Considering its use as a catch-all for music originating in the general “not North America or Western Europe” region, the “world music” label, while technically accurate, is arguably the laziest addition to the English language since Martha Stewart coined “fixer-upper” in 1914 (a title challenged in recent years as Twitter spawned The Verb That Shall Never Appear Herein).
If the sprawling genre should apply to any musical production, though, it would be to that of Thievery Corporation: Sure, Beltway stalwarts Eric Hilton and Rob Garza serve as the group’s core, but a revolving, polyglotic galaxy of guest contributors define the Corporation’s identity. From Anoushka Shankar to Seu Jorge, the collection has drawn from disparate corners of the globe over the past 15 years, mixing genres to oftentimes brilliant effect. Loyalists laud the mega-collab as groundbreaking in its synthesis of foreign sounds and cultures; detractors accuse the band of aspiring to a Starbucks-worthy brand of vapid backpacker trip-hop. Last weekend, it scarcely mattered: Thievery Corporation brought its lush consonance to San Francisco’s annual “Sea of Dreams” New Year’s festival, and 7,000 revelers converged to greet 2011 as one pulsing, euphoric mass of Day-Glo.
This isn’t to suggest, however, that the conglomerate played alone: Berlin’s Modeselektor and gypsy-punk-evolved Balkan Beat Box topped the roster of nearly two dozen acts on four stages. Thievery, in fact, effectively opened for brash SoCal DJ MiMOSA, whose 70 minutes of “crunk-step dub-hop” (his words) shut down the venue before an entranced crowd that thinned only minimally after Thievery stepped off. The throngs jiggled through a vast maze of stages, sideshows, vendors, and recovery stations, with throwback candyravers, goths, and all sorts in between ogling an impressive assortment of hanging jumbo neon constellations and other visual treats. Elaborately-bearded tea mavens from San Francisco’s OmShanTea served up hot refreshments in a Bedouin tent-like environment, while upstairs, UC-Santa Cruz grads and other mellow-outers vied for prime puffing position in the aptly named Hookahdome Lounge.
Thievery Corporation, which took the stage shortly after midnight and played well past 2 am, ran through a host of standards (yes, “Lebanese Blonde” included), drawing heavily from its latest and most political album, 2008’s Radio Retaliation (playing “Vampires,” “Sweet Tides” and “33 Degree,” to name a few). Co-founders Hilton and Garza — still the band’s only official members — presided over the stage behind twin turntables as longtime vocal mainstays LouLou (France), Sleepy Wonder (Jamaica) and Emiliana Torrini (Iceland) swapped turns in the spotlight with several other toasters, funksters and songstresses. Meanwhile, a DC-heavy collection of instrumentalists layered sitar upon sax, trumpet upon guitar, bass upon bongoes until the roof of the main hall, wracked from beyond by a howling winter’s storm and from within by relentless and rolling basslines and the heat of many thousands of sweating bodies, could take no more and dropped the first raindrops of 2011 onto the heads of the revelers below.
Never before has a leaking roof been welcomed with such enthusiasm.
Remember BMG? When they offered “Ten CDs for the Price of One,” they must have assumed that most of the kids who enlisted were too hopped up on Pogs and Big League Chew to mail back the overprints they tried to foist upon you with every delivery. I was no such mark. I monitored the mailbox religiously and ‘returned to sender’ with abandon, collecting my ten damn CDs for the low damn price of one, just like the good folks at BMG had promised. Never mind the fact that I spent the next year scrawling ever-more-threatening letters in an ultimately successful campaign to make them stop sending me Kenny Loggins compilations — I had my treasure trove, and among the trendy (Nirvana’s In Utero), obligatory (Marley’s Legend), educational (The Cream of Clapton), peculiar (Green Jellÿ’s Cereal Killer Soundtrack), and Sinbad-ish (Heavy D’s Peaceful Journey), I uncovered an album that would influence my adolescence more than any other: Bad Religion’s Stranger than Fiction.
At turns uptempo and anthemic, the album is defined by Greg Graffin’s relentless, scathing vocals and driving guitar work led by Brett Gurewitz in his premature swan song with the band (he famously split with the band to lead Epitaph Records’ evolution into a major indie force). Half punk, half thrash, half rock opera (yes, this shit gets three halves), Stranger than Fiction recruited kids like me and my friends on pure aesthetics, with singles like “Infected” featuring singalong hooks conveying vague malcontent and others, like “Hooray for Me,” issuing messages that no youngster would reject: “Can you imagine for a second/Doing anything just ‘cuz you want to/Well that’s just what I do/So hooray for me…and fuck you!”
But the extent of Stranger than Fiction’s impact only began to reveal itself once “21st Century Digital Boy” got stale around the 30th repeat and we started listening carefully to the rest of the album: I would wager good greenbacks that Americans born between 1980 and 1985 learned more middle-school vocab from this album than from the oeuvres of Twain, Steinbeck and Judy Fucking Blume combined. This from “Inner Logic,” as told to a 12-year-old more accustomed to the diction of Penthouse Forum: “Graduated mentors stroll in marbled brick porticos/ In sagacious dialog they despise their average ways/ Betraying pomp and discipline, they mold their institution/ Where they practice exclusion on the masses every day.”
My discovery of Stranger than Fiction laid the groundwork for exploration of many sorts, from exhaustive encyclopedia research on all things “-theism” to the rest of Bad Religion’s work. Frustratingly, my efforts to complete the former were thwarted by the band’s expansion of the latter throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s as they continued to mine such common themes as oppression and alienation in the context of contemporary events (notably those of the political variety). Along the way there were moments of creative paralysis and subsequent rebirth (Gurewitz’s return in 2001 seen by some as a flash point in the band’s return to form). But no album, to my mind, has come close to eclipsing Stranger than Fiction.
So, then, it was to my great pleasure that Bad Religion, while touring to support their 15th studio album, Dissent of Man, dipped well into the past as it played a sold-out Regency Center in San Francisco last Friday night. In addition to early staples such as “Fuck Armageddon…This is Hell,” the band played a handful of Stranger than Fiction cuts for the heaving crowd, most of which was significantly younger than the artists (though a sprinkling of grayhairs lurked in the rafters, heads bobbing). Graffin stoked EssEff pride by launching into the ambiguously-spirited “Los Angeles is Burning,” eliciting middle fingers and hearty “Fuck LA” chants not long after proclaiming San Francisco the band’s “second city” and describing how he was once accosted by a transvestite here during an early tour. The singer, less physical a performer than he was in his salad days, nevertheless exhibited the same moxie that impressed so many young people a quarter-lifetime ago (and clearly continues to lure new generations), charging through 25-plus songs in the two-hour set and leaving the audience screaming for more even after a second encore.
I was trying to think of a clever closing line, but it’s 5:50 a.m., and goddammit, I have to get up at Doesn’t Matter tomorrow, so just enjoy these crappy videos and pipe down already:
Along with the crisp November (now December — I know, we lag) weather, and falling colored leaves came a refreshing perspective from the Bay, in the form of the new Jeremy Fish exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. Weathering the Storm is the San Francisco artist’s premiere museum showing, and an impressive one at that, including a boatload of new paintings and a smattering of hand-carved dark wood pieces filling the stairwell and the mezzanine level of LAM.
Best known for his whimsical woodland creature/skull hybrids, Fish reveals a successful transition in the show: His familiar forms become sculptural works, including myriad bas-relief frames, a fully functional couchette, and several individual sculptures such as the F-Unicorn (my personal favorite; pictured immediately below). Fish also created a large mural engulfing several walls, overlaid with cutout paintings bearing rainy day themes referencing current world crises and struggles. Having followed his work since my San Francisco salad days, this show seems more reactionary than anything I’ve viewed previously, presenting substantial commentary throughout.
The long hallway of the mezzanine was adorned with a series of smaller cutout paintings. Reflecting on Fecal Face’s earlier coverage of Fish’s studio pre-opening, I vividly imagined how each piece came jigsawed to life in his North Beach space. These cutouts maintained the strongest link to his previous work, providing comedic and lighthearted subjects in bright colors.
The crowds came out in full force, with many from the action sports industry, established Laguna Beach art-types, and families with small children in attendance. LAM’s evolving programming is bolstered significantly by shows such as this, which appeal to patrons beyond the institution’s Sunday-afternoon-luncheon base — as evidenced by the number of youthful bodies roaming the halls.
BONUS: Upon approaching the bar, I excitedly realized that my favorite bartender-about-town, Armando, was manning the buckets. He majorly hooked a sister and her brother up. Armando, you’re “Our-Man…do” (doh.)
Today’s SF Chronicle carries a front-page article on the San Francisco Panorama, the ambitious forthcoming publication from SF publishing house McSweeney’s. Blatantly self-serving motives aside (the piece offers Chron readers “the chance to preorder the one-time product” through its sfgate.com website and announces plans to run excerpts from the Panorama in the coming weeks), Julian Guthrie’s overview neatly profiles a literary endeavor that is anything but concise: The Panorama clocks in at 320 pages. The pub’s centerpiece comes in the form of a 112-page broadsheet newspaper comprising investigative and feature news writing as well as substantial arts, sports, food and comics sections. A 112-page magazine and a 96-page books section round out the epic.
As one would expect of an endeavor of such staggering length, McSweeney’s employed an army of creative types for the project — 150 of them, to be inexact. As the broadsheet’s name implies, the Panorama is heavy on the Bay Area/NorCal slant, and the contributors’ page is accordingly representative (Michael Chabon, Robert Hass, Peter Orner, Sean Wilsey and other notable locals, as well as “dozens of working and laid-off Bay Area journalists,” provided words). But the scope of Panorama’s literary and artistic haul is equally impressive from a national perspective: Stephen King, Chris Ware, Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Art Spiegelman and Matt Klam lend their names to the project. So breathtaking is the collection, in fact, that the Chronicle deems it deserving of a quote from one of its own editors, Ward Bushee, who asserts that “the Panorama may be the biggest, most creative and famously bylined edition of a newspaper ever printed.”
Justifiably gushing praise for the literary collaborgy aside, let’s get real: Dave Eggers’ latest altruistic project, slated for release on Dec. 8th, looks to be brilliant in many, many ways, but it will not save newspaper. The Panorama is a one-off several months in the making. It costs $16 (though Bay Area readers can cop it for just $5 the day it debuts). And the prospect of the publication realizing a profit appears dubious at best.
Wisely, McSweeney’s stops short of issuing any delusionally grandiose proclamations, instead implying that the Panorama is intended to display to the public and What Remains of Newspaper that there are alternatives to reining it in. Explains the publisher: “We think that the best chance for newspapers’ survival is to do what the internet can’t: namely, use and explore the large-paper format as thoroughly as possible. To that end, we opted for a huge and luxurious broadsheet — 15” x 22”. Then we unleashed artists and designers to show exactly how much the format can do.”
The newspaper section of the Panorama, then, should serve as an experimental blueprint — an idea, or rather, a collection of ideas, for purveyors and readers of newspaper to examine and consider. Many, if not most, major newspaper publishers and owners will dismiss the Panorama as a fantastic and fiscally nonviable exercise in “alternative” journalism. These are people whose ideas — or, more accurately, lack of such — haven’t served their publications particularly well in recent times.
Newspaper needs an overhaul if it is to survive in any physical form; the time for tender tweaks to the business model has passed. In an industry whose only recent innovative success is championed chiefly by a fossil intent on reeling back civil rights to 1952, the Panorama may serve as the radical catalyst newspaper needs to avoid a meek descent into utter irrelevance.
2) Come evening, the girls of SFC Double Dutch delight in providing an opportunity for drunk concertgoers to hurt-slash-embarass themselves.
3) Pirates on stilts bring the creep hard.
4) As a friend noted, hipsters are all closeted fans of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone,” as proven by Girl Talk’s set.
5) Grizzly Bear are wimps: They complained incessantly about the cold while playing on Sunday, and then complimented L.A. on their warm climate at the Palladium on Tuesday. More like Panda Bear, boys. P.S.: Aren’t you from Brooklyn??!?
6) Poem Guy Zach Houston commands a way longer line when the sun is shining.
7) Music can be organized as a family tree of increasing edginess, e.g.: Gin Blossoms —> Dinosaur Jr. —> Hüsker Dü. Noted during Bob Mould’s set.
8) Local graf artist Robert D Harris is adept at creating lovely works despite the damp and salty bay air.
9) Dan Deacon makes everyone smile — no matter how tough you want to look — with his dance contests and human tunnels.
Bay Area hip-hopper The Clap may or may not have perished in one of the myriad natural disasters that have struck Southeast Asia and Oceania in the past three weeks. Composing one-third of seminal San Fran provocateurs Dead Horses, The Clap and his misogynistic, drug-riddled hedonism will be missed by many dozens of people should he fail to return of good health and spirit. He also owes DCQ $31.50, so there’s that, too. Clap, please come back and kill ‘em all, preferably before rent’s due on the 1st.
(Warning: Video and lyrical content therein completely devoid of moral fiber).
When we were wee bitty Dunces growing up in the Bay Area, we idolized our 49ers. This was before we knew (or cared to know) about collective bargaining, steroids, domestic violence and salary caps (or even ‘salaries,’ for that matter). They were Niners, and they kicked most everyone all over the field, and they were awesome.
We knew them all — even the offensive lineman. We had Joe and Jerry and Roger and John and Harris and Guy and Jesse and Steve (Wallace) and Steve (Young) and Charles and Eric and Ronnie and Keena and Brent and Tom and even Mike Fucking Cofer. The only question was whether we’d beat the Vikings, then the Giants, then later the Cowboys, and finally the Packers, in the NFC Championship Game. Sometimes we would and sometimes we wouldn’t, but we’d almost always get close (I vividly remember winning ‘only’ 10 games and missing the playoffs in 1991). Either way they’d riot in the Mission, which, though only a mile and a half from where I grew up (which wasn’t a perfect place, either), might as well have been present-day Juarez for all I knew (though it looked OK from the Laidlaw bus on the way school every morning).
The Niners, good guys that they were, played a charity basketball game in Kezar Pavilion every offseason. This was your chance to see these heroes in the flesh, up close and without all their armor. We were there. With much trepidation I approached John Taylor and asked for an autograph. He asked, “You got 10 bucks?” I said “N-noo” and started retreating to the bleachers. He hollered out something and I turned around and he signed my ticket stub. I still don’t know if he was messing with me or actually trying to extort 10 bucks out of an unemployed, half-grown person, but I’ve since concluded that this was the moment when I realized not all athletes were as great as I’d previously assumed they were.
Years passed and we grew somewhat and saw the Niners in a different light: They were still very good — not dominant, but very good — every year. But the cast had changed: Where there had been Joe, there was now Steve. We were OK with that because he, like Joe, tore up defenses without fail, which was nice. We also had Charles and Deion and Richard and Rickey and Ricky and William as new complements to Steve. It was this year — 1995 — when I became aware of the concept of ‘buying championships.’ But we were still the Niners, and kicked everyone’s asses, and it was awesome. A precocious tween with no bills, job, nagging wife or serious work ethic, I had all kinds of time to absorb every number in the Chronicle’s sports section. And soon it was decided: Ricky Watters was the new BEST PLAYER EVER. He scored five — FIVE! — touchdowns in one playoff game. He could run, catch, spin, high-step…the Man. Like Taylor, he came to the local basketball gym to play a charity game with other Niners, and we all got him to sign stuff and he was the coolest. I think he even threw down a dunk, though maybe not.
But Ricky, like the Niners of the mid-to-late 90s, never achieved greatness, though he was consistently very good, and occasionally spectacular. Then he bolted for Philly and had a couple decent seasons there and places beyond before retiring after, according to the omniscient and infallible Wikipedia, reportedly turning down Cleveland’s contract offer out of fear that terrorists would blow up the next plane he boarded (this being the age of 9/11 hysteria, and he being a man not paid for his intellect).
Recently, our thoughts returned to the guy. An extensive Google search followed. His modest personal website indicates he does promotional speaking, helps run football camps, and bankrolls a positive-vibe rap label.
But he also proffers up a glimpse into his personal life:
by Jon Toulouse
