Recommended, 10/24-10/30: Bottom of the Hill Celebrates 20 Years, King Tuff/Extra Classic, Mikal Cronin, Garrett Pierce
October 24, 2011
Every Monday, we’ll be offering you early picks for some of the week’s best concerts. Do you think we omitted something worthwhile? Let us know in the comments! Be sure to visit our Local Concert Calendar for an expanded set of daily listings.
There are a ton of great shows this week and over the Halloween weekend. We’ll be offering up some weekend picks a little bit later, but here are four shows to catch before Friday.
Bottom of the Hill celebrates 20 years with a free show
Congrats to Bottom of the Hill, which is celebrating 20 years as one of San Francisco’s best music venues. The venue is throwing a free 20th anniversary party on Wednesday, October 26th (9pm, Free), with performances by Hank IV and Total B.S.
Extra Classic and King Tuff perform late-night at the Make-Out Room on Wednesday
Reggae-inspired pop band Extra Classic celebrates the release of its debut LP, Your Light Like White Lightning, Your Light Like A Laser Beam, at the Make-Out Room on October 26th (10pm, $10). Headlining the show is SoCal garage popper King Tuff.
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Thursday: “Kim-O-Benefit” — help a local sound engineer fight breast cancer
November 10, 2010
Over the past decade-plus, SF sound engineer Kim Greiss has worked behind the boards at venues like Bottom of the Hill, Slim’s, and Great American Music Hall. Greiss was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, and her friends in the local music community are rallying together to help support her as she embarks on treatment to defeat it.
That support comes in three forms, beginning with a benefit show on Thursday, November 11th, at Bottom of the Hill (9pm, $10 and up sliding scale, All Ages). The show features locals Taxes, Fake Your Own Death, Kill Moi and DJ BAGeL Ted.
Second and third, a raffle and a silent auction will be held during the show, although you don’t need to be present to participate in either. The items offered for both are pretty great. The raffle includes, among other prizes, photos and prints from some of the Bay’s best concert photographers, a guitar, and over a dozen new CDs from Sub Pop. On the auction front, how does a one year free admission pass to every show at Bottom of the Hill sound? Or perhaps a weekend van rental? Find out more details about the items and how to participate at these Raffle and Auction pages. If all of this sounds too difficult, you can also donate some money to help Kim via PayPal.
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Music and…: Five Ways to Think About the Crackdown on SF Venues
March 8, 2010
In the midst of enjoying a series of sold-out, locally-headlined shows during last week’s Noise Pop festivities, there was just enough of a gap between bands, drinks and good times for me to have a real downer of a realization: if the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) has its way, many of the great venues hosting Noise Pop shows would be put out of business. Places like Bottom of the Hill, Cafe Du Nord, Slim’s, and the Great American Music Hall. Chances are pretty good that if you’ve been to see a show recently, you’ve been to a venue under attack by the ABC. If you’re under 21, the places being targeted account for most of your concert-going options in the City. And therein lies much of the problem.
As many local media outlets have covered, for well over a year the ABC has been pursuing enforcement actions against local clubs that offer all ages shows. In several of these cases, the ABC alleges that the clubs have failed to meet conditions that are part of their liquor licenses, conditions that were either forced upon the clubs (that no one could have expected them to meet) or that the clubs never agreed to at all. Unbelievably, at the heart of a number of these enforcement actions is the claim that venues should be making as much money from food sales as they do from alcohol sales if they want to hold all ages shows.
January’s Flux Summit, titled What’s Shaking Down SF Music Venues?, was a welcome sign of increased action by local venues to distribute information about the attack they are facing (video from the summit here). With the stakes so high for some of the City’s best clubs, though, it’s a little disheartening that more people aren’t already aware of what’s going on. And yet, it’s not difficult to understand why many aren’t engaged in issues of regulatory enforcement, entertainment business licensing, and disputes over food-to-alcohol sales ratios. On the surface, these problems aren’t particularly accessible, compelling or sexy. The reality, however, is that the crackdown on SF venues isn’t just about local indie music. Instead, it touches on a number of concerns that should matter to a broad swath of San Franciscans.
In that vein, I offer:
Five Ways to Think About the Crackdown on SF Venues.
1. This isn’t just an indie music issue. It’s a performing arts issue.
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P.O.S., Grieves, Budo and Dessa @ Bottom of the Hill 2/18
February 23, 2010
Enthusiastic hip-hop fans lined up, down, and around the block waiting patiently to pack in to the sold out, all-ages P.O.S. show at Bottom of the Hill. Desperate fans took to panhandling for extra tickets, and countless sneak-in attempts occurred.
The intensely powerful jazz-infused slam poetry of Dessa (the sole female representation in the Doomtree collective) permeated through the walls as eager fans listened in. Dessa wrapped up by serenading the crowd like the true soul musician she is.
Not to be outdone, Grieves and Budo, the latest additions to Rhymesayers, brought the big guns to San Francisco. Infamous beat maker Budo came equipped with brass, bass, guitars, and turntables, spinning, hitting, plucking and mixing on the spot. Meanwhile, Grieves made his way through some of his popular, and also more personal rhymes, even taking a request for “I Ate Your Soul,†a song apparently he “hates doing.†But you did it so well, Grieves. Judging by the audience reaction (and groupie following), it appears that Grieves and Budo have struck gold with their collaboration. The duo’s debut album together, 88 Keys And Counting, will be re-packaged and re-distributed through Rhymesayers Entertainment on March 2nd of this year, with an exclusive Rhymesayers debut album soon to follow.
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My Metal Month of May
June 7, 2009
The shows cropped up fast as Memorial day approached, cascading on top of each other like the hairs of a vigorously headbanged coif. Instead of trying to keep pace, I bode my time. Now, feast on these reviews, covering the last couple weeks of heavy, condensed and combined into an omnibus post, richly suffused with the connective tissue of metaphor and theme.
Black Cobra at Thee Parkside, 5/14
Photo by Shannon Corr courtesy of At a Loss Recordings
The beginning of a landmine marathon, the first battle in a war that my eardrums were certain to lose. Local duo Black Cobra appeared at a birthday party for Pirate Cat DJ “Naked Dan.” There were no naked people at the show, but one assumes he was there. Had I found him, I would have been sure to ask him the secret of getting Thee Parkside to throw you a birthday bash, featuring one of the Bay’s most gruesome metal twosomes. Black Cobra were in fine form, with similar outfits and matching black locks reanimating my notion that they’re rock and roll siblings (they’re not, more on this later), and they cranked out an incendiary set. There’s something so right about the sparse symmetry of drums-and-guitar duos, especially when the guitarist has enough wattage in tow to rival the drumset for consumption of cubic feet.
This symmetry is completed by the music, which thrives on the furious collaboration between the band’s two members, sludgy riffs and thundering fills trading punches before locking arms in a death spiral of carefully orchestrated tandem assaults. Guitarist Jason Landrian has an endless supply of clever, stuttering riffs, and drummer Rafael Martinez navigates them expertly, mirroring ten-ton syncopations exactly without losing an ounce of power. Check out “Sugar Water” below.
Gojira at Slim’s 5/21
Photo by Gabrielle Duplantier courtesy of Prosthetic Records
I’ve been trying to limit myself to California-based bands when contributing to this site, but that all went out the window once Gojira finished their set one fateful Thursday. Hailing from Bayonne, France, hardly a hotbed for metal, the four-piece band hit San Francisco well into their first North American headlining tour. Their status as heavy music’s best-kept secret is about to become a dim memory. Simply put, Gojira delivered the best hour and a half of music I’ve seen in 2009. At the core of the band are brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier, technical wizards on guitar and drums, respectively. Their creativity and fraternal interplay make Black Cobra’s half-sibling exceptionalism seem as disorganized as a Golden Gate Park drum circle, and they’re only really rivaled by totemic brothers-in-metal Vinnie Paul and “Dimebag” Darrell Abbot, of Pantera renown.
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The latest on the ABC and local venues: why promises of change aren’t enough
April 29, 2009
A Bay Bridged reader tipped us off to this post over at the Chronicle‘s City Insider blog, the latest in the paper’s coverage of the ongoing conflict between the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and some of the City’s best venues, including Bottom of the Hill, Cafe Du Nord, the Great American Music Hall and the DNA Lounge.
You can find our previous posts about this issue here and here for more background, but here’s a quick recap: the ABC, charged with issuing and enforcing alcohol licenses throughout the state, has been challenging the liquor licenses of a number of historic City music venues, either by attacking technical or otherwise insignificant discrepancies in the licenses, or by imposing new, unreasonable conditions on their continued use. These licenses allow these venues to hold all ages shows, something already in too-short supply in the City.
The last we had heard, State Senator Mark Leno had a “positive meeting” with ABC chief Steve Hardy that resulted in a “commitment to working toward a resolution,” including ideas to draft new legislation to clarify venue licensing requirements or the creation of a new type of license specifically for music venues. All of this, tentatively, sounded like progress. [More...]
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Must-read Chronicle story on the ABC and SF live music
April 13, 2009
Via The OCMD, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an absolutely astonishing story this weekend about action by the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control targeted at some of the City’s best venues, like Bottom of the Hill, Cafe Du Nord and the Great American Music Hall. This early sentence should get your attention:
Those venues could be forced to close, owners say, if the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, better known as ABC, continues to impose rules that club attorneys argue are legally questionable and often unrelated to booze or safety issues.
It’s not uncommon to hear about a quasi-legal venue getting shut down for operating without a permit or public complaints of excessive noise. It’s simply astonishing, however, to find out that three of the City’s most established, most respected venues have found themselves in the ABC’s sights not because of public complaints, but because of minor ambiguities in documentation, or because they aren’t meeting a particular food sales to alcohol sales ratio:
John Hinman, the attorney representing Cafe Du Nord, said his club was chastised by the ABC for opening to the public at 7 p.m. instead of 5 p.m., the hour owners put on their application form more than 15 years ago.
The owners explained that they open at 5 to feed the bands, Hinman said, but the ABC still challenged their state liquor license. The agency also demanded that the club start selling at least as much food as alcohol, he said, even though that condition was never on the license.
State Sen. Mark Leno should be commended for stepping up to the plate to fight for San Francisco’s live music scene and for recognizing the dangers of the ABC’s expansive and seemingly arbitrary power:
“I believe the ABC has a job to do – of course enforcing the current law and protecting public safety, but also protecting the well-being of businesses,” [Leno] said. “In San Francisco, we’re doing very well at working out our differences locally, and when you have this outside force that has the power to issue and revoke license and put small businesses out of business, I take it very seriously.”
We’ll keep an eye on this story as it develops.
