art is the new religion

there is always music

I haven't gone to many show over the past six months, but there are several concerts coming up that I don't want to miss.

11/1: Shudder To Think in LA
11/2: Shudder To Think at the Fillmore in SF

I met Craig back around '97 or '98 in Austin.  Shudder To Think played Emo's on a Wednesday so cover was a criminal two bucks.  We ended up standing next to each other at the bar, waiting for our drinks, started talking, and have been friends ever since.  I have waited a decade to see one of my favorite bands of all time again. (Also, this video - not my favorite David Wain production):

11/22: My Brightest Diamond with Clare & the Reasons at Swedish American Hall in SF
11/30: Azure Ray in LA
12/11: Wildbirds & Peacedrums at Bottom of the Hill in SF 

It's been years since Azure Ray has toured; in the meantime Maria and Orenda went their own ways to release solo records.  This is a one off show, not yet part of a larger tour.  I miss those Azure Ray harmonies.  Also, slip dresses and scooters:

I've seen My Brightest Diamond, the brainchild of Shara Worden, twice now and both shows were full productions: she definitely brings the theatre.  But beyond her wit, fanciful outfits, immaculate hairdos, and absolute shredding on guitar, her voice is the star of her show.  Can't wait to hear it in the delicate, old-wood acoustics of the Swedish American Hall.

Owing to Shara's impeccable taste, I'm already checking out the artist she's bringing with her on tour: Clare & the Reasons.

Under The Water

Shara was the one who tipped me off to Wildbirds & Peacedrums, whose debut record Heartcore tops my Best of 2008 list so far.  Mariam Wallentin's voice is a universe unto itself, a true original.  This show will be a revelation, I guarantee it.  Get your tickets now!

Related reading:

• My post about My Brightest Diamond
• My post about Wildbirds & Peacedrums

Support local artists this weekend in San Francisco

All this week I've been writing about buying local and buying directly from artists and makers.  So I'm excited to tell my blog readers in San Francisco about some of this weekend's opportunities to do just that.

The Capsule Design Festival is back this Sunday in my gorgeous neighborhood of Hayes Valley:

Capsule Design Festival
Sunday, October 19, 2008
11:00 am ‘til 6:00 pm
Hayes Valley Park
Octavia and Hayes Streets, San Francisco, CA 94102

Sunday's event will feature 160 clothing, jewelry, children's, lifestyle and accessory designers so you're bound to find something you love.  Check out the complete list of designers.  This video shows an aerial view from the event they held this past spring.

SF Open Studios continues this weekend.  Weekend 3 concentrates in the following neighborhoods:  Bernal Heights, Castro, Duboce, Eureka Valley, Glen Park, Mission, Noe Valley, Portola.  I'm planning on stopping by Art Explosion Studios in the Mission, which offers a chance to see well over 100 artists across three locations which are within walking distance of each other.

Also on Sunday is the 20th Annual Festival on the Hill in my old 'hood, Bernal Heights.  Reason I mention this is because a band I heard last Sunday at Indie Mart, Blue Rabbit, is playing the festival at 12:45pm. Blue Rabbit is fronted by three women, with Heather penning the songs and Sarah and Arami cooking up some gorgeous lead harmonies.  Their playfulness and beautiful blending of voices remind me a little bit of Tilly and the Wall, but the addition of a cello player adds a moodiness to the music.  A very fun band to see live.

Speaking of Astor Piazzolla

Yesterday I posted about Unboxing Indiespensable Volume 5, and showed you some of the cool stuff that came in the package. 

Here's a detail of one of the information cards that comes with each book release.  There's always an interview with the author, in this case Miriam Toews, which gives you some fun facts and interesting details about the writer and the book.

The bottom card is a quote from Nick Hornby, where he tells the story of how Powell's turned him on to Toews' first book.  The top card in this photo shares some info about Toews herself.  What stood out to me was that she listed Astor Piazzolla as her favorite relaxant.

Astor Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer who played the bandoneón, which looks and sounds somewhat like an accordion.  The bandoneón, according to Wikipedia, "has buttons on both sides. Additionally the notes produced on push and pull are different (bisonoric). This means that each keyboard has actually two layouts - one for the opening notes, and one for the closing notes. Since the right and left hand layouts are also different, this adds up to four different keyboard layouts that must be learned in order to play the instrument."  To even imagine trying to play this instrument makes my mind reel a bit.

Piazzolla was keen to throw some jazz elements into traditional tango, and he's lauded for taking the genre to a totally new place (nuevo tango, if you will).  Here's a not-particularly-relaxing clip of a live performance of "Chin Chin" from the 1984 Montreal International Jazz Festival:

I own Piazzolla's Tango: Zero Hour, recommended to me several years back by the incomparable Craig Wedren.  It's a lovely record.  Highly recommended.

 

Kings of Leon, revisited

I'm getting my music recommendations from really weird places these days.  I don't listen to the radio or watch TV and rarely check in with music blogs or music magazines.  The promotional CD fairy has flown away since I'm not actively writing about music.  And when I listen to music, it's usually from my own collection or from something I've intentionally sought out on Rhapsody.

So where am I hearing about new stuff?  One source is (non-music) blogs.

I already told you how Alyssa Milano inadvertently alerted me to the new Chad VanGaalen album coming out. That was unexpected.

I've recently, and extraordinarily late in the game, started regularly reading Dooce's very famous blog.  (For my friends who read this blog who are not SF Web 2.0 know-it-alls, Dooce got fired from her job for blogging years ago and now basically feeds her entire family from her blog empire.  The woman's a true pioneer and a phenomenal writer to boot.)  Turns out she's got pretty great taste in music too, even though music is hardly the focus of her blogging.

Dooce tipped me off to Kings of Leon's new single "Sex on Fire" in this post.  Now, I tried to like the toothsome brothers in Kings of Leon when they first came out, but something put such a bad taste in my mouth for them that I have written them off ever since.  Then Dooce's description of the song piqued my curiosity:  "Holy God, this song is so good. One morning last week it came on the satellite radio when I was taking Leta to school, just as we were pulling into the parking lot, and I totally made her sit there in the backseat so I could listen to the whole thing. And she kept rolling her eyes at me AS IF SHE COULD JUST SIT THERE AND IGNORE ITS BRILLIANCE. WHATEVER." and (via her Twitter) "'Sex on Fire' is on the radio in the car right now, and yeah, I'm actually humping the dashboard."

After that recommendation, I had to listen to determine whether I disagreed with Dooce's taste in music or whether KOL had actually recorded a song I could like.  Turns out they recorded a pretty amazing song; it's not going to change my life, but it is phenomenally catchy and passionate, and those brothers sure are growing up to be fine specimens.  Caleb's voice breaks and squeaks in just the right ways, like he's giving you all he's got.

The official video for the song exploits the brothers' attractiveness in a very satisfying way, and is worth watching for that reason, but their ignorant record company has disabled embedding the video (and you know how I feel about that).  But here's a great live version:

There's something kind of retro about this song - it's exuberant and not ironic.  It's straightforward, not trying to be clever.  Reminds me of the sincere delivery and giant choruses of old Pearl Jam.  The chorus - "your sex is on fire" - is dumb as a rock; but isn't that the point sometimes? 

In all those ways, this song - from Only By The Night which was released this week - is a perfect specimen.

Brazilian Girls on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic

Brazilian Girls is one of those bands which I've heard of over the years, listened to once or twice, but never really formed a positive or negative opinion about.  Yesterday I happened to click to watch this live performance from KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, and I was charmed:

Brazilian Girls from http://kcrwmusicnews.vox.com/

The song didn't really grab me in the beginning - her whistling is quite impressive, but I let the song run in the background while I read some other blogs.  But when she began the chorus, I stopped in my tracks. There's a sensory shift from the jaunty, plonky verse as the chorus quiets (ethereal, melancholy) then opens up (arching, angelic).  "Do you like my accent..." she asks, singing foreign words, playing with pronunciations.  Even her body language shifts; she closes her eyes in the denouement, reaches her hands skyward, calls out in that language, words I imagine are endearments, entreaties. I've listened to this song over and over, just for the reward of the chorus.

Then the spell is broken each time with those la-la's.

 

• You can see this performance and more over on the KCRW Music News blog.

Menomena @ the Independent tonight

As much as I love Menomena, it's a shame I'm not going to make it out to their show at the Independent here in San Francisco tonight.

Let's watch their video for "Evil Bee" off of Friend and Foe:

While we're at it, let's watch the Muppets' "Menomena" song, because it really never gets old:

Doo-doo, doo doo doo.

My Brightest Diamond

My Brightest Diamond, a.k.a. Shara Worden, released her second album last week.  I don't have A Thousand Shark's Teeth yet but I'm going to snag a copy on vinyl as soon as possible.  The tracks I've heard from it, online and during a live set earlier this year at SXSW, are even more haunting, gorgeous, challenging and ambitious than those on her first album.  I love to hear an artist grow, mature and stretch, filling an ever more unique shape amongst the edges of their influences.  I usually despise it when people compare artists to Jeff Buckley, either because the comparison is completely unfounded, or because the comparison just highlights outright imitation.  Shara comes close to copping a few of Jeff's most unique legacies in her vocals, songwriting and guitar tones, but for some reason I register her similarities as tributes and not theft.

I got to see Shara perform at SXSW earlier this year in a church with gorgeous acoustics.  I sat with dear friends, eating homemade cookies we bought from the churchgoing ladies while Shara serenaded us with her opera-quality voice, theatrical garb, and comfortable command of dynamics.  Watch this live performance from Other Music (a record store in NYC - I used to work right across the street from it) for a taste of Shara's talents.

Hear more of Shara's thoughts about the new record:

Shark's Teeth - Part I from My Brightest Diamond.

The copy editor in me would like to point out, due to the placement of the apostrophe in the album title, that we're talking here about one thousand teeth (which come from a shark), and not all the teeth from one thousand sharks.

• Buy A Thousand Shark's Teeth from Insound (mp3).

Ted Nugent at The Fillmore

It's been a crazy week.  I was out sick, work's been wild, and then last night I found myself at the Ted Nugent show at the Fillmore. 

As I mentioned yesterday, my friend Chris was playing with the opening artist Alex Winston.  He smuggled me into the venue before the doors opened with this impressive custom VIP pass and we caught up over a pre-show meal in the Fillmore's dining room.  We killed time before their set in the backstage area, which is really on the side of the stage on two levels.  Since Ted doesn't really spend time backstage (he probably lingers in his plush tour bus or nice hotel room and then shows up minutes before his set starts), Alex and her band had access to the main backstage room on the upper balcony. I was able to watch Alex's set from this vantage point. 

After her set concluded, the guys had to load out their gear.  I knew I had at least half an hour to kill so I left the backstage area to wander around and people watch a bit.  I'd estimate Nugent's audience to be around 85% male, and I was definitely the only female wandering around by herself.  The people watching was interesting for a little while, until I started to feel a little creeped out by the leers of drunk dudes.  I walked back up to the side balcony and attempted to re-enter the safety of the backstage area and was promptly stopped by the bouncer at the entrance.  Apparently even with my fancy VIP badge, I still needed to be escorted by a band member.  Nugent's security is pretty tight.

I sent Chris a text telling him to come save me, then took a seat on the public side of the balcony where about 40 or so fans were waiting to watch the show.  A few moments later, two burly dudes came in and ordered a few people to clear a walkway.  Then the 'Nuge himself strode in, all hat and flowing hair, long legs and smug smile. He was surrounded by about five men, all making a quick walk of the 20 or so yards to the backstage entrance.  It happened so quickly that most people just had enough time to turn their heads and smile and maybe let out a "Hey, man!"  Except for one woman:

"Teeeeed!  THAT'S TED!!!"

She wobbled to her feet and teetered after the entourage, sloppily grasping over the shoulders of the rear bodyguard.  Though her desire to touch her idol was indisputably fervent, the fact that she was at least a few drinks into her evening softened the effects of her pursuit.  She almost seemed to be grasping for him in slow motion, yelling out his name at full volume while forty other fans stood by and watched.  It didn't take Ted long to disappear behind the backstage curtains and it was over as quickly as it started, but the woman's night was made.  "That was TED F*$^IN' NUGENT!" she yelled as she tottered back to her friends, elated.  I can only imagine how many times and to how many people she'll tell this story for years to come.

I finally made my way backstage again and before reuniting with Chris I watched a few songs of Ted's set.  In addition to a fully painted backdrop, his stage set included: 

• a semi-automatic weapon (fake?)
• US flag
• California state flag
• animal skull
• animal pelt
• Ted Nugent-branded wall of amplifiers
• raccoon tail, affixed to pants

Got Me In A Stranglehold

I've been sick this week but managed to rally today, just in time to see my friend Chris who is in town tonight playing at The Fillmore in Alex Winston's band.  He says he hates when I mention my "friends" on my blog, so this should really annoy him.  Here's a video of Alex's band on this tour (Chris is the guitar player wearing glasses):

I don't know Alex's stuff very well, but I do know the headliner:  Mr. Ted Nugent.  Come on, come on up!

SXSW: Motörhead at Stubb's

"Don't forget us.  We are Motörhead.  We play rock n' %$*@ing roll."

I saw Motörhead today at 3pm at Stubb's.  I ended up with a VIP wristband thanks to my friend Steve, so I watched all the madness from the balcony, far away from the inebriated rockers in the mosh pit.

When you get the chance to see Motörhead for free, you go.