SF

I against I

-
0

CULT FILM Nothing exerts quite the same simultaneous attraction-repulsion magnetism like a really world-class vanity project. You know, the kind in which the writer-director-star-editor-caterer-fluffer — usually playing a thinly disguised version of moi in a world that does not at all fully appreciate them — reveals more of their off-screen inner workings than one ever wanted to know.

Typically these things occur just once in a talent’s life, then are never allowed to happen again, like Babs’ 1996 The Mirror Has Two Faces or Los Angeles weirdo Tommy Wiseau’s so-bad-it’s-surreal cult microhit The Room (2003). Some inexplicably get to make several, like Vincent Gallo, Ed Burns, or such determined wrong-medium meddlers as Bob Dylan and Norman Mailer. It’s possible to strangle whole movies with manifest-destiny egotism even when one merely stars in them. It’s even possible to overexpose oneself without actually appearing onscreen: what are The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Apocalypto (2006) but coded maps of Mel Gibson’s soul?

For full effect, however, the more personal credits, the better. In 1969 Brit multitalent Anthony Newley conceived, cowrote, produced, directed, starred, and pretty much jacked off for the world to see in something called Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? This "erotic" autobiographical musical phantasmagoria cast Newley’s actual then-wife (none other than Joan Collins) and children as his endlessly cheated-on wife and neglected children — not to mention Milton Berle as Satan.

Though it was a major-studio release made for the then not-inconsiderable sum of $1 million, Merkin has since become more rumor than reality, with bootleg TV dupes sought by a few while most simply forgot it existed. Could it really have been that bizarre? Yup. That bad? Well, anything this out-there pretty much transcends ordinary quality measures. An extremely rare chance to taste its unique flavors — indeed, the only revival screening I’ve ever heard of — occurs June 4 at the Roxie when the Film on Film Foundation pairs it with another legendary cliff-jumper, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971).

Newley conquered the West End and Broadway with shows mixing Chaplinesque whimsical bathos and big-ballad bombast. They gave some critics hives — but not audiences. Covered by every mid-1960s crooner, his songs (like "What Kind of Fool Am I?") topped charts. A ubiquitous variety-show guest, he looked set to become a movie star too. Result: carte blanche for Merkin, the type of freedom that ought to have set off alarm bells from Hollywood to Hampstead.

The film tells the tender tale of an angst-ridden famous writer-singer-actor who, like Newley, was born a "bastard" (at a time when that really mattered), a former child star now on his second marriage — to Collins’ piquantly named Polyester Poontang — while incessantly screwing the likes of Filigree Fondle and Trampolina Whambang. Liberally partaking of Fellini’s 8 1/2 model, this "sum total of my life to date" (as the auteur then stated) operates on many levels, from flashbacks of Merkin’s professional rise to fantasy sequences to onscreen ersatz producers and critics critiquing the movie-in-progress. There’s a zodiac dance, a bestiality number, a mime alter ego, and an acid trip (not to be confused with the black mass) — plus the queasy running theme of Newley-Merkin’s jones for Lolita-esque girls, as personified by Playboy playmate Connie Kreski’s defiled innocent, Mercy. She’s his true love — or as close as it gets for a character who finally admits, "Not only do I have no respect for women, I may well hate them."

In her memoirs, Collins notes, "I had a sick, horrible feeling when I first read the script. Tony seemed to have spelled out the end of our marriage." (Indeed, that event promptly occurred.) The commingled massive egotism and masochism in this "totally revealing picture of his life" (her words) had a similar effect on most real-life critics, a typical notice saying Newley "so overextends and overexposes himself that the movie comes to look like an act of professional suicide … [it] is as self-indulgent as a burp."

Roger Ebert, however, thought it "strange, wonderful, original, and not quite successful," applauding its sheer nerve if nothing else. Indeed, Merkin remains such an oddity and perfect warts-and-all memorial to Newley (who died in 1999, his long, post-Merkin career slide actually highlighted by 1987’s The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) that, like most spectacular follies, it commands a certain awed respect.

CAN HIERONYMUS MERKIN EVER FORGET MERCY HUMPPE AND FIND TRUE HAPPINESS?

June 4, 9:15 p.m., $7

with The Last Movie, 7 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

3117 16th St., SF

www.filmonfilm.org

Burn this

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER More power, I say, to sibling twosome Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces. FF’s forthcoming 51-track, double-CD/triple-LP retrospective, Remember (Thrill Jockey), has been burning up my ear holes for more than two hours now, charged with the power of fraught familial relations, rock-out thunderbolts, and mysterious blueberry boats. And I confess, part of my wonderment at their artistry stems from the fact I could never be in a band with my own bro. Judging from our childhood knock-out, tooth-and-claw smack downs, we’d be at each other throats within minutes of our first band practice — and triumphantly playing bad vibes with the vanquished’s finger bones. Those are our kind of family values.

I get the impression the Friedbergers’ relationship is just as intense, if less bloodied, talking to a chatty, quirky, and disarmingly frank Matthew on the phone from New York City. "We weren’t friends growing up necessarily," he concedes. "We were friends after I left home, but we have to talk to each other so much now that we aren’t friends in the same way. We have to spend so much time together that it’s … ridiculous." Doubling back on himself, the ever-analytical 35-year-old guitarist-keyboardist-vocalist just as quickly shrugs it off. "But that’s the way it goes."

Still, we all know that family bands traditionally have sold the dream of togetherness: feather-light musical fun with none of the fighting-for-grub-at-the-dinner-table heaviness. Seventies ensembles like the Osmonds cozied up to those warm ‘n’ fuzzy associations in the genre’s TV-pop heyday — at the very moment that the generation gap seemed its widest — while more recent combos such as Danielson Famile somewhat self-consciously play off of them. Not so with Fiery Furnaces. An electrical, emotional current between the magnetic, sexily verbose vocalist Eleanor and musical mastermind Matthew runs like a live wire through their songs, many of which show up on Remember, which splices together reworkings from various shows in 2005 and onward. Overall the collection — set for August release but available on tour — is musically formidable, capturing the aggression of their live performances alongside drummer Robert D’Amico, percussionist Michael Goodman, and bassist Jason Loewenstein, and coming off as a little overwhelming.

"Yeah, it’s long. It’s long. It’s long," Matthew drawls somewhat wearily. "People sometimes resent the idea that they have to sit down and listen to the whole goddamn thing. So we wanted to make it clear: you needn’t do that. Please use it as you wish." Consider it, he says, chuckling, "straight background music. I mean, I could say that it’s meant to be an opera about the band, starring the band." Or — Matthew adds, rearranging his thoughts like a tune — look at the songs as objects that show the group "aging." Or try it this way: "It made sense to have the record be about the songs traveling, so to speak. What kind of journeys the songs went on, I say with a smirk," he says, a playful smirk clearly audible over his cell.

That searching sense of play — and enthusiasm — has kept the pair going as FF, which Matthew readily admits he never thought would last this long. Growing up in Oak Park, Ill., he performed in teenage rock combos before his younger sister summoned up the courage — with encouragement from friends and her broheim — to make music. The Brooklyn twosome decided to record their songs in 2002, he recalls, and "then we thought, well, we’d better try to be good."

"It’s no accident we have the same taste," he explains, though they aren’t the type of sibs who were "giving each other supportive hugs all the time." "That’s because our taste was formed by the same things, given to the extent she heard all the records that I listened to when I was a teenager. She’s younger than me, so she heard them at the same time, whether she wanted to or not, because I played them loudly. Even more than that, we understand each other — the things we refer to when thinking of what’s meant to be good in rock."

For the FF, that means making songs with the scraps of ephemera found in audience members’ pockets, otherwise known as their "Democ-Rock" project, launched in honor of the 2008 election season, which the ever-prolific band will record in the near future, and a funk companion album to last year’s ’70s-rock-esque Widow City (Thrill Jockey). It’s all grist for the mill, agrees Matthew, although Remember will stand as the document he feels the most emotional about. "It’s the story of my life in the last few years," he says, laughing. "It sounds like me trying to work hard and do something nice." *

THE FIERY FURNACES

Thurs/29, 9 p.m., $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

WINKING AT REM

REM’s Peter Buck was a proto-indie-rock guru of sorts back in the late ’80s day — thanks to his impeccable taste and his way of shining a light on then-unsung predecessors like the Velvet Underground. So it wrecked my head to hear back in 2001 that he was charged in an air-rage incident with allegedly assaulting flight attendants and smashing up a first-class British Airways cabin, all of which he was later cleared of. Anger, however, has its uses, as his band has found on their new, energized CD, Accelerate (Warner Bros), a recording that tackles the tension between REM and its enraging world, rather than creating an otherworldly realm for the listener à la their early works. "I think it’s kind of hard to live where we live, at the time we live, and not be a little frustrated with the way the world is and the way our country is run," Buck says with a sigh, from his Seattle home. "I have to say, I don’t really trust people who aren’t angry about life in general or particular issues."

REM

May 31, 6 p.m.; June 1, 5 p.m.

$39.50–$89.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley, Berk.

www.apeconcerts.com

The Long Blondes

-
0

PREVIEW When the Long Blondes arrived in November 2006 in fits of preening twirls and smoldering pouts with the decadent disco/new wave revamps of Someone to Drive You Home (Rough Trade), we’d at last found worthy successors to Pulp’s lip-gloss-and-sweat–smeared velvet crown. Fronted by the risky, romantic Kate Jackson, the Sheffield, England, quintet proved to be just as adept at intertwining the tawdry with the chic as their hometown forerunners, delivering laser-precise details of the dating scene while making the blood rush with every dirty dalliance and morning-after sound. Amid the snappy glam guitars, ice-sparkling synths, and jitter-pop rhythms, Jackson peered into the dance floors and singles bars and narrated back with a furious mix of exhilaration, lasciviousness, and cool detachment. Love’s a dangerous game with the Long Blondes, but pity the poor fool who doesn’t join in the frantic romp. When they sang promises of "Giddy Stratospheres" on the disc’s unstoppable Blondie-esque highlight, who could deny themselves such steamy, limb-tingling rapture?

Having recently re-emerged with the darker, rougher-edged Couples (Rough Trade), the Long Blondes remain just as committed to the hot-‘n’-flustered/couldn’t-be-bothered dynamic as they were before, and the Pulp/Blondie parallels hold true as well. On this go-round, however, there’s more menace to their nightclub trawling. Tracks such as "Round The Hairpin" skulk and creep with post-punk hypnotics recalling the likes of the Au Pairs, while the skeletal throb of "Too Clever By Half" offers spooky minimalist-disco deserving of the Italians Do It Better label. But for all their newfound experimentalism, the group has kept its flair for penning liberating live-wire pop anthems firmly tucked in its front pockets. "Falling in love is hard," Jackson reveals on "The Couples." "Writing a love song is even harder." Perhaps, but the Long Blondes have the lust-song thing down.

THE LONG BLONDES With Social Studies. Mon/2, 8 p.m., $15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

The Cool Kids

-
0

PREVIEW With the success of their BMX ode "Black Mags" ghost-riding beyond the Internet echo chamber, the Cool Kids are on a roll. After one single for Nick Catchdubs and A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold imprint and a year spent performing live, including 30 dates with M.I.A., the 10-cut Bake Sale EP comes courtesy of C.A.K.E. Recordings/Chocolate Industries, home or former home to such acts as Prefuse 73 and Lady Sovereign. It’s slated to be followed by a proper album, When Fish Ride Bicycles, but right now the Cool Kids are back onstage, peddling — or pedaling? — their own blend of stripped-down hip-hop.

Though many latch onto the Chicago duo’s 1980s fixation and look no further, the carefully casual drawl of 19-year-old Antoine Reed (Mikey Rocks) and the spare, angular beats of 23-year-old Evan Ingersoll (Chuck Inglish) owe as much to Spank Rock or the Neptunes as the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. With its brassy, clanging drums and tightly reverbed vocals, it’s no surprise that "88" has been snatched up by both HBO and NBA Live 08. If it’s possible to be aggressively nerdy, this pair, who first met on MySpace, are doing it. On "What Up Man," lanky Mikey Rocks raps, "I can build a sandcastle without bringing a pail / And go catfish fishing and come up with a whale," while the rhythm track, built from Inglish’s processed ticks, claps, and basses, chugs greasily along. From the uptempo, hi-trilling "Bassment Party" to the lethargic one-in-four boom of "Jingling" — an off-the-cuff riff on the sound of keys in your pocket — the Cool Kids make hip-hop akin to busting a wheelie. It looks pretty simple, but it’s damned hard to do.

THE COOL KIDS Tues/3, 9 p.m., $18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422 www.theindependentsf.com

“Tree Show IV”

-
0

PREVIEW In Shel Silverstein’s 1964 classic book, The Giving Tree (HarperCollins), a self-sacrificing tree hands itself off to a boy — surrendering its shade and its lumber — until it ultimately ends up just a stump for the now-old man to sit on and die. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to know that everything from the air we breathe to the paper we print on wouldn’t exist without them.

For the fourth consecutive year, the San Francisco branch of Giant Robot presents "Tree Show," a fundraising exhibition with a portion of the sales benefiting Friends of the Urban Forest. It includes mostly two-dimensional pieces by more than 40 artists who work mainly in the street-art and comic-book graphic style GR is known for supporting. Check out Deth P Sun’s painting with his trademark Orphan Annie–eyed warrior kitty in a grim, gray forest, and collage artist Alexis Mackenzie’s vintage-lady-as-lupine-shrub, embellished with butterfly blooms. François Vigneault contributes an ink-and-watercolor image of a huge tree getting a scooter ride in the rain, and Cupco makes three nasty forest lumberjack elves ("Cut! Kill! Burn!") out of stuffed felt.

GR founder Erik Nakamura writes in an e-mail that the gallery-store came up with the show concept years before eco-movement causes became so ubiquitous. "We like trees, and we felt, just for a second, it would be great to turn people onto trees," he explains. That second has obviously been extended, since Nakamura has noticed that many of the participating artists continue to paint tree images even after the exhibitions. And why not? "It’s a big part of their art supplies!" he adds. So pick out an affordable work of art for your home and help plant more trees in San Francisco — a happier dynamic for artists and arbors alike.

TREE SHOW IV Through June 18. Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., noon–7 p.m. Giant Robot SF, 618 Shrader, SF. Free. (415) 876-4773, www.gr-sf.com

Tataki

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

Earlier this spring, a young colleague wrote to ask if I knew of seafood restaurants in the city that emphasize sustainability. While I could recall plenty of sightings of sustainable seafood items on various menus in recent years, I could only think of two seafood restaurants that answered to his description — places, in other words, where sustainability is central to the restaurant’s consciousness and is a basic element of menu composition. One is the Hayes Street Grill, whose menu card gives detailed information about where and how particular fish have been taken. The other is a small sushi spot named Tataki that opened about three months ago in an old Subway space at the southern foot of Pacific Heights.

Tataki does and doesn’t look like a typical sushi spot. It does have a small bar in a far corner of the snug dining room where you can sit on ergonomically peculiar stools of black plastic and watch the chefs deftly go about their business, and the bamboo tables were handmade by owners Raymond Ho and Kin Lui. But the pumpkin-colored walls are unusual, and the slate floor, while handsome, does contribute to a noise level that can be surprisingly high for such tight quarters. Of course, nowhere is it written that sushi bars and other Japanese restaurants must be quiet and serene; here it is merely written that, so far as this writer is concerned, it’s nice when they are.

Still, as holes-in-the-wall go, Tataki isn’t bad looking. The real interest lies in the menu. To a glance, this document resembles many others around town: there are selections of nigiri, rolls, tataki, soups, salads, and starters from the grill. But, as at HSG, each menu entry includes information on how the fish were obtained. Many are farmed, and while aquaculture raises all kinds of uncomfortable issues about pollution, antibiotics, and food-chain inefficiency, it does offer one inarguable virtue: aquaculture helps protect wild fish populations from collapse.

Since salmon, whether farmed or wild, is problematic now, Tataki uses a close relation, farmed arctic char, instead. The fish, with its delicate rose-peach flesh, makes a handsome nigiri ($4.50); it also turns up in one of the rolls and as carpaccio. Other nigiri might feature hiramasa ($4.50), also known as kingfish (a yellowfin relative, farmed in Australasia), and California striped bass ($4.50), whose flesh is like a disk of translucent ivory someone spilled Grenache on.

No sushi joint in San Francisco would be complete without a clutch of wittily named rolls to call its own, and Tataki is no exception. The best name probably belongs to the Divisaderoli ($6), chunks of avocado bundled with either tuna or kampachi (a Hawaiian member of the jack family) and scattered with glistening orange grains of tobiko. Tastier, if bearing a less-fun-to-pronounce name, is the Mix It Up roll ($11), a blend of spicy tuna and crab meat that achieves an almost sausage-like intensity of flavor and texture.

But the king of Tataki’s rolls is surely the Extinguisher ($13), which offers not only a serious spice kick but a moment of real visual spectacle. If you like saganaki (the flaming cheese of Greece), you’ll love this scene. But first, the roll itself: flaps of kampachi marinated with chiles, packed in rice, topped with chunks of avocado, squirts of what the menu calls "hot sauce" (chipotle mayonnaise?), and heavy sprinklings of habañero tobiko, fire-alarm red rather than the usual orange. The redness of the tobiko should be enough to caution anyone who’s remotely paying attention, but just to make sure, the chef sprinkles the side of the platter with rock salt, sloshes some rum over the crystals, and lights the whole thing on fire with a blowtorch. This might make an interesting DIY project for the patronage, assuming no licensure issues — probably a large assumption.

The flame, which is mostly blue and not at all raging (its more like something you’d see under a chafing dish), burns down quickly, and you might not even notice it expire, since eating the actual roll is a memorable experience of fire and spice. I love spicy food and I responded to the clever combinations here, but at the same time it did seem to me that the subtleties of the fish were all but irrelevant. Nuance can get lost in firestorms.

A nice chaser to the Extinguisher would be the cold spinach ($4), with the greens "boiled … in soy broth," as the menu grimly explains. The dish sounded almost Dickensian in its bleakness, but it turned out to be four compressed-spinach cylinders cut on the bias and arrayed upright on a plate, like a little diorama of some ancient temple. (Minor complaint: the tightly packed leaves were tricky to hack through.) A more easygoing cold dish — the Sancho Panza of such dishes in Japanese restaurants — is the seaweed salad ($4), which Tataki, in a nice twist, presents in a large porcelain ladle.

Despite mounting evidence that fisheries are collapsing from human exploitation throughout the world — the plight of the king salmon is a recent, local, and particularly disturbing example; see also the death of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland — we seem to have a vestigial confidence that the oceans are too vast to suffer real harm at our hands. If we don’t see it happening, then it can’t be quite real. But it is happening and it is real, and if there is going to be any kind of future for sushi and other seafood restaurants, it will be because Tataki, in its eco-prescience, turned out to be the dawn of a new day. *

TATAKI

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11:30 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.

2815 California, SF

(415) 931-1182

www.tatakisushibar.com

Beer, wine, sake

MC/V

Surprisingly noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Nuclear fusings

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Jazz has always been about fusing rather than fusion. But there’s a new generation of improvisational players from around the world who are effortlessly blending wide-ranging cultural and generational ideas in their music. These artists are equally conversant in Ben Webster, Kanye West, and Fela Kuti. They might cover Coltrane and Radiohead, but using contemporary Western instruments. It’s jazz with a global scope, modern sensibility, and an intimate, personal feel.

One musician who is naturally engaging a world of influences in his music is Puerto Rico–born saxophonist David Sanchez. When he brings his new sextet to the Herbst Theatre June 13 to debut music from his just-released album, Cultural Survival (Concord), Sanchez will cap an expansive run of so-called multilingual jazz artists coming through the Bay Area. Preceding Sanchez at venues across the region are saxophonist Charles Lloyd, pianist Marc Cary, bassist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Edward Simon, who are all bringing variations on the theme of modern jazz as a genre informed by worldwide cultures.

It all starts next week with SFJAZZ’s "Miles from India" concert at the Palace of Fine Arts, a live presentation of the recent Four Quarters album of the same name. Producer Bob Belden and Indian keyboardist and co-arranger Louiz Banks reworked the music of Miles Davis and recorded it with such Davis alumni as bassists Ron Carter, Michael Henderson, and Marcus Miller; keyboardists Chick Corea, Adam Holzman, and Robert Irving III; drummers Jimmy Cobb and Lenny White; and such Indian musicians as Ravi Chari on sitar, Vikku Vinayakram on ghatam, and V. Selvaganesh on khanjira. The composer himself used sitar and tabla on numerous sessions throughout the 1970s, when he began making funkier and more layered, open-ended music.

Davis and numerous jazz musicians before him — from Duke Ellington and Yusef Lateef to Randy Weston and John Handy — integrated musical elements from non-Western cultures into their work. So it’s not surprising that a younger player like Sanchez, who is equally at home improvising with Latin jazz piano legend Eddie Palmieri as he is touring with guitarist Pat Metheny, would meld ethnic nuances of his Caribbean heritage with a postmodern jazz sensibility.

SONG CYCLES


Sanchez’s Cultural Survival is a cycle of seven original songs and one Thelonious Monk ballad. The disc culminates in the 20-minute "La Leyenda del Canaveral," inspired by a poem written by Sanchez’s sister Margarita about African and Caribbean sugar cane plantation workers. It’s a relatively new and spare, though lyrically rhythmic, sound for Sanchez, forged during a three-year immersion in African folkloric recordings from Tanzania, Cameroon, and the Congo, and his impromptu tour with Metheny. "Doing the tour with Pat was really a confirmation for me that there are different sounds out there," Sanchez said from his Atlanta home. The saxophonist has mainly played with a pianist but now works with guitarist Lage Lund in his band.

"In some ways there is more space for me there," he added.

Also exploring new concepts is veteran saxophonist Lloyd, who performs at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival May 31 with his Indian-music–inspired Sangam Trio, which includes percussionist Zakir Hussain and drummer Eric Harland. The band uses its ethnic edges as stepping stones. "It’s really what propels the music," Harland said of the intuitively improvisational trio during an SFJAZZ rehearsal in the city.

Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon also mixes new and old approaches: he studied classical piano at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and jazz at the Manhattan School of Music before joining trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s band. His new Ensemble Venezuela, which plays the Herbst Theatre June 8, is a sterling gathering of major young players including Mark Turner on saxophone, Marco Granados on flute, Aquiles Báez on cuatro, Ben Street on bass, and Adam Cruz on drums. Báez will also perform with his own band while the local VNote Ensemble (formerly the Snake Trio) offers its take on jazz and Venezuelan traditional sounds.

FRESH FLAVORS


Such explorations vary conventional presentations and inject unexpected aural flavors. "Jazz is one of the most immediately gratifying art forms there is because it’s spontaneous development," pianist Marc Cary explained from New York. "It documents a moment, and that’s the moment you want people to hear."

Cary’s Focus Trio performs in Healdsburg June 5. His partners onstage are Bay Area musicians Sameer Gupta on drums and tablas and David Ewell on bass. "Sameer is from India and David is from China," said Cary. "I didn’t pick them because of that. I play with them because they’re good, but they’re bringing that too." On his 2006 album Focus (Motema), Cary wanted to get out of the standard chorus-solo-chorus cycle that has sometimes straitjacketed jazz. "I like continuous movement, a straight line, and I like to color that line," Cary mused. Gupta cowrote one song with Cary and contributed the reflective ballad "Taiwa," and his tablas close out the last three Cary originals with a distinctive flourish.

Cary played behind the übervocalist and band leader Betty Carter and has toured with hip-hop vocalist Erykah Badu, whose influences find their way into his work. "If you’re really going to play this music in today’s times, you have to bring in elements of the past, the present, and what you consider to be the future," Cary said.

That future is now with 23-year-old bassist Esperanza Spalding. The Portland, Ore., native, who graduated from and now teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, recorded her 2006 full-length Junjo (Ayva) with two Cuba-born colleagues from the school: pianist Aruán Ortiz and drummer Francisco Mela. Their rhythmic approaches subtly imbue the recording’s sound as Spalding sings wordless, hornlike runs in a bright, fluttery alto. Her latest album, Esperanza (Heads Up), includes flamenco guitar virtuoso Niño Josele, drummer Horacio "El Negro" Hernández, and saxophonist Donald Harrison. She brings her new band to Yoshi’s in Oakland June 12.

Why have all these players connected with sounds so far afield? The world has not gotten smaller — it’s just better connected. Through technology even the most obscure genres find new and far-flung listeners. The communal spirit informing jazz performance and appreciation also transcends differences: jazz musicians have to be open; otherwise they can’t play the music. "At the end of the day, jazz is about how you relate to things happening at the moment," Sanchez said. He heard a reality in the African tribal drumming music he listened to and wanted to bring it to his own playing. "You have this feeling when you hear it that the music is like water or air for them."

"MILES FROM INDIA"

Sat/31, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon, SF

www.sfjazz.org

CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET AND LLOYD’S SANGAM TRIO

Sat/31, 7:30 p.m., $45–<\d>$70

Jackson Theater

Sonoma Country Day School, Santa Rosa

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

MARC CARY’S FOCUS TRIO

June 5, 7 and 9 p.m., $26

Barndiva

231 Center, Healdsburg

www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org

EDWARD SIMON AND THE ENSEMBLE VENEZUELA

With Aquiles Báez Ensemble and VNote Ensemble

June 8, 7 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

ESPERANZA SPALDING

June 12, 8 and 10 p.m., $10–$16

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl

www.yoshis.com

DAVID SANCHEZ SEXTET

June 13, 8 p.m., $25–$56

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.sfjazz.org

The orbs

-
0

In Thorsten Fleisch’s five-minute Energie! (2007), an untamed 30,000-volt current exposes photographic papers that are then sequenced in a manner that suggests or reveals systems of electrons. Fleisch’s film is a blast. Its black-and-white lightning formations resemble angry veins in the eyeball of an electrical beast — and the veins in your eyes will sprout similarly after gazing at this strobe attack by Fleisch, a student of Peter Kubelka.

The orb that gradually rises to the center of the screen during Energie could be a ferocious cousin of the eclipse that forms the insignia for the digital projects of Other Cinema, Craig Baldwin’s space for visions in the Mission. It also serves as a core symbol for Other Cinema’s latest calendar-closing "New Experimental Works" program.

Here’s an orb, there’s an orb, everywhere’s an orb, orb! There’s one at the center of Shalo P’s Vengeance 2.0, which begins with a word of warning from Michael Jackson before mixing Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo (1958) and numerous Batman symbols into a brew fans of Paper Rad and Michael Robinson might enjoy. There’s even a character named Orb in Apple, a sword-clanging, sprite-eared, and typically ingenious vision from "from the hideous director of Dawn of the Evil Millennium," Damon Packard, whose movies are as potent as laughing gas and better than all other drugs.

Eli Marias’ and Amos Natkin’s An Internal Camaraderie might not feature an orb, but its new age mix of hilarity and potent hypnotism includes just about everything else, including fluorescent rainbow colors, a sea of testifying infomercial faces, and one well-deployed white turtleneck.

Other highlights among "New Experimental Works" that this reviewer was able to see include: Roger Deutsch’s Act Your Age, where a pencil is not just a pencil; Tony Gault’s Count Backwards From 5 (2007), in which images of water — with a powerful use of voice-over — convey the mystery of family and death; and Danny Plotnick’s Out of Print, a four-minute testimonial that should be placed in a time capsule.

OTHER CINEMA: "NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS"

Sat/31, 8:30 p.m.; $7

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

Awesome T-Shirts for Cinephiles

-
0

By Justin Juul

Have you been to Lost Weekend Video lately? If not, you better run soon. It’s the only place in the city where you can score one of these limited edition t-shirts by local Bay Area artist, Maria Forde. The Herzog/Kinski and Roman Polanski shirts are almost gone, but rumor has it there’s a Sam Peckinpah line coming soon and she may even do a run of Don Siegel prints. Rad!

Lost Weekend Video
1034 Valencia. SF
(415) 643-3373

shirt1.jpg

DEMF: Girl Talk bumrush, Mr. De’s sexy beach, gettin’ Yeke

-
0

Marke “too many pills, you’re not 17 anymore” B is at Movement ’08: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival. Read part one here, and part two here. Apples! Apples everywhere! Downtown Detroit is a laptop orchard. “Mac should really sponsor these things,” said Hunky Beau, freshly arrived on the scene to improve my picture quality. But the answer is that Mac doesn’t have to — those glowing, half-eaten little beauties speak from the booths themselves. girltalka.jpg Oh, that Girl Talk. All pics by David Schnur DEMF’s day 2 was so pleasant it hurt, and the crowd was full of neon-festooned hipsters (they have them here too!) eagerly passing time before new old-school rap duo Cool Kids and sample-happy girly boy Girl Talk hit the the Red Bull stage, which overlooked the Detroit River. We passed the time in the sunny company of the great Mr. De’ featuring Greg C. Johnson, whose “Sex on the Beach” from back in the day is a protobooty classic. The crowd was going nuts — Mr. De’ schooled the “ghetto tech” kids on some real sensuality. mrde2a.jpg Mr. De’ sexing the keyboard mrdea.jpg Greg C. Johnson, pleased Cool Kids gave a predictably stunner set — even calling out to Detroit and pumping some rhymes over ancient electro — and then Girl Talk came on and the crowd went bananas. I’ve never really warmed to the Girl Talk phenomenon. We have great mashup artists in SF, and dropping some Public Enemy over a Toto sample is sooo 2005. Still, the man’s a genius when it comes to party music and self-promotion: who knew all you had to do was post several YouTube vids of kids stage diving off your laptop platform and you could be famous? Well, maybe everybody knows that now, but Girl Talk knew it first. And who am I to argue, even when he dropped his pants and mooned the crowd in his boxers for half his set while he leaned over his equipment. But this year is indubitably Richie Hawtin’s year — despite other hometown giants Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, and Alton Miller on the roster — so after a few Girl Talk singalongs (oh yes, there was stage-diving) we went over to the Beatport tent to catch the Windsor homeboy in a harder mood tan the previous night, at least until he dropped Mory Kante’s “Yeke Yeke” and the dance floor exploded. richieha.jpg Richie Hawtin: Gettin’ Yeke

DEMF: Cold techno feet as big fest heats up

-
0

Native Detroit gadabout Marke B. hits Movement: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival That thing where you return to your hometown and immediately, or at least on the ride home from the ex-urb airport, begin to feel your former soul flood back into you – old or familiar buildings take on some weightier significance in the fading evening light, new buildings even more. And then you’re hooking up with old friends downtown, smoking a bowl or two, generally reminiscing and catching up, and driving around looking for a party, although you wouldn’t mind if you just stayed in the minivan bopping to 20-year-old Balearic beats and laughing your ass off with your BFFs. train.jpg The grand, abandoned Michigan Central Train Station, two blocks from my Corktown residence in tha D. (Don’t try to throw a party here, you’ll get srsly busted.) All of which is a belabored way of saying that I didn’t get much afterhours in here in Detroit last night, the “official” pre-party night of Movement: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now going on nine years. Sure there were big bonanza advertised shindigs – this festival attracts tens of thousands of globe-hopping techno-lovers to the bowels of the Motor City, no mean feat, that – but for me and my SF fairy-dusted baggage none of them grabbed on all night long. That’s OK: where else in the world but here would you find yourself on a dance floor with legendary DJs Juan Atkins and Eddie “Flashin’” Fowlkes — and 20 other people? Their party “The Fuzion of Science & Techno” had moved from the Detroit Science Center to the grand Majestic Theatre at the last minute, due to what I judge to be poor pre-sales. At first that was cause for a little alarm – the Science Center party is a bit of a tradition, and with a line-up that included Theo Parrish, Mike Clark, Kenny Dixon, Jr, and Alton Miller, the lack of draw was a shocker. Plus, the usual tiny panic hits: is techno really dead? Have the “neo-electro faddists,” as Detroit music journalist Hobey Echlin calls them, taken over and relegated soulful tech-house to another early grave? Aw, hell no, it was just midnight on a Friday in downtown Detroit. We were probably way too early, wot.

Lit: Rediscovering Philip Lamantia

-
0

An upcoming article will feature Tau by Philip Lamantia and Journey to the End by John Hoffman (City Lights, 138 pages, $12.95), the latest — and 59th — volume in City Lights’ Pocket Poets Series, edited by poet, hip-hop devotee and Guardian contributor Garrett Caples. For now, I’d like to get the word out, if it ain’t too late, about a reading and book party this Sunday. Caples hosts the event, which justifiably celebrates the publication of the lost second book by the influential surrealist Lamantia, who in turn was devoted to the writing of the comparatively obscure Hoffman, who died at the age of 25. Here’s the info, and after the jump, a choice Hoffman poem from the book.

Sun./25, 5 p.m., free
City Lights Books
261 Columbus, SF
(415) 362-8193

tau.jpg

No rest for the ‘No Wave’: author Marc Masters chats up his tome

-
0

nowavecover sml.bmp

What’s the story behind the music movement that cried, “No”? I recently caught up with No Wave author Marc Masters via e-mail, as he prepared for a series of Bay Area appearances: Saturday, May 24, at Amoeba Music in SF and 21 Grand in Oakland and Sunday, May 25, at Artists’ Television Access in SF.

SFBG: How did the book project come about?

Marc Masters: Black Dog approached me about writing a book about another subject, but for various reasons that fell through. They mentioned they had been considering doing a no wave book for a while. I¹d always liked no wave and wanted to delve further into it, since there have been lots of theories about it when it happened, which bands were part of it, and so on. So I was really excited to get that chance. I was intimated, too – so I contacted Weasel Walter for advice, since he¹s been researching and collecting this stuff forever. When he agreed to help with material and proofreading (and eventually write the foreword), I felt a lot less daunted.

Sonic Reducer Overage 2: block partay, Nothing People and Pets rage through Sunday

-
0


Heavy Mochipettin’.

Why not take on two more for the raucous road leading into Memorial Day weekend? Sunday will be hopping…


Mighty Underdogs at Bonneroo 2007.


LIVE ON THE LANE
Expect to get on up to get down when eight bands and artists converge on Maiden Lane for music, live art by Vulcan, food, and bevvies. Performers include the Mighty Underdogs collective with Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), Lateef the Truthspeaker (Latyrx), and Headnodic (Crown City Rockers) (7:30-8:15 p.m.), Bayonics (6:30-7:15 p.m.), Mophono (5:45-6:15 p.m.), Mochipet (8:25-9 p.m.), Ghosts on Tape (9:10-9:45 p.m.),
Maus Haus (5-5:30 p.m.), Ryan Greene (3:30-4 p.m.), and Egadz (4:20-4:40 p.m.). Proceeds benefit the music program at George Washington Carver Elementary in SF. Sun/25, 4-10 p.m., $12 basic entry; $35 all-you-can-eat-and-drink. Maiden Lane between Kearny and Grant, SF. going.com/liveonthelane

nothing people.jpg

NOTHING PEOPLE AND THE PETS
Hypnotic drone-rockers Nothing People find something to celebrate at a free record-release party. Oakland outfit the Pets also tear it up in honor of their own punky release. Sun/25, 5-7 p.m., free. Lucky 13, 2140 Market, SF. (415) 487-1313.

Blast from the past

-
0

Intern Phil Eil checks out his neighborhood diner – without nearly kissing his mother.

Does your license plate read, “MCFLY”? Have you been scanning Craig’s List for a Flux Capacitor? Well, while you’re waiting for that “Your DeLorean is ready,” phone call (the waiting list is eight months last time I checked), head over to Al’s Good Food Cafe at Mission and 29th Street. The place is a time machine, itself — definitely where Doc Brown dines when he’s in the Bay Area.

Al’s opened in 1947 and it hasn’t changed much since. From the original Cattle Queen of Montana poster signed by Ronald Reagan to the menu descriptions (“Maiden Christina’s Special: A breakfast feast for the delicate lady with the big appetite…”), the place is steeped in old-school American allure. As “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” played over the speakers, I ate a Jo’s Special — three extra large eggs scrambled with ground chuck, fresh spinach, green onions and mushrooms — and tried to named the movie stars pictured on the walls. Jimmy Dean. Audrey Hepburn. That other guy from Rebel Without a Cause.

But while the décor of Al’s is the real deal (as opposed to, say, Chili’s), the reason to eat there is not the Bing Crosby champagne bottle (“He only gave them to his closest friends,” Jean, my waitress, told me) or the Thank-You note from Florence Henderson. It’s the hospitality. Al’s daughters Jean and Joann have been working there since the restaurant opened, and they keep it grounded in its original principles. “Everyone here aims to please,” Joann told me. Jean added, “My father always said, ‘Soup and coffee is like saying, ‘Hello.’”

Leaving the restaurant, I put on my sunglasses, popped in a lollipop (it came free with the bill), and headed back out to Mission St.—back to the future.

Al’s Good Food Café
3286½ Mission, SF
(415) 641 – 8445

Al's Cafe 012.JPG
When this thing hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious…scrambled eggs.

Jello turns 50 with toasts from the Melvins, Triclops! and others

-
0

jello sml.bmp

This just in from Alternative Tentacles: honcho Jello Biafra will be celebrating the big five-oh with two nights of shows including the Melvins, Jelvins, Triclops!, Drunk Injuns, and a new (unnamed as of yet) Biafra project.

“Legendary singer of the Dead Kennedys and head honcho of the highly influentual punk label Alternative Tentacles, Jello Biafra, has no plans on fading away soon. The outspoken, controversial Biafra has been active as a spoken word artist for quite some time and also performing as Jello Biafra and The Melvins, or just Jelvins. On his 50th, Alternative Tentacles celebrates with a show showcasing Jello’s new band, reunited skate-punk legends Drunk Injuns, and latest crop of exciting bands such as Akimbo, and Triclops!.

“The newly hatched Biafra band (as yet unnamed) is Ralph Spight (Victims Family, Freak Accident, Hellworms, etc.) on guitar, Billy Gould (Faith No More, Cool Arrow Records, etc.) on bass, and Jon Weiss (Sharkbait, Horsey, Tonnage, etc.) on drums. Coady and Jared of the Melvins are recording the new Big Business album in June, so the Jelvins bassist this round will be Andy Coronado (Wrangler Brutes, White Shit, Skull Kontrol). The emphasis will be on new music, with the occasional nod to the past evil doing. To open the shows, the Melvins reach back to their original ’83 hardcore days with King Buzzo on guitar, original drummer Mike Dillard and Dale Crover manning the bass.”

“BIAFRA FIVE – O”
June 16-17; 8 p.m.; $22 per nigh, $40 both nights
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750

Fly boys

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER I never swooned over Jemaine Clement when his clueless geek-goon was busily copping quasi-Street Fighter moves in 2007’s Eagle vs. Shark, and I never noticed the spacey Middle Earthly beauty of Bret McKenzie when he was striking sultry elfin poses in The Lord of the Rings. But somehow, two discs of season one of HBO’s Flight of the Conchords and a couple jillion listens to the duo’s new self-titled Sub Pop album later, I’m hooked. I woke up this morning with the cyborg-gut-busting "Robot" roving through my head ("The humans are dead / We used poisonous gases / And we poisoned their asses…. It had to be done / So that we can have fun"), and I silently sang the lusty-nerd verses of "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)" ("You could be a part-time model / But you’d probably have to keep your normal job") to myself for the rest of the morning. Apart from those lyrics, I’m at a loss for words — for a change. All I can say, doltishly, is "uhhh, they funny." Otherwise I’m considering a leg transplant and dye job so I can become the "Leggy Blonde" of FOC dreams — or at least a Rhys Darby tat.

What have they done to deserve such gushery? The way they sweetly snark at my rock, garbed in the amiable skin of a fumbling indie-rock-folk duo. The manner in which they poke at pop clichés, letting them fly well above the heads of those who don’t grasp the Shabba Ranks and Marvin Gaye references — and somehow those unfortunates still crush out on FOC. The botched trysts and fumbled musical careers of the pair, played by the half-Maori Clement and the sometime reggae musician McKenzie, which make all and sundry adore them that much more. Their humanizing humor, which stems primarily from FOC’s New Zealanders-straight-outta-Middle Earth naïveté.

Much has been made of the rise of so-called indie rock comedians like David Cross and Eugene Mirman — who both, coincidentally or no, are FOC labelmates — but lo, Clement and McKenzie are the real thing. They have the facial hair. They swill water. They hail from the land of the Clean and Tall Dwarfs. They combine pop-savvy wit and wiseacre lyrics, while sending up genres ranging from between-the-sheets R&B swoons ("Business Time") to backpacker hip-hop ("Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" with Clement trotting out a ringer imitation of Del tha Funkee Homosapien) to art-rock nipple-antenna anthems ("Bowie"). A good deal of FOC’s appeal hinges on the fact that pop is so utterly ripe for lampooning — after all, doesn’t the title of E=MC2 (Island) sound like Mariah Carey is attempting a self-conscious, FOC-style jab at her own intellectual prowess?

It also helps that FOC come so often with the hooks: I can’t stop replaying "Inner City Pressure" — and reveling in its low-budg, pseudo-seedy Pet Shop Boys video tropes — repeatedly in my skull. My only critique of their recently released full-length might be that the songs cry out for a DVD clip or eight: while some tracks sport lyrics with built-in yuks that allow the songs to hold their own, still others like the puzzling opener, "Foux du Fafa," completely lose the original, necessary context — FOC was hitting on patisserie workers while frolicking through a color-coded Scopitone-esque Gallic pop reverie — that justifies, for instance, its litany of French baked goods. Some numbers such as "A Kiss Is Not a Contract" are sweet and strong enough to include on the CD, though you miss the series’ accompanying Serge Gainsbourg video parody even if the tune itself bears little musical resemblance to Sir Serge’s oeuvre. Still, most of FOC’s soaring sonic moves don’t fall too far from the tree shaken during the more larky outings of producer Mickey Petralia’s other client, Beck. And who knows, this high-school-friendship-turned-comedy-act could be the start of a beautiful musical career, considering that the other would-be beautiful "Loser" kicked off his illustrious catalog with what many considered a joke song as well: there have been stranger flights of fantasy. *

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS

Tues/27, 8 p.m., $32.50

Masonic Auditorium

1111 California, SF

Also May 29, 8 p.m., $32.50

Davies Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

OUT THERE

DESTROYER AND DEVON WILLIAMS


Dan Bejar pulls Destroyer out of the garage, while intriguingly minimal nouveau-’80s-popper Devon Williams unleashes Carefree (Ba Da Bing). Wed/21, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

MATES OF STATE


Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel polish their indie-pop to a bright sheen on Re-Arrange Us (Barsuk). Thurs/22, 9 p.m., $17–$19. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

DEAD MEADOW AND DAME SATAN


Yes, we’re weirded out that Jimmy McNulty’s spawn dug Dead Meadow on The Wire. The Bay’s Dame Satan cast a spell with the new Beaches and Bridges (Ghost Mansion). Sat/24, 9 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

NO WAVE EVENTS


The definitive book on awesome atonal negheadedness is fêted by author Marc Masters and no wave authority Weasel Walter. Sat/24, 2 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com; Sat/24, 9 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl., www.21grand.org; Sun/25, 5 p.m., $6. Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. www.atasite.org

WHITE RABBITS


The NYC nibblers have been ruling the boroughs since the announcement that they were joining Radiohead on ATO subsidiary TBD. Tues/27, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Dancers without borders

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

What do you need to create a first-rate hot product that is of value to others besides yourself? A great idea, a support structure, and money are good places to start. But what if you had no support structure and no money? If you believe in your idea, you’d plow ahead anyway — just like Andrew Wood, executive director of the San Francisco International Arts Festival.

In 2002, Wood began to think about something he felt this city full of artists and tourists needed: an arts festival that would bring the two together. The event would also focus local attention on a large, vibrant arts community that thrives in the shadow of the three big ones — the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Opera.

"Lots of artists here are bursting with ideas," Wood explained during a recent interview. "We need an entity that supports them because they need more opportunities to show their work."

That a similarly ambitious undertaking called Festival 2000 went belly-up in 1990 didn’t deter the string bean–thin Brit, who talks faster than a cattle auctioneer. But Wood wasn’t about to let the fate of another festival stop him. Soon he was everywhere, talking to anyone who was willing to listen — and even to some who weren’t.

Mostly he encountered closed doors. The city had no extra cash. Foundations were already overcommitted. Wood — onetime director of ODC Theater — had no track record when it came to producing a such a large-scale event. Artists were suspicious that already-scarce funds would be siphoned off for a project that might have no room for their work. And another thing: did Wood know how to balance a budget?

He remained undeterred, largely because he had seen something happening in the Bay Area that others had noted as well, even if they hadn’t yet connected the dots. The community was supportive of young artists who were willing to put up with just about anything to get their work out — but once they got to the level where they needed decent rehearsal spaces, performers they could pay, and offices beyond their bedroom floors, the going got tough. Traditionally, local artists at this stage either called it quits or moved away. No longer.

HAVE ART, WILL TRAVEL


In scouring the local arts scene, Wood noticed what he calls the advent of "journeymen" artists. He named them after the century-old tradition of skilled professionals who traveled long distances and practiced their craft wherever they were hired. Propelled by a desire for adventure and professional improvement, they also managed to support themselves, often handsomely, whether they were roofers, storytellers, or healers.

"Dancers like Janice Garrett, Kim Epifano, Scott Wells, Jess Curtis, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and Stephen Pelton work part-time in Berlin, or London, or Tokyo, or Mexico City. They create work where they are supported and bring it back," Wood explained. In addition, these artists return home with news from abroad about who is doing what, and where.

Despite his admiration for the vitality of the Bay Area arts scene, Wood recognized that "not a lot of artists come through here [on their own]. This place is insular in many ways." As one working artist told him, "You don’t need to see Merce Cunningham for the umpteenth time. You want to see something that resonates within you."

There is a huge pool of artists all over the world whose work has simply not yet hit the radar screens of local presenters. When the San Francisco International Arts Festival launched in September 2003, Wood presented the astounding Quasar Dance Company from Brazil; Indian British dancer Akram Khan (now a megastar); and Compagnie Salia nï Seydou, the first in a succession of contemporary African dance companies that have been seen here since. In 2005 (there was no 2004 festival), the festival showcased extraordinary performances from the AKHE Group (Russia); Fabrik Companie (Germany); Manasku no Kai (Japan); and — one of the wildest of them all — the Moe!kestra, from Manteca.

A focus of SFIAF has become fostering international collaborations that make local artists into journeymen citizens of the world. "We need to support artists here but they also need to realize that there are opportunities somewhere else," Wood said.

This process of cross-fertilization started in 2006 and continued in 2007, when the festival highlighted art from Latin America and the African diaspora. Since the city has yet to commit to any direct funding — Wood called local arts leadership "miserable and petty" — he has become a wizard at patching his budget together, creating cosponsorships, acting as an umbrella organization, and linking artists with individual funding sources. He also has become adept at handling the Department of Homeland Security’s onerous (and expensive) visa process for performers. "They all have visas!" he exclaimed.

A monthlong visual arts exhibit loaned SFIAF 2008 its name: "What Goes Around … The Truth in Knowing/Now." This year’s fest kicks off Wednesday, May 21, and runs until June 8, when it will be capped with a free Yerba Buena Gardens concert by the Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet, with local Latin percussionist John Santos.

DANCE PLUS


The festival also includes operatic and theater pieces, as well as choreographers whose work might not be seen locally if not for SFIAF. For example, SFIAF enabled Idris Ackamoor, co-artistic director of Cultural Odyssey, to bring Brazilian dancer-choreographer Cristina Moura to San Francisco. "I was struck by her innovative movements," said Ackamoor, who encountered Moura while scouting for the National Performance Network’s Performing Americas Project, which he co-curated. "She moves like no one else, with a pedestrian and a highly physical vocabulary. She also has a unique way about storytelling." Moura’s solo like an idiot (2007) also resonated with him, as did the title. "Isn’t that the way we all sometimes feel?" he said, speaking of the work, which holds its California premiere at SFIAF.

Wood caught Shlomit Fundaminsky’s emblematic SkidMarks at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival and this year SFIAF is copresenting it with SF’s Israel Center. Speaking from Tel Aviv, Fundaminsky describes the work, a duet for herself and Gyula Csakvari, as inspired by "the home life of a man and a woman who live so close to each other — really as one person — that they lost their ability to communicate. They are creating this box for themselves and are unable to break out of it."

The Kate Foley Dance Ensemble may be familiar to Bay Area audiences because of Foley’s 10-year local performance history. In 1998 she moved to Croatia, where she is in residence at a newly constructed arts center. When Wood sent out a call for SFIAF participant proposals, John Daly of the Croatian American Cultural Center suggested her. Yet the Oakland-born Foley’s homecoming has not been without pain. "I have been so ashamed of what I have had to put my dancers through for the visa process," she said on the phone from Rijeka, Croatia. Her US premiere, Angels of Suderac, is a dance theater work using modern dance and what she calls "reconceived" folkloric material. The piece is based on her research into shamanistic practices that connect fairies and herbal medicine women.

By contrast, new to the Bay Area is the young AscenDance Project, which formed in 2006. German-born director Isabel von Rittberg joined Dancers’ Group when she moved to San Francisco, where she heard about SFIAF. The world premiere of Levitate, which combines rock climbing with dance, will be shown as part of "Jewels in the Square," a festival-spanning series of free performances in Union Square. *

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

May 21–June 8, various venues, most shows $20

For complete schedule, visit www.sfaif.org

Motor psyched

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

Born too late, on the wrong side of the country, with the wrong rodents hanging from your tail? Considering my abiding love of Elvis Presley, Al Green, Big Star, Shangri-La Records, and Memphis barbecue, I should have perhaps switched lives with Snake Flower 2 vocalist-guitarist Matthew Melton.

The Bay Area transplant from Bluff City still retains the courtly, sweet-tea manners of a Southern gentle-rocker, despite the trouble he’s seen in the name of scorching biker psych, tambourine-bashing vixens named Bunny, and dustups with such garage-rock kin as the Black Lips. When I tell him I have the hots for his native Memphis, Melton’s instantaneous happiness and hometown pride blasts right through the phone line.

"Thank you so much!" he exclaims. "I love Memphis too." He should: Melton’s love of raging garage-rock was honed playing in the city alongside the Memphis Break-Ups and the River City Tanlines, as well as the Lost Sounds’ Jay Reatard and Alicia Trout, whom he performed with in the Bare Wires. No wonder Snake Flower 2’s first full-length, Renegade Daydream (Tic Tac Totally), is so utterly bitchin’: it’s overdriven, romping-in-the-red hot-rod rawk for kids whose minds were forever fractured by dog-eared, rifled copies of Nuggets LPs, Steppenwolf’s gnarlsome guitar tone, Roger Corman cinematic cheapie sleazies, and the Standells’ heightened snot levels. Renegade Daydreams‘ supercharged, fuzz-doused frenzies are the choicest tidbits plucked from, Melton says, "the first batch of songs I wrote after I escaped from the South."

He didn’t intend to end up in Oakland, a town he lovingly describes as comparable to Memphis in its desolation and "blankness." Two years ago, Melton was stranded in San Francisco by his original Snake Flower bandmates, including an ex called Bunny, who, he says, "ended up leaving me for an art school professor who looked like John Lennon. We were touring across country in this Volvo, and by the time we got here, we were at each other’s throats."

After attempting to follow his erstwhile Snake Flowers back to Los Angeles via Greyhound, making it only as far as Santa Cruz, and hitchhiking back to the Bay, Melton decided to simply add "2" to his band name and sally forth, hooking up with and firing various rhythm sections (Paula Frazer filled in as a touring drummer in one early incarnation) until settling on bassist Carlos Bermudez and drummer Johnny Axe.

The supremely "dirty and blown out" sound of the disc, as Melton describes it, comes courtesy of mastering by Weasel Walter and all-analog tracking by Jay Bronzini (the Cuts, the Time Flys) on a Tascam 38. "You get a lo-fi sound that barely meets fidelity standards," says Melton happily. "I’m right there on the cusp. When it sounds too clean, you lose some of the soul and feel of it." In the meantime, Melton is already prepared to make his next long-player, which he’ll record himself on his own Tascam 38 while refining that biker psych tag ("It’s a combination of ’60s garage rock and ’70s motorcycle anthems — like Mad Max meets Alice in Wonderland") that a friend laid on him. He’s even penned a song titled "Biker Psych" for Snake Flower 2’s next seven-inch on German label Red Lounge.

Melton also seems to be finally relaxing into the Bay Area music scene, playing in Photobooth and reforming Bare Wires with the Time Flys’ Erin Emslie. "It took me a long time to assimilate here," he confesses. "Being from the South, I’m very open. Here I feel like I gotta keep my guard up. But I’ve met so many great musicians. I’m not going anywhere." *

SNAKE FLOWER 2

Fri/23, call for time and price

Annie’s Social Club

917 Folsom, SF

(415) 974-1585

www.anniessocialclub.com

Weekend warrior

-
0

Phil Spector may or may not have been the first to use layers of overdubs to convey the widescreen-aspect ratio of teenage emotion. Nonetheless, he certainly carved a niche. Adolescent euphoria be thy name: Brian Wilson, "Baba O’Riley," Bradford Cox, and now Anthony Gonzalez on his new M83 album, Saturdays=Youth (Mute).

"I have such good memories of my teenage years," Gonzalez confesses over the phone from his native Antibes, France. Saturdays=Youth wraps wasted youth in nostalgia for 1980s pop, and it’s a dangerously fun tonic. "John Hughes was my main influence on this album," Gonzalez said, and the proof’s in the overheated lyrics, the sun-struck portraits, and the quick changes between subgenres, which resemble so many high school cliques. Saturdays=Youth is no less ambient than Brian Eno’s chilliest scores, but instead of Music for Airports, it’s Gonzalez’s "Music for a Molly Ringwald Movie."

When Gonzalez first emerged with his massive, bright synth rainbows on earlier M83 albums like M83 (Mute, 2001) and Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts (Mute, 2003), he came off as a post-shoegaze Enya. The crucial change on Saturdays=Youth is first apparent after the marching chorus opening "Kim and Jessie" drops out, leaving space for Gonzalez’s verse. Instead of coasting on an endless climax-loop, the song makes effective use of a traditional pop structure — choruses, bridge, and masterfully diffused outro — to convey the simple exuberance of two teenage girls sneaking liquor in a patch of woods. Gonzalez downplays revisionist favorites like My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain here in favor of shinier surfaces descending from groups like Simple Minds and Tears for Fears.

M83’s dips into catchy new wave ("Graveyard Girl"), Hot Topic goth ("Skin of the Night") and electro-gospel ("We Own the Sky") are smoothed by the album’s high definition gloss. After only working with sound engineers in the past, Gonzalez opted to collaborate with two different producers on Saturdays=Youth. Ken Thomas’ long résumé makes the album one degree removed from Gonzalez favorites Cocteau Twins, while Ewan Pearson is known for his sleek dance tracks. "The combination of these two producers brings something interesting," Gonzalez muses, and the songs do seem to sway between velvet reverie and intense ear candy.

"My older brother used to lend me his VHS, so I used to watch with my friends," Gonzalez said. "A lot of horror movies and a lot of the teen movies. When I was watching the John Hughes movies, I was 13 or 14. I felt really close to the characters." At its best, Saturdays=Youth slows these generational markings into a ritualized ghost dance. The album is certainly a simpler, less troubled nostalgia piece than something like Donnie Darko (2001). What of the fact that this heavily marketed teenage paradise was borne of American conservatism? Gonzalez doesn’t have the answers, but his transporting music makes you feel silly for asking too many questions.

M83

With Berg Sans Nipple

Wed/21, 9 p.m., $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.musichallsf.com

Cluster luck

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Lünenburg Heath is a vast, moorland-like tract in northwest Germany, between Hamburg, Hanover, and Bremen. Its low-growing vegetation, gnarled shrubs, and dry soil form the scar tissue left by medieval deforestation. SS leader Heinrich Himmler was secretly buried there. And despite its springtime swatches of wildflowers and family-friendly theme parks, it is a landscape whose beauty stems from its air of desolation.

"Don’t get lost on Lünenburg Heath," intones Brian Eno in a nursery rhyme monotone atop a cortège of synth chords. They are the only words sung on Tracks and Traces, a 1997 Rykodisc reissue of a 1976 collaborative recording session between Eno and Harmonia, the veritable ’70s German supergroup composed of Neu! guitarist Michael Rother and kosmiche godfathers Cluster.

I have always pinned Cluster as the dark stars in the krautrock universe, based on the drifting, feverish, synthesizer-rich improvisations of core duo Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. So I can easily imagine their protean music whistling across Lünenburg at dusk, haunting the ears of daytrippers — a strange and seductive admixture of sprightly pop and forlorn ambient improv reflecting the landscape’s more recent transformations and less-than-sunny history.

Having regrouped in 1997 after a decade-long hiatus from working together, Moebius and Roedelius are once again touching down for a rare series of US dates, including a May 23 trancefest at Henry Miller Library in Big Sur and a May 25 show at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. And despite Eno’s cryptic warning, it’s hard not to lose one’s way amid the hazy vistas and plaintive melodies of Cluster’s music.

Their expansive discography — which includes a recombinant cast of regular, notable collaborators such as Eno, Can bassist Holgar Czukay, and überproducer Conny Plank — provides a few signposts. Roedelius and Moebius initially teamed up with fellow electronic musician Conrad Schnitzler in 1969 as Kluster, releasing three explosive documents of improvisation that rapaciously incorporated elements of 20th-century classical music, jazz, and rock. Important Records’ recent release, Vulcano: Live in Wuppertal 1971, paints a vivid picture of this early period.

Schnitzler left the group in ’71, taking the hard "k" with him. From then on, Cluster recalibrated its keyboards toward a more subdued and, at times, even pretty and poppy aesthetic. Improvisational jams gave way to shorter songs, and the lurking menace of 1972’s Cluster 2 (Brain/Water) was followed by the double about-face of drum machine confections on Zuckerzeit (Brain/Lilith, 1975) and the pastoral miniatures of Soweisoso (Sky/Captain Trip, 1976).

Still, dark patches are a consistent hallmark of Cluster’s terrain, even when they choose to let the sun shine through. The superficial pleasantness of their two collaborations with Eno released at the time, 1977’s Cluster & Eno (Sky/Water) and 1978’s After the Heat (Gyroscope), belies the affective force — what could be described as a low-simmering melancholy — of certain songs. The slow progression of blue notes that form the woozy melody of "Für Luise," from Cluster & Eno, linger long after they have decayed into the Gershwin-like piano of "Mit Simaen." Cluster & Eno‘s cover photo returns us to a field — though not Lünenburg. A lone microphone stands at attention against a faint mother-of-pearl sky, which ends at the smudge of shadowy foliage at the bottom of the frame. It’s near twilight. Cryptic and evocative, meditative and inexplicably sad, the image provides a visual analog to Cluster’s chimerical output. The visual is also suggestive of Moebius and Roedelius’ openness to the chance encounters and unforeseen possibilities that arise from improvisation, as if to say: if you find yourself lost in a dark wood, just stop and listen. *

CLUSTER

With Wooden Shjips and Arp

Fri/23, 7:30 p.m., $22

Henry Miller Library

Highway 1, Big Sur

(831) 667-2574

www.henrymiller.org

Also with Tussle and White Rainbow

Sun/25, 8 p.m., $19–$22

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Dionysian Festival

-
0

PREVIEW Mary Sano may have a small performance space, but she sure packs them in. The Tokyo-born Sano is a disciple — so to speak— of Isadora Duncan, one of the most influential yet most underperformed women dance pioneers from the dawn of modern dance. Sano regularly puts on mixed programs in which she and her dancers bring to life Duncan’s repertoire. The 11th Dionysian Festival presents Sano and her five dancers — one flying in from Tokyo — in selections from Duncan’s Brahms Waltzes, Op.39 (1905). Sano also premieres Spring, a tribute to her teacher Mignon, a protégé of Anna and Irma Duncan, who were themselves protégés of the free-spirited choreographer. (Duncan dancers trace their lineage like British aristocracy). Mignon, born a century ago, originally began — but did not complete — this piece set to Franz Schubert’s charming Rosamunde incidental music. Sano finished it in what she hopes would be her mentor’s spirit. An unnamed dance drama in collaboration with koto player Shoko Hikage highlights Sano in her experimental mode. Also performing are G. Hoffman Soto’s improvisational dance group, SotoMotion; two Bharata Natyam dancers, Priya Ravindhran and Rebecca Whittington; and on Saturday only, avant-garde Peruvian violinist Pauchi Sasaki with bamboo flutist Hideo Sekino.

11TH DIONYSIAN FESTIVAL Sat/24, 8 p.m. Sun/25, 5 p.m. Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dancing, 245 Fifth St., SF. $15–$17. (415) 357-1817

Crudo

-
0

PREVIEW The first time I saw Mike Patton I was 10. It was a sticky July afternoon and here’s this long-haired guy on MTV gesticuutf8g and rapping to distorted guitars. It freaked me out — not the lightning-shooting eyeball embedded in his hand or that flopping fish inciting the ire of PETA activists — but the man himself. He inspired a major uh-oh feeling, and my understanding of the universe was eternally compromised.

But that was 1989. Since those early, badly dressed years with forever-fighting Faith No More, Patton has spearheaded many beloved projects on the noisy melodic fringe, from the haunting Fantômas to his recent pop-wannabe project Peeping Tom. Now with Crudo, he’s teamed up with Dan the Automator, a.k.a. Daniel Nakamura, the Bay Area producer on the forefront of groundbreaking hip-hop, including Gorillaz’s eponymous putf8um-selling debut album (Virgin, 2001) and the Handsome Boy Modeling School with De la Soul’s Prince Paul.

"Crudo" may be Italian for raw, but this isn’t the dynamic duo’s freshest collaboration — in 2001 Patton and Nakumura worked together on Lovage: Songs to Make Love to Your Old Lady By (NicheMusic.com Inc), a fun if challenging listen. Crudo’s MySpace page gives a single one minute, fifty-six second glimpse called "Let’s Go," a poppy tease that makes me dance, but not much else. There’s no official word on a new album release date, but rumor in the blogosphere is 2009.

To bide time, Patton and DTA fans won’t want to miss Crudo’s debut appearance at Great American Music Hall, a practice run for Washington State’s Sasquatch Festival two days later. Fulfill your Crudosity. Personally, I need to see if Patton still creeps me out. I hope so.

CRUDO With San Quinn. Thurs/22, 8 p.m., $21. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Sun City Girls still shine

-
0

PREVIEW When Sun City Girls drummer Charles Gocher died of cancer last year, it was a shock to fans of the long-running band. The group hadn’t publicized his illness, and they seemed to be as active as ever during the few years prior to this sad, surprising news. Following Gocher’s death, the remaining members — brothers Alan and Rick Bishop — immediately disbanded the group, which had the same three-piece lineup since 1981. Along with their current nationwide tour, Alan and Richard Bishop’s The Brothers Unconnected: A Tribute to Charles Gocher and Sun City Girls (Abduction) is meant to close the book on this influential, inspiring, and sometimes maddening ensemble.

No one will ever accuse the Sun City Girls of being predictable or easily accessible. They were probably best known for their various fusions of psych-rock with influences from the Middle East (the Bishops are half-Lebanese), India, and Southeast Asia. But part of their charm was their willingness to do anything they felt like: a movie soundtrack, a radio play, or an album of trashy 1970s rock covers. With all that in mind, the tour-only The Brothers Unconnected is the most concise, approachable summary of the vast SCG catalog you’re likely to find. It showcases the Bishops together on acoustic guitar and vocals, live in the studio, doing renditions of some of their "hits." There is plenty of black humor, with Rick doing his best Gocher impression on the ornery "Ballad of (D)anger," and Alan hilariously handling "Six Kids of Mine," a song about strangling a gaggle of crying children in order to get some sleep. There are also moments of unadorned beauty on par with anything they’ve done: the mysterious, gently flowing "Cruel and Thin" and a handful of tunes from 1990’s Torch of the Mystics (Majora), including dramatic spaghetti-western anthem, "The Shining Path," and the sunny, raga-like "Space Prophet Dogon." If this disc is any indication of what their upcoming show at Slim’s will sound like, then it’s a must-see for anyone interested in this legendary group.

ALAN BISHOP AND RICHARD BISHOP PRESENT "THE BROTHERS UNCONNECTED" With Neung Phak. Wed/21, 8 p.m., $16–$18. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com

1...347348349...427Page 348 of 427

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