Emily Savage

Antwon’s Top 10 Rap Jamz of 2012

Tony Robles
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For our annual Year in Music issue, I asked local musicians, rappers, producers, and music writers to sound off on the year’s best songs, album releases, shows – pretty much anything they wanted, music-wise. For the next few days, I’ll be posting them up individually on the Noise blog. You can also check the full list here.

If you’ve somehow been off the web all year, you might have missed San Jose rapper, Antwon. I certainly didn’t – I blogged about his awesome “Helicopter” video when it first went up in February, caught him live at Public Works, handed him a Best of the Bay award this summer, and wrote a print feature on his mixtapes, all in 2012. So naturally, I begged him to contribute to the Top 10s.

At first he wrote back “wait i have no idea to do these things haha cuz i dont really remember 2012 haha,” but then he sent in this:

ANTWON, RAPPER
TOP 10 2012 RAP JAMZ

1. DJ Nate, “Gucci Gogglez”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0vebi56kRQ
2. Chief Keef, “Ballin”
3. French Montana, “Shot Coller”
4. Chippy Nonstop, “Money Dance” DJ Two Stacks remix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np0FW2gsVnA
5. Cash Out, “Cashin’ Out”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9mfuifkZgc
6. Future, “Turn on the Lights”
7. Gucci Mane, “Bussin Juggs”
8. Juicy J, “Drugged Out”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6a70sCCTYU
9. Lil Mouse, “Don’t Get Smoked”
10. Lil Reese, “Traffic” feat. Chief Keef
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSizftVHBk

And for good measure, here’s one of Antwon’s killer vids from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXmo0zsG3q0

YEAR IN MUSIC 2012: Sinner’s exit

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YEAR IN MUSIC 2012: Sinner’s exit

emilysavage@sfbg.com

YEAR IN MUSIC “We weren’t supposed to be allowed to play live on the morning news,” Ty Segall says just moments after finishing a meal at In-N-Out, on his way down the coast from San Francisco, the city he can no longer afford to live in, to pick up his 16-year-old sister from his hometown of Laguna Beach. “Giving a bunch of long-haired weirdos really loud amplifiers and free reign on the morning news is just stupid. So I thought that was a great opportunity to do whatever the hell we wanted.”

“And I’m really happy we did that,” he says of the Ty Segall Band’s bizarrely mesmerizing performance of “You’re the Doctor” off this year’s Twins (Drag City), on the Windy City’s WGN Morning News in October. It ended with screeching feedback and Segall repeatedly screaming “Chicago!” into the mic. “It was way too early, so we were already feeling a little weird.” The weirdness rubbed off on the news anchors, who, when the camera panned back to them mid-song, were throwing papers up in the air and pogoing behind their desk. It made for a great split second.

The band also made its late night debut in 2012, on perhaps more appropriate Conan. Segall, drummer Emily Rose Epstein, bassist Mikal Cronin, and guitarist Charlie Moothart seemed a bit more in tune with that set-up and host, playing Twins‘ awesome “Thank God For Sinners.”

The group of old friends toured extensively this year, playing a whole bunch of festivals including Bumbershoot, the Pitchfork Music Festival (“I had no idea what to expect with that one, because like, you know, Pitchfork is almost a mainstream media outlet now. But that was one of the most wild, definitely craziest festival we played”) and Treasure Island in San Francisco (“most beautiful festival…the scenery — it was just psychotic”).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCMSYRgRdAo

And Segall again had a full hand of releases over these 12 months. He began the year with a White Fence collaboration: Hair (Drag City), following that up with a Ty Segall Band record, Slaughterhouse (In the Red). Then in October he dropped a solo album, Twins (Drag City).

Each record stood for itself. They were recorded with different bands at various locations (Eric Bauer’s studio in Chinatown, the Hangar in Sacramento). Hair was a true collaboration between Segall and White Fence’s Tim Presley, exploring one another’s strengths through fuzzy noise, psychedelic wanderings and the occasional surfy licks. It was originally slated to be an EP, but it was going well, they decided to put out a full LP.

Slaughterhouse kicks off with foaming feedback and maintains a sonic assault of aggressive, noisy guitars, screaming in the ether, throughout — a loud, frenzied, psychedelic garage-punk masterpiece. Bluesy-punk thumper “Wave Goodbye” turns down the riffs on the intro and lets Segall’s nasal intonations take charge, with a ’70s punk approach: “I went to church and I went to school/I played by all of your other rules/but now it’s time to…wave goodbye/Bye bye.” He shrieks that last “bye bye,” simultaneously recalling early Black Sabbath, and sonically flipping the bird.

Twins was the solo triumph, lyrically exploring Segall’s dual personalities between his thrashy stage persona, and his casual, polite, dude-like demeanor off-stage.

“Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?” — Patti Smith in ‘Just Kids.’

Segall first picked up the guitar at 15 after hearing Black Flag. “I was super into Black Sabbath and Cream and classic rock and then I heard Black Flag and I was like ‘dude, I can play punk.'”

The multi-instrumentalist still plays guitar, first and foremost. Currently, he sticks to a ’66 baby-blue Fender Mustang he calls “Old Blue” or “Blue-y,” but brings along a ’68 Hagstrom as backup.

During the week of Halloween though, Segall, 25, played drums with the first band he joined when he moved to San Francisco eight years back, straight-forward punk act Traditional Fools. It was at Total Trash’s Halloween show at the Verdi Club with a reunited Coachwhips (with Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer) and it made for an epic night of reunions for the two men most associated with the current garage rock scene in San Francisco. “I have always thought, and will always think, that John Dwyer is the savior of rock and roll.”

When I bring up the news of Segall’s pal Cronin signing to Merge recently, he has a similar compliment for him: “He’s going to be the savior of us all. I can’t wait until you guys hear his next record; it’s insane.” Segall swears Cronin will be the next big thing.

Late last week, In The Red Recordings announced it would be reissuing Segall and Cronin’s joint 2009 surf-laden, chainsaw-garage record Reverse Shark Attack. In a video from that era for the song “I Wear Black,” Segall and Cronin cruise through town on skateboards in washed-out clips, ever the beach-bred rockers.

It was just three years ago, but that’s lifetime in Ty-land.

As the city has watched him grow Segall has maintained a youthful glow, a raucous, energetic punk spirit surrounded by sun-kissed California locks and a fuck-everything attitude. His sound, however, has expanded. How couldn’t it? He put out three records in 2012, and a dozen more in his relatively short lifetime.

But youthful abandon has caught up Segall. He can longer afford to live and work in San Francisco, the city that loves him so. He plans to move to LA in March or April of 2013. Will the wide sea of local rockers here soon follow suit? How many have we already lost to the rising tides of tech money? It’s a question currently without an answer.

“It’s really expensive,” Segall says. “I’ve loved it there, but I can’t even play music…I can’t work at my home. It’s a drag. I think a lot of musicians and artists are being forced to move out of San Francisco because they can’t afford it, and they can’t really work anymore because they can’t afford housing that allows for noise.”

It seems backward, that a year full of such booming professional success and critical acclaim should be the final year he’s able to afford the life he’s lead for the better part of a decade. But perhaps he just needs a break, to go back and focus all of his time and energy on a single release in the far-off future. Give his tired mind a minute to grasp his explosive last year.

“[In 2013] I’m going to like, get my head wrapped around the next thing and take some time, [and] slowly and lazily start working on demos,” he says. “There’s definitely not going to be a record from me for a year. I just want to focus on one thing and make it as best as I can. I’ve never really focused on just one thing for a year straight, so I’d like to do that.”

 

EMILY SAVAGE’S LIST OF NEW ALBUMS I LISTENED TO ENDLESSLY IN 2012

1. Grass Widow, Internal Logic (HLR)

2. Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory (Carpark)

3. Ty Segall, Slaughterhouse (In the Red)

4. Dum Dum Girls, End of Daze EP (Sub Pop)

5. Frankie Rose, Interstellar (Slumberland)

6. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Alleluja! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (Constellation)

7. The Fresh and Onlys, Long Slow Dance (Mexican Summer)

8. THEESatisfaction, awE naturalE (Sub Pop)

9. Terry Malts, Killing Time (Slumberland)

10. Guantanamo Baywatch, Chest Crawl (Dirtnap Records)

 

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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Call it the influence of witch house on the folk scene, or don’t –  those involved would probably hate that. But it does feel like there have been more and more “darkly spiritual acoustic-folk” acts of late, in the vein of Chelsea Wolfe and Father John Misty (albeit, on opposite ends of the spectrum), and in particular, King Dude, who returns to the Bay for a set of Oakland shows this weekend. There’ll also be live sets this week by Lavender Diamond, less moody but certainly as spiritual and folk-infused, and the legendary, if snappier Mountain Goats.

Unrelated, but also performing in the Bay these next few days: Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers, Overwhelming Colorfast, and the Chuckleberries; Dee Dee from the Dum Dum Girls with her boo, Brandon from the Crocodiles; Wooden Shjips, Liturgy, and Barn Owl, at the same show. Plus, it’s Chanukah, and the Subterranean Arthouse is celebrating with Yiddish bands and live klezmer. I hope for your sake you get some latkes this holiday season, my first batch was oily, crispy, and vegan – perfect.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Lavender Diamond
You know Lavender Diamond, right? The whimsical LA-based electro-folk band fronted by crystal-clear vocalist/tree fairy Becky Stark? The group plays SF’s newest venue, the Chapel, this week. And as I hinted and posted about last week, Lavender Diamond will be joined on stage by actor-musician-superhuman John C. Reilly.
With Jessica Pratt
Tue/11, 9pm, $10-$12
Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
www.thechapelsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPHZY8IOgIc

Thrill Jockey 20th Anniversary
It’s finally here, the showcase I was blathering on about in the Tofu and Whiskey music column last week. Here are the specifics: awesomely independent Chicago label Thrill Jockey is celebrating 20 years of existence with showcases in towns they love, including ours. This was includes performances by Wooden Shjips, Liturgy, Barn Owl, Trans Am, Man Forever, and Eternal Tapestry. Thrilling.
Thu/13, 8pm, $18
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
www.theindependentsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2iwAAaEZvE

Subterranean Arthouse’s Chanukah Party
The Subterranean Arthouse’s Chanukah Party is part of Heather Klein‘s “Hungry for Yiddish: A Mitzvah Project” concert series, which donates proceeds from events to the Berkeley Food Pantry and similar organizations; and the event is co-presented by KlezCalifornia and the Jewish Music Festival. Acts include Klein’s Inextinguishable Trio, Anthony Mordechai-Tzvi Russell, noted Yiddish dance instructor Bruce Bierman, and Saul Goodman’s Klezmer Band. With instructions from Bierman, the lovely Yiddish songs of both Klein and Russell, and Goodman’s brassy klezmer, this should make for a fun, frenzied mid-point party during the festival of lights — and yes, they’ll light the menorah.
Thu/13, 9pm, $10-$20 donation
Subterranean Arthouse
2169 Bancroft, Berk.
Klezmer.brownpapertickets.com

The Mountain Goats
“The Mountain Goat’s dynamic leader, John Darnielle, has been writing songs about addiction, infidelity, and more sensitive subjects for the last 20 years. The group’s new album, Transcendental Youth, has been an excuse for Darnielle to branch out, inviting avant-symphonic rocker, Matthew E. White, to write horns for the album and working with Owen Pallett to arrange the songs for a collaboration with the a cappella quartet, Anonymous 4.” — Molly Champlin
With Matthew E. White
Fri/14, 9pm, $28
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
(415) 346-6000
www.thefillmore.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6RQwx3r1BU

King Dude
If you missed King Dude – the “darkly spiritual acoustic-folk” side project of gravelly TJ Cowgill of Teen Cthulu and Book of Black Earth – at Elbo Room last month, chin up. Dude/Cowgil is playing two shows at the Uptown this weekend, opening for Psychic TV. So no more tears, except possibly for those drawn from King Dude’s bleak, dance-with-the-devil, Johnny Cash straining to meet Tom Waits ballads.
With Lumerians, Youth Code
Fri/14-Sat/15, 9pm, $23
Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakl.
www.uptownnightclub.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP-MBHdka90

Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers, Overwhelming Colorfast, the Chuckleberries
This is an early show, and it’s a benefit to help rebuild wild rock purveyor Norton Records (its warehouse was demolished in Hurricane Sandy) so it’s already a win-win situation: donate to a worthy cause, catch every band, and still have time for an early dinner. But the lineup is even better; it’s packed with classic Bay Area musicians: roots rock’n’rollers Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers – featuring hiccuping, rockabilly star Loney, of Flamin’ Groovies fame – along with ’90s pop-punk band Overwhelming Colorfast, the Chuckleberries featuring Russell Quan of the Mummies and Phantom Surfers, and more.
With the Tomorrowmen, Dirty Robbers, Rue 66, the Devil-Ettes, DJs Ruby White and Sid Presley
Sun/16, 2-7pm, $7-$10
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
www.elbo.com
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/301250
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRD2IADQsrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH276SrfG-M

Dee Dee and Brandon
OK, technically this is next week, but it’s a Monday so I’m letting it slide: Dee Dee from the Dum Dum Girls and Brandon from the Crocodiles are in love — married, in fact, and make a rather swoon-worthy couple. Listen to Dee Dee’s crooning on “Bedroom Eyes” off 2011’s Only In Dreams, in which she repeats “fear I’ll never sleep again” and you start to get a sense of their connection, and the pain they feel apart on separate tours. To view said connection live, in all its gushy splendor, be the voyeur at their joint Rickshaw Stop show tonight; a very special showcase, indeed, where both will perform songs from their respective catalogs and — as I can only imagine — harmonize like old lovers do.
With Gio and Stef (Young Prisms)
Mon/17, 8pm, $15
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysk55bI5E0U

Thrill ride

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Thrill ride

emilysavage@sfbg.com

Tofu and Whiskey Arbiter of good taste, Thrill Jockey Records is officially 20 years old. In another era, in another business, this would merely be a back-slapping milestone. In the present stuck-barreling-downwards roller coaster of the music industry, it’s an anniversary worthy of widespread jubilation.

“It’s a mind-boggling number of years,” label founder Bettina Richards says during a phone call from the main office in Chicago, where the label’s been based since 1995.

And how else would a record label celebrates its birthday than with a series of familial concerts? There have been shows booked in key Thrill Jockey cities such as New York (where it began in ’92), London, San Francisco, LA, Chicago. Those shows (some of which have already gone down) boast lineups packed with label notables Tortoise, the Sea and Cake, Trans Am, Liturgy, Future Islands, and Matmos.

The San Francisco version of the traveling Thrill Jockey rodeo will be headlined by the label’s Bay Area acts: psych-rockers Wooden Shjips and drone duo Barn Owl, along with Liturgy, Trans Am, Man Forever, and Eternal Tapestry (Dec. 13, 8pm, $18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF; www.theindependentsf.com).

SF is considered a key Thrill Jockey city for a handful of reasons; there’s the aforementioned connection with Wooden Shjips and Barn Owl, plus, one of the label’s earliest releases was a band from here called A Minor Forest. And there’s another super-secret new signing set for 2013 (sorry, you won’t learn more than that here). “We’ve had a long, fond affection for the way San Franciscans can create super individual sounds,” Richards says.

Though they create different styles of music, Wooden Shjips and Barn Owl had some similarities that stood out to Richards when she was in the process of signing each. “They both share this transportive quality…taking you to an entirely different realm. With the Wooden Shjips, it’s an active feeling of motion, and with Barn Owl, it’s really an escape. It’s hard to put into words, but they both do something compelling to me.”

It’s that compulsion that’s lead Richards to many of her choices for the roster. She tells this story about one one the label’s most beloved acts: “Trans Am, way back in 1993, were the B-side of a seven-inch that John McEntire from Tortoise had recorded, and he gave me the seven-inch. It just happened that a week later they were playing. I saw them and was like, ‘oh my god, I love them.'”

While most of the acts have been found through musician friends and pals of the label, there’s the occasional random encounter, like Sidi Toure, the gifted Malian singer-songwriter. His CD arrived via snail-mail to the Chicago office right before Christmas last year. “We don’t usually get packages from Mali. I was on a drive to go see my folks, popped it in, and I just couldn’t believe it.” I tell Richards I had the same initial reaction to Toure’s mesmerizing compositions. “And the weirder thing,” she adds, “was that he sent it because he’s a really big Radian fan, which is a band from Austria with like, atonal drums. You just wouldn’t have guessed that, right?”

Austrian prog band HP Zinker was the first band she ever signed — at the time (’92), she was living New York City and was still bartending and working at a record shop. In fact, she did that for the first eight years of the label. The band lived in a decaying squat where White Zombie used to reside, and they all ended up moving in to Richards’ studio apartment. Richards lets out a raucous laugh recalling those early days.

From signing HP Zinker, to the label’s 330th release planned for next year, Thrill Jockey has maintained a comparatively sparkling reputation as a label that treats its artists well.

I asked Wooden Shjips drummer Omar Ahsanuddin why the label is so beloved and he replied: “Because they know their shit, are music fans, and mostly because [Richards] is a straight-shooter. As Phil Manley once told me: if you like getting paid on time, you’ll like Thrill Jockey.”

Barn Owl’s Jon Porras said, “It’s great to work with a label that trusts an artistic vision…Thrill Jockey upholds a level of professionalism and is open to unconventional ideas.”

“I think one of the main things, at least to me, is that these bands would be doing what they’re doing whether anybody is paying attention or not,” says Richards. “This is something they’re compelled to do. And in the same sense, we’re compelled to put it out, whether it makes sense or not.”

And that’s important in this current musical climate, a time when the mainstream labels are floundering, record sales have plummeted, and free music is a click away. “Trying to combat it would be like trying to swim against the tide. You’d exhaust yourself and get nowhere. Instead, we just try to adapt,” Richards says. “We’re small, so we’re flexible and can adapt quickly. The people that work here are super music geeks, that keeps them really involved.”

One shift has been the number of releases it puts out. It jumped a few years back from 10 releases a year, to three or four a month, including small print, specific collector releases, which appeal to the super music geek market.

In a nostalgic mood, given the anniversary shows, I ask Richards to look back and pick out what she’d want her legacy to be, after this thrill ride is over: “I hope people are as attached to some of the bands and the records that I am. I hope to, as an octogenarian, sit in my house and blast a Barn Owl record and really feel the same feeling I felt the first time I heard it. And I hope it’s as treasured to them as it is to us.”

Warm, fuzzy feelings abound.

 

REED FLUTE THERAPY

In these stressful last days of the year, we likely all need a modicum of relaxation, just a taste. Local reed flute master Eliyahu Sills, best known as part of the the Qadim Ensemble, has just released an acoustic solo tribute to the sacred music of Sufism; a haunting record meant to assist in meditation, yoga, and just some overall relaxation techniques. Song of the Reeds is 10 songs of original improvisations, created on a flute made from a reed; can’t get more organic than that. www.qadimmusic.com.

 

THE BABIES

That Vivian Girls-Woods collaboration just keeps getting cuter. It’s fascinating how it really feels split between the two out-fronts: Cassie Ramone and Kevin Morby, one part jingly lo-fi girl-group, one part folky, acoustic forest-dweller. With all the fuzz and tender melodies on half of the songs, it gets inevitable comparisons to Best Coast, but that’s only a shade of its output. Check the new karaoke-filled, warped VHS-style video for “Baby,” off Our House on the Hill, released this month on Woodsist, then go back and try alternating tracks such as “On My Time” or “Get Lost.” It makes for an engrossing, push me/pull you dynamic that will translate nicely to the stage. Plus, the Brooklyn band plays with our own headlining post-punk heroes, Grass Widow.

Thu/6, 9pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17 St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

 

ANTIBALAS

Another Brooklyn export: infectious 11-piece Afrobeat band Antibalas is coming our way, with its first full-length album in five years — a self-titled LP released in August on Daptone Records — horns blazing. The long-running act has been making a big, boisterous noise since the late ’90s, and closely followed in Fela Kuti’s steps, yet has suffered in relative obscurity until recently. Earlier this year, the New York Times asserted its belief that a post-Fela! world (i.e. the rise of crossover acts like Vampire Weekend, and the wildly popular run of Fela! on Broadway), might finally “catch up” and catch on to the skill of Antibalas. With Afrolicious DJs Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz.

Mon/10, 8pm, $23

Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.slimspresents.com

 

Will John C. Reilly be the secret guest at Lavender Diamond’s Chapel show?

Tony Robles
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You know Lavender Diamond, right? The whimsical LA-based electro-folk band fronted by crystal-clear vocalist/tree fairy Becky Stark? The group plays SF’s newest venue, the Chapel, Tues/11. Turns out, there’s a super-secret surprise guest set to appear, and I’ve got a solid guess now we can announce who it is: John C. Reilly.

The rumored surprise guest (Reilly) is, of course, best known as the curly-haired character actor with a wide range (Magnolia to Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, Boogie Nights to Chicago to Step-Brothers). But he’s also a pretty solid singer and musician, who played Bimbo’s earlier this year alongside Lavender Diamond’s Stark as John Reilly and Friends.

The duo previously collaborated on a duet covering  “I’ll Be There (If You Ever Want Me),” made famous by Ray Price, for Jack White’s Third Man Records, and have played together since. Reilly and Friends also popped up at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSqN1ROUpo

If you hadn’t already guessed, we’re big fans of the actor-musician.

But we’re also fans of Lavender Diamond, so either way, the show should be a good one. The band released its second full-length, Incorruptible Heart, in September, and a small batch was pressed on lavender vinyl. Amazing. It’s a lush break-up record full of subtle melancholy, torch songs, and chamber pop, with contributions from M. Ward and the Calder Quartet on strings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPHZY8IOgIc

Plus, local wonder Jessica Pratt was recently added to the bill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF1lESEpYrc

Alright, here’s one more of Stark and John C. Reilly together from when Reilly recently stopped by Stark’s web series, We Can Do It.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcEvXWtfvY

Again, it’s rumored he’ll show up. Oh, he’ll be there!

Lavender Diamond
With Jessica Pratt
Tue/11, 9pm, $10-$12
Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
www.thechapelsf.com

Localized Appreesh: Coo Coo Birds

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

Music should be fun. We forget that little factor, those of us drenched in so many layers of irony we can no longer differentiate between sounds. Lest we draw another blank, I present Coo Coo Birds.

The band – made up of singer-guitarist Jonny Cat, producer-bassist Charles James Gonzalez, and singer-drummer Ryan Zweng – is connected to the Convent arts collective (hence the song, “Convent Girl”), and seems to have a real good time making music together. It dropped full-length debut, Don’t Bring You Boyfriends, in September, quickly followed that up with the forthcoming Psychedelic Warrior, and have another release already on the horizon: Sultan of Cats, due February 2013.

So far, the tracks have been about things like rock and roll animals, sake babies, and marshmallow pies, sonically mixing in swishy psychedelia, swinging 1960s pop, and the band’s professed love of rock’n’roller Link Wrap, and the Kinks.

And the Birds have some pretty fun musician friends too: Steve Mackay of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, who lent some tenor sax to Coo Coo Birds’ first release; fellow locals and Localized Appreeshers Brand New Trash, and legendary song-man/ex-Modern Lover Jonathan Richman, who recently gave them a Big Star boxset, and invited them to open for him at the Great American Music Hall this weekend.

Also, a note for the not-so-distant future: the band will perform as the Order of the Holy Coo at the First Church of Sacred Silversexual’s Very Bowie Glampocalypse blowout Dec. 21 at Cafe Du Nord. So you’ll be able to spend the last night on earth in style. 

First, get to know the Coo Coo Birds, the rarest of the species:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT6srRZcEiE

Year and location of origin: November 2011 at the Condor Strip Club in San Francisco.  That was when we first played together and felt something extraordinary.  At that moment Coo Coo Birds were born.

Band name origin: A film maker who now lives in New York named the band after who knows what.  We just like the sound of it so we kept the name.
Band motto: Don’t Bring Your Boyfriends.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: The Sound of Coo Coo Birds is 1 part LINK WRAY, 1 Part KISS, and 1 part T-REX.

Instrumentation: All band members sing behind a wall of guitar, bass, and drums.

Most recent release: Our first LP, entitled Don’t Bring Your Boyfriends was released in Sept. 2012.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: Girls, drugs, fun and very loud music.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Girls, drugs, fun and very loud music.

First album ever purchased: KISS ALIVE II with the cutout corner. Things were never the same afterwards.

Most recent album purchased/downloaded: BIG STAR box set on vinyl. Jonathan Richman gave us a copy a couple weeks ago. I guess that counts.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Coo Coo Birds have regular band meetings at Da’ Pitt BBQ on Divisadero and Grove in SF.  We usually order a rack of Ribs, with mac & cheese, collared greens, white bread and hot sauce on the side.  We always wash it down with 32oz bottles of Coors (Banquet) beer.

Coo Coo Birds
With Jonathan Richman
Sun/2, 8pm, $16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com

You’ll be a woman soon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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You’ll be a woman soon

emilysavage@sfbg.com

Tofu and Whiskey The phrase “‘woman’ is not a genre” has been popping up again. It’s been in articles, board threads, and subsequently, conversations I’ve been a part of. It’s a good one. Kind of an earworm of a saying, because on its face, it’s implicit, simplistic, obvious, even. But it’s a good mantra, for music writers. “Woman” is not a genre.

Maybe it’s a backlash against Rolling Stone’s recent, ridiculous “women who rock” package, which sought out the “best” woman in rock with votes from readers, and somehow ended up with cloying pop act Karmin plastered across the cover, cleavage-y as all Rolling Stone cover ladies. Can you imagine a “best white guy in rock” contest in RS?

But this is nothing new. As far as I can trace it, Little Boots said “‘girl’ is not a genre” in 2009, but — seeing as how it’s so gosh darn simple — it’s got to have been uttered previously, and certainly, undoubtedly, felt since the first time a woman picked up a different instrument from her female neighbor, and got thrown in concert together.

It was the headline and thesis of a piece on Electronic Beats about the rise of thinkpieces sputtering about a supposed rise of women making electronic music, another fallacy; it’s just the cheap shots in feature pieces clumping heterogeneous acts together again.

One of the only things linking all ladies of wildly divergent sounds at this point is the gendered showcases, or gendered comparisons. That’s not to say all comparisons are entirely inaccurate, they just frequently are made based on little more than appearance.

Ash Reiter, the frontperson for her eponymous East Bay band, saw plenty of comparisons after the release of her first album, Paper Diamonds, in 2010, with passing references to Fleetwood Mac and Cat Power, both of whom she admires. The singer-songwriter-guitarist was also hoping to sound like a mix of Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Grizzly Bear, and OK, Jolie Holland.

Now, Reiter and her band have taken that sound for a walk in another direction. With the new LP, Hola — which see release on 20 Sided Records Fri/30 with a show at the Rickshaw Stop (8:30pm, $10. 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com) — the local musicians took notes more from bubbly 1960s pop and classic Motown cuts, arrangements interspersed with bits of funk and Afro-pop.

“With our first album, I was in a folkier place with a lot of those songs, doing the Jolie Holland thing, which, you know, I cut my teeth singing along to her songs,” says Reiter, remarkably cheerful on the phone the afternoon before her current 54-day tour ends. “But I’ve gotten more excited about writing more upbeat pop songs with grooves to them, and working with my band to write music instead of writing it alone.”

On this tour, Reiter and her drummer Will Halsey went to the Motown Museum in Detroit, which was particularly meaningful because of its influence on Hola: “that’s a lot of the music we look up to. Of course, [we’ve always looked up to] the Beatles and the Beach Boys, but also all these girl groups, the Ronettes, and the Shirelles, and the Crystals. And we definitively imitated a lot of what we heard in the background vocals listening to the Supremes.”

She had just gotten the Supremes box set, but also was listening to early Nigerian pop, and Os Mutantes when she first began work on Hola, and brought those inspirations to New Improved Recording, where the band worked for the first time with engineer Carlos Arredondo, who they met at a party at Anna Ash’s house.

You can hear Ash Reiter’s many complimentary influences on Hola opening track, “I’ve Got Something I Can Laugh About Now,” with jangly guitars, shakers, cooing harmonies, and Reiter’s crystal-clear, honey-sweet lead vocals. Funkier, electro-shot “Ishi,” written about the last member of the Yahi, very much a part of California’s history, follows. Reiter read his biography for that song, but also just liked the phonetic sound of his name.

Raised in Northern California (specifically, Sebastopol), Reiter looked to the state’s history for inspiration lyrically this time around; the former modern lit major was reading voraciously during the making of the record, including Joan Didion’s Where I Was From. The song “Little Sandy” has a chorus that’s a quote Didion included from a pioneer girl’s diary.

While Hola was girl group-influenced, Reiter wasn’t about to write a break-up album — she’s dating the band’s drummer, Halsey, who also plays with Oakland’s the Blank Tapes.

Another Bay Area act — freshly rejiggered and condensed — is headlining the release show with Ash Reiter this week: DRMS. It’s also a new progression for the plucky electro Afro-pop act, formerly known simply as Dreams. Down from eight players, the now-four piece has whittled to bandleader-keyboardist Rob Shelton, vocalist-percussionist Emily Ritz, drummer Ross McIntire, and Mark Clifford on vibraphone, melodica, and backup vocals.

 

DON’T CALL IT FREAK-FOLK

Local singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt just released a mystical, fleeing-through-a-foggy-forest folk album that’s so stripped down, quavering and personal, crackling yet crisp, it sounds like a rare, weird gem from the early ’70s that you’d unearth in the lower racks of Amoeba. The self-titled LP has such a true-blue timeless quality, however, to call it a throwback would do it injustice. White Fence’s Tim Presley is said to have created new label Birth Records solely to release Pratt’s debut, which came out Nov. 13. Pratt recently told Fader: “I was really afraid of some freak-folk comparisons because I’m from San Francisco, and I play electric guitar, and it’s kind of weird, folky stuff.” I’ll refrain.

TALES FROM THE FRONT LINE

Part of Nayland Blake’s ongoing FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! exhibit, Show and Tell: Queer Punks in Conversation will include conversations with Leslie Mah of Tribe 8, Brontez Purnell of Gravy Train!!! and The Younger Lovers, Jess Scott of Make-A-Mess Records, Brilliant Colors, Index, and Flesh World, and Matt Wobensmith, founder of Goteblüd Vintage Zine Store and Outpunk. Full disclosure, the panel discussion will be moderated by SFBG managing editor, Marke B., but I’d have gone regardless.

Fri/30, 6:30pm, free with admission

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

Localized Appreesh: Golden Void

Tony Robles
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1

Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

Another blog this week declared Golden Void “the Bay Area’s best new psych band,” and I’m not about to quibble. The band, named after a Hawkwind track, features members of Earthless, and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, and just released a mind-bending, fuzzy guitar-bursting beaut of a debut album, out now on Thrill Jockey.

The self-titled LP clearly showcases the band’s love of 1970s psych, proto-metal, and space rock, dipping into Black Sabbath (vocally) and yes, namesake Hawkwind territory throughout. Check out the acid-laced video for “Virtue” below, then check the band’s answers to the Localized Appreesh questionnaire. Once you pick yourself up off the ground, make it out the band’s album release party Friday at the Hemlock Tavern.

Year and location of origin: 2010 in San Francisco.

Band name origin: Song by Hawkwind.

Band motto: Did you see the Giants game?

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Herds of buffalo running through the open plains.

Instrumentation: Bass, drums, keyboards, guitar and vocals.

Most recent release: Self-titled album November 2012 on Thrill Jockey.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: The Giants, The A’s, redwood trees and great bands to play with.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Cant complain, really.

First album ever purchased: Grateful Dead’s In the Dark.

Most recent albumpurchased/downloaded: Witchcraft’s Legend.

Favourite local eatery and dish: Escape from New York’s “You Say Potato” slice and their mushroom slice.

Golden Void
With Joel Robinow Band, Phil Manley
Fri/23, 9:30pm, $7
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
www.hemlocktavern.com

Gabba gabba buy

Andrew Lam
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0
Gabba gabba buy

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY’S HOLIDAY GUIDE Before I expound on anything, I’ve got to spit this out: buy local. If you’re going to buy something; in particular, if you’re going to buy actual vinyl records or CDs or books or musical equipment, get them from an independent store in the Bay Area.

Support Aquarius, Amoeba Music, Black Pancake Records, GROOVES, 1-2-3-4 GO!, Recycled Records, Rooky Ricardo’s, Rasputin’s, Streetlight, and the smaller mom-and-significant-other type stores; otherwise, the brick and mortars will slowly die and we’ll be stuck rifling only through the virtual library, which will inevitably lead to a host of other problems (loneliness, fatigue, hive mindedness).

Making it even easier to shop live, Record Store Day has a Black Friday special releases list (Fri/23), which means there will be lots of specialty music and rare editions on the shelves. And yes, some detractors complain of the single-mindedness of asking shoppers to obsess over rare vinyl jewels just one day a year — actual Record Store Day takes place in April — and that most of the items end up online with jacked up prices anyways. I disagree with this mindset, especially around the holidays. That push can make the difference for a struggling independent shop. Keep in mind, this is not advocating for actual Black Friday shopping at Wal-Mart and the like. End rant.

Last year, all I wanted for Chanukah was the Phil Spector box set, each disc enveloped in tiny cardboard sleeves made to replicate the original records in miniature — like dollhouse versions. I got the CDs, and have listened to the Crystals’ “Frankenstein Twist,” on average, once a day for these past 12 months. This year, I’m just not sure what to covet, so I asked around.

From my non-academic study, I found that musicians tend to be of the practical angle when it comes to gifts. They want extra cables, or picks, headphones, or record needles. One mentioned the Fender Champ amp, which is good for thin-walled apartment use, or the $39 Fireye Mini portable headphone amp. Better yet, a gift certificate to a (local) music shop — try spots like Real Guitars (15 Lafayette, SF; www.realguitars.com), SF Guitar Works (323 Potereo, SF; www.sfguitarworks.com) or Starving Musician (2474 Shattuck, Berk; www.starvingmusician.com).

Those one step apart from the musicians, the quintessential music nerds such as myself, on the other hand, tend to desire the ostentatious and/or extraordinary. They want that rare, hard-to-find seven-inch on white vinyl, the oversized coffee table book, or that carefully curated box set.

Or something else entirely: a gift subscription to Turntable Kitchen’s pairing boxes ($25/month, www.turntablekitchen.com) is a particularly cool gift that’s based right here in the Bay. The boxes ship once a month and include dry ingredients, recipes, and limited edition seven-inches, often by local musicians.

Now on to the music shops. The specialty records, box sets, and CDs in general that stuck out to me as great gifts this year — of course dependent on the listener — are Blackbird Blackbird’s covers of Kate Bush on limited edition vinyl with origami, Castle Face Record’s The Velvet Underground and Nico Tribute, and new box sets from the English Beat, and Death Cab for Cutie. That Castle Face Records full album tribute features covers by a who’s-who of revered locals: Kelley Stoltz, Fresh and Onlys, Warm Soda, Ty Segall, the Mallard, and more (www.castlefacerecords.com).

There’s also Record Store Day’s Black Friday exclusives such as the Fat Boys pizza disc — the record looks like a saucy pie and it comes packaged in a cardboard box — Wanda Jackson’s Capitol Rarities, the Asobi Seksu/Boris split seven-inch,”obscure giants of acoustic guitar” trading cards, and a limited deluxe edition of Joey Ramone’s Ya Know?.

For all the Record Store Day Black Friday specials and to check participating Bay Area shops, visit recordstoreday.com/SpecialReleases.

For the Chanukah specific, I’d recommend ‘Twas the Night Before Hannukah: The Musical Battle Between Christmas and the Festival of Lights. It’s another release from the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, generally the best archivists of vintage Yiddish and Jewish-centric music from the past century or so. The 34-track double CD comp includes Chanukah songs by Woody Guthrie, the Klezmatics, and Mickey Katz, along with Christmas tunes performed by Jewish musicians like Lou Reed, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the Ramones.

An added bonus, there will be a ‘Twas the Night Before Hannukah show at Brick and Mortar Music Hall in December (Dec. 15, 9pm, $15–$18, 1710 Mission, SF. www.brickandmortarmusic.com), with live appearance by Luther Dickinson, Sway Machinery, Thao, Steve Berlin, Ethan Miller, and Ceci Bastida.

As for books, there’s a new coffee table beast that I’ve been dying to talk about called The Art of Punk: The Illustrated History of Punk Rock Design (Voyageur Press, 224pp, $40), by Russ Bestley and Alex Ogg. It’s a beautiful hardcover with splashy images showcasing the aesthetics of punk; graphic fliers, posters, album covers, patches, and other imagery from the proto-punk era through the present, including international punk art, hardcore designs, and fringe elements (though aren’t they all?). Interesting, there’s another great book on punk graphics released this fall: Jon Savage’s Punk: An Aesthetic (Rizzoli, 352pp, $55).

As The Art of Punk puts it, “The value of such groundbreaking artwork, which continues to have an impact on music, fashion, design, and media to this day, is even now only becoming fully apparent. The visual legacy of punk is extensive and its graphic codes — symbols of struggle and resistance, but also a complex subcultural visual vocabulary, and more cynically, a means to tap into deeply held antiauthoritarian consumer sentiments by lifestyle branders — still have resonance. “

The books will appeal to anyone that ever spent hours carefully sewing garish back-patches to jackets to represent the music they believed in, or those who stared at album covers so long their eyes crossed, and the imagery has been burned in their brains ever since. Basically, the music nerds we’ve been shopping for here today.

 

SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS

It’s the swinging, soul-funk group’s first headlining show in San Francisco in more than two years, and in the grand Davies Symphony Hall to boot. The Brooklyn nine-piece Dap-Kings, is of course led by the velvety, luminous Sharon Jones and will likely be belting tracks off 2010’s I Learned the Hard Way LP.

Sat/24, 8pm, $15–$82

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

DICK DALE

Is there anything more exciting than reverb-heavy surf guitar? It warbles through the veins. Last time the King of Surf Guitar, Dick Dale, popped up at the Uptown he roared through all the hits — yes, “Misirilou” was high on the setlist — and then some, rapidly fingering his custom guitar at a blistering speed, his long white hair whipping around him. Trust me, see the 75-year-old maven while you still can.

With Jonny Manek and the Depressives

Sat/24, 9pm, $20

Uptown

1928 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 451-8100

www.uptownnightclub.com

 

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Be Grateful, Eleven Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $8.

Gold Fields, Electric Youth (DJ set), popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $13-$15.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 8pm, $28.50.

Hopie, DJ Ry Toast, DJ Cutso Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $5-$8.

J. Boog, Hot Rain, Bayonics Mezzanine. 9pm, $30.

Jeremy Jones Band, Chris James and the Showdowns, Jeff Campbell Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

John Lawton Trio Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

"Rockin Reggae Thanksgiving" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12, all ages. With Clear Conscience, Dewey and the Peoples, Thanks For Leaving, and more.

Solwave, Major Powers and the Lo-Fi Symphony, Resurrection Men Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Todd vs Charles Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm, free.

UFO, Points North Independent. 8pm, $25.

White Panda, 2AM Club Slim’s. 9pm, $16-$19.

Witchburn, All Hail the Yeti Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Sweater Funk Elbo Room. 9pm, $5-$10. Steppers night with two step soul on vinyl.

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free. With Vinyl Ambassador, DJ Silverback, DJs Green B and Daneekah.

Eats Everything, Ryan Crosson, Bill Patrick Public Works. 10pm, $10.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

THURSDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP.

Dark Sparkle Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $5.

Todd Dunnigan Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Twang! Honky Tonk Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm. Live country music.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $7. Thanksgiving edition with DJ-hosts Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz, DJ Small Change.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

FRIDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

As I Lay Dying, Asking Alexandria, Suicide Silence, Memphis Mayfire, Attila Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $30.

Body and Soul Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Charles, Rome Balestrieri, Todd Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Delicate Steve, Dana Buoy, Raleigh Moncrief Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

Quinn Deveaux and the Blue Beat Review, Brass Menazeri Independent. 9pm, $15.

English Beat, Impalers Bimbo’s. 9pm, $25.

Golden Void, Joel Robinow Band, Phil Manley Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 9pm, $28.50.

Katdelic, DJ Fillmore Wax Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $10.

Macarthur, R.O.D., Rossisings, Halley Washington, Skye Green Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Pi Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

RNDM feat. Jeff Ament, Joseph Arthur, Richard Stuverud, Line and Circle Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $22.

Wallpaper, Neon Hitch Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Baxtalo Drom Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10. Live music, gypsy punk, belly dancing.

Colonel Jimmy and the Blackfish, Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers, Blank Tapes Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $13-$15. "Turkey Trot 2012."

Sebastien Giniaux Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-$15.

DANCE CLUBS

Biscuits and Gravy Elbo Room. 10pm, free. With DJs Vinnie Esparza, Asti Spumanti, Johnny Deeper.

Distance, Tunnidge, District, Trap City Mighty. 10pm, $15.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

NO-ID Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20-$30.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Taboo DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20-$25, 18+. With Larry Tee, Brooke Candy, Manics.

SATURDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Professionals, Bobbleheads Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

B-Side Players, LoCura Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $9-$15.

"Complete Last Waltz" Warfield. 8pm, $32.50-$55. With members of Dr. Dog, Ween, Gomez, Nada Surf, and more.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 9pm, $28.50.

Petty Theft, Stung Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, Project: Pimento Bimbo’s. 9pm, $45-$65.

New Riders of the Purple Sage, Moonalice Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $25.

Tamaryn, Tropic of Cancer, She’s Independent. 9pm, $15.

Top Secret Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Todd, Charles, Rome Balestrieri, Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Via Coma, Beta State, PK Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Vitamin X, Strung Up, Side Effects, Zero Progress Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

White Barons, Tiger Honey Pot, Winter Teeth Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Alexander Abreu and Havana D’Primera Yoshi’s SF. 8 and 10pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Post-Thanksgiving Madness DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$15. With Smash-Up Derby, Lucio K, DJ A Plus D, and more.

Church Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $10. With Rusty Lazer (DJ set), DaveO of Double Duchess (DJ set), Trixxie Carr, Dulce De Leche, Honey Mahogany.

Chris Garcia Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20-$30.

120 Minutes Elbo Room. 10pm.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Tiefschwarz, Roos and Bo Public Works. 10pm, $20.

SUNDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Action Bronson Independent. 9pm, $20.

Enrique Bunbury Fillmore. 8pm, $45.

Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, Acaro Slim’s. 8pm, $20-$25

Aaron Leese and the Panhandlers Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

Cass McCombs Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Nasty Christmas, Black Sparrow Press Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Donald Arquilla with Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s. 7pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Twang Sunday" Thee Parkside. 4pm, free. With Rocketship, Rocketship.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, free before 9:30pm; $6 after. With DJs Sep, Vinnie Esparza and DJ Mundi.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Creepers, Commissure, Loomers, Permanent Collection Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Earl Brothers, Kendl and Joe from Blackbetter Bushes Amnesia. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Uni and Her Ukelele Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-$5, 18+.

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

BAUS, Pleasure Gallows, Life Stinks Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Alice Cooper, Kill Devil Hill Warfield. 8pm, $37.50-$57.50.

Deep Sea Diver, Wild Belle, Showrunners Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Sufis Amnesia. 9:30pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Jacob Armen Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $22.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Stylus John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane.

Takin’ Back Tuesdays Double Dutch, 3192 16th St,SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 10pm. Hip-hop from the 1990s.

Heads Up: 6 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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1

Yes, it’s that time of the year again – when I make a faux-turkey. And, I suppose, when many of you eat the real thing. That’s cool. Either way, you’re going to want to relax, decompress, scream into the abyss after the stress of eating and chatting with the family, or over-indulging at multiple Friendsgivings. This Thanksgiving weekend, you can let your conflicted demons out into the night with Dick Dale, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Cass McCombs, Sébastien Giniaux, Kill Paris, and SISU.

An added bonus: because there are so many transplants to the Bay Area, holidays like this often suck the crowds out, meaning more space for you to shake a tail feather on the dancefloor, and shorter waits at the bar.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Sébastien Giniaux
All Django-ish and la pompe, Parisian musician Sébastien Giniaux is a gypsy jazz guitar virtuoso. He quickly maneuvers from darkly emotional gypsy -spirited compositions to plucky swinging hot jazz, much like genre originator Django Reinhardt. True to inspiration, Giniaux has played France’s Django Reinhardt Festival and Djangofest in the US.
Fri/23, 7:30pm, $10-$15
Red Poppy Art House
2698 Folsom, SF
www.redpoppyarthouse.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ElEoy6h6Tg

Kill Paris
“The consistently solid Opulent Temple DJs at the bottom of this eclectic lineup will definitely put down some solid house sets, but also worth checking out is Kill Paris, an EDM up-and-comer with a near fetish for funky ’80s soul and ’90s R&B. Expect to hear Prince, Montell Jordan, and Blackstreet reworked with the sounds of French electro, dubstep, and the fringes of LA’s beat scene.” — Ryan Prendiville
With Big Chocolate, Jelo, Opulent Temple DJs (Tekfreaks, Dutch, Dex Stakker, and more)
Fri/23, 10pm, $15–<\d>$30
1015 Folsom, SF
(415) 431-1200
www.1015.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLhEjllbU3E

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
It’s the swinging, soul-funk group’s first headlining show in San Francisco in more than two years, and in the grand Davies Symphony Hall to boot. The Brooklyn nine-piece Dap-Kings, is of course led by the velvety, luminous Sharon Jones and will likely be belting tracks 2010’s I Learned the Hard Way LP.
Sat/24, 8pm, $15–$82
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness, SF
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSvRMiemEGc

Shine On with SISU
Shoe-gazy dreampop fronted by Sandra Vu, drummer of the Dum Dum Girls, creating moody meditations in line with 4AD bands and Broadcast. Hard to resist, no? If you missed it, here’s our chat from earlier this year.
With Sophie Gineau, DSTVV
Sat/24, 10pm, $5 
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
www.theknockoutsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNRz020IijQ

Dick Dale
Is there anything more exciting than reverb-heavy surf guitar? It warbles the veins. Last time the King of Surf Guitar, Dick Dale, popped up at the Uptown he roared through all the hits — yes, “Misirilou” was high on the setlist — and then some, rapidly fingering his custom guitar at a blistering speed, his long white hair whipping around him. Trust me, see the 75-year-old maven while you still can.
With Jonny Manek and the Depressives
Sat/24, 9pm, $20
Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakl.
(510) 451-8100
www.uptownnightclub.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8CnurLcxRY

Cass McCombs
I probably shouldn’t even be writing about this one; people will likely complain that that it’ll sell out quick if everyone knows about it. I mean, it’s talented singer-songwriter Cass McCombs (who is about to embark on tour with the one and only John Cale). At comparatively tiny Amnesia. For just $5. But then I wouldn’t be doing my journalistic duty, right? If I was suppressing – already widely available – show info? It’s done; I apologize. Now breathe, and buy tickets;or you know, throw that Cass McCombs money away on another Four Loko, or whatever the kids are buying these days.
Sun/25, 9pm, $5
Amnesia
853 Valencia, SF
www.amnesiathebar.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOcnITphyjk

The Faint will play ‘Danse Macabre’ in its entirety this weekend

Tony Robles
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It’s been a decade since the release of the Faint’s stand-out album, Danse Macabre. Nuts, right? With Saddle Creek Record‘s release this month of the deluxe edition of its landmark album, the somewhat dormant dark wave band is now touring and playing Danse Macabre in its entirety; that tour takes the Faint to the Regency Ballroom this weekend (Sat/17).

Originally released on Saddle Creek at the height of its buzz, the Faint’s crisp and flashy third studio full-length was a standout during the early electro-pop buzz of the Aughts, sounding like it was crafted by a dance-punk band with a heavy metal guitarist, which it pretty much was. Do you remember “Agenda Suicide” pumping out of boomboxes at every party in 2001, and swallowing up goth club and new wave dancefloors? I do.

On the eve of the Regency show, I shot synth-master Jacob Thiele a few rapid-fire questions about the band’s influences, Danse Macabre, and what the members have been up to the past few years (hint: some have been DJing under the name Depressed Buttons):

San Francisco Bay Guardian What’s it been like revisiting ‘Danse Macabre’? 

Jacob Thiele Actually all the songs on the album that we’ve neglected in our live show over the years have so far been the most fun to play as a band. So I think we’re all looking forward to finally playing those for everyone, as well as showing off our new songs!

SFBG There’s been an increasingly trend of ‘whole album’ shows, what are the advantages to this? Why did you decide to do it for this deluxe version release?

JT With the re-issue coming out it seemed right. We are doing it a little differently than other bands, in terms of how we play the whole album.

SFBG What other songs will you be playing during this tour? 

JT We’re also going to be selling a limited edition 12-inch of the current versions of our new songs, which we’re really excited about! We are playing some of our new songs from the 12-inch and songs from all of our albums.

SFBG Did you feel on the verge of something new when ‘Danse Macabre’ first dropped, or before it with ‘Blank-Wave Arcade’? 

JT At that time all of our friends were also in bands and everyone was doing something, recording, touring, etc, so it did not feel like anything different was happening to us.

SFBG Were you influenced by any of the first wave of dance-punk, ESG and the like? 

JT Yeah totally, all of that stuff was great and really important to us. Todd made a mix for an online magazine [that] sums up a lot of what we have been into over the years and it is a great listen.  

SFBG What have you all been up to since 2008’s ‘Fasciination’? 

JT We have been DJing a lot, some of us did some music under the name Depressed Buttons that our friends at Mad Decent released. 

SFBG Are there any plans for a new record? 

JT We have this 12-ich for now and we are working on more new music. 

The Faint
With Trust, Casket Girls
Sat/17, 8pm, $25-$27
Regency Ballroom
1300 Van Ness, SF
www.theregencyballroom.com

Localized Appreesh: Brand New Trash

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

Brand New Trash is a new “trash pop” (more on that in a second) band from Buxter Hoot’n’s SF-via-Indiana brothers Vince and Jimmy Dewald. The group, rounded out by two drummers – Kevin Alan Walters and Ebony Towner, who also doubles on keyboard – is about to release its debut self-titled LP.

It’s a record rooted in raw rock’n’roll Americana, with dreamy roadtrip sing-along melodies, hence the “trash” and the “pop” that make up the band’s sound. The album is mostly original tunes, but one of the more surprising turns would be the group’s solid, harmonica-peppered cover of Tupac’s classic “Brenda’s Got A Baby” – definitely worth a listen; and it’s certainly not done in a kitschy-krappy Karmin way. Instead, it’s a Tom Petty-reminiscent mouthful of a tribute, showcasing the boldness of the original lyrics, wrapped in a noisy roots rock package.

Brand New Trash’s last local live appearance of 2012 – at Bottom of the Hill this week – also happens to be its release party for that brand new album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ12emzwy-I&feature=youtu.be

Year and location of origin: 2011, San Francisco, but the band’s roots go back to the late ’90s in northern Indiana where three of us grew up and played in a band together.
 
Band name origin: Our sound just kind of spawned the name. We are also big Crazy Horse fans and Neil Young saying “Here’s some more trash for ya,” on a live album has always stuck in my mind.
 
Band motto: “Tell the story and keep it trashy.” A lot of the songs on our debut are first takes. This is a big part of “trash pop,” being ready for the moment and delivering something raw and uncensored. There are no put ons with this band, allow for the unexpected and let the music tell a story.
 
Description of sound in 10 words or less: Trash Pop – raw rock with stick-in-your-brain melodies.

Instrumentation: We do a lot of switching instruments and we all sing because we all write songs. Mainly, brothers Vince and Jimmy Dewald share the bass and guitar duties. Kevin Walters and Ebony Towner share the drums and Ebony also plays keys.

Most recent release: Debut album, Brand New Trash out November 20, 2012.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: The general freedom in the Bay. We did a lot of touring with our first band, Buxter Hoot’n, and you just don’t find that everywhere.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Getting to the rest of the country for tours is a big undertaking

First album ever purchased: Run-D.M.C, Run-D.M.C. “It’s Tricky” still pops up in my head, probably the first song I ever memorized.

Most recent album purchased/downloaded: Kurt Vile, Smoke Ring For My Halo.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Underdog-“The Organic Sausage Joint”, half of the band gets “Let’s Be Frank” half goes for the Vegan Dog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFgNZqdm5Gs

Brand New Trash
With Jonny Cat and the Coo Coo Birds, Sufis
Thu/15, 9pm, $10
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

GOLDIES 2012: WATERS

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2012: WATERS

GOLDIES “It’s been a great year for me,” says Van Pierszalowski, slightly out of breath after pushing his bicycle up a seriously steep hill. “It’s been the first year that I’ve lived anywhere in a long time.”

Pierszalowski has been part of the San Francisco indie rock scene for years, first with Port O’Brien and now with WATERS, but he hasn’t actually lived in the Bay Area since his days at UC Berkeley. He’s been mostly out on the road, couch-hopping at friends’ houses upon return, spending summers fishing in Alaska with his father — or in Oslo with his European girlfriend, Marte Solbakken, who also plays in WATERS.

But in 2012, following positive reviews for 2011’s Out In The Light (TBD Records), his debut album as WATERS, he’s finally on dry ground. He’s got a somewhat permanent structure — an apartment he shares with Solbakken — on the top of Potrero Hill, and a part-time job at the bottom of those hills, at Four Barrel.

“I haven’t had a job, other than music and fishing, since college,” he says with a laugh. “Finally I’m not touring for a little while, and I’m just concentrating on writing songs, and I wanted my days to have a little more structure. So I sought out a job — I love coffee and I love Four Barrel.”

Java-brewing skills aside, Pierszlawski’s been garnering notice from music fans for other reasons: his earnest, salty sea-referencing lyrics; matured and more aggressive vocals; grungy, fuzzed out guitar-work; and seriously tripped-out music videos. As far as imagery goes, there’s a lot to take in with the video for “For the One” — flaming dream catchers, creepy convenience store clerks, acid-laced dreams, purplish starry nightscapes that look like screensavers for Windows 95, extras fleeing through smoke machine fog, and Pierszalowski riding his bicycle through a tunnel full of trash and glitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIOJkUFTiwY

It’s kind of what WATERS is all about, the light and the dark, the weird and the weirdly confident, the grungier moments of the ’90s, soulful voyages through choppy seas, the hooks (pop and otherwise), a fisherman in a flannel.

Then there’s the more straightforward tour video for sparkly, garage-punk standout track “Back to You,” and two for moodier, yearning acoustic single “Mickey Mantle” — one clip that’s of Pierszalowski with a guitar on a rooftop, and the other a zoomed-in snapshot of his day — created for the 48-hour Music Video Race this spring. Live, the song’s a crowd-pleaser in which he pleads, “forever, forever” and gets the audience chanting the word back to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izgmACVXVBA

Pierszalowski also toured a whole lot with WATERS this year, opening for Delta Spirit across the US and Nada Surf throughout Europe. But WATERS’ biggest moment came this summer, when the band topped a bill at Brick and Mortar Music Hall.

“It was the first WATERS headlining show and I was super nervous and anxious about it. I thought no one was going to come. I could feel that my mood for the next while was dependent on how it would go,” he says. “To my great surprise, it was an amazing turnout. It was packed, and people knew the songs and were singing along and dancing. It just really felt like almost a solid year of promoting the album had paid off. And I know that’s not a huge deal, but it kind of is to me. It felt like the start of something new.”

With a boyish gleam of hope in his eyes, he adds, “Getting to play for people in San Francisco, on our own, felt infinitely more powerful than any of those [previous] experiences.”

Plus, now that he’s got his own apartment in SF, it probably didn’t take him too long to find his way home after the show.

GOLDIES 2012: The Mallard

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2012: The Mallard

GOLDIES You always hear of those artists that simply must keep creating, regardless of location, monetary resources, health, or free time. It’s the urge, the craving, something deep in the pit of their being. Idle hands and all that. I get the feeling this is just how it is for Greer McGettrick, the Mallard’s lead vocalist-guitarist. There’s a fire in her belly, and it burns from a sonic tinder.

Let’s take just this year as a case example. The Mallard released its psych-garage influenced debut full-length, Yes on Blood, in March on John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records to increasingly rave reviews. The band opened for Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Shonen Knife, Hot Snakes, and countless others, at shows at places like the Verdi Club, Slim’s, and Bottom of the Hill. It toured with the Fresh and Onlys’ Wymond Miles. It put out a split seven-inch with Thee Oh Sees. It’ll have a plexi seven-inch out later this month. It contributed a stirring cover of the classicaly morose track “There She Goes Again” to Castle Face Records’ Velvet Underground and Nico tribute album. Oh, and McGettrick has had a few art shows around the city, showcasing her intricate woodcuts.

In addition to all that, the fuzzy San Francisco four-piece is now working on its follow-up to Blood. “I’m still writing a lot, but I feel like it’s more of a record for me,” says McGettrick, sitting outside the coffee shop-video store where she works. “I feel like Yes on Blood was more of a record for San Francisco, an homage, where it was like, ‘These are the bands that I love and I’m drawing from them’ — there’s the Thee Oh Sees song, the Ty Segall song, the Intelligence song.”

Or, as she’s been know to describe it, the band makes “inside-out-echo-laser-garage-psych-rock.”

“This is more of an album for me in that it’s a lot weirder, a lot darker, more personal,” she says. “I’m learning how to use my voice versus yelping.”

Live, that yelping comes across as more of a gritty punk plea, an emotional core tumbling out, backed by McGettrick’s noisy guitar work; “boy” Dylan Tidyman-Jones on guitar, keys, and backing vocals; “girl” Dylan Edrich on bass; and Miles Luttrell on drums.

This current formation of the Mallard is here after a few false starts. When McGettrick first moved to SF three years back, she gathered friends to start a new band, but it quickly fizzled. So she started again. “I just needed to keep playing songs, keep playing shows,” McGettrick says.

She’d already been in bands for years before her move to the Bay Area. The Studio City, Calif. native was part of the Fresno music scene for five years after college. “I kind of got stuck there, but it was good for me. There are some great people there, some really talented musicians, there’s just not a lot to do. A lot of people move away once they realize there’s something else out there.”

Once in SF, she clicked with the booming garage rock scene, and fortuitously met Dwyer. She played him some of her raw home recordings and he told her to go record more, and he’d put them out on Castle Face.

“It’s a really great scene,” McGettrick says. “Living in Fresno for five years — where it was just such a struggle to get other bands to play from out of town, and it was hard to get any momentum there. People moved away, bands broke up — it got me to work a lot harder. I moved to San Francisco and it kind of seemed easy. There’s all these bands, all these shows, people go to shows. It feels nourishing. We’re really lucky to live in this city.”

Rupa and the April Fishes re-‘BUILD’

Tony Robles
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The ethereal San Francisco global fusion band released this video for the title track of its new album, BUILD, last week. Tonight (Fri/9) it plays an album release show at the Great American Music Hall.

Known for blending different cultural styles of music and languages, Rupa and the April Fishes spent years creating BUILD, a follow-up to 2009’s Este Mundo, traveling the world during the process, and touring via bicycle — and those global influences are felt throughout the record, along with a sociopolitical edge. Earlier this year she told us, “In the wake of where we find ourselves right now, economically, sociopolitically, we can’t wait for someone to hand us the reality we want. We have to build it, we have to create it.”

Rupa and the April Fishes
With Black Nature Band, the Glasses 
Fri/9, 9pm, $17.50
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com 

Hi-fidelity weather

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Hi-fidelity weather

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Shellacked gummy worms, cherubic Ebay’d figurines, one of those ships in a glass bottle usually reserved for nautical-themed offices, a red bike reflector, a holarctic blue copper butterfly, a vintage stenograph. The physical items sit on separate pedestals as part of the release for Michael Zapruder’s newest album, Pink Thunder (www.michaelzapruder.com).

You have through Nov. 18 to visit the Curiosity Shoppe on Valencia in the Mission, stick some headphones on your ears, and press a small red button on a bubblegum-pink square circuit board affixed with a kitschy sculpture of a bear holding an empty pot attached, or that bowl of shellacked gummy worms, or that holarctic blue copper butterfly, and hear the single track encased within. Zapruder dubbed the structures “portmanteaus” after the linguistic term meaning two blended words.

These particular portmanteus are blends of vision and sound, sculpture and music. The objects, and the individual songs that pump out of them — Zapruder’s free-form pop built from poetry — force you, the listener, to think beyond your lazy current manner of music absorption.

“Just generally, I love the idea of a totally unconnected song. This is a song. That feels like an object that’s somewhere closer to the stature of the music, as opposed to a CD. This celebrates music. It dresses it up,” Oakland’s Zapruder says, smiling in the center of his portmanteaus.

Plus, it’s fun to touch the art.

“Imagine if you went into a record store and there weren’t that many things but each thing was really cool, you wanted to pick it up and play with it, and there was only one copy of each thing. Don’t you think that’d be cool?” He laughs after he says it. Could this be the future of the now-shuttered mega record stores? Could downsizing have saved the behemoths?

Of course, it all goes a bit deeper than that, the vision behind this multifaceted, six-year-long project.

“I think it’s good when people listen to stuff in an uncertain state. So many listening experiences are so familiar. You’re working on your computer and you’re listening, or you’re in a club. And it can be amazing. But you know what you’re going to get, you know the structure. [Pink Thunder] songs are all experimental, all free-composed. Hopefully they’re very listenable, but they’re odd, and I thought it’d be good for people to be in a ‘what is this?’ state.”

Though the songs are also being released through a few more traditional venues. Pink Thunder as a whole is the portmanteaus, each with one of 22 songs that are also compiled into CD form and 12-inch vinyl on The Kora Records (known for releasing records such as Philip Glass’ recent Reworked), seven-inches released by Howells Transmitter, which Zapruder helps run, and a bright pink poetry book, put out by Black Ocean.

The whole process took half a decade to create, completed with the Oct. 16 release on The Kora and the installation at Curiosity Shoppe, which opened in mid-October. Though clearly, the wider range of this project, beyond the physical objects, is the relationship between poetry and music.

It all began with a poetry tour organized by Seattle’s Wave Books; Zapruder’s renowned poet brother Matthew helps run the small publishing house. Zapruder jumped on the Green Tortoise poetry bus for a week of the 50-city tour and after a few false starts, he came up with the idea: “I wanted to see if songs could communicate those same kinds of things that these poets’ poems do.”

He gathered up poems by the likes of the Silver Jews’ David Berman, Carrie St. George Comer, Gillian Conoley, Noelle Kocot, Sierra Nelson, Hoa Nguyen, D. A. Powell, Mary Ruefle, James Tate, Joe Wenderoth, and his brother, and turned them into lyrics.

“The poets are such badasses,” Zapruder says, when asked if he sees the project as a way to deliver poetry to the masses. “Most of them are better known than me. The idea that I could give something to them, introduce people to their work, that’s incredible.”

As musician-writer Scott Pinkmountain says in the book’s introduction, “these are poets who understand that the big grabs — Love, Family, Confession, Death — can no longer be approached directly in a convincing way. Today’s audience is too savvy, too wary of manipulation and sentimentality. These poems instead stake their foundation on the minutia of accidental revelation, trusting the details of life to point out the bigger picture.”

We, as the music listener, hear this in the subtlety of a track like “Book of Life,” created from Noelle Kocot’s story about a monk and a phoenix meeting in the woods. At one point, the monk gives the phoenix a squirming worm — hence the shellacked bowl of gummy worms portmanteau at Curiosity Shoppe.

There are slightly more literal interpretations in songs such as the deceptively upbeat string-heavy “Storm Window,” based on the poem by Mary Ruefle, which tells a story of a sedentary couple — “She sat writing little poems of mist/he in his armchair/reading blood-red leather novels/their three-legged white cat wandering between them/24 champagne glasses sparkle on a shelf/never a one to be broken.” It’s about empty domestic harmony, so Zapruder created the portmanteau with that cheery Ebay bear holding an empty bowl. The found object is eerily revealing.

The project’s title came from Zapruder’s brother’s poem “Opera,” which ends with the line,”still riding your bike under pink hi-fidelity thunder.” (The object represented here is a red bicycle reflector.)

One of the more arresting combinations is for the song “John Lomax: I Work With Negroes.” The object is an old voltage meter. The poem, written by award-winning African-American author Tyehimba Jess, and subsequently the song, are about John Lomax, who “discovered” fabled blues musician Lead Belly in the 1930s.

The theme throughout is of the racism of exoticism, the way Lomax exoticized Lead Belly. “Racism that’s couched in admiration, this condescending accolade,” as Zapruder describes it. “So the idea [for the voltage meter] was that he’s constantly measuring and evaluating — but also, Lomax brought all this stuff in his car on tour, hundreds of pounds of equipment, so I thought maybe he had one of those.”

The piano-driven song is brief, just a minute and 35 seconds, but shifts from quiet plea to deep gravelly question mark, and back again, using multiple vocal backing tracks.

The songs often deviate, in tone, and in tempo. As a whole, it’s an impressive, if difficult listen. There are so many layers, so many twists and turns. They don’t have expected pop hooks, there isn’t a whole lot of repetition. Zapruder lets the songs wander, as if he’s creating a melodic new method of storytelling, occasionally dipping into child-like wonder. He builds songs in a Jon Brian-esque style, with Elliot Smith-like sensitivity and raw ache in his vocals, treading ever-so-lightly over tracks of electric guitar, drums, synthesizers, and in some cases, marimba or brass horns.

The actual songwriting process was quick. He wrote half of the them during a solo 10-day residency in a Napa cabin. The recording of said tracks took considerably longer — nearly three years, beginning in December of 2008. The Oakland resident hopped around with the songs in mind, recording some vocals in his own studio, some instruments at Closer Studios in San Francisco, and New, Improved in Oakland (where tUnE-yArDs and her ilk record), and mixed at Tiny Telephone.

He sang and played many of the instruments, but got backup musical help from dozens of fellow musicians, including Nate Brenner (aka Natronix) of tUnE-yArDs, bassist Mark Allen-Piccolo, and multi-instrumentalist Marc Capelle. An aside: Allen-Piccolo and his father are the ones who designed the music player circuit in all the wooden bases of the portmanteaus, as they have a circuit design business.

So Zapruder pieced together recordings from different studios and time periods in a situation he describes as a “free for all.”

“It took years,” Zapruder says with a shrug, “That’s what it’s like when you do something you’ve never done before. You make a lot of mistakes.”

And it is a relatively unique idea — there isn’t much to compare this project with. Zapruder mentions Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony on Bang on a Can Records, an electronic composition in five movements on a microchip in the jewel case. Also, a release from German ambient-experimental label tomlab that featured an album with an object (though the music wasn’t inside the object as with Pink Thunder).

In his own career, Zapruder’s recorded three well-received albums; Spin Magazine once called his work prolific, and described his compositions as “in the mold of Sufjan Stevens or Andrew Bird,” a pretty weighty and favorable comparison in the indie music world. But so far, he’s never done anything quite like Pink Thunder. The stunt for which he’s perhaps most well known is 1999’s 52 Songs, in which he wrote, recorded, and posted one new song a week for a full year; and this was back before the ease of the modern web with ubiquitous sites like Youtube, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud.

So while he’s dabbled in the avant garde, this was certainly the first time he Ebay’d and thrift-shopped physical items (he went to Urban Ore in Berkeley) to display and interlock with his music.

And now he’s back to his other undertakings. The married father of two also works part-time at Pandora (where he was the curator of the music collection for seven years), is in graduate school for music composition at California State University East Bay, and is making another record. He’s a third of the way through recording, and hopes to put it out next year. “I have a lot of songs that didn’t come out because I’ve been working on this,” he explains. He plans to release that in object form as well.

And he’ll be taking Pink Thunder on the road in the next year as well, stopping by the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, lecturing at New York University, and making an appearance with Wave Books and Black Ocean at the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) in Boston, which is “the SXSW for writers.” AWP is also where he first premiered Pink Thunder.

As he describes all this, he wonders aloud if he has dark circles around his eyes, worn from the general life trajectory, and perhaps from explaining his vision for the last hour plus while standing in the diminutive Mission store. He doesn’t have raccoon eyes today, munching on a health bar as he first describes the portmanteaus, but I can see why he’d be tired.

On the same day the Curiosity Shoppe installation closes — Nov. 18 — Zapruder will also perform Pink Thunder live at Amnesia. Earlier in the day, there will be a closing party at the store; that will be followed by the live performance down the street.

At Amnesia, it’ll be a duo with backing tracks and audience participation. “Honestly, I think it can be hard to listen to these one after another if you’ve never heard them before,” he explains. “It’s a lot of new information. Without the help of familiar forms, you’re dealing with new sounds but also like, ‘where is this thing going?'” To help with that, there will be samples and audience members will likely be invited to come up and trigger different sounds during the show. A mad scientist approach to live music.

“Even with everything that’s going on, the main thing is that I’m a musician, and that’s why I did this,” says Zapruder. “It’s to clear the way for these songs to get through to people. The music is the center. I want people to hear it and be affected by it. But that probably goes without saying.”

PINK THUNDER

Through Nov. 18

Curiosity Shoppe

855 Valencia, SF

www.michaelzapruder.com

MICHAEL ZAPRUDER CLOSING NIGHT SHOW

Nov. 18, 8pm

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

www.amnesiathebar.com

 

Heads Up: 8 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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Heads Up: 8 must-see concerts this week

Kitty Pryde, Maya Jane Coles, Die Antwoord, Tilly and the Wall, La Sera – it’s like a pop culture IRL explosion on the streets of the Bay this week. It’s the acts that shake up your Youtube trolling, the bands that guest star on teen queen dramas, the darlings of Hipster Runoff, all on the calendar during this first full week of November. Oh, and the irrepressible, Mike Watt. Let the fall sweeps begin.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Mike Watt and the Missingmen
What’s new for the post-punk man in the van with the bass in his hand? With his solo career still roaring (third opera Hyphenated Man is on its second US tour with the Missingmen trio), albums from his side project bands (Dos and Spielgusher) released this year, and the book On and Off Bass, it’s easier to ask what isn’t new. That would be the former Minutemen leader’s legendary skills and scruffy persona. He’ll forever jam econo.
With Victory and Associates, Jokes for Feelings
Wed/7, 9pm, $15
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66HCBt9F8vA

The Glowing Stars
Local pop chiptune duo the Glowing Stars is powering down. For this, its final show, the Game Boy-led 8-bit Stars will play alongside fellow gamers crashfaster, string metalllers Judgement Day and headlining sci-fi garage-punkers the Phenomenauts. Perhaps the breakup is just a kill screen, and we’ll see Glowing Stars again in another life.
Thu/8, 8pm, $15
DNA Lounge
375 11th St., SF
www.dnalounge.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbhM45CV0pg

Maya Jane Coles
“If London producer and DJ Maya Jane Coles has made a statement in her so far short and rapid ascension in the dance music world, it was with the title of her 2011 EP, Don’t Put Me in Your Box. Whether under her own name, dubstep alias Nocturnal Sunshine, or as part as dub duo She Is Danger, Coles has resisted the contrived hooks and familiar samples that promise EDM success, instead forging a path through deep house, delivering independent productions with her personal stamp on everything from vocals to visual design. Noted in the press for being both a breakthrough artist and still quite young, Coles is worth paying attention to as she prepares her eagerly awaited full-length album. “ Ryan Prendiville
With Moniker, Brian Bejarano
Thu/8, 9pm, $20
Monarch
101 Sixth St., SF
(415) 284-9774
www.monarchsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2q7mbbBmSc

Tilly and the Wall
You remember Tilly and the Wall – it has a tap dancer instead of a drummer? Yep, it’s back. A bit wilder, a smidgin darker, but as blissfully adorable as ever with Heavy Mood, its first new album in four years. The Omaha five-piece gained fame at the tail-end of the Saddle Creek bubble with hand-clapping, tap-dancing ballads. And the quintet showed up on the first season of the new 90210, performing at a sparkly party that devolved into cat fights, natch. Live, you’re hands will betray your brain and you’ll be patty-caking back to that tap-tap-tap stomp.
With Icky Blossoms, Il Gato
Thu/8, 8pm, $18
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7HjBr_QMXI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UyuGj6ta6A

High Places
Friday’s going to be a tough choice, my friends. Here’s one of a few shows you should seriously consider: truly original, experimental LA electro duo High Places will be doing a live set. Plus, it’s also the official release party for Shock’s new 12-inch, Heaven.
Push The Feeling with YR SKULL, epicsauce DJs
Fri/9, 9pm, $5 (free before 10pm with RSVP)
Underground SF
424 Haight, SF
Facebook: Push the Feeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t73J5fIkBg

Kitty Pryde
Live meme/Florida rapper/Riff Raff collaborator/“rap game Taylor Swift”/teen dream. It’s Kitty Pryde, y’all, and the “Okay Cupid” web star is making her first Bay Area appearance tonight at #Y3K. Plus, she shares the spotlight with East Bay hip-hop duo Main Attrakionz, which just released a weed-smoker’s paradise of a new album, Bossalinis & Fooliyones. 
#Y3K with Hottub, Friendzone, Matrixxman, Marco de la Vega
Fri/9, 10pm, $13, all ages
DNA Lounge
375 11th St., SF
www.dnalounge.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SDYus7iKC8

Die Antwoord
Oh those freaky South African rappers, will they ever stop messing with our minds? Would we want them to? What seemed like a weirdo wormhole web-discovered flash on the screen has turned into an endearing live art project, full of eye-popping videos and bouncy, aggressive dance beats laced with tongue-rolling hip-hop flow and manic pixie trills, though Die Antwoord would likely spit on such a suggestion. And by the way, have you seen the video for “Fatty Boom Boom” – Die Antwoord’s response to Lady Gaga asking the trio to open for her on tour?
With Azari & III, Seth Troxler, Paul Kalkbrenner, Nic Fanciulli
Fri/9, 7pm, $49.50
Fox Theater
1807 Telegraph, Oakl.
www.thefoxoakland.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc

La Sera
“These jangly, melancholic pop songs might sound a bit familiar to you. Brooklyn singer-songwriter Katy Goodman, the woman behind La Sera, is also “Kickball Katy,” one third of the indie rock band Vivian Girls. This year’s Sees the Light is Goodman’s second solo release under the La Sera moniker. It’s a rollicking break-up album that leaves you, after many powerfully emotional highs and lows, feeling not downtrodden, but empowered. Layers of distorted sound create a dreamy, escapist pop landscape, at times blurring the lines between pop and punk rock. La Sera is one of the first indie artists to perform at the Chapel, the Mission’s brand new music venue.” — Haley Zaremba
Sat/10, 9:30pm, $10
Preservation Hall West at the Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
www.thechapelsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a70zvIOuxR0

Localized Appreesh: The Parmesans

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

That’ll teach me to judge a book by its cover; or better yet, to judge a whole lineup by its headliners. I first caught the Parmesans opening up for Buffalo Tooth, Poor Sons, and Uzi Rash at Elbo Room this summer, so I naturally assumed they’d be in the same thrashy vein, or at least, they’d play some variation on the loud rockn’roll theme. Untrue: they lined up, strumming guitars, banjos, a mandolin, a stand-up bass, and the like, and launched into a fun set of bluegrass, folk, and Americana ditties, some covers and some originals.

Since then, I’ve been casually following along, occasionally checking their band page for upcoming shows and releases. Turns out, they’re doing one of those Halloween shows I love (bands costumed as other bands, c’mon, I’ve talking about it all week) and they have another record release coming later this month. Get in on the Parmesans early, check them out as the Kinks tonight at Thee Parkside, and read up below: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQ8iC3i4yc

Year and location of origin: 2012, San Francisco

Band name origin: After partaking in the Devil’s lettuce, it seemed like a good idea. 

Band motto: [none]

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Something new and something old. 

Instrumentation: Guitars and mandolins and basses and banjos and trumpets. 

Most recent release: Uncle Dad’s Cabin and Horse Crumbs were released back to back earlier this year.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: [none]

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Being poor. 

First album ever purchased: 40 Dayz and 40 Nightz by Xzibit 

Most recent album purchased/downloaded: Plumb Restless by Hungry Hands from Brooklyn, NY.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Friday lunch buffet at the Gold Club in SOMA. 

Hallorager at Thee Parkside 

With Glitter Wizard, Twin Steps, Meat Market, the Parmesans

Wed/31, 8pm, $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

www.theeparkside.com

 

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