Nicole Gluckstern

The Performant: Nerds vs. Geeks and other four-letter words

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Scoping out the local arts and culture scene …

Are you a nerd, or are you a geek? A geek, or a nerd? I like to think of myself as a word nerd. Doctor Popular claims to be a super nerd. The organizers of the next San Francisco-based BarCamp claim to be geeks — though they do allow that one can “geek out” about almost anything, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Yet both nerds and geeks presenting at Noisebridge’s monthly “5 Minutes of Fame,” to a crowd composed of nearly 100 folks who mainly, though not exclusively, could be categorized as either, or possibly both. The premise of 5MoF is short (very) and sweet: in five minutes or less each presenter gives a talk, makes a pitch, or demonstrates a work in progress to the general public who may then in turn offer assistance or appreciation.

Topics this week included why dumb is good (‘cause Socrates said so), music you can make on your iPhone, how to combat global ignorance with a video game, the creation of a new Tenderloin performance space dedicated to “cutting-edge vintage,” the demise of the fourth estate, and what the heck is in my kombucha anyway? Best of all, during the post-show mingling, people who’d asked for assistance with projects were almost all approached by people equipped to do just that. Maybe that’s the vital ingredient in what makes a nerd a nerd or a geek a geek — that an entire social event can be built around the moral equivalent of helping people out with their trig homework. Journalist Quinn Norton inadvertently summed up the collaborative spirit of the event by promising in her talk “Manufacturing Dissent” to stop “only writing about the shit that geeks break, but writing about the shit that geeks build.”

What else do geeks build? Well, while some geeks are building pathways to newer computers, others are building pathways out of old ones. The Sculpture Garden at the San Francisco Dump has an entire walkway made of cement slabs with embedded ephemera — computer chips, silverware, random tools, colored glass. But it’s the sculptures lining the walkway that really dazzle. A dragonfly made of a propeller, a fence made of bicycle wheels, a double archway decorated with a dazzling mosaic of tiles and glass, nesting balls of webbed wires. Free tours of the garden, the facility, and the Artist-in-residence studios take place every third Saturday of the month, inspiring not a small dose of waste stream envy.

Wrapping up my dork-tastic journey a couple weekends ago was the They Might Be Giants concert in Stern Grove, where myself and all my pasty brethren were treated to an afternoon of unseasonal sunshine and a 25-song set stuffed with maths, geography, the periodic table, space ships, the alphabet, shriners, and drum-playing worms. Since TMBG has been crossing over into the kid market since 2002, there were lots of little’uns jumping up and down to the geek groove, but not nearly as many as there were awkwardly-limbed adults trying to frug to “Upside Down Frown”. Which in many ways proved just as entertaining to watch as the band — another one of my favorite four-letter words.

The Performant: The Witching Hour — Puritan girls gone wild and midnight museum marauders

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Checking out the local arts and culture scene …

There’s no doubt about it—San Franciscans love a rock opera. From the faux-real heavy metal anthems of “Live Evil” to the afterlife explorations of “Exit Sign,” the suicide art movement of “Thanatics” to the human sacrifices of “Wicker Man,” we like our rock operas loud, messy, and tinged with darkness and humor both. So an original rock opera about the Salem Witch Trials seems an obvious pairing between our love of the darkside plus power chords. Appropriately held at the Temple nightclub on Howard, “Abigail the Rock Opera” straddles the SF rock opera line between serious and silly.

There’s some damn fine singing, particularly from Alexis Lane Jensen who plays Betty Parris, and Daniel Knop, who plays her father Samuel Parris as well as a curiously fey Giles Corey in a silver mop-top/Andy Warhol wig and every 60’s British Invasion mannerism to ever make it onto the Ed Sullivan show. There’s some really solid rocking out thanks to the band, particularly guitarist Kurt Brown (who not coincidentally co-wrote the music with Knop). Plus there are dead babies, bloody aprons, moonlit excursions in the woods, goth-y girls in leather corsets and modest bonnets, and angry men wearing glittery facepaint, Thanksgiving pageant hats, and smug patriarchal entitlement.

There are some downsides too—namely over-reliance on video projection, hard-to-follow lyrics, and not enough campy abandon. I’d have liked to see the goth angle played up more as well as the glam. Perhaps a Klaus Nomi or Gary Numan homage tucked in between the standard rock anthems, or even a little synthesized EBM and some serious stomping. But for now they’ll be performing every Thursday at 9 p.m. through September, and one hopes they’ll make it at least to Halloween, with or without a darkwave makeover.

Meanwhile, it may have been midnight, but the YBCA was far from dark during the DIYbca party last Saturday. People dressed in hand-crafted costumes floated through the hallways of the museum like so many neon-colored moths, drawn to the flames of creative crowd-sourcing and hi tech/lo brow design hacks. In the Forum, reality television was getting a send-up with the Drinking and Dancing competition featuring fun-guy trio Adonisaurus, while in the gallery, old-school industrial noisemakers Kwisp jammed on bicycle parts, metal sheets and springs, and bits of old electronics before leading a hands-on, build-your-own thumb piano workshop (the best use for bobby pins and cigar boxes ever!).

A stencil workshop with queer street artist Jeremy Novy, creative cobbling with Mrs. Vera and SCRAP, a Puma shoe design competition, and a create your own techno music lab hosted by LoveTech rounded out the midnight hour, blurring the line between performer and participant to its most malleable degree. In other words, even the fun was being crowd-sourced, and pretty successfully so. Party promoters take note. You can hire all the big brand bands and fog machines and light-show designers you want, but for a really memorable event, you might want to consider adding a crafting circle to your lineup. Just saying. [Editor’s Note for craft aficionados — there is a wild Haute Gloo craft table every Friday night at the Stud‘s Some Thing drag party! And it totally works.]

The Performant: A mutable feast — or, theater, buffet-style

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If the venerable San Francisco Fringe Festival is a full-on Circus Circus-style, all-you-can-eat-buffet, I like to think of its kid cousin the San Francisco Theatre Festival  — which took place Sunday, August 8 — as more of a pu-pu platter. Tasty little morsels of performance presented in manageable, bite-sized chunks designed to whet the appetite for the main courses (the full productions) to come. I don’t know about you, but when I’m confronted with the choice between dainty nibbling, or cleaning each plate as it comes, I tend to adapt the life-is-uncertain principle and gorge myself on all the available goodies in sight.


Gorging comes more easily than restraint at all-day festivals, and it’s hard to determine before you bite whether your picks will be sweet or savory. A delectable treat, first of the day, was an excerpt from a brand new company: The 11th Hour Ensemble. The 11th Hour members’ 20-minute preview of their movement-based, Lewis Carroll-inspired “Alice” was fresh, exciting, hilarious, and completely unexpected. If their full-length production (opening September 8th) is half as charming as their highlights reel, it’ll be a don’t-miss. A quick dash across the park and into the Metreon brought me to Mugwumpin’s excerpt of their current show “This is all I Need” (playing at NOHspace through September 4). Thematically-connected to their last, site-specific “Occurrence” which took place in a semi-residential motel in June, “Need” explores the relationships between ourselves and our possessions. A particularly funny bit involved a convoluted daydream of property ownership and a barricade of berry boxes, but over too soon, it was back outside for a glimpse of No Nude Men (ha! there weren’t any! But there were zombies!). On my way to see San Francisco Recovery Theatre’s modernized take on the Amiri Baraka classic “Dutchman” (opening in October, I believe) I slipped into Ray of Light’s “Jerry Springer, the Opera” (opens September 10). Classically-trained singers reveling in lyrics about adult diaper-play, stripping, and self-abuse? Someone ought to write a show about that.

*******
A one-man smorgasbord of theatrical tropes and truisms, Will Franken played the Clubhouse this past weekend,serving up a bubbling stew of new material mixed in with a few old favorites. As physical as he is cerebral, commedian Franken’s act conforms far less to the traditional stand-up routine but rather to that of the highly-refined, abstracted-reality sketch comedy of Monty Python, The Kids in the Hall, and The Cody Rivers Show. Jim Carrey might be the man with the rubber face, but Franken’s whole persona is as elastic as a rubber band, and in a whirlwind 20-minute set, Franken portrayed a panoply of distinct characters from cross-dressing panhandler to schizophrenic marriage counselor, Al Gore to General Petraeus, an outsourced solar panel salesman in China to a well-meaning yet ultimately self-deluding “condom lady” in Whitechapel circa 1888. No passively-progressive sacred cow ever emerges from Franken’s contrarian logic unscathed—he’s out there gleefully hacking off the hindquarters and serving them up on a slightly tarnished platter before you can say “yoga mat.” But even late on a Friday night with no BYOB, just a taste of Franken’s mad creations left us salivating for more.

The Performant: Adrift on survival riffs and life rafts

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Recent trends on the arts and culture scene

As long as there has been art, I imagine that the phrase “starving artist” has been in use. I like to imagine prehistoric cave painters stopping halfway through a particularly thrilling rendition of a successful buffalo hunt to halt operations and hold a fundraising party. “Grod, your donation of three chunks of limestone and a sharpened flint chip will help to fund the portraiture of no fewer than five renegade buffalo heading over the edge of the cliff.” But it helps put the sacrifices made in art’s name into perspective when confronted with art created on the very fringes, where “starving” can be more than just a catchphrase but a grim reality.

Friday night at the Redstone building I attended a performance at LaborFest — a month-long celebration of organized labor, worker’s rights, and solidarity. A POOR Magazine project, “Hotel Voices” was written by and about the denizens of SROs — those reviled bastions of affordable housing. Co-directed by Allan Manalo of Bindlestiff Theatre, and Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of POOR the performance touched on themes such as institutionalization, infestation, violence, racial profiling, death of loved ones, and yes, starving, with a bite of humor provided by the flamboyant “El Bedbug” (Charles Pitts), a charismatic harmonica interlude played by “Nightmare Joey” (Dennis Wilmot), and a suckerpunch of survivalist wisdom from “Supertenant” (Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia).

Told in a series of short vignettes, like scenes of a documentary film about the often unsavory conditions “enjoyed” by the occupants of residential hotel rooms, “Hotel Voices” raised a collective voice against the daily marginalization of its principle characters. More importantly, it underscored the basic tenet of artistic expression that’s so often overlooked — that the need to create isn’t dictated by economics, education, or public demand. On the contrary, it can be an impulse as deeply ingrained as the need for food, shelter, or companionship. In other words, an act of survival.

A very different aspect of survival in the arts occurred to me Sunday night, while watching a shaky staging of “Gillian’s Island” which hadn’t quite found its sea legs. But at least it was at the Garage, a favorite low-key venue where the anything-might-happen vibe pulsates like a club beacon in the SOMA night. Which seems especially important to acknowledge now that three of its neighbors have either shut their doors or announced a pending closure in the last few months: the Climate, Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory (which closed Saturday), and the Off-Market Theatre (scheduled to close January, 2011).

Yes, it’s been a bad year for black boxes, yet the Garage, despite its non-existent booth, minimal grid, and limited seating, remains a competitive player in the performing arts community with a full calendar, focused curation, and an array of artist-in-residency opportunities. And just as “Hotel Voices” helped to remind that the creation of art is an essential aspect of our collective survival, hanging out at The Garage reminds of the importance of maintaining a space for those arts and their creators to survive in.

The Performant: Upright Citizen’s Brigade and Fly Trap Theatre spelunk the absurd

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Reviews of recent arts and culture happenings

When asked by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade touring company last Friday what his motto in life was, the random guy onstage we’ll call Nick (because that’s what he called himself) said “abandon all hope ye who enter here,” which seemed a little heavy for an evening of comedy, but the UCB took it in stride. This influential improv group, hosted locally by Bay Area improvisers Pan Theater, plumbed the depths of Nick’s predilections and peccadilloes with gusto. Got hit by an SUV on your motorcycle, must be those preciously extended pinkies, dude. Got slapped down by a bio-bitch down the street—why don’t you stick with the steampunk tranny hos in your own backyard? Why not launch a string of rockets into the street and call it installation art? Why not make sandwiches with a block of cheese containing the cremated ashes of your loved ones?

The second portion of the show was a series of short improvs based on text messages called out by the oddience (my personal favorite: “if they’re not playing D&D they should go to the demolition derby”) and included a round of double-jeopardy where the contestants drank themselves smart, a unique menstruation situation involving Beggin’ Strips, a few unfortunate deaths courtesy of the 911 call center, and a company policy of suicide handed down from “corporate”. Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up! But the lightning-quick, three-man-one-woman touring company of LA-based performers can and did, riffing on themes so absurd it made “The Young Ones” look like “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” Or vice versa, depending on your brand of dada.
 
Dropping in on the “Fly Trap Theatre” at Paxton Gate Curiosities for Kids in the Mission on Saturday, I was treated to a different kind of improvisation, as Danielle Coe, a cheery volunteer from the Conservatory of Flowers dissected a pitcher plant for a handful of curious kiddies, who “eeewww”’d in satisfied unison when half-digested beetles plopped out into a plastic dish. The star of the “show” was indubitably the red-tinged Venus Flytrap snapping its leafy mandibles tightly shut on command (a soft nudge with a wooden dowel), a plant so insatiable that one of its several feeder “mouths” had closed tightly on the stem of another.

“I like doing the shows here in the Mission,” said Danielle, “it’s fun to work with the kids. You get to be less scripted, and more silly.” Sounds like improv
to me, albeit minus the beloved block of cremated mom + Montereyjack. But really, what could be more patently absurd than a carnivorous plant attempting to devour itself? The only auto-cannibal on the planet lower on the food chain than its usual meal.

Nothing to do with the above, but mention should be made somewhere of the Dan Plasma stage mural for “The 91’ Owl” which recently closed at the BurielClayTheatre. His distinctive design lent the bare bones set an air of urban authenticity, San Francisco-style.

The Performant: When I die I will be offcenter

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Scoping out the local arts and culture scene …

If there were a Best of the Bay category for performance space with the catchiest moniker, I’ve always felt that Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory had a clear lock on the title. That’s just one of the many things about the place I’ll miss when it shuts its doors, possibly for good, at the end of this month (though a loose association of affiliated artists including acting MCVF director Ernesto Sopprani, have announced their intention to continue as Theoffcenter, so look for future programming from them in an as-yet-undetermined location).

Speaking of clever monikers, for a last show in a vital location, you couldn’t ask for a better than Alicia Ohs’ dance-theatre production, “When I Die I Will be Dead.” But walking into Mama Calizo’s, instead of death’s muffled pall, a scene of lively chaos immediately unfolded. Each member of the oddience was given a number upon entering the space, split into two groups, and taught a quick dance routine that none of us mastered in the few short moments we were given to try.

As the casting director, Alicia Ohs, dressed in a white button-down short exhorted us to “Eat Nails!” we shuffled our feet and flopped our arms around lamely. Clearly Broadway bound we were not. Mercifully allowed our seats after about five minutes, the rest of the mostly comical “New York, I Love You! I Hate You…Now Dance” ensued; a “Chorus Line” send-up complete with a “One” finale. The evening’s second piece, “Dokuen,” was more nuanced. From the physical comedy of an auditionee being locked in a trunk of memories (Hana Erdman), to the raw anguish of dancers José Navarrete and Ay.Lin hurling paint at the walls, flowers across the floor, and abuse at each other, the self-revelatory vignettes spoke voluminously of loss though few words were used. The reappearance of Erdman as memory’s avatar made the act of saying farewell a study in grace—an appropriate finale for yet one more casualty in the trenches of the art wars.

Meanwhile, across town, in the crowded Café Royale, loss of life, limb, and the last tattered shreds of (in)dignity were being explored by San Francisco Theatre Pub with their free staged reading of “Ubu Roi” — adapted by company member Bennett Fisher. As the oafish would-be-king of Poland played by Sam Leichter cursed, spat, and clawed his way to the top, his power-hungry wife Mere Ubu (Catherine Lardas) gave the term Machiavellian a feminine touch as she urged him forward, then stood out of the way of his inglorious fall. Though it initially seemed that as many people came to hear the guest deejay (DJ Wait What) spin as to see the classic forerunner of absurdist theatre (overheard: “I think it’s about a king. It’s set in France.”), the café crowd soon became a cheering, catcalling, mass of enthusiastic participation. Directors of reading series take note: a spoonful of alcohol helps the medicine go down. And bartenders: a spoonful of Ubu can only help the alcohol sales go up.

Café Royale
800 Post, SF
(415) 441-4099
www.caferoyale-sf.com
sftheaterpub.wordpress.com

The Performant: Shrouds Illuminated at the LAB and Garage

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Nicole Gluckstern reports on the Bay Area arts and culture scene

It sounds a little strange, but I’ve been thinking about shrouds. Not in a morbid way, just in the practical sense. Mostly I wonder what kind of material gets used. Movie mummy shrouds always seem to be made of cheesecloth, but that strikes me as a little flimsy for a swaddled delivery into the afterlife. Actually, speaking of swaddling, doesn’t it seem a little curious that babies and corpses should be wrapped so similarly — at least in the days before they invented the Tickle-Me-Elmo onesie?

But back to the shrouds. I’m sure they’re on my mind because of the Illuminated Forest exhibit at The LAB, part of this summer’s Soundwave festival. I walked in and these great swaths of white tulle were draped, floor to ceiling in front of the entryway and all around the exhibit hall, separating each small nook from the next cranny, and providing screenage for video projections of forest color and form. Occasionally someone would get lost in the layers and have to flail their way out again. But the ghostly silhouettes of gallery-goers flowed smoothly, for the most part, like physical embodiments of the trickling water field recordings provided by Ben Bracken and Agnes Szelag.

Hiding behind one curtain/shroud/swaddle – a parade of turtle-like sculptures with rippling clam-shell bodies (Vaughn Bell); behind another –a Dr. Seuss-ian grove of calico trees and cuddly corduroy stones (Suzanne Husky). Oh to curl up on this forest floor and take a nap! Behind another curtain, some people were sneaking in, if not naps, then at least a bit of down time, watching a film clip of body as landscape while a nearby video installation shrouded within a hand-crafted nest screened the intrepid adventures of a burrowing mole (San Easterson).

Saturday, the theme remained intact. I walked into the Garage for Dark Porch Theatre’s “Comedy Ballet,” and a white curtain was hanging across the stage. While the curtain didn’t last long, death remained an almost constant presence onstage, as the assembled company riffed on Dia de Los Muertos, crematory ashes, Mesoamerican mythology, human sacrifice, and a journey to the underworld, as well as job insecurity, betrayal, bizarre sex fetishes, and other trauma
topics.

Margery Fairchild’s dance choreography, more comedy than ballet, brought a welcome leavening of slapstick to the action, and in particular to the menacing trio of “intrepid gentlemen” (Anjeli Jana, Matthew von MeeZee, Bryce Charley). Nathan Tucker’s out-of-work, off-his-nut, alcohol-soaked Foreplay embodied the term “blowhard” in the most bombastic sense of the word. And a deadpan Amy Seimetz as an increasingly frazzled interviewer for some unnamed project or research facility kept the metaphysical conundrums from over-powering the fun.

Slated for a November run at the EXIT Theatre, it’s easy to see this quirky square peg of a show fitting more smoothly into the traditional Halloween-tide niche, but the attentive crowd at the Garage didn’t seem to mind the head start. As for me, I’m sorry to report that despite the abundance of funereal themes, not a single shroud was featured in “Comedy Ballet”—but some fetching silver lame swaddling is, which pretty much made up for it.
 

Illuminated Forest at the LAB through August 7
Wed-Sat, 1 p.m.-6 p.m.
2948 16th St, SF
(415) 864-8855
www.thelab.org
 
“Comedy Ballet” at the Garage through July 18
8 p.m.
975 Howard, SF
(415) 518-1517
www.975howard.com

Up Mission Creek with Mark Matos and Os Beaches

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 I had a “hold me closer, Tony Danza,” moment when I first heard the hyper-localized anthem “High Priest of the Mission,” on Mark Matos and Os Beaches’ 2009 Porto Franco release Words of the Knife. I thought Matos sang “the high priest of omission,” then I suspected that maybe he was singing “the high priest of submission,” which gave the song an entirely different slant.
Either way, the rollicking tempo of the organ and solid, driving rhythm section infuse Matos’ tongue-in-cheek ode to a hipster-haven with very unhip earnestness. The album’s next track, “The Moving,” a downbeat duet with fellow Porto Franco compatriot Kacey Johansing, plays out like a classic Camper Van Beethoven composition minus the signature strings. The down-home, plaintive tone of Matos’ voice eerily conjures Dave Lowery’s isolated Santa Cruz croon, as does the subtle poetry of the lyric: “You never said you were unhappy/You never said you’d rather be/somewhere in Montana….I just kind of felt you/moving away from me.”

The psychedelic swirl of “The Warrior and the Thief” creeps up like a tab of orange sunshine, mellifluous layers of cello, guitar, and a Hammond B3 following the “rise rise rise” of the warrior’s path, and the slow, meandering line of the end of the road. Words of the Knife‘s final track, the tumbleweed-lonely “I Come Broken,” manages to tie together all the songs’ themes, referencing the brown eyes of “High Priest,” the seashore of “The Moving,” and the self-reliance of “The Warrior and the Thief”. When Matos sings “I’m broken but I’m free,” he sounds like he means it.

MARK MATOS AND OS BEACHES: MISSION CREEK MUSIC FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT
with Rykarda Parasol, Kevin Junior, Dolly Rocker Movement
Wed/14, 9:30 p.m., $12-14
Café Du Nord
2174 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com

Get your kicks

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culture@sfbg.com

SPORTS The Olympics may get the most props for bringing sports fans of all nationalities together in (mostly) friendly competition. But as futbol fans know, a simple “gooooaaaallll!” translates thrillingly into any language. Like millions of World Cup soccer enthusiasts around the globe, I’ll be parking my particulars in front of the biggest screens in town for this year’s spectacle (June 11-July 11). And fortunately, no matter where you are in the city, you should be able to do the same. Here’s a short list of some of the best places to go and check out a match or 10. Too numerous to list are the many sports bars and Irish/English pubs that will undoubtedly be open (Bus Stop, Kezar Pub, the Phoenix, Mad Dog in the Fog, Balompie Café — here’s looking at you!), but you’ll find them easily enough on your own. Just follow the sounds of “ole, ole, ole, ole” wafting in the breeze, grab a stripy scarf, and plunge into the fray.

Civic Center: If you can’t force your soccer-loving employees to come to work during the big matches, at least you can cut down on their commute by installing a giant 13-by-18-foot screen in front of City Hall and inviting the neighbors ’round. Jens-Peter Jungclaussen, the “teacher-with-the-bus” who almost single-handedly wrangled 10,000 people to a screening of the 2006 final at Dolores Park, is helping spearhead the city’s ambitious 2010 operation, with 10 days of screenings including all quarterfinal, semifinal, and final matches, and a corresponding youth soccer tournament organized by America SCORES.

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF. www.worldcupsf.com, www.teacherbus.com

AT&T Park: “Take me out to the ballgame” gets a brand new meaning at AT&T Park where they’ll be screening the big USA-England match on June 12 for free. Open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the ballpark expects 5,000 fans to show up. If you ever wanted to give soccer hooliganism a try, this might well be the place. Just try not to get all Bill Buford about it.

24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF. (415) 972-2000

Goethe Institute: Even though the games aren’t being played in the vaterland this year, native German-speakers and we amis who love them will be gathering at the institute to watch the Germany-Australia game on June 13, and the Germany-Ghana match on June 23. Kickoff time for both games is 11:30 a.m., more screenings will be announced presuming Germany progresses to the next levels.

530 Bush, SF. (415) 263-8760, www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco

Mercury Lounge: Who would have thought that a relatively innocuous den of SoMa-style iniquity would decide to open its doors to the rough-and-tumble world of footie fandom? If you can get through the somewhat self-indulgent event webpage, you’ll come away pretty excited about the prospect of seeing matches every day from 6 a.m., with drink specials, breakfast menu, and (ick) bar-staff “eye candy”. Don’t get me started on that, but do expect to see me put in an appearance or two for half-volleys and hash browns.

1582 Folsom, SF. (415) 551-1582, www.sfworldcup2010.com

Horatius: The proprietor of this Potrero Hill café, Horacio Gomes, has thrown down the “best place to watch the World Cup” gauntlet by promising to be open for every single match — including those that start at 4:30 a.m. — and screening simultaneous games when they occur. Plus, the venue boasts a 15-by-15-foot projection screen that you won’t find at your run-of-the-mill sports bar and a capacity for up to 300 people. Free coffee will be served during the early morning matches, and light breakfast at 6 a.m.

350 Kansas, SF. (415) 252-3500, www.horatius.com

Steps of Rome Caffe: This North Beach stronghold is also planning to be open for every game — including those 4:30 matches that only the most diehard fans would consider attending (New Zealand vs. Slovakia anyone?). If you’re not yet a diehard fan, this might be the place that turns you into one, what with all that Italian coffee, pizza, and overseas-bred enthusiasm for the world’s greatest game flowing like a robust house red.

348 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-0435, www.stepsofromecaffe.com

To thrill is divine

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER It’s been a different kind of thrill down at the Hypnodrome as Thrillpeddlers enters the 11th month of extensions for its runaway smash hit, The Cockettes’ musical Pearls Over Shanghai. One hundred performances strong (as of May 1) and with no end in sight, Thrillpeddlers has slyly redefined its brand of thrills to embrace a wholly different genre besides the Grand Guignol revivalism for which it is best known; setting aside its usual quotient of twisted naturalism and splattered gore for the rambunctious, over-the-top glitter and glam of Theatre of the Ridiculous.

But the two art forms are not entirely unrelated. After all, a staple of Grand Guignol was the steamy sex farce, a fitting description for the ecstatic nudity, cross-dressing, masturbation, and defloration running wild throughout Pearls. And just as the endangered-species quality of Grand Guignol first prompted Thrillpeddlers artistic director Russell Blackwood to begin mounting performances of it in 1991, so too did the precarious posterity of Theatre of the Ridiculous spark a similar interest.

“I didn’t want it to become a footnote in theatre history, or just something you read about,” Blackwood explains. “It turned me on — the fact that it was as marginalized and as conceivably to be forgotten in the way I was concerned Grand Guignol might be.” In 2008, Thrillpeddlers took the slapstick scripts of Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium by Charles Busch and Charles Ludlum’s Jack and the Beanstalk and mounted its first “Theatre of the Ridiculous” festival, eventually taking the whole show on the road — along with an hour-long rendition of Pearls Over Shanghai — to the HOWL festival in New York City’s East Village.

“It went really, really great,” Blackwood said. “We had two full separate bills that played in repertory with each other. And afterward, seeing a videotape of that made me realize just what to do with Pearls.”

Of course it wasn’t just Blackwood’s vision that made the Pearls revival possible; it was also the ongoing collaboration with musical director and original Cockette Scrumbly Koldewyn, who painstakingly brought together songs and scripting from multiple versions of the show despite having scarce archived material — save memories and a few recordings — to work from. Koldewyn also has been an instrumental force behind the upcoming revival of Hot Greeks, the only other “book” musical from the original Cockettes repertoire, (opening at the Hypnodrome May 2). He also accompanies the shows nightly on the piano.

One particularly interesting aspect about Pearls is the way it has brought together multiple generations worth of queer performance fixtures: the original founder of Theatre Rhinoceros, Lanny Baugniet, who performs an opium freakout clad in skintight silver lamé; Jef Valentine, whose Madame Gin Sling drips with Frank N. Furter juice and alternates with original Cockette Rumi Missabau; the eternally robust Steven Satyricon as a rosy-cheeked Naval Captain with a mysterious past; and the role of Russian VIP escort Petrushka, serially portrayed by no fewer than four drag Grand Dames.

But by no means is Theatre of the Ridiculous meant to be viewed solely through a queer lens. Blackwood estimates that slightly less 50 percent of the cast is queer-identified. And the myriad Thrillpeddlers core company members, who started off as ghoulish Grand Guignolians, mesh well with their gaily glittering counterparts.

“What struck me (about Theatre of the Ridiculous) was that it’s a decidedly queer art form, yet always seems to have involved men and women, gays and straights,” Blackwood said. “It’s also a wholly American movement, which you can almost look at as a triangle that goes from New York’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous, to John Waters in Baltimore, and the Cockettes out here.” From French horror-show to all-American glam, Thrillpeddlers has seamlessly expanded its niche: resurrection.

PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI

Through Aug. 1

Through June 26: Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; July 10.-Aug. 1: Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m.

$30–$69

Hot Greeks

May 2– June 27 (Thurs., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.), $30–$69

Hypnodrome

575 10th St., SF

www.thrillpeddlers.com

Whatever it takes

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culture@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED It’s not everyone’s idea of a good time to be choked from behind and thrown into a wall repeatedly, although this is San Francisco. But this is no kinkster playground; rather, it’s an unprepossessing mirrored studio on the Nob end of the Tenderloin where a diverse group encompassing just about every age, gender, and athletic quotient gathers to learn the hand-to-hand combat and self-defense techniques of Krav Maga. Krav is martial without the art: crude but effective street-fighting techniques and counter-weight defenses honed into body memory through repetition, use of full force, and peer coaching. Unlike more rigidly codified martial arts systems, which put an emphasis on form and fair play, Krav puts an emphasis on “whatever it takes.” Whatever it takes to get home alive.

And the tradition of Krav Maga — “contact combat” in Hebrew — takes that mantra very seriously. Developed in the 1930s by Slovakian boxer Imi Lichtenfeld to help Jews defend themselves from anti-Semitic attacks, the “Israeli jujitsu” technique was honed by the Israeli Defense Forces for military purposes. Krav Maga San Francisco, founded in 1999 and owned by brown belt Barny Foland, offers 70 classes, and prepares you for any untoward situations.

A relative newcomer, I attend level one classes at Krav Maga San Francisco once or twice a week, schedule permitting. This week we’re learning to break free from a choke from behind, followed by a push. The first thing we learn when being thrown into a wall from behind is how to protect the face, blocking the impact with our forearms and turning our heads to the side. “That part’s pretty important,” our instructor quips. “You can’t see them now, because we painted over them, but there used to be blood spots on the wall where people bashed their noses.” Good to know.

The next step is breaking the choke, and though the movement itself is not complicated, training it to feel intuitive takes longer. Basically, the chokee shoots an arm straight into the air and quick turns, breaking the hold through leverage. Of equal importance to the choke-break is the follow-though, defensive moves morphing into offense: hammer strikes, groin kicks, a few rapid-fire punches to the soft tissues. Without pads, we mime the strikes, which earlier we practiced at full force on unwieldy foam “shields”. The choking is real enough, though, as is the body-slam, and two days later, a tender spot the size of a thumb rests below my jawline, and bruises on my elbows attest to how I finally learned to not block with them.

The hardwiring process and use of full-force is what inspired me to take Krav in the first place. I had already taken an IMPACT (www.impactbayarea.org) self-defense seminar, which taught me how to take a fall and fight hard from the ground. But Krav aims to keep students on their feet. I find the benefit to training face-to-face against my peers (instead of a “padded suit”) is two-fold. Firstly I learn to strike with force against a person whose face I can see, and secondly, I learn to absorb their blows, a crucial key to surviving a real-life attack. Taking the time to help each class member master every skill genuinely is a top priority at Krav Maga SF. I’ve attended aerobics classes that were more competitive.

Foland assures me it’s the norm. “Anybody who wants to come in and train for competition, we send them down the street to the local kickboxing gym. You can be in a level one class and have level four students in there with you, and the only reason you would know it is because they’re really good, and they’re trying to help you learn. You show your skill by how much you help your partner.”

Of course, folks looking for a more graceful, philosophy-based martial art might ultimately decide that Krav Maga is just too rough around the edges. I think of the earnest man who attended an intro session about a month ago. He’d been blocking well all night, but balked when our instructor urged us to aim our punches for the throat, in order to cause “the most amount of damage in the quickest amount of time.”

“But couldn’t you damage someone permanently if you hit them in the Adam’s apple,” the man asked, concerned.

“I didn’t start the fight, remember,” our instructor said firmly. “But I’m going to finish it.”

KRAV MAGA SAN FRANCISCO

1455 Bush, SF

(415) 921-0612

www.kravmaga-sf.com

 

Mark Growden hits with a “Judas” kiss

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It’s been eight years since Mark Growden, local bad boy of the accordion (and the bicycle handlebars), last recorded a studio album, and the weathering of not a few storms layers his lyrics with a weight typically reserved for bellowers of dust-bowl ballads and feverish Appalachia-born hymns. But though Growden — who’ll be performing Wed/11-Sun/14 at the Porto Franco Art Parlor — captures the sorrow and sincerity of a high lonesome crooner, his unique instrumental blend of Dixieland, Frontierland, and gypsy caravan band inhabits a genre all its own, especially on the new Saint Judas (Porto Franco).

Part chamber music, part High Noon, the atmospheric moan of songs such as “Coyote” and the first half of “The Gates/Take me to the Water,” tug low in the gut, while a touch of bitterly rollicking bar band via cabaret lane creeps into tunes such as the title track, “Take me to the Water,” and “Been in the Storm so Long”. Perhaps destined to be remembered as Growden’s finest drinking song, “Saint Judas” in particular distills the dark joviality of the sort of shambolic dive bar frequented by off-duty cab drivers, ex-junkies, and toothless pensioners, while toasting the “saint of the sinners” for taking the blame, “’cause somebody had to.”

But for an album so intimately acquainted with woe, the real connective thread throughout is not one of pain, but one of love. Hurt love hopeful love, dashed love, and eternal love, each facet of the ever-abiding emotion has its own moment to shine in the flickering glow of the Mark Growden ensemble’s warm strings, hot licks, and sizzling horns. There’s an ode to love the undertaker (“Undertaker”), love the temptress (“Delilah”), and love the hidden (“Inside Every Bird”). A melancholy, lounge-y cover of Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” and the lonely dirge to a fallen companion “Coyote,” dissect heartbreak while the banjo-infused jam piece, “Everybody Holds a Piece of the Sun,” and the tenderly wistful rendition of “All the Pretty Little Horses,” remind of hope.

Growden’s music has never been the kind that compels the body without first engaging the mind, and Saint Judas is full of the kinds of compositional layers and technical surprises that keep music geeks happy while still providing enough oompah and oomph for the kinesthetic enjoyment of the masses. It’s a homegrown affair all the way through, released by Mission-based family label Porto Franco records, with cover art by local muralist Mona Caron, and championed by various luminaries of the San Francisco underground. And yet, meticulously designed and arranged, this album has obviously been crafted with a high trajectory in mind, and time will tell if this bid to escape the gilded cage of regionalism will take.

Mark Growden
Thu/11-Sun/14, 8pm, $20
Porto Franco Art Parlor
953 Valencia, SF.
www.portofrancoart.com
www.markgrowden.org

Underground and proud

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THEATER It’s difficult enough to want to perform in San Francisco without the added hardship of not quite fitting into someone else’s concept of “performance.” And the unclassifiable Dan Carbone must surely be one of the hardest acts to shoehorn into a hapless festival curator’s vision. As a performer who regularly skirts the way-out edge between the surreal and the downright schizophrenic, he’s had the dubious honor of being shut out of the comedy club circuit, kicked off the stage at San Francisco’s now-defunct Dadafest, and not selling out the house of numerous local and national “standard” venues.

But Carbone’s ability to evoke the most unconventional of worlds — beginning with his classic one-act Up From the Ground, involving a mysterious giant flower in a Southern cornfield, and most recently with his “one man space opera” Kingdom of Not — has been discomfiting and astonishing audiences and critics on for more than 10 years, and he has the accolades, if not the ticket sales to prove it.

“The SF theater world has no idea what I’m about,” Carbone confesses via e-mail. “They don’t know what to do with me.” Originally an experimental filmmaker, Carbone’s off-kilter performance aesthetic and penchant for dream logic meshes more readily with his silver screen collaborators (including the inimitable Kuchar brothers) than with his more traditionally linear solo show peers. So what’s a decidedly noncommercial, genre-shredding, avant-gardian to do to widen the scope of his influence? Start his own damn performance series, of course.

To kick start this series with a serious bang, Carbone is hosting professional provocateur-comedian Rick Shapiro in his second San Francisco appearance. A former drug addict and homeless rent boy, Shapiro’s own slow rise (literally, up from the ground) serves as ample fodder for his mercurial rants against the status quo, and his unstructured, stream-of-consciousness performance style once earned him the moniker “the James Joyce of comedy.” Or as Carbone puts it, “He’s the only guy on the circuit who not only tells dick jokes but also riffs on Sartre and Kierkegaard — and does so simultaneously.” Their shared inability to write for the mainstream, which has precipitated this joining of forces, will test the theory that art is at its best when designed to suit its creators — not its curators.

March 6, Carbone performs his two most celebrated solo shows, Up from the Ground and Here be Monsters, and premiere a show of works April 3 (both at the Dark Room Theater; check Web site for details). But his ultimate goal is collaboration. “The lesson,” he concludes, “is I need to start my own scene.” Dan Carbone and Rick Shapiro Sat/27, 10 p.m., $8 Dark Room Theater 2263 Mission, SF (415) 401-7987

www.darkroomsf.com

Strong Beer Month pours it on, is strong

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There’s not a lot to look forward to in February. Unless, of course, you happen to be into beer. (And, er, love.) Yes, we’re currently in the middle of a great SF Beer Week. But the city has also embarked on an entire month of sudsy exploration. A proud tradition imported from Munich, Germany, strong beer (Starkbier) festivals have become part of the beer drinker’s winter calendar worldwide. In San Francisco, where good beer is as easy to find as a decent burrito, and not much more expensive, Strong Beer Month, co-hosted by Magnolia Pub and Brewery and 21st Amendment (both of which make their own) still stands out on the beer enthusiast radar as a special occasion. First, because it’s about beer. Second, because it’s about strong beer – as in extra-alcoholic. And mostly, because like any celebration of the craft of beer-making, it’s full of delicious and surprising nuances.

Maybe the first surprise to the uninitiated is discovering just how many various beer styles are represented in the festival. The original Starkbier might have been the monastic Doppelbock (famously brewed to chase away the Lenten doldrums, and “replace” the food not allowed to be eaten by the monks who first brewed it), but any beer can be made stronger by the addition of extra malts or sugars. There’s hardly a repeat flavor to be found on the combined menus of the 12 strong beers on tap offered throughout the month at Magnolia and 21st Amendment. Punchcards are available at both locations, and the lucky drinker who manages to get through all 12 during the course of the month, gets a commemorative glass.

The good news, for everyone concerned (and especially your liver), is that the strong beer limit is three nightly at each location, so you can take your time
getting around to them all.

I wrangled brewmaster and owner Dave McLean to give me a brief lowdown on all the strong beers available at Magnolia this year.

Magnolia’s Dave dives in. Photo by Jennifer Yin

The venerable Old Thunderpussy Barleywine, named for iconic restaurateur Magnolia Thunderpussy (as is Magnolia), who originally occupied the location, is entering its 13th year of notoriety. Clocking in at a respectable 10.8% alcohol content, this traditional, English-style barleywine is a sentimental favorite for the Magnolia brew-crew and clientele alike. Other returnees include the malt-rich imperial stout—Smokestack Lightning—and the hop-tastic Promised Land IPA, plus a back-by-popular-demand rye beer, the Delilah Jones, the premise of which makes my mouth water.

It was the new brews, though, that intrigued me the most: the Belgian-style Four Winds Quadrupel, and this year’s contender for “most interesting experiment” — Let It Rauch. This tastebud-stunner contains the famous smoked Bamberg malt used in other smoked beers. But instead of using a lager yeast, Magnolia went with an alt-bier yeast from Düsseldorf, giving it, as Dave puts it, a brighter, more vibrant mouth-feel and ale-like notes.

Magnolia taps at the ready. Photo by Jennifer Yin

Next I dropped in on 21st Amendment and slaked my growing thirst with a tasting of each of the six beers in their lineup. I started with a tipple of their experimental BeerSchool, basically a dry-hopped blonde. Definitely one for the ale-lover, though not nearly as much as the next beer on the tasting rotation: Imperial Jack. This extra special bitter practically sings “Hail Britannia” on your tongue while waving the Union Jack.

But when I got to the Two Lane Blacktop I knew I was in love. A double black IPA, super well-balanced, subtly woody, and smooth on the palate. Blind Lust was next, a blended Belgian-style brew with a “splash” of Lindeman’s Lambic. A sort of cherry cough-drop meets summer meadow affair, or like a frolic in the raspberry bushes. It’s the 10-year anniversary of 21st Amendment’s barleywine, Lower de Boom, which I found to be surprisingly subtle: amber-colored, hop-fragrant, and, despite an alcohol-by-volume of 11.2 percent, dangerously drinkable.

 

Incidentally, this delish drink won 3rd place last year at Toronado’s annual Barleywine Festival (coming up again on the 13-14th of February!), an award which seems well-deserved. By the time it was time to taste the Hop Crisis, my tastebuds were already in a bit of a crisis, but like a good triple-IPA should, it cut straight through the nerve. The aggressive nose was like snorting an entire packet of cascade hops in an isolation chamber, and after a few sips, my tongue went numb! Probably not a beer for the fair-weather beer dabbler, but definitely a hop-lover’s tour de force.

So what’s the final verdict? It’s beer. It’s strong. And best of all, you still have three weeks to try some yourself.

Strong Beer Month

www.strongbeermonth.com

through February

at

Magnolia Pub and Brewery

1398 Haight, SF

www.magnoliapub.com

and

21st Ammendment Brewery Cafe

563 Second St., SF.

www.21st-ammendment.com

The revolution will not be regionalized

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

It’s safe to say that Achim Bergmann of Trikont, Germany’s oldest independent record label, has an affinity for the underdog. From his favorite soccer team (Munich’s best-loved losers, the 1860 Löwen) to his favorite musicians, it is outsiders who attract Bergmann’s attentions, personal and professional, rather than the heroes of the mainstream. Of course, outsider music comes in many variations, and somehow Trikont manages to embrace them all. From Finnish Tango to American yodeling, German-language reggae to Turkish techno, British punk to Black Panther soul, the label’s eclectic catalog has been transcending language boundaries and international borders long before "world music" became a Billboard buzzword.

First founded in 1967 as a radical publishing arm of the SDS, Trikont started publishing books of political and philosophical ideology collected mainly from the so-called "third world" (Trikont, short for trikontinentale, is a colloquial expression for same), including the Bolivian diaries of Che Guevera, the incendiary Revolution in the Revolution by Régis Debray, and the ubiquitous Little Red Book or Quotations from Chairman Mao. In 1971, Trikont released its first record album — a compilation of neoprimitive folk and radical "self-made music" titled Wir Befreien Uns Selbst or We Free Ourselves, a phrase that could stand as the label’s unofficial motto even today.

"It was very simple, very rough, not polished at all," Bergmann tells me as we sit at a wobbly kitchen table in Trikont’s Munich-Obergiesing headquarters. His youthful exuberance belies his bushy, white Ernest Hemingway beard. When Wir Befreien Uns Selbst sold 20,000 copies, for Bergmann it sparked the realization that "music was the non-dogmatic part of left-radicalism, a way to connect with the working class." It also provided the radicals with music — beyond the endlessly circuutf8g MC5 and Rolling Stones albums — they could call their own. Trikont’s official motto, "our own voice," reflects this ideal to this day.

And what a range of voices call the label home. After splitting from the book publishing side of the business in 1980, Trikont’s focus shifted from being a mouthpiece for the radical German left to being a conduit for what Bergmann terms "popular music" from all over the world. Not popular in the MTV hit-parade sense, but popular as in sphere-of-influence: from the emblematic zydeco of the Louisiana Bayou to the dramatic excesses of Mexican bolero, the label excels at tapping into that particular cultural zeitgeist expressible only through music. It does so through exactingly executed compilations curated by DJs, music journalists, and fellow aficionados of the slightly askew. Their ranks include a veritable who’s who of luminaries from the European music scene — John Peel, Jon Savage, Jonathan Fischer, Thomas Meineke, Bernadette La Hengst — while from our side of the pond, Greil Marcus provided the liner notes for Christoph Wagner’s harrowing 2002 compilation Prayers from Hell: White Gospel and Sinner’s Blues

Like the best mixed tapes, Trikont’s compilations are elegantly cohesive while still retaining the essential element of surprise. My first Trikont album, 1997’s Dead and Gone #2: Songs of Death — which I scored from a department store bargain bin while living in Munich — is an unlikely amalgamation of Serbian requiems, chilling soul tracks, avant-garde moaning provided by Lydia Lunch, Lou Reed, Nico, and Diamanda Galás, a suicidal lament by Bushwick Bill and the Geto Boyz, and an astonishingly moving funeral hymn from South Africa. Not exactly the stock-in-trade set list of goth clubs and vampire movies, yet as suitable a soundtrack for reflection on mortality as any Rosetta Stone album could aspire to be.

A current favorite, last year’s Roll Your Moneymaker: Early Black Rock ‘n’ Roll 1948-1958, plumbs the earliest incarnations of rock music. It includes the first recording of the Preston Foster song "Got My Mojo Working" (sung by the enigmatic Ann Cole), two classic Ike Turner tracks, the powerhouse Etta James anthem "W-O-M-A-N," and the hilariously snarky "Pneumonia" by Joe Tex. Trikont’s acclaimed swamp music series — nine albums’ worth of forgotten zydeco and Cajun gems — evolved from a crash course in music appreciation. Bergmann reminisces: "We came to Floyd Soileau of Flat Town Music … and told him to go to the cellar where the music that he couldn’t sell anymore was stored … [afterward] we were sitting here for weeks, reading things, listening to big boxes of it without any knowledge [of the genre] and ended up with the first three compilations, which were an incredible success."

One of the most outré of Trikont’s compilations is also perhaps one of its most universal: the "La Paloma" series — an audacious collection of 141 versions of one song. Originally penned around 1863 by a Basque national called Sebastian Iraider, the stately habanera spread from continent to continent, insinuating itself into the collective musical consciousness. In Mexico, it’s a call to arms (or to amor). In Romania, it’s a funeral march. In Tanzania, it’s chanted at weddings. In Germany, it’s a seafarer’s anthem. In Hawaii, it’s plucked out on the slack key guitar first introduced to the island by Spanish-speaking vaqueros. In fact, series curator Kalle Laar estimates that "La Paloma" has been recorded well over 2,000 times, in every possible language and style.

Even though his label is open to experimentation and quirk, Bergmann admits that when the "La Paloma" project was first pitched by Laar — a prominent sound artist and "a collector of very strange music" — Trikont’s first reaction was unequivocal: "We said, hey, Kalle Laar, we are crazy, but not that crazy." But Laar persisted, bringing mixed tapes of the song, presenting the history of the tune, and expounding on its worldwide popularity. "It was very interesting to hear," Bergmann recalls. "It was the same song each time, but it wasn’t. You could listen to all these versions at one time and it wasn’t boring or repetitive."

In 1995, the first volume of La Paloma: One Song for All Worlds was released. With versions recorded by Amon Duul II, Hans Albers, Carla Bley, Jelly Roll Morton, and Szedo Miklos, it documents a full 100 years’ worth of "La Palomania," and has since led to the eventual release of five more volumes. In turn Laar’s project inspired Sigrid Faltin’s 2008 documentary La Paloma. Sehnsucht. Weltwide (a.k.a. La Paloma. Longing, Worldwide) which screened at San Francisco’s Berlin and Beyond festival last January.

In addition to genre-crossing compilations, Trikont’s lineup of German-language folk, jazz, and avant-garde pop musicians keeps the label connected to its original mission. Collectively, the label’s single-artist albums are as varied as its compilations: they include recordings by Bayrische Rastafarian Hans Söllner, Berlin-based jazzman Coco Schumann, and Bavaria’s contribution to the anarchist brass band genre, La Brass Banda.

Though Trikont’s desire to free music from the narrow confines of regionalism applies to its German-language artists, the label is best recognized for its compilations of obscure Americana. American music, Bergmann points out, has long been the preferred music of German youth in regions occupied by the U.S. Armed Forces. Alien yet electrifying, the music broadcast on the AFN (Armed Forces Network) during the occupation and through the 1960s inspired a whole generation of young Germans searching for individuality and self-determination. It did so with more success than German volksmusik. "In Germany, we had never really had a revolution, so we didn’t have the music for it," Bergmann muses. "It’s hard for an old leftist like me to say it, but it was the American soldiers who brought freedom. But in the cultural sense, it was true."

On its unexamined surface, Munich seems like an unlikely place for a revolutionary underground music scene. Unlike its edgier northern counterparts, the city has enviably low unemployment and a relatively stable middle-class. It manages — somewhat tenuously — to strike a balance between being the capital of traditionally conservative Bavaria and the southernmost stronghold of the left-leaning Social Democrats. But scrape beneath and you’ll find that the same stubborn spirit that compels Bavaria to retain its status as a "Freistaat" within the German Bundesrepublik, and which has also fueled a streak of hard-left radicalism since the 1960s. Observe Trikont: with limited resources and anticapital ideologies considered counterintuitive by the so-called big players in a slumping music industry, the label nonetheless has created a stable home and well-deserved audience for the previously unheard music from every continent and classification.

What, then, is the key to Trikont’s longevity? "We never really had an agenda," Bergmann reflects. "We just wanted to say, ‘We will tell you a story in music, so you can see how good and how strong music can be.’ People have got an innate sense for it. If they listen to good music, they want good music." No matter what your definition of good music is, chances are, Trikont has it.

www.trikont.com

Hats off to Paul’s!

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Text by Nicole Gluckstern. Photos by Gabe Magaña hats20909.jpg hats10909.jpg Richmond District residents and fedora aficionados who mourned the temporary closure of Paul’s Hat Works on Geary will have no excuse to go out on the streets hatless again, now that the 91 year-old custom haberdashery has reopened its doors with new ownership at the helm. For the first time since its inception, Paul’s will be an entirely woman-run, worker-owned operation, but the focus and craft of hat-making by hand is one they’ve inherited from three generations of hatters, all the way back to Napolean “Paul” Marquez, who founded his namesake storefront in 1918. hats30909.jpg Olivia Griffin, Kirsten Hove, Wendy Hawkins, Abbie Dwelle Trained in traditional hat-making by previous owner Michael Harris, who’s been hatting for about forty years, Paul’s new owners, Abbie Dwelle, Olivia Griffin, Wendy Hawkins, and Kirsten Hove are hoping to breathe new energy into a time-honored craft, one toquilla palm fiber body and grosgrain ribbon at a time. hats50909.jpg Olivia Griffin persons the counter A whirlwind tour of the premises at the grand opening gala last Saturday revealed a cosy retail floor, a vintage glass-paneled display cabinet, a museum-quality array of hat blocks and brim shapers, and a slightly diabolical-looking conformiteur, a hat-shaped device with vaguely medieval head vise undertones, used to measure the circumference of the skull (a completely painless process, I am assured). hats40909.jpg Wendy Hawkins and a potential customer try out the conformiteur Because it’s still the season for straw, a wide variety of Panama hats were on display, ranging from high-end superfine weaves to the coarser “creative” line — a pocketbook friendly choice for hard times. “If you take care of it, a Panama hat will last you a lifetime,” co-owner Wendy Hawkins says, showing off 75 year-old model. Now that they’ve finally opened their doors, will the spirited proprietors of Paul’s succeed in their mission to “bring the hat back”? Only time, and perhaps your wallet, will tell. hats60909.jpg Paul’s Hat Works 6128 Geary Blvd, SF (415) 221-5332 http://hatworksbypaul.wordpress.com

Art or ARG

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ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES It starts, as most quests do, with a question. "What the hell?" A flyer advertising the Aquatic Thought Foundation, a division of the Jejune Institute devoted to Human-Dolphin interaction. And even though you’re probably the type to resist even the perverse pleasure of sitting through a bullshit Scientologist e-meter reading, something about the prospect of communing with dolphins is absurdly compelling. You call the number. A recondite family awaits.

So begins stage one of an ongoing self-paced scavenger hunt/walking tour/alternate reality game devised by a pseudonymous cabal of Bay Area artists and pranksters. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with the clumsy graphics and overblown hyperbole of cultist media will recognize, the shadowy overlords behind the Jejune Institute have done their homework well. Their office digs on California Street are pure cult cliché — from the op art adorning the walls to the shelves of new age esoterica and obsolete radio equipment to the videotaped welcome message from Institute founder Octavio Coleman, Esq. Upon completion of the "induction," the inductee embarks on a clue-finding expedition through Chinatown, armed with a treasure map and an official Jejune Institute pencil. The mysterious trail wends lo and hi, from the St. Mary’s parking garage to the back balcony of a shabby-retro edifice on Grant Street, places not exactly on even the most well-honed urban explorer’s radar.

Level two, hosted by rival branch the Elsewhere Public Works Agency, takes place in the Mission District, hitting a series of beloved independent institutions — Faye’s, Force of Habit, Adobe, Paxton Gate — as well as the site of a former Native American cemetery, a spate of interdimensional hopscotch, and a visit to what might be the district’s smallest micro-neighborhood. If the Jejune Institute is a picture-perfect façade of cult imagery, the EPWA is an even more fully realized vision on both the physical plane and that bastion of obfuscation, the interwebs. Clues as well as false leads can be gathered online from phony Wikipedia pages, faked Chronicle archives, and bogus blogs as well as out in the real world via micro-transmission radio broadcast, CDs, custom-printed books, teeny-tiny letters and a charmingly illustrated map. Piecing together the puzzle is the least part of the game’s ultimate value — the stealthy introduction to an underlying artist’s philosophy, to resist "false nonchalance" yet cultivate a sense of wonder and discovery in even the most familiar places is compelling and apt — and the revelation of secret locations hidden in plain view a welcome prize.
www.jejuneinstitute.org
www.elsewherepublicworks.com

Sila and the Afrofunk Experience

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PREVIEW First come the horns, then the bass, an emphatic high hat and a sparkle of percussion, a trill of electric guitar, more brass, and it’s on. Thanks to "Shelter," Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s second album Black President (Visila Records, 2009) has a funky kickoff. With inspired grooves that recall the jazzy Afrobeat of standard-bearers both old (Fela Kuti) and new (Lagbaja) and layered with a tireless P-funk aesthetic, the group goes on to represent the best of all possible worlds in World Music terms: uptempo, polyrhythmic, socially conscious (but not pedantic), strikingly melodic, and eminently danceable.

While Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s first album The Funkiest Man in Africa (Visila Records, 2006) explored the musical and social legacies of Fela Kuti, Black President brings it all back home — literally to our door step (or our turntable) — with a track cautiously celebrating the election of America’s first black president ("Mr. President … the people are hungry for change"). Africa never strays far from the rotation, though. "Shelter" is an examination of the ongoing AIDS epidemic, "I’m So Tired" speaks to the diaspora experience, and "Africa" is sheer Afrobeat magic. The official release party for Black President — which is already available online — kicks off a busy summer of touring for SF’s favorite adopted son Victor Sila and his tightly-knit ensemble. It’ll be a challenge to get enough of a Sila fix in a single night to last until the group returns from its travels, but I’m game to try.

SILA AND THE AFROFUNK EXPERIENCE With Fool’s Gold, Diego’s Umbrella. Sat/30, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF.(415) 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com

Throbbing Gristle vs. Machine Sex

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P>Though San Francisco might be eternally hampered by the stereotyped perception of a hippie wonderland replete with flowery hair, free love, and fluffy puppies, in reality, SF has long been as much a haven for radical dystopians as it is for their wistfully upbeat foils. From robot circuses to urban exploration to electric sheep, San Franciscans have a demonstrated predilection for the bionic, the blighted, and the bizarre. Add in a penchant for situational absurdism and a fervent appreciation for electronic music predating the Summer of Love, and it becomes clear why San Francisco was ground zero for the first wave of North American industrial noise music, and the city with the strongest connection to its European progenitors — Throbbing Gristle.

Throbbing Gristle is, in every sense of the word, the seminal industrial band, whose confrontational performance tactics, nihilistic lyrics, and audio sampling techniques foreshadowed acts as divergent as Skinny Puppy, Negativland, and 2 Live Crew, despite their repeated assertions that they were not really meant to be a band at all. "Assuming that we had no basic interest in making records, no basic interest in music per se, it’s pretty weird to think we’ve released something like ten albums … that have had an effect on the popular music scene forever." So declared Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge in the Industrial Culture Handbook, first published in 1983. Beginning their Bay Area association in 1976 through correspondence with Oakland-based shock artist Monte Cazazza — who traveled to England to assist with their nascent Industrial Records project and coined their company slogan: "industrial music for industrial people" — Throbbing Gristle’s aural extremism was also painstakingly documented by local champion of the underground V. Vale, first through fifth issue of the publication of RE/Search, and then through Industrial Culture Handbook.

It wasn’t just the Dada-esque, cut-up compositions of Throbbing Gristle and Bay Area-based industrial noise peers like Boyd Rice and Z’ev that gained an early foothold in the collective consciousness of the SF underground. Survival Research Laboratories, founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, gave mecha-fetishism a physical expression — with installations of and performances by a bevy of robotic entities, often decorated with animal carcasses for ultimate shock value. SRL’s first public event, Machine Sex, featuring dead pigeons on a conveyor belt trundling toward a rotating blade, debuted on St. Patrick’s Day 30years ago. Not long after, Vale introduced Pauline to Monte Cazazza, who became one of SRL’s early collaborators — and the bridge between the musical and mechanical arms of industrial culture.

Industrial music, permanently positioned outside the mainstream by design, has long struggled for recognition in the U.S. But early industrial’s lasting influence on the Bay Area arts is readily apparent in the confrontational panhandling robots of the Omnicircus, the large-scale mechanical sculptures of the Flaming Lotus Girls, the electro-noise/"weirdcore" performances of the Katabatik Collective, the flesh-eating fantasia of industrial music club MEAT, and even in the Mad Max-ian flamethrowing antics and electronica oases found at Burning Man and live looping sensations such as Kid Beyond and Loop!Station. Considered in that vein, you could say a little bit of Throbbing Gristle resides in us all. Chew on it.

A THROBBING GRISTLE AFTERPARTY

With DJs D-SYN, pink noise, R.M.S.

Thurs/23–Sun/26, 11 p.m.-2 a.m., free

Space Gallery

1141 Polk, SF

www.mobilization.com

Wise blood

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The only real city within a 1,000-mile radius, Denver perches a full mile above sea level, a windswept plateau superficially blanketed by strip malls, widget manufacturers, and convention centers. Bereft of both cosmopolitan peerage and any truly cohesive sense of cultural identity, the loneliness of the native Denverite is pervasive, haunted, and misunderstood, but not wholly undersung. For within the discomfited bosom of the Centennial State, an entire subgenre of music has continued to flourish — attracting devotees from far beyond the state line.

At the forefront of the Denver sound, even before there was such a term, has been David Eugene Edwards. Formerly a member of the Denver Gentlemen — as was fellow standard-bearer, Slim Cessna — Edwards’ most well-known band, 16 Horsepower, had all the requisite qualities characteristic of the Denver sound: conviction, intensity, and an uncompromising spiritualism that manifested itself in fire-and-brimstone lyricism, American Gothic instrumentation, and the feverish denouncements of a traveling preacher man. It is difficult to speak of Edwards without the specter of 16 Horsepower looming large behind the context, but Edwards’ current band Wovenhand, an entity in progress since 2001, has finally broken away from the tyranny of the past to fully inhabit its own potential with a new album: Ten Stones (Sounds Familyre, 2008).

Ten Stones is as elemental an album as Edwards and present company have ever crafted. From the rock-solid, faith-shaken lament "Not One Stone" to the north wind-inhabited "Kicking Bird" to the curiously moving cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s "Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars)," which sounds as if it had been recorded underwater, almost every song on the album corresponds intriguingly with a companion force of nature. One of the album’s particular surprises, the druggy rocker "White Knuckle Grip," feels like the rising tension of clouds gathering before a particularly fierce Colorado thunderstorm — the kind that splits the sky in two and harks back to the great flood that drowned the world. The album showcases the metamorphosis of the band as a whole from solo side project into a tightly knit collaborative, drawing inspiration from the impassioned religious fervor for the supernatural that characterizes much of the Denver sound, and from a greater reverence for the immutable power of the strictly natural, and of the music that lies buried at the heart of both.

Peter van Laerhoven, Wovenhand’s lead guitarist since 2005, especially comes into his own on Ten Stones. Like a spirited horse finally allowed his head, he rises to the challenge — penning two of the disc’s songs, most notably the aforementioned "Kicking Bird" — and smoothly lending earthy heft to the otherworldly divergences of bandmate Edwards. Stripped of many of the alt-Americana bells and whistles of Edwards’ earlier music, this strong guitar base helps anchor the tunes in a thoroughly modern context, without diminishing the ageless quality of their emotional weight. And while a driven, revival-meeting furor was essential to the development of the original Denver sound, this willingness to encompass other forms of reverence has become its new watchword. Call it a tempering process, or simply call it maturation. The refined blade of Wovenhand may have been forged in the youthful fires of what was once 16 Horsepower, but with a steel all its own, it cuts straight to the bone.

WOVENHAND

Tues/20, 9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Liebe me, liebe me not

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By Nicole Gluckstern

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It might not be spring, but love is already in the air, thanks to a Berlin and Beyond lineup crammed full of romance — as mysterious and elusive as the first vernal crocus. From the grief-stained impressionistic canvas of Götz Spielmann’s Revanche, to the addled office politicking in André Erkau’s Come in and Burn Out, to the sweetly scandalous wartime liaison of Ulla Wagner’s The Invention of Curried Sausage, the vagaries of love, lust, and even plain old like are on diverse display.

Going by typical film fare, one would think romantic love is a sensation reserved for awkward adolescents, torrid 20-somethings, and the midlife crisis set. Any character over 50 is either comfortably married or a lone wolf, and if they display any sexual spark at all it is frequently comic or saccharine. Considering too the usual portrayal of desperate love triangles from which no one exits unscathed, we might further find ourselves taking false comfort in the myth that such messy affaires d’coeur will sort themselves out later in life. With Cloud 9 (Wolke Neun), Andreas Dresen seeks to dispel those myths with a fearless cast of aging ingénues.

When seamstress Inge (Ursula Werner) falls for one of her clients (Horst Westphal), a charming widower whose flirty spontaneity is a distinct contrast to the familiarity of husband Werner (Horst Rehberg), she impulsively gives in to her desires. By turns exhilarated and distressed, Inge struggles to balance her welling fondness for Karl with her habitual devotion to Werner. And though she is cautioned against coming clean by her daughter, she eventually confesses her actions to Werner, who wrathfully accuses her of not acting her age. "What does it matter if I’m 16, or 60, or 80?" she retorts, a deserving question for which none in her sphere can provide a good answer. The unscripted cast members comport themselves with a naturalistic dignity and guileless intimacy even as the movie’s initial optimism takes a sharp downturn into melancholia. Avoiding moral conclusion, Dresen’s quietly resonant film suggests that the pitfalls of mature love are just as treacherously uncertain as its youthful counterpart.

That such uncertainty also belongs to the young is evidenced in Micha Lewinsky’s unusual The Friend (Der Freund), which centers around an imaginary love affair between awkward singer-songwriter Larissa (Emilie Weltie) and her equally awkward fan-boy Emil (Philippe Graber). Agreeing to pose as Larissa’s boyfriend, Emil doesn’t entirely realize his role is to be that of an alibi. Nor does he get time to find out. Before he can solidify the terms of the agreement, Larissa is dead, and her family insists on meeting him. This overtly-dramatic introduction aside, The Friend is a gentle reflection on death’s impact on the living, and the nature of life to move beyond.

Though Emil bears all the hallmarks of a typical loner, by the movie’s midpoint it has become apparent that he is in good company. Each character’s painful isolation is so deeply ingrained they can’t even find words to remark upon it. But despite their instinctive solitude, they can’t help but grasp for comfort from each other, which precipitates a clumsy romance between Emil and his dead fantasy’s sister, Nora (Johanna Bantzer). The final frames might be a shameless rip-off from Fatih Akin’s Edge of Heaven (2007), but the movie that precedes them is a singular creation.

BERLIN AND BEYOND

Jan 15–21, most shows $10

Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF

www.berlinandbeyond.com.

“Tantalus”

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PREVIEW Last year’s audacious staged reading of the complete Tom Stoppard trilogy The Coast of Utopia saw the Shotgun Players expanding their already broad horizons to encompass a rarely performed heavyweight piece exploring the roots of Russian radicalism. This year, they’ve raised their own impossible bar even higher, with a staged reading of John Barton’s daunting 10-play cycle Tantalus.

Performed only once in its entirety — in Denver in 2000 — this marathon of myth was Barton’s attempt to fill in what he has termed the "gaps" in the Epic Cycle, which described the rise and fall of Troy in a series of epic poems, many of which have survived only in fragments. Sire of the doomed house of Atreus, Tantalus doesn’t actually appear in his own titular drama, having already been imprisoned by the gods for stealing their ambrosia — and offering up his son in a savory stew. But the rest of the squabbling pack — Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, et al. — play a role, along with a host of heroes, gods, and poets. Performing one-third of the great work on each of three successive Wednesdays, the Shotgun Players are poised, with this epic endeavor, to tantalize us.

TANTALUS Wed/14, Jan. 21 and 28, 7 p.m.; $150 for three performances. Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berkeley, (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org

The Thousand Faces Ball

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PREVIEW Imagine the unsavory digs of the Mos Eisley Cantina of Tatooine stormed by a horde of previously barred droids and miscreants and forced to hold a variety show to stave off certain destruction — it’s a scene reminiscent of those generated by San Francisco’s OmniCircus, which has been simultaneously thrilling and troubling audiences for two decades. Founded by local surrealist artist and roboteer Frank Garvey, first as a film project, then as a live performance troupe, OmniCircus combines the high tech with the lowdown, propagating an environment where down-and-out robot performers and their human counterparts can come together under one roof, creating a spectacle part Transmetropolitan, part Captured! By Robots, and part The Black Rider. No mere vehicle for cream pies and contortionists, this darkly subversive one-ring circus has all the hallmarks of an ecstatically apocalyptic experience: music, mayhem, and mechanical mendicants. The Thousand Faces Ball marks the latest incarnation of the project, introducing the Moth nor Rust band starring OmniDiva Joan Loon, and retaining the talents of longtime DeusMachina collaborators, including Daniel Berkman and Geoffrey Pond, as well as an army of robotic riffraff: junkies, beggars, street preachers, and whores. Billed as the world’s first robotic theatre ensemble, OmniCircus is nevertheless no ephemeral vision of the future, but a thorough examination of the present through an unsentimental, yet curiously life-affirming lens.

THE THOUSAND FACES BALL Sat/8, 8 p.m., $10 donation. OmniCircus, 550 Natoma, SF.

(415) 701-0686, www.omnicircus.com