1. Show your Brazilian friend Gustavo some love: It's his country's independence day!
2. Euromuzik bloggers Fluokids spin French stuff at Lobby.
3. Luuuucy! Let's go grape-stompin' in Julian.
4. Dylan, squared.
5. Fall into a scorching ring of fire.
6. Turn your babies into club kids, way early.
7. ASR stuff.
8. 250-something more things to do in San Diego this weekend.
WEEKENDER: Group Think
NO HAIL MARY'S REQUIRED: Bob Dylan and band score repeatedly at their Mission Valley concert (6)
Tommy wrote: Mix was too strong on the instrumen... [more]
RAD: Tiny Yellow Cart Road Adventure (4)
amy wrote: cool... [more]
EYE CANDY: Galeria H&H (3)
Шиш wrote: А это Вы написали на основе исключи... [more]
PROJECT RUNWAY: In which Leanne dominates (2)
Nicole wrote: It wasn't a fight between Kenley's ... [more]
JEALOUS: S.D. boy floats down Mississippi on raft of trash (31)
Anutkais wrote: Супер акция всего за 5р http://anut... [more]
September 07, 2008
NO HAIL MARY'S REQUIRED: Bob Dylan and band score repeatedly at their Mission Valley concert
September 06, 2008
What a difference two days makes!
On Thursday, Bob Dylan and his band too often seemed detached and unable to get in sync as they delivered a concert that sparked at times, but more frequently verged on the perfunctory. Happily, that was not the case at their concert last night at AEG Live Concerts on the Green in Mission Valley. There, before an enthusiastic, multigenerational audience of 6,700, Dylan and his versatile, five-man band repeatedly soared -- and scored -- as they performed on the former site of the San Diego Chargers' practice field.
Clocking in at almost two hours, the concert opened with a charged version of "Cat's in the Well" and concluded with a similarly electrifying "All Along the Watchtower." In between came wonderfully fresh takes on various Dylan classics, including "The Times They Are A-Changin," "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Highway 61 Revisited" and a revelatory "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding," which repeatedly changed shape -- musically speaking -- without any loss of momentum or impact.
He and his five-man band also delivered newer Dylan songs with equal power and authority, such as "Ain't Talkin'," "Honest With Me," and "The Levee's Gonna Break" (the latter an insired updating of Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie's surging 1929 gem, "When the Levee Breaks").
Scroll down for setlists for last night's concert and Thursday's Temecula show. For a full review, see tomorrow's San Diego Union-Tribune, in print or online.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE: Surrender To The Sound Of Todd Sickafoose's Tiny Resistors band at Dizzy's
September 05, 2008
Ani DiFranco and Andrew Bird are among the guest musicians featured on "Tiny Resistors," the captivating new album by Todd Sickafoose, who plays tomorrow at downtown's all-ages Dizzy's with his band.
Sickafoose is, of course, the bassist in DiFranco's band (her drummer, Allison Miller, shares percussion duties on "Tiny Resistors" with the Charlie Hunter Band's Simon Lott). On his new album, Sickafoose also performs on piano, vibraphone, accordion and several other instruments that help him realize his genre-leaping musical vision.
Having previously recorded with everyone from ex-Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and neo-bluegrass provocateur Darol Anger to J.J. Grey & Mofro, Tin Hat Trio, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and avant-jazz dynamo John Zorn, Sickafoose is well-equipped to create a striking synthesis. Drawing from indie-rock, jazz, blues, Americana, funk, electronica, African high-life, chamber music and more. "Tiny Resistors" is his third and most accomplished album.
It's also his most enjoyable. Rich in multilayered textures, this 11-song collection is both earthy and elegant, seamlessly performed yet full of thoughtful improvisations that are designed for artistic impact, not as vehicles for showboating or instrumental noodling.
OLD 97's MURRY HAMMOND At LESTAT's TONIGHT
Murry Hammond is best known for his bass playing and singing in the hard-rocking Texas alt-country band The Old 97's, but he has at least three notable ties to this region.
The first is his wife, fellow singer-songwriter Grey DeLisle, who is a San Diego native and lives with Hammond and their young son in Los Angeles. The second is Project Mercy, a Habitat for Humanity-inspired charity group that builds basic housing in the most poverty-stricken areas of Tijuana and surrounding areas.
Hamond's enchanting new solo album, "I Don't Know Where I'm Going but I'm On My Way," was recorded here last year with a small group that includes Old 97's drummer Phillip Peeples and top San Diego jazz bassist Rob Thorsen. Proceeds from sales of the 17-song release, which came out last month on Hammond's own Humminbird Records label, will go to Project Mercy and other like-minded charities.
He'll celebrate the all-acoustic album's release with a performance tonight at the all-ages Lestat's in Normal Heights. Texas troubadour Billy Harvey opens.
Continue reading "OLD 97's MURRY HAMMOND At LESTAT's TONIGHT" »
WORK IT: "Entourage" pre-premiere party at Fit
It's not everyday that a gym will use free alcohol, soda and popcorn to lure in potential clients (Uh, yeah, those are definitely not gonna help tone abs), but the new Fit Athletic Club on 10th Avenue downtown is not the run-of-the-mill workout spot.
To draw in existing and new customers alike to their state-of-the-art equipment and outdoor pool with views of Petco Park (among other amenities), Fit hosted an "Entourage" pre-premiere party Thursday night for gym members and contest winners.
One major bump in the road came even before the packed screenings started, when Fit was forced to forgo the complimentary cocktail service they had originally planned to offer before and after the show.
Instead, attendees headed over to the Tilted Kilt and/or Basic before and after the screening to receive their two complimentary drinks. Fit was prevented from serving the promised drinks on-site after an anonymous complaint was filed with the San Diego branch of Alcoholic Beverage Control pertaining to Fit's lack of a liquor license. According to San Diego district coordinator Jennifer Hill, Fit attempted to file a catering license in "the 11th hour" that would allow them to serve alcohol after receiving a cease and desist order from ABC. However, the application was denied and ABC brainstormed the partnership with nearby bars Basic and Titled Kilt.
Continue reading "WORK IT: "Entourage" pre-premiere party at Fit" »
GROCERY LIST: Ingredients for a 'Vice' party
It's not a Vice party unless it involves an unnamed warehouse in "the ghetto" (before long Barrio Logan will look like Hillcrest, so stop calling it the ghetto because it's "dirty," OK?), a smoking lounge the size of a roller rink that's as inviting as a cave, five or six garbage cans full of free malt liquor, three Port-o-Potties, no more than four functioning light bulbs, a couple of thrash bands that make you terrified to even wonder, "How should I dance to this in front of the natives without causing myself harm?," one black guy dressed in plaid, a pack of shirtless white guys wearing what looks like power lines around their necks, 19 bazillion girls dressed up like Pocahontas if she were queen of the Journey groupies (fringe on their vests, jackets, purses and foreheads), and at least one pair of white boots (above) on a person whose gender you're forced to debate among your friends even though you're all still stone sober.
It's times like these when you realize too many people in this town wear their flip-flops after dark.
HORNY DEVILS: Dr. Mario art possesses Subtext
September 04, 2008
"DIABOLUS MUNDUS" AT SUBTEXT
680 W. BEECH ST.
LITTLE ITALY
619-876-0664
Aaron Thomas' new collection, "Diabolus Mundus," looks like it crawled out of Nintendo's Dr. Mario, which is sort of like Tetris (well, OK, a lot like Tetris) but involves piling capsules on top of bacteria and viruses of the same color until their mischievously smug little faces shriek and cry and fizzle away. Thomas' paintings are those mischievously smug little faces, laughing at your sticky fingers and their inability to match primary colors. With urine-yellow skin, neon eyes and diabolical horns (hence the show's name), the germs clutch the most random utensils for a medical disaster in their mitts: syringes, toothbrushes and bottles of radioactive-green ex-lax.
It's pop art overdose for sure, but in the sickest way. The opening's tonight. You should go. More info at subtextstore.com.
AT LONG LAST: The officially unofficial guide
Meet your officially unofficial Street Scene 2008 instruction manual. In it you will find the following:
The details (when, where and why you need to leave your raver bear backpack at home).
The bands (a mini-encyclopedia of the buzzed about, the unknown, the odd and the overrated -- with soundclips).
The map (which denotes the stages but more importantly all locations where beer may begin and end its journey through your body).
The Twitter talk (yes, we have a Twitter account and believe microblogging will one day be all you care to read).
Last year's photos and video interviews with Simian Mobile Disco, Air, Honeycut and more.
And coming soon, the ability to create your very own weekend schedule, just as soon as the embargo on the set list rots away.
It's all at streetscene.signonsandiego.com. Now go have a ball.
ONE MORE ROUND: Bleu Boheme's Matt Carastro
When he's not crooning for local band Emery Byrd, Matt Carastro sauces up his customers at Bleu Boheme with Absolut Rockets, his backyard barbecue cocktail of choice. The best drinks are always simple as far as assembly goes, he says, "because after you've had a few you wanna remember how you made it." Greyhound fans, you're in for a treat.
Get your Absolut Rocket shopping list here.
PROJECT RUNWAY: In which Leanne dominates
My Leanne just won't stop winning.
She didn't even have to try very hard this week because she had immunity thanks to last week's victory. But then, why would you not do your best when the latest challenge was to design for fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg? (And not, as Blayne had hoped, for Mary-Kate Olsen.)
The designers were asked to create a look for DVF's fall 2008 collection, which was inspired by -- careful, it gets confusing -- Berlin and Shanghai and New York and spies and the 1940s and the movie "A Foreign Affair."
The cast was allowed to pick fabrics from the DVF showroom and the winning look would be sold online (here). BUT. You can only buy it if you have an American Express because, remember, you're watching "Project Runway" and you can't go more than 15 minutes without a sponsor being cleverly worked in.
Still, such a high-profile challenge created a weird, moody tension among the designers.
Kenley couldn't stop crying because she was in awe of DVF. It was sweet at first. But she just wouldn't stop with the tears and how she's only ever designed for Wal-Mart and this is just the biggest opportunity of her life.
Other designers were making fun of Terri because she only ever makes pantsuits. And though they have a point, at least her pantsuits are always stylish and interesting.
And, can we talk about how Stella has also made the exact same thing each time? A tight, lace-up vest. But no one seemed to be calling her out on it. At least not yet.
Over in the boys camp, the competition for the ugliest dress was being fought between Joe's pink backless wrap blouse and Suede's camo/tweed number.
On to the results:
Continue reading "PROJECT RUNWAY: In which Leanne dominates" »
STROBE LIGHT DIARIES: Goths and go-goers collide
THE FLAME
3780 PARK BLVD.
HILLCREST
619-295-4163
No need to fear the hearse that's parked outside the Flame on the second and fifth Saturdays of the month; it merely means that Sabbat, one of S.D.'s longest-running goth nights, is well under way. Diskdroid, Atom, Robin Roth and Liquid Grey, all scene staples, shower the crowd with a hard-hitting, German-heavy industrial mix from atop the DJ altar, go-go nurses equipped with whips take to the boxes, the Gothic Volunteer Alliance distributes subculture tolerance ribbons, and Linda Estep, who gave birth to Sabbat nearly 10 years ago, offers free advice for first timers: Wear black.
See it all here.
GLITTERY SANTOGOLD: Artist creeps into town like an itch
September 03, 2008
Go: To Santogold's show. She's finally headlining!
When: Tickets are on sale for the Oct. 10 show at HOB.
Why: OMG, you've never heard of Santi White? Who sings/cackles/taunts on tight, lo-tech tracks that were orphaned in a dub shack, raised on '70s punk rock, only to fight through the prepubescent keyboard index-finger '80s and find their glorious destiny among mad, booty-beat creators like Diplo (at Street Scene on Friday), Switch, XXXChange and Freq Nasty?
Music lovers, please, perk up your shine and embrace more New Yorkers wearing strange, stylized costumes and making noisy art. Really, Rolling Stone, Spin, the BBC and other opinion-making media (that includes "Street"! Holla!) dubbed her an "It Girl." And she's doing "It" everywhere: even in three recent commercials (for Bud Light Lime?! The Ford Flex! And something more dignified, Converse). And Santogold's eponymous album only dropped last May.
As one who caught her Coachella 2008 appearance, I say, with all the sincerity a Texan not running for office has at her disposal, don't fight Santogold's "big unstoppable." Don't fight.
Click here to listen, it's OK.
Santogold, with Mates of State
Friday, Oct. 10, 2008
House of Blues
$20
SEND-OFF: Is it hot in here?
SACRE BLEU! French Cowboy performs tonight at the Beauty Bar
September 02, 2008
Break out your berets and your Stetsons -- French Cowboy is headed to town for a show tonight, and the Beauty Bar may never be the same.
Not to be confused with the nickname for French-born, Los Angeles-based "cheese master" Laurent Bonjour, the four members of the Nantes-based band French Cowboy don't exactly play up their Frenchness.
It isn't until the Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin-inspired "Le Ballade de Baby Face Nelson," the fifth song on the band's self-titled debut album, that a single word of French is uttered. Only two other selections on this 14-song album feature French lyrics.
Lyrics apart, the first of those two songs, "Dis-Moi," sounds no more French than a debate about caramel popcorn between Pee-wee Herman and Mojo Nixon. (The second song, "Hymne a la Base," is the only one on the album whose music seems to boast European roots, however subtle.)
Continue reading "SACRE BLEU! French Cowboy performs tonight at the Beauty Bar" »
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