sfbg

Movie mania: “Reflections” and Kuchar brothers

-
0

By Johnny Ray Huston

The next two nights bring a pair of great treats for movie maniacs. Tonight, Gallery Paule Anglim hosts “Reflections,” a program of short films that includes ones by Pat O’Neill, Stan Brakhage, a rarely-seen James Whitney work, and some Tarkovsky. At the heart of the program are selections from Dean Smith‘s ongoing video project thought forms. If Smith’s drawings are any indication — and they should be — his contribution to the evening alone should be worth the trip. Smith’s current exhibition is one of the best I’ve seen this year, and even better when paired with Dean Byington‘s painted reconfiguring of collage aesthetics in an adjoining room at the gallery.

thought.jpg
Dean Smith, thought form #11, 2005, colored pencil on paper, 37.5 by 50 inches
georgeandmike.jpg
Mike and George Kuchar, from the documentary It Came From Kuchar

Friday night, Baer Ridgway is home to an hour-long program of films by the Kuchar brothers. (That last sentence deserves a !!! ending more than standard punctuation.) George is showing Jamboree Journey and Portrait of Genie. Mike is showing four movies: Vortex, Stolen Sweets, Tattle Tales, and Witchery. I got a lucky peek at one of Mike’s recent movies a month ago, a romantic idyll as gorgeous as its leading man and leading lady — love at first sight stuff. Wanna be where the cinematic fun is? Be there. And it’s free.

REFLECTIONS
Thurs/23, 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Paule Anglim
14 Geary, SF
(415) 433-2710
www.gallerypauleanglim.com

FILM SCREENING: GEORGE KUCHAR AND MIKE KUCHAR
Fri/24, 7 p.m., free
Baer Ridgway Exhibitions
172 Minna, SF
(415) 777-1366
www.baerridgway.com

Cruising Craigslist: Smelly fingers, fast food, and straight guys who like to watch other men masturbate

-
0

Each week, Justin Juul combs the SF Craigslist Personals and Missed Connections for true gems that prove there’s enough love for everyone. View his last installment here

picard10409.jpg

Sex is cool and all, but sometimes it’s just too much work. That’s why so many of us masturbate. It’s easier, safer, cleaner, and –if you can find someone who looks like Picard from Star Trek to watch you do it or lend a hand — 10 times as fun as regular intercourse. You can even win national recognition for your talents! The only problem is, where are you gonna find someone like that? Hmmmm.

Jack-U? (downtown / civic / van ness)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-04-15, 6:55PM PDT

Handsome older gentleman, Picard-like, seeks good-natured hwp ns/nd to jerk off. Zero receiving. No senior nudity. I’m compact at 5-3 126. This is jack-u-off only.

Help me understand something – w4m – 21 (Bradford)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-17, 8:32PM PDT
Hello guys, I’m not looking for sex, so don’t ask. I need help understanding something. My boyfriend says that all men masturbate all the time. I’ve been married and have had several other relationships and have never been with a man that said he has to jack off everyday. Even days when we’ve had sex, he still sometimes does it a couple of times. I don’t mind putting on a show for him while he does it, and that’s led to some great sex, but if I’m busy, he just looks at erotic porn and does it anyway and that kind of bothers me. I’ve never been into it, unless I’ve been without sex for a long time. In my whole life, I’ve probably masturbated to orgasm less than a dozen times. He says that the other men I’ve been with did it regularly too, but just did it in secret. Is this true? Do all of you still masturbate, even when you’re getting regular sex? Do you ever outgrow it? If you do, can you explain why? Do you have to look at images of women too? I’m serious about this. Thanks for your honest input.

Pics: Lines Ballet tingles, lights up YBCA

-
1

Text and Photos by Ariel Soto

lines_6.jpg

lines_5.jpg

Evocative African beats and spine-tingling motion are filling up Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts all this week as the local dance company Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet takes the stage. The company, which has been in San Francisco since 1982, breaks away from traditional, stuffy ballet by adding modern movements and contemporary music, with each dance creating a story about the struggles and reality of everyday modern life. It is obvious why they are called Lines Ballet — the dancers’ bodies seem to stretch across every inch of the stage, constantly in fluid movements, keeping the audience’s eyes glued to the tip of their toes and the ends of their fingers and making them come back for more, year after year.

lines_3.jpg

lines_4.jpg

lines_2.jpg

Beer Fest blues? Wash ’em down …

-
2

By Molly Freedenberg

309-eventbox.jpg

It’s Beer Fest time again, which means those lucky enough to have scored tickets to the always sold-out event are prepping their drinking pants for three hours of madness — and those who’ll miss the affair are prepping to, well, drip tears into their (non-festival-acquired) beers. We can’t blame their lachrymosity. The festival features more than 300 varieties from a mind-boggling number of breweries and brewpubs, from locals like Anchor Steam to internationals like Guinness. Then there are the hard ciders and nonalcoholic options. Oh, and the food from the city’s best restaurants. And a commemorative stein to use for tasting and then take home. It’s enough to make a beer fan weep like the condensation on an ice-cold pilsner glass.

We’re sorry to say there’s not much we can do for the people who don’t already have tickets — but we can recommend ways to ease the pain. How about staging your own tasting? Pick up a variety of ales, lagers, pilsners, and more from the dizzying selections at City Beer Store (1186 Folsom, SF. 415-503-1033, www.citybeerstore.com), Healthy Spirits (2299 15th St., SF. 415-255-0610, healthy-spirits.blogspot.com), or New Star-Ell Liquor (501 Divisadero, SF. 415-567-7900). Or let the experts choose unusual, exciting Belgian varieties for you at La Trappe (800 Greenwich, SF. 415-440-8727, www.latrappecafe.com), Monk’s Kettle (3141 16th St., SF. 415-865-9523, www.monkskettle.com), or the Trappist (460 Eighth St., Oakl. 510-238-8900, www.thetrappist.com). Granted, these options aren’t the Beer Fest, but they’re all pretty fantastic as alternatives go. And remember, there’s always next year.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL BEER FESTIVAL 7-10 p.m. $60. Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF

www.sfbeerfest.com

Isabella Rossellini and “crazy animal sex”

-
4

By Juliette Tang

GreenPorno0409a.jpg

Isabella Rossellini is a woman who wears many hats. Actress, model, writer, philanthropist. Now, Rossellini can add “filmmaker specializing in animal pornography” to that already impressive list. “When needed, I can have an erection six feet long and stick it inside a female,” exclaims Isabella Rossellini, clothed not in her standard designer fare, but in a paper mache whale costume, of which the defining characteristic is an attachment of a giant pink penis in full erection.

Hallelujah, season two of Green Porno is underway!

Rossellini writes, directs, and lends her acting chops to the quirky Green Porno series, which features the actress, donned in hilarious animal costumes, describing the various mating habits of members of the animal kingdom. The series is winsome and fun, not just because of Rossellini’s infectious charm, but also because of the wonderful craftsmanship of Andy Byers, a Brooklyn-based artist who created all the sets and costumes. His costumes are hand-made, crafts-influenced, and seeped in an adult’s residual nostalgia for bad elementary school Halloween costumes meticulously made by well-intetioned mothers hungry for Kodak moments. There’s also the fact of Rossellini’s sexy, ambiguously European accent, with its traces of Italian and Swedish, which lends richness and whimsy to phrases like “Penises, different penises, all trying to get as close as possible to my eggs!” The series is peppered with Rossellini’s cheeky and good-natured translations of beastial intercourse, and pronouncements like “we are sequential hermaphrodites” reminds me very much of a Polish biology teacher I once had, who always confused the term “organism” with “orgasm,” to jocular result.

Gudrun Gut beguiles with a missing essence

-
0

By Brandon Bussolini

gut0409.jpg

Now two years old, I Put A Record On (Monika Enterprise, 2007) is a record worth lingering over. In addition to being the first solo release from Berlin-based musical gadabout Gudrun Gut, it’s remarkable for how unhurried Gut was in getting around to it: she’s been appearing on recordings and taking part in bands, including a very early incarnation of industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, for more than 25 years. Her intervening projects give her the aura of a post-punk Zelig: the all-female punk band Malaria! formed in 1981, toured with the Birthday Party, put out records on Belgian boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule, and performed with Nina Hagen at Studio 54. That the group’s "Kaltes Klares Wasser" would later be covered by Chicks on Speed was a foregone conclusion.

The synthy Matador followed Malaria!’s collapse, but Gut’s ear eventually led her, like any good punk, to techno. With typical great timing too: Berlin had just undergone a techno surge, spearheaded by local duo and label Basic Channel. Abandoning the constraints of playing in a rock-derived idiom in favor of more uncharted territory, Gut also had the good fortune to run across Thomas Fehlmann, a producer with post-punk roots who had recently collaborated with Alex Paterson’s downtempo pace-setters the Orb. The two founded Ocean Club, producing a weekly genre-stomping radio show as well as parties that paired up the likes of experimental techno producer Thomas Brinkmann and splay-shirted southern gothic aficionado Nick Cave.

Gudrun Gut, “Move Me”

None of this is new information, yet all of it is useful in figuring out how something like I Put A Record On came to be. It’s beguiling, though free of big emotions — a left-field album that functions as an homage to the hypnotic state that arrives when you’re sucked into your favorite records. The best indication of its intentions is provided by the sole cover, of Smog’s "Rock Bottom Riser." Gut’s multitracked delivery, over a pistoning and downtrodden bass drum, is affectless enough to make Bill Callahan’s stoic delivery on the original seem fraught. But by the end, she’s wracked by giggles, as flecks of color appear like dried spittle around the monochrome production’s edges. Gut is not an innovator: both she and Callahan are committed to the old, inexhaustible pleasure of listening, regardless of genre. And this is exactly what allows them to give back to their respective genres, if we care to name them, some missing essence.

FIRST PERSON MAGAZINE BENEFIT PARTY FEATURING GUDRUN GUT with Thomas Fehlmann, Grecco Guggenheit, and Nate Boyce. Fri/24, 10 p.m., $10-$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880. www.firstpersonmag.com/events.htm

Street Threads: Look of the Day

-
2

SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Milana and Viana, 24th Street and Noe

milanaviana0409.jpg

Tell us about your look: “It’s always important to look fashionable.”

Peepshow: The Masturbate-A-Thon cometh

-
0

Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

mastur_30409.jpg

Who: Last year, a Japanese man named Mr. Masanobu Sato came to San Francisco and masturbated in public for nearly ten hours straight. Had he done this in any other city, he might have been thrown in jail or at least laughed at relentlessly. But this is the sexiest place on earth so Mr. Sato got a gold medal instead. He also got a lot of media attention for the toy company he works for, Tenga, Japan’s premier manufacturer of disposable and reusable wank cups. Obviously, becoming a world champion has done wonders for Sato’s career (sales are up, employee-of-the-month certificates are hanging, etc) and so he has no choice but to defend his record. That’s why he’ll *probably be coming back to our city again this year for The Center for Sex and Culture’s annual Masturbate-a-thon. Join Mr. Masanobu Sato, Sister Roma, Fellatio Brown, Dr. Carol Queen, and other famous wankers as they play with their junk in the name sex positivism. Exhibitionists, porn-addicts, and totally normal people like you and me are encouraged to ogle, vote, and even participate in this year’s exhibition/contest.

Film review: “Lost in the Fog”

-
0

By Natalie Gregory

lostINfog2.jpg
The need…for speed.

If you’re into horses or horse racing, go see John Corey’s Lost in the Fog — Lost in the Fog being a famous steed who cleaned house in 2005. The film follows the success of the horse’s short career as told through the experiences of owner Harry Aleo and trainer Greg Gilchrist. Aleo is a semi-famous San Francisco local. He has pictures of President Reagan in his front office in Noe Valley and terms the neighborhood “Looney Valley.” (Guess who he probably voted for.) At any rate, the guy has owned horses for about 39 years. Fate brings him Lost in the Fog, a seemingly unstoppable horse that was born to run. The film doesn’t exactly explain the whole industry and sport of horse racing. But it’s fun to watch Lost’s rise to the top. The more he dominates, the more I understood why people go so nuts for these animals.

Lost in the Fog is now playing at the Roxie.

Snap Sounds: Dan Deacon

-
0

By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

bromst.jpg

Dan Deacon
Bromst
(Carpark)

Dan Deacon’s latest album forfeits one-man prowess for a more expansive sound — realized on tour by a 15-piece ensemble — that swaps electronic exclusivity for a tightly woven tapestry of bleeps, samples, and acoustic instruments like the guitar, glockenspiel and marimba. The resulting sound is less alienating-irritating than on previous releases.

Bromst still has endorphin-inducing tracks, like “Woof Woof,” a bouncy, buoyant opener that spazzes out with animal calls that loop backward as the rest of the song moves forward into catchy cacophony. Deacon has honed his skill at building suspense all the way up to a climactic finish, as in the standouts “Build Voice” and “Paddling Ghost,” which crescendo and then plummet like a roller coaster ride. I imagine the noisy culminating track “Get Older” as a scene in Fantasia 3.0, filmed shortly after the apocalypse, in which abstract butterflies and birds repetitiously stream through a realm of light and darkness before lightness finally wins out.

deacon.jpg
Dan Deacon gets a hand. Photo by Josh Sisk.

All of Deacon’s work possesses an inherent sense of humor, exemplified by the fold-up tent that is central to his current iconography. But Bromst taps some emotional depths, thanks to “Slow Horns/Run For Your Life,” with its moving staccato piano break, and “Snookered,” with its poignant lyric, “We’ve done this so many times before…but never quite like this.” Such new hints of maturity leave me anticipating the next act by this mad scientist of electronic noise.

DAN DEACON
With Future Islands, Teeth Mountain
Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $13
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
www.gamh.com

Deacon talks about Bromst, after the jump:

“Open Endless” views by David Wilson tonight

-
0

By Johnny Ray Huston

thepoint.jpg

David Wilson’s new show “Open Endless” includes a 22-foot watercolor of the ocean, and a very small rendering of the sand. I’m going to the opening tonight, because I really like Wilson’s art, which was on display at Eleanor Harwood Gallery last year.

shell.jpg

WIlson has a kinship with Nathaniel Russell, another Bay Area artist who knows how to make a lot out of just a little line or two. Curated by Brianna Toth, this show collects drawings he’s made over the past eight months at the ocean and at the Rodeo Cove cliffs in the Marin headlands. Anyone who has attended one of the happenings Wilson has put together under the Ribbons rubric knows tonight should be sweet, not just because it’s at Tartine.

OPEN ENDLESS
Wed/22, 9 p.m.
Tartine
600 Guerrero, SF
(415) 487-2600
www.ribbonsribbons.blogspot.com/

Beach demon Wavves baptizes SF

-
0

By L.C. Mason

wavves2.jpg

Even though I’m in my twenties, I feel firmly stuck in teenagerdom, where absolutes reign supreme, the world is always about to end, and indifference is not only allowed, but is a right. Evidently, so does fellow 22-year-old Nathan Williams, the mastermind of the SoCal noise-scrubbed punk project Wavves. At Bottom of the Hill on April 13, his arty, minimalist gospel of hazy boredom and elation churned the sold out spitfire crowd like the hippest TV evangelist with a guitar, drumset and one Herculean Marshall stack in the middle.

The genius of Williams’ sermons are the one-line gems of angst-ridden pubescent sentiment (“Everything’s so fucked”; “You see me / I don’t care”; “I’m getting high / to pass the time / no reason why”) he deftly delivers under a mask of cool ennui –the elusive equilibrium that every teen strives for, but few achieve. Therein lies Wavves’ universal charm: the music gives us a chance for emotional redemption, cleansing our minds of the hormone-fueled confusion that plagues our youth.

R.W. Ulsh and Nathan Williams of Wavves
wavves1.jpg

Williams and his bespectacled drum-wizard R.W. Ulsh unleashed their set with “Beach Demon,” a speed-ridden amp-sizzler with a lean riff and meaty drums serving up a clanging two-step beat. Usually awash in snaps, crackles and pops, Williams’ on-stage vocals were crystal clear, showcasing his San Diegan drawl. He wailed words we’ve lived by for the past eight years: ”Nothing to do / nowhere to go / everything’s wrong / everything’s wrong,” and his rapid-fire chorus of “Going nowhere / going nowhere / going nowhere” propelled the audience into a maelstrom of fist-pumps and matted hair. Williams’ fuzzed riffery during the extended breakdown not only got the house sweaty but also smelly in its reverie.

The Wavves-brand slow jam was “Side Yr On,” a mournful tune about missed phone calls. Williams’ stony, soaring falsetto and dirge-riffs vividly evoked the sobering brutality of the kind of rejection that hurts at any age.

The night’s coda, “Wavves,” started with gratuitous bass drum and snare beats and whimsical, falsetto Beach Boys croons with a singalong quality that the ladies on the floor couldn’t resist. Williams clearly enjoyed it; a mischievious grin painted itself across his face when their chirps rose above the noise. His boyish string of declarations “I wanna be with you / I wanna be a punk / I wanna see the sun / I wanna be your daddy-o,” reference past pop-punk classics and condense life’s most simple pleasures into music. The one-man juggernaut’s seething, feedback-laden guitar freak-out closed the set, only to leave the rest of us panting for more. The anointing of the San Francisco sect of fervent Wavves fan had taken place.

Tiger Beat-for-punks pic of Williams
wavves3.jpg

Live Wavves clips after the jump:

Sex-children of the Throb

-
0

By Marke B.

Throbbing Gristle, “Discipline” live at Kezar, 1981

“Like always I persuaaa-aade you.” My audiophile pals have been burbling for weeks about Throbbing Gristle’s return to the Bay Area — an event of enormous sonic-historical magnitude that both Brandon Bussolini and Nicole Gluckstern write about in this week’s issue. And they’ve mostly been taken by the series of vids recorded at Kezar Stadium (“the stadium of dead souls”) in 1981 that documents the raw, uninhibited mind-warp of the group at the time — a perfect tonic for our still-obsessed post-punk indie-bop era. It’s pretty amazing, and I’m loving the obvs tripped-out audience. Also, it looks to have much more in common with composer John Adams‘ Berkeley music-concrete happenings than the overloaded, multimedia Wax Trax spectaculars that industrial would soon veer into, livewise.

The above extended cataclysm, plus this one below by Germany’s Liaisons Dangereuses from 1982, tells a seedy, sweaty, and dirty-sexy industrial story, with a space for women even (“are you ready boys, are you ready girls?”), that I wish had been pin-patched and bedazzled onto Haight Street kids’ jackets rather than the hypersteroidal/paranoid-pop Skinny Puppy-Nitzer Ebb-Ministry one (and hey, doesn’t Depeche Mode have a new album out?)

Liaisons Dangereuses, “Los Niños Del Parque”

It’s a wonder to me how all those macho mid-80s big-time industrial acts could simultaneously be so testosteronal and yet so castrated. Maybe it was all the trying too hard (and it kind of happened again in the 90s with, ew, rap-rock). But, you know, I shaved off my devil lock and fled the industrial dance floor once KMFDM’s “Control” became inescapable. Now that was torture, even though now I find them quite adorable. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of crowd shows up at the TG show on Thursday, to say the least, and whether they’ll have the spikes to ride the experimental thrust into polysexual purgatory, industrial’s true Valhalla (not hell at all), with barest, brief release.

gporr0409.jpg
From the LA Times Coachella blog: “I think I’ve had three orgasms already,” Genesis P-Orridge said after the first song of Throbbing Gristle’s set. All right, so we know it was good for the fair-haired, transgendered leader of the British industrial act, but how was it for us?

The Bay’s Grass Widow sounds out mesmerizing shapes

-
0

By Michael Harkin

309-muscbox.jpg

Grass Widow‘s harmonious post-punk tension is fostered below SF street level, in a former meat locker containing, among other things, a very charming quilt with the band’s name patched into it. In anticipation of an impending record release — the band plays Thursday at ATA — I met there with bass player Hannah Lew and drummer Lillian Maring (guitarist and trumpet player Raven Mahon was overseas), who, although living far apart — Maring is on the East Coast at present — were clearly very happy to be together.

"It’s not like there are any dispensable characters," explains Lew. After the dissolution of Shitstorm, Lew’s former band with Mahon, the two started playing together in 2007 with Maring, who was in the city for the summer from Washington state. Though Maring went back up north for a bit, she says she quickly returned and the trio "got really serious" — serious enough to tour the U.S. the following summer after cranking out a wonderful demo CD-R/ cassette that makes up most of their upcoming self-titled 12-inch on the local Make a Mess label.

The Blender: What we’ve been eating

-
0

By the edacious Guardian staff

matzohbriebiga.jpg
Mmm .. matzoh brie

(1) Pit-roasted whole pig in banana leaves, Santa Cruz Mountains

(2) Matzoh brei and brisket

(3) Fries with eyes, Anchor and Hope, SF

(4) Two towers of stacked donuts while watching Twin Peaks

(5) Pagan Sunday dinner with steak, celery root mashed potatoes, strawberry mousse

Street Threads: Look of the Day

-
2

SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: SF Slim, 16th Street and Sanchez

SF0409.jpg

Tell us about your look: “”Lo rez.”

Bonus recipe: Gary Danko’s chicken stew

-
0

In the latest edition of FEAST, our guide to dining and drinking in the Bay, we asked three local chefs to create recipes using part of a chicken and a few simple, affordable ingredients. Below is a bonus recipe from Gary Danko.

garydanko_0409.jpg
Chef Gary Danko gives Guardian readers more ideas for affordable, delicious home dining.

Spiced Chicken-Chickpea Stew

Serves 8
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
5 whole cloves
1-inch piece cinnamon stick
2 small yellow onions, finely diced
4 pounds chicken thighs, trim excess fat
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2-3 teaspoon kosher salt or to taste
2 cups boxed or canned chopped tomatoes
1 to 3 cups water or just to cover
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, finely ground (optional, but delicious)
1 teaspoon toasted cumin
1/2 teaspoon Garam Masala (see recipe below)
2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup chopped cilantro, mint and scallions

In a thick bottomed soup pot, heat the olive oil. Stir in the pepper, cloves, and cinnamon stick, cooking until the spices start to sizzle. Stir in the onion and coat with oil mixture, cooking for five minutes or so. Place chicken in pot and cook until each side is opaque and slightly golden brown, stirring the onions so that they do not burn. (You want a slight caramelization.) Stir in the turmeric, cayenne pepper, tomatoes, water, saffron, cumin and the Garam Masala.

SFSU MFA art show: New visions and decay

-
1

By Danica Li

Any long-suffering graduate student will tell you that assembling a thesis out of thin air is something that requires a lot of time, a lot of love, and just a pinch of lunacy. The Department of Art at San Francisco State University (SFSU) is graduating artists from its three-year MFA program this month, and work by eight of them will be on display at the university studio through May 13. The contributions run the gamut: there are photography pieces, sculptures, paintings, samples of performance art, and installations.

Tom Griscom, Beale Street, 2008, 8 inches by 36 inches, digital pigment print
beale.jpg

Rosie Sesler, Penis of the Quomerticus fere, mixed media, 6″ by 4″ by 4″
penis.jpg

Clare Szydlowski, Untitled, gum biochromate, 28 inches by 70 inches
clare.jpg

Seriously? The exhibition is nothing if not a prime chance for the keen-eyed art fanatic to come and rub his hands over bottled fallopian tubes and black and white photos of urban corrosion. Some highlights include Clare Szydlowski’s “The Obvious Unseen: Landscapes of Efficiency and Decay,” Tom Griscom’s landscape photography, and Rosie Sesler’s sculptures, which in the past have taken on the form of exotic, self-created animal species alien to this world and the next.

Snap Sounds: Telepathe

-
0

By Brandon Bussolini

telepathe0409.jpg

Telepathe
Dance Mother
(IAMSOUND)

This debut album by a pair of self-styled producers finds Telepathe at a turning point some bands only reach several albums into a career: ditching trad-rock instruments for synths and sequencers, and turning an eager ear to mainstream pop for cues. A recent profile of the Brooklyn duo of Melissa Livaudis and Busy Gangnes (formerly of First Nation and Wikkid, respectively) portrays the band coming into their own by teaching themselves Logic, a software production program. Dance Mother fleshes out the bedroom MIDI sketches with typically precise production from TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. It also plays up the retro-tinged futurism: indie rock’s an insular enough realm for a Mannie Fresh influence to be novel.

Dance Mother’s opening salvo of “So Fine” and “Chrome’s On It” crutches on indie’s high tolerance for mumbled lyrics. The melodies are potent stuff, though, and the songs’ productions, which might not have taken more than an hour to throw together, stand in contrast to the vogue for wet, overworked psych in the band’s home borough. There’s some unevenness to those two compositions, which are the album’s most accessible — it’s hard to decide if we should be frustrated or charmed by the way “Chrome’s On It” smooshes lovely, indistinct verses into a daffy breakdown. (Livaudis sings, with a kind of suburban carriage, “I can feel the real bang bang, I can do the real thing thing.”)

Telepathe, “So Fine”

By track three, Telepathe’s trying out both the Velvet Underground’s “Murder Mystery” sing-speak and the heavy romantic deconstruction of the Kim Gordon-led Sonic Youth Evol track “Shadow of a Doubt.” By track six, Livaudis and Gangnes are making a serious bid to be your new favorite band with the heart-tugging swoon “Can’t Stand It,” which marries the chiming samples of Seefeel and waifish contemporary doo-wop. It’s so measured that you take your emotional cues from the repeating floor tom-and-cymbal motif. This is one to put on the shelf next to Merriweather Post Pavilion for achievements without guitars.

More vids after the jump:

Freakin’ with Dan Deacon

-
1

By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

299-musabox.jpg

I first saw Dan Deacon perform at Oberlin College’s venue the ’Sco, a den of nascent creativity that eventually brought me to a city sometimes referred to by the same three-letter abbreviation. Deacon was there, balding and bearded, his glasses taped to his head, his muffin-top iced by a bright pink T. He set up his mad scientist’s table of electronics in the audience’s usual domain. Different colored cords sprang out in every direction and there were multiple mics for his one-man show. Lit by a neon green skull, Deacon began stretching, then implored the audience to stretch. They did.

Not only did we all stretch with Deacon, we danced with Deacon. For a generation that has been taught that to move is to be judged — or whatever excuse keeps scenesters so static — such an act is similar to the miracle of the Virgin Mary getting pregos. Deacon’s inhibition-less philosophy was infectious: not only were the undergrads dancing, they were willing to participate in a high-five conga line and compete in a dance-off.

Dan Deacon, “Crystal Cat”

Although the complexities of Deacon’s music become clearer when heard on an iPod, the experience verges on seizure-inducing. Live, the same music becomes hypnotic. Like his earlier work, Deacon’s newest album Bromst (Carpark) is as much a singular composition as a collection of tracks, which should make it exhilarating to encounter. In concert, he has arranged for it to be played by a 15-piece ensemble. Now that he’s decidedly bigger — in band, popularity, and girth — it’s hard to predict how the intimacy and audience participation aspects of his performance will be affected. But it is sure to be a blast. And a bromst. (Deacon said he made up the word for his album title because it doesn’t have a meaning and he likes the way it sounds.)

DAN DEACON With Future Islands and Teeth Mountain. Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall. 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Street Threads: Look of the Day

-
0

SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Rollin, 18th Street and Castro

Rollin0409.jpg

Tell us about your look: “I got this jacket in Hong Kong.”

Appetite: Hot tamales, banana cookies, $1 martinis, and more

-
0

By Virginia Miller

tbtb2008.jpg
Hot Tamales on Sun/26. See “Events” below

As long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this city and obsessed with exploring its best food-and-drink spots, events and news, in every neighborhood and cuisine type. I have my own personalized itinerary service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot, and am thrilled to share up-to-the minute news with you from the endless goings-on in our fair city. View the previous installment of Appetite here.

———-

NEW OPENINGS

Anthony’s Cookies satisfies your cookie craving all day long
On the same Mission block as Suriya Thai (R.I.P.), is a new cookie kitchen that can help assuage the loss of my favorite Thai. Anthony (who has spent over 10 years perfecting his craft) and his staff give a friendly welcome as they bake, for now offering a half dozen cookies for $5, or $9.25 a dozen, eventually selling them individually. On the blessedly smaller side, they’re warm and about as homemade tasting as they smell. There’s toffee chip, banana (like banana bread in cookie form), cinnamon sugar, whole-wheat oatmeal cranberry, gooey chocolate chip, and maybe my favorite? Cookies and cream. Tastes like home.
1417 Valencia, SF
415-655-9834
www.anthonyscookies.com

Moussy’s brings French cooking classes, movies and Petit Dejeuner to Nob Hill/Polk Gulch
Downstairs from Alliance Francaise, there’s a new stop pre or post AF’s French language classes and film screenings: Moussy’s, an intimate, candlelit cafe for a morning croissant and cappuccino, or lunch time respite, serving salads, baked brie, and pot pies. They’ll soon be offering French cooking classes and film nights, too, ensuring that foodies, expats, bohemian artists, poets and aspiring cooks have a true Parisian cafe hangout.
1345 Bush, SF.
415-441-1802
www.moussys.com

Snap Sounds: Two San Franciscos

-
0

By Marke B.

Two recent releases, both based on the Bay by Bay favorites. The first, “Young San Francisco” by SF’s Boy in Static, aka Alexander Chen and Kenji Ross, from their new album, Candy Cigarette (Fake Four Inc & Circle Into Square) is way too cute — check out their new “East Bay to Back Bay” XLR8R podcast mix for a great listen to some more new, slightly twee West Coast indie pop (loving “To the Sea” by Portland’s Mint Julep).

Boy in Static, “Young San Francisco”

The second recent track focusing on the Bay is by SF hip-hop stalwart Kero One, “Welcome to the Bay,” off his sophomore disc, Early Believers (Plug Label). I really wanted to like this one more — I’ve been a fan for a while, and Kero’s def got the chops, working with everyone from Talib Kweli to Mark Farina — but it seemed a tad too polished for me, despite the nice groove. Still, it’s a breezy listen for a steamy day. From what I’ve heard of Early Believers it’ll be a perfect summer BBQ collection.

Kero One, “Welcome to the Bay”

Something both of these songs have in common is a young Asian American perspective on the homebase. Kero’s is especially poignant, talking about why his parents came here at a time when “words like ‘chink’ were teachable.” Really feeling the latitude of historical perceptions coming forth in two distinct tunes.

View the previous Snap Sounds here.

1...353637...59Page 36 of 59

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