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Sean Lennon and Vincent Gallo at Red Devil Lounge, SF
Sean Lennon and Vincent Gallo
August 12th at Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco
“Holy Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger!” That would have clunked out of your mouth if you too had witnessed the historical magic and entertainment of Sean Lennon’s whimsical jam session with Bob Weir at the Red Devil Lounge. Three-hundred-plus attendees scrunched under the intimate venue’s gothic chandeliers to catch a rare appearance by Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon on Wednesday night.
After a three-year hiatus from his solo career, Lennon has adopted a new sound, alias, and girlfriend in his nascent project, Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger. Answering to the pseudonym of “Amatla,” Lennon and model girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, aka “Zargifon,” craft downtempo tracks that range from Donovan-esque snippets to India-inspired ballads. “This is the dangerous part of the show,” Lennon warned the audience as he pulled his acoustic guitar onto his lap. “[Charlotte’s] going to attempt to play the piano from a different room.” Beyond the forest of guitar stands, MIDI controllers, and amps that encroached on Lennon’s chair, the venue’s green room was illuminated with peach hue as she opened their set with cascading piano notes while Lennon echoed them on his guitar. And after Lennon and Muhl finished what sounded like a modern take on Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”, Charlotte trickled onto the stage in a pale negligee and floral cardigan to begin their 45-minute set.
Rock the Bells at Shoreline Amphitheatre, SF
Rock the Bells
August 9th at Shoreline Amphitheatre, San Francisco
“What you’re about to see… is what we’ve been trying to put together for a while: Peace, love, unity. This is what this music is about.” In an act of unity, a banner falls from the top of the stage as KRS-One, host of Rock the Bells, announces this year’s headliners: Nas and Damian Marley. Representing two segments of hip-hop culture, a portrait of Nas against Brooklyn’s skyline and a snapshot of Marley in front of Kingston’s horizon provided the backdrop for their performance and the final act of Rock the Bells on the final night of the 2009 tour.
“Hip-hop is dead,” Nas chanted as he swaggered onto the main stage for his shared set with Marley, the “Jamrock” prodigy. With a populous band ensemble and a twirling Rastafarian flag, Nas reminded the crowd of an era when the mainstream rejected hip-hop, when the game was about delivering a message instead of an advertisement, when hip-hop spoke for the community instead of the corporations who commission it. “Reminiscin’ when it wasn’t all business / If it got where it started / So we all gather here for the dearly departed.” Spitting rhymes to a crowd of over 10,000 people, Nas berated the “rap culture” hip-hop has become throughout tracks like “One Mic”, “Made You Look”, and “Road to Zion”, his duet with Marley off their new collaborative album, Distant Relatives. While Nas commanded the crowd’s attention for his more popular songs like “The World Is Yours”, Marley got them to move. Covering a slew of his legendary father’s discography, Damian jived with two frenetic vocalists and the Roots’ guitarist, Captain Kirk Douglas, who wailed electric blues throughout his set. Dancing around on stage with meters of bouncing dreadlocks, he finished off the evening with “One Love.” While Nas and Marley’s pleas of unity may have been romantic, their sentiments were echoed by other performers throughout the day.
Quintron and Miss Pussycat at the Hemlock, San Francisco
.jpg "Courtesy of Quintron and Miss Pussycat")
Quintron and Miss Pussycat
August 4th at Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco
“What kind of LSD-infused, Play-Doh playground did I step onto?” I asked myself this question during Quintron and Miss Pussycat’s performance at the Hemlock on Tuesday night. With a black light puppet show, swamp boogie blues, and a befuddling haze of fog, Quintron and Miss Pussycat put on a late-night spectacle that one could only characterize as a “trip” through Gumby’s stomping ground.
I expected something out of the ordinary when I watched Miss Pussycat teeter around before the show in a purple mini dress complete with a blue, silver, and gold fringe sash and a matching blue and purple pom headband. I knew something out of the ordinary was about to happen when the venue’s staff cleared the crowd to haul a miniature puppet theater, upholstered with red and gold curtains and white down comforter façade, onto the stage. Quintron’s set-up tipped me off, too. His organ synth, with a Lincoln grill and “Quintron” license plate tacked onto its front, stood aside his Drum Buddy, a piece of equipment that looks straight out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and seems just as unfathomable as a race of Oompa Loompas. (The piece of machinery is an invention of Quintron’s own that plays like a drum machine and works through light oscillations, operating on the principles of an optical theremin). But I wasn’t prepared for a show that combined the satirical antics of Wonder Showzen with a soundtrack that fused the White Stripes’ rhythm and blues rock and Le Tigre’s dance-punk tracks. It was a spectacle, indeed.
Sonic Youth at the Fox Theater, Oakland
Sonic Youth
August 2nd at the Fox Theater, Oakland
Squatting on some vestigial cargo tracks in an alley, I saw Sonic Youth for the first time through a slice of open space between two buildings during their 2003 Chicago gig at the Goose Island Festival. Sharing my first cigarette in that alley with a vagrant who’d camped out for the show, I knew my conception of rock ‘n’ roll would be clouded and dissolved after watching Sonic Youth finish their set with a 15-minute riff of “Expressway to Yr Skull.” I was 14. Sonic Youth was 22.
Six years later, Sonic Youth’s live music still conjures up sentiments from that night: The rush of delinquency, the intimacy of Kim Gordon’s lullabies and Thurston Moore’s jests, and the alienation of watching their performance from afar.
At Oakland’s Fox Theater on Sunday night, Sonic Youth drew attendees from ages six to 60. Weaving through the younger concert-goers, I spotted the same vestige of awe, freedom, and thrill that I wore in 2003. At the beginning of their set, Moore introduced their first song, “This is a love song called, ‘No Way’.” But after playing only a few seconds of the opening chords of “No Way”, Sonic Youth clamped down on their strings and halted their performance. Moore stepped up to the mic and teased, “Changed my mind. This is a hate song.” And they continued their blithe demeanor throughout “Leaky Lifeboat”, “Massage the History”, “Shadow of a Doubt”, and two encore sets.
Ty Segall at Thee Parkside, San Francisco
Ty Segall
July 26th at Thee Parkside, San Francisco
“Thank god the songs are all under 10 minutes,” I repeated to myself. Exploding lights. Shrieking guitar chords. Drowning in the crowd’s sweat. These are but snippets of the sensory overload I experienced during Ty Segall’s set at Thee Parkside on Sunday night.
The night began calmly enough. Punk enthusiasts from age 13 to 30 jabbered about a punk revival, psychic hotlines, and galleries in Oakland while they chain-smoked American Spirits on the patio. Thrift-diggers stood near the merchandise table in their crepe skirts and black tights. The antique bar near the stage was hassle-free with only a handful of concert-goers at each end, and Miller High Lifes were a reasonable three bucks. I wondered what forces aligned for me to have such luck.
Then, entropy kicked in. Leaning against the small divide between the stage and crowd, I began to feel the restlessness of the audience. Segall and gang, bassist Tim Hellman and drummer Emily Rose, were in the midst of syncing their instruments, but the show had already begun for some of the crowd. Nearly an hour and a half after the show was listed to start, the surly men in the crowd had their fists pumped, ready to commence moshing. Rose counted off behind her drum set, Hellman dipped into his first note, and the crowd tore into fragments (of those who moshed and those who coolly tapped their toes against the concrete floor) as Segall shredded a track from his new album, Lemons.
The Mighty Boosh at 4th and B, San Diego and Jay Brannan at Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco
The Mighty Boosh
July 24th at 4th and B, San Diego
“San Diego, you cheeky bitches!”
The Boosh boys have officially begun their invasion of America and it was my pleasure to witness one of their first, in what I am sure will be many, hilarious takeovers: A performance done by way of Comic-Con in a small club in San Diego last Friday.
The entire core cast of the highly acclaimed British comedy phenomenon was present, as well as each of their alter egos, for the introductory show/DJ set: Creators Noel Fielding (aka Vince Noir) and Julian Barratt (aka Howard Moon), Michael Fielding (Naboo the Enigma), Rich Fulcher (Bob Fossil), Dave Brown (Bollo), and, of course, the Moon. There were classic crimps and guitar tracks, many beloved characters, stories, jokes, a piece of “serious” theater about an old Russian woman, and a sinister white rabbit lurking and ready to pounce at any moment.
Baby Teeth
Baby Teeth
Hustle Beach
(Lujo, 2009)
In a landscape crowded with vacant high-rises, dusty storefronts, and a budding population of vagrants, imagining the American Pastoral that Baby Teeth paints in their newest album is a relief. Inspired by Philip Roth’s 1997 novel—which unfolds during a post-WWII America and follows the unraveling of a Jewish-American’s upper middleclass life—the Chicago trio reevaluates and re-thinks the American Dream in an economic recession.
Recorded in only four days, using as many live takes as possible, the band’s deliberation is not lost on Hustle Beach. With their gaudy guitar riffs, excessive repetition, and grandiose organ-key intros, Baby Teeth outlines what Seymour Levov’s grief and America’s current economic recession identify as their catalyst: An idealized perception of the world. The band experiments with this fantastical projection by way of their silly demeanor, yet their substantial delivery captures the distortion of the American Dream: They postulate that chasers of the American Dream, people just “longing for soul,” mutate contentment and purpose into an acquisition of material possessions and conformity. How retentive can the age-old recipe be? What’s the shelf life of a pre-packaged meal with a few courses like marriage, a mortgage, and some kids?
Dirty Projectors at the Independent, San Francisco
Dirty Projectors
July 7th at the Independent, San Francisco
Electro beats are rattling the contemporary music scene. From Animal Collective’s dance party-ready Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009) to Major Lazer’s catalytic fanbase following the release of Guns Don’t Kill People-Lazers Do (2009), a familiar cast of indie artists are producing disco-infused tracks faster than the BPMs on their newest records. So, is there a future for traditional, full band arrangements in contemporary music?
“Look around at everyone / Everyone looks alive and waiting / The wind is up, the stars out / The sun is calm, the light is fading / But we are.” The Independent bubbles with experimental enthusiasts, the 400-plus attendees move in unison, the stage glows a green and purple, and mastermind behind the Dirty Projectors, Dave Longstreth, warbles his poetry to the crowd. Longstreth, one of indie music’s most innovative composers—accompanied on stage by a shaggy-haired bassist, a multi-tasking drummer (as he switches off between drums and a tambourine), a fresh-faced female on analog synth, and two dolls whose harmonic melodies are convincing enough to be taken as instruments—jolts the crowd with his moving lyrics and orchestrations. And movement, as in progression, is one of the hottest trends in indie music today.
King Sunny Adé and Papercuts at the Independent and Starfucker at Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco
King Sunny Adé & His African Beats
June 19th at the Independent, San Francisco
Although he remains hugely popular in his native Nigeria, it’s been more than a decade since King Sunny Adé’s heyday in America. Adé’s last album release here, Seven Degrees North, was off the market since 2000 (it was recently re-released). But that hasn’t stopped a litany of Western artists from digging into his immense catalog of juju music for inspiration. Any fan of bands like Foals, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, and Animal Collective has heard Adé’s influence. Dirty Projectors’ recently released album, Bitte Orca, features plenty of the multipart vocal harmonies and dissonant guitar that have been hallmarks of Adé’s sound over his 42-year career. Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio once cited Adé’s use of “a lot of people playing small parts that are intertwined together” as a major influence.
So it was with great anticipation that the 62-year-old guitarist and bandleader played a set at the Independent in San Francisco. His 12-piece backing band strode on stage and proceeded to dive into a beast of a rhythm, driven by a sea of dunduns, or “talking drums.” Looking years younger than a sextagenarian, Adé immediately led his group through one of the hallmarks of juju music: A lengthy, multipart a cappella harmony, sung in Yoruba, with an unmistakable cadence of short bursts followed by long verses. During many of the a cappella sections, which were the set’s mainstay, Adé and his fellow singers would act out choreographed dances and mime acts like passing food to one another. The only sign of Adé’s age—he’s released a mind-blowing 120 albums in his career—was the fact that he only picked up his axe once during the two-hour set. But when he chose to do so, as he was joined by two Nigerian dancers with superhuman powers in the gluteus maximus department, his playing was light and crisp.
Forward Music Festival in Madison, WI
by: Marissa G. Muller
Forward Music Festival’s attendees, venues, and acts are even less conducive to generalizations. As the manifestation of five music aficionados’ aim to “[highlight] Madison, Wisconsin as the hub of the Midwestern music scene,” Forward Music Festival succeeded in drawing nascent and established acts from near and far this year. Headliners Atlas Sound, YACHT, Ra Ra Riot, Andrew Bird, and Wavves packed crowds into intimate venues over the weekend. While all headliners bonded over their large followings in the indie community, the opening bands spanned from Christian rock to electro karaoke. And, as expected, with a roster that encompassed over 100 bands, some performances were more noteworthy than others.
The Wars of 1812 was one of the noteworthy performances. With only a drummer, bassist, guitarist, and keyboardist, the group emitted mega energy. Hailing from Minneapolis, like many of the other newer bands at the festival, the Wars of 1812 crafted upbeat melodies with lulling vocals, frenetic percussion, and Dark Side of the Moon-minded chords for an audience that ranged from age six to 60. In homage to the Beatles, whom the group pinpoints as their main influence, their set ranged from psych-folk to pop-rock to somber ballads and, like the Beatles, the Wars of 1812 had their quirks. I experienced their eccentricity up close when I caught up with frontman Peter Pisano after their set. “It’s actually possible to sit down and write music that’s so full of shit, people will actually listen to it,” he said, “and that has been my philosophy for the past three years.” And while the Wars of 1812 recognize the fickle nature of the music biz, headliners Wavves were unable to transcend their own fickle nature during their set on Saturday night.
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by: Marissa G. Muller
published: September 24, 2009
in column: It Shows
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