I don’t actually recall much about any of them to be honest, but the Ford GoBike map is keeping the dream alive:
The Lexington Club is definitely still kaput though.
Also what ever happened to Emily’s Seasonal Soulfood?
Author: Allan Hough
Old Time Relijun back from the grave plus Rocky’s band Turqoiuz Noiz!
OTR hasn’t toured in like 10 years, but they’re back, at the Chapel! And Rocky’s band Turqouiz Noiz is opening!
What’s happening for Halloween???
1.) First there’s happy hour:
STAND BY YOUR MON!
Classic Country & Classic Reggae
w/ your selectors DJ Dukes + DJ Nutzeffekt
ALL vinyl, ALL irie, ALL my exes live in Texas
“Jah bless America!”
2.) Then there’s cover bands:
Everyone Is Doorsy (as The Doors)
Down Dirty Shake (as The Spice Girls)
Mayya & The Revolutionary Hell Yeah! (as Iggy Pop)
Blue Lotus and the Lagoons (premier showing)
+ DJ Neil Martinson
4.) And of course, more cover bands:
Lucifudge
as DANZIG 12:15
Stereorehab
as STEREOLAB 11:30
Stephen & Kristin & Michael & Candice & Peter & Nicholas & Elizabeth
as BELLE & SEBASTIAN. 10:45
We have Joy
as KILLING JOKE 10:00
The Heelies
as THE FEELIEs 9:15
Bitcharge
as DISCHARGE 8:30
5.) Or you could always go to Weird Wednesday!
6.) Or you could see Suspiria Classic at the Roxie right before New Suspiria premieres everywhere else the following day:
What’s it gonna beeeeeee??????
Something out of a ’70s daydream: Tennis stripped down live at the Chapel [review + lots of lovely photos]
By Valerie Luu / Photos by Ruchita Lalmalani
I knew nothing about Tennis before going to their show on a Tuesday night at The Chapel.
All I had was this memory: listening to “Young and Old,” their sophomore album released in 2012, which was on heavy rotation at Reveille Coffee in North Beach, where I would go for a pot of tea and to chat with my cafe crushes.
Their song “It All Feels the Same” reminds me of continuing that soundtrack as I put on headphones after leaving the cafe. I’d skate down Montgomery Street while the fog lifted and the sun filtered through skyscrapers and commuters emerged from BART with freshly ironed clothes and washed hair.
When I hear that song, I think about what a luxury it was to have all that time to banter with baristas, to push up Howard Street to the Mission and to witness the morning sunrise. Where have those days gone?
I was curious what memories Tennis holds for other people, so I went into the show with this question: “Is there a Tennis song or album that reminds you of certain time in your life?”
Liz O’ Neal, 30, was the first person I spoke to. She was holding down a spot in front of the stage with her friend Hanna Steinberg, 29.
“How would you describe their music?” I asked, realizing that I hadn’t thought about how to classify their sound up until that point. “It’s dreamy, sexy rock,” she said. “It makes you want to go to the beach.”
Beaches and boats are a big part of the band’s mythology. Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, the husband-and-wife duo of Tennis, met in a philosophy class at the University of Colorado, Denver. After graduation, they took sail for half a year along the Atlantic Coast. “Cape Dory,” their debut album, was written on their trip and is a diary of the places they visited — Maryland, South Carolina and Florida.
For O’ Neal, “Marathon” brings back memories of her sailing trip in Greece. “We hired this old sea captain, who looked like a sexy dad from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding.’ He took us to all these tiny Greek islands for a week,” she said. “It reminds me of being happy and carefree.”
I had recently come back from island hopping in the Cyclades, the group of Greek islands known for their whitewashed and blue domed buildings, so I was able to imagine how “Cape Dory” could be a perfect soundtrack to hanging out on a boat, grilling fish on the secluded beaches and feeling your cares dissolve away in the saltwater and Mediterranean sun.
For others, the songs are less about actual memories and more about a image.
For Serratia Krank, 22, “Baby Don’t Believe,” from Tennis’ most recent album, is a love song from a “wingman’s perspective.”
“When I hear the song, I see a guy with flowers at a woman’s window,” she said. “Or a guy in the back of a crowd watching his woman playing on stage. The crowd is going wild for her, but he doesn’t mind. He’s there for her.”
To Krank, an inspiring filmmaker, the song is about someone rooting on the sidelines — even if it’s yourself. Sometimes she’ll listen to the song while she looks at herself in the mirror. “I’m your biggest fan,” she says to herself, becoming the person in the crowd.
Her friend Jamie Banks, 24, said “10 Minutes 10 Years” resonates with him. “I think about their relationship,” he said of the married musicians. “If I ever wanted a relationship I would want to be like theirs.”
With that, the show started. Moore came out in a silver sequined dress and sat at a piano across from Riley, who was on guitar. Without speaking, they opened with “10 Minutes 10 Years,” blue lights illuminating her blonde afro.
Their current acoustic tour was inspired by an experience they had opening for Father John Misty. At one of his shows, he spontaneously went onstage without his band and played an unplugged set. “I was shocked that it was my favorite [part of the tour],” Moore said.
That inspired Tennis to strip embark on their “Solo in Stereo” tour with just the two of them — which required the couple to do things outside their comfort zones — for Moore it was playing the guitar and Riley, the drums.
The aim was a more raw, stripped down version that sounds closer to their demos. “It’s the most minimal, just like how we wrote it,” she said. “It’s four chords and the truth.”
In trying to be minimalist, Moore realized her true nature. “Five minutes later, I found myself with five pianos and 20 drum machines,” she laughed. “Turns out I’m a maximalist — I tried to bring it down to zero and ended up with an afro and a 100 percent sequined dress.”
In addition to the acoustic set, the stage design also made me feel like we were in their home recording studio. On stage at The Chapel was an upholstered green bench, vanilla shag rug and a side table with a velvet rose tablecloth which sat unused until “Island Music,” the last song on “Yours Conditionally” and the closing song of the night. Moore took a seat on the table and pressed a button, which turned it into a rotating pedestal.
Before the show started, I overheard Jamie Banks making a bet with Serratia Krank: “For every song you don’t dance to, you owe me a dollar,” he said. After Tennis finished “Island Music” and the house lights turned on, I turned to the two friends and asked if they had danced to every song.
“I did,” said Krank. As for Banks, he was coming out of a haze. “I didn’t dance to the last song,” he said. “I was so stunned by her beauty.”
As was I. “Island Music” now holds that image of Moore spinning onstage looking and sounding ethereal as she sang the lyrics “through the living and breathing and dreaming / like a daze” with tropical guitar sounds looping in the background. It was a magical ending, something out of a ’70s daydream.
—
Thanks to The Chapel, Allan Hough, and Tennis for the lovely, memorable show.
—
Valerie Luu chases grandmas for Chinatown Pretty and hustles at Rice Paper Scissors. She’s probably listened to “10 Minutes 10 Years” a hundred times.
Ruchita Lalmalani is a portrait and concert photographer. She’s available for prints, press and shoots at electric.spaceinvader@gmail.com.
[Editor’s note: The Sadies are playing at the Chapel on Sunday afternoon and they are the BEST! Thanks Val!!!]
Clamped Down/Pumped Up, a ’70s-’80s punk and new wave night with cover band Space Force ’77!
Here’s the deal:
CLAMPED DOWN/PUMPED UP
A Night of ’70s & ’80s Punk + New Wave
• SPACE FORCE ’77 live debut!
• DJ Nick Pal (Pal Family Records, BFF.fm, KALX)
• DJ Nutzeffekt (Hard-Boiled Babes, American Tripps, KDVS)
$3 before 8pm
$5 after 8pm
Music legend Lee “Scratch” Perry performs this Thursday in the Mission!
It’s at the Chapel and here’s the deal:
Celebrating the 45th anniversary of Grammy winning dub & reggae pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s landmark 1973 album “Blackboard Jungle Dub”, the world’s first dub album, Scratch, now 82 years young, will embark on a tour across North America performing his studio masterpiece live in its entirety for the first time, aided by the technology of NYC’s Subatomic Sound System, his hybrid band of new school electronics and veteran Jamaican musicians from the Black Ark era recordings.
RSVP and invite your friends here. Get tickets and more info here.
King Kong, the sandwich
Turner’s Kitchen, of course:
Egg salad, roasted pork belly (sliced thin and gently reheated so it melts) baby spinach (place the warm pork belly on the spinach so it wilts just a little) crispy onions and fresh thyme-black pepper mayo on sliced sourdough.
[via Turner’s on Instagram]
Edward Snowden LIVE in the Mission!
It’s going down at the New Mission and also features Uma and Ethan:
When former intelligence officer Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA was seizing the private records of billions of people, he helped spark the most significant reforms to U.S. surveillance policy since 1978—and his story read like a science fiction novel. In a special virtual conversation, Snowden will join former WIRED editor-in-chief Katrina Heron for a discussion about technology and its potentially dystopian future.
And then everybody watches Gattaca together! Get your tix here (there’s still a lotta good seats left).
Treasure Island Music Festival is this weekend! Not on Treasure Island! Heaps of Aussies mate!
This year’s Treasure Island Music Festival takes place across the bay at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, amongst the Port of Oakland’s iconic bigass cranes. Here’s what the view will be like probably:
The lineup is stacked with a mess of our favorite Australians: Tame Impala, Courtney Barnett, and Alex Cameron (who we first discovered in the Mission opening for Thee Oh Sees a few years back). Here’s the whole thing, organized by day:
Transportation works thusly: take BART to West Oakland and hop on a special free shuttle.
Lots more info here. Pick up your tickets at the gate, or online here.
Hot new sunblob for summer
[related-posts]
“No Roots” singer Alice Merton performs Thursday at August Hall
The first time I heard that was on the radio in a rental car in traffic in Atlanta, and everybody in the car was like WHAAAAAAT IS THIS?????
Well it’s Alice Merton! Here’s the deal:
Platinum-selling English born, German-based singer-songwriter Alice Merton releases her most commercial and exciting single to date with ‘Why So Serious’, along with intriguing official video taken from her upcoming and much-anticipated debut album ‘Mint’ out in Jan. 2019 via Mom + Pop Music (Pre-Orders 21st Sept.).
After rising to fame two years ago in 2016 with her explosive debut single ‘No Roots’ (Mom + Pop), written about her constant moving homes as a child becoming such as huge debut, it’s safe to say it’s been a whirlwind for Alice Merton with 124 Million YouTube hits to date. With an early mission statement to perform and write music she has a passion for, to be an artist she’s proud of and to keep an Independent way of thinking, she took things into her own hands and started Paper Plane Records Int. with her best friend and manager Paul and together formed some huge plans.
Can’t wait. Show is 8pm this Thursday at August Hall. More info and tickets here.
Here’s the new single:
Aussie legends the Scientists and the Church play the Chapel this Sunday and Monday respectively
First up it’s the Scientists — on their first ever US tour! From the tour announcement:
With a sound that was swampy, primal and modern-urban all at once – as much in the tradition of rock and roll and punk rock as it was a rejection of those things, the Scientists’ formula was as universal as it was specific to their own experience. They were about what it was like to be young and living in modern times in an Australian urban/suburban environment. The themes of getting wasted on alcohol and drugs, driving round in hotted up cars, being trapped in crap jobs and paranoia were their subject matter.
CHeckit:
More info and tickets here. (Ty Segall is one of the opening acts btw.)
Next up is the Church. It’s on a Monday night, sure, but here’s all you need to know:
And guess what: they’re on tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of the album that legendary song is on, what more do you need to know?
More info and tickets here. Big thanks to the Chapel for hosting all these great shows!
P.S. The Aussie onslaught continues at the Treasure Island Music Festival in a couple weeks! More on that soon!
Some recent portraits of people hanging out on sidewalks in the Mission
Eleanor Friedburger brings her “warped version of ’80s goth disco” to the Chapel this Wednesday night
Eleanor spent the summer in Greece a couple years back and came away with some good ideas:
After a month in Athens I asked my friend, the Greek musician Σtella, “What’s one thing I have to do before I leave?” After some long and careful consideration she smiled and said, “you have to go to Rebound. It’s a time warp; kind of an 80s goth disco where everyone does the chicken dance; you’ll love it… but it’s only open on Saturdays after 3:00 AM.” Rebound proved to be a revelation in terms of finding the sound and energy for my fourth album. The club was very dark and despite the no smoking signs, like everywhere in Athens, it was very smoky. The “chicken dance” Stella mentioned was a solitary one. I copied the slouchy strut, moving back and forth in line, swinging my arms in time to the music that at first sounded like Joy Division or maybe The Cure, but never revealed itself– one could only assume it to be knock-off by an unknown Baltic band. It was alienating and exhilarating. “In Between Stars” is an attempt at a song you could hear at Rebound. It’s a dark and disorienting; my warped version of 80s goth disco.
Have a listen:
The opener Pill sounds pretty good too. Show is this Wednesday night at the Chapel, 8pm; get tix and more info here.
Doc’s Clock sign lighting ceremony
Doc’s has been back up and running for a while now, and their sign has been back up for a while too — but this Tuesday at 7:30ish is the official first time it’ll be lit up in all its glory. Here’s the official invite:
This day has finally come! We are going to light up the sign on Tuesday September 18th, around sunset (7:30pm)
Come be a witness and help celebrate this amazing moment!!
UPDATE:
PSA Press made this special Doc’s pin, which will be for sale at the event or on the PSA website.
[related-posts]
Vintage photo of a Coast Guard helicopter landing on a ship in the 1950s with the old Bay Bridge in the background
[via Found Photos]
[related-posts]
500 Club sign, the pin
PSA Press with another winner!
We were so honored to design and manufacture a pin for 500 Club, one of the best bars (with one of the best neon marquees) in all of San Francisco. Get one from the bar before they are gone!
★★★★★, gang!
[related-posts]
Mesmerizing BART GIF
Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s 175th birthday
From Wikipedia:
‘Firebelle Lil’ Coit was considered eccentric, smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. She was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the male-only establishments that dotted North Beach.[2]
As a young woman, she traveled to Europe with her mother. After her return, she married Howard Coit, the “caller” of the San Francisco Stock Exchange during an economic boom.[1] They separated in 1880, and he died in 1885 at age 47.[2]
At age 15, in 1858, she reportedly witnessed the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 respond to a fire call on Telegraph Hill when they were shorthanded, and helped them get up the hill ahead of other competing engine companies. Sources differ on whether this happened while she was coming home from school or coming from a rehearsal for a wedding.[1] She was thereafter treated as a “mascot” of the firefighters, and after her return from travel in Europe, in October 1863, she was made an honorary member of the engine company.
There’s a party this Thursday, celebrating her 175th birthday:
Come to Chief Sullivan’s Irish pub for the Celebration! 4 pm to 7 pm – 21+ please
Your $25 ticket gets you into the party, along with a raffle ticket and delicious appetizers! All proceeds benefit Guardians of the City SF, the non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the City’s First Responders.
Raffle for great prizes! Silent Auction for unique items! Costume contest: Dress like Lillie and win a prize! Socialize with current and former SF First Responders! And don’t forget to try the signature cocktail of the night, the Firebelle!
Get tickets here.
PSA Press‘s commemorative pin (pictured above) will be for sale at the party or on their website on the 23rd.
The weekend is almost here, what should we do?
Friday: Rodriguez at the Warfield
The legend returns to SF! Perhaps he’ll have a helpful take on the shitshow the world has become of late. Let’s rock out to this song and buy tickets.
Saturday: 20th Street Block Party
The annual tradition continues! Lots of bands, food and activities — and the above handy map gives you a quick idea of the scale of this year’s party. Read on for the full lineup.
Sunday: Brunch at Foxsister
We gushed about it at length last month, but basically all you need to know is benedict benedict benedict benedict AND the best new burger in town.
Mission Mission 