Overriding the Rules Committee recommendation and dissing Sup. Scott Wiener – who has taken a lead role on protecting nightlife from critical cops and NIMBY neighbors – the Board of Supervisors yesterday voted to appoint Glas Kat Supper Club owner Steven Lee to the Entertainment Commission, even though he doesn’t live in the city and needed a special residency waiver. UPDATE (1/12, 3 PM): Sup. Sean Elsbernd informs us that the City Attorney’s Office has ruled residency waivers can’t be used with Charter Commissions such as Entertainment, thus invalidating this appointment.
Why would supervisors do so when Castro club owner Tim Eicher, Wiener’s pick and the Rules Committee’s choice, was well-qualified, anxious to serve, and actually lives in the city? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that sources say Chinatown political fixer Rose Pak and Pak protege David Ho are close to Lee and have been lobbying on his behalf. Or that Wiener said Lee supporters have been making the argument that there are already too many gay men on the commission.
“Nightlife issues are important tot he LGBT community,” Wiener said, noting that he was disappointed that Lee supporters have made that argument, particularly because he noted the LGBT people are underrepresented on many city commissions, particularly the powerful Planning and Airport commissions, where there are none.
Whatever the case, it made for a tense discussion at the board yesterday, followed by a vote that didn’t break along normal ideological lines. The motion by Sup. Eric Mar to substitute Lee for Eicher was approved on a 6-5 vote, with Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Wiener opposed.
Lee supporters noted that he has lived and worked in San Francisco for decades even though he has recently moved down the peninsula to help care for an aging father and disabled brother. For three generations, Lee’s family has been opening and operating businesses in San Francisco, including nightclubs.
“I felt his experience was somewhat superior,” Sup. John Avalos said of his reason for backing Lee.
But those who voted against Lee said it’s a troubling precedent to choose an out-of-towner over a city resident. “To grant a residency waiver for someone when we have a qualified San Francisco candidate is something we just don’t do,” Farrell said.
Sup. Jane Kim cited examples of other appointees that had such waivers, but Elsbernd angrily retorted that those were for seats that no city residents had applied for. And if Sup. Malia Cohen gets her way, there will be even more non-residents being appointed to city commissions. She said that she intends to recommend African Americans who have left the city to serve on various commissions, and she told her colleagues that she expects their future support for that effort.
After the hearing, both Lee and Ho downplayed Pak’s role in the move, telling the Guardian that Lee had key supporters in many of the supervisorial districts. “I’ve been doing this on my own,” Lee said. “I never asked Rose to help me.”
As for his priorities on the Entertainment Commission, Lee said, “Obviously, our main goal is public safety, but also working with the neighbors.”
With nine members currently blending Afro Balkan and Middle Eastern sounds and dance moves, Califa certainly refrains from limiting itself. The new Los Angeles-based ensemble – which features members of Fishtank Ensemble, Plotz, and Ballet Asaneh – is something of a world music supergroup. It’s a blend of other acts, and of live music, live dancing, and obscure instruments.
Still in its infancy (it formed in May 2011) Califa takes its first tour up the northern coast this week, with show stops in the Bay Area at Red Poppy Art House and Ashkenaz Music & Dance Center. I spoke with band member Ursula Knudson, who sings and plays theremin along with the occasional hand-held percussion instrument, on the eve of the tour and got the lowdown on Califa’s origins, its interest in global music, and the group’s desire to draw out movement in crowds.
San Francisco Bay Guardian:How did Califa form, and where does the group write its music? Ursula Knudson: Originally the idea was to have a group of all women superstars who could sing, dance, and play instruments. We decided to have a mixed group because we knew we didn’t want to limit the quality of the musician by sex – meaning if there was a kickass bass player that was female we’d take her but if there was an even better one who was a man, we wanted that choice as well.
Basically, we wanted our dream group. Different members of the group offer either arrangements or original compositions, and with nine people, there is a lot of choice! The original concept was [created by] our singer Rosa Rojas, and my husband Fabrice Martinez, also with Fishtank Ensemble, they were the two who dreamed up the group.
SFBG:Why did Califa decide to focus on the music of North and East Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East? UK: Like I mentioned, this is intended to be our dream band, so even though those [sounds] are what we are focusing on now because it is our new interest, whatever else strikes anyone’s fancy could be pursued later.
We wanted beautiful singers, rock players, traditional players, experimental plays, and it seems we are getting all of it! Right now we chose those regions because most of us have experience already with Balkan music or Middle Eastern music, we have a Morrocan in the band, and ever since I visited Senegal last year I have been in love with the music of West Africa.
SFBG:And are there personal connections with those regions within the band? UK: Momo Loudiyi is from Morroco and plays sintir and got our violinist is playing bendir, and he brings an awesome North African love power vibe to the group. Four members of the group are in a band called the Plotz, which is like crazy Balkan time signature rock, and of course Fabrice and I are both in Fishtank Ensemble which is known to play a lot of Eastern European/Balkan music, so that is our connection as well. And Rosa Rojas, our other singer, has spent years studying the dances of the Silk Road and performed for a while with Ballet Afsaneh in Bay Area.
SFBG: How do you incorporate those styles into your music? UK: We play some original songs composed by various members in certain ethnic styles (rhumba, a Ukrainian song that sounds slightly African, Momo’s music) and also the Balkan and Middle Eastern songs, already in our repertoire, that we have arranged for this particular ensemble.
SFBG:Was it intentional to create a sound that encourages dance? UK: Of course! The show should extend beyond the stage; it should encompass the whole room!
Califa Thurs/12, 7 p.m., $15 Red Poppy 2698 Folsom, SF (415) 826-2402 www.redpoppyarthouse.com
With Inspector Gadje Sat/14, 8:30pm Ashkenaz 1317 San Pablo, Berkl. (510) 525-5054 www.ashkenaz.com
Bonus related show: Fishtank Ensemble With George Cole Quintet Jan. 27, 8 p.m., $22.50 Freight & Salvage 2020 Addison, Berkl. (510) 644-2020 www.thefreight.org
Actually, more likely Newt Gingrich, Scorched Earth Opportunist, but whatever, we’ll take it: Newt — he the friend of plutocrats and one-time lobbyist for predatory lenders — is launching an assault on Mitt Romney, calling him, in essence, a capitalist pig who exploits the workers.
The fact that it’s true makes the story even more fun. As does the fact that Romney has run so far to the right in the primaries that Obama — by any standard in serious trouble — now has a natural line of attack against the candidate most likely to offer him a credible challenge.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has succeeded in pushing the issue of the nation’s vast wage and wealth disparity onto the agenda of the 2012 campaign. While Republicans in the past have been successful in dismissing discussion and debate about the Third World levels of wealth concentration in the U.S. as unpatriotic “class warfare,” the inarguable facts about the massive gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else are now well-known by many mainstream voters, at a time when Romney stands as a central casting character representing the 1%.
Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron says that ” many of us wish that Democrats had the chutzpah to be this scathing and direct,” and I can’t argue with that. The good news is that the Newtclear Bombs in South Carolina will probably work: Romney’s going to win the nomination, and everybody knows it, but the blitz of revenge ads may wound Romney enough to convince the Obama folks that this is the line of attack to use during the general election.
In other words, Newt is pushing the Democratic party to the left, legitimizing the class warfare that the Republicans so love to denounce as unAmerican.
If you’re going to get to the other side of this deep transition you’re in, you’re gonna have to contend with some of your gnarlier insecurities. Instead of trying to make your actions and plans perfect, learn from your internal blocks. Cultivate a sense of adventure and play this week.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Approach your goals and interests in a methodical way, Taurus. If you allow yourself to get too caught up in the outcome of things you may descend into a dark and worried place trying to predict the future. Focus your attentions on the things you can do something about in the here and now.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
The unknown offers the temptation to make up stories that suit your feelings. Be careful not to project your fears or your ideals onto situations this week, Gemini. Go openhearted towards what feels good; the heavy stuff will unfold in its own time, so just have fun for now.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Things have not developed as much as they need to in order for you to really know what you’re dealing with yet, Cancer. It’s a challenge to organize your time and actions in a way that gets it done but is not too controlling, but that’s exactly what you should strive to do this week.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Your heart is so big, Leo, and it craves a shower of attention and loving. All of your relationships are important, but now is the time to identify the three most special ones to pour your sweetness and caring into. Invest in relationships that make you feel happy and hopeful.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
The pursuit of balance is a noble one, and it takes flexibility and a healthy sense of self. Strive towards knowing yourself well enough to know when you are tipping off scale, Virgo. If you find yourself out of balance, try to learn how you got there that you can use in more difficult times.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Friends are awesome, but they can’t fix your problems for you. This week your tendency to freak yourself out by using a magnifying glass on what only needs a cursory look, is activated. Find ways of supporting yourself that don’t involve fixing them, Libra. Be nice to your self!
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
If you do all the right things and say all the right stuff you still may not get what you want; then again, you just may. The point is, you’ve got to do the right thing because it’s right, not because of whatever conclusion you’ve decided is best. Be true to yourself, regardless of the upshot.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Don’t refine a thing beyond what is necessary, Sag. You run the risk of burning your candle at both ends of the wick and that’ll burn those adorable fingers of yours! Pace yourself in all things so that you don’t keep on running when you reach the finish line.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Learning to expect the best is a process for any sign, but especially yours, Cappy. Trust that there is no other foot about to fall and no secret bad consequences to this burgeoning sense of hope you’ve got. Visualize your best-case scenarios, then take practical steps towards them, pal.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
You need to set some healthy limits with people in a way that they understand, so avoid cryptic messages and subtle hint dropping this week. You’re able to get what you need as long you are clear with yourself and others about what that is, so make that your top priority, pal.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Patience is all you need, Pisces. You are approaching a stage of development that will allow you to integrate some major changes that you have been long at work on. Trust in the process of your own creation, even if things are taking longer than you’d like. *
Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com
For this week’s Winter Looks issue, we rounded up some of the Bay’s hautest dressers to show us how to step out right when the weather’s wrong
Stylist Leah Perloff is a woman that can’t let chilly winds keep her at home. In addition to her stylist gigs, Perloff moonlights as DJ Rapid Fire, booty-bouncer at the monthly queer throwdown Stay Gold. When asked how she chose the layered looks she sported in photographer Matthew Reamer’s studio for our shoot, Perloff sassed back: “Winter is so whatever in San Francisco that you can even integrate things you would wear during the summer.”
Tardy Platform Boot by Jeffery Campbell (Shoe Biz), Groupie Flare Jeans by BDG, Zach Godiva Tee by All Saints, Twisted Yarn Cardigan by Zara, Vintage Denim Jacket by Levi’s, ROZI Hooded Infinity Scarf by Ryan DeBonville Knitwear (Mission Statement), Basenji Clutch by Aldo, Earrings, Rings, and Necklaces by Babe Alert Jewelry (Stone Pony)
Crisson Ankle Bootie by Aldo, pants by Ever, Dune Tee by Eighteenth (Mira Mira), LEAH Oversized Infinity Scarf by Ryan DeBonville Knitwear (Mission Statement), jewelry by Babe Alert (Stone Pony)
I get it: Life in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Krushchev was pretty bad. Food was sometimes scarce, spies were everywhere, people got locked up in jail for disloyalty to the State … I know all that. I read The Gulag Archipelago when I was in High School. It made me more wary of powerful governments than it did of Communism, but whatever — I’ll stipulate that the Soviet Union of that era was not exactly the great workers paradise it was supposed to be. (We had a few problems with repression here at home, too.)
But Child 44, Tom Rob Smith’s bestselling 2008 thriller about Leo Demidov, an idealistic Soviet security officer, is still hard to read. Every single person in the Soviet government is corrupt and evil. Every aspect of life is absolutely miserable. There is no hope, just bleakness; the only way anyone can do any good at all is either by mistake or by subversion. Child 44 just drips of the sort of anti-Communist propaganda I was fed in grade school, and while it’s a brilliantly constructed crime mystery, I had to put it down every few pages and say:
Really?
So I opened the sequel, Agent 6, with some hesitation. These books are long and thick, and some of the references are obscure, so you have to pay attention. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to wade through another 467 pages of Commie Plot Nightmare.
But Agent 6 is a pleasant surprise. It’s much lower on the bleakness scale and much more of a serious international novel of intrigue, with realistic characters, some good action and (of course) not much sex. I guess they don’t do that in Russia. Maybe it’s too cold.
The plot actually stretches from the Cold War to the present, but the heart of the matter occurs in 1965, when out hero Demidov (dismissed from the security service in some sort of disgrace, downgraded to a minor plant manager with a crummy apartment) discovers that his schoolteacher wife, Raisa, has been asked to take her students on a friendship tour of the United States. Of course, the couple’s two teenage daughters will be going along — but not poor Leo. He’s been such a bad boy that he can’t leave the country.
Then there’s an African American singer who was a huge star — and an outspoken commie — in the U.S. in the 30s and 40s, but has since been blacklisted and driven to poverty by the American version of Soviet repression. He, like Leo, has a shitty apartment in a slum. But the singer, Jesse Austin, gets invited by some shady crew that may be part Soviet propaganda machine and may be part FBI/CIA op, to sing at the friendship event — except that he’s not really officially invited, so he stands outside on a box — and winds up dead. One of Leo’s daughters is arrested for the murder, Leo’s wife is killed along the way — and the former Soviet cop spends the rest of his life trying to figure out what happened (and for his efforts is exiled to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan).
What happened is a good tale. The parallels between the way the Americans treated a one-time commie and the commies treated a one-time cop make this a lot more intellectually interesting than the first book. The scenes (and lessons) from the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan are a good real, and relevant to anyone who thinks it’s every possible for a foreign nation to invade that country. The depressing ending is about what you’d expect from a writer who makes his living describing depressing conditions and sad people, but it works.
I’m changing my mind about Tom Rob Smith. And while this is being sold as the last one, I suspect he’s got another Leo Demidov story in him somewhere.
Though Starfucker hails from Portland, Ore., it’s easy to see why the band feels at home here. If a bunch of hip, pasty dudes performing in drag doesn’t scream “San Francisco,” I don’t know what does. Its name is edgy enough to elicit parental concern (the less offensive STRFKR is often used instead), but Starfucker’s trendy synth-pop is catchy and sweet.
Every time the band rolls through town, it seems like more resident scenesters have been bitten by the Starfucker bug. Maybe it was the release of the delightful Reptilians (Polyvinyl) in March, or its appearance at last summer’s Outside Lands festival that ignited Starfucker pandemonium. Whatever the reason, the group was inspired to put on three Bay Area shows to accommodate voracious fans this time around.
Friday night’s sold-old show at the Great American Music Hall was jam-packed enough to quell the most insatiable appetite. As the band appeared in gaudy thrift store dresses and wigs, the young, attractive crowd went ape. Joints were sparked, beers were lifted, and the band made it impossible to have a bad time.
At every Starfucker show I’ve seen in the past (I’ve seen a lot), the band seemed to rely heavily on the seductive charisma of former lead vocalist Ryan Biornstad. Without Biornstad, the boys mostly resigned to their respective positions on stage with no one taking a lead position. There was, however, plenty of tambourine shaking and wig tossing.
Though slightly less exciting visually, Starfucker sounded better than ever. Melodic synthesizers and guitars meshed with founding member Josh Hodges’ gentle, androgynous vocals. The extremely long set featured a bunch of tracks from Reptilians, including the Passion Pit-esque “Julius,” a hand-clap inciting “Death as a Fetish,” and many older selections from the Starfucker catalog. With its lusty bassline and celestial synths, “Isabella of Castile” served as a reminder that the band’s name was aptly chosen. Other highlights were the Target commercial jam “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” and cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
When the set finally concluded, we were a sweat-soaked, satisfied bunch. Those on stage were likely sweatier and undoubtedly more exhausted. There wasn’t much between song banter, but the night began with Hodges declaring the band’s love for San Francisco. Hey Starfucker, the feeling is mutual.
Opener: I spent most of Painted Palms’ set trying to figure out why keyboardist Reese Donohue was giving me major déjà vu. I realized that I’d seen Donohue doing lead vocals during electronica outfit Butterfly Bones’ opening set for Starfucker at the Rickshaw Stop years ago. I’m pretty sure I also saw him on stage with absurd joke rap ensemble Flophouse when it opened for Starfucker side-arm Skeletron at Milk Bar. Painted Palms was, however, the most promising act I’ve seen Donohue perform with so far. A relatively new band with only one EP under its belt, the duo cranked out a short set filled with bright loops and chill vibes, which was a nice way to warm up for Starfucker’s crazy energy.
Mayor Ed Lee talked to the Examiner about his plans for the next year, and it’s a lot of the usual political crap: I’m going to create jobs, I’m going to bring people together and promote civility, ho hum. But he did mention, briefly, the need to change the city’s business tax, and here’s how he put it:
We have given ourselves four months to reach out to all the business groups. There will be different views and opinions. You can have a hybrid [between a payroll and gross receipts tax], and you can also have a phase-in period of time. We want to have a good conversation with everybody and get their best ideas, and then use those ideas to craft what we think could be on the ballot. We’re not saying it has to be on the November ballot, but it could be. We want to have something that is not job punishing, but also something that does not decrease our revenue.
First: He’s going to reach out to all the business groups — but what about everyone else in the city? The level of business taxes has a direct impact on city services; is that not part of the equation? Clearly, he’s talking about something that’s at best revenue-neutral, something that “does not decrease our revenue.”
And please, don’t tell me about “job punishing” — it makes me even crazier than I already am. Look: There has to be a business tax in San Francisco. And any time you tax businesses, you take money for the city that could be used for other things. In some cases — not that many — the extra money might be used to hire a few people. In reality, for most businesses, the payroll tax is absolutely NOT a factor in job creation. It sounds bad — Gasp! a tax on jobs! — but the truth is that payroll is a rough approximation for the size of a company, and that’s what the city uses as a tax base.
Of course, we could change that to a gross receipts tax — another rough approximation for the size of a company. It’s also imperfect — some companies have a lot of money (VC funding, for example) and a lot of employees, but at this point not much in the way of sales. Some companies (supermarkets, for example) have high gross receipts but relatively low profit margins. And, of course, if you do a gross receipts tax the same people who complain about the payroll tax will have a new line: The GR tax penalizes growth! It penalizes success! The more money you make the more you pay! Unfair! Un-American! Job killer!
Because some people in this town (mostly big business types) just want lower taxes, period — not different taxes, lower taxes
So let’s get rid of the “job killer” rhetoric and start talking about what the city’s tax policy should be. And it should go like this: The individuals and businesses with the most money should pay the highest tax rates. The rich don’t pay their fare share anywhere in the U.S., and while the mayor and the supervisors can’t change federal policy, they can do their part on a modest level at home.
This a great year for tax reform in San Francisco. The spirit of Occupy is very much alive. There is, for the first time in decades, a national discussion about income and wealth inequality. There’s strong evidence that the middle class is vanishing in San Francisco. And, thanks to the wierdness of state law, in 2012, when there’s an election for the Board of Supervisors, a tax measure can pass with a simple majority vote In many ways, this is the single most important policy issue in the city, the one that defines who pays for what and who gets what and whether (public sector) jobs are created or destroyed and what kind of a city we want to be.
So let’s take it seriously. Instead of allowing Mayor Lee and the (big) business folks set the agenda, the progressives really need to move forward on a tax-reform plan that looks at making big business pay more and small business pay less — and that brings in another $250 million a year for the local coffers If gross receipts is the flavor of the day, I’m good with that — but not a flat tax. Exempt, say, the first $250,000 (or the first $500,000, whatever, run the numbers and see what we can afford). Put a 1 percent tax on the next million, a 1.5 percent tax on all receipts between $1.5 million and $5 million, a 2 percent tax on $5 million to $10 million and 3 percent on everything higher. Adjust the numbers either way, but that’s the general idea. Then add in a tax on commercial rents (again, exempt the first $500,000 or whatever) to make sure the the big landlords (who get away with murder under Prop. 13) are paying, too. And yes, based on market supply and demand, some will try to pass that on to their tenants, but companies (including a lot of law firms) that rent enough space to be paying millions of dollars a year in rent can afford to modest tax hike.
It will take the city controller or the city’s economist to do the math and see what the options are and how you get to $250 million net new revenue, so my proposal is just a start. But somebody needs to take this on, some member of the Board of Supervisors — or else we’ll just be responding to what the Chamber of Commerce wants. Who wants to be the champion of Tax Reform for the 99 Percent? Time is getting short.
I know, I know: It doesn’t deserve the hype. And Mitt Romney’s going to be the Republican nominee anyway; the rest is all theater. And I was just joking about how it might help Obama if one of the true wingnuts won the Iowa Caucuses.
But in the cold light of a Jan. 4 morning, I have to say:
It’s pretty fucking scary that the voters in Iowa not only took seriously but gave a fair amount of support to someone who has made much of his career out of being a homophobe and a racist. Oh, and really, really stupid:
“There are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore. I don’t know if that’s the similar situation or that’s the case for anyone that’s black. It’s a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that’s the diff for serving in the military.”
Seriously: I know that he only got 30,000 votes, and there are a lot of evangelical Christians in Iowa, and I suppose not all of them hate queer people. Al Sharpton — and whatever you say, Sharpton’s no political fool — says that Santorum helps the Democrats by forcing Romney to continue to pander to the right. And I don’t believe that even 25 percent of the Republican voters in the nation as a whole would support someone with Santorum’s views.
But still: It’s 2012. And the most virulently antigay candidate in a right-wing field is right up near the top in the first real contest.
Start the year off right by tying up loose ends and generally cleaning house. Things are about to change in surprising ways, so don’t put too much energy towards making them stick just yet. Get rid of the clutter that obscures your clear view for best results.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
It’s time to focus on foreplay. The confusion and anxieties that are plaguing you reflect a lack of self-awareness. Take yourself out, treat yourself right and make yourself comfortable before you lay on the pressure. The path of self-discovery is as important as where it brings you.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
There’s pleasure and then there’s joy, and sometimes the two things come from the same source and then some times they just don’t. The things that are bringing you good times may not have good vibes, so watch yourself, Gemini. Invest in joy, even if it slows down the fun train.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Invite awesomeness into your life by following two simple rules, Cancer. First, have vision! Know what you want to have enter your life in the upcoming months. Next, set some small, manageable goals that help you lay the foundation to reaching the bigger ones.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Let the virtue of compassion govern your upcoming year, and most certainly this week, Leo. The healthiest answer to your problems, and the smoothest course to your answers will be found with a patient and forgiving heart. If things are set to change, all you can do is make the best of it.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
This week is a great one for instigating transformation. Trust your instincts and strive towards expanding your life. You are meant to grow, so make sure you do so in an upward direction. Mate your free will with your current conditions in a way that brings the best out of both of them.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
The only way to achieve the kind of results that you’re looking for is to approach things differently. Practice self-control with your old habits of over-doing things, and daring with your self-imposed limitations. You are on the verge of a life that is greater, so put your best forward.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Take care of your family matters, Scorpio. It’s important to know where you want to go with those relationships because the energy is there for you to change the course of them for the better. Pay close attention to what you know about people, instead of what you want to believe about them.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
There is no greater lesson for you this week than patience, Sag. Trade in your enthusiastic impulsiveness for foresight and diplomacy. You are being challenged to get to your destination unharried so that you have more to give when you get there.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Today’s disappointment’s are the building blocks of your tomorrow: at first, this may sound like a bummer but the truth is that you will handle whatever has got you down and the skills you use will lead to a greater you. Learn from your mistakes, don’t lament them.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Don’t be scared to experience longing, Aquarius. If you don’t dream it, how will you ever get it, much less recognize it when it sidles up beside you? The problem with desire is that you risk the heartache of not getting what you want when you want a thing so bad: it’ll be totally worth it.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
“What you resist shall persist,” Pisces. You have got to promote your emotional well-being this week. Look at your old ways of avoiding pain and stop before you start! Find other, better ways to approach your needs that require more intention and less autopilot for best results.
Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com
Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. Each week a band/music-maker with a show, album release, or general good news is highlighted and spotlit. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com. This installment is guest written by Frances Capell.
If you pick up a copy of Swiftumz’s (a.k.a. Chris McVicker’s) LP, Don’t Trip (Holy Mountain), you’ll notice a purple sticker that says “CALL ME,” and lists his phone number. Weird, yes, but it’s the same endearing candor that lights up McVicker’s darling lo-fi pop tunes. His retro guitar hooks and fragile, imperfect voice remind me of Girls’ Chris Owens, but McVicker is one of a kind. Check out the album, give him a call, or go see him at the Hemlock Tavern this Saturday.
Year and location of origin: We’ve all been playing music together for years, this incarnation is new and based around my solo project. Band name origin: A nickname some people call me. Band motto: “Short sets!”? Do bands have motto’s? I think we are all into having fun playing music together, being productive at practice so we can be good live. Description of sound in 10 words or less: Short, heartfelt, pretty pop songs with good instrumental arrangements. Instrumentation: Two guitars/drums/bass and whatever else is called for. Most recent release:Don’t Trip LP (Holy Mountain Records). Released October 2011. Best part about life as a Bay Area band: Feel like this is the best place to live, and that translates to most aspects of life and art. Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: I don’t know, I think we all really like it here. First record/cassette tape/or CD ever purchased: Prince 1999. Most recent record/cassette tape/CD/or Mp3 purchased/borrowed from the Web: Bought last week at Aquarius: Fac.Dance Compilation, Scare Dem Crew The Album, Dictators Manifest Destiny. Favorite local eatery and dish: Fresh Dungeness crabs! [ed note: but from where, Swiftumz?]
Swiftumz With Wet Illustrated and Meercaz Sat/7, 9:30 p.m., $6 Hemlock Tavern 1131 Polk, SF (415) 923-0925 www.hemlocktavern.com
Warming up with the picturesque video for “Day We Met:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH-Oh_NhDr4
The nice thing about playing a major stage in your hometown is that you can count on support from old friends. On the other hand, it also means that those same people can shout out whatever they want during the mic breaks. “Man, they just had to bring out my childhood nickname,” a slightly blushing Mara Hruby said Wednesday night, responding to a slightly inaudible call from someone from way back in the back of the sold-out crowd at Yoshi’s Oakland.
Coming to the stage, Hruby recalled her first concert experience seeing Ahmad Jamal play at the venue, and for the relatively new singer – having so far released an EP From Her Eyes that’s largely a collection of covers – the historic significance seemed to be working on her. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m a little excited to be on this stage,” she said, following a rendition of Mos Def’s “The Panties” and her original “So Come.” “I have the jitters a little bit.” Maybe there were visual signs of this, like a firm grip on the mic stand or platform heels rooted in place, but you couldn’t hear it in her voice. Hruby sang with composure and a deceptive ease, whether drawing the room’s attention sustaining the end of Andre 3000’s “Take Off Your Cool” or playfully bouncing along the highs and the lows of her own “The Love Below.”
When the evening’s “special guest” Chris Turner (an Oakland native who has spent the last nine years in New York) joined Hruby on stage for a few songs beginning with D’Angelo’s “Send It On,” it made for a nice duet. Whereas Hruby’s voice is typically soft and reserved, Turner’s is more forceful, bombastic. Given stage time to himself, he sang a track called “All We Need Is Love” – what he would refer to as his “anthem” – with the didactic emphasis of a preacher. It could have been corny, in the same way that Turner proclaims to be heralding “the Romantic Movement,” but has enough charm and genuine feeling behind it to back it up. (Hruby, perhaps just beating him to the compliment, said that Turner “doesn’t know that he’s the next great musician of our generation…seriously.”)
After singing with Turner, Hruby appeared more relaxed on the stage, and dedicated the next song to her father, just recently married. “If you choose to be with me,” she began to sing, as the girl at the table next to me slipped her arm around her date, a guy that I honestly thought had been blowing it. Maybe, reflecting Hruby, the crowd was warming, getting caught up a bit in the Romantic Movement. And it seemed the band, an unimposing group suiting the venue, started laying into it as well. First turning a cover of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love” – the low on Hruby’s EP for me – into a highlight, and then adding some funky bass on the original “I’m Sure” before giving the guitars a workout for Jamiroquai’s “Alright.”
Early in the night Hruby had coaxed the audience to speak up, get vocal, saying that she liked to interact. As her performance went on that became more clear, whether it was with the crowd, Turner, or the band. Closing the show with Al Green’s “Simply Beautiful”, one line stood out: “If I gave you my love, I tell you what I’d do, I’d expect a whole lot of love out of you.”
It starts off in your basic living room, two girls laughing then launching into a sweet, stripped down lo-fi version of Cock Sparrer’s oi classic “Take ‘Em All.” The musicians, Jennie Cotterill and Sara Lyons, play acoustic guitar and organ respectively, and harmonize “Take ’em all, take ’em all/Put ’em up against a wall and shoot ’em.” The disparity between the lyrics, origins, and this whole set-up encapsulates the appeal of Long Beach’s Cunt Sparrer, a trio that also includes Jen Kirk-Carlson and sometimes Myra Gallarza of Cotterill and Kirk-Carlson’s other band Bad Cop/Bad Cop on drums. More than a tribute act, Cunt Sparrer has been rearranging and rejuvenating Cock Sparrer tunes and other traditional punk hits for the past few years and through those efforts gained some deserved social media recognition — its Youtube clips routinely garner upwards of a thousand views, and on Twitter there was the biggest compliment of all: a tweet of approval from Cock Sparrer itself. I got the chance to chat with Cotterill and Lyons before their New Year’s Eve Eve San Francisco show this Friday at Thee Parkside — here are the juicy bits:
San Francisco Bay Guardian:How did the idea for Cunt Sparrer form? Sara Lyons: We’ve been big Cock Sparrer fans for a really long time and I always thought “Cunt Sparrer” was a funny name for an all-girl tribute band. Originally we had thought about doing it as a straightforward Cock Sparrer tribute, but then Jennie came across our first electric chord organ at a flea market and we just sort of started playing around with it and liked what we came up with.
SFBG: Have you met resistance from Cock Sparrer fans or in general from those offended by the term “cunt”? Ever have to deal with asshole punks? Jennie Cotterill: Some people seem to think that the word “cunt” means it’s going to be a strip show or something, but I think we’ve gotten pretty good at shutting that down. There are a lot of assholes on the internet, but in person for the most part everyone is pretty nice. SL: When we first started out I was nervous about resistance from Sparrer fans, but it turns out that a lot of our biggest fans are old-school Cock Sparrer fans who can appreciate hearing their favorite songs interpreted in a different way.
The Cock Sparrer-approved version of “Because You’re Young”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIWBwEqBPZQ
SFBG: What was Cock Sparrer’s response to your band? You’ve opened for them, correct? SL: We haven’t actually opened for Cock Sparrer. We did get to play at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas this year, which they also played, but our shows weren’t connected. From everything we hear from people who have met or are close to the band, they’re really friendly guys who are super appreciative of their fans. They do know about us and have tweeted our Youtube video of “Because You’re Young,” so we think they are aware that Cunt Sparrer is coming from a place of major love and respect. JC: We really hope we get to meet them someday.
SFBG: What’s the been the best part about this band so far? Any particular moments that have stood out from live shows? JC: Getting to go on vacations with your best friends! SL: Yeah, just having the opportunity to spend a lot of time around my favorite people, playing some of my favorite songs. JC Our show at the Yucca Tap Room in Tempe, AZ back in November was our best experience ever. We were playing with Kevin Seconds and we had a local oi band called the All City Boot Boys opening up for us. SL: They were your classic big, burly traditional skinhead dudes and at first I was like, ‘I’m not sure how they’re going to respond to us.’ But when we started our set, there was this crowd of thirty plus huge dudes singing along to every word, chanting “oi”… JC: ….and inviting us back to their place for home-brewed beer.
SFBG: If you were to start another tribute band, which band would it cover? SL: We like Descendents songs. And we do cover Billy Bragg and the Misfits in our set. JC: And we’ve covered Angelic Upstarts and 7 Seconds before. SL: Yeah…badly. JC: I don’t know, though, I don’t think I’d really be interested in being in any other cover band. I know it’s kind of a novelty right now or whatever, to have a tribute band, but that’s not why I’m doing this. I’m in Cunt Sparrer so I can play music with my friends and because these are fun, good songs that I can play when I’m drunk. And they appeal to people. SL: We’re really lucky in that Cock Sparrer has such a unique and loyal fan base and that the majority of them are open to our interpretation of the music, because it plays such a vital role in a lot of people’s lives. We kind of stumbled onto a niche thing with Cunt Sparrer that I don’t think would work in any other capacity, and I think that’s why we’ve managed to do the things we’ve gotten to do so far with our little band.
Cunt Sparrer With Bro-Mags, Girl-illa Biscuits Fri/30, 9 p.m., $6 Thee Parkside 1600 17th St., SF (415) 252-1300 www.theeparkside.com
Take inventory of all that you’ve achieved in 2011 — the good, the bad and the mediocre. As your year closes an honest appraisal of things will help you to best set goals that nurture your heart and are sustainable as well as attainable. Make this year count.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Let your approach to life in the New Year be one of surrender. Do not surrender your will, but your willfulness. Go for what you most want without being attached to how others react or how things need to play out. You can only take responsibility for how you participate, so do your best.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
The pursuit of happiness should be utmost in your mind, and the practical steps on that path must be considered. In 2012, finding new strategies for understanding and dealing with your anxieties will pave your road with yellow bricks and lollipops! Magic will come after maintenance, Twin Star.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Stay focused on your goals, even if they feel very far from you. The New Year may bring with it a bit of an existential crises, but don’t despair, sweet Moonchild! You are ready to look at some things you’ve been avoiding and to create a life that is more whole and true to you.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Happy 2012, Leo! Take a solid assessment of the path you have traveled in ’11, and reevaluate your hopes and goals for the New Year. There are many things ending now, so tie up loose ends and focus on what will make you happy as you strive onwards and upwards.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
You have got to be true to yourself, above all else, Virgo. Regardless of others expectations of you, make certain that you are setting healthy and self-appropriate limits for yourself as you enter the year 2012. Say yes to yourself, even if it means saying no to others.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Take risks to improve the state of your relationships and to strengthen family bonds, Libra. The way you bring yourself forward is just as important as what you are bringing; find a way to be authentic in the sharing of your lovely self, or hold back until you can.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
You don’t need to know how to carry out all the changes and improvements your life requires, Scorpio. Too much fretting over those details will derail you from the most important work before you: setting yourself on a course the ends the path of bad mental vibes you were on.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Resolve to have a realistic sense of what works for you in 2012, Sag. Do whatever you have to so that you avoid over extending yourself, no matter how awesome your reasons for wanting to do so are! Pace yourself for best results, personally and professionally.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Don’t strive to improve your life solely on the path of least resistance. Your fears of failure and scarcity are in high gear, but that’s just a fancy way for the Universe to get you to cultivate a new relationship to them. Gather your energy and then move forward, be damned your fears.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Get your self together because you are about to embark on some major changes, Aquarius. Don’t take anything new on as we cross the threshold of 2012: focus your energies on letting go of old baggage and creating a clean slate for the potential of your New Year to play itself out on.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Your emotional integrity should act as your compass for navigating the waters of this New Year. Do whatever you’ve gotta to stay in touch with how you feel. There is more freedom in being true to your self than toeing the line will provide. Don’t go for easy, go for realness.
Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com
When Maryam Qudus — sole member of local indie-pop project, Doe Eye — sings “I Hate You,” it’s hard to believe her. It’s cute as hell. But the point of the song is indeed that. She doesn’t hate the faceless “you,” but is tortured by the affection. It’s that kind of thoughtfulness with an added ear for pop charm that makes Doe Eye a project you can espouse. Doe Eye released the EP, Run, Run, Run, in August, and sure, it’s about as radio-friendly as you can get. But the instrumentation, with its orchestral and wavy synth touches, is undoubtedly inspired by indie-rock acts around today, be it Beach House or St. Vincent. (James H. Miller)
Michael Jackson doing “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Al Green doing “Light My Fire.” Nina Simone doing “Rich Girl.” (Yeah, Hall and Oates, look it up.) While a cover rarely make the original irrelevant, a good one should make it the artist’s own. On From Her Eyes, a free EP she reportedly sang, arranged, recorded, and engineered, Oakland’s Mara Hruby lent her sweet, soulfully agile voice to tracks by Mos Def, Andre 3000, Bob Marley, Jamiroquai, and others, rendering each different and new. Since then Hruby has been at work on her debut album, teasing songs “Lucky (I Love You)” and “The Love Below” online, and will be including new material at this show. (Ryan Prendiville)
A double bill of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and A Woman is a Woman (1961) at the Castro is the stuff cinephilia is made of. Those sweet on The Artist should be sure to check in with these earlier Gallic interpretations of Hollywood razzle dazzle. The first, Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas is the purer confection in many ways, but the film’s tender sentimentalism and radiant color design flow towards a soulful poetry of the everyday. The second, by Jean-Luc Godard, is an early distillation of his complex movie love and a poignant offering to actress Anna Karina. Both films feature scores by Michel Legrand, so they carry their complex register of emotions with a lightness that escapes words. (Max Goldberg)
What do you get when you cross a gutter punk b-boy with a space goth? Sprinkle him with a little MDMA and you’ve got Travis Egedy, a.k.a. Pictureplane. Egedy works clubby ’90s vocal samples and celestial beats into infectious pop songs, which he sings over in a breathy, lusty moan. With effervescent dance anthems like “Black Nails” and “Trancegender,” Egedy gives goths something to freak to. And you’re just as likely to shake it as you are to wind up in the center of a mosh pit. We should all thank our lucky stars for the weird amalgam of personas that is Pictureplane. Speaking of stars, did I mention he’s really, really into space? (Frances Capell)
Let’s face it. A lot of us love rap, but many of us can’t relate to carrying guns or moving kilos of cocaine. Luckily there’s Asher Roth, a gifted 26-year-old MC who raps about things the everyman can identify with — like partying with friends and soaking up sunshine. Roth may be a college bro, but he’s legit enough to have earned props from the likes of Ludacris and Slick Rick. Roth prides himself on his live performances and makes them unforgettable by bringing along a full band. If that’s not incentive enough, Thursday is the release show for Roth’s fresh new Pabst & Jazz Sessions mixtape produced by Blended Babies. (Capell)
For more than 70 years and counting, The Wizard of Oz has entertained and fascinated viewers; at the time of its original release, the film’s breathtaking color sequences enthralled audiences still stuck on black and white, and the soundtrack’s beloved songs introduced the world to the talents of Judy Garland. For the majority of us who have grown up watching the movie on television, we are in for a special treat tonight when the grand old Paramount hosts a screening, a rare chance to see such a classic piece of cinema on the big screen, the way it was meant to be viewed. Just watch out for flying monkeys! (Sean McCourt)
Taking the same searing energy that propelled its contemporary punk counterparts then add the rock solid drumming of DJ Bonebrake, the guitar virtuosity of Billy Zoom, and the poetic lyrics and intimate vocal interplay of John Doe and Exene Cervenka. Legendary Los Angeles punk rockers X have always distinguished themselves from the other bands of the genre. This holiday season finds the band celebrating with “The Xmas Traveling Rock & Roll Revival,” where fans are sure to hear all of their favorite iconic tunes, and probably a couple of revved-up holiday favorites as well. (McCourt)
With Sean Wheeler & Zander Schloss, and the Black Tibetans.
In the mid through late 1970s, Southern California was one of the hubs of hardcore punk, with bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Wasted Youth all forming in the region. It was also a center of skateboarding, thanks to — among other things — a newly developed polyurethane wheel and a drought that left scores of pools empty. The band Agent Orange was a by-product of both of these phenomenons. Formed in Orange County in 1979 by lead singer and guitar player Mike Palm, bassist James Levesque, and drummer Scott Miller, the band took a Dick Dale spin on hardcore and became synonymous with early incarnations of “skate punk.” Skateboarders needed an identity of their own, and Agent Orange helped with that task. Now, 30 years later, you don’t need to know how to do a kick flip to understand why they were so essential. (Miller)
With Inferno of Joy, Tokyo Raid, The Nerv, Suggies
“I hear you’re buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator.” James Murphy tipped his hand when he wrote that a decade ago, but while would-be musicians could have gone straight past the irony to eBay, one thing they wouldn’t have was Gavin Russom. The ace up the sleeve, Russom is the tech wizard, creating analog synths for LCD Soundsystem and others. But more guru than a Radio Shack hobbyist, Russon has performed, DJ’ed, and created music on his own and under the aliases of the Crystal Ark and Meteoric Black Star. His latest “Night Sky,” is an epic, speedily slow building, sexually suggestive track that proves, as usual, he knows what you really want. (Prendiville)
With LA Vampires, Bobby Browser, Magic Touch, and Pickpocket
Is one of your New Years’ resolutions to go Sailing The Seas Of Cheese? Do you plan on serving up some Frizzle Fry? Imbibing in some Pork Soda? Well, any way you look at it, the two club shows this week by musical boundary-busting Bay Area rock favorites Primus are a rare treat for local fans to see the band up close and personal. You can choose to ring in the New Year with Les Claypool and company on Saturday, or if you prefer, you can work off your holiday hangover on Sunday with the band, which will be performing two sets each night at its Hawaiian Hukilau-themed parties. (McCourt)
There’s no shortage of New Year’s Eve events taking place in the city, but you’re hard-pressed to find a more definitively San Francisco way to spend the evening than with local psych-pop darlings Thee Oh Sees. Though many a band has hopped on the fuzzy garage train in recent years, these guys have been blazing the trail for well over a decade (under various monikers). Each new release, including the spanking new Carrion Crawler/The Dream (In The Red) finds Thee Oh Sees shredding harder and better, but its live shows will melt your face clean off. Enjoy some gnarly guitar riffage, kiss a stranger, and partake in the vices you’ve resolved to quit come sunrise. (Capell)
Part carnivale, part circus, part burn, part Halloween, part massive: the annual Sea of Dreams event takes the promise of a wild New Year’s Eve and adds more. In part it has to do with the crowd, drawing some serious do-it-themself-ers with fantastically creative outfits. But whatever distractions are off stage, there will be hard competition from a triple bill of headliners including local favorites Beats Antique, infectious dance MC Santigold (who has new material to debut live), and the return of Amon Tobin’s deafening, eyeball melting ISAM set. (Prendiville)
With Claude VanStroke, MarchFourth Marching Band, An-ten-nae, Diego’s Umbrella, and more
With her little toy piano Eliza Rickman makes bewitching alternative folk rock. Listening to her EP, Gild the Lily, is like walking through a life size dollhouse and feeling not sure whether to be frightened or enchanted. There’s something about the nature of the toy piano — its sparkling sound can be at once blood curdling and tender (like John Cages’ Suites for Toy Piano, which popularized the instrument). Similarly, Rickman’s voice has a plucked from the garden pleasantness, but her words tend toward the tragic. This balance between adorable and dreary can even be seen in the titles of her songs, like “Black Rose” and “Cinnamon Bone.” In any event, whether she’s cinnamon, bone, or both, the toy piano under her hands is more than a novelty. (Miller)
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YEAR IN FILM American cinema lost several of its troubadours this past year: genuine independents like Robert Breer, Owen Land, Adolfas Mekas, Richard Leacock, Jordan Belson, and George Kuchar. Critical appraisal of these sui generis filmmakers tends to rest upon masterpieces and technique, but several were also influential as teachers.
Mekas founded the film department at Bard College, which today boasts a remarkable faculty including Peter Hutton and Kelly Reichardt. German filmmaker Helga Fanderl dedicated her San Francisco Cinematheque show earlier this fall to Breer, her mentor at Cooper Union. Leacock used his post at MIT in the 1970s to develop relatively affordable video systems for student filmmaking. Kuchar brought several generations of San Francisco Art Institute kids into moviemaking laboratories flying under banners like “AC/DC Psychotronic Teleplays” and “Electro-graphic Sinema.” After Kuchar’s passing SFAI professor and administrator Jeannene Przyblyski wrote, “I will very much miss waking up at night worrying about what might be going on in Studio 8.”
Teaching remains an underappreciated aspect of the whole adventure of avant-garde filmmaking. The late 2010 release Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000 (University of California Press) lovingly detailed the instructional incubators that have contributed to a long-flourishing Bay Area avant-garde, but one still hungers for more particular chronicles along the lines of “Professor Ken,” Michael Zryd’s contribution to Optic Antics: The Cinema of Ken Jacobs (Oxford University Press). Zryd persuasively links Jacobs’ intensive teaching style at SUNY Binghamton to his thrilling feature-length frame analysis, Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (1969). The story of the American avant-garde’s alliance with the academy has everything to do with the mid-century college boom and the rise of theory, but this general view doesn’t take into account those outlying autodidact instructors who reoriented the teacher-student exchange in much the same way that they called upon a different kind of spectatorship.
Among the many treasures in the SFAI archive’s George Kuchar file are a couple of his syllabuses: “In this workshop atmosphere we all embark on making a moving picture using the equipment at school and … whatever else falls into our hands.” Class participation is what the class was. It’s also discretionary: “Come as frequently as you wish so that we can showcase your unique talents or specialty acts and help us try to solve the many technical and creative problems involved in making moving pictures.” Asked about his unorthodox teaching materials, Kuchar responded, “Am I going to show the students Potemkin and then talk about our class movies? With the kind of words I use and my accent? It’ll be like sacrilege or something … It’s stupid anyway. Renting movies is expensive as hell, and you can put that money into making a movie.”
Kuchar’s creativity took a liberating form in the classroom. Elsewhere in the SFAI file, the filmmaker reflects upon having to rescue terrible class productions in the editing room. One laughs at first and then is touched that he considered these real movies, imperfect but necessary to see through.
RAY OF LIGHT, RAY OF DARKNESS
One of the year’s most significant film restorations originated in a comparable workshop environment. Nicholas Ray arrived at SUNY Binghamton in 1971 not having directed since 55 Days at Peking (1963). As in Kuchar’s workshops, he took his students as collaborators: everyone rotated production jobs and worked toward the common ends of We Can’t Go Home Again, an unspooled picture of dissolution spanning the election years of 1968 and 1972. The workshop process became central to the psychodrama itself. As in other films of the era by John Cassavetes, Robert Kramer, and Shirley Clarke, the filmmaking style dives deep into breakdown narratives: he and four students charting out self-destructing versions of themselves.
In Leo Tolstoy’s prescriptive essay “Are the Peasant Children to Learn to Write from Us, or Are We to Learn from the Peasant Children?”, the great Russian author dramatizes his teaching experience to show how an attuned instructor can enrich a student’s intrinsic sense of harmony. Ray evinces a similar degree of trust in his pupils, but towards the ends of drawing out their intrinsic disharmony (this was Nixon time, after all). The composition of the drama and the drama itself bleed into one another; performance is inescapable, the film grasping how the phrase “the personal is political” was reversing itself.
We Can’t Go Home Again — which plays in a restored and reconstructed version along with Susan Ray’s contextualizing documentary Don’t Expect Too Much at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in January 2012 — was long thought unsalvageable for both technical and artistic reasons. Ray conceived the film as a multi-projector performance, with several streams of narration playing simultaneously and various 16 mm/Super 8 mm frames affecting a kind of cinematic Guernica. The limitations of the novice crew are readily apparent, though the amateur acting likely plays differently in our present media environment. Ray continued to tinker long after presenting a version at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, and the present reconstruction doesn’t claim to be definitive. It does, however, make Ray’s vision a feasible if still challenging theatrical proposition.
As always in the director’s work, the characters’ emotions are primary and sharply defined in space. Vulnerable figures reach across their loneliness; improvised family units emerge from the ashes of corruption and betrayal. The thin veneer of middle-class reality that gives 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause and 1956’s Bigger Than Life their magnificent tension is gone, leaving only the characters’ own psychological mirrors and Ray himself clad in James Dean’s red jacket. Student Tom Farrell is the last of Ray’s boy angels, a bewildered innocent suffering moral estrangement from his policeman father (whom he loves). The agonizing close-up in which he shears his beard in front of both a mirror and Ray’s camera is both visceral and symbolically telling, the beating heart of the film.
Though deeply marked by shame and pain, We Can’t Go Home Again also has a comic streak. The counterculture dream is pictured as eating raw cauliflower without any pants on. As he prepares to act out his suicide Ray mutters to himself, “I made ten goddamned westerns, and I can’t even tie a noose.” Of course this kind of flaunted martyrdom requires its own vanity, which might lead one to wonder about the lasting impact of Ray’s teaching — that is, whether his ferocious movie might have superseded the students’ learning.
His colleague Ken Jacobs certainly thought so: “I had the dumb idea that he would balance the little department, teaching from his narrative/Hollywood experience but he was self-aggrandizing BS throughout, with tantalizing glimpses of a former self.” Don’t Expect Too Much justifiably avoids department politics to focus on the film itself, but knowing this acrimonious background colors Ray’s former students’ awed remembrances of the Great Artist. There’s a lot of talk about the director working by instinct, exactly the kind of mystification Jacobs targets when he draws a distinction between “living through the cinema” and “using film to enrich your engagement with life and the real world”: “One is an experience that dominates while the other condemns you to be free.” The irony is that it’s hard to imagine a public university giving either man so much freedom today — if they even hired them at all.
Before closing out the year with the Sea of Dreams NYE blowout, the party people at Sunset Promotions (along with Metrowize.com) are throwing a community appreciation show and bringing out the U.K.’s Krafty Kuts. He’s best known for his 2006 album Freak Show and a Fabriclive release in 2007, but is largely building a reputation as an international, multiple award-winning breakbeat DJ and turntablist through live performances. Krafty Kuts’ most recent mix — for his November Canadian tour — unrelentingly shifts between the likes of Beastie Boys, Wolfgang Gartner, Fast Crew, and Bart B More. Like the best of breakbeat, Krafty Kuts plays a high wire act, always keeping energy up without growing tiresome nor ADD addled. (Ryan Prendiville)
First published in 1957, Dr. Seuss” How The Grinch Stole Christmas was adapted into an animated film in 1966, featuring the unforgettable narration of Boris Karloff, and a bevy of now-classic songs such as “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” belted out by Thurl Ravenscroft. Fans of all ages can relive the beloved holiday special this month when How The Grinch Stole Christmas: The Musical! brings the classic tale to life on stage with colorful costumes and amazing sets that recreate the magical world of Whoville and the inspirational events that transpire there. (Sean McCourt)
There is something about the shortest days of the year that invites you to become hopeful about what lies ahead. Perhaps it is that we know that the sun will be back. So you don’t have to be a Christian or hooked on family traditions to celebrate what is an extraordinary, though yearly occurring season. “Nutcracker,” often for sentimental reasons, is part of that feeling. Graham Lustig’s 2000 version, now part of Oakland Ballet Company, has plenty of sentiments but little sentimentality. No whiff of Victorian attitudes inhabits this family’s turn of the 20th century modernity. The home is what was considered high-tech at the time: tile, steel, concrete, and huge expanses of glass that invite the sunny, snow-covered outside in. The very fact that the Oakland Ballet Company exists again, is a sign of hope. (Rita Felciano)
The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s RitLab (Ritual Laboratory) series stretches the idea of what can be done with such a space as the CJM. Often museums host children’s interactive events, but RitLab is more like afterschool activity time for adults too — I once learned how to make my own spicy pickles at a RitLab event, m’kay? For this Hanukkah-Houdini version, there will be very-mature holiday crafting (magic card wallets, monkey-fist key chains, thaumatropes), a dreidel spin-off, and perhaps most importantly, a performance by Conspiracy of Beards — a local a capella Leonard Cohen cover group. It’ll be fun for kids of all ages, especially those who dig magic and Cohen. (Emily Savage)
6-8 p.m., free with admission (admission is $5 after 5 p.m.)
Popscene is bringing home someone special for its Xmas Gala. An innovative hip-hop and electronic producer, Dan “the Automator” Nakamura needs little introduction. Collaborating with Kool Keith, Del the Homosapien, Prince Paul, Damon Albarn, and Mike Patton on projects such as Dr. Octagon, Deltron, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Gorillaz, and Lovage (to name a few), Automator always looms large. He’s recently produced albums for English rockers Kasabian and locals Dredg, while contributing to Albarn’s Kinshasa One Two charity project along with the likes of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Jneiro Jarel. (And yes, continuing to tease the long awaited follow-up, Deltron 3040.) (Prendiville)
“The Coca-Cola Santa Clause is a hoax,” little Pietari tells his friend. He hands him a picture he’s torn from an old book — St. Nicholas with goatish antlers, dropping a child into a boiling cauldron. “The real Santa Clause, he tears naughty kids to pieces.” Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) — directed by Jalmari Helander and based on ancient Scandinavian mythology — might make the kids sooner want Freddy Kruger coming down the chimney on Christmas rather than Santa. When an archeology dig coincides with a bizarre series of events (slaughtered reindeer, missing children, stolen blow dryers), Pietari knows that the real Santa has been unearthed. Rare Exports is a dark tale that’s full of unsuspecting and outlandish surprises. You’ll never see Santa the same way again. (James H. Miller)
You loved The Artist, and now you’re obsessed with seeing every silent movie you can jam into your sockets. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival isn’t until next summer, but you can check out one of the genre’s very best this week at the Smith Rafael: Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 The Gold Rush, a delightful comedy even Buster Keaton 4-Lyfe Fan Club members can get behind. Unspooling in a snazzily restored 35mm print (with Chaplin’s own 1942 score as accompaniment, arranged by composer Timothy Brock), this film follows the Little Tramp as he tries his luck prospecting in the frozen Yukon. As the Smith Rafael notes point out, “it’s the one in which Chaplin eats his boot” and contains “The Dance of the Rolls,” an iconic bit of playing-with-one’s-food familiar to fans of 1993’s Benny & Joon — and the current Muppets movie. (Cheryl Eddy)
Jazz Mafia is a Bay Area institution. With its eclectic influences, cutting edge genre crossovers are this musical collective’s forte. Jazz Mafia has featured a ton of talented players, with founding member and trombonist-bassist Adam Theis contributing to no less than 10 acts since its inception. The Shotgun Wedding Quintet is a dynamic hip-hop and jazz hybrid fronted by exceptionally cool lyricist Dublin. Brass Mafia is a weird and wonderful New Orleans-y brass ensemble that covers songs from the likes of Skatalites and the Rolling Stones. And, well, there are simply too many incredible acts to list. It’s Jazz Mafia’s 11th anniversary, and I’m sure this San Francisco family has plenty of surprises in store. (Frances Capell)
With Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia String Quartet, Joe Bagale, and more
For those who don’t celebrate Christmas — or those who do, but could use a good laugh after spending the day with family — “The 19th Annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy” show is a sure-fire bet for entertainment while much of the rest of the city shuts down for the holiday. With a line-up featuring Elayne Boosler, Avi Lieberman, Jeff Applebaum, and Lisa Geduldig, what better way to spend the night than with a bit a bit of Jewish comedy — and what better location than in a Chinese restaurant! (McCourt)
Through Sun/25; 6 and 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 5 and 8:30 p.m. Sun.; $42–$62.
There’s no expression of love more pure than early 1990s-era R&B. And in the golden age of sensual R&B, few could compete with Oakland’s Tony! Toni! Toné!. During the late ’80s and early ’90s, this trio cranked out the jams, climbed the Billboard charts, and provided the soundtrack for countless moments of passion and romance. Did you slow dance with your high school sweetheart to “(Lay Your Head On My) Pillow?” Did you bump and grind to “Whatever You Want?” The holidays are a time for nostalgia; a time for showing our loved ones how much we care. Why not spend Christmas Eve with Tony! Toni! Toné!? (Frances Capell)
Undeniably, the holiday season is an adorable one — children point in store windows and glow; Dads are donned in gay apparel; It’s A Wonderful Life airs without end on basic cable; bells a-ringing, figgy pudding, fa la la la la and what have you. However, for some of us around this time of year, it feels like we’re being smothered by a hand knit stocking. Thankfully Death Guild’s “X-Mess Night” is here for anyone who prefers leather corsets instead of holiday turtle necks, The Sisters of Mercy over Bing Crosby, and of course, gin and tonics, not milk and cookies. DJs Decay, Melting Girl, Daniel Skellington, Sage, and Lexor spin gothic, industrial, synth pop and more. (Miller)
Christmas day falls on the fifth night of Hanukkah. It’s also the Make-Out Room’s “It’s a Jewish Christmas,” which means Jews and Gentiles both face a dilemma. In the case of us Jews, it comes down to either enduring Grandpa Eshkol, or shooting over to the Mission for a Woody Allen film festival, Chinese food, and a salacious game of strip dreidel. With all that being offered, I doubt old Eshkol would blame you for schlepping out without him. Hosted by none other than Broke-Ass Stuart, the travel writer behind the recent IFC documentary, Young, Broke & Beautiful, “It’s a Jewish Christmas” also features the sounds of DJs J Dub and M.O.T. Mazz. Ah Freilichen Chanukah! (Miller)
Set amongst the swingin’ nightclubs of San Francisco, 1957’s Pal Joey stars Frank Sinatra as a womanizing singer who dreams of one day owning his own club — and plans to seduce a wealthy widow (portrayed by Rita Hayworth) to secure the funding. Things begin to go awry, however, when he meets Kim Novak’s character, and starts to fall for her instead. Featuring the iconic tune “The Lady Is A Tramp,” the film earned Ol’ Blue Eyes a Golden Globe for Best Actor (in a Musical), and remains a shining example of why he was the king of the crooners. (McCourt)
Double feature with Bye Bye Birdie, which screens at 2:40 and 7 p.m.
YEAR IN GAMER In 2010, year-end awards were dominated by one game: Red Dead Redemption. Published by Rockstar Games, the title was a sweeping, epic Western in the best American tradition. Using a proprietary game engine, Rockstar stitched together a giant swath of imaginary frontier, a teeming open world that seems to leap straight from the imagination of John Ford or Sergio Leone.
Now that 2011 is nearly done, it’s clear that Red Dead Redemption‘s success was merely a sign of things to come. Rival publishers must have watched contentedly as the game’s accolades stacked up. They were about to make 2011 the year of the open world game, ushering in a glut of go-where-you-want, do-what-you-want, slay-who-you-want titles that would dominate both discourse and sales.
Rockstar themselves were the first to get in on the action, taking a second bite at the apple in May with L.A. Noire. Developed by now-shuttered Australian studio Team Bondi, the game takes place in a meticulously recreated version of late-40s Los Angeles. Like Red Dead Redemption, Team Bondi’s title is an engrossing pastiche of classic cinema, drawing on the tropes, mopes, and molls of vintage noir. While critics rightly complained that the game’s open world offered little except the opportunity to drive around and sightsee, the simulated city’s presence added atmosphere and heft to an already immersive game.
Explore L.A.Noire‘s carefully art-directed metropolis, and the most dangerous thing you’re likely to encounter is fast-talking dame with nothing to lose. Not so in DarkSouls, an October release by iconoclastic Japanese studio From Software. From’s open world is a foreboding, twisted take on fantasy gothic, full of decaying grandeur, uncanny creatures, and fetid environs. Players must creep forward against their better judgment, dreading whatever horror lurks around the next corner. Though the game’s uncompromising difficulty acts as a deterrent, Dark Souls‘ labyrinthine, deadly world and endless creativity are well worth the frustration.
In Batman: Arkham City, British developers Rocksteady Games put Batman in his place: perched on the roof of some crumbling Gotham pile. The game’s titular open world is a vast outdoor prison, an entire urban zip code done up in hyperbolic neon-noir, then filled with psychopaths and super-villains. While he’s not using Rocksteady’s impressive, flowing combat system to put the hurt on Gotham’s criminal underclass, Batman can deploy gadgets like the Batclaw to swoop around. Though Arkham City mostly serves as a backdrop for a fairly linear narrative, but there are also dozens of collectible, lime-green “Riddler Trophies” scattered around, giving gamers an incentive to explore every inch of the game’s open world.
For sheer size and scope, you can’t top The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, released in November by Maryland-based Bethesda Game Studios. Bethesda have made open worlds something of a specialty in recent years, and Skyrim is the company’s most ambitious effort to date. Set in a frigid, arctic landscape, the game showcases natural beauty on a grand scale, rendering icy peaks, swampy tundras, and furtive wildlife darting among snow-dappled pines. Players will spend hours completing hundreds of quests, scaling the world’s highest heights and descending into the bowels of its darkest dungeons. Though the game makes it easy to follow a floating arrow directly to you current goal, Skyrim’s best moments are often the product of getting hopelessly lost.
When it comes to the sheer joy of exploring an open world, Minecraft reigns supreme. Created on a lark by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, the game randomly generates a gargantuan new environment every time you tell it to. Comprised entirely of chunky, Lego-like blocks, the world can be altered at will — dedicated players have spent hours moving blocks one-by-one to create replicas of things like the USS Enterprise. Minecraft is an impressive indie success story — first released in its alpha version in 2009, the game now boasts nearly 242 million logins per month.
What lessons will open world games learn from the class of 2011? Will 2012’s vast gaming environments be welcoming or forbidding? Will players be given long lists of collectibles to hunt, or simply asked to explore for its own sake? Dec. 20, thousands of people logged into Star Wars: The Old Republic for the first time, a big-budget MMORPG from local publishers LucasArts and Electronic Arts. Not content with the vast worlds already available to them, these intrepid gamers opted for an entire galaxy — a galaxy far, far away.
Golden Girls, Kung Pao Kosher, Merry Forking Christmas … the holidays are coming whether you like it or not.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the holidays just keep on coming around. And unless you plan on hibernating the entire month of December away, sooner or later someone is going to force you into an ugly sweater and drag you to some seasonal entertainment designed to fill you with goodwill towards all humankind — or some such optimistic twaddle. Even so, there’s certainly no reason you have to subject yourself to endless renditions of Tchaikovsky’s famous suite or stale Bing Crosby carols in order to fulfill your holiday spirit quota. Alternatives abound here in Babylon-by-the-Bay, and you’re sure to stumble across a few that speak to your own imitable tastes.
Call it nostalgia, or call it an abiding love for the dubious fashions of the late 80’s, but whatever the attraction, this year’s edition of Trannyshack’s “The Golden Girls Christmas Episodes,” (through Dec. 23) has been packing the house at the Victoria Theatre with its irreverent rendition of the iconic television show. The four Tranny Grannies — Heklina, Cookie Dough, Pollo del Mar, and Matthew Martin — embody their characters with real affection, as their enthusiastic audiences sing along to the retro jingles of old Dr. Pepper commercials while cat-calling each spectacular costume change.
Another tradition-in-the-making, Pianofight’s third annual production of “A Merry Forking Christmas,” (through Dec. 30) is also packing the house with a good mix of PianoFight first-timers and old “Forking” initiates who are easily identified by their crumpled brown paper BYOB bags. The concept of “Forking” is both deceptively simple and yet infinitely clever — a choose-your-own-adventure story which “forks” off in several, audience-mandated directions, mostly determined by chaotic bursts of applause. Set in that oppressive microcosm otherwise known as “The Mall,” the play follows a handful of characters battling the stress and hopelessness of Christmas Eve either engaged in last minute selling, buying, security guarding, or Santa Claus-ing as the “true meaning” of the holiday in question eludes each.
Since nothing can make one feel more self-consciously Jewish than a month full of Christmas cheer, it’s good to know that Lisa Geduldig’s Kung Pao Kosher Comedy event (Dec. 23-25) has been stuffing holiday orphans of all faiths full of potstickers and potshots for nineteen years. This year’s headliner is Elayne Boosler, and if you go for the dinner show your ticket includes a seven-course feast, which sounds like my kind of Christmas. Or it would if it didn’t compete with the First Satanic Church’s annual Black X Mass (Sun/25) at the Elbo Room. Basically an excuse to throw a high-voltage rock show on the quietest night of the year, Black X Mass consistently boasts some of the most eclectic line-ups imaginable, combining costumed concept bands with “abstract metal” ensembles, mean-tempered go-go devils, various permutations of Mongoloid and Graves Bros. Deluxe, and a black-clad specialist in a rarified musical field — “Theremin Wizard Barney.” It’s a season’s greeting more reminiscent of “The Shining” than “It’s a Wonderful Life” but let’s face it, sometimes that’s exactly the kind of tradition we like best.
I grew up in the Catholic Church, and it pretty much drove me away from religion. I could never quite get the basic contradictions between a message of love for all people and a politics of intolerance. (Jesus loves his children, except the women, who have to be second-class citizens, and the homosexuals, who are going to burn in Hell.)
Then there was the general wackiness: Every Sunday, we had to pray for “the Jews” in the hope that they would see the light of Jesus and be saved. I once asked our head parish priest, who was also the “Christian Doctrine” teacher at my Catholic school, what that was all about; the Jewish people I knew seemed to be doing fine on their own. They believed their thing, we believed ours, and so what? Were these folks all really going to suffer eternal damnation? That seemed so, you know, harsh.
The priest was very direct: Our way, the Catholic way, was the only way. Everyone else was wrong and would pay for it. People who didn’t believe the same things we did were doomed to hideous torture in the flames of Hades until the end of time and beyond. Too bad for them.
Oh, and by the way: It wasn’t just a sin to have sex, even with yourself — it was a sin to think about it.Later, Father.
Before the blog comments start, let me acknowledge that there are many wonderful Catholics who have done wonderful things for the world. I have nothing but respect for them and they way they live their lives. The nuns who live next door to my mom in Philadelphia are really sweet and helpful to her, and they were great when my dad was dying. I’m a proud atheist, but whatever turns your spirit on is fine with me. Just don’t tell me I have to agree with you.
That said, the dodos who run the organizational part of the Church have always been a bit of a problem.
For example: this is San Francisco, and there are a decent number of gay Catholics, and a lot of them go to Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Castro, which is about as welcoming to gay people as any Catholic institution can ever be. And what does the Great and Exalted Archbishiop, Geroge Niederauer, do? According to a nice scoop by Cythina Laird in the BAR, he kicks a few lesbian and gay ministers out of an Advent service:
At least three gay and lesbian clergy members were disinvited from participating in Advent services at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, the Bay Area Reporter has learned. … “The basic reason is that Archbishop Niederauer felt the themes for vespers should better reflect the themes of Advent,” Wesolek told the B.A.R.
The “themes of Advent?” The only “theme of Advent” I know is that it celebrates the upcoming feast of the birth of Christ, who, at the time of his miraculous arrival into this world, hadn’t said a single thing about homosexuals.
Let’s be serious: This isn’t a religious statement, it’s a political statement about same-sex marriage. The archbishop can’t tolerate the idea that people — even respected religious people who also believe in Jesus, one of them a damn bishop, for Christ’s sake — who happen to disagree with his teachings on marriage might share the stage with his holy crew:
Charles was the Episcopal bishop of Utah and was married to a woman for many years. After his retirement in 1993, he came out as a gay man, divorced his wife, and moved to San Francisco. In October 2008 he married Felipe Sanchez-Paris, Ph.D. in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. The couple had a church wedding in 2004 that was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle .
He told the B.A.R. that he received a call the night before his scheduled appearance “indicating that my participation in a liturgical service was unacceptable to the Chancery (in all likelihood, the archbishop): presumably, my participation as the first openly out gay bishop, legally married according to the laws of the state of California, might suggest approval of gay marriage.”
Kind of hard to believe. Or not.
I wish the folks at the archdiocese would talk to me about this, but they haven’t returned my calls.
UPDATE: George Wesolek, spokesperson for the archdiocese, just called me. He acknowledged that the archbishop had decided to disinvite the three ministers on the grounds that “it appeared they might be going to talk about topics with agendas. Advent is not the time for politicizing this, for divisive issues, it’s a time to bring people together.”
In other words: If you want to talk about same-sex marriage, shut up.
If I take steroids and lie about it, can I spend a month there, too?
Seriously — other than the publicity the U.S. Attorney’s Office got for prosecuting the Home Run King, what has all of this accomplished? Are any of us safer now that Bonds has been forced to live under house arrest for 30 days and do 250 hours of community service (that he was going to do anyway)?
After all the public money, drama, and hysterics, this is what we’re left with. He was “evasive.” Keep in mind that we live in a country where the US Department of Justice has not pursued one person for the investment banking fraud that cratered the US economy in 2008. Not one indictment has been issued to a single Bush official on charges of ordering torture or lying to provoke an invasion of Iraq. Instead, we get farcical reality television like the US vs. Barry Bonds.
Did Bonds take a “performance enhancing drug?” Again, Zirin:
The cortisone shot into Curt Schilling ankle in the 2005 playoffs was a performance enhancer. The Viagra coursing through Bob Dole’s veins is a performance enhancer. Whatever keeps that smile glued to Laura Bush’s face is a performance enhancer.
Please: There are real crimes happening all the time, from war crimes to political corruption and fraud, things that actually change the lives of human beings for the worse. And the U.S. Department of Justice has proudly used our taxpayer money to send Barry Bonds home for a month.
The singular DJ speaks of slow house, fraud players, and the pop future of dance music
“Oh, the slo-mo thing. I guess I can see how people came to associate me with that.” DJ Slow Hands, a.k.a. New York’s Ryan Cavanagh, was playing down his status as poster boy for the slow house movement.
A couple of years ago, some DJs, mainly from the East Coast, started slowing things down to a sultry 100 beats per minute from the standard, boppy 120 BPM. And Slow Hands — a fast talker, I learned, in wide-ranging phone interview anticipating his appearance this Fri/16 (9 p.m., $15 before midnight, $20 after. Beat Box 314 11th St., SF., www.ayli-sf.com and Facebook) — came to the fore, with a dynamic combination of disco-dubby aesthetics, a willingness to let songs breathe a little, and an impeccable instinct for track selection. Does it hurt things that’s he’s rather dreamy in the brains and looks department? It certainly does not.
Slo-mo was a thrilling development for many of us who enjoyed the disco revival of the late ’00s, with its focus on expansive tunes, slow-burning builds, and relaxed pace, but were worried that we were being backed into a retro corner with no way forward. The disco re-edit scene was entering its prime with some great contemporary-sounding rejiggers of classic tunes, yet slo-mo was a more radical approach to extending the disco vibe into more of-the-moment electronic music developments. It also brought with it a crunky, somewhat zonked global-dub mood of its own that felt eerily avant-garde. (In slow house sets, sometimes tracks are physically slowed down, and sometimes lower-tempo songs from outside the usual house canon are incorporated, adding to the mystique). Cavanagh brings his own brand of artfulness to the mix: in his sets I hear echoes of everything from the Orb to classic Cadillac soul.
Don’t pigeonhole Slow Hands, however. “I don’t just stick with one tempo at all,” Cavanagh continued. “I aim for what’s appropriate, like any other DJ, because at the end of the day people are paying money and we’re here to do a job and keep the party going. At least the DJs who aren’t complete dicks! I think it’s the shittiest thing in the world if another DJ is warming up and someone just comes in and shuts down their track to make an entrance or whatever. ‘Oh, look at me! Here I am!’ Sure, I sometimes prefer to play a whole set at 90 BPM, but I’m not going to ruin anyone’s night. And also, really, who wants to walk into a party at two in the morning and the beats are at 90 BPM?”
Well, a lot of people actually, as indicated by his huge following — as well as of other, if not as slow beatswise, than similarly deep, slightly warped, and funky-minded compatriots like the Soul Clap, No Regular Play, and Wolf + Lamb duos. (Cavanagh is also part of a duo, Worst Friends, with his best friend John Paul “J.P.” Jones. In fact, Cavanagh was calling from LA, where he was hanging out with his amigo for a few weeks before the birth of Jones’ baby.)
Still that “go with the flow” ethic explains the unexpected acceleration level of the podcast he provided to the As You Like It party crew to promote his appearance here (listen below): peppy almost, and brimming with neat pop. “Oh yeah, that was I think recorded in Moscow, and the party was in full swing. It’s still me, though,” he said with a laugh.
A classically trained guitarist (his moniker is taken from a favorite Eric Clapton album, not the Pointer Sisters classic) who originally foresaw a career in jazz, Cavanagh dropped out of music school in the first year. “I went to a gig where there was this guy playing the guitar on stage, really talented, but he was playing the same jazz songs people had played forever. And then I looked around at the handful of other guys in the room, and they just looked so stale, stroking their chins like ‘mmm-hmmm.’ I hate chinstrokers, by the way and I know they’re all over the techno scene, too. Just standing there stroking their chins and thinking they’re smart. New York is full of them and it drives me crazy.
“Anyway, I thought the whole jazz thing felt like a trap, hearing and analyzing the same songs and getting paid $50 to go play them somewhere to the same people. If you think about it, jazz innovation stopped with Miles Davis. He invented so many splinter genres that it was the end of jazz, in a way. The music has gone nowhere new since. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’m never going to be able to do what I want, and I’ll never make any money at it.’ So I became a bartender, ha ha ha, but I also started DJing and really learning the craft.”
Some chinstrokers may shudder at his introduction to electronic dance music, but at least it got him here.
“This was all in the ’90s and I started hearing those big DJs like Sasha and John Digweed, [Paul] Oakenfold, and my jaw just dropped. I realized that here was this kind of music with the possibilities that I envisioned. And I started digging and found the direction I wanted to take things, in making my own music and playing to crowds — and now with a live show. “
(As for making his own music, an EP, The Formal, came out in April, and a split 10-inch Covers with Benoit and Sergio, on which Slow hands re-interprets Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo” came out in July.)
Cavanagh has some interesting words about some of the things going on in DJ culture lately.
“I was cracking up earlier looking at the Resident Advisor top DJs of 2011 poll that just came out. Like half of those people have jumped on the slow thing, going from 120 BPM to 100, 110. And — this is going to get me into a lot of trouble, but that’s what interviews are for — some of those DJs are, well, less than genuine. Guys like Soul Clap had to play thousands of gigs to get to the level they’re at now, and really their style, and maybe the whole slo-mo thing itself, came from DJing at weddings, learning to play things in a way that people who don’t ever listen to house music can get into. The only way you could get away with playing the music you wanted was with edits, or slower tempos, or records that sounded like house but weren’t at all. Many of the DJs on the RA list don’t have nearly that experience or versatility.
“And some of them say they’re playing live when they’re really just syncing two of their tracks in Ableton — big deal, right, and only two tracks. Literally not doing anything, really half-assed. One of those guys, I actually watched this, was playing ‘live’ and played someone else’s song, the whole eight-minute track, as his own, and he got away with it. Not a remix or anything, just basically cued someone else’s song up in Ableton and played it straight. People are getting away with a lot right now because of the technology. What is a ‘live’ performance in dance music? I think you need to do more than just look down at a laptop if you’re going to charge promoters twice as much, and then the audience pays twice as much, for a live performance.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odbJ6_sp9IU
Getting back to slo-mo, though. It’s definitely taken off. Any thoughts, Slow Hands, on the hows and whys?
“I don’t think BPMs have much to do with anything anymore, insofar as defining a genre of music. I think we’ve broken through that at this point, that you can play a variety of tempos during a set and have it be satisfying, that that can actually make it feel timeless. We’re progressing beyond the usual expectations and audiences are ready for something different. I think people got tired of minimal, they got tired of techy stuff. The slo-mo thing came along and was new and it had a sort of drama that was missing. I think it offered an alternative to harder techno and in-your-face electro and French Touch that just strikes me as angry, nervous music. I definitely think there’s a place for that kind of metrical, aggressive style, but it’s not what I’d choose to listen to. I’m sorry I wasn’t in Windsor when Richie Hawtin was playing for 20 people in a basement or whatever and blowing everybody’s mind 20 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room in electronic music now for what I do as well.”
“When it was just me really out there doing it, I had to learn how to construct a set very carefully to get the effects that I wanted, it was a real period of exploration, how far could I take it? Now there’s a lot of people making music that fits into the sound, but still there’s not enough for me to DJ three times a week and feel like I’m not repeating myself. I look very hard for tracks. I think that’s another reason slo-mo caught on. With so much available through sites like Beatport etc. people want someone to create something unique out of all that, something difficult to replicate, well-curated but still enjoyable and that makes sense on a dance floor. So the slow thing was also viable that way.
“In any case, I used to over-analyze it, but now I just have fun with it.”
Cavanagh will be appearing behind the decks on Friday, but he’s pulling back on DJing next year to focus exclusively on his live show which, yes, involves much more than staring at a laptop. Guitar, singing, and keyboards are all part of his one-man band. Here’s a recording of him live last August at the Ego club in Hamburg:
“It’s something I visualized since I was a kid, putting together a live show. It’s really changed my work flow. I have to actually sit down and make plans for once, and I’ve never been really good at that. I’m just not good at normal life stuff. There’s a lot to figure out, and really when you see me up there you see someone on the verge of pissing his pants. It’s not like your laptop melting or anything, you can’t blame the equipment if you screw up, it’s just you.”
From what I’ve seen and heard of the live show — a full tour is set to kick off in February — it’s smooth as silk. But it also puts Slow Hands more in a pop context, something that’s extending to many of his DJ-turned-vocal-act peers, like Art Department, Matthew Dear, James Blake, Visionquest, and Maceo Plex.
“Definitely,” Cavanagh agrees, “I think this kind of music is absolutely moving in a more pop direction, and you’re going to see more and more people in the next year doing this type of thing. They put Jamie Lidell from Super Collider’s music in a Target commercial! For me there will always be an electronic component, though — I’ve heard about a lot of problems some guys are having with full live bands, and it doesn’t sound so good.”
Does Slow Hands see anything else in the future of dance music?
“We’re going to start seeing some big changes in the way DJs play music thanks to some new software and the way people like Subb-An are using it. It’s incredible some of the possibilities with some of the software now just becoming available, insane.
“And yeah, of course a great party on Friday — I had an awesome time playing San Francisco for the As You Like It crew last year at the underground space, the Compound, great memories from that night. The Bay Area is one place that really gets into what I’m doing.”
More American teens are smoking pot, and fewer are drinking alcohol, according to a new survey that’s at the very least interesting and could be a push for policymakers to start thinking about how we regulate marijuana.
As the father of two kids, I’d like to start off by stipulating: High schoolers are going to try to alter their consciousness. They’re also going to try to have sex. I did it, you did it, we all did it (well, we all drank and smoked pot. Some of us got laid and some of us didn’t, but speaking personally, I can say that for those who didn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying).
My sainted mother used to tell my brother and me that she’d rather have us hang out in the basement with our friends than go out and drive somewhere at night, and she never adhered to the Catholic doctrine of pretending kids shouldn’t know about birth control. Her mantra: “As long as nobody gets pregnant or killed in a car accident, whatever you’re doing can’t be that bad.” Which isn’t such an awful parenting lesson.
And when it comes to getting pregnant or killed in a car accident, I’d say it’s probably better that kids smoke pot than drink. Not saying either one is a great choice for a 16-year-old, just saying that drunk driving, blackouts etc. are a product of alcohol and that the risks of really bad outcomes from smoking pot are a bit lower.
But there’s a larger point here, coming from the Marijuana Policy Project:
“This report, once again, clearly demonstrates that our nation’s policymakers have their heads buried in the sand when it comes to addressing teen marijuana use,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “Political leaders have for decades refused to regulate marijuana in order to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers who aren’t required to check customer ID and have no qualms about selling marijuana to young people. The continued decline in teen tobacco and alcohol use is proof that sensible regulations, coupled with honest, and science-based public education can be effective in keeping substances away from young people. It’s time we acknowledge that our current marijuana laws have utterly failed to accomplish one of their primary objectives – to keep marijuana away from young people – and do the right thing by regulating marijuana, bringing its sale under the rule of law, and working to reduce the easy access to marijuana that our irrational system gives teenagers.”
Yep: Education and intelligent regulation works. When I was in High School, I was one of the very few kids that didn’t smoke cigarettes. Today, the number of teen smokers is much, much lower. And the new study says kids aren’t drinking as much — again, no doubt a result of health education and strict regulation.
So if harm reduction is the goal (and it ought to be), why aren’t we legalizing and regulating pot?
Mercury goes direct on the 14th, so you’ll have to start blaming your problems on something else this week.
ARIES
March 21-April 19
When the going gets rough, don’t throw in the towel. Take inspiration from the things that aren’t working in your life to understand what needs attention. Hope will go a long way towards overcoming your troubles, so use liberally when needed.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Did you know that the planet Venus is the ruler of your sign? Make her proud as you seek balance, be it in the form of internal peace or an outside job. Don’t let diplomacy water your needs down, but also don’t forget to use it while trying to get what you want. Balance, Taurus.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Lay the building blocks to your happiness carefully, Twin Star. You are overwhelmed and likely to make messy choices if you don’t slow down. Ask yourself what your life would look like if you could have what you really wanted; be sure the things you’re going for will really make you happy.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
The effort it will take to get where you’re going is only worth it if you are setting yourself up for satisfaction. Process systematically, Cancer. Tally up your actions with your desires to see if your outcome is cost effective! Be intentional about what you do to meet your life’s needs.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
You are going through a big shift and need some way to process your frustrations. You have a right to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, but be mindful of how you act around those feelings. Avoid creating more consequences than you are willing to deal with, pal.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Things cannot be perfect right now Virgo, and that may be super-annoying. The best course of action is to think about the longterm, big picture trends in your life and invest your energies with them in mind. Every hiccup in your process is a new opportunity to learn.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Its time to cut your losses, mourn whatever you need to let go of and move on, Libra. There is so much freedom on the other end of your current attachments, even if you feel blind to it. Be willing to take the risks needed to improve your life.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
If you don’t know what your goals are then it will be an extra frustrating week, Scorpio. Get clear about what you want out of the active situations in your life so you can better understand your challenges. Extend yourself towards whatever will promote most happiness, for best results.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Trust your gut instincts, but don’t go running around on impulse with them, Sag. Find a way to make practical use of your senses without forgoing your common sense! Remember to learn from the past so you can avoid re-creating it, Sag.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
You have some deep attachments to how things should be or feel, and it’s time to let them go. Turn your focus to what you want moving forwards. Your personal life is in need of a major expansion, and it requires that you kick some bad habits to the curb to make room for some new ones.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
‘Tis the season to be overwhelmed! Don’t crowd your life with too many diversions from your most heartfelt goals this week. You are in a good place, but one tiny step away from an overwhelmed one. Keep your focus and field of action tight, Aquarius.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Feeling awesome is tops, but that doesn’t mean you get to act like you’re entitled to overdoing it to compensate for all the time you spent feeling less than awesome! Be generous without overreaching, Pisces. You have so much to share, so pace yourself.
Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com
