistic arsenal. Pixar director Lee Unkrich, CCO John Lasseter and writer-director Brad Bird will act as hosts this weekend as the San Francisco Symphony performs parts of the scores from fan favorite films live, including the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life, Wall-E, Cars, Up, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc., Brave, and Monsters University. (Sean McCourt)

Through Sun/20

7:30pm Thu-Sat; 2pm Sun, $35-$150

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

 

 

 

Dark Entries 5th Anniversary

Labels like Josh Cheon’s Dark Entries exist to remind us that no matter how much (or how little) good music might be coming out presently, there are always gonna be underappreciated gems from the past to discover. With this digger’s mentality and assistance from prolific mastering master George Horn, the San Francisco label has been attentitively re-releasing ’80s dance obscurities. Hi-NRG, Italo disco, minimal, post-punk, etc: If it’s avant, analog, and (obvs) dark, it’s perfect. Starting off on a anniversary tour, Cheon will be joined by some of the label’s contemporary artists including REDREDRED (Michael Wood) and Bézier (the live synth project from Cheon’s Honey Soundsystem collective-mate, Robert Yang.) (Ryan Prendiville)

With Max+Mara

July 17, 9pm-2am, $8

The Eagle

398 12th St, SF

www.sf-eagle.com

 

July 19 +Flora Palmer

9pm, $7

Terminal

3957 San Leandro St, Oakl.

 

FRIDAY 18

 

 

 

Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie Festival

The name says it all: Pretty much any mode of transport — even, probably, roller-skating or Segway-ing, though maybe leave your team of draft horses back on the farm — is acceptable conveyance to the Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie Festival. Once you arrive, settle in (BYO lawn chair or blanket) for an old-school drive-in experience, with films projected on a big screen and sound provided by FM radio as well as amplified speakers. What’s not old-school is the programming: genre-spanning shorts and the occasional feature (this year: a Bollywood pick!), mostly of the “underground” variety, which means you might not catch ’em anywhere else. (Eddy)

Fri/18-Sat/19 and July 25-26, $12

NIMBY

8410 Amelia, Oakl.

www.brainwashm.com

 

 

Erk tha Jerk with Kev Choice

June was a busy month for Erk tha Jerk, the Richmond rapper and producer known for his clever wordplay and catchy, often intensely sexual hooks. On the 12th, he dropped a new video produced by frequent collaborator Fly Commons called “Blast Somebody.” A smooth beat finds Jerk getting existential about his stresses while a near-nude woman gyrates on his bed. The video premiere was bolstered by the announcement that the duo’s upcoming EP, Food and Vegetables comes out on July 15th — the gig doubles as a release party. Fellow East Bay MC Kev Choice opens for Erk. Where Erk often embraces an id-driven and autobiographical style, Kev is far subtler and more socially conscious. A prodigious pianist and bandleader, his set should provide a soulful introduction to Erk’s intensity and bombast. When two of the most idiosyncratic and up-and-coming Bay Area rappers come together, sparks will inevitably fly. (Kurlander)

8pm, $15

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

San Francisco Frozen Film Festival

Foggy days, windy nights — yep, it’s summer in San Francisco. No need to the seek air-conditioned comfort of a movie theater in this town, unless the films on offer are as tempting as this year’s San Francisco Frozen Film Festival lineup. The two-day fest offers a stack of shorts by indie, international, and youth filmmakers, grouped into thematic programs: dramatic shorts, animated shorts, LGBT shorts, experimental shorts (including at least one music video), documentary shorts, and the sub-category of short environmental docs, spanning locations as close as Mt. Tam and as far as Antarctica. Brrrr-illiant! (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sat/19, $12 (fest pass, $20)

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.frozenfilmfestival.com

 

 

SATURDAY 19

 

 

Sara Lautman at the Cartoon Art Museum

Macrogroan, Sara Lautman’s ongoing booklet series and accompanying blog, is remarkably diverse. Lautman, July’s cartoonist-in-residence at the Cartoon Art Museum, deconstructs tiring pop culture trends (one illustration includes a speech bubble by a young woman sitting a desk with a computer: “If you heard Matthew Sweet in some bar he’d fit right in but you’d be like Holy Fuck!” Near the bottom right corner of the same illustration: “Gross. I sound like Marc Maron.”) and larger societal issues (“Clothes People We Are Afraid of Becoming” is made up of four sketches of archetypes Lautman fears, with corresponding labels that describe their respective outfits). Her self-referentiality and distinctive, often experimental drawing methods — she has created entire comic books using a crude drawing program on a flip phone — has earned her spots in publications as varied as Bitch Magazine and The Hairpin. Lautman will present her work and discuss her process with visitors to the museum. She sums up her vision of the experience on her site: “Come see me yammer for a while, then hang out.” (Kurlander)

1pm, free

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission, SF

(415) 227-8666

www.cartoonart.org

 

 

Jimmy Cliff

Bob Marley may adorn more stoner dens with his smiling face, but the credit for bringing reggae to a worldwide audience goes first and foremost to Jimmy Cliff. As the star and main soundtrack composer of the 1972 Jamaican film The Harder They Come, Cliff brought the once-obscure Caribbean pop style to national attention and broke open the door for the genre’s success in the 1970s. But he couldn’t have done it without a set of killer songs — the film’s title track included —and a voice that puts nearly every stateside soul singer to shame. At 66, he’s still a respected live performer, appearing frequently at festivals — as well as at the Fillmore, where he’ll play on the 19th. (Bromfield)

9pm, $39.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, San Francisco

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

 

 

SUNDAY 20

 

 

The Hole

Sometimes landlords just refuse to openly admit that they’re renting you a dilapidated apartment. On the surface, the similarities between modern life and the 1998 Taiwanese film The Hole end there — unless you think our tenacity for lining up in the rain for day-old bagels imported from New York is a sign we’d prosper in a post-apocalyptic world. The screening is the first in this summer’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series comprised of obscure movies selected by local cinema aficionados. There’s just something about the renter’s dilemma (a modern twist on the prisoner’s dilemma) and a fondness for hoarding toilet paper that resonates with viewers. (Amy Char)

2pm, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF (

415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

TUESDAY 22

 

Say Anything

Like many pop-punk bands, Say Anything caught their big break with a completely ridiculous, comically sexual earworm. “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too,” a song about phone sex that includes zombie references and the word “interweb,” is still the band’s most popular track and a mainstay in teenage bedrooms, but Say Anything’s catalog is anything but shallow and kitschy. Through a decade and a half of mental health issues, drug habits, and music crit’s endless ridicule of pop-punk, Max Bemis and company have continued to turn out catchy and lyrically sharp and funny records. It is perhaps their distinctly un-hip and unapologetically self-aware musical style (they released a record called In Defense of the Genre) that makes the band most earnest and entirely loveable. (Haley Zaremba)

With The Front Bottoms, The So So Glos, You Blew It!

7pm, $23

The Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com


White Lung

Who said music writers can’t make music? When Mish Way isn’t busy freelancing as one of America’s most passionate and hilarious music writers, she’s rocking harder than any other architecture-dancer since Patti Smith as the leader of punk outfit White Lung. After making a splash in Vancouver’s punk scene with its debut It’s The Evil, the band found its profile substantially increased when Rolling Stone included sophomore effort Sorry in their top 10 albums of the year — no small feat for a punk album, least of all one that barely runs 20 minutes. They’ve added Wax Idols member and Bay Area native Hether Fortune on bass for album number three, Deep Fantasy, whose hearty reception should secure the band’s footing in both the critical and the die-hard punk worlds. (Bromfield)

7pm, $12

The Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, San Francisco

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

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Music Listings Aug 20 – Aug 26, 2014

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

WEDNESDAY 20
ROCK
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. The Spiritual Bat, Crimson Scarlet, Headless Lizzy & Her Icebox Pussy, Roadside Memorial, 8:30pm, $8-$10.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Commune,” w/ The Fresh & Onlys, The Tambo Rays, Popgang DJs, 9pm, free with RSVP.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Koward, Green Beret, Condition, Trenches, 8:30pm, $8.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Boris, Marriages, 8pm, $20.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Balance and Composure, Seahaven, The American Scene, 8pm, $16.
DANCE
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “BroMance: A Night Out for the Fellas,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage-A-Go-Go,” w/ DJ Damon, Tomas Diablo, guests, 9:30pm, $7-$10.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance party, 9pm, $10-$20.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Go Deep!,” 18+ dance party, 9pm, $10-$15.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Housepitality,” 9pm, $5-$10.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” 7pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9pm, free.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Burn Down the Disco,” w/ DJs 2shy-shy & Melt w/U, Third Wednesday of every month, 9pm, free.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, 9pm, $3.
HIP-HOP
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7pm, free.
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7pm, free.
Balancoire: 2565 Mission, San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9pm, $10.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7pm, free.
Level III: 500 Post, San Francisco. Sony Holland, Wednesdays-Fridays, 5-8pm, free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Panique, Third Wednesday of every month, 8:30pm, free/donation.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eric Tillman, 7pm, $5.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30pm, $5.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Baobab!,” timba dance party with DJ WaltDigz, 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7pm, $5-$10.
SOUL
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Soul Train Revival,” w/ Ziek McCarter, Third Wednesday of every month, 9:30pm, $5.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Color Me Badd,” coloring books and R&B jams with Matt Haze, DJ Alarm, Broke-Ass Stuart, guests, Wednesdays, 5:30-9:30pm, free.
THURSDAY 21
ROCK
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. French Cassettes, Flagship, Black Cobra Vipers, Feat. O, 9pm, $12.
DANCE
Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10pm, free.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9pm, $5-$7.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Twerk Thursdays,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Class of 1984,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” 10pm, $5.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 18+ LGBT dance party, 9:30pm, $10.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Hi Life,” w/ resident DJs Pleasuremaker & Izzy*Wize, 9:30pm, $6.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Beat Church,” w/ resident DJs Neptune & Kitty-D, Third Thursday of every month, 10pm, $10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10pm, $10.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9pm, $5 after 10pm
Raven: 1151 Folsom, San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Trax: 1437 Haight, San Francisco. “Beats Reality: A Psychedelic Social,” w/ resident DJs Justime & Jim Hopkins, 9pm, free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10pm, free.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Future Flavas,” w/ DJ Natural, 10pm, free.
Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Tougher Than Ice,” w/ DJs Vin Sol, Ruby Red I, and Jeremy Castillo, Third Thursday of every month, 10pm
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/ lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7pm
Contemporary Jewish Museum: 736 Mission, San Francisco. “Unplugged in the Yud,” w/ Carletta Sue Kay, 7pm, free with museum admission.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Tipsy House, Third Thursday of every month, 9pm, free.
The Pour House: 1327 Polk, San Francisco. Jimbo Scott & Grover Anderson, 7pm, free.
JAZZ
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, First and Third Thursday of every month, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums, 7:30pm
Level III: 500 Post, San Francisco. Sony Holland, Wednesdays-Fridays, 5-8pm, free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eric Tillman, 7pm, $5.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Pure Ecstasy, 7:30pm, $10.
INTERNATIONAL
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8pm
REGGAE
Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, free.
BLUES
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Chris Ford, Third Thursday of every month, 4pm
COUNTRY
McTeague’s Saloon: 1237 Polk, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk,” w/ Sheriff Paul, Deputy Saralynn, and Honky Tonk Henry, 7pm
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Honky Tonk Thursdays,” w/ DJ Juan Burgandy, 9pm, free.
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “In ‘n’ Out,” w/ The Selecter DJ Kirk, Third Thursday of every month, 10pm, free.
FRIDAY 22
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. Four Tet B2B Jamie xx, Eug, Shawn Reynaldo, 10pm, $27.50-$30 advance.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Manimal,” 9pm
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ resident DJs Daniel Skellington & Melting Girl, Fourth Friday of every month, 9:30pm, $7 ($3 before 10pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10pm
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Trade,” 10pm, free before midnight.
The Grand Nightclub: 520 Fourth St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30pm
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Flight Fridays,” 10pm, $20.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $5.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9pm
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Sneaky Sound System, Blaus, 9pm, $15-$20.
OMG: 43 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Deep Inside,” 9pm, free.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “As You Like It: 4-Year Anniversary,” w/ Todd Terje, Maurice Fulton, Qu, Jason Kendig, Conor, Jackie House (aka P-Play), Christina Chatfield, Rich Korach, Bells & Whistles, Mossmoss, 9pm, $25 advance.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9pm, $3.
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Darling Nikki,” w/ resident DJs Dr. Sleep, Justin Credible, and Durt, Fourth Friday of every month, 8pm, $5.
HIP-HOP
EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9pm
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10pm, free befoe 11pm
ACOUSTIC
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Before the Brave, Joseph, Marshall McLean, 9pm, $10-$12.
The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10am, $5.
JAZZ
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Mean to Me, Fourth Friday of every month, 7:30pm, free.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30pm, $10 suggested donation per adult.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
Level III: 500 Post, San Francisco. Sony Holland, Wednesdays-Fridays, 5-8pm, free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Rob Reich Quintet, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9pm, $10.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $10-$15.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30pm, $15 (free entry to patio).
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15pm, $15-$18.
Roccapulco Supper Club: 3140 Mission, San Francisco. Fuego Latino, 9pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, Seth Asarnow y Su Sexteto Tipico, DJ Emilio Flores, 8pm, $25-$35.
REGGAE
Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30pm, free.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Lee “Scratch” Perry, 9pm, $25.
FUNK
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, and Tom Thump, 10pm, $5-$10.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Fourth Fridays Freestyle Fiesta with MSK.fm, Fourth Friday of every month.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10pm, free.
SATURDAY 23
ROCK
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Turbonegra, The Grannies, 10pm, $5.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Sylvan Esso, 9pm, sold out.
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” 9pm, $10-$15.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. Shangri-La, Asian queer dance party., Fourth Saturday of every month, 10pm, $15-$20 (free before 11pm).
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Set,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10pm, $20.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Galaxy Radio,” w/ resident DJs Smac, Emils, Holly B, and guests, Fourth Saturday of every month, 9pm, free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9pm, $3.
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Electric WKND,” w/ The Certain People Crew, Fourth Saturday of every month, 10pm, $5.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Life,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10pm, $20.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Nice,” w/ DJ Apollo, Fourth Saturday of every month, 10pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco and/or Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6pm, free.
JAZZ
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9pm
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. “Pura,” 9pm, $20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Mango,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 3pm, $8-$10.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10pm, $5-$10.
OMG: 43 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Bollywood Blast,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 9pm, $10 before 11pm with RSVP.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8pm, free.
Space 550: 550 Barneveld, San Francisco. “Club Fuego,” 9:30pm
REGGAE
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Fiji, Mango Kingz, Jah Yzer, 9pm, $25.
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Dave Workman, Fourth Saturday of every month, 4pm
COUNTRY
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. 13th Annual Honky-Tonk Showdown: A Celebration of Classic Country Music & Dance, w/ Wolf Hamlin & The Front Porch Drifters, Misisipi Mike Wolf & The Midnight Gamblers, Jon Emery & The Dry County Drinkers, Miss Kay Marie, 9pm, $15.
FUNK
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “What the Funk?!: James Brown vs. Fela Kuti,” w/ DJs J Rocc & Rich Medina, 9pm, $10-$20 advance.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Nightbeat,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and Dr. Scott, Fourth Saturday of every month, 9pm, $3.
SUNDAY 24
ROCK
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Ancient Altar, Infinite Waste, 7pm, $7.
DANCE
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9pm, free.
The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8pm
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” Sunday night excursions into the echo-drenched outer realms of dub with resident DJ Sep and guests, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Sundaze,” 1pm, free before 3pm
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Stamina,” w/ DJs Lukeino, Jamal, and guests, 10pm, free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10pm, free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8pm, $2.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10pm
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Werd,” 9pm, $5-$10.
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” w/ DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 9pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8pm, free.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Cognitive Dissonance,” Fourth Sunday of every month, 6pm
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Sunset Arcade,” 18+ dance party & game night, 9pm, $10.
HIP-HOP
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. Traditional Irish Session, 6pm
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Bernal Mountain Bluegrass Jam, 4pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. Spike’s Mic Night, Sundays, 4-8pm, free.
JAZZ
Chez Hanny: 1300 Silver, San Francisco. George Cotsirilos Trio, 4pm, $20 suggested donation.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10pm, free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with David Byrd, 7pm, $5.
INTERNATIONAL
Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30pm, $10-$20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30pm, free.
Caña Cuban Parlor & Cafe: 500 Florida, San Francisco. “La Havana,” 4pm
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Salsa Sundays, Second and Fourth Sunday of every month, 3pm, $8-$10.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Balkan Jam Night, 8:30pm
Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30pm
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4pm; The Door Slammers, Fourth Sunday of every month, 9:30pm
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8pm, free.
Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9pm
MONDAY 25
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30pm, $3-$5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Pick Bluegrass Jam, Fourth Monday of every month, 6pm, free; The Earl Brothers, Fourth Monday of every month, 9pm, free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30pm, free/donation.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open Mic with Brendan Getzell, 8pm, free.
Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4pm
JAZZ
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7pm, free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8pm
REGGAE
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10pm, free.
BLUES
Elite Cafe: 2049 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Fried Chicken & Blues,” 6pm
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30pm
SOUL
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8pm, $3 after 9pm
TUESDAY 26
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Scary Little Friends, 9:15pm continues through.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Apocryphon, Redacted, Connoisseur, Infinite Waste, Jesika Christ M.S. benefit show, 8:30pm, $10 minimum donation.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Rosebuds, El May, 8pm, $12-$15.
DANCE
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10pm, $2.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Time Warp Tuesdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9pm, free.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10pm, free-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9pm, $3.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10pm, free.
HIP-HOP
Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Takin’ It Back Tuesdays,” w/ DJs Mr. Murdock & Roman Nunez, Fourth Tuesday of every month, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Song session with Cormac Gannon, Last Tuesday of every month, 9pm
JAZZ
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Clifford Lamb, Mel Butts, and Friends, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7pm
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. The Pleasure Palace, Fourth Tuesday of every month, 9pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9pm, $10-$12.
Wine Kitchen: 507 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Hot Club Pacific, 7:30pm
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Tommy Igoe Big Band, 8pm, $22.
INTERNATIONAL
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Salsa Tuesday, w/ DJs Good Sho & El de la Clave, 8:30pm, $10.
The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. Conga Tuesdays, 8pm, $7-$10.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9pm, $5 (free before 9:30pm).
REGGAE
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10pm
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30pm, free. 2

The Fourth of July: Remembering the good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Note: In July of 1972, when the Bay Guardian was short a Fourth of July story, I sat down and cranked out this one for the front page on my trusty Royal Typewriter. I now reprint it each year by popular demand on the Bruce blog, with some San Francisco updates and postscripts.)

Back where I come from, a small town beneath a tall standpipe in northwestern Iowa, the Fourth of July was the best day of a long, hot summer.

The Fourth came after YMCA camp and Scout camp and church camp, but before the older boys had to worry about getting into shape for football. It was welcome relief from the scalding, 100-degree heat in a town without a swimming pool and whose swimming holes at Scout Island were usually dried up by early July. But best of all, it had the kind of excitement that began building weeks in advance.

The calm of the summer dawn and the cooing of the mourning doves on the telephone wires would be broken early on July Fourth: The Creglow boys would be up by 7 a.m. and out on the lawn shooting off their arsenal of firecrackers. They were older and had somehow sent their agents by car across the state line and into South Dakota where, not far above the highway curves of Larchwood, you could legally buy fireworks at roadside stands.

Ted Fisch, Jim Ramsey, Wiener Winters, the Cook boys, Hermie Casjens, Jerry Prahl, Elmer Menage, and the rest of the neighborhood gang would race out of  their houses to catch the action. Some had cajoled firecrackers from their parents or bartered from the older boys in the neighborhood: some torpedoes (the kind you smashed against the sidewalk); lots of 2 and 3-inchers, occasionally the granddaddy of them all, the cherry bomb (the really explosive firecracker, stubby, cherry red, with a wick sticking up menacingly from its middle; the kind of firecracker you’d gladly trade away your best set of Submariner comics for.)

Ah, the cherry bomb. It was a microcosm of excitement and mischief and good fun. Bob Creglow, the most resourceful of the Creglow boys, would take a cherry bomb, set it beneath a tin can on a porch, light the fuse, then head for the lilac bushes behind the barn.

“The trick,” he would say, imparting wisdom of the highest order, “is to place the can on a wood porch with a wood roof. Then it will hit the top of the porch, bang, then the bottom of the porch, bang. That’s how you get the biggest clatter.”

So I trudged off to the Linkenheil house, the nearest front porch suitable for cherry bombing, to try my hand at small-town demolition. Bang went the firecracker. Bang went the can on the roof. Bang went the can on the floor. Bang went the screen door as Karl Linkenheil roared out in a sweat, and I lit out for the lilacs behind the barn with my dog, Oscar.

It was glorious stuff – not to be outdone for years, I found out later, until the Halloween eve in high school when Dave Dietz, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Bob Babl, Jerry Prahl, Jack McBride, and the  rest of the Hermie Casjens gang and I made the big time and twice pushed a boxcar loaded with lumber across Main Street and blocked it for hours. But that’s another story for my annual Halloween blog.

Shooting off fireworks was, of course, illegal in Rock Rapids, but Chief of Police Del Woodburn and later Elmer “Shene” Sheneberger used to lay low on the Fourth. I don’t recall ever seeing them about in our neighborhood and I don’t think they ever arrested anybody, although each year the Lyon County  Reporter would carry vague warnings about everybody cooperating to have “a safe and sane Fourth of July.”

Perhaps it was just too dangerous for them to start making firecracker arrests on the Fourth – on the same principle, I guess, that it was dangerous to do too much about the swashbuckling on Halloween or start running down dogs without leashes (Mayor Earl Fisher used to run on the platform that, as long as he was in office, no dog in town would have to be leashed. The neighborhood consensus was that Fisher’s dog, a big, boisterous boxer, was one of the few that ought to be leashed).

We handled the cherry bombs and other fireworks in our possession with extreme care and cultivation; I can’t remember a single mishap. Yet, even then, the handwriting was on the wall. There was talk of cutting off the fireworks supply in South Dakota because it was dangerous for young boys. Pretty soon, they did cut off the cherry bomb traffic and about all that was left, when I came back from college and the Roger boys had replaced the Creglow boys next door, was little stuff appropriately called ladyfingers.

Fireworks are dangerous, our parents would say, and each year they would dust off the old chestnut about the drugstore in Spencer that had a big stock of fireworks and they caught fire one night and much of the downtown went up in a spectacular shower of roman candles and sparkling fountains.

The story was hard to pin down, and seemed to get more gruesome every year – but, we were told, this was why Iowa banned fireworks years before, why they were so dangerous and why little boys shouldn’t be setting them off. The story, of course, never made quite the intended impression; we just wished we’d been on the scene.  My grandfather was the town druggist (Brugmann’s Drugstore, “Where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902″) and he said he knew the Spencer druggist personally. Fireworks put him out of business and into the poorhouse, he’d say, and walk away shaking his head.

In any event, firecrackers weren’t much of an issue past noon – the Fourth celebration at the fairgrounds was getting underway and there was too much else to do. Appropriately, the celebration was sponsored by the Rex Strait post of the American Legion (Strait, so the story went, was the first boy from Rock Rapids to die on foreign soil during World War I); the legionnaires were a bunch of good guys from the cleaners and the feed store and the bank who sponsored the American Legion baseball team each summer.

There was always a big carnival, with a ferris wheel somewhere in the center for the kids, a bingo stand for the elders, a booth where the ladies from the Methodist Church sold homemade baked goods, sometimes a hootchy dancer or two, and a couple of dank watering holes beneath the grandstand where the VFW and the Legion sold Grainbelt and Hamms beer  at 30¢ a bottle to anybody who looked of age.

Later on, when the farmboys came in from George and Alvord, there was lots of pushing and shoving, and a fist fight or two.

In front of the grandstand, out in the dust and the sun, would come a succession of shows that made the summer rounds of the little towns. One year it would be Joey Chitwood and his daredevil drivers. (The announcer always fascinated me: “Here he comes, folks, rounding the far turn…he is doing a great job out there tonight…let’s give him a big, big hand as he pulls up in front on the grandstand…”)

Another year it would be harness racing and Mr. Hardy, our local trainer from Doon, would be in his moment of glory. Another year it was tag team wrestling and a couple of barrel-chested goons from Omaha, playing the mean heavies and rabbit-punching their opponents from the back, would provoke roars of disgust from the grandstand. ( The biggest barrel-chest would lean back on the ropes, looking menacingly at the crowd and yell, “ Aw, you dumb farmers. What the hell do you know anyway? I can beat the hell out of any of you.”   And the crowd  would roar back in glee.)

One year, Cedric Adams, the Herb Caen of Minneapolis Star-Tribune, would tour the provinces as the emcee of local  variety shows. “It’s great to be in Rock Rapids,” he would say expansively, “because it’s always been known as the ‘Gateway to Magnolia.” (Magnolia, he didn’t need to say, was a little town just over the state line in Minnesota which was known throughout the territory for its liquor-by-the-drink roadhouses. It was also Cedric Adams’ hometown: his “Sackamenna,” as Caen would say.  Adams kissed each girl (soundly) who came on the platform to perform and, at the end, hushed the crowd for his radio broadcast to the big city “direct from the stage of the Lyon County Fairgrounds in Rock Rapids, Iowa.”

For a couple of years, when Rock Rapids had a “town team,” and a couple of imported left-handed pitchers named Peewee Wenger and Karl Kletschke, we would have some rousing baseball games with the best semi-pro team around, Larchwood and its gang of Snyder brothers: Barney the eldest at shortstop, Jimmy the youngest at third base, John in center field, Paul in left field, another Snyder behind the plate and a couple on the bench. They were as tough as they came in Iowa baseball.

I can remember it as if it were yesterday at Candlestick, the 1948 game with the Snyders of Larchwood. Peewee Wenger, a gawky, 17-year-old kid right off a high school team, was pitching for Rock Rapids and holding down the Snyder artillery in splendid fashion. Inning after inning he went on, nursing a small lead, mastering one tough Larchwood batter after another, with a blistering fastball and a curve that sliced wickedly into the bat handles of the right-handed Larchwood line-up.

Then the cagey Barney Snyder laid a slow bunt down the third base line. Wenger stumbled, lurched, almost fell getting to the ball, then toppled off balance again, stood helplessly holding the ball. He couldn’t make the throw to first. Barney was safe, cocky and firing insults like machine gun bullets at Peewee from first base.

Peewee, visibly shaken, went back to the mound. He pitched, the next Larchwood batter bunted, this time down the first base line. Peewee lurched for the ball, but couldn’t come up with it. A couple more bunts, a shot through the pitcher’s mound, more bunts and Peewee was out. He could pitch, but, alas, he was too clumsy to field. In came Bill Jammer, a farmer now in his late 30’s, but in his day the pitcher who beat the University of Iowa while playing for a small Iowa college called Simpson.

Now he was pitching on guts and beer, a combination good enough for many teams and on good days even good enough  to take on the Snyders. Jammer did well for a couple of innings, then he let two men on base, then came a close call at the plate. Jammer got mad. Both teams were off the bench and onto the field and, as Fred Roach wrote in the Reporter, “fisticuffs erupted at home plate.” When the dust cleared, Jammer had a broken jaw, and for the next two weeks had to drink his soup through a straw at the Joy Lunch cafe, John Snyder, it was said later, came all the way in from center field to throw the punch, but nobody knew for sure and he stayed in the game. I can’t remember the score or who won the game, but I remember it as the best Fourth ever.

At dusk, the people moved out on their porches or put up folding chairs on their lawns. Those who didn’t have a good view drove out to the New Addition or parked out near Mark Curtis’ place or along the river roads that snaked out to the five-mile bridge and Virgil Hasche’s farm.

A hush came over the town. Fireflies started flickering in the river bottom and, along about 8:30, the first puff of smoke rose above the fairgrounds and an aerial bomb whistled into the heavens. BOOM! And the town shook as if hit by a clap of thunder.

Then the three-tiered sky bombs – pink, yellow, white, puff, puff, puff. The Niagara Falls and a gush of white sparks.

Then, in sudden fury, a dazzling display of sizzling comets and aerial bombs and star clusters that arched high, hung for a full breath and descended in a cascade of sparks that floated harmlessly over the meadows and cornfields. At the end, the flag – red, white and blue – would burst forth on the ground as the All-American finale in the darkest of the dark summer nights. On cue, the cheers rolled out from the grandstand and the cars honked from the high ground and the people trundled up their lawn chairs and everybody headed for home. b3

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The resurrection of Ronnie Spector

Steven T. Jones
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1
The resurrection of Ronnie Spector

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL How do you address a woman who toured with the Rolling Stones as an opening act, while being chased after by a baby-faced John Lennon? Who had five singles in the Top 40 by the age of 21? Who perfected the beehive hairdo two decades before Amy Winehouse was even born?

“Call me Ronnie,” purrs Ronnie Spector, age 70, on the other end of the line. You can almost hear the hairdo.

The woman who influenced performers like Billy Joel, Patti Smith, and Joey Ramone is calling from a suburb near Danbury, Conn., where she lives with her manager/husband of 30 years, Jonathan Greenfield. Their life is a quiet one. Spector — who, as the lead singer of the Ronettes, perhaps the most iconic girl group of the early ’60s thanks to hits like “Be My Baby,” has been described as the original bad girl of rock ‘n’ roll — likes to read and watch movies. She goes grocery shopping, does a little cooking, goes to Bed, Bath & Beyond. Three times a week she goes to an office and dictates responses to her fan mail to an assistant (she doesn’t like to use the Internet much herself). She doesn’t drink (never has, she says), but she still smokes (Marlboro Reds).

Okay, and every now and then she’ll catch up with her old friend Keith Richards, who lives 15 minutes away.

For the past two years, the ’60s icon has also been on tour again: Her one-woman stage show, “Beyond the Beehive,” chronicles her tumultuous life from childhood onward, punctuated with songs, stories, behind-the-scenes dirt and dishing. She’ll bring elements of that show to the Bay Area July 4 weekend, when she performs at Brick and Mortar Music Hall Sat/5 (in a ridiculously fabulous-sounding evening hosted by Peaches Christ) and at Burger Boogaloo in Oakland’s Mosswood Park Sun/6.

So: Why would someone who’s lived such a full life — not to mention a self-described homebody — put herself through the rigors of a touring stage show at a time in her life when she could be resting on her laurels? Or at least, one might think, just resting?

“Because I love it — it lets all of my emotions out,” says Ronnie, sounding straight-up girlishly, genuinely excited. “When I first started, of course, I was scared to death: I’ve been on stage singing since I was a little girl, but I never had to sit down and talk to an audience. Now, I feel so good after I do that show. I go through the good, the bad, and the ugly. I tell them everything, and I’m nervous every time, but I love it.”

A little like on-stage therapy, no?

“I stopped going to therapy when I started ‘Beehive’!” she cries. “Who needs a psychiatrist? My show is my therapy. The audience loves it, I love it, and I get to tell them things I never got to talk about.

“Because a lot of stories from my life — ooh, if walls could talk…”

FROM HARLEM TO HOLLYWOOD

Born to a Cherokee and African American mother and an Irish father, a drummer, on Aug. 10, 1943, Veronica Bennett grew up in Spanish Harlem, in a large, working-class family that served as her first audience.

“When I was 7 or 8, me and eight of my cousins were in the lobby of our building and I was singing ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’ — the sound was great down there, the tall ceilings — and my cousins all started clapping,” she recalls. “And I thought, I got it! From that point on, all I thought about was singing. I didn’t do homework. The teachers were calling my house saying ‘She’s just singing for the class.’ It was all I cared about.” She spent hours singing with her sister, Estelle Bennett, and cousin, Nedra Talley, the trio that would go on to become the Ronettes.

When the girls were young teens, as if to say “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” Ronnie and Estelle’s mother, a waitress at a restaurant next door to the Apollo Theater, managed to get the girls a spot on the bill at the legendary venue’s amateur night. They didn’t win that evening’s competition, but the audience applauded (as opposed to throwing tomatoes), and Spector still remembers the feeling. “That was it. It was the toughest crowd in town, and they liked us,” she says.

The rest is show business history: The signature eye makeup and impeccable on-stage style. Hordes of shrieking fans during appearances on American Bandstand. The UK tour on which the girls spent evenings flirting and dancing with the Beatles. Bottles upon bottles of hairspray.

And, of course, the group’s relationship with wunderkind producer Phil Spector, the man responsible for the “wall of sound” instrumentation that makes so many ’60s records sound so beautifully, chart-toppingly lush. “Be My Baby,” a song Brian Wilson has called the best pop song ever made (at 21, he was driving when he first heard it and had to pull over), is considered the first pop record to use a full orchestra, with horns, multiple pianos, and guitars layered generously over each other. Backup singers included Darlene Love and a then-unknown couple named Sonny and Cher.

To be sure, Spector was ahead of his time. But 30 seconds of any Ronettes song will tell you everything you need to know about what made the group stand out from the pack.

As the Time magazine writer Michael Enright once put it: “Ronnie had a weird natural vibrato – almost a tremolo, really – that modulated her little-girl timber into something that penetrated the Wall of Sound like a nail gun. It is an uncanny instrument. Sitting on a ragged couch in my railroad flat, I could hear her through all the arguments on the street, the car alarms, the sirens. She floated above the sound of New York while also being a part of it…stomping her foot on the sidewalk and insisting on being heard.”

It’s that same combination of vulnerability, sex appeal, and determinedly tough-as-nails I’ve-been-through-hell-so-don’t-test-me bravado that still attracts fans to her shows some 50 years later — despite the fact they’ve probably already heard a good chunk of the story.

Her low points are well-documented: the nightmarish marriage to a jealous Phil Spector that, according to her 1989 memoir, involved death threats and the young singer being physically locked in his mansion. Then rehab, which she later said was just a means of escape from her ex-husband (who, it must be mentioned, as of this writing, is five years into a 19-year sentence for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson — after a trial in which at least five female acquaintances recounted him holding them at gunpoint).

Then there was life after Phil. Ronnie burst back onto the charts in 1986 as a guest on Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight” (with her signature whoa-oh-oh-ohs front and center), may or may not have had a brief fling with David Bowie, released a critically acclaimed solo album produced by Joey Ramone, married her second husand, had two kids (not necessarily in that order). In 2000, after a 15-year royalty battle, a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that Phil Spector owed the Ronettes $2.6 million; despite licensing their songs to everything from commercials to Dirty Dancing over the previous four decades, he’d only ever paid the women $14,000 and change.

And now? She’s an unmistakably happy woman, and she clearly likes to talk. It doesn’t take much to get her going on today’s pop music: “It’s like a circus! You can’t see a show without dancers and lights and booms and bangs. It takes away from rock ‘n’ roll. Everyone has to have ridiculous outfits, and you don’t even know who they are by the time their record comes out. People don’t have an identity! Miley Cyrus gets up there with an [inflatable] penis coming out of her? Hello? What is that?”

“You take away the dancers, you take away the choreographers, and [with a lot of pop stars] you will not see a real artist there,” she says. “And everybody lip-syncs. In my day you didn’t do that; I would never do that. To me, it’s cheating the audience.” (Ronnie’s voice has stayed strong, she says, because she’s never liked parties.)

However: “I do love that today’s women artists [are allowed to] write their own material, which we couldn’t. You look at the artists from the past like me, the pioneers, we ended up with nothing because of royalties. Now, Taylor Swift is one of the richest girls in rock ‘n’ roll.”

She also has nothing but kind words for Amy Winehouse — a singer who owed her obvious debts in the vocal and visual style department, and whose “Back To Black” Ronnie sometimes covers in return (once, in London, with Winehouse trying not to be spotted in the audience). “She was a dirty rock ‘n’ roll singer, her voice was real, and she was real,” she says. “I miss her.”

Aside from not really enjoying Top 40 radio, however, Ronnie says she’s loving life — and you believe her. She talks like a survivor — not just of an abusive marriage, but of a time and a place in pop music that chewed young women up and spit them out with astounding ease.

“To be honest, a lot of the groups I knew 50 years ago are dead or dead broke,” she says. “And I had to fight for my career. I was in court for 15 years.

“But you know what? What goes around comes around,” she says conspiratorially. “Karma’s a bitch, and it’ll bite you right in the ass. He’s in prison, and I’m not. I’m out there singing, having the time of my life, and I have everything I want: My shows, a great husband, everything I wanted back then. Turns out you can have your cake and eat it too.” A hearty laugh.

“Otherwise, what’s the point of having cake?” 

Ronnie Spector will perform at the Burger Boogaloo After-Party (Sat/5 9pm, $35) at Brick and Mortar Music Hall and at Burger Boogaloo Day 2 (Sun/6, all day, $35-$50) in Oakland’s Mosswood Park.

 

Comedy without limits means ‘No Happy Endings’ for SF’s Granny Cart Gangstas

Sue Vaughan
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0

Sexy granny panties? Up-and-coming San Francisco comedy troupe Granny Cart Gangstas recently proved this isn’t an oxymoron. Taking a cue from the Kids in the Hall — one of member Ava Tong’s biggest inspirations — who were once photographed wearing bras over suits, the troupe decided to do something similar (one member flaunted a pair of leopard-print granny panties) for a photo shoot ahead of its Sat/28 show, “No Happy Endings,” at SF’s Little Boxes Theater. 

Founding members Tong and Aureen Almario dreamed about creating their own comedy troupe since 2006. The two met at San Francisco State University, where Tong was Almario’s teaching assistant in an Asian American studies class. “Then she ended up being one of my friends’ girlfriends and I was like ‘Oh … hey!’ and I saw her at Bindlestiff [Studio] and it was like … ‘Can’t get away from you, Aureen!’” The two finally created the troupe in 2011, with five total members, and continued to expand by inviting women associated with Bindlestiff that they worked well with. 

The name of the comedy troupe, Granny Cart Gangstas, juxtaposes two contrasting concepts. Tong said Almario, who came up with the name, was inspired by the pedestrian lifestyle of granny-cart owners in the midst of the hustle and bustle of certain SF neighborhoods. “That’s like, ‘I don’t care. I’m going to do my thing and I don’t care what anyone else thinks,’” Tong explained. 

Lauren Garcia, who joined the troupe last October, expanded on the name’s connotations. “If you have a granny cart, you know, you can’t politely, say, go through the bus or the street, and go ‘Excuse me, excuse me.’” (Tong interjected, “You’re just unapologetic.”) Garcia continued, “You just run over those people’s feet.”

When it comes to the troupe’s material, this mindset is always relevant. Its material is solely comprised of things that make its own members laugh. And even though members grapple with worries that no one else will find certain things funny, they’ll keep them in anyway.

“No Happy Endings” opens with a piece that pays homage to grannies — one of the first pieces where the members assume the role of grannies. “You’ve got to respect grannies,” Garcia said. “They’re grannies — they’ve been through shit.” In the sketch, the troupe members are nursing home residents (sans granny carts, unfortunately), comatose as a nurse administers their daily medicine. Before the nurse leaves, she switches on a radio, which starts playing classical music. But one of the grannies won’t have that and slowly trudges to the radio — with the assistance of her walker — and changes the music to something more modern: Beyoncé’s “Grown Woman.” Instantly rejuvenated, the grannies begin to dance. 

The troupe returns to this scene later to close the show. “Grown Woman” is still playing. “We actually bust out into our younger selves and we do a short synchronized dance,” Tong said, “kind of saying that every granny is young inside them. They have that young person that lived there before.” Combined with the young souls’ dance, Beyoncé’s lyrics “I’m a grown woman / I can do whatever I want” only serve to further drive this message home.

“I feel like so many people forget that older people were young once and they are people — they’re not the sacks that people treat them as,” Garcia said. As a nurse, she said she constantly witnesses incidents of verbal elder abuse where nurses and other people in the hospital condescendingly speak to elderly patients. 

Besides the geriatric piece, the group likes to write about womanhood. For their first show, “Rise of the Red Dawn,” the group performed a sketch titled “Look At This Betch.” “We’re making fun of the idea that women sometimes … have this competition with each other,” Garcia said. “They’re cutthroat and catty and will cut other women to get ahead when they should be helping other women. They know what it’s like to be a woman in this world.”

However, Tong said the group noticed that much of the last show focused on the negative aspects of womanhood. To depict women in a more positive light, it included a sketch titled “Vag Save” in the upcoming show, which also includes films and stand-up. Garcia introduced “Vag Save” to me through a mock movie trailer voiceover: “Save your best friend’s vagina. Coming soon, this Saturday, June 28, we will be saving … your vaginas.”

The sketch follows a group of women at a club banding together to protect each other from the unwelcome advances of creepy men. “Not everybody sees that world,” Tong said. “Guys definitely don’t know when other guys are being creepy — or when they’re being creepy — and this is how women see it.”

The troupe is entirely comprised of women of color. Members write cultural references sparingly — one of the lines in sketch “Spanx” plays with how similar the word “backpack” and the Tagalog word for “vagina” (pekpek) sound: “Reach into my pekpek” — because they don’t want to alienate any audience members. Sometimes they’ll include references if a character has an accent (the references are usually improv ad libs), but they stray from writing references that aren’t obvious or explained. 

At the same time, Tong and Garcia appreciate San Francisco’s diversity and open-mindedness. “I think we take advantage of that,” Tong said. “We almost take it for granted. We don’t think about having to be sensitive.” The two joked that they might have things thrown at them on stage or their citizenship papers checked in more conservative states. Most of the members are Bay Area natives, but live in cities as spread apart as Walnut Creek, San Francisco, and Hayward, which Tong admitted makes getting together for rehearsal tough.

Inspiration can hit the troupe at any time — sources range from people, such as Beyoncé, or the minutiae of daily life, such as putting in a Diva Cup. (A Diva Cup is an eco-friendly alternative to a tampon. Garcia shared some tips from a YouTube how-to video she watched, where an upside-down wine glass served as a model vagina: improper nail length can quickly make the experience unpleasant and one of the tricky things is “getting it into a little ball and making sure it goes in before it pops open … because then that’s painful and you don’t want to do that, let me tell you.” Tong was a little hesitant about this sketch idea.) Throughout the interview, Tong and Garcia effortlessly bounced new ideas off each other, assuring me they could even parody the interview we were having. “You’ll be in this,” Garcia told me. “Come watch our stuff; you’ll see yourself.”

Six days before the show, at least one troupe member’s grandmother was confirmed to attend “No Happy Endings.” Garcia’s mother purchased tickets for several family members — before her daughter explained that the not-so-family-friendly show was “mature, sexual, and raunchy.” Garcia complained that her grandmother would simply have to sit through performances such as “Octopussy,” where she sings “I’ve tried everything / You could possibly do / When you’re in bed with two / Wheelbarrow, doggy style / Missionary, 69 / It feels so fine / But he can’t make me cum.”

“We’ll apologize later if you need us to,” Tong reassured Garcia. 

Emphasis on “need.” After all, a true granny cart gangsta is never apologetic if they can help it. 

Granny Cart Gangstas’ “No Happy Endings”

Sat/28, 8pm, $15

Little Boxes Theater

1661 Tennessee, SF

(415) 603-0061

www.littleboxestheater.wordpress.com

City agencies defend their slow response to Airbnb’s illegal rentals

Sasha Cuttler
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57
City agencies defend their slow response to Airbnb’s illegal rentals

More information has been coming out about how Airbnb is used to convert San Francisco apartments into tourist rentals — including an interesting study reported by the San Francisco Chronicle last weekend — in advance of next month’s hearings on legislation to legalize and regulate short-term rentals.

But questions remain about why the city agencies in charge of regulating such “tourist conversions,” which have long been illegal under city law, have done so little to crack down on the growing practice. For more than two years, we at the Guardian have been publicly highlighting such violations, which have finally caught fire with the public in the last six months.

Even Mayor Ed Lee — who has helped shield Airbnb from scrutiny over its tax dodging and other violations, at least partially because they share an investor in venture capitalist Ron Conway — has finally said the city should pass legislation to regulate the company, as Sup. David Chiu is trying to do.

But attorney Joseph Tobener, who has represented clients evicted to facilitate Airbnb rentals and has brought a number of such lawsuits on behalf of San Francisco Tenants Union, still can’t get city departments to issue notices of violation even for the most egregious offenders that he’s suing, an administrative prerequisite to filing a lawsuit.

“The Department of Building Inspection and the Department of Planning need to start shutting these violators down by enforcing the existing laws, or we need stricter laws that allow us to pursue our claims without City approval.  Two months ago, we sent our requests to pursue landlords on behalf of the SFTU.  Then, radio silence.  Two months of utter inaction. Someone in charge does not want to see us close the loophole that is allowing landlords to take units out of our housing stock,” Tobener said.

The Chronicle investigation found that in San Francisco, 1,278 Airbnb hosts in San Francisco were managing multiple properties (Chiu’s legislation would limit hosts to their primary residence for just 90 rental nights per year), including 160 entire homes that tourists appear to be renting out full-time. Overall, the paper counted 4,798 properties for rent in San Francisco through Airbnb, 2,984 of which were entire homes, belying the “shared housing” label favored by the company and its supporters.

And even though groups like the San Francisco Apartment Association and SFTU say they have been actively trying to get the city departments to crack down on such illegal uses over the last year, representatives for DBI and the Planning Department say they’ve received few complaints and therefore issued few violations, while also saying they need more resources to regulate the problem, something Chiu’s legislation would begin to help address.

“Our enforcement process is complaint based and we investigate each complaint that is received by our Department (more than 700 per year).  Complaints regarding short term rentals that result in the loss of housing are prioritized for enforcement,” Planning Department spokesperson Gina Simi told the Guardian.

She said that property owners are given the opportunity to correct a violation before being cited, something that she said happens in about 80 percent of cases.

“A case is opened for every complaint received. Since March 2012, we have had approximately 120 enforcement cases for Short Term Rentals.  In each case, notices were sent to the property owner and approximately half (54) have been abated and half (66) are active cases.  Many of these (approximately 30) were received since the beginning of April 2014,” she told us when we inquired about the issue last month.

As for Tobener’s charge that city agencies are dragging their feet and making it difficult for his clients to pursue relief from the courts, she said, “The ability for interested parties to pursue the matter through civil action (for injunctive or monetary relief) following the filing of a complaint and determination of a violation is a process outlined in Chapter 41A, which is enforced by the Department of Building Inspection.  Enforcement under the Planning Code does not allow for interested parties to seek civil action.”

But DBI spokesperson William Strawn said his department hasn’t received many complaints, claiming to have gotten just three total through the end of last year.

“A few weeks ago, per Mr. Tobener, we did receive seven complaints, with documentation, that the Housing Division is still reviewing; and, per [DBI Chief Housing Director Rosemary] Bosque, we also recently received an additional seven complaints – for a current total of 14 – that also are under review and being scheduled for administrative review hearings, as required by Chapter 41A,” Strawn told the Guardian.

But he also pointed his finger back at the Planning Department as the agency that should be handling problems related to the short-term stays facilitated by Airbnb.

“Given that these ‘duration of stay’ issues are Planning Code matters – a point we have made to Supervisor Chiu, and which I know you discussed with the Planning Director {John Rahaim] during Supervisor Chiu’s media availability on this issue a few weeks ago – the role of the Building Department in the enforcement of these types of complaints in our relatively new Internet Age will require guidance from the City Attorney,” Strawn told us.

Indeed, in response to a Guardian question about why the Planning Department seems to have ignored violations facilitated by Airbnb, Rahaim said that his department hasn’t had the resources, tools, and authority to address the problem, even though, “This is an important issue we’ve been hearing about for quite some time.”

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

Sue Vaughan
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0
Doo-wop (that thing): talking with the cast of ‘Jersey Boys’

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFBG Did he ever break into song on the set?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFBG How true is the movie to the stage production?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JERSEY BOYS opens Fri/20 in Bay Area theaters.

Go with a smile

Michael Redmond
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Go with a smile

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Clad in his signature cape and cowl, Batman has been taking to the streets in the darkness of night and fighting crime in the imaginations of comic-book fans for 75 years.

Thanks to the Christopher Nolan film trilogy, the public has gotten used to the idea of the character being dark and brooding and living in a gritty, more realistic world. But it was Tim Burton’s eye-popping Batman, starring Michael Keaton, that first ushered in a modern vision of the Dark Knight, 25 years ago this week on June 23, 1989. That summer, Batman unleashed in a wave of pop-culture Batmania. No matter where you turned, you’d see the Bat-Signal on a T-shirt, hear “Batdance” on the radio, or catch yourself muttering one of Jack Nicholson’s iconic Joker quips.

Sam Hamm, who wrote the story for Batman and co-wrote the script with the late Warren Skaaren, is a San Francisco resident.

“I grew up reading comic books — I was completely saturated with the stuff. A few years ago, I was cleaning out some old boxes, and I came across a picture of myself when I was probably five years old, wearing a cowboy hat and reading a copy of Batman. So in that photograph somebody had encapsulated my entire future. Obviously, it was my destiny,” laughs Hamm.

By the mid-1980s, an early script for a Batman film had been kicking around at Warner Bros. for several years. Hamm had started working for the company on some different projects around that time; one day, while waiting for a meeting, he saw the script on a shelf and started reading it.

“It was very much the same structural model as Superman,” he recalls. “I was reading it, and thinking, ‘No, this is not the way.’ It [was] explaining all this stuff you don’t have to explain. It’s basically just a guy who puts on a suit and goes out and kicks ass — but why would a rich guy go out and do that every night? That, it seemed to me, was the interesting part of the story. It wasn’t how this guy came to be, it was why this guy came to be — that’s the central mystery of the movie.”

After lobbying for about six months, he was asked by Tim Burton, who was attached to direct at the point, to share his ideas for a new story.

“I said, ‘Okay, here’s the deal — you don’t start with Batman. It’s the origin of the Joker that you start out with, and Batman is the mystery. I have this feeling that Batman is really depressed, and he has to keep on going out and doing this stuff because he’s reenacting this mess with his parents.'”

Hamm’s vision was a drastic departure from the campy 1960s television show that mainstream culture most closely identified the character with at the time, but the filmmakers quickly decided that it was the direction they wanted to take.

“We started with the idea that Batman is bat-shit crazy. He goes out and does this, but then meets a girl, and starts thinking, ‘What would it be like if I had a normal life? I’ve never thought of having a normal life.’ So the progress of the story is that he starts to go sane, and what does that do to the weird sort of lifestyle decision that he’s made?”

That approach clearly resonated with fans around the world. Looking back decades later, Hamm has fond memories of being part of the phenomenon.

“It was wild. There was a huge buzz around it,” he says. “I would be driving around San Francisco, and there was a house in Noe Valley where the guy had painted the logo on his garage. They put a Bat-signal on Zeitgeist! It was quite bizarre to feel you were a part of that.” *

 

Tune in to SFBG’s Alternative Ink, sickout edition! LISTEN NOW

Erica Hanna
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Tune in to SFBG’s Alternative Ink, sickout edition! LISTEN NOW

Spend your Sunday night with the dedicated staff here at the Bay Guardian, for two hours of local music and lively, information talk during our bi-weekly Alternative Ink radio show from 6-8pm Sunday, June 8, on BFF.fm. UPDATE: Listen to the show here. 

This week will be our sickout labor edition, where we talk Muni and the Bay Area labor movement. We’ll probably toast a few brews to Harry Bridges while we’re at it. 

Music Editor Emma Silvers will be laying down the tracks and checking our levels, so to speak, while News Editor Rebecca Bowe and Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez provide the inside scoops.

We’ll also be talking about the newest developments with Ryan Chamberlain, who allegedly posessed explosives, the brewing battle between Uber and SFO, as well as the big fight over City College of San Francisco. And whatever else springs to mind. So tune in or check back later to this post to listen to the audio link. 

This Week’s Picks: June 4 – 10, 2014

Michael Redmond
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WEDNESDAY 4

 

 

‘Mr. Irresistible’

Multifaceted showman and irrepressible art-dragster D’Arcy Drollinger, the brains and falsies behind such contemporary camp classics as Shit & Champagne and Sex and the City Live!, is poised to deliver on his biggest project since Project: Lohan, or even 2010’s cutting-edge Scalpel!: A sci-fi musical comedy about love and robots and office work entitled Mr. Irresistible. First produced in workshop form last year at New York’s La Mama E.T.C., the Aesop-inspired story of unpopular Eileen Morchinsky and her titular mechanical friend (purchased from a magazine ad and destined to turn her life right around) sails into the fairly exotic Alcazar Theatre for a limited run, aloft on a score by Christopher Winslow, book and lyrics by Drollinger, and some big-wig talent. (Robert Avila)

Through June 8, 8pm; Sun. 7pm only, $25

Alcatraz Theatre

650 Geary, SF

(415) 766-4588

www.mrirresistiblemusical.com

 

 

The Damned

Remember, kid: Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Yes, we’re talking about THE Damned. Formed in 1976, The Damned were the first punk band in the UK to release a single, a record, or tour the United States. They cut their teeth opening for bands like the Sex Pistols and T. Rex, and are still going strong. Not only were they punk rock pioneers, they also were some of the frontrunners of the goth scene in the ’80s, and now, nearly into their fourth decade, The Damned are still going strong. With an ever-changing lineup and an incredible repertoire of revolutionary tunes, these dudes are incredible at evolving and even better at performing. They’re not to be missed tonight at Slim’s. (Haley Zaremba)

With Koffin Kats, Stellar Corpses

9pm, $30

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 225-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

THURSDAY 5

 

 

XV: St. James Infirmary 15-Year Anniversary Party

Lost in the outpouring of accolades in the wake of the great Maya Angelou’s passing last week was her crucial time as a sex worker, which she chronicled, unashamed, in her 1974 book Gather Together in My Name. It’s indicative of the stigma sex workers still face when even the well-documented past of the nation’s literary godmother is scrubbed free of any reference. San Francisco’s own groundbreaking St. James Infirmary, the first occupational safety and health clinic for sex workers in the United States, deals with the damage of that stigma by offering non-judgmental medical and social services. The organization also knows how to celebrate: This huge party and fundraiser boasts one of the city’s best house DJs, David Harness, as well as porn-star-turned-DJ Ricky Sinz, movers and shakers from the international sex workers rights movement, sexy pole dancing, a Kink.com demonstration dungeon, and oodles more. The whole joint will be singin’ and swingin’ and getting’ merry like Christmas. (Marke B.)

9pm-3am, $20 ($40 includes free lapdance)

Temple

540 Howard, SF

www.templesf.com

 

 

Urban Air Market Summer Night Block Party

Urban Air Market’s newest addition to its community-enriched neighborhood events around the city begins tonight. Head on over to Fern Alley — a hidden walkway located between Polk and Larkin Streets — for this one-night affair. In partnership with the Lower Polk Art Walk, Urban Air Market is hosting a summer night block party of sustainable art, fashion, food, and live music at this unassuming Tenderloin location. While occasionally occupied by a small farmers’ market, tonight Fern Alley will be bustling with food trucks, henna tattooing, face painting, interactive fashion film installations, live bands, and countless booths from sustainable and local brands: Oaklandish, Synergy Organic Clothing, Indosole, and Skunkfunk USA to name a few. (Laura B. Childs)

6pm, free

Fern Alley (Fern St. between Polk and Larkin St.)

www.urbanairmarket.com

 

 

Nature For Sale

For the past few years, Bolivian-born artist Javier Rocabado has been producing stunning, icon-like portraits of famed gays like RuPaul, early AIDS activists, and local beauties. All these figures have been posed with gold halos against Rocabado’s signature dollar-bill background, glowing with symbolic meaning. (Rocabado paints only the backside of the dollar.) His new series turns to nature: Beautiful bird specimens, frogs, and weeping monkeys take on aspects of holy saints. “I want to point out the universally ridiculous thinking of ‘economics is first’ under Capitalism. Through this new series of paintings, I strive to create images of animals that allow the viewers to experience the false pride in human civilization to conquer nature and profit from it,” he says. Dark spirits of Chevron, BP, and other disaster-fueling multinationals hover at the borders of his exquisite new works, but their sheer gorgeousness radiates hope as well as guilt. (Marke B.)

Through July 1, opening party 8-11pm, free

Public Barber Salon

571 Geary, SF

www.publicbarbersalon.com

 

FRIDAY 6

 

 

 

‘Test’

Test is not great, but it’s a beautiful, honest film that evokes the mid-’80s, when AIDS was ravaging San Francisco’s gay community, a time when a test had become available but no cure was in sight. The film follows a naïve young man’s coming of age (a splendid Scott Marlow of LEVY Dance) as a gay man and as dancer in a local modern dance company. The film excellently captures what it meant living at the edge of uncertainty, when nothing could be taken for granted and yet, despite of it all, everything seemed possible. Test includes extensive and fine dance sequences choreographed by the remarkable Sidra Bell. Fun to see was just how many other local dancers were involved in this small, but big-hearted movie. (Rita Felciano)

Opens June 6, times vary

Presidio Theater

2340 Chestnut, SF

(415) 776-2388

 

Rialto Cinemas Elmwood

2966 College, Berk.

(510) 433-9730

 

 

The Buzzcocks

It must be punk rock royalty week at Slim’s, because just two days after The Damned grace the SoMa stage the Buzzcocks are coming to town. Part of the Holy Trinity that also includes the Clash and the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks are a crucial piece of UK punk history. Bringing the world such killer tunes as “Ever Fallen in Love” and “What Do I Get,” challenging British radio with songs like “Orgasm Addict” and confronting the punk community with an open and serious examination of homosexuality, the Buzzcocks are a tireless and fearless force of nature. Plus, 38 years into their career, they’re still touring regularly and have a new record out this year. Is there anything more punk than refusing to succumb to gray hair or body fat? (Zaremba)

With Doug Gillard, Images

8pm, $35

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 225-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

SATURDAY 7

 

 

Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang

Les Claypool has an amazing eye for weirdness. His band Primus has made a decades-long career out of defying every possible genre classification, wearing monkey masks onstage, and naming their albums things like Pork Soda and Sailing the Seas of Cheese. Now Claypool is going the opposite direction, creating the most minimalist, deconstructed music possible, with one vocal, one bass, one guitar, and one makeshift percussion tool — but don’t worry, it’s still bizarre. In his Duo De Twang, which was originally organized as a one-off for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Claypool teams up with longtime buddy and collaborator Bryan Kehoe to play originals and tasty twang covers (including the Bee Gees and Alice in Chains). The show promises down-to-earth, intimate weirdness, plus seriously incredible musicianship. (Zaremba)

With Reformed Whores

9pm, $38

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

tUnE-yArDs

What a difference five years makes: Merrill Garbus moved to the Bay around that time, as word quickly spread about the undeniable force of her musical vision, one that draws from African, folk, and electro-acoustic quarters, and her visceral one-woman performances. Since her maiden tUnE-yArDs outing, BiRd-BrAiNs, she’s put out the album that every critic could agree on in 2011, whokill, which scored her the coveted top spot in that year’s Pazz and Jop poll. Her third full-length, Nikki Nack, takes tUnE-yArDs further, into Garbus’s fascination with Haitian artistic traditions, as she turned to the country’s boula drum to lay the groundwork for the recording’s intoxicating call and response. (Kimberly Chun)

With the Seshen

9pm, $26

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


SUNDAY 8


Silent Frisco Beats on Ocean Beach

Summertime throwdowns are the types of shows the brilliant Silent Frisco have made their niche — take a pristine outdoor environment, add groovin’ music and people, let fun ensue. “Scene Not Heard” as the Silent team puts it. The key to making these public shows possible is ditching speakers and substituting wireless headphones, removing complaint-inducing noise, and leaving the amusingly awesome sight of befuddled onlookers observing limbs gyrating to what appears to be silence. For this event, two channels allow movers and shakers to select from a rotation of California electronic music talent throughout the day. Fresh off touring with The Glitch Mob, Ana Sia will bring big, bouncy, driving bass, while Dutch grandmasters Kraak & Smaak headline with two hours of their lush, disco-tinged sound. (Kevin Lee)

With Kraak & Smaak, Ana Sia, Pumpkin, JLabs, Motion Potion, and more

11am, $20; kids and dogs free (all-ages show)

Ocean Beach Great Highway at Balboa Ave, SF

www.silentfrisco.com


TUESDAY 10


Tom Robbins

“If Tibetan Peach Pie doesn’t read like a normal memoir, that may be because I haven’t exactly led what most normal people would consider a normal life,” forewarns writer Tom Robbins in the preface of his first nonfiction book. With that on readers’ minds, Robbins reflects on his colorful adventures, from an accident laden-youth in Depression-era North Carolina in which his mother dubbed him “Tommy Rotten,” to an established literary career in Washington state. Along the way, Robbins studies the weather in Korea, experiments with acid, embarks on international religious journeys, tangos with Hollywood, and discovers some love. Tibetan Peach Pie‘s 41 succinct tall tales crackle with a Robbins’ rare blend of warmth, wisdom, and wit. (Lee)

In conversation with Isabel Duffy

7:30pm, $27

Nourse Theatre

275 Hayes, SF

(415) 392-4400

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Rep Clock: June 4 – 10, 2014

Michael Redmond
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Schedules are for Wed/4-Tue/10 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. Check website for program information.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. We Are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013), June 6-12, call for times.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” Mean Girls (Waters, 2004), Fri-Sat, midnight.

NEW PARKWAY 474 24th St, Oakl; www.thenewparkway.com. Free. “First Friday Shorts,” works by Youth Radio’s young artists, Fri, 6.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. San Francisco Green Film Festival, environmental films, events, panels, and special guests, Wed. Complete program details and tickets (most shows $15) at www.sfgreenfilmfest.org. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, June 5-19. Complete program details, including additional venues, and tickets (most shows $12) at www.sfindie.com.

TEMESCAL ART CENTER 511 48th St, Oakl; www.shapeshifterscinema.com. Free. Shapeshifters Cinema presents: “The Light Art of Dennis Keefe and Glenn McKay,” Sun, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Astonishing Animation: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli:” Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2002), Thu, 7:30 and Sat, 7; Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997), Fri-Sat, 7:30; Pom Poko (Takahata, 1994), Sat, 1; Ponyo (Miyazaki, 2009), Sun, 1: From Up on Poppy Hill (Miyazaki, 2011), Sun, 3:30; Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki, 1986), Sun, 5:30. *

 

The 8 things that made BottleRock, well, BottleRock

Steven T. Jones
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I am surrounded by people with purple teeth, stained from too much red wine. These people are twisted beyond belief, screaming obscenities about forgotten 90s bands, while wine sloshes around in glasses suspended by those stupid-looking lanyard wine glass holders. I want to say to them, “Literally, handle your shit. Like, physically hold your glass of wine. You’re a grown up.” It’s like a bad summer picnic for rich winos…

Or at least that’s how I imagined BottleRock to be as we drove up from San Francisco blaring the Gin Blossoms. It was my first time at this particular festival and like everything, I imagined the weirdest possible outcome. While I was dead wrong about the particulars, it was right about something: this festival was strange as shit. Here are a few things that made Bottle Rock, well, Bottle Rock. 

1. Cargo shorts – There were A LOT of cargo shorts. Especially the first day. My friend Lauryn was right, the time machine had worked. But instead of a My So-Called Life fashion parade, it was more like all the style trends of the past 40 years muddled together with large dollop of not really trying. Cargo shorts are the vanguard of not really trying. While I appreciate their utilitarianism, how many things do you really need to hold? I know I sound like a San Francisco snob, but really…cargo shorts.  

cs

2. Middling bands – There were some really stellar, world-class acts at BottleRock. Outkast, The Cure, Weezer, TV on the Radio; these are the groups whose music helps not only define the moments of your lifetime but also whose existence has influenced the way music is created. That said, a lot of the bands who played over the weekend were probably as surprised as you were that they were booked. I wonder how many of them first said to their booking agent, “Are you fucking with me?” While groups like Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, The Spin Doctors, and Cracker all have one or two solid hits, festival-goers spent most of their sets fidgeting anxiously while muttering, “Dude, play the one song already.” We didn’t even get to stay long enough to find out if the Gin Blossoms played “Hey Jealousy” because well, The Cure was about to start. BottleRock was held where the Napa Town and Country Fair is held, which makes sense considering how many of the bands now play the fair circuit.

weezer
Weezer

3. The crowd was really well-behaved – Honestly, what a nice group of 40,000 people. I remember saying at one point, “Nobody gets arrested at this festival.” Anyone who’s spent time in large groups of drunk people knows that feeling of menace being in the air. Like when you walk out of a sports game at the opponents home field after your team just won. It’s that feeling of, “things could get ugly real fast”. Well there was none of that at BottleRock. You could’ve headbutted somebody’s child and they would probably have apologized to you. Well done, Napa. You sure bring out nice folks. Case in point: At one point my lady friend Ashley lost her phone and some well-meaning person found it and brought it to a security guard. Ashley had it back in less than an hour.      

cure
The Cure. Photo by Lauryn McCarthy.

4. The crowd was also kinda weak – At two different times during their incredible set, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, the principle members of Outkast, asked the crowed “Are you still with us?” [Ed note: this is embarrassing.] Outkast didn’t even come out for an encore. Maybe it’s because after two days of watching bands like Third Eye Blind, where the festival goers only knew one out of every six songs, they just weren’t emotionally equipped to handle a set this good. At this point they so yearned for something familiar that anytime Outkast strayed from their megahits, the crowd lost interest. I’m sorry, Andre and Big Boi. I was there with you the whole time. 

5. Matt and Kim make the world a better place – Seriously who knew that two people, a drum kit, and a synth could be so enthralling? Matt and Kim are the most fun band ever! I was never that into their recorded music, but after seeing them live, I want to start saving up now so I can afford to hire them to play my as-yet unborn child’s bar or bat mitzvah.

matt and kim
Matt and Kim

6. $20 glasses of wine – Yes, really. Glasses of wine were $20. Maybe that’s why everyone was so nice to each other, nobody could afford to get drunk.  

7. No place to stay and terrible traffic – One of the things that makes Napa so nice to visit, besides the whole being buzzed on wine samples thing, is that it’s a quaint and lovely little town. The problem with that is that when you have 40,000 people come in for the weekend it makes it really had for people to find a place to stay. This makes people stay in the Bay Area and commute each night, which in turn potentially puts a lot more intoxicated people on the road. There isn’t even shuttle service offered from San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley etc. Even though we stayed with friends for the weekend, everything was so impacted that it took an hour an a half to get an Uber. These are all things that the organizers should take into account for next year.   

8. The strict 10pm curfew – Napa’s lovely quaintness also means that BottleRock has neighbors who hate everything about the festival. Somebody told me they saw a sign on a nearby house that basically said, “Hey Bottle Rock: Get the fuck out of here”. Thus there was a strict 10pm curfew that lead to both The Cure and Heart getting the plug pulled on them. I’m not saying anything instructive here about it, I’m just saying “bummer.”

If my snarkiness makes it seem like I hated the festival, I apologize. Overall BottleRock was a good time and has a lot of potential to get even better as the years progress. Until then, let’s all make an effort to rid the world of cargo shorts.  

Our Weekly Picks: May 28-June 3, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 28

Rodriguez

In 1970, a singer-songwriter called Rodriguez, who had been discovered by a couple of music producers in a downtown Detroit bar, cut an album called Cold Fact. It bombed. After an equally-disappointing follow-up record, Rodriguez abandoned his musical career and faded into obscurity. Meanwhile, in South Africa, a bootleg copy of Cold Fact had become the soundtrack to the Anti-Apartheid movement. Rodriguez was completely unknown in the United States, and more famous than Elvis in South Africa. Decades later, two Rodriguez fans travelled from Cape Town to find out what happened to Rodriguez and research the rumors of his onstage suicide. Instead they found him working in construction and ready to continue his musical dreams. Rodriguez’ story is chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugarman. His incredible story, however, is not what makes him worth seeing: As a performer he is tender, compelling, and well worth the 40-year wait. (Haley Zaremba)

With LP

$40, 8pm

The Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

 

 

Exclusive screening: The Pink Room

Never mind Elizabeth Raine, the med student who auctioned her virginity for a six-figure price tag. In many cases, prostitution is not a luxury, it’s slavery. In a country ravaged by genocide, many Cambodian children became orphans and forced into a life of child slavery and prostitution. The Pink Room documentary exposes the human trafficking and child sex slavery that runs rampant in Cambodia, threading together first-person accounts of those held captive and those helping to change the country where over 1 million children are sexually abused. One of the accounts comes from a Cambodian woman who was forced into the industry at a very young age, illustrating how Mien’s virginity was sold at a high price, but her value becomes lower with each purchase. After years of torture, she’s become a voice of hope and compassion in a country plagued by darkness. This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s directors and producers. (Laura B. Childs)

7pm, $25

Letterman Digital Arts Center

Chestnut & Lyon, SF

(415) 897-2123

www.onelettermandrive.com

 

 

THURSDAY 29

 

SF’s Power Women of Eventbrite, ModCloth & One Kings Lane

Talk about co-founders with cache — three local startup champions will share their success stories, including tales from the trenches of the e-commerce realm and insights on how they’ve won followers’ hearts. Julia Hartz’s Eventbrite has become the ticketing standard-bearer for events; Susan Gregg Koger’s ModCloth merges online couture shopping with a growing social network of fashionistas; and Alison Pincus’s One Kings Lane provides high-end furnishings and home decor directly to trendy tastemakers. They’ll converse with a fourth entrepreneur, BlogHer cofounder and media strategist Jory Des Jardins. (Kevin Lee)

6:30pm, $15-$45

The Fairmont Hotel, Gold Room

950 Mason, SF

(415) 597-6700

www.commonwealthclub.org

 

 

Bloody Beetroots

With a real name like Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, it’s hard to see why you would opt for a pseudonym, but the Italian producer has been successfully producing infectious and inspired dance and electronic music under the Bloody Beatroots moniker since 2006. Rifo was classically trained on guitar, learning to read by the solfege method and studying Chopin, Beethoven, and Debussy. His fascination with punk, new wave, and ’70s-era comic strips, however, pulled him out of this straight-laced territory and into a new musical world of his own creation. Rifo and his right-hand-man and sampler Tommy Tea are known for their rowdy, energized live shows, and the black Venom masks they wear throughout, never showing their faces. Dirty, fun, and hard to predict, the Bloody Beetroots guarantee a great, sweaty night. (Zaremba)

With J Boogie

$25, 8pm

The Regency

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

 

SF Green Film Festival

San Franciscans are no strangers to tackling the subject of global warming. Whether we’re discussing the drought or trying to solve climate change by working less, the well-being of the planet is foremost on our minds. But starting tonight, we’ll let the pros take over: The Green Film Festival is a weeklong affair that will consist of environmentally-conscious documentaries, panel discussions with filmmakers and activists, and workshops with non-profits. The 4th annual festival kicks off with the San Francisco premiere of DamNation, an award-winning documentary that explores sea change and reveals how removing dams would bring rivers back to their natural state, helping to stabilize the ecosystem. Explore marine life, meet the filmmakers, and discuss the environment over sustainable food and drinks at the opening night reception, held at the Aquarium of the Bay. (Childs)

6pm, $50

Aquarium of the Bay & Bay Theater

Embarcadero at Beach, SF

(415) 742-1394

www.sfgreenfilmfest.org

 

 

FRIDAY 30

 

Animal Collective (DJ set)

Animal Collective guitarist Panda Bear is jamming on a nationwide tour solo, so some of the other members have elected to show off their digital record collections in select venues. What to expect from a set? Actual recorded footage of the band’s mixmastery is rare, but Soundcloud and YouTube have a two-hour tablets-and-mixer session that serves as an especially encouraging primer — a catchy blend of funk, psychedelic, uplifting vocal house, and brooding techno. The Collective members stitched together their tasteful selections through different techniques, alternating between tried-and-true beat-matching and masterfully weaving melodies. Much of the two-hour mix came off as both carefully curated and effortlessly engaging; hopefully there is more to come. (Lee)

With Slow Magic, Sophie

10 pm, $25

1015 Folsom, SF

(415) 431-1200

www.1015.com

 

 

Risa Jaroslow’s What’s the Upshot?

Having moved here barely a year ago, Risa Jaroslow is not yet a household name even within the local dance community. Yet she has brought with her a long, well-respected career of creating choreography in which movement — whether from highly trained dancers or common folks — has stories to tell about what it means to be alive today. “I always start with a question that has resonance for me,” she recently explained. The new What’s the Upshot? may well have been provoked by her move across the country. Here she is working with Sophie Stanley, about to join AXIS; Jordan Stout, who comes from contact improv; and Patrick Barnes, who brings a strong athletic background to dance. On Friday and Sunday, Peiling Kao’s Ludic Numerologies will join Jaroslow’s premiere. (Rita Felciano)

May 30 and 31, 8pm, June 1, 4pm, $15-$18

Shawl Anderson Dance Center

2704 Alcatraz, Berk.

(510) 654-5921

www.shawl-anderson.org

 

 

SATURDAY 31

 

SPIRIT: Queer Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander Artivism

The National Queer Arts Festival and San Francisco’s own community leaders Queer Rebels present the untold stories of queers, from Angel Island to the Arab Spring, in a two-day celebration of performance art and film. Saturday’s performances include drag performance duo BELLOWS, who opened Queer Rebels’ Liberating Legacies show earlier this month; Elena Rose, co-curator of Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue, which has run at the National Queer Arts Festival for five years; Modern Arabic Stage Style dancer Heaven Mousalem, and many more. Come back Sunday for an afternoon of films by a variety of artivists, including Queer Rebels co-founder and host Celeste Chan herself. SPIRIT is an opportunity to honor histories, talents, and intersections of identity that don’t make it to our televisions sets. Tickets for Saturday’s performances are available on Brown Paper Tickets, and tickets for Sunday’s films can be purchased at the door. (Kirstie Haruta)

Sat., 8pm, $12-20

African American Art & Culture Complex

762 Fulton, SF

(415) 922-2049

www.aaacc.org

 

Sun., 3pm, $7-10

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.atasite.org

 

 

SF Silent Film Festival

Fans of classic cinema are in for a treat this week with the return of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the annual celebration of the early years of film. Opening up the fete this year is a screening of 1921’s The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse — the film that propelled Rudolph Valentino to Hollywood stardom — which will be presented with live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Other highlights include Douglas Fairbanks’ The Good Bad Man and comedy legend Buster Keaton’s The Navigator. Don’t miss your chance to see these films in one of the last surviving movie palaces from that time period. (Sean McCourt)

May 29 – June 1, times and prices vary

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

www.silentfilm.org

 

 

SUNDAY 1

 

Fantasia

Growing out of what was originally just going to be a “Silly Symphonies” short in the late ’30s, Walt Disney’s 1940 masterpiece Fantasia broke new ground in animation on a variety of levels, employing some of the finest artists and musicians of the day to bring his vision to life. Combining the magic of cartoons and classical music, the film featured famous conductor Leopold Stokowsi leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. This weekend the San Francisco Symphony will be performing live to screenings of selections from both the original classic and Fantasia 2000, including the beloved and iconic piece “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” (Sean McCourt)

8pm Sat.; 4pm Sun., $41-$156

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

MONDAY 2

 

Kelis

 

Perhaps today’s young’uns will come to know her for her relatively tame show on the Cooking Channel (Saucy & Sweet), but for the rest of us, Kelis will always be one of the bossiest, baddest ladies in radio R&B — not to mention that whole milkshake thing. The un-self-consciously sexy singer/rapper/larger-than-life-persona kicks off her first national tour in four years with this show in San Francisco, performing songs off her April release and sixth studio album, the straightforwardly-titled Food, which features rootsy, funky, electro-tinged tracks like “Breakfast,” “Cobbler,” “Jerk Ribs,” and “Friday Fish Fry.” Maybe eat before you go. (Emma Silvers)

With Son Little

8pm, $22.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.thefillmore.com

 

TUESDAY 3  

 

Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy

“Ziola said that the students would leave for the fields after breakfast, around 7 a.m., and would come back around 5:30 p.m. There were no days off. They were working on Sundays and holidays as well.” This is how a seamstress from Uzbekistan describes her daughter being forced by school officials to pick cotton for meager wages in a new book from McSweeney’s, Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy. Her account is among 16 first-hand oral histories documenting the poor working conditions and hidden human rights abuses that laborers encounter in the U.S. and abroad. Invisible Hands‘ editor and San Diego-based immigration lawyer Corinne Goria will talk with Mother Jones editor Maddie Oatman about how the collection of stories came together. (Lee)

7pm, free

826 Valencia

826 Valencia, SF

(415) 642-5905

www.826valencia.org

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Gettin’ festy

Steven T. Jones
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Gettin’ festy

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL Earlier this month, Oakland singer-songwriter Ash Reiter was at Hipnic, an annual three-day music festival in Big Sur thrown by promoters folkYEAH!, featuring Cass McCombs, the Fresh & Onlys, the Mother Hips, Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers, and plenty of other Bay Area folky faves. Held at the Fernwood Resort and campgrounds, with families gathering under the shade of redwoods, it’s one of the cozier, more homegrown summer festivals in the greater Bay Area — there’s nary a Coachella-esque VIP section in sight — but a three-day pass still comes in at a cool $240.

Looking around, Reiter saw how the ticket price had shaped the crowd.

“There was obviously some great music, but that kind of boutique festival thing is so expensive that a lot of the audience seemed like older, well-off folks, parents — I mean, those are the people who can afford to go to these things,” she recalls. “I’m sure a lot of the bands playing wouldn’t be able to go to that festival, if they weren’t playing.”

It was that kind of thinking that sparked the idea for Hickey Fest, a three-day festival now in its second year and named for its location in Standish Hickey State Park in Mendocino County, “where the South Fork of the Eel River shimmers against the backdrop of the majestic redwoods,” according to the fest’s flyers. Born of the desire to curate a “musical experience outside of just your average festival, a chance for musicians to actually hang out and talk to each other and get to know each other that’s not just in a loud rock club,” Reiter launched Hickey Fest over Memorial Day weekend last year, with a lineup of friend-bands like Warm Soda, Farallons, Cool Ghouls, and Michael Musika. The goal: A festival her musician friends would actually enjoy, in an atmosphere that wouldn’t be “as overwhelming as a BottleRock or an Outside Lands.” She estimates some 500 to 600 people attended in total.

This year’s festival, which runs June 20-22 in the same location, includes another local-love lineup, including Papercuts, Sonny and the Sunsets, Black Cobra Vipers, and more. A $60 ticket gets you three days of music and camping. “I wanted it to be about community, about putting the fun back in music,” says Reiter, who will also perform. “So I did intentionally try to make it as cheap as possible.”

It’s a sentiment rarely heard from music promoters, especially as the days get longer and the work-ditching gets ubiquitous and the college kids are all turned loose for the summer. Festival season is upon us, Bay Area, and make no mistake: It’s a great way to see touring bands from all over the country. It’s a great platform for local bands, who get the chance to play bigger stages and reach new audiences. And as a music fan, it’s a great way to spend a shit-ton of money.

FIELD OF DREAMS

In the summer of 1969, when Woodstock was changing the meaning of “music festival” on the East Coast via Jimi solos and free, mud-covered love, plans were taking shape for a San Francisco festival that, had it actually taken place, would have been legendary: The Wild West Festival, scheduled for Aug. 22-24, was designed as a three-day party, with regular (ticketed) concerts each night in Kezar Stadium, while other bands performed free music all day, each day, in Golden Gate Park.

Bill Graham and other SF rock scene movers and shakers worked collaboratively on organizing the festival, which — had it happened — would have seen Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Country Joe and the Fish, the Steve Miller Band, and half a dozen other iconic bands of the decade all taking the stage within 72 hours.

Why’d it fall apart? According to most versions of the story, too many of those involved wanted the whole damn thing to be free. Graham, among others, countered that, while the free music utopia was a nice idea, lights, a sound system, and other basic accoutrements of a music festival did in fact cost American dollars. The plans collapsed amid in-fighting, and the infamous Altamont free music festival was planned as a sort of make-up for December of that year — an organizational disaster of an event that came to be known for the death of Meredith Hunter, among other violence, signaling the end of a certain starry-eyed era.

So yeah, money has always been a sticky part of live music festivals. But the industry has boomed in a particularly mind-boggling way over the last decade; never before have ticket prices served as such a clear barrier to entry for your average, middle-class music fan. Forget Hipnic: In the days after Outside Lands sold out, enterprising San Franciscans began plonking their three-day festival passes onto the “for sale” section of Craigslist at upwards of $1,000 each.

The alternative? The “screw that corporate shit, let’s do our own thing” attitude, which is, of course, exactly the kind of attitude that’s birthed the bumper crop of smaller summer festivals that have sprung up in the Bay Area over the past few years, like Phono del Sol (July 12, an indie-leaning daylong affair in SF’s Potrero del Sol Park, started by hip-kid music blog The Bay Bridged in 2010, tickets: $25-$30) and Burger Boogaloo (a cheekily irreverent punk, surf, and rockabilly fest over July 4 weekend in Oakland’s Mosswood Park — weekend pass: $50). Both pair bigger, buzzy acts with national reach like Wye Oak (Phono del Sol) or Thee Oh Sees and the great Ronnie Spector (Burger Boogaloo) with a slew of local openers.

“I’ve played a few festivals, and when it’s a really big thing, you realize there are just so many other huge bands that people would rather see,” says Mikey Maramag, better known as the folk-tronica brains behind SF’s Blackbird Blackbird. He’ll be sharing a bill with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Nick Waterhouse, White Fence, A Million Billion Dying Suns, and others at Phono del Sol — which, judging by last year’s attendance, could draw some 5,000 to 6,000 people.

“I think at smaller festivals you have more people who take the time to really listen, appreciate the music more, really big fans,” he says. “There are fewer artists on this bill [than at large festivals] but they’re all great ones — I’m especially excited to see Wye Oak.”

Maramag will be debuting some songs from his new album, Tangerine Sky, out June 3; the show will serve as a welcome-home from a quick national tour to promote it.

Then there are the even more modest summer offerings, like SF Popfest, which takes place over four days (May 22-25) at various small venues in the city. It’s not exactly a traditional festival — you’re not likely to find slideshows online of the “BEST POPFEST FASHION!!1!” the way we’ve unfortunately become accustomed to from Coachella — but for the small contingent of super passionate ’90s indie-pop fans in the Bay Area (hi!), this is one not to miss.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people who think it’s a very different kind of festival than it is. App people. This one guy had some kind of offer about a parking app for festivals, I think? Which would really not make any sense at all,” says Josh Yule, guitarist for SF jangle-pop maestros Cruel Summer, who received the mantle of SF Popfest organizer from his predecessor in the mid-aughts (older history of the festival is a little hazy, as it’s always been primarily organized by musicians for musicians — for fun and, says Yule, absolutely no profit whatsoever). There was talk of getting some beer sponsors at some point, but he decided against it. “We have friends working the door at most of these things. I was a punk kid in high school, I guess, I tend to stay away from things that would make this go in a more corporate direction.”

This year’s fest is centered around reunions of bands who’ve been broken up for a while, like cult-favorite Sacramento popsters Rocketship, who haven’t played together in at least a decade; the band will be at the Rickshaw Stop Fri/23 for a Slumberland Records showcase. Dressy Bessy, Dreamdate, the Mantles, Terry Malts, and plenty others will all make appearances throughout the fest, as well as a few newer bands, like the female-fronted Stockton garagey-punk band Monster Treasure.

“Obviously it’s not gonna be thousands of people, it’s not going to be outside — it’s going to be 100 to 200 like-minded individuals who all enjoy the same thing, and they all get it,” says Yule. “We got these bands back together to play and they’re all excited about it even though there’s no [financial] guarantee…It’s that community that I’ve always been involved in and sometimes I feel like it’s not around anymore. So it’s nice to go ‘Oh wait, there it is. It’s still there, and it’s still strong.'”

CROWD SURFING

For local bands just starting to make a name for themselves, of course, there’s nothing like a larger and yes, very corporate festival for reaching new audiences. Take the locals stage at LIVE 105’s BFD, the all-day radio-rock party celebrating its 20th year June 1 at the Shoreline: Curated by the station’s music director, Aaron Axelsen — aka the DJ who’s launched 1,000 careers, thanks to his Sunday night locals-only show, Soundcheck, as well as booking up-and-comers for Popscene — the locals stage at BFD has a pretty good track record for launching bands onto the next big thing. The French Cassettes, one of SF’s current indie-pop darlings, sure hope that holds true for them.

“Aaron Axelsen has been really generous to us. I think we’re all clear that none of this would be happening without him,” says singer-guitarist Scott Huerta. The band will be playing songs from its newest album, out on cassette (duh) at the end of May. “But we’re super excited just to be in there. Hopefully we make some new fans. I know I used to find out about new bands by going to BFD and just passing by that stage. It’s by all the food vendors, so as long as people are hungry, we’ll be good. Don’t eat before you come.”

For the Tumbleweed Wanderers, an Oakland-based soul-folk-rock band that’s been hustling back and forth across the country for the past year, hitting the stage at Outside Lands (Aug. 8-10) — that festival everyone loves to hate and hates to love — will be the culmination of years of playing around the festival, quite literally.

“In 2011, we busked outside, and I think that’s the year [our keyboard player] Patrick almost got arrested?” says Rob Fidel, singer-guitarist, with a laugh. “Then the next year we got asked to play Dr. Flotsam’s Hell Brew Review, which is this thing in the park just outside Outside Lands, and we did that for an hour and a half every day for free. And then busked outside. I like to say we played Outside Lands more than any other band that year.

“But to be on the other side of that all of a sudden is awesome,” he says, noting that the band will be playing some tunes from a new record set for release later this year. “It was the same when we played the Fillmore for the first time — we used to busk outside of there and the venue would get super pissed, and now, oh look, that same guy’s carrying our amps…but I think the experience of working our way up like that has kinda taught us you’re gonna see the same people on the way up as on the way down. And we’ve worked really hard these past few years. It’s nice to feel like we’ve earned it.”

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say there are roughly 1,000 other music festivals happening throughout the Bay Area this summer — at the Guardian, our inboxes have been filling up with press releases and show announcements since February; check out the roundup below for a mere smattering of what’s going on. And, ticket price hand-wringing aside, you don’t need to be rich to rock out: Stern Grove’s free Sunday lineups, with heavy hitters like Smokey Robinson, Andrew Bird, Rufus Wainwright, and the Zombies, are among the best we’ve seen. In the East Bay, the Art+Soul Festival is always a source of up-and-comers in hip-hop, funk, and more — this year for the whopping price of $15.

So, yeah, we never got that Janis and Sly and Jefferson Airplane show. So be it. As a music fan in the Bay Area, there’s no better time than summer to smack yourself, remember that you’re super lucky to live here, grab a sweater (because layers), and get out to hear some music. Call it your own damn three-month-long Wild West Festival. We’ll see you in the bathroom line.

 

May

SF Popfest, May 22-25, locations vary throughout SF, www.sfpopfest.com

Audio on the Bay, Craneway Pavilion, Richmond, May 23-25, www.insomniac.com

BottleRock Napa Valley, Napa, May 30-June 1, www.bottlerocknapavalley.com

 

June

LIVE 105’s BFD, June 1, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, www.live105.cbslocal.com

Not Dead Yet Fest, June 7, Thee Parkside, SF, www.notdeadyetfest.com

OMINODAY Music Festival, June 7, McLaren Park, SF, www.ominoday.weebly.com

The San Francisco Jazz Festival, June 11-22, locations vary. www.sfjazz.org

Reggae in the Hills, Calaveras County Fairgrounds, June 13-15, www.reggaeinthehills.com

Hickey Fest, June 20-22, Leggett, www.hickeyfest.wordpress.com

San Francisco Free Folk Festival, June 21-22, Presidio Middle School, SF, www.sffolkfest.org

Berkeley World Music Festival, June 22, People’s Park, Berk., www.berkeleyworldmusic.org

 

July

High Sierra Music Festival, July 3-6, Quincy, www.highsierramusic.com

Burger Boogaloo, July 5-6, Mosswood Park, Oak., www.burgerboogaloo.com

Phono del Sol, July 12, Potrero del Sol Park, SF, www.phonodelsol.com

Northern Nights, July 18-20, Mendocino/Humboldt, www.northernnights.org

 

August

Art + Soul Oakland, Aug. 2-3, City Center, Oak., www.artandsouloakland.com

Outside Lands, Aug. 8-10, Golden Gate Park, SF, www.sfoutsidelands.com

First City Festival, Aug. 23-24, Monterey, www.firstcityfestival.com

 

Throughout the summer: Stern Grove Festival, Sundays, www.sterngrove.org; People in Plazas, dates vary, throughout downtown SF, www.peopleinplazas.org.

KUSF’s axe-man, Father Privett, stepping down

Erica Hanna
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KUSF’s axe-man, Father Privett, stepping down

The University of San Francisco president who sold off beloved community radio station KUSF in 2011 is stepping down in August, the university recently announced. Father Stephen Privett is known by elected officials and higher-education folks as a strong, stalwart 14-year leader of San Francisco’s oldest university. But to local artists and music lovers, Privett was and will always be the axe-man of KUSF.

And no, we don’t mean he shredded on the guitar.

KUSF continues to rock on as San Francisco Community Radio, but in 2011 its spot on the terrestial dial was sold and closed.

The day it went down, KUSF radio’s employees and volunteers were unexpectedly tossed out of their studio, the locks were changed, and they learned then and there that the station was sold. The signal went dark, radios went silent. The USF-hosted radio station long broadcasted renegade tunes on 90.3 FM, with programming in a variety of languages few other stations replicated.

Privett brought the hatchet down on the beloved radio station, silently. The backroom deal to sell KUSF’s spot on the dial to a Southern California classic music radio station was brewed largely in the dark, with only two KUSF employees told before the day the station was shuttered. Both were silenced under non-disclosure agreements, according to news reports at the time. 

In his farewell interview with USF’s campus magazine, Privett touched on his controversial decision. 

“KUSF was originally student run and operated, and a valuable learning laboratory. It morphed over time into a community enterprise where only 10 percent of the workers were USF students, while USF remained 100 percent responsible for its operation and costs.

Our mission is to educate in the Jesuit Catholic tradition, not to provide opportunities largely for non-students. I am obligated to spend tuition dollars to support student learning, and that’s how the proceeds were used: to fund scholarships and academic programs.

USF continues to offer students solid learning opportunities at KUSF.org, which is entirely student-staffed and streamed live on the Internet.”

It’s safe to say former KUSF DJs and volunteers aren’t sad to see him go. 

“Sadly, a black cloud continues to linger over Father Privett’s legacy, due to his shady and dishonest actions in killing one of the largest and most vital community radio stations in San Francisco,” former KUSF Music Director (and DJ) Irwin Swirnoff told the Guardian. “With all the drastic changes the city has gone through since the sale of the station, the loss of KUSF is extra devastating as the need for a spot on the terrestrial dial for artists, activists, musicians, and underrepresented communities.”

Privett has led San Francisco’s oldest university for 14 years, and this will be his last semester presiding over the Jesuit institution. This weekend, May 16-17, Privett will send off a graduating USF class for the last time. Meanwhile, the fate of the former KUSF-in-Exile, now SFCR, is still in limbo.

The staff and volunteers of KUSF filed an appeal of the sale of the station with the Federal Communications Commission back in 2012, former KUSF DJ Damin Esper told the Guardian. The appeal has neither been ruled on nor dismissed.

SFCR also filed with the FCC for a new spot on the dial, 102.5 FM. The frequency is known as Low Power FM, which has a variable broadcast strength. On its blog, SFCR says the broadcast range of 102.5 FM is as of yet unclear. 

But what is clear is that no matter what his accomplishments at USF, Privett will long be remembered in San Francisco as the man who shut down KUSF. 

“The station was gutted and demolished; dorms now stand in its place,” former DJ Andre Torrez told the Guardian. “He did what he felt he had to do in order to make his instant millions. Our vast vinyl library was handed over to the Prometheus archive, with no option for the Save KUSF volunteer/ activist group, which still broadcasts online only, to purchase or access the collection.” 

“We were major. We had Nirvana, The Ramones, Metallica, Iggy, Green Day, and more recently Ty Segall all as live in-studio guests when they were emerging artists or on the brink of breaking through. Father Privett probably wasn’t fully aware of how important KUSF was, but we certainly would have let him know how we felt had he cared or asked.”

“He has been instrumental in killing community terrestrial radio in San Francisco,” Torrez said, “and for that, he should be ashamed.”

This Week’s Picks: May 14 – 20, 2014

Michael Redmond
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WEDNESDAY 13

 

KQED Presents an Evening With Ken Burns

Remember slowly drifting off while watching documentaries during history class on a warm afternoon? Well, if there’s anyone who can make a historical documentary interesting, it’s the great Ken Burns. If you’ve ever used iPhoto, iMovie, or Final Cut Pro, you’re familiar with “The Ken Burns Effect.” Known for bringing life to still photographs, the Ken Burns Effect is back with The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Burns will present a sneak preview of his seven-part, 14-hour documentary after an onstage conversation about the film, which will premiere on PBS in September. The film takes the unique perspective of weaving together the lives of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, illuminating the influential stories of how two presidents and a first lady played integral roles in shaping American history — from human and civil rights battles to the creation of National Parks to the defeat of Hitler. (Laura B. Childs)

7:30pm, $25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6350

www.castrotheatre.om

 

 

 

Rocking the robots

If you’ve never seen Sleepbomb do its thing at the band members’ main stomping ground, you’re in for a rare treat. This postindustrial improvisational band, made up mostly of Zeitgeist employees and regulars, will play a live soundtrack to Metropolis, the cult-classic silent film by German Expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang. Sleepbomb has done live soundtracks to Metropolis and Nosferatu before in the Zeitgeist beer garden, and it’s always an eerie, artsy, urban, robotic, drunken good time. (Steven T. Jones)

8pm, donation-based

Zeitgeist

199 Valencia, SF

www.zeitgeistsf.com

 

THURSDAY 15

 

Anti-Nowhere League

British hardcore punk stalwarts the Anti-Nowhere League have made a name for themselves over the past three decades with an unabashedly aggressive and in-your-face approach, as evidenced by their signature songs “I Hate People” and the profanity-laced “So What” — the latter was even notoriously covered by Metallica. In a perfect pairing, Southern California punk icons T.S.O.L (True Sounds of Liberty), who became infamous for the police riots that would break out at their shows, and the tune “Code Blue,” an ode to the joys of necrophilia, join the bill for what promises to be one hell of show. (Sean McCourt)

With The Riverboat Gamblers and Dime Runner

9pm, $18-$20

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 


FRIDAY 16

 

Fou Fou fabulous

Fou Fou Ha, our favorite cartoon performance troupe, makes a big leap forward as it returns to its roots for its latest original show, In Living Colors. This psychedelic dance journey through an exotic world is described as “Alice in Wonderland meets the Forbidden Zone,” combining elaborate 3D pop-up sets and projections by Obscura Digital. It’s a new twist on the lively choreographed comedy that is classic Fou, but on an occasion that’s a little bittersweet for Mama Fou (aka Maya Lane) and the rest of Family Fou. The troupe got its start in this location back when it was CELLspace, the players kept it as their home during its evolution into Inner Mission, and now this looks like it will be Fou Fou Ha’s final performance in a space that is being shut down this fall and converted into condos. So come laugh, cry, dance, and laugh some more. (Jones)

9pm, DJ dancing until 1:30am

$25 advance, $30 door

Inner Mission

2035 Bryant, SF

www.foufouha.eventbrite.com

 

 

 

Zion I

Last time Zion I was at the Independent was for a guest appearance during the venue’s 10th anniversary celebration. Tonight, the Bay Area indie hip-hop duo is back. Baba Zumbi and AmpLive of Zion I have been making music together for over 15 years. AmpLive brings the electronic dance beats that vacillate between reggae and drum ‘n’ bass, Zumbi carries the vocals with socially conscious lyrics. Originally formed in Atlanta, the Berkeley-based duo creates a relatable sound that’s difficult to define. Neither West Coast hip-hop, nor East Coast rap, the band’s musical influences remains deeply engrained in songs that deliver messages of unity and hope. (Childs)

9pm, $25

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

 

SATURDAY 17

 

Black Market SF Presents ‘Rendezvous’

Secrets, truths and lies…Black Market SF is hosting one of its legendary events tonight for the curious: Rendezvous. They say, curiosity killed the cat, but in this case, let your curiosity run wild. This clandestine discovery market will carry an assortment of local craft and food vendors as well as many secret activities to be discovered on the night of. Explore one of SF’s best-kept secrets in the intimate setting of the Folsom Street Foundry. If the city’s best craft artisans and food purveyors don’t pique your interest, an exclusive live set of up-and-coming acts will spearhead the dance party. This mysterious night will be one for the books. (Childs)

6pm-11pm, $8

Folsom Street Foundry

1425 Folsom Street

(415) 795-3644

www.folsomstreetfoundry.com

 

 

‘Nomad: The Blue Road’

Many tribal people living on parched lands engage in ritualistic dances to encourage the falling of precious rain. Since water is the world’s most important and most endangered natural resource, we might as well try dancing. It just could help. For this weekend the bi-national Dance Monks, an interdisciplinary ensemble that works both in the Bay Area and Mexico, has enlisted local artists — Dohee Lee, NAKA Dance among them — to help out drought-stricken California. NOMAD: The Blue Road, takes audiences along the path of Strawberry Creek, Berkeley’s beloved small stream that still burbles and runs under the urban asphalt of downtown Berkley. The piece starts on the UC campus and winds its way along the creek’s trajectory with performances along the path. (Rita Felciano)

May 17-18, 11am, free

UC Berkeley Campus

Oxford and Center St, Berk.

www.dancemonks.com

 

 

SUNDAY 18

 

Bay to Breakers people-watching

If you have friends participating in the race but, like so many of us, you also feel a local’s urge to get the hell out of town during Bay to Breakers weekend — or at least as far away from the costumed, beer-soaked debauchery as possible — get the best of both worlds by hitting one of the rival Hayes Street house parties along the course, with DJs, more than you could ever want to drink, and probably very little pressure to be athletic in any way. Alternatively, hit Alamo Square for an amazing view of some 30,000 people all making their way up the Hayes Street Hill. Just remember: The cops have pledged a zero-tolerance policy for public drunkenness this year. We’ll see how that all shakes out. (Emma Silvers)

All day, free

Throughout SF

Check www.baytobreakers.com for the official route and other events

 

 

 

Iggy Azalea

First things first, she’s the realest. The Australian beauty and hip-hop performer, Iggy Azalea, has been making waves in this hemisphere since her Clueless-inspired music video for her hit single “Fancy.” With sassy raps and catchy hooks about the glam life, Azalea’s sound is reminiscent of the “it” girls of the early 2000’s. Think Gwen Stefani’s vocals and Lil’ Kim’s beats, but this former model adds personal flair with her zero-fucks-given charisma and unabashed obsession with America. She’s opened for household names such as Beyoncé and Rita Ora, but since the release of her debut album, The New Classic, Azalea is on the prowl with her Monster Energy Outbreak Tour. (Childs)

8pm, $35

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


MONDAY 19


Ben Folds with the San Francisco Symphony

In the 17 years since his old band, Ben Folds Five, burst onto the national scene with “Brick” — likely the catchiest, most radio-friendly song ever penned about an abortion at Christmastime — pianist-singer-songwriter-storyteller Ben Folds has proven to be so much more than a flash in the pan. On this tour, he’s been performing solo with orchestras and symphonies around the world; if you’re not quite sure how his songwriting would stand up to such elaborate instrumentation, search for videos online of his performances with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. This one-off show should be a treat for devotees of the singer’s nearly three-decade career as well as symphony fans — nothing like a little pop-rock-classical synergy on a Monday night. (Silvers)

7:30pm, prices vary, see website for details

Davies Symphony Hall

Grove between Van Ness and Franklin, SF

www.sfsymphony.org


TUESDAY 20

 

Write Club SF

Who says writing isn’t a contact sport? The monthly Write Club, which bills itself with the motto “literature as bloodsport,” pits local lit figures against each other in a competitive readings series, with writers arguing such topics as “snow vs. fire,” “ham vs. turkey,” and “Santa vs. Jesus.” This month’s will see six writers, including Caitlin Gill, Rachel Bublitz, and founders Steven Westdahl and Casey Childers arguing over topics such as “beginning” vs. “end.” The audience picks the winner, and proceeds go to a charity of the winner’s choice. Reading, arguing, a full bar — what’s not to like? (Silvers)

8pm, $10

Make-Out Room

322522nd St, SF

www.writeclubsf.com


Damien Jurado

Serious Damien Jurado fans — and the folksy indie-rocker does seem to inspire a certain (well-deserved) fervor amongst a certain set — know the songwriter’s gift for storytelling owes as much to a willingness to get weird as it does to playing with narrative. Jurado’s latest release, January’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, is the third piece in a three-part collaboration with producer Richard Swift, and it shies away from neither the religious overtones nor the heady, spaced-out hero’s journey type of tale 2012’s Maraqopa laid out; it’s more stripped-down, if anything, so those themes are laid bare. Live, he’s known for making even large rooms feel intimate; this show shouldn’t disappoint. (Silvers)

8pm, $15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

 

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