SF

Noise Pop: Fuck yeah

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Most articles and reviews about Holy Fuck begin with some comment about whether the band’s music did or did not make the writer exclaim, "Holy fuck!" So insert your own exclamatory joke about the group’s name here, and let’s move past the moniker and go on to the music.

Holy Fuck straddle the rock and electronic divide: they mash together techno beats, dirty lo-fi electronics, and loud kinetic-rock rhythms. It’s a perfect of-the-moment sound — the type that indie rock kids love to dance to, balanced with enough chaotic experimentalism to appeal to noise rock and electronic fans. We live in weird times, and this band gets the times.

Perversely, as bad as the war and the economy are, kids are having a great deal of innocent fun these days. You can catch a sweaty, spazzy groove to the not-so-faux-naïf, party-starting sounds of Video Hippos. Or you can bang your head to Holy Fuck’s embodiment of that dance-party spirit.

The songs on their latest record, LP (XL), drive forward kraut rock–style, but the dirty layers of electronic noise on top of their propulsive rhythms have a purer rock vibe: they’re raw, primitive, and energetic. On my MP3 player, "Choppers," the last track on LP, fits snugly up against my next loaded disc, a Can anthology. The sound of Holy Fuck’s recorded output lies somewhere between Trans Am and Suicide, although they don’t stake out the confrontationally icy ground of the latter nor cloak themselves in the distancing self-awareness of the former. Instead, onstage a few weeks ago at the Great American Music Hall, Holy Fuck bopped around unselfconsciously, with quick-change mixes, effects-pedal tweaks, and keyboard jams. It’s a friendly, accessible show, performed by a band dedicated to making electronic music without laptops or sequencers. In fact, not only will you not find a laptop on Holy Fuck’s stage, but you’ll also discover instruments that come with a junkyard aesthetic: film modulators, and a Casio mouth organ.

The group has emerged from a Toronto scene with a vast and supportive music community, one that embraces many genres and in which most performers have more than one musical project going. Although Holy Fuck don’t want to be perceived, as the group’s Brian Borcherdt puts it over the phone, as "hippie lovefest" musicians, their writing process has been somewhat loose, improvisatory, and collaborative. The band has also included a rotating cast of Toronto musicians, which has led some to dub the ensemble an "evil supergroup," Borcherdt says. Still, regardless of what they play and whom they play with, Holy Fuck remain an exciting live band — though I’m still not going to use the easy exclamatory.

HOLY FUCK

With A Place to Bury Strangers, White Denim, and Veil Veil Varnish

Feb. 29, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Noise Pop: Tossers

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I want to live the Scott Reitherman life: from his harmony-soaked, listener-baiting songwriting to his skittering, synth-driven zeal, the Seattle multi-instrumentalist seems to be leading the pack in Throw Me the Statue through perfect days at the beach year-round.

Since Reitherman’s college days in upstate New York, he’s been hammering out a surplus of catchy, experimental pop recordings like a regular Robert Pollard. The fruit of his toils finally found its proper release when Reitherman issued TMTS’s debut, Moonbeams, on his Baskerville Hill imprint last summer. Since then TMTS has become an overnight buzz sensation in the blog community, a feat that caught the ears of several larger record labels before Reitherman decided to partner with Secretly Canadian for last fall’s rerelease of Moonbeams. Abounding with pinging beats and foamy electronics, "Yucatan Gold" could be Reitherman’s love poem to Stephin Merritt, while "Lolita" glows with chiming allure and sun-rich resonance. A full band will accompany Reitherman for this tour, so expect an engaging, magnified performance. (Chris Sabbath)

THROW ME THE STATUE

With Stellastarr*, Birdmonster, and the Hundred Days

Feb. 28, 8 p.m., $18

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

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Noise Pop: Retooling along Americana’s byways

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

By the fall of 2003, when Eric Earley’s Portland, Ore., outfit Blitzen Trapper released its self-titled debut on Lidkercow, alt-country was in fairly desperate need of its own alternative. Tweedy was too far afield, Adams was too far gone, and the subgenre teetered on the brink of becoming a slur. A track like Earley and company’s "Whiskey Kisser" was a blessed antidote to post-Whiskeytown blues, serving up dirt-road stylings at their least stylish: bilious slide guitar, freewheeling harmonica, tarted-up kid sisters, and maverick state cops. "Kisser" and the surrounding album weren’t country, exactly, but they were close enough to count as smashing correctives.

Four years on, Blitzen Trapper have executed a neat roundabout: they’re no longer plausibly in alt-country’s orbit, but they’re still solving problems with scenes. The group’s third LP, Wild Mountain Nation (Lidkercow), which arrived last June, unearthed one sort of West Coast music in the context of another, juxtaposing rambling ’70s highway rock with the skuzzy experimentalism of a newer Oregon. The classic-rock turn is at its most sublime on the title track, a pile of juiced-up blues riffs and lyrics so inexactly mellow they’re nearly a caricature ("When the red moon wanes / We’ll be moving on the plains / Through the tall grass out to the sea"). "Wild Mountain Nation" almost feels engineered to hit our sweet spots, which is worth noting as a development in indie theory. Within a pretty asexual music culture, Blitzen Trapper seem to be authorizing a return to the libidinal anthem. Given the massive hooks and field-and-stream rhyme schemes, the big rock hit is back!

It’s nowhere near that simple, even if simplicity is just what a song like "Wild Mountain Nation" promotes. The album touches on other tributaries of classic rock: Byrds-ish Rickenbacker gambols in "Futures and Folly," warm canyon folk on sun-dappled ballad "Summer Town." Yet Nation insistently neighbors these songs — and often imbues them — with heavy experimental turns ranging from raucous guitar noise to bleeping keyboards. Looked at suspiciously, the record might be propping up crowd-pleasing hooks just so it can set them alight.

But as Earley tells it, the Blitzen Trapper project is far less sinister: he’s a studio rat by nature, and the self-immolation is mostly a function of curiosity. "A good song can take a lot of abuse," the bandleader commented by e-mail. "Sometimes I enjoy seeing how much sonic abuse a well-crafted piece can take and still seem timeless or nostalgic." He’s not callous about his music’s grimy elements either. He’s actually hypersensitive to them. Though Nation‘s eponymous song comes off as a clean tune, rowdy only in familiar and approachable ways, Earley pronounced its production "very rough and unfriendly." He may be the only one surprised it took off.

Since Nation, the group has released an EP, Cool Love #1 (Lidkercow), its four songs gleefully denying a current pressing question: whether Nation‘s Led Zepplin–style jags were a detour or something more permanent. After two tunes’ worth of weighty rock guitars, Cool Love abruptly regresses to country, ending up in "Jesus on the Mainline," a flurry of electro-tinged banjo and harmonica. Earley describes the next full-length, which he’s begun work on, as taking a third way: heavy on the hooks but distinct from the overall Nation sound. So it may be that all of the attempts to parse Blitzen Trapper’s music as rock or country miss the point. The band is, in a sense, the purest sort of alternative act, ready to ding up whatever sort of Americana comes across its path.

BLITZEN TRAPPER

With Fleet Foxes, Here Here, and Sholi

Feb. 28, 8:30 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

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Noise Pop: Heavy petting

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SFBG The song "Xavier Says," off the Magnetic Fields’ latest album, Distortion (Nonesuch), seems to describe a relationship between two not-terribly-happy and at least somewhat fucked-up people. I know you hate these questions, but is this based at all on personal experience?

STEPHIN MERRITT It’s certainly based on personal experience in that I spend a lot of time sitting around writing in sleazy gay bars with a lot of old men because that’s where they play the thumping, boring disco music that I find is best to write to. And so I hear this kind of conversation.

SFBG On the surface, "Nun’s Litany" seems to be about a nun thinking back on her life. Is there a deeper meaning or perhaps a social criticism to the song?

SM Someone pointed out that it could be the same protagonist as in "California Girls" — in fact, maybe the protagonist in "California Girls" is already a nun. I am not intending any social criticism in music. I think social criticism is best done in prose. If you want to do social criticism in rhyme, then you can’t be very serious — neither about the rhyme or the social criticism.

SFBG In a somewhat recent interview, you said that "serious music isn’t listened to in a casual setting." Now you seem to be playing more formal concert halls around the country instead of smaller venues or art galleries. Is this because of your growing fan base or because you prefer playing concert halls?

SM Well, we have more people who want to get in, so we can’t play in galleries. With our growing fan base, where we would be playing is not arenas but large, big, clunky venues. We’re keeping it down because of my hearing problem.

SFBG Are there any particular noises in a live music environment that bother your ear?

SM Well, that’s a leading question. Why, yes: applause. Applause is seemingly perfectly tuned to send my ear into lawn-mower mode.

SFBG Does feedback or distortion bother your ear?

SM Not as much — it seems to be pure tones. Actually, what bothers me most is high white noise. [Irving, Merritt’s Chihuahua, named after Irving Berlin, starts barking for the third time during the interview]

[Thirty seconds later] There, I killed the dog. [Laughter] n

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

With Interstellar Radio Company

Feb. 28–29, 8 p.m., sold out

Herbst Theatre

War Memorial Veterans Bldg.

401 Van Ness, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

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Noise Pop: Little twin stars

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

So are they or aren’t they? A pop twosome that make lovely music together in more ways than one is the irresistible scenario embedded in more rock, soul, and country partnerships than one can count — who doesn’t fall for the notion of torturously entangled C&W soulmates that extends far beyond Walk the Line turf and into the year in and year out of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons territory? Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood’s affections remained unrequited up to the latter’s 2007 death, as did the palpable chemistry between Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

Well, gawkers remain out of luck here, says Matt Ward, a.k.a. M. Ward, the manly half of indie rock’s latest sweetheart duo, She and Him. He and actress-singer-songwriter Zooey Deschanel are just friends, friend. "People are always going to think whatever they’re going to want to think, no matter what they read in interviews or what the facts are," the extremely soft-spoken Ward says from Omaha, Neb., where he’s currently mixing his next LP, with Bright Eyes’ Mike Logan. "I think music is a lightning rod for people’s imaginations — and I don’t think that’s a bad thing."

He can hardly expect a listener to stop dreaming while listening to the Deschanel originals. With Ward’s production and arranging input, the tunes take on the luscious feel of gimlet-eyed ’60s-style girl-group protorock ("I Was Made for You"), pedal-steel-sugared, chiming country ("Change Is Hard"), and subtly colored girl-singer pop ("I Thought I Saw Your Face Today"). Leslie Gore, Darlene Love, Julie London, Ronnie Spector, and all of those other dulcet voices of teen agony, ecstasy, and crash-and-burn romantic disaster, move over: Deschanel is the next worthy addition to those ranks — a doll-like upstart cross between Sinatra and Carole King — thanks to She and Him’s maiden outing, Volume One (Merge).

Director Martin Hynes brought Deschanel and Ward together to cover a Richard and Linda Thompson tune for his as-yet-unreleased film The Go-Getter. Deschanel and Ward discovered they were "mutually fans of each other’s work," the latter says. One song led to another and, he adds, "eventually Zooey mentioned she had some demo songs that she had under her hat. I had no idea she was a songwriter — let alone a really incredible songwriter and vocalist. They had really beautiful chord progressions, and as a producer, it makes things easy when you have great songs and amazing vocals." He decided to play Phil Spector to her King.

"We started with a pile of songs that I had written," Deschanel e-mails from her current movie, "and had found their life up to that point completely in the safety of my bedroom. It was amazing to see what such a creative individual as Matt could bring to those songs. He brought a tremendous amount of life to them without killing their original essence. His instincts are dead on."

Deschanel wasn’t above making the bizarre instrumental contribution: the mysterious bazookalike sound on "This Is Not a Test," for instance, "is actually me playing mouth trumpet," she writes. "I said, ‘This song needs a trumpet,’ and then I said, ‘You know, like this’ and I did that bit. Matt liked it. We didn’t have the budget for horns so I just did it."

They took each song as its own "island," as Deschanel puts it. "The compositions tell you where they want to go," adds Ward, who strived for a warm analog production. "We tried keeping it away from computers and digital technology as much as we could. I think that’s the main reason the record sounds good — that and the songs are good."

The approach perfectly jibed with Deschanel’s aesthetic. "I have always been attracted to old music. I have always been a fan but I continue to discover ‘new’ old music," writes the vocalist, who says she started writing at age eight, was in bands in high school, and later had a cabaret act called the Pretty Babies. Elf (2003) gave her a chance to sing on film, but otherwise she had limited her music primarily to demos: "Demoing became sort of a hobby that I found relaxing."

She isn’t concerned with trying to please hipsters or cool kids who might view her as a movie-star dilettante simply passing through the trenches of indie pop. "I hope each person responds to [Volume One] naturally without any agenda of mine seeping into the matter," she offers. "Ideally audience and artist should be uncorrupted by each other."

Not a surprise from a singer in love with the passion and craft of country music. "I think," Deschanel opines, "sincerity is hugely underrated."

SHE AND HIM

With Whispertown2000, Adam Stephens, and Emily Jane White

March 2, 8 p.m., sold out

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

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Noise Pop: Up from under

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Salvation can come to us in the strangest of places, but it takes a special person to search it out in the sordid, cigarette butt-cluttered back alleys where the daylight never creeps in. While most of us might cower in the darkness, vocalists Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan have each built careers from reveling in it, offering contrasting – but curiously compatible – dissections of life in the shadows. As frontman for the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers, Dulli has waxed romantic about tortured love and shady midnight dealings. Meanwhile, Lanegan has focused on matters of mortality and addiction, blowing a ghostly rumble into his former band the Screaming Trees and myriad solo albums and collaborations (Isobel Campbell, Queens of the Stone Age). Somewhere in the murk these two after-hours explorers crossed paths, and from there they walked side by side in search of redemption. A new name for the venture was needed, of course, and the christening was inevitable: the Gutter Twins.

The union has yielded fascinating results: their new disc, Saturnalia (Sub Pop), while still bearing occasional similarities to previous works by Dulli and Lanegan, offers distinctive, dirty-fingered gospel theatrics not found elsewhere in their catalogs. "That was the whole point," Dulli explains by phone from Los Angeles. "We didn’t want to sound like just the two of us put together. We wanted to sound like something new." In lieu of Dulli’s familiar sensitive-lothario stylings and soulful film noir expositions and in place of Lanegan’s inner-demon warfare, the language of the Gutter Twins is one of angels, chariots, and even rapture.

Salvation doesn’t come easy, however: Saturnalia offers glimmers of hope, but reaching them still requires the navigation of a late-night sleazescape studded with dense atmospherics and prickly instrumentation. "God’s Children" opens with an unsettling Nico-recalling harmonium drone, whereas the creeping violin swells at the start of "Circle the Fringes" make for an ominous portent of the twin-guitar melodrama that soon follows. Paradise might be within sight, but it don’t come cheap. Or, as Lanegan puts it on "Seven Stories Underground," "Ooh, heaven – it’s quite a climb."

As if one evocative moniker weren’t enough, Dulli has also referred to the project as "the Satanic Everly Brothers," a tag that fits with velvet-glove snugness once you’ve soaked up the dusky harmonies and bristling vocal interplay of the duo’s feedback-and-folk-driven voodoo. Lanegan’s seismic-rumble baritone finds its perfect foil in Dulli’s leering, sneering rasp, lending a nervy intensity to their declaration "I hear the Rapture’s coming / They say He’ll be here soon" on "The Stations." Elsewhere, particularly over the mellow electro sputter of "The Body," the paired voices exude a soothing soulfulness suited for a spiritual journey.

How, pray tell, did these two larger-than-life figures manage to work together to unleash such devastating beauty on Saturnalia? For Dulli, the answer comes quickly: "Lanegan is the easiest guy to work with, no doubt about it. I think we balanced each other out, and we definitely brought out elements in each other which we hadn’t really used much before this." Maybe the gutter isn’t such a bad place after all….

THE GUTTER TWINS

March 1, 8 p.m., $18

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(415) 474-0365

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Noise Pop: Follow those Dodos

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Meric Long spent a year in chicken heaven or hell, depending on your feelings about charred fowl flesh. For about a year the Dodos vocalist-guitarist-trombonist chopped, baked, and tended as many as 80 signature roasted chickens per night as a line cook at San Francisco foodie institution Zuni Cafe — a day job so intense that plump, juicy birds haunted his dreams. "Whenever I start talking about the chickens, I can’t shut up," he says ruefully now. "It just it ruled my life for a year!"

But honestly, despite those incursions into his REM-scape, Long feels more kinship with his band’s namesake: the Dodo, that incredible, edible, yet now extinct white meat. "They were like chickens," he muses, sprawled sideways on a bench in Mission Creek Cafe on this warm California winter afternoon. The precision roasting of fowl seems far away on this fair day. "They were lonely, though."

"They wanted friends," drummer Logan Kroeber throws in. He’s still shaken and a bit stirred thanks to a too-close-to-personal-extinction-for-comfort encounter between his skateboarding self and a car blasting down a nearby alley.

"And that’s why they got killed off," Long continues. "They weren’t used to visitors, and the English came and were hungry and ate ’em."

Still, it takes a lot of sly chutzpah to adopt the moniker of the highly uncool, not-so-beautiful loser of the animal kingdom. And though they’d never say so explicitly, Long and Kroeber are hoping, humbly, to do the clumsy waddlers proud by adapting and maybe even flourishing. Exhibit one: the Dodos’ compelling second album, Visiter, scheduled to be released March 18 on Frenchkiss. Its 14 songs unfold in three rough parts, beginning with the toy piano invocations of road-weary, lovelorn musicians ("Red and Purple"), then rolling through noise-wracked folk drone ("Joe’s Waltz"), wry, Magnetic Fields–style songcraft ("Winter"), and a ragtag country blues scented with the sun and sand of Led Zeppelin and West African drumming ("Paint the Rust"). A significant evolution from Long’s time as a solo acoustic act and from the Dodos’ self-released debut, Beware of the Maniacs (2006), Visiter is startlingly deep and likely to hold up under repeated plays, catching the listener on the tenterhooks of Long’s insinuating melodies.

So it’s funny, then, to think that Long first dubbed his solo folk act Dodobird because he felt like such a slow goer and has now firmly found his voice with Kroeber and the Dodos. "To be honest, I think back then I used to have a fear that I was kind of unintelligent, like I was really dumb but didn’t know it," Long says bashfully. "I don’t know if I should say it. But I think it had to do with partying too much when I was younger and completely fucking my brain. I also think there’s this plane of understanding that other people seem to be on and I’m still kind of out of the loop on."

As usual, Kroeber jumps into the conversation, to watch his bud’s back, because seriously, dude, in his opinion, Long is nothing like the dazed and confused kids he grew up with down south: "A lot of people can sort of deflect that with ‘You’re thinking too much, man! Keep it simple! Positive vibes!’ You know, that sort of brick-by-brick, build your weed cabin." Kroeber nods sagely. "I grew up in Santa Cruz — it’s a historical place for weed-cabin building."

The Dodos found their endearingly clumsy footing far from the happy yet isoutf8g metaphorical grassy isles of yesteryear. After moving from his hometown of Lafayette, Long had been playing solo around town — occasionally as Mix Tape with vocalist Brigid Dawson of the Ohsees — when Kroeber’s cousin introduced the guitarist to the drummer two years ago. Kroeber started accompanying Long live on a few songs, on a single tom. "Even during those early shows," Kroeber recalls, "that girl Emily from Vervein was still, like, ‘It’s cool — I like what you’re doing, the one drum thing. I’m all about it!’ Even with one drum, people were, like, ‘Keep going!’<0x2009>"

A particularly inspiring Animal Collective show roused Long to offer to pay Kroeber’s way to Portland, Ore., where the singer-songwriter was about to record Beware with engineer John Askew, who owns the Filmguerrero label. Their experience working with Askew was so fruitful that the two returned to Askew’s Type Foundry studio to make Visiter after spending 2006 on perpetual tour, getting tighter, writing songs together, and solidifying their identity as a band. For Visiter, the duo piled on an odd array of instruments — stand-up bass, toy piano, and trombone — while the producer carefully pieced the sounds together in the recording’s aural landscape. "John sits there and closes his eyes and imagines his record as a soundscape and places things geographically," Long says, standing suddenly and patting the air above him here and there. "I think it really helped with this situation, because with two people there’s a lot of sonic space to fill, so where he placed everything really made a huge difference. The drums take up so much sound space on the record."

Loneliness fills the spaces of the songs as well, as Visiter so often seems to revolve around the women who were just passing through Long’s life. "Jodi" and "Ashley" are, naturally, about two such suspects, while "Undeclared" eschews Kanye West collegiate themes to focus on an unrealized crush, and "Red and Purple" captures that "young lady" who fashioned elaborate gifts involving invisible ink that would greet Long at every club on tour. "It was pretty romantic shit," Long says a bit wistfully.

"I was definitely impressed," Kroeber agrees. "I didn’t really know this girl, but later I imagined she was one of those people who sew everything by hand, supermeticulous. It was some next-level spy shit."

As the talk turns to girls who have come and gone, the Dodos grow a mite melancholy, though not enough to throw in the towel and jump in a roasting pan. They recently underwent a minimedia storm in New York City, where they attempted to go uncensored for MTV.com while hungover and sleep deprived after partying with Long’s chef pals the previous night. Fortunately, these days the Dodos are relying on their survival instinct more often than not and seeking out swimming holes rather than new watering holes when on tour.

Not that the drink doesn’t have its uses. "It’s an artificial sort of cryostasis," Kroeber quips. "But as soon as you get done with the tour and go home, it crumbles. The second tour, when I came back, my girlfriend was, like, ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ But it does work! When you’re on the road it’s the one thing that keeps you going."

THE DODOS

With Or, the Whale, Bodies of Water, and Willow Willow

Feb. 28, 9 p.m., $10–$12

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

ww.cafedunord.com

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Mother of all indie?

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Is indie rock back? Did it ever go away? Is it to safe to wax naïf and twee once more? Is my shirt ill fitting yet modest? Will Converse ever go out of style? Do the Strokes suck? Wait, who are the Strokes?

Thoughts worth flexing one’s gray matter around on the verge of the indie-oriented Noise Pop music festival — though, well, the RCA-aligned Strokes ain’t indie, really. Nor can one imagine their jumpy once-new-rock appearing on the shock chart topper for the week of Jan. 27: the Juno soundtrack. The disc bounded bashfully up Billboard’s Top 200 over the course of a month till it reached the peak at a mere 65,000 copies, allegedly delivering a first-time number one to Warner Bros.–affiliated Rhino Records and inspiring many a question mark. Such as, isn’t 65,000 awfully low for the number one album in the country — surely those crack six digits?

Well, no more, apparently, in the many-niched, entertainment-rich marketplace (the sole exception: triple or quadruple threat Jack Johnson?). Sure, geeks are once again chic — as Superbad, Rocket Science, Eagle vs. Shark, and numerous other awkwardness-wracked cinematic offerings could tell you. And don’t forget, brainy indie rockers à la the Shins and Modest Mouse have been making inroads in chartland of late. Even the woman pegged by mainstream movie critics as the soundtrack’s breakout star, the Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson, has been around since the turn of the century, when she was banging her bleached ‘fro against Adam Green’s tennis headband onstage at the Fillmore. Please, indie, let’s not even go into how long Cat Power, Belle and Sebastian, and Sonic Youth have been doing the do — and how canonical the Kinks, Mott the Hoople, and Velvet Underground are. Has indie — and its primary sources — simply reached an apex of popularity by virtue of low overall CD sales?

Like its music, Juno the film doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel but instead delivers the hormonal, feminine flip side of Rushmore‘s protagonist, less an antihero than a talented misfit learning from a young person’s mistakes. Pregnant with meaning, Dawson’s frail, wobbly voice — buttressed by her verbose, brainy lyrics — embodies that character and aesthetic as much as her clear inspiration, the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker, who sings the ever-sweet-‘n’-lowly "I’m Sticking with You" on the soundtrack.

It’s not so much that everyone is discovering indie rock: instead, perhaps the soundtrack gets much of its shine from the fact that the music is such an intrinsic part of the film’s emotional power — it’s as memorable as Juno’s rapid-fire, perhaps overly arch one-liners. Playing the film’s title tyke, Ellen Page at times sounds like a 35-year-old woman in a 16-year-old’s body. And in its no-fail, crowd-pleasing selections, the soundtrack similarly plays like a cultured 35-year-old’s music collection in teen comedy maternity garb. Now how fair is that? I’m tempted to call foul for the outclassed Hannah Montana 2 soundtrack (Walt Disney/Hollywood). *

KIMYA DAWSON

Thurs/21, 7 p.m., call for price

924 Gilman Street Project

924 Gilman, Berk.

(510) 525-9926

www.924gilman.org

SIX-SIX-SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE TIME!

Six Organs of Admittance’s new CD, Shelter from the Ash (Drag City), rocks ‘n’ drones the most — but don’t expect the project’s winter tour–besieged Ben Chasny to scrape together too many thoughts on the making of the album: his "brain is on zombie mode," he concedes during a drive to Minnesota. Yet he does let on that the lovely Shelter was the result of simply bunking down, looking around his Mission District neighborhood for musical assistance (including from Comets on Fire kin Noel Harmonson and Fucking Champs chief Tim Green, who dwell nearby), and enlisting his live-in paramour, Magik Marker frontwoman Elisa Ambrogio, and Matt Sweeney, who happened to be in town for a wedding.

Too bad the Mars Volta had to swipe Chasny’s Ouija board rock ‘n’ roll thunder with their supposedly magic-derived new LP. "I was actually designing a Ouija board to sell during this tour — there are some really beautiful ones out there," he says. "And I ended up looking up Ouija on Wikipedia and found out about the Mars Volta, and I just gave up on the whole project." Of course, there are upsides to that downer. Chasny adds, "Elisa was, like, ‘It’s turning into a Six Organs tchotchke revue.’<0x2009>"

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE

Sat/23, 10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Compañía Nacional de Danza

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PREVIEW When Nacho Duato, crowned with laurels from his years in England and Holland, returned to his native Spain in the 1980s, the country’s national ballet company offered him its directorship. He took one look at the ensemble’s anemic repertoire and decided he could breathe some life into it. Consequently, today Compañía Nacional de Danza is a repository of Duato’s choreography. Spain could have done worse: Duato has put contemporary Spanish ballet on the world map like no one else. Don’t expect even a shadow of bolero or flamenco in the two different programs that constitute his company’s San Francisco debut. You will get the fruits of an exceptionally broad musical imagination and dancing that is full-bodied and energized — still ballet based but moving into a lush contemporary sensibility. One of this tour’s pieces, Castrati (2002), also performed at the University of California at Davis a few years back, recalls the brutal ceremony that insured boy sopranos retained their voices beyond puberty. To the sounds of the most glorious Vivaldi, cassocks fly about the stage in a none-too-gentle representation of those initiation rituals. An older work, 1996’s Por Vos Muero, splendidly evokes the role of dance as a social occasion and is performed to 15th- and 16th-century Spanish music. The newest work, Gnawa (2007), named after Moroccan descendents of slaves, explores connections within Spanish and North African cultures. Also on the program are Gilded Goldbergs (2006), White Darkness (2001), and Rassemblement (1990).

COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA Program A, Wed/20–Thurs/21, 8 p.m.; Program B, Sat/23, 8 p.m., and Sun/24, 2 p.m.; $35–$55. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org, www.ybca.org

A la Turca

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TURKISH TREAT Lebanese, Syrian, Greek — a craving for Mediterranean or Middle Eastern can be satisfied at a number of Bay Area restaurants, yet what if you want the one cuisine bridging the two? Inexplicably, Turkish restaurants are sorely missing from an otherwise all-inclusive food scene.

But deep in the cracked-out heart of the Tenderloin resides the consistently delicious and ridiculously affordable A la Turca. It’s a virtual Xanadu for any aficionado of the Byzantine: flat-screens showing Turkish channels, an all-Turkish waitstaff, hard-to-find Turkish dishes like fried carrots in yogurt sauce, a swarthy Turkish chef in the window shaving glistening slices of doner off a spit, the potent Turkish tea served in the traditional diminutive tulip-shaped glasses, and Turkish wine selections. Add the smell of diesel, cigarettes, and that ubiquitous lemon cologne, and I would swear I was in the back streets of Istanbul.

And thankfully, the food is incredible. The lahmacun (Turkish pizza) is perfectly crunchy on the edges and covered with a thin mixture of flawlessly seasoned tomato and ground lamb. The doner is divine. But I would go to A la Turca for the manti alone. Manti is Turkish comfort food — meat and onion ravioli in a spicy tomato and garlic yogurt sauce (bring Altoids). I’ve never found it outside Turkey, but A la Turca has a delectable version available only on Sundays (I’ve always thought the mark of a great restaurant is that it can make demands on you).

The desserts were surprisingly bland, but the rest? Çok güzel.

A LA TURCA Mon.–Thurs. and Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–11 p.m. 869 Geary, SF. (415) 345-1011, www.alaturcasf.com

“Low Life Slow Life: Part One”

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REVIEW "Low Life Slow Life: Part One" is a self-curated portrait of the artist Paul McCarthy as a young man told with a few of his favorite things. It’s a very personal exhibit, much of it culled from the archives of a now-grown enfant terrible, and lays out a canny narrative about artistic influence that throws the viewer more than a few MacGuffins.

Before McCarthy fully developed his taboo-vioutf8g aesthetic — which found its most abject expression in his foodstuff- and prosthesis-filled performance pieces of the 1970s and ’80s — he was a Utah painting student whose first steps in using his body as a medium were guided by the action-based events of artists such as Allan Kaprow, Kazuo Shiraga, and Yves Klein. A first edition of Kaprow’s canon-making Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings (H.N. Abrams) is on display here, alongside paintings, photographs, sculptures, and printed matter by or related to several of the artists included in the 1966 volume.

Much of what McCarthy has chosen would slot neatly into the syllabus for one of the art history classes he now teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles. Which is to say that he is aware of how institutions inevitably shape an artist’s time on Earth into a career, placing it within a historical context in relation to and often as a reaction against other artists. McCarthy’s piss take on these sorts of creative genealogies starts with Dada collagist John Heartfield’s swastika-shaped Tannenbaum (1934), then jumps 30-odd years to Joseph Beuys’s 1962 sculpture made with fallen pine needles, whose brown color is shared by McCarthy’s dead Xmas tree and bric-a-brac pileup (2007). The trees’ tinder skeletons look like the survivors of a pillow fight on a paintball range. Wisely, McCarthy leaves other works out of such daisy chains of facetious art history scholarship. Mike Henderson’s giant, ghoulish oils Nonviolence and Castration (1968) stand alone as apocalyptic visions of the dark underside of American life. I wonder if they remind McCarthy of his salad days of stuffing Barbies up his ass while besmirched with ketchup. (Matt Sussman)

LOW LIFE SLOW LIFE: PART ONE Through April 12. Tues. and Thurs., 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Wed. and Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, 1111 Eighth St., SF. (415) 551-9210, www.wattis.org

Monk’s Kettle

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› paulr@sfbg.com

First, although it’s early, let’s hand out our first annual Best Restaurant Name Award. This year’s winner is the Monk’s Kettle, which is a witty, memorable, and — since the place in question is a craft-beer bar with food to match; ergo, a kind of hipster tavern — evocative phrase. Everyone loves a monk, and kettle is just fun to say, especially after a fancy beer or two.

The Monk’s Kettle is not a brewpub. No beer brewing is done on the premises, which are probably too snug anyway. The deal instead is a wide offering of beers from around the world, in the manner of Toronado or Moe Ginsburg’s; some are draught, many others are in bottles, but all are served in one of the stunning array of specialty glasses stacked behind the bar like crystals in some extraordinary ice formation.

Pardon is hereby issued to those who don’t recognize the space as the recent home of a Thai restaurant, Rasha, and before that, of Kelly’s Burgers. The footprint is the same — deep and narrow, with the sizable, mirror-backed bar and a semiopen kitchen along the right side and, on the left, booths snuggled against the windows — but the smell of old grease is gone, the color scheme is now one of muted earth tones, and the harsh lighting has given way to halogen pinpoints and, above the booths, glowing disks that look like the shells of some huge mollusk.

But the aesthetic makeover, though thorough and stylish, is dwarfed as a marker of change by the crush of people trying to get into the restaurant. A year ago Rasha seemed to be largely empty, despite good food at moderate cost, a bright red neon sign, and a prime location; the Monk’s Kettle, at age two months, is already wall-to-wall crowds on weekend evenings, with even more people spilling out onto the sidewalk. And they’re young, hipstery people.

If the wealth of craft beers is part of the Monk’s Kettle’s appeal to this social cohort, so too must be the food, which is a surprisingly vegetarian-friendly version of pub grub. Many of the most memorable dishes are meatless and would do credit to the kitchen at Greens. But hipsters like their burgers too, apparently; on a recent evening while eating at the bar, we were flanked by young burger eaters dressed à la mode, two and three to a side.

The burger ($10.50) is good. The meat is grass-fed Niman Ranch and is served on a dense, chewy bun from La Brea Bakery. A slice of cheese (various choices) adds $1.50, and the American-style fries are fine. But there’s nothing exceptional here. As for the house-made veggie burger ($9.50): half a gold star for innovation, since the patty is falafel, laid out on the same La Brea bun instead of stuffed into a pita pocket with tahini sauce.

On the other hand, the Monk’s Kettle does offer quite a few treats you won’t regularly find on menus in the Mission or around town. There’s a fresh pretzel ($6.50), for instance, twisty soft and served with whole-grain mustard and a cheddar-ale sauce for dipping and dunking. We also liked the lightly crisped black-bean cakes ($8.75), a pair of slim disks scattered with roasted-corn salsa and artily piped with chipotle crème fraîche. Bruschetta ($8.50) — toasted bread spears smeared with cannellini puree — were plated in an overgrown garden of mixed greens and resembled statuary half hidden amid unkempt tendrils, but the greens were enriched by sautéed mushrooms and chunks of white cheddar cheese, bringers of flavor, texture, and heft.

Butternut squash soup ($6.50) needs special handling to rise above its usual station as a cold-weather commonplace. Do pepitas, the little pumpkinseeds of Mexican cooking, answer the call? The Monk’s Kettle kitchen installed them as a scattering across the surface of the soup, and they did their best, but the soup, while creamy, was a little too sweet and unfocused to satisfy, even with pepitas. It was also, however, nicely steamy, which brought some relief to my sniffly friend across the table.

Also nicely steamy was a bowl of Jude’s vegan chili ($6.50), a black-bean preparation laced with tomatoes, mushrooms, and olives. We did catch a whiff of some faint, faintly exotic, eastern Mediterranean spice in there and found ourselves thinking more of Turkey than Texas: mushrooms and olives in chili? The Turks, it must be said, prefer chickpeas to black beans. (The chickpea is thought to be native to southeastern Turkey.)

The kitchen seemed to be in possession of a mushroom mother lode, because tasty fungus recurred as a ragout in the day’s surprisingly elegant potpie ($14). I say elegant because the ragout had been baked in a handsome white crock with fluted sides, under a tarpaulin of butter-flaky pastry worthy of a beef Wellington. The potpie had the look of a huge, family-style dessert — a giant pot de crème, possibly, lurking under the pastry.

We never quite got around to actual dessert, but we did dabble in the beers (whose listings go on for several pages), in part to see which glasses would be used to serve them. St. Bernardus, a dark, caramelly Belgian brew ($7.75 for an eight-ounce pour), arrived in a vessel that looked like a giant cognac snifter, while Bitburger pilsner ($6.25 for 14 ounces) was presented in an attractive if slightly disappointing pilsner glass, a close relation of the ones I have at home. Mr. Cider, meanwhile, partook of the Fox Barrel black currant cider ($4.50 for eight ounces); this was served in a wineglass look-alike and was refreshingly unsweet in the European manner but did not really taste of black currant — a presence in name only, but we liked it anyway.

MONK’S KETTLE

Mon.–Fri., noon–2 a.m.; Sat.–Sun., 11:30–2 a.m.

3141 16th St., SF

(415) 865-9523

www.monkskettle.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Skunked

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS One week you smell like bacon, and the next week it’s skunk. Life is like this.

And do you know what a skunk sounds like? They make one of the most sinister noises in the animal kingdom, I think. They speak in a kind of wheezy, whiny murmur that forebodes death and disaster like a bunch of gangsters with head colds complaining about the service at a Chinese dive.

First I thought they were trying to make a hit on my chickens. It was three in the morning and I was in the throes of my depression. So the last thing I needed to wake up to was a pile of smelly, bloody feathers. Wait. I think skunks are like weasels. They pull the chickens’ heads off and suck out their brains, then leave the rest.

Either way, not a cheerful scenario.

So I dragged myself out of bed and went to my closet for something farmerly to wear. I couldn’t decide between overalls over a union suit and a Western shirt with a denim skirt. Overalls look great with a shotgun, and Western wear goes better with handguns. Of course, I don’t have either kind of gun. I just wanted to look convincing because the last time I raced outside in the middle of the night to defend the honor of my chickens, I was essentially laughed back to high school by a gang of possums, I assume because of the pajamas I was wearing.

In any case, my self-esteem suffered. They can be a cruel lot, these woodsy types that I hang with. Possums, foxes, bobcats, skunks … Eventually, after trying on several outfits, I settled on a "safe" floral-print flannel shirt and tight blue jeans under a long oversize coat that isn’t a trench coat but looked pretty good in the half dark in the mirror, especially from the side, I thought. And I went outside with a flashlight and walked around the chicken coop, trying to act casually curious, if not cool.

At the exact same time I realized that, gasp, I was wearing socks with Birkenstocks, I also saw, spotlighted in my flashlight light, the skunk. Also looking at my feet, shaking its head, like, "Loser!"

He wasn’t interested in my chickens after all. He’d been messing around behind the woodpile. I think he had a girl with him, or vice versa. In any case, this skunk was now smack between me and the door to my shack, and it turned its back to me, still shaking its head and muttering something about "pathetic hippie chicks."

I’m going to smell really bad for a really long time, I thought. But miraculously, it didn’t spray.

I was almost offended. What do I have to do to look threatening around here? I wondered, tiptoeing back around to the porch. Inside my shack I stood in the dark with my back to the door and breathed again. Then I threw my coat on the floor, kicked the old Birks way under the bed, and got back under the covers. Way under.

The fucking skunks fucked all the rest of the night that night, and when they weren’t making love they were complaining in those whiny, whiny undertones, right outside my window. I think someone wasn’t seeing to the other one’s needs or something.

It smelled a bit bad, but not as bad as it did a couple of nights later when the same skunk or skunks — or a different one — mixed it up with a feral cat in the crawl space beneath my shack. That was on Friday, and five days later I still smelled it on every single aspect of my life. Everything I own, and everything I have on loan from the library.

My dreams. My thoughts. My food. My songs, my singing. My writing. It all stinks right now. My cat, Weirdo the Cat … She doesn’t seem to mind. I smoke a lot of pot. And I keep a pan of bacon grease just sort of simmering on the wood stove.

Trying to get it back.

My new favorite restaurant is Fruitful Grounds. It’s just a little coffeehouse on Fulton near Masonic, but it has a good choice of good foodstuffs. Like French toast with bacon for $7.50. Huge portion. Delicious. And you can also get omelets, burgers burritos, smoothies … and, of course, bagels or pastries.

FRUITFUL GROUNDS

1813 Fulton, SF

(415) 221-1876

Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 9 a.m.–7 p.m.

Beer and wine

Cash only

Double talk

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

PREVIEW I approached a meeting with Gilbert and George, the joined-at-the-hip-since-the-late-1960s so-called living sculpture, with some trepidation. How does one interact with such a well-honed identity in a way that resembles a real conversation? How do you talk to a work of art?

Thankfully, the pair are a burnished public entity with manners — and demeanors that may seem a bit canned but not exactly insincere. They wear their trademark suits: Gilbert, 65, the shorter, Italian-born half, in gray tweed, and George, 66, the slightly ruddy-skinned, bespectacled Brit, in beige. Their time-honored uniform sets them apart, though at the same time they could be ordinary insurance salesman: these suits don’t seem like designer artifacts. The only hint at a subversive side are matching ties with splotches suggestive of some body fluid or another. The artists are warm and friendly, like real people, like a pair of eccentric uncles. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that they’re not particularly quirky, theatrical, or difficult to engage. Then again, a 40-year life and art partnership can result in a comfortable public face.

They give me a tour of their in-progress de Young Museum show. Even without much lighting, a magisterial, pop art stained-glass-window effect is apparent. The pieces are huge and colorful and address urban conditions, religious hegemony, and boys, boys, boys. There’s barely a female figure to be seen in these galleries not long ago inhabited by Vivienne Westwood.

"Gilbert and George" is a reduced version of the Gilbert and George retrospective presented at the Tate Modern last year: "It was four times bigger," Gilbert states. (He seems to be the practical sort, frequently pointing to facts while George philosophizes.) Apparently, it was the largest such show the British museum has ever presented. A working model of the gallery is a key part of their process in plotting out their exhibition, and there’s one on a table with tiny, hand-drawn versions of the expansive pieces on the wall. "We do all of this ourselves," Gilbert announces, referring to the layout, although more than once he makes that claim in terms of the production of their work. The tinted photo-collage work used to be done by traditional photographic and hands-on graphic arts techniques, though they shifted to working on the computer in 2001. "But you can’t tell the difference," he boasts.

Among the first things they tell me is that a piece from 2005 titled Was Jesus Heterosexual? was edited out of the show’s United States tour by the Brooklyn Museum for its religious content — not a shock given that was the site of the 1999 "Sensation" controversy that involved another generation of English artists and Christian icons. "All the American journalists in London say, ‘How uptight you British are,’ when it’s really the other way around," George says wryly. I get the impression they enjoy the ruckus, as their work regularly generates lively debate: for example, their big pictures of turds, including a panoramic one on view here.

It comes as no surprise, then, that they’re tickled by double entendres and randy references. Pointing to a typically large-scale work with the term spunk in the lower right corner, George expresses concern that it may not make sense here: "Do Americans even know that word? What is it here, jism?" I wonder if this is a playful, flattering ploy, as he speaks as if these were obscure terms, like I’m in on the secret. In a similar spirit, he asks me to identify a fuzzy gray image, instantly recognizable as a crab. "And not the kind you get at Fisherman’s Wharf," Gilbert giddily interjects. As they make repeated references to a kind of authenticity — "We photograph everything ourselves," they say — I ask where they got the subject. "Same place you would," George lobs back quickly.

That comment is more than a characteristic bon mot. Though Gilbert and George are not exactly ordinary characters, their subjects are as elemental as piss, shit, and blood — not to mention bottles of booze — which inform some of the earlier works seen here. These elements’ associations are hardly rarefied topics. As we’ve worked our way backward, we end up at a wall of small black-and-white photos of the pair posing together beneath trees in 1971. "We were so young and innocent," George confesses, revealing that beneath the bolder proclamations of their work, there’s even some love.

GILBERT AND GEORGE

Through May 18

Tues.–Thurs. and Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.; Fri., 9:30 a.m.–8:45 p.m.; $6–$10 (free first Tues.)

De Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive

Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 750-3614

www.famsf.org/deyoung

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

There comes a time in any campaign, a political consultant once told me, when you just have to hang up the phone, stop looking at polling data, walk away from the office, and leave it in the hands of the voters. You do everything you can; you work every angle, make the case every possible way you can … and in the end, someone else is going to decide. You can only hope that if you told the truth, played by the rules, and showed why your side was right, in the end you’ll come out on top.

And sometime around the day this issue hits the stands, the Guardian‘s case against the big national chain that owns the SF Weekly will go to the jury. We have the facts on our side. We have the law on our side. We have the truth on our side. And all we can do now is hope the jury sees it.

If you haven’t been following this on the blogs or in the paper: we’re suing the Weekly and Village Voice Media, which used to be known as New Times, for predatory pricing. Our claim is that the Weekly (and until recently, the East Bay Express, which VVM just sold) has been selling ads below cost for the purpose of hurting a local, independent competitor.

Over the past three weeks I’ve been in the courtroom almost every day, watching the story unfold. I’ve learned a lot: the Weekly, for example, has lost money every single year since New Times bought it in 1995. In the past few years the losses have only escalated (to nearly $2 million per year). The paper is still publishing because the corporate parent in Phoenix has shipped more than $16 million to San Francisco to prop it up.

That’s pretty good evidence of the first part of our claim: if the Weekly keeps losing money, the paper is clearly selling ads below cost.

I’ve also seen evidence that the Weekly prepared special Guardian reports every month to send to Phoenix, that the Weekly‘s publishers devoted a special section of their regular financial reports to competition with the Guardian, and that the senior staff regularly talked about the war they were waging on us. Three witnesses testified to hearing Mike Lacey, one of the principals of VVM, announce that he wanted to drive the Guardian out of business.

I’ve seen memos and heard testimony showing the Weekly paid its sales staff bonuses to take ads away from the Guardian. I’ve seen a study showing that in 91 percent of key accounts, the Weekly sold below cost — and in 66 percent of those cases the Guardian either lost the ad or had to deeply discount rates to keep it.

I’ve heard witnesses from the Weekly‘s side testify that the Guardian was just one of many competitors in the market and that they treated it no differently than any other publication. I’ve heard misdirection and lies so blatant that I’ve wanted to stand up and point my fingers at the witnesses and call them out and demand they be indicted for perjury.

And now a jury will have to sort that out. In the end, I think this is a pretty clear case: we are a small, locally owned independent business under assault by a chain competitor that is vioutf8g state law in an effort to take monopoly control of the market. I think we’ve proved that. We’ll know soon.

No shelter from the budget storm

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› news@sfbg.com

Arriving at the steps of Buster’s Place on a cold night is a familiar, comforting act for many of the city’s chronic homeless people. Or rather, it was until recently, when a sign was posted informing clients the facility will be closing its doors for the first time in almost a year.

Buster’s Place, the only centrally located 24-hour drop-in center in San Francisco, is on the chopping block to meet the demands of one of the city’s most drastic midyear budget cuts in recent history. The $1 million cut (roughly the one-year operating cost of Buster’s) is only a piece of the $9.25 million the city’s Department of Human Services must trim from its annual spending.

Buster’s has logged more than 34,000 visits from an estimated 700 clients in the past year. The center serves all walks of life, from lonely elders to those who cannot manage the complex shelter reservation system to newcomers who don’t know where to turn. While staff and resources are limited, Buster’s provides easy access to essential facilities like showers, bathrooms, and laundry rooms. It’s the stop of last resort, as I learned during my recent undercover investigation (see "Shelter Shuffle," 2/13/07, and "Search for Shelter," on the Guardian‘s SF blog).

"There’s a need for this place," Louis Ramon, who is the only case manager working at Buster’s and has been at the center since it opened, told the Guardian. "This is where the too sick, the too paranoid, the too mentally ill come who cannot be housed. Nobody is working with these clients — the really hardcore ones."

Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director for the Coalition on Homelessness, has been a leading advocate for 24-hour homeless centers and is pressuring city hall to reinstate funds to carry Buster’s through the end of the year.

"It’s frustrating when the mayor makes random and arbitrary decisions without consulting relevant community-based organizations or the homeless themselves," Friedenbach told us. "This is another attempt by the mayor to put a nail in the coffin of overnight shelters."

In a Feb. 14 press conference Mayor Gavin Newsom held with Dariush Kayhan, his newly appointed homeless czar, Newsom discussed plans to redesign the city’s shelter system, as well as the midyear budget cuts. "We’ve got a lot of resources that are being spent, but they could be spent more wisely by coordinating strategies," he said.

"With respect to 24-7 access, we’re going to have that with the [Mobile Assistance Patrol] vans, to ensure that people still have that. People can, in rare instances, come to the shelters directly if they’re in a dire emergency and access a bed if needed," Kayhan said. "And we also want to engage those folks because we don’t think sitting in chairs, around the clock, at night — and especially since a lot of those folks are seniors and disabled — that’s not a proper place to be."

Less than five months after it opened last year, Buster’s was slated to close during the regular fiscal-year budgeting last June. Homeless advocates came to Buster’s rescue and had the Board of Supervisors reinstate most of the funding for the center.

However, many homeless advocates and Department of Public Health officials are less optimistic about this round of budget reductions. For one thing, midyear cuts are generally more reactionary, made with little public deliberation, and made because the deficit is bigger than expected.

"This year is much different because the amount of money we need to cut is much more severe," said David Nakanishi, coordinator for community programs at the DPH and responsible for spearheading the planning of Buster’s Place. "Last year Buster’s was the only cut being made to homeless programs, so the community could rally around that one issue. The fiscal situation is much more dire this year. The supervisors will probably not reinstate the money."

Sup. Chris Daly, whose District 6 includes Buster’s Place, isn’t optimistic. "I will fight, but I won’t be successful," he told us, referring to his reduced power on the board after being removed as chair of the Budget Committee last year. "The cut list resembles very closely the list of board priorities from last year. The board cannot compel the mayor to spend."

Over the past year, Buster’s Place has had an uncertain future. The center was created after the temporary closing of the McMillan Drop-in Center, the city’s previous 24-hour drop-in center, at 39 Fell Street. Homeless-rights advocates campaigned for the creation of a 24-hour facility until Daly lobbied the DPH to keep an all-night drop-in center open. The city then contracted the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics to open Buster’s.

However, since the DPH established the center on a short timetable, it did not follow standard procedures for awarding the contract. The DPH is now going through a request-for-proposals process for a 24-hour drop-in center. Of course, if the midyear cuts are approved, this process will stop.

During a night at Buster’s, visitors can count on a few things: hard plastic chairs, restless sleep (if any), and good conversation with familiar faces. While Buster’s provides 24-hour shelter, it also serves as an important social hub for the homeless community. Elisa Frank, who handles shelter reservations through the city’s CHANGES system at the 150 Otis Street administrative office, sends up to 60 people per night to wait for beds at Buster’s.

"Buster’s is a community for a lot of people. They want supervision so they’re not just on the street doing dirt. Some people even have houses. Some who are in [single-room occupancies] and even some who just live alone come to Buster’s just for company," she told us.

One 31-year-old homeless client at Buster’s told us he has been in and out of shelters and illegal housing for most of his life. He has been staying at Buster’s occasionally over the past year and hopes to get his own apartment.

"When I don’t have a place to stay, I get suicidal," he told the Guardian on a chilly night outside Buster’s. "More people are going to die on the street if this place closes."

Noise Pop: Hot shots

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Mika Miko


Los Angeles’ proudly punky ladies have been busy tearing out new tunes back home. Expect them to show their hand in their constant quest to drive the audience bonkers. Also on board is more of their characteristically dark imagery. "There’s nothing worse than happy-joy-joy," drummer Kate Hall says. "You gotta go through some dark stuff." (Kimberly Chun)

With DJ Amp Live and Tempo No Tempo. Tues/26, 8 p.m., free for badge holders and VIPs. Rickshaw Stop, 55 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011

Minipop


Indie pop rarely gets sweeter — or more radio-friendly — than in the hands of San Francisco’s preternaturally poised Minipop. The foursome found an avid listenership early in their career, and the recently released A New Hope (Take Root) finds the unit looking fondly back at the dreamy alt-pop of the early ’90s, with graceful nods to 4AD forebears. (Chun)

Feb. 27, 8:30 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

The Mumlers


Perhaps the Mumlers were channeling the spirit of William Mumler, a mid-19th-century man famous for claiming he could photograph ghosts, but once all seven band members touched their fingers to a Ouija board’s planchette, the board, they claim, spelled out their group’s name. Regardless, it’s clear their swaggered ruckus pop channels dead folk musicians galore. Despite the ghostly origins of their handle, the Mumlers’ live appearances tend into turn to lively celebrations, with the outfit dancing about the stage. Their repertoire of instruments rivals any philharmonic’s and includes guitars, drums, upright bass, various keyboards, euphonium, French horn, trumpet, clarinet, tambourine, pedal steel, and recently, eagle whistles from Mexico. While the tunes give old-time music an indie pop sheen, beneath the group’s sprawling arrangements the lyrics and vocal delivery compare to those of Johnny Cash’s later recordings — with a touch of early Bob Dylan. (Alex Felsinger)

With the Entrance Band, honey.mooon.tree, and Golden Animals. Feb. 27, 9 p.m., $14. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

The Morning Benders


This group has no shortage of hooks and crescendos, and with a lighthearted indie pop style familiar enough to capture anyone’s attention and enough creativity to hold it, they stand out from their peers. Listeners have drawn comparisons to Voxtrot, the Shins, and Of Montreal for good reason, but in the end the Morning Benders’ biggest debt is to the Beatles. So far they’ve recorded all of their releases at home but have always managed to mimic that old analog sound, even when using nothing but a laptop and one microphone. With their upcoming debut, Talking Through Tin Cans (+1), they’ve successfully stepped into hi-fi wonder without losing their homespun feel. The Morning Benders don’t break any musical molds, but their solid songwriting and smooth deliver serve pop tradition well. (Felsinger)

With Kelley Stoltz, Grand Archives, and the Weather Underground. Feb. 28, 8 p.m., $14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

The Blacks


SF’s grungy indie rock band the Blacks sound so much like the Pixies that they ought to be called the Frank Blacks, but they trump the re-formed Pixies in stage presence tenfold. Vocalist JDK Blacker doesn’t sing much at all but rather focuses his energy on livening up the audience: sometimes he’ll help drummer Gavin Black smash cymbals, or perhaps he’ll simply thrash around with his trusty tambourine. Vocalist Luisa Black holds the group together with solid alternating rhythm and lead guitar, while Gavin Black’s drumming shines with stripped-down, solid beats. The Blacks take the simplicity of ’70s punk and garage rock and jump-start the attitude: the concept isn’t new, but then, a combo doesn’t need to be entirely original to rock. (Felsinger)

With Cursive, Darker My Love, and Judgement Day. Feb. 29, 8 p.m., $18. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

Jeffrey Lewis


Crass saved punk. They never fit the part, never ripped off the Rolling Stones, and never tried to become famous, because they genuinely wanted to create a better world and thought they could do so through music. But in the past four years every kid with a leather jacket has picked up an acoustic guitar to sing against the war and capitalism, recorded some songs on their PowerBook, then thrown them up on MySpace. Folk punk has swept the nation’s underground to the point where 924 Gilman Street Project hosts a monthly Acoustic Night. Bringing it full circle, New York City’s Jeffrey Lewis recently released 12 Crass Songs (Rough Trade), composed entirely of acoustic versions of Crass numbers, including some of the group’s best. Lewis came out of his city’s so-called antifolk scene — a Crass cover LP ought to be deemed anti–folk punk, right? — and his vocal patterns have a hushed, somewhat raplike flow. The CD’s best track has to be "Punk Is Dead," which Lewis delivers as a wistful ballad. Hearing a folk singer recite the lyrics 25 years after the first recorded incarnation makes more sense than ever — because the words are certainly truer today. (Felsinger)

With the Mountain Goats, OKAY, and Aim Low Kid. Feb. 29, 8 p.m., $18. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. www.bimbos365club.com

British Sea Power


Do You Like Rock Music? is the provocative title of British Sea Power’s new Rough Trade LP. Well, sure, but do I like their brand of grand indie? Their engorged drums and highly dramatic overtures just might get them discounted as the Big Country of the ’00s, though their quieter moments and more experimental textures hint at increasing — and welcome — complexity and nuance. (Chun)

With 20 Minute Loop, Colour Music, and Off Campus. March 1, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Immigrant


These SF vets of Evening have come a long way from would-be bell-ringing bouts, taking on an epic yet poppy, synth-dappled alt-rock veneer with the self-released Novakinesis. (Chun)

With Panther, Wallpaper, and Distraction Fit. March 1, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011

Port O’Brien


One might note that the flowing harmonies between the four members of Port O’Brien work so well onstage that the audience would be doing a disservice to the band if they joined in. But that would be an unfair request. Port O’Brien’s music emits the instant atmosphere of a warm campfire sing-along. The group’s more intimate acoustic concerts are now only rare gems, and their recorded efforts tend to fall short of capturing the same level of energy, yet their glowing personalities and dedication to the crowd are still evident at their amplified full-band performances. (Felsinger)

With Delta Spirit, What Made Milwaukee Famous, and the Mayfire. March 1, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

The Virgins


Imagine Julian Casablancas with a freshened-up adenoidal approach and jaded ‘tude intact, backed by sloppy-cool disco-rock rats. Equipped with a taste for that tatty late ’70s intersection where punk and disco met, snarled, and duked it out on the train on the way back to the boroughs, these New York City decadance-kins seem likely to outshamble Babyshambles and their louche ilk. Too bad you can only be a virgin once — wonder what the combo’s next trick will be? (Chun)

With Airborne Toxic Event, the Blakes, and Man/Miracle. March 1, 9 p.m., $12–$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

Scatterbrain Jamboree

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PREVIEW How many times have you heard this before? "There’s no good local rock scene in San Francisco! It’s totally a DJ city!" Sigh. Before resigning yourself to a safe and steady diet of well-known touring indie bands — "Why risk $10 on an unknown local band that could suck?" you ask — while bemoaning how much cooler the scene is in other towns (Brooklyn! Montreal! Portland! Oh my!), check out the Scatterbrain Jamboree at Thee Parkside. Sponsored by Stanford radio station KZSU, 90.1 FM, this two-day, all-ages local band–palooza features 19 groups, including some of the freshest new talent this city has to offer.

Highlights include: French Miami, headlining Feb. 23, who manage to combine the anthemic, sweaty-basement-party spirit of Japanther with the speed and prowess of a math rock band (think finger tapping) and the harmonized guitars of the Fucking Champs. Channeling Frank Zappa, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and Devo, the six members of Battlehooch create a fantastic racket that makes you want to scream your way right into a straitjacket. Little Teeth play raspy, effervescent freak folk with hints of Animal Collective’s raw psychedelia and the quirkiness of bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Moldy Peaches. Finally, Master/Slave is the ultradanceable electropop brainchild of guitarist Matt Jones and makes for a remarkably tight live show. But perhaps the best thing about the jamboree is that it’s a benefit for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

SCATTERBRAIN JAMBOREE With White Pee, Pidgeon, Mumlers, Schande, Make Me, Holy Kiss, Top Critters, and DJ Nate Nothing. Fri/22, 8 p.m., $10. Also with French Miami, Master/Slave, Death of a Party, New Centuries, Battlehooch, Shitkickers, Settler, Little Teeth, Thunder Thighs, and Bug Pedals. Sat/23, 2 p.m., $10. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. (415) 252-1330, www.theeparkside.com

Israeli Noise Pop: Monotonix’s cure for the perfection that ails ya

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By Alex Felsinger

Certainly the Noise Pop band farthest from home, Tel Aviv’s Monotonix is also the most distinctive group scheduled to perform. The combo brings sweat, mustaches, and outright stage destruction from Israel, but their music – which sports a hint of the Stone Temple Pilots and some blatant hair-metal influences – takes a back seat to their stage antics.

They’re known for dismantling the drum set and flinging the parts across the stage, and sometimes they’ll even light small fires while the music disintegrates into cymbal crashes and guitar feedback. If Noise Pop has you sick of perfect-to-the-note performances, Monotonix promises the cure.

Monotonix performs at Noise Pop with Gutter Twins, Great Northern, and Apache. March 1, 8 p.m., $18. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

Weekly publisher dodges the facts

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The publisher of the SF Weekly took the stand Friday and today in the Guardian’s predatory-pricing suit and presented all of the Weekly’s positions as if he’d been rehearsing for weeks.

And in fact, Fromson has been sitting in the courtroom watching most of the trial so far. Most witnesses in legal cases don’t get to watch the proceedings until after they’re done with their turn in the box – it might influence their testimony – but Judge Marla Miller has been pretty lax on that front. She’s allowed one representative from each paper to sit in for the entire case, and Fromson has apparently been the Weekly’s designate.

(She’s also allowed me to sit there and watch, and then write about, the proceedings even though it’s theoretically possible that the Weekly’s lawyers will try to put me back on the stand.)

I have no objection to any of this; I’m simply pointing it out because Fromson’s testimony was carefully targeted to hit all the major points where the Weekly has been weak.

But his carefully buffed lines, delivered like the salesman he is, don’t exactly jibe with the evidence.

Fromson’s line – and the line of the lawyers for the 16-paper chain now known as Village Voice Media – is that the poor beleaguered Weekly was trying really hard to raise its ad rates so that it wouldn’t be selling below cost and would be starting to make a profit. The company, he said, is “concerned with rate growth, revenue growth, and increased profit.”

But the facts show that over the 12 years the chain has owned the Weekly, the paper has never made a profit. In fact, for every one of those years, the Weekly has been selling ads below cost.

Fromson tried to argue that in many cases, the Guardian’s ad rates were actually lower than the Weekly’s, and that he as publisher has had to cut prices to meet the competition from the Guardian. But again, the evidence shows otherwise – while there are no doubt a few cases here and there where the Guardian rates were lower, the overall financial statements from both companies make very clear that the Weekly’s rates were consistently below the Guardian and consistently below cost.

Then he tried to argue that he was cutting rates to meet other competition. In fact, the notion that the Guardian was not the Weekly’s prime competitor – that there were dozens of other media outlets fighting for every ad dollar – is central to the Weekly’s defense.

Fromson talked about fighting with the Onion, the neighborhood newspapers and SFStation.com, among others, for ads, and cited some cases in which he said he’d had to lower rates to meet those competitors’ prices.

But again, the evidence doesn’t lie. The Weekly publishers before Fromson all had to prepare regular special reports on the Guardian – and on no other competitor. Fromsom filed some “Guardian reports” of his own – and he couldn’t point to a single similar report he’d filed on any other competitor.

And anyone with any common sense knows that there’s a market niche for alternative weeklies; if there weren’t, neither the Guardian nor the New Times/VVM chain would have survived and grown over the past three decades.

In fact, Fromson as much as admitted that on cross-examination. Guardian attorney Rich Hill asked if any of the neighborhood papers, or the Onion, were members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies or represented by either of the two national ad firms that specialize in alternative weeklies. No, he acknowledged. The neighborhood papers, Hill asked, have much lower circulation and very different types of editorial, don’t they? Yes, said Fromson.

“Are there serious investigative pieces in the Onion?” asked Hill.

“They don’t see themselves doing that,” Fromson replied.

In other words, Hill said, those supposed competitors are actually quite different products, right?

“I don’t agree with that,” Fromson said.

But it became very clear during cross-examination that Fromson did, indeed, see the Guardian as his chief competitor – and that he and the top executives at New Times/VVM were looking for ways to hurt the competitor.

Hill took Fromson through the paper’s finances. In 2005, when he arrived, the Weekly lost $1.8 million. In 2006, with Fromson at the helm, the loss was $2.5 million. And the steep losses continued in 2007.

Hill pointed to several memos showing how Fromson and his bosses, chain president Scott Tobias and CEO Jim Larkin, saw the competition with the Guardian. In one memo, dated Feb/ 24, 2006, Larkin warned Fromson that the Guardian had more ads in the paper. “No way they should be ahead of us in ad count like this,” Larkin wrote.

“They won’t,” replied Fromson. “That is the loudest drum I am beating around here.”

The point of that exchange: Fromson and the higher-ups were concerned not with increasing their rates or making a profit, but with making sure they had more total ads than the Guardian.

“I’m not OK with losing to anyone, least of (sic) Brugman (sic),” Fromson’s email continued.

In July, 2006, Fromson sent an email back to corporate headquarters stating that “we are doing a great job, all things considered.” That came at a time when Fromson’s paper had lost more than a million dollars in just the previous six months.

In November, 2006, Fromson wrote that he was “feeling good about working them over the rest of the year.” Who, Hill asked, is the “them” referred to in that message?

“I imagine it would be the Guardian,” Fromson said.

That same month, while the Weekly was losing $179,000, Larkin wrote to Fromson and said: “great work, let’s keep it going.”

And in Fromson’s Nov. 30,2006 “Guardian report” to Larkin, he wrote: “As you can see, we are winning the battle locally and nationally.”

Since that clearly wasn’t a battle to be profitable or a successful business, Fromson had to be referring to something else. As Hill put it: “Is that the battle to wreck the Guardian?”

Fromson: “There was no battle to wreck the Guardian.”

One of the things the jury will have to do is decide is which witnesses are telling the truth, and which ones, as the lawyers say, lack credibility.

Durty Noise Pop: White Denim – put it on…

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By Alex Felsinger

White Denim‘s bluesy anthems evoke the Minutemen, but they replace the irreverent attitude with an unrelenting and refined drive found in the likes of Kings of Leon or the Thermals. They’ve been tearing up every venue in Austin, Texas, a town so saturated with indie rock that only the most unique make their presence known outside of the Sixth Street clubs.

Their only release, a five-song 7-inch EP, takes full advantage of the analog format and provides a rough-around-the-edges barrage of  fist-pumping fun. On the mic, vocalist and guitarist James Petralli yelps and shouts like Lil’ Richard while bassist Steve Terebecki writhes and dances along – not only do these guys know how to play rock ‘n’ roll right, but they can work a crowd like at a 1950s high school prom.

White Denim play Noise Pop with Holy Fuck, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Veil Veil Varnish. Feb. 29, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF.

Folked-up Noise Pop: Whispertown2000 harks back to Y2K handles

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By Alex Felsinger

Ridiculous nicknames were once reserved for football locker-rooms and saloons, but the Internet has given everyone the ability to bestow any embarrassing name they please upon themselves.

In the early days, Whispertown2000 actually went by Vagtown2000, and then thankfully realized their mistake within a year. But the real mystery here is that instead of starting with a clean slate, they decided to stick with the millennium-village theme and changed their moniker to Whispertown2000.

All ragging on their naming ability aside, founder Morgan Nagler’s vocal delivery evocates female folk vocalists like Mary Chapin Carpenter, but since their songs include either sparse acoustic guitar or low-key synth over mid-tempo drums, the band becomes more of an indie-rock version of Melissa Etheridge. (Felsinger)

Whispertown2000 plays with She and Him, Adam Stephens, and Emily Jane White. March 2, 8 p.m., $18-$20 (sold out). Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF.

Depth charge: artist Katsushige Nakahashi re-creates pieces of WWII

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By Megan Ma

The depiction of war can seem alarmingly passé to the generation removed from it. Death and destruction are a given, and we glibly accept them through the linear narrative of documentaries or the History Channel. Of course, what we choose to reflect in art can sometimes, as Roland Barthes wrote, also reflect memories of past and present that coexist.

SF Camerawork‘s latest show, “Katsushige Nakahashi: Depth of Memory,” achieves a fusion of the historic and/or collective memory of what has been and the personal memories that seem to counter the former. Nakahashi makes a full-scale replica of the Kaiten, a Japanese torpedo used in the last days of WWII as a final, desperate resort by the Imperial army.

A literal death trap, kamikaze pilots delivered themselves to a horrible death in these steel machines. But there’s nothing solid about Nakahashi’s interpretation: it’s made up of thousands of glossy square photos of the actual thing, all taped and bound together into an imperfect replica. The 48-foot long surface of the Kaiten is deflated and somewhat baggy, a receptacle for our own interpretations and memories. True to his vision, Nakahashi asked hundreds of volunteers to arrange his photos, re-living together their own memories of war and swapping stories.

Susan Leal’s fate to be sealed 9 am, Feb. 20?

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Looks like this is the time and date that Leal’s future as SF PUC general manager will be decided:

2/20/08 Agenda Special Meeting San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
Published: 02/15/2008 | Updated: 02/15/2008
Published By: Commission

MAYOR

Susan Leal
GENERAL MANAGER
Michael Housh
SECRETARY
ORDER OF BUSINESS:
1. Call to Order
2. Roll Call
CLOSED SESSION
3. Public comments on matters to be discussed in Closed Session.
4. Motion on whether to assert the attorney-client privilege regarding the matter listed below as Conference with Legal Counsel.

THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION WILL GO INTO CLOSED SESSION TO DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING ITEM:
5. Pursuant to Government Code section 54957 (b)(1) and San Francisco Administrative Code section 67.10 (b), discussion and possible action on a Public Employee Dismissal, Number of Employees Affected: 1.

FOLLOWING THE CLOSED SESSION, THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION WILL RECONVENE IN OPEN SESSION.
6. Announcement following Closed Session.
7. Motion regarding whether to disclose the discussions during Closed Session.
ADJOURNMENT

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