Live Review: Throbbing Gristle at the Grand Ballroom

In the further adventures of Throbbing Gristle as the most ingratiating band on the planet, the four original members turned on all the house lights in the Grand Ballroom last night, uncoiled an incessant low, seraphic noise from the stage, and started their first set in San Francisco since 1981’s famous show at Kezar Pavilion with “Very Friendly,” a peppy little tune about murdering children.

“No matter how fucking loud you yell,” declared a sort-of-almost-halfway-transgendered Genesis P-Orridge, “my voice will always be louder than yours.”

That could very well be Throbbing Gristle’s motto: Our voice will always be louder than yours. Of course, the band was quiet for years. In the aftermath of the Kezar show, they stopped performing, and the live album from that swan song, Mission of Dead Souls, served as a final spurt from one of the world’s most abrasive, interesting and unique groups. Last night’s return to the city of Dead Souls was a historic event, yes. It was also a sonically vicious onslaught, and its voice, definitely, was louder than yours.

In front of the speakers was not the healthiest place to be standing, where both physical and mental faculties were repeatedly strained by jarring stabs of digital knifeplay from the laptops of Chris Carter and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson. And yet in front of the speakers was the most appropriate place to fully absorb the live experience, a full-body workout unavailable on Throbbing Gristle’s albums. The health of their audience is not a concern. The bass sounds blew loose-fitting clothes with each gut-churning wallop; up in the piercing tweeter range lay Cosey Fanni Tutti’s slide guitar abstractions; and in the middle of it all, the soul of the band, P-Orridge, delivering litany after litany on death, bondage, masturbation, mayhem and disorder.

In a blonde wig, orange blouse, pink skirt and brown vest, the bosomed P-Orridge commanded the stage, intractable during the frightening narratives of classic Throbbing Gristle material like 20 Jazz Funk Greats’ “What a Day” and “Persuasion,” and Mission of Dead Souls‘ “Something Came Over Me.”

A dash of humor came when a note was thrown on stage. “Genesis: Thank you for creating you,” P-Orridge read out loud, reciting the note. “Love, Stephanie. Call me.” Then, to make sure that everyone had a chance to write it down, P-Orridge twice read off Stephanie’s phone number. “Stephanie has brown hair, a blue dress, some cleavage,” he continued, “and she’s ready to be created with you.”

For as much as P-Orridge is painted as an antagonist, an iconoclast, and an artistic anarchist, he is still, in his heart, a human being. During the lone song played last night with the lights dimmed, the new song “Almost a Kiss,” he stepped back from each verse to unfurl his arms and plead to the skies for a love that had mysteriously disappeared. It was a dark, revelatory moment, unveiling the universal sadness that is so often shrouded in Throbbing Gristle’s industrial venom.

The show ended sweetly, with P-Orridge introducing his daughter Genesse to the crowd, and concluded with a long, long version of “Discipline,” which the up-till-then staid crowd took to heart by finally becoming undisciplined; bodies started moving, someone in the back dropped their drink, a fight broke out in the balcony. Finally, all the ingratiation had worked. Finally, Throbbing Gristle had made their grand return. And just like that, with an appreciative bow and no encore, they were gone again.

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Daredevils & Queens Gets the Axe

First the Boogie Room gets evicted. Then the Orchard Spotlight goes dim. And now, Daredevils & Queens gets the axe. What the hell’s going on here?

At around noon yesterday, Travis Kennedy, owner of Daredevils & Queens, was paid a visit by the Santa Rosa Fire Department and given a stern verbal warning to not host any more gatherings there. No written notice was issued, nor any specific citations made pertaining to emergency exits or capacity—just a heads up that one of their marshals had walked by the other night and noticed a group of people inside. Kennedy had hosted a private birthday party for a friend, with about 50 guests, the week before. Any such afterhours assemblies at Daredevils & Queens, Kennedy was firmly instructed, are against city zoning code.

This, of course, is terrible, terrible news. The successful hair salon that’s also hosted numerous art shows, reunion events and musical performances has grown into an increasingly vibrant and important center on Railroad Square’s cultural map. Every single event I’ve attended there has been well-mannered and safely monitored. Especially because the city has placed such an emphasis on supporting the arts, Kennedy is understandably dismayed that he’s in a position to cancel all his upcoming events—including a May 2 show with Polar Bears, Shuteye Unison and Prizehog.

“The more I thought about it,” he told me today, “the more I can’t see how they could shut us down! I wasn’t charging any money, and it was a good thing all around.”

Kennedy has held events very sporadically—once every two months or so—and has never received any complaints from neighbors or police. He’s never taken a percentage of art sales, and in fact he always, always spends his own money to buy merchandise and support the artists and musicians he willfully opens his salon doors to. Is it really such a crime to broaden your place of business to support the local arts and music community?

Kennedy is looking into finding out how he can work with the city and continue to host events at Daredevils & Queens legitimately, but for now, all events are off.

First Fridays On Fourth

Some of you may have heard of First Fridays in Santa Rosa, where the streets are overtaken on the first Friday of each month with local art, theater, and live music. This year, the organizers are looking to ramp up the whole shebang, and they’re presenting a great opportunity for local bands and musicians to play in public – and actually get paid for it.

Attention, everyone! First Fridays is looking for bands!

The music schedule is still wide open at this point, and there’s two time slots in both Courthouse Square and Railroad Square each Friday. That’s four bands each month. This is your chance to bang on a guitar, howl in public—and instead of getting a citation from downtown cops, you’ll get a check from the City of Santa Rosa. How can you lose?

It’s easy to sit back and complain that there are no places to play in Santa Rosa, but it disheartens me when the city actually funds a budget to create opportunities like this and they go unseized. So far, it’s mostly classical and acoustic music, but all types of music are welcome. Let’s fill the schedule up quick with kickass bands and prove that Santa Rosa can support its local scene.

“We are looking for all genres of music,” writes Arts District Coordinator Vicky Kumpfer, and notes a sizable stipend will be paid (it’s not pocket change). Those interested in joining the lineup—and I’d act fast if I were you—should get in touch with her at (707) 543-3732, or email at vkumpfer [at] srcity.org.

Just Give In

On the downside, it’s Trident gum commercializing the flash mob concept (it was bound to happen) by paying participants to advertise for an upcoming Beyoncé cross-promotion.

On the upside: It’s 100 girls doing the “Single Ladies” dance in Piccadilly Circus. What’s not to love?

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Live Review: Adam Theis' 'Brass, Bows & Beats' at the Palace of Fine Arts

Last night, the City of San Francisco belonged to Adam Theis.

At 8:06pm, the lobby of the Palace of Fine Arts was full, over a hundred people, with two lines for will call and another line for ticket purchases. Inside the theatre, all seats were occupied; standing-room overflow lined the aisles. Onstage, the orchestra had already begun playing, trying to fit as much music as possible into the tiny time frame allowed.

At the front was the man of the hour, Adam Theis, conducting this impossibly huge ensemble after a year of nonstop writing. San Francisco’s own Theis—of the Jazz Mafia, the Realistic Orchestra, the Shotgun Wedding Quintet and an upbringing in Santa Rosa—stood casually in sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt, overseeing the premiere of his magnum opus and life’s work thus far.

This is no local-boy-makes-good story. After the incredible composition unveiled last night, it’s time to stop with the hometown platitudes and officially herald Adam Theis as a major talent.

Brass, Bows & Beats is a work on par with Miles Davis & Gil Evans’ Live at Carnegie Hall or Charles Mingus’ Epitaph—visionary in scope, staggering in depth. Rarely have I heard live music of greater variety without the variety itself taking center stage. If there is a dominant theme to the work, it is that we are all one, and it makes its case with dizzying arrangements, evocative poetry and an impossible-to-resist urge to get down.

In the great jazz tradition, Adam Theis has spent ten years playing virtually nonstop in San Francisco’s small nightclubs. Sometimes he’ll play a whole set of loose, free-form funk songs. Sometimes he’ll stick to strictly jazz. Lately he’s been showcasing special sets of instrumentals sampled by De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, bringing attention back to the sources of classic hip-hop songs. Beats, Bows and Brass combines all of this activity with cerebral aplomb and an unerring personality that widely circumvents the rudimentary hokum of early jazz/hip-hop hybrids like Jazzmatazz or Hand on the Torch.

Theis conducted his 48-piece orchestra, played trombone and bass, spoke humbly between segments and animatedly tossed his charts to the stage floor throughout the performance. He allowed his players, and particularly his vocalists, to take the limelight. He stepped aside when violinists Anthony Blea and Mads Tolling went head-to-head in the dual jazz improvisation “Blea vs. Tolling”; when rappers Lyrics Born, Aima, Dublin, Seneca and Karyn Paige evoked the Mission District in “Community 2.0”; and when DJ Aspect McCarthy scratched along to beatbox breakdowns while the brass section swelled and ebbed dramatically.

On the surface, Brass, Bows & Beats is akin to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in that it brings a genre associated with black music into the symphonic realm. Theis does the same for hip-hop with Brass, Bows and Beats, but a closer cousin is Gordon Jenkins’ 1949 vignette Manhattan Tower, in which a great city is realized through a work of music that feels as alive as the city itself. Without a doubt, Brass, Bows & Beats is the sound of San Francisco in 2009; intelligent, soulful and diverse.

Once the official symphony was over, a second, looser set opened with an Astor Piazzolla song featuring Colin Hogan on the accordion. Joe Bagale brought the house down with his soul cry “Love Song,” and Jon Monahan conducted Eric Garland’s “Arc Line.” Those awaiting a party-rocking amalgam—in line with the Jazz Mafia’s many nights at Bruno’s—were rewarded near the end when the intensity level was raised markedly by Lyrics Born, who had been a small accessory to the first set.

Working the front of the stage, Lyrics Born brought the entire Palace of Fine Arts to its feet with full-orchestra versions of his own album tracks. A slow, sultry “Over You” and the hands-in-the-air “Hott 2 Deff” balanced the serious nature of the first set; the veteran Bay Area rapper then joined a full-frontal freestyle by all six vocalists for a television crime drama “Streets of San Francisco / Theme from S.W.A.T.” medley, arranged by Jeanne Geiger, that thrillingly increased in tempo toward the euphoric finish of a great night.

Attention, rest of the world outside the Bay Area! Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia: Recognize!

Harmony Festival Just Got Five Times Awesomer / Weirder

The inital lineup for this year’s Harmony Festival was announced last month, with all of the Spearheadiness and Matisyahuism and Kimocky vibes you’d expect from the Harmony Festival. But I just checked their site again, and hang on to your beanies…

The Dead Kennedys?! The Bad Brains?!

This is no joke. The re-formed Dead Kennedys (minus Jello Biafra) and fellow punk rock pioneers Bad Brains are playing—on separate days—in the land of Nag Champa and the Goddess Grove at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa this year. I have just spit my herbal green tea all over the keyboard. This is nuts!

In another exciting development, the excellent Somali-born rapper K’naan is appearing at the Harmony Festival both Friday night and Saturday. His new album, Troubadour, is easily one of the year’s best so far. I’ve written about him extensively here, here, and here. His short set at last year’s Outside Lands festival was unbelievably great. My pal John Beck echoes the sentiment: “When will K’naan hit the Bay Area as a headliner?”

This is also a good time to applaud Saturday night’s jazz addition, the Spirit of Miles Davis quintet with Ron Carter, Airto, Mike Clark and Mike Stern. Ron Carter! On the bass! In Santa Rosa! And they’ve thrown Killah Priest in the group, too?! Seriously!

Job well done, Harmony Festival. This is the craziest / best news in a long time. I’d like to think it also represents a shift in consciousness about punk rock; that at its sweaty, aggressive core, it’s basically always been about caring for humanity and trying to make the world a better place.

Live Review: Green Day at the Fox Theater – Oakland, CA

Sometimes you just gottta believe.

As expected, the Internet was flooded with sleazy offers for tickets to Green Day’s last-minute show at the Fox Theater in Oakland last night, and unless you’d been quick, the situation looked grim. Luckily, between the irritating online postings asking for either $300 or for Asian girls to “send photos,” there came perpetual signs of hope on Craigslist. “Just bought 2 GA tix on Ticketmaster!” read a typical post. “Don’t pay the scalpers! Keep trying!”

Throughout the day, the faithful were rewarded with sporadic releases of tickets to the third of Green Day’s “secret shows”—all of them announced at the last minute, selling out instantly and premiering the band’s new album 21st Century Breakdown in its entirety.

I scored two quick-release tickets at noon yesterday, and drove frantically through rush-hour traffic with my wife to Fremont to pick up my niece. We got to the theater right at 8pm, bought one of seemingly plenty of extra tickets outside on the sidewalk, and voilá—I was suddenly standing with some people who’d flown in from Massachusetts, six rows away from a band I’ve loved since I first saw them opening for Nuisance, All and MDC in 1989 at the River Theater in Guerneville, CA.

Obviously, much has changed in Green Day’s world since 1989. At that first show in Sonoma County, they made jokes about handing out hundreds of joints to the crowd, sold hand-silkscreened tuxedo shirts stolen from their high school marching band for $3, and had just one record—a fantastic Lookout 7” called 1,000 Hours that my friends and I listened to obsessively. (We weren’t alone—just a month later at the Los Robles Lodge in Santa Rosa, crowds stormed the stage to sing along haphazardly with “Dry Ice.”)

20 years later, bouncers now keep an eye on pot smoking, T-shirts are now sold for $35, and Green Day, of course, now have plenty more than one record out. But the key magic is still there. As evidenced in their two-hour-plus show last night, Green Day is among a small handful of bands who have navigated the waters of success with a clear head and, in spite of the rigors of fame, have only gotten better over the years.

Case in point: the new album premiered last night.

At the doors of the beautifully restored art-deco Fox Theater, patrons were handed a Playbill-like program detailing the three acts of the new record, complete with author credits and libretto, while a large tragedy/comedy curtain hung over the stage. It’s hard to assess an album on only one listen, but 21st Century Breakdown is, as expected, a sister sequel to American Idiot. It loosely follows a story about being disillusioned with modern life in America, with recurring characters and themes. It’s pensive, it’s angry, and it unabashedly swipes snippets from the great catalog of rock ‘n’ roll and parlays them into anthems for the disenfranchised.

Judging from last night’s impassioned performance, at least four songs are utterly dumbfounding in their greatness (“Before the Lobotomy,” “Last of the American Girls,” “Horseshoes and Handgrenades,” “Last Night on Earth”), and several, like “¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl),” toy with completely new styles.

There are echoes of Green Day’s past: “Christian’s Inferno” starts with a rant straight out of the bridge to “Holiday,” “East Jesus Nowhere” cribs the chorus from “Welcome to Paradise,” and at one point Green Day stone-cold lifts the outro to “Brain Stew.” At the same time, the album makes musical and lyrical reference to Van Morrison, Gogol Bordello, the Who, Screeching Weasel, Barry McGuire, Wilco, John Lennon, P.I.L., the Ramones, Frank Sinatra, the Replacements, Tom Petty, Rancid, Otis Redding, the Misfits and Francis Scott Key.

One thing the album is missing, sadly, is a sense of fun. American Idiot was written and recorded quickly when the master tapes for their “real” album were stolen, giving it a spontaneous immediacy. 21st Century Breakdown took five years to make, and it shows. It is labored and serious, full of dramatic pauses and piano segues, and it teeters on the pretentious. I wish it didn’t. During a ’70s soft-rock piano ballad complete with falsetto vocals, an audience member held up a homemade sign reading “Play at 924 Gilman,” and it was painfully obvious how far the band has “grown” since their constant presence at said club. (Billie played there last year with Pinhead Gunpowder; read about it here.)

A drastic explosion in the excitement level came after the short intermission, when Green Day played older songs for another hour, and I got blissfully lost in the sweaty fray of people. “American Idiot” turned the stoic crowd into a swarming tornado; “Jesus of Suburbia” was dedicated “to everyone down at Gilman Street,” and “Going to Pasalacqua,” “She,” “Longview” and “Welcome to Paradise” thrilled longtime fans. The band was obviously making the set list up on the spot—during “Minority,” Billie asked, “I don’t know, should this be the last song?”

It wasn’t, of course. The show’s final song, the epic “Homecoming,” came with a warm explanation from Billie about the East Bay. Clearly, the band was happy to play for a hometown crowd (including Jello Biafra!), and at the end, he stood at the front of the stage, repeatedly opened his arms to the audience, and mouthed the words “I love you, I love you, I fucking love you!” over and over.

The feeling was mutual.

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Live Review: Britney Spears at the HP Pavilion, San Jose

How thrilled was I for the opportunity to take my young niece to the circus! Yes, the fond memories of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey’s ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ still linger in my mind as warm assurances of a childhood well spent. Never had I thought, as a lad, that I might one day be on the opposite end of this great tradition: a torch-bearer passing down to a generation anew the excitement of the traveling circus under the big top.

And yet the occasion was dew-dropped with sorrow. The circus has changed quite drastically in such a short span. I hardly recognized it. The brothers Ringling have nothing to fear in the poor competition presented by this newfangled “Britney Spears” circus of today.

We entered the arena in anticipation alongside droves of like-minded circus fans, bought our popped corn and cotton candy, and found our seats in the grandstand. When the curtain was raised, a group of female acrobats in clown makeup called the “Pussycat Dolls” filled the center ring, but they performed no somersaults, no balancing act, nor did they treat the children in attendance to any aerial trickery.

Instead, the acrobats moved their pelvises in ways that made me think they had to go to the bathroom. This hunch was proved correct when each girl ran to a pole and squeezed her legs around it. Why is there no bathroom provided for the performers? Circus budgets are so tight these days.

In my youth, the circus was a nonstop show. But when the poor Pussycat acrobats left the stage, there was nothing. Certainly, thought I, Merle Evans will march in with the opening strains of “Thunder and Blazes,” followed by wagons of lions; or a caravan of unicycles will charge the arena; or, if fate does smile on us, a motorcycle “globe of death” will roll into the ring.

Instead, a large screen showed moving pictures of the circus. Moving pictures! I could not believe the indignity! The surrounding children in our section seemed content to occupy themselves by staring at their telephones and hitting the small devices with their thumbs, but I was incensed. This was not what I had paid $150 for!

After this half-hour mockery, the lights went out and more live circus tricks ensued, erasing the sour feelings. A clan of jugglers flung clubs into the air! A prancing maiden navigated dozens of hula-hoops! Two strongmen hoisted a nimble gymnast into flights of fancy! All those seated in the grandstands were tickled and on their feet in glee.

Unfortunately, the main attraction of this particular circus was the elephant, who I believe was advertised as a “singer.” Upon the elephant’s entrance, the small children cheered wildly. Yet to the more wizened it was very apparent that the elephant, replete with jovial blonde wig, was not singing at all but only moving its mouth in time with the loudspeakers!

From that point forward, the singing-imposter elephant took center ring. Clowns surrounded the elephant and held their bladders while horrendous crashes of noise mixed with the “songs.” Trapeze artists dangled from the ceiling, unmoving, while the elephant ambled slowly to and fro in a cornucopia of silly outfits.

After an hour, an unknown defect created a gigantic electric malfunction in the circus apparatus, causing sparks to fly onto the rings, and the performance was over. What a disappointment!

I do hope the Ringling Bros. circus comes to town soon. I would relish a chance to show my niece the true spirit of the big-top instead of this shoddy knock-off currently being peddled across the country.

Outside Lands 2009 Lineup Announced

Here it is—the lineup for the 2009 Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, August 28-30, 2009:

Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, M.I.A., Mars Volta, Modest Mouse, Ween, Thievery Corporation, Black Eyed Peas, TV on the Radio, Atmosphere,Q-Tip, Bettye LaVette, Raphael Saadiq, the Dodos, Built to Spill, Deerhunter, Mastodon, Calexico, Os Mutantes, Tom Jones, Band of Horses, the National, Akron/Family, the Dead Weather, Silversun Pickups, Robert Randolph, Brett Dennen, Midnite, Jason Mraz, JJ Grey & Mofro, Kinky, Lila Downs, Trombone Shorty, Dengue Fever, Heartless Bastards, the Dirtbombs, Lenka, Incubus, John Vanderslice, Matt & Kim, Portugal, the Man, the Morning Benders, the Duke Spirit, Zee Avi, Blind Pilot, Sambada, Ryan Bingham, West Indian Girl and Extra Golden. Whew!

I was trepidatious about last year’s inaugural Outside Lands festival, but as you can read here, here and here, it was conceived and executed extremely well.

Advance three-day passes are $200-$226. My friend Kim writes to take issue with this year’s “layaway” ticket pricing option, no doubt geared to help those in the struggling economy:

Look – I get that the tickets are too expensive for some people who would want to go. Giving them an option to spread out the cost over a few months is, on the surface of it, a nice convenience. But charging them an additional $35 for it? Could it possibly cost that much to run the card a few times? I don’t really know how much Visa & Mastercard charge, but it seems unlikely to be that much. If I’m wrong, then all apologies, but if not, then OL is charging poor people more money for the same exact ticket.

If you have to spread the cost of the ticket over a certain amount of time, shouldn’t you just do that on your own and buy it when you have the money? The whole thing seems totally predatory to me.

And get a load of this:

IMPORTANT: If, for any reason, any of your payments are declined, in whole or in part, then all of the following will apply: (i) your order and your tickets will be cancelled (ii) any payment received as of that date will be kept by Outside Lands as partial offset for your default, (iii) you will still owe the balance of the full amount due for each ticket and you authorize Musictoday and Outside Lands to charge your credit card for any balance due, (iv) Musictoday and Outside Lands will be entitled to pursue all of their legal and equitable remedies to recover the full payment from you, and (v) you agree to pay all costs of collection incurred by Musictoday or Outside Lands, including legal fees, that they may incur in collecting the balance of each ticket price. Payment plan tickets are subject to all of the other terms of the ticketing agreement.

Mismanage your account or have unexpected expenses, and not only do you lose your ticket, but you’re still liable for the full price.

I suppose this is a good time to remind people that festivals very rarely sell out, and that one-day tickets will surely be made available at some point, just like last year. If you’re raring to be the first on your block to buy tickets, they go on sale April 15.