Rock the night--last Friday night, that is!
I'm finally posting some pics to an art opening and then warehouse party we went to that featured four local San Fran bands. First stop was
Queen's Nails Annex on Mission St., the gallery started by friends Bob Linder and Julio Morales. The artists were a duo from Mexico City, Marcela and Gina, with work ranging from installation, video, and photo documentation. Their work has involved bribing the Mexican police to participate in their performances and other such shenanigans. Next door to a real live nail salon, ("Queen's Nails", duh), you could go next door and get a single nail done that featured a design by the artists in question (see above--voila!). That giant nail had to be cut off the next day, as it was completely impeding any sort of normal movement of my hand. Very short lived.
me fascinated and yet totally freaked out by the idea of getting a giant fake nail. those poor vietnamese ladies who have to do this all day--sooooo toxic and fumey!
nail salon on the left, gallery on the right...got it?
My friend Mary Elizabeth throws music shows at her big space every now and then...the most infamous one burning in my mind happened 2 new year's eves ago, the climax being the Joy Division cover band and I was standing on a couch wasted out of my mind--Mom, maybe you should stop reading this, if you are--and looking around and everyone was just going bonkers and there was no room to move and if there were a fire or earthquake or other SF disaster it would have wiped out the entire music and art scene of the city, and i came up with the brilliant plan of jumping out of the 3-story window in case it did happen, to avoid being squished in the firetrap single stairway that led to the outside world...needless to say, the night featured no disaster and i didn't die...whew!)
The local music scene right now is sort of split between the new-folk acoustic genre, that generally features the likes of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, etc...Stuff that you can play in a bookstore or quiet gallery space and sounds a bit like old-timey music or croony lamentations full of wistfullnesses. And on the other hand is a new wave of noise (not "new wave", just noise) that mixes math rock, a little bit of electro, and lots of drone or "wave of sound" stuff--maybe sort of like Deerhoof, another SF local. Happily for me, the party was on the latter side--I've been trying to figure out why i'm not a fan of the "neo-folk". I think it's because I can't jump up and down and freak out to it. I like feeling my body vibrate with giant waves of sound and the spectacle of a band just losing it.
Paradise Island, the one-woman outfit featuring the ex-lead singer of local lesbian pop-rock Erase Errata (think LeTigre-like, but not) started off the set, with a spare girl-on-microphone-with-strobelights-and-a-single-beat-drum-machine collection...
Then on to
Fuck Wolf, a total wall of sound with the singer from Spector Protector playing guitar and the lead singer from some other band i don't know. Quite awesome.
the F-word Wolf
My friend Wendy's band
T.I.T.S. was on third. Short for "Totally InTo Sex" (hilarious!), they're an all-girl dark metal band (no, not like Cinderella or that old hair metal stuff--think early Black Sabbath) with two guitars, a base, drums, and everyone on vocals. They came out wearing vintage 60s nightie slips, long hair, and barefoot, like little angels. T.I.T.S. always brings out the crowd--if they weren't actually good they could easily be dismissed as a passing fad (oooo, an all-girl metal band) but not so.
T.I.T.S., all eight of them (2 x 4 girls, dig?). notice my giant red plastic party cup front and center, resting on the P.A. It's not a party until the plastic party cups start popping up in the photos, ha ha
We missed the fourth band cuz it just got waaaaay too late. Quite a scene--again, it was the "everyone who's anyone" in the music scene was there. And Kurt and I laughed about how it's now sort of hip to be a white musician going out with an Asian or South-East Asian girl. Seems to be the new "thing", except that good ole Kurt has been doing it for almost eight years already (congratulations, honey, you were an "early adopter" of the style!). Have to say, this city is almost half Asian, so it's not hard to follow that the cross-pollinations are rampant. We used to play a game that we dubbed
"sushi restaurant" syndrome...go into a sushi restaurant and count how many white guy/asian girl couples there are (one point). you get TEN points if there is an asian guy/white girl couple (rather rare). One day we were at a sushi restaurant and we looked around and noticed that every single one of the couples there--like, seven total--were scoring us points! It made me feel like we were in some surreal replicant land. I don't know why we find this game so funny, maybe we're weird :D I mean, the moment we walk into a sushi restaurant we automatically score one point!
But i digress, don't i? funny how talking about one thing leads to a myriad of others...
ta-ta!
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