- Making A Feature Film Is Grown-Up Business
- Published: May 01, 2008
No one has it easy becoming an adult. And most people believe that taking up a pursuit like filmmaking is a surefire way to put off the inevitable. But for David Munro and Xandra Castleton, after nearly six years making their first feature film (fittingly titled Full Grown Men), digging deep into their psyches, building a business together and, oh, getting married and having a child along the way, growing up is exactly what's happened.
- Everything Has Been Arranged: An Interview with Sean San Jose
- Published: Dec 06, 2007
Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo are currently presenting Everything Has Been Arranged, a play based on Denis Johnson's story "Small Boys' Unit" from Seek, the 2002 non-fiction collection. Part of Intersection's Grounded? project, the play follows a narrator, attempting to track down Liberian president, Charles Taylor, during that country's civil war, who encounters a cadre of very young boys trained to fight. I sat down with Campo Santo co-founder Sean San Jose to talk about the challenge of adapting Johnson's story for the stage.
- Treasure Island Music Festival -- Day Two
- Published: Sep 18, 2007
The large, white VIP tent next to the Bridge Stage shaded those who paid a premium to get into the Treasure Island Music Festival this weekend, but who couldn't have felt like a very important person on the ride over from the AT&T Park parking lot in the spacious, luxurious Bauer limo buses. I'm not sure how much this cost the festival organizers, but what a brilliant way to get fans in a good mood for the music.
- The Plant Gala
- Published: Sep 11, 2007
Last Monday afternoon's gala (September 3, 2007) for the Bridgeway Music Foundation held at Sausalito's Plant Studios, offered an exceedingly rare opportunity to prowl the modest-looking wooden building complex at 220 Bridgeway where dozens of platinum and gold records have been recorded.
- Architecture in Helsinki: Places Like This
- Published: Aug 23, 2007
Caution: If you take your music with two lumps of serious, then this album may not be for you. Architecture in Helsinki's third studio effort finds them at their kinetic peak, sounding a lot less twee, a bit more playful and much more new wave than on previous albums.
- Tortoise at The Independent
- Published: Jun 29, 2007
They have a job title for people who classify things like music into distinct sets and subsets. They're called taxonomists. The reason there's a whole field of study attached to this task is that it's an exceedingly difficult one. Just ask any music journalist or employee of All Music Guide who's charged with categorizing bands into genres.
On the other end, bands will gripe to no end about being mischaracterized as "freak folk" or "alt-country." This brand of aggravation is not an unfamiliar one to either band that appeared on the bill at the Independent last Friday, June 22, 2007.
- Elvis Costello at Village Music
- Published: May 04, 2007
The Elvis Costello devotees were packed in almost as tight as the vintage vinyl in the old oak shelves at Village Music. On this sunny May afternoon in downtown Mill Valley, Elvis' favorite record store was getting ready to close its doors for good after more than 50 years, and the 52-year-old punk and pop icon felt compelled to give the shop and its iconic owner, John Goddard, a proper sending off.
- Avett Brothers at The Great American Music Hall Tonight
- Published: Apr 26, 2007
The Avett Brothers make popular music in the purest sense. No, I'm not talking about the triangulating, focus-grouped, commercial pablum peddled by your average major label. This is a welcoming, inclusive kind of sound, born of the folk and country traditions of the Avetts' home state of North Carolina, replete with picked-out banjo, stand-up bass and three-part harmonies, and then infused with the brash, unbridled energy of punk and rock.
Their acclaimed fourth studio album, Four Thieves Gone, released in February 2006, is a triumphant example of what modern roots music should be Â? unguarded and genuine personal stories delivered with a sense of humor, a fierce individualism and a sense of perspective rare in the genre. Something Johnny Cash might have really liked.
- South by Southwest: Wrap Up
- Published: Mar 29, 2007
Positioning yourself in the forward half of the audience at a This Moment in Black History performance is like sitting in the front row of a Gallagher show without an umbrella, but with a much better payoff for your Â?participation'. It turns out that Bay Guardian Music Editor Kimberly Chun was inadvertently kicked in the head by the very same lead singer that chose to hop into my chair with me. He holds a vendetta against Bay area music journalists, perhaps? No matter. Maybe we're both sadists, because from what I can tell, we both rather enjoyed the rough treatment. This could be because the bands start to blend together after a while when you're in the midst of four 13-hour days of music. If it takes a little of the old ultra-violence to command the crowd's attention, then let me be the first moodge to take one in the yarbles.
- South by Southwest: Crazy RV Music Adventure
- Published: Mar 19, 2007
SXSW Music Festival: Austin, TX
The city is bursting at the seams with hipsters seemingly posing as conventioneers. Conspicuously absent are the embroidered-logo short-sleeve knit shirts tucked into frumpy, old guy jeans held up (just a little too high) by a belt which also holds a cell phone holster. Instead, you can't walk a block in any part of town without seeing a gaggle of young, hip-looking people with asymmetrical haircuts, Chuck Taylors, tight jeans, vintage park-and-rec t-shirts and hoodies, sporting badges around their necks.
The streets are also alive with exhibitionists of often-undetermined stripes, evangelists screaming through microphones and handing out t-shirts, a girl in an orange bodysuit dancing for a video camera as if her arms and legs were propellers, random indie-band photo ops in parking lots, gypsy bands set up on the sidewalks or wherever else they can catch peoples' ears, a muscle-bound guy in an Army Ranger t-shirt barbecuing on his porch to the strains of Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty."
- Noise Pop: The Gray Kid
- Published: Mar 06, 2007
Noise Pop has come and gone again, and this year, the fifteenth installment of the Bay Area's preeminent music festival, had some real solid lineups if no eye-popping, big-ticket event like last year's visit from the Flaming Lips. The triumphant Bay Area return of 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, the Sebadoh reunion, The Dandy Warhols and Cake notwithstanding, this year's fest was all about bands and artists just beginning to stretch out and explore their newfound acclaim. Bands like Tapes 'n Tapes, who played the opening night party, as well as Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Midlake, The Ponys, Ghostland Observatory and Clinic.
