Afternoon Delight at the Rickshaw on Friday
April 18, 2007
Click to listen to our feature episode on The Lovely Public!
This coming Friday afternoon, around 4:53, when you’ve succumbed to manually refreshing your Inbox or drooling away the remnants of your weekly cycle, you should consider a happy hour jaunt over to the Rickshaw Stop for the first in a new monthly series of concerts called Afternoon Delight.
On the third Friday of every month, the creators of Afternoon Delight will be presenting a FREE, all ages show at the Rickshaw featuring two of San Francisco’s up and coming bands, as well as “mountains of edible treats” and drink specials. This week’s show kicks off the series with a great line-up of The Lovely Public and The Mantles.
Like a cousin to SF art rock heroes Deerhoof, The Lovely Public explore a pastiche of off kilter rhythms, jagged prog and compact psychedelia while still maintaining a contagious pop edge. The Bay Bridged had the pleasure to interview these talented folks back in March. You can listen to the full interview here. The Mantles, with their blend of reverb-drenched garage and fuzz-ridden jangles, seem the ideal companion to open this early evening. Log out. See you there.
Show begins at 6:30pm, All Ages, FREE.
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The Green Apple Music and Arts Festival: April 20th-22nd
April 18, 2007
Whether you realize it or not, if you’re headed to a concert in the Bay Area this weekend, you may be heading to an event that’s part of The Green Apple Music and Arts Festival. Billed as “The World’s Largest Earth Day Celebration”, eighteen Bay Area venues are participating, as are over forty in New York City and Chicago.
The festival’s goal is to raise awareness of environmental issues during the Earth Day weekend, and in addition to setting up informational tables at all of the venues, the festival organizers will be making some other notable changes. For one, all of the participating venues will be supplied with environmentally friendly concessions materials, including napkins and paper towels made of recycled materials, compostable garbage bags and biodegradable cleaning materials.
In addition, the Green Apple Music and Arts Festival will be carbon-neutral, meaning it will offset any carbon dioxide emission produced as a result of the festivities. According to festival organizers, this will be the nation’s largest carbon-neutral event ever. For a full list of local venues and shows in the festival, head on over to the official web site, where you can also find out more about the event.
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Episode 60: The Harbours
April 17, 2007
Photo by: ndkoster.com
Stream the episode:
The Harbours, this week’s featured band, began as a solo project for Miguel Zelaya following the dissolution of his previous band after an aborted national tour. Regrouping in San Jose and then moving to San Francisco where he now resides, Zelaya composed these songs on his own and then found himself recruiting friends and former bandmates to perform as a band at the 2005 Mission Creek Music Festival and help him commit the songs to record.
We received a copy of the resulting album, titled Second Story Maker, shortly after it came out late last year, and were immediately drawn to it, including a track in our January Monthly Mix. The album is full of warm melodies and memorable choruses, but sets itself apart most in Zelaya’s willingness to let many of the songs expand past the four-minute mark, taking twists and turns as they build to even greater payoffs.
We spoke with Miguel a few weeks ago at The Bay Bridged Headquarters, discussing The Harbours’ debut album, the process of bringing his songs to a full band for live performances, and the new recordings he’s been working on lately. Speaking of his latest recordings, Miguel was kind enough to bring us a few new demos he’s been working on, including a song from his new project The 383′s, a collaboration with Matt Tritto.
The next show on The Harbours’ calendar isn’t for a few weeks, but it’s a hell of a bill:
Thursday, May 10th
Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival Presents:
The Harbours
w/ Rykarda Parasol, Hiss Golden Messenger, Michael Zapruder
The Rickshaw Stop
8pm, Price tba
To purchase Second Story Maker, released on Stab City Records, head to The Harbours’ web site or you can pick it up on iTunes. To hear some more tunes and keep abreast of their latest shows, head to their Myspace page.
Stay tuned for the latest local news over the rest of the week and we’ll be back with another new episode of the podcast next Tuesday.
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From Monument to Masses (RARE live appearance Friday at BOTH)
April 16, 2007
Click to listen to our feature episode on And a Few to Break!
From Monument to Masses
There are only a handful of bands that can resurface after an extended hiatus and instantly recapture the interest of their audience — From Monument to Masses (FMTM) is one such band. From 2001 to 2005, FMTM was a fixture of the Bay Area music scene playing everywhere from Kimo’s to the Fillmore in support of their self-titled debut, From Monument to Masses, and their breakthrough record, The Impossible Leap in One Hundred Simple Steps, both released on Dim Mak Records. FMTM anchors its music with samples and political vocals, mixed with beautifully vulnerable guitar and drum machine-driven electronics.
The band’s return to the Bay on Friday at Bottom of the Hill, part of the Green Apple Festival, finds them in the midst of a heavy period of activity as they prepare for a stint in support for Don Caballero later this month in Japan and continue to write, record and mix the demos for their fourth album. For more information about From Monument to Masses, check out their recent profile over at NASCENT.
Opening the show will be Bay Bridged vets (Episode 51), And A Few to Break, who seem to be paving a similar path for themselves over the past couple years with their own breed of beautiful mayhem, and February’s BB mixsters, Silian Rail.
Show begins at 9:30pm, $10 adv/$12 door, 18+.
Contributing reporting on this article by Brady.
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The Most at the Hemlock on Wednesday
April 16, 2007
Click the button to listen to our Monthly Local Mix from last November, featuring The Most and seven other great Bay Area bands!
There’s yet another quality show at the Hemlock Tavern this Wednesday night, this time featuring Monthly Mix veterans The Most. We caught the band in a six-piece configuration at a Pacific Noise benefit at Balazo a few months back, where they delivered the loose, fun mix of garage, psychedelia, punk and pop that’s all over their excellent EP Welcome to the Breakfast Show. The band was interviewed a little while back by The Deli SF, and you can read that here.
Supporting The Most are Washington power-poppers The Pharmacy and San Francisco’s Mr. Divisadero, whose songs on his MySpace page and web site suggest a slightly warped and catchy-as-hell keyboard-driven pop sound that definitely make us want to hear more.
The show starts at 9:30pm, is $6 and is 21+.
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The Weekend Digest: April 12th-15th
April 12, 2007
Click to listen to our feature episode on Rykarda Parasol!
Lots of good stuff this weekend:
Thursday night, Rykarda Parasol plays the Rickshaw Stop backed by her band The Tower Ravens. Since we spoke to Rykarda last year, she’s been playing shows in and outside the Bay Area, including headlining our The Bay Bridged Presents show last November. Click here to see video footage from that performance. She’s also been interviewed by the Bay Guardian and is gearing up for a European tour in the fall. Tonight’s show is billed as “La Fonce de la Danse” and features early evening performances by Parasol and The Reverse, also from San Francisco, followed by DJs and dancing. The show starts at 8pm and is $8.
Also on Thursday, Or, the Whale headlines at one of our favorite haunts, the Make-Out Room. It’s been a long time since we included them on our podcast, and in the interim we’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of their debut full-length album. We’re pleased to report that the album, titled Light Poles & Pines will be released in May. Tonight, they’ll be joined by two other Americana-infused acts, The Ghosts of California and Westerly. The show is $7 and starts at 9pm.
Friday night, two shows tempt our ears. First off, there’s the Owl Mag birthday party we wrote about yesterday. Jason Jurgens and the Owl gang do a great job covering national and local indie music and the party should be quite fun, with a lineup that includes some great local acts, including one of our favorites in LoveLikeFire.
Your other option on Friday is to head to the House of Shields to check out recent Monthly Mix veterans The Parish and The Val Papadins, featured here and here respectively. The Val Papadins are actually gearing up for the release of their new album no one wants to move the piano, which will be out next week. The show starts at 9pm and costs $5.
Saturday and Sunday also feature live performances by some Bay Bridged favorites. On Saturday night, The Dont’s are opening for Ted Leo and The Pharamacists at Slim’s. Tickets are getting scarce at this point, but if you manage to get one, be there at 9pm to see The Dont’s.
Sunday, Berkeley’s The Attachments, also featured on our February Monthly Mix, play over at the Hotel Utah. The band plays second in between two local indie-folk acts, Lesser Lights and Nathan Moomaw. The show starts at 9pm and is $6.
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The Owl Mag’s Second Birthday Bash on Friday!
April 11, 2007
Click to listen to our feature episode on LoveLikeFire!
On Friday night, Live 105′s Soundcheck and Mezzanine will present San Francisco’s The Owl Mag‘s two-year birthday bash with an assault of quintessential local pop including Minipop, Maldroid, Poor Bailey, Finding Mercury, and LoveLikeFire, who were recently featured on our weekly podcast. In addition to the bands, there will be a DJ set by Popscene’s Nako.
For two years, the Owl Mag has wielded its insightful and entertaining lens upon local music and beyond through its live reviews, CD reviews, venue spotlights, and features, including a recent feature on local podcasters. If you haven’t gotten an opportunity to explore the site, it’s due time to bookmark it right beside your daily cup o’ joe.
Show begins at 8:30, $10, 21+.
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(((folkYEAH!))) Spring Festival April 20th-21st, featuring Howlin’ Rain
April 11, 2007
Next weekend, (((folkYEAH!))) presents its Spring Festival 2007. The festival runs Friday the 20th and Saturday the 21st at Fernwood Resort in Big Sur, and features a number of excellent bands, including Tussle, Flying Canyon, Port O’Brien, and this week’s featured band Black Fiction. Tickets are $15 for Friday and $25 for Saturday and will be available at the door. On Sunday, the show moves to the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur for a free Earth Day show featuring Citay, The Finches, Rubies and more. All of the details for all three days can be found here.
Here’s contributor Will Benham from New & Used Records with a look at Howlin Rain, one of the great local bands playing next weekend:
Among the acts at this year’s (((folkYEAH!))) festival will be Birdman recording artists, Howlin’ Rain. Fronted by Ethan Miller of Comets on Fire, the band’s 2006 self-titled debut is full of top-down, classic rock jams. The only difference between these songs and those of say, Creedence, is that as Comets on Fire’s songs extend beyond that expected three minute radio limit (as they frequently do), their thrashing and distortion-heavy solos kick into high gear. The band manages a perfect middle ground between the simple melodies and complex arrangements that define classic rock and the postmodern sound theory that characterizes Miller’s other project.
The above video was shot last year during some of the band’s first-ever live shows. It features on an interview with Miller, touring guitarist Mike Jackson, as well as original drummer John Moloney. Moloney has since been replaced by Garrett from The Cuts.
