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"content": "\u003cp>When you first hear the music of \u003ca href=\"http://www.batforlashes.co.uk/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bat For Lashes\u003c/a>, you may think you’ve heard it before … somewhere. There’s something uncanny about many of the songs, with their soaring vocals and pensive melodies — they sound familiar, perhaps from childhood, perhaps from even earlier. Going far beyond simple nostalgia, Bat For Lashes’ debut album \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> plunges us into a dreamscape filled with elements of our own subconscious. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horse and I” opens \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> in fine form, with an urgent harpsichord line anchoring martial drums and staccato strings — the perfect accompaniment to a vision of Joan of Arc. Throughout the album, many of the lyrics reflect an obsession with the stuff of myth and legend, with songs about arcane objects like a trophy of fur and gold, wizards and court jesters. And the music matches, with echoey production and medieval touches like harpsichord, harp and timpani adding to the atmosphere greatly. But the flourishes of the archaic are added delicately and never overwhelm the simple and straightforward songwriting. Similarly, the lyrics may tempt you to envision a fantastical landscape of talking beasts and magical forests, but it remains a dimly lit backdrop for the very modern emotions at center stage. The visual treatment similarly mixes old and new, whimsy and darkness as in the video for \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wnOUH2jk8\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">“What’s a Girl to Do”\u003c/a> with its BMX biking anthropomorphized woodland creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bat For Lashes is the solo project of Natasha Khan, an art schooled Brighton resident who is remarkably consistent in her love for sequined headbands and facepaint, on and off the stage. With an all-girl backing band, songs about girls (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRCzmvvdDU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">“Prescilla,”\u003c/a> “Sarah”) and loads of feminine imagery, Khan has invited comparisons to other strong female artists, like Bjork, Kate Bush, Cat Power. I would add Mary Timony and Broadcast to that list. The comparisons are warranted, but luckily, the music is in no way derivative, and Khan has also mentioned her time in San Francisco and exposure to the Beats as formative. Perhaps most prominent among her influences are British literary fantasists like J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Frances Hodgson Burnett, even Enid Blyton’s fantasy stories like \u003cb>The Enchanted Wood\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bat For Lashes has been scoring acclaim of the dizzying kind most artists can only dream of (Bjork and Thom Yorke have professed fandom, as has Devendra Banhardt). And \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> was up for the Mercury Prize this week, putting Khan in excellent company with fellow nominees Amy Winehouse, the Klaxons, who \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6977433.stm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">won the prize on Tuesday\u003c/a>, and another of my favorites, Maps, who have put out a gorgeously shoegazey delight of an album in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/We-Can-Create-Maps/dp/B000PKG7MU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">We Can Create\u003c/a>. Recorded as part of the run up to the prize giving, you can hear \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgYWUeZWgKU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">a lovely update\u003c/a> of “Higher Than The Sun” from Primal Scream’s Mercury Prize winning album \u003cb>Screamadelica\u003c/b> that features Bat For Lashes along with Maps and another nominee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even better, Bat For Lashes will be in town next month, playing at Slim’s on October 11th. Don’t miss your chance to hear Bat For Lashes in person. \u003ca href=\"http://www.slimstickets.com/evinfo.php?eventid=18480&sid=\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ticket information\u003c/a> (at slimstickets.com).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When you first hear the music of \u003ca href=\"http://www.batforlashes.co.uk/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bat For Lashes\u003c/a>, you may think you’ve heard it before … somewhere. There’s something uncanny about many of the songs, with their soaring vocals and pensive melodies — they sound familiar, perhaps from childhood, perhaps from even earlier. Going far beyond simple nostalgia, Bat For Lashes’ debut album \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> plunges us into a dreamscape filled with elements of our own subconscious. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horse and I” opens \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> in fine form, with an urgent harpsichord line anchoring martial drums and staccato strings — the perfect accompaniment to a vision of Joan of Arc. Throughout the album, many of the lyrics reflect an obsession with the stuff of myth and legend, with songs about arcane objects like a trophy of fur and gold, wizards and court jesters. And the music matches, with echoey production and medieval touches like harpsichord, harp and timpani adding to the atmosphere greatly. But the flourishes of the archaic are added delicately and never overwhelm the simple and straightforward songwriting. Similarly, the lyrics may tempt you to envision a fantastical landscape of talking beasts and magical forests, but it remains a dimly lit backdrop for the very modern emotions at center stage. The visual treatment similarly mixes old and new, whimsy and darkness as in the video for \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wnOUH2jk8\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">“What’s a Girl to Do”\u003c/a> with its BMX biking anthropomorphized woodland creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bat For Lashes is the solo project of Natasha Khan, an art schooled Brighton resident who is remarkably consistent in her love for sequined headbands and facepaint, on and off the stage. With an all-girl backing band, songs about girls (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRCzmvvdDU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">“Prescilla,”\u003c/a> “Sarah”) and loads of feminine imagery, Khan has invited comparisons to other strong female artists, like Bjork, Kate Bush, Cat Power. I would add Mary Timony and Broadcast to that list. The comparisons are warranted, but luckily, the music is in no way derivative, and Khan has also mentioned her time in San Francisco and exposure to the Beats as formative. Perhaps most prominent among her influences are British literary fantasists like J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Frances Hodgson Burnett, even Enid Blyton’s fantasy stories like \u003cb>The Enchanted Wood\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bat For Lashes has been scoring acclaim of the dizzying kind most artists can only dream of (Bjork and Thom Yorke have professed fandom, as has Devendra Banhardt). And \u003cb>Fur and Gold\u003c/b> was up for the Mercury Prize this week, putting Khan in excellent company with fellow nominees Amy Winehouse, the Klaxons, who \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6977433.stm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">won the prize on Tuesday\u003c/a>, and another of my favorites, Maps, who have put out a gorgeously shoegazey delight of an album in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/We-Can-Create-Maps/dp/B000PKG7MU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">We Can Create\u003c/a>. Recorded as part of the run up to the prize giving, you can hear \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgYWUeZWgKU\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">a lovely update\u003c/a> of “Higher Than The Sun” from Primal Scream’s Mercury Prize winning album \u003cb>Screamadelica\u003c/b> that features Bat For Lashes along with Maps and another nominee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even better, Bat For Lashes will be in town next month, playing at Slim’s on October 11th. Don’t miss your chance to hear Bat For Lashes in person. \u003ca href=\"http://www.slimstickets.com/evinfo.php?eventid=18480&sid=\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ticket information\u003c/a> (at slimstickets.com).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Listening to \u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b>, the excellent debut album by \u003ca href=\"http://www.ilovestvincent.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">St. Vincent\u003c/a>, a thought suddenly struck me: it must be very tiring to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.bjork.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Björk\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This isn’t to say that St. Vincent, the recording name of American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, sounds anything like Björk. In fact, she doesn’t at all. Not one bit. Yet, and this is the crucial point, almost everything I read about her somehow shoehorns in a mention of the elfin Icelander (you can \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22st+vincent%22+bjork&btnG=Google+Search\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Google their names together\u003c/a> to see for yourself).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why? Because St. Vincent has committed the twin crimes of making music that deviates from standard-issue mid-range pop, and being female. And, as anyone who has taken Music Math 101 will know, “weird” plus “woman” almost always equals “Björk.” (This is after extensive research revealed the previous answer of “Kate Bush” to be outdated, which is ironic as, in this case at least, the earlier comparison is probably closer to the mark.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This formula holds true for just about every female singer/songwriter hanging around on the fun side of the fence right now. I have been enjoying a rich seam of music by women recently, from the mild, relatively mainstream kookiness of Feist, through the progressively more out-there recent recordings of Regina Spektor, all the way to the genuinely awesome French loopiness of Camille Dalmais. They all share two things: an admirable streak of fearless individualism and a tendency to be mentioned in the same sentence as a certain recording artiste from Reykjavik.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “B” word has become a lazy shorthand for describing any female musician who dares to deviate from the norm, which is a shame. In reality, the only thing the singular musicians mentioned have in common — Björk included — is a creativity that conversely makes them sound different from anyone else and each other. Their music defies easy comparisons, which is probably why they all get lumped together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, I’m aware that this blog is committing exactly the same sin. However, I’m willing to take one for the team in the fight for the greater good. Starting by encouraging you to go out and buy St. Vincent’s album \u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b>, to discover its unique charms for yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This relatively short, 11-track album, contains more bewitching and delightful twists and turns than most musicians manage in their whole career. I lost track of the amount of things it reminded me of: the drama of Portishead or James Bond theme music, the theatrical flourishes of Rufus Wainright or Antony and the Johnsons, the beguiling artiness of Talk Talk or Charlotte Gainsbourg, even the contrasting vocal stylings of both Ella Fitzergald and Billie Holiday (remarkably in the space of one song, album closer “What Me Worry?”). I could go on, except you will probably hear a completely different list than mine. Suffice it to say that every influence I heard, whether real or imagined, I also liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Put it all together and you get St. Vincent, who is that rare thing: a genuinely new voice in a world that sounds increasingly homogenic. And, no, I don’t mean the Björk album…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b> is out now on Beggars Banquet. St. Vincent will be appearing with The National at The Grand Ballroom on September 29, 2007. \u003ca href=\"http://www.apeconcerts.com/concertInfo.cfm\">Visit Another Planet\u003c/a> for ticket information.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Listening to \u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b>, the excellent debut album by \u003ca href=\"http://www.ilovestvincent.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">St. Vincent\u003c/a>, a thought suddenly struck me: it must be very tiring to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.bjork.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Björk\u003c/a>.\u003cp>This isn't to say that St. Vincent, the recording name of American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, sounds anything like Björk. In fact, she doesn't at all. Not one bit. Yet, and this is the crucial point, almost everything I read about her somehow shoehorns in a mention of the elfin Icelander (you can \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22st+vincent%22+bjork&btnG=Google+Search\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Google their names together\u003c/a> to see for yourself).\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Listening to \u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b>, the excellent debut album by \u003ca href=\"http://www.ilovestvincent.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">St. Vincent\u003c/a>, a thought suddenly struck me: it must be very tiring to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.bjork.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Björk\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This isn’t to say that St. Vincent, the recording name of American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, sounds anything like Björk. In fact, she doesn’t at all. Not one bit. Yet, and this is the crucial point, almost everything I read about her somehow shoehorns in a mention of the elfin Icelander (you can \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22st+vincent%22+bjork&btnG=Google+Search\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Google their names together\u003c/a> to see for yourself).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why? Because St. Vincent has committed the twin crimes of making music that deviates from standard-issue mid-range pop, and being female. And, as anyone who has taken Music Math 101 will know, “weird” plus “woman” almost always equals “Björk.” (This is after extensive research revealed the previous answer of “Kate Bush” to be outdated, which is ironic as, in this case at least, the earlier comparison is probably closer to the mark.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This formula holds true for just about every female singer/songwriter hanging around on the fun side of the fence right now. I have been enjoying a rich seam of music by women recently, from the mild, relatively mainstream kookiness of Feist, through the progressively more out-there recent recordings of Regina Spektor, all the way to the genuinely awesome French loopiness of Camille Dalmais. They all share two things: an admirable streak of fearless individualism and a tendency to be mentioned in the same sentence as a certain recording artiste from Reykjavik.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “B” word has become a lazy shorthand for describing any female musician who dares to deviate from the norm, which is a shame. In reality, the only thing the singular musicians mentioned have in common — Björk included — is a creativity that conversely makes them sound different from anyone else and each other. Their music defies easy comparisons, which is probably why they all get lumped together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, I’m aware that this blog is committing exactly the same sin. However, I’m willing to take one for the team in the fight for the greater good. Starting by encouraging you to go out and buy St. Vincent’s album \u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b>, to discover its unique charms for yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This relatively short, 11-track album, contains more bewitching and delightful twists and turns than most musicians manage in their whole career. I lost track of the amount of things it reminded me of: the drama of Portishead or James Bond theme music, the theatrical flourishes of Rufus Wainright or Antony and the Johnsons, the beguiling artiness of Talk Talk or Charlotte Gainsbourg, even the contrasting vocal stylings of both Ella Fitzergald and Billie Holiday (remarkably in the space of one song, album closer “What Me Worry?”). I could go on, except you will probably hear a completely different list than mine. Suffice it to say that every influence I heard, whether real or imagined, I also liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Put it all together and you get St. Vincent, who is that rare thing: a genuinely new voice in a world that sounds increasingly homogenic. And, no, I don’t mean the Björk album…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marry Me\u003c/b> is out now on Beggars Banquet. St. Vincent will be appearing with The National at The Grand Ballroom on September 29, 2007. \u003ca href=\"http://www.apeconcerts.com/concertInfo.cfm\">Visit Another Planet\u003c/a> for ticket information.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Last Monday afternoon’s gala (September 3, 2007) for the Bridgeway Music Foundation held at Sausalito’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.plantstudios.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Plant Studios\u003c/a>, 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.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Foundation’s mission is to use the facilities at The Plant to reinvigorate the San Francisco music scene. Though the bayside studio has not often opened its intricately carved doors to the public during its 35-year history, once inside, it felt like The Plant’s three recording rooms have been a neighborhood hang from day one. Guests strolled in and out of the control room of Studio B, where Huey Lewis’ \u003cb>Sports\u003c/b>, Journey’s \u003cb>Raised on Radio\u003c/b> and Prince’s \u003cb>Graffiti Bridge\u003c/b> were recorded. Others plunked down beside a particularly rapt John Prine on the Garden Studio’s couch to watch a documentary about the making of Fleetwood Mac’s \u003cb>Rumours\u003c/b>, which was also laid down in Studio B. And as is customary at most parties, the biggest throngs gathered around the open bar and gourmet finger-food spread, featuring shrimp, crab cakes, cheeses, dips and veggie salads prepared by Bay Café’s Joey Altman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The atmosphere in The Plant was as welcoming as can be. The warm, decorative wood walls — one even adorned with a depiction of a piano player and his music crafted from a mirror and colorful plush fabric — gave way to oddly shaped wooden hallways and the occasional kitchen or lounge. The Plant is surprisingly spacious, but has a cozy feel, surely part of the reason why so many great artists felt at home here. I was told at one point that I was standing in Sly Stone’s bedroom, a spacey-looking room off the Garden Studio, also known as Studio C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A happy throng of people also seemed to feel right at home sitting in the sun on the garden patio outside Studio C, sipping drinks and catching up. Many of them looked as if they may well have attended the opening of the studio almost 35 years earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The event was definitely on rock ‘n’ roll time. No one seemed to know when or where anything was happening, and just about everything went off about an hour behind schedule, but no one seemed to notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one part of event that did go off on schedule was the opening photography exhibit and signing in Studio A, where Heart, The Dave Matthews Band, Metallica and Mariah Carey made albums. On Monday, the walls were graced with former \u003ci>Rolling Stone\u003c/i> shutterbug Robert Altman’s iconic rock photography covering subjects like Tina Turner, Keith Richards and Iggy Pop. Altman was on hand, signing books and shooting the breeze with fans and friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the evening, the schedule abruptly resumed with seven or eight minutes of very entertaining footage from an upcoming documentary on Plant owner Michael Indelicato and his vintage guitar business. After that, a listening for a few of the songs that appear in the documentary, covers performed by Journey’s Neil Schon, Clarence Clemons, Sammy Hagar, Bob Weir, Jerry Harrison and Ratdog guitarist Mark Karan — the latter two there to talk about their contributions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But perhaps the most enlightening part of the evening was a trip to the bathroom, notable for its tall wooden door with an extremely high knob, which also features an image of Frank Zappa that has been written on by many of the famous and less-than-famous names who have come through this commode on their way to creating an album. That alone was worth the price of admission.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one part of event that did go off on schedule was the opening photography exhibit and signing in Studio A, where Heart, The Dave Matthews Band, Metallica and Mariah Carey made albums. On Monday, the walls were graced with former \u003ci>Rolling Stone\u003c/i> shutterbug Robert Altman’s iconic rock photography covering subjects like Tina Turner, Keith Richards and Iggy Pop. Altman was on hand, signing books and shooting the breeze with fans and friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the evening, the schedule abruptly resumed with seven or eight minutes of very entertaining footage from an upcoming documentary on Plant owner Michael Indelicato and his vintage guitar business. After that, a listening for a few of the songs that appear in the documentary, covers performed by Journey’s Neil Schon, Clarence Clemons, Sammy Hagar, Bob Weir, Jerry Harrison and Ratdog guitarist Mark Karan — the latter two there to talk about their contributions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But perhaps the most enlightening part of the evening was a trip to the bathroom, notable for its tall wooden door with an extremely high knob, which also features an image of Frank Zappa that has been written on by many of the famous and less-than-famous names who have come through this commode on their way to creating an album. That alone was worth the price of admission.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>There’s no lack of love for the accordion. From lilting French ditties to rowdy German polka, sober klezmer cryalongs to obstreperous mariachi blowouts — Italian jingles, Dutch clog stomps, cajun zydeco, Scottish ceilidhs, from the circus to the chapel, the accordion has always had a home among the much of the world’s folk music and tradition, seeming to define — musically, at least — the peculiar features unique to each culture. Part-piano, part-synthesizer, part-arachnid, the accordion may be one of the most versatile musicmakers around. In its relatively short history of just under two centuries, it has managed to define an impressive amount of styles and inspired a huge range of awkward dance moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, ever since modern man first wielded the guitar, the accordion has had to take second stage as drinking culture’s brawny, boisterous instrument of choice. In recent years especially, perhaps ever since Weird Al Yankovich began strutting his squeezebox skills, or perhaps when ’80s ubernerd icon, Urkel, first strapped one on on TV’s \u003cb>Family Matters\u003c/b>, our pop culture notion of the accordionist has been all braces, bad hair, and multicolored suspenders. Not the stuff of a self-respecting rock idol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For decades, it’s been as if the accordion itself had slunk away into the shadows. There it learned some new chops, sulked over its self-imposed exile, got a few tattoos on the side, and — now that Yankovich’s career has gained a cult following and new credibility — the squeezebox is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just off of Broadway, in the small nook of downtown Oakland that is becoming home to an ever-larger collection of art galleries, cafes, bars, and strange, half-constructed condo units, \u003ca href=\"http://www.21grand.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">21 Grand\u003c/a> is a gallery-cum-performance space that favors the experimental and subversively populist. It also shares a space with \u003ca href=\"http://www.smythesaccordioncenter.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Smythe’s Accordion Center\u003c/a>, appropriately enough, the area’s longstanding accordion dealer and repair shop. Kimric Smythe, the shop’s owner — we’re later told — is actually responsible for suggesting the \u003cb>Monsters of Accordion\u003c/b> tour in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The space is completely packed for tonight’s show. In fact, every show on the tour — each of which features four solo accordionists and special guest — has sold out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the crowd has left their clogs and lederhosen at home. (There are plenty of suspenders, however, as well as mohawks and Siouxsie Sioux-style vintagewear.) \u003ca href=\"http://www.geoffberner.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Geoff Berner\u003c/a> starts things off. Dressed in a what looks like a mortician’s tailored black and white tux with a cueball head and wry smile, teetering a little as he stands, Berner lurches into his first song. “Volcano God,” a sullen song to the tune of the traditional Jewish hymn, “Oseh Shalom:”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Volcano God, Volcano God,\u003cbr>\nWhich one of my treasures will you take from me today?\u003cbr>\nVolcano God, Volcano God,\u003cbr>\nPraise you with my screams as I watch them fall away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well. That’s one way to start a party. In the silence that followed, Berner told us that he is devoted to developing new Jewish Canadian drinking songs. “It’s a popular genre,” he drawled, setting the stage for the rest of the set. Cut deep with sardonic humor and irreverent wit, and punctuated with Berner’s own brand of darkly humorous, drunken banter, each song plays on Jewish theological concepts and classic klezmer/cantorial arrangements, from “Whiskey Rabbi” to “Lucky Goddamn Jew.” My favorite — and probably that of most of the audience — was the call and response version of “Weep, Bride, Weep,” a wedding song of sorts, to the horrors of marriage and men. By the end, the audience was laughing so hard that Berner need only waft his fingers and the whole room responded at each refrain, “Weeeeep, Bride, Weeeeep…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However long the intermission was, it was not long enough to prevent \u003ca href=\"http://www.duckmandu.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Duckmandu\u003c/a>‘s hockey-game warm-up rendition of Devo’s “Girl U Want” to come crashing into the end of Berner’s solemn set. To go from comic, funereal Yiddish ballads to accordion recreations of ’80s pop hits was a little jarring. In purple jacket, blue pants, and constantly switching between a series of Donald Duck-billed caps (which obscured a pink and blue faux-hawk), Duckmandu moved between rich accordionized versions of Tex Ritter’s “(I Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” with nary a trace of irony. But his coup d’grace had to be a nearly spot-on rendition of California punk band The Dead Kennedys’ “Moon Over Marin.” It takes a calloused throat to mimic singer Jello Biafra’s nasal falsetto, and nimble fingers to follow the chords of the song’s guitar solo. In fact, I later learned, Duckmandu has an entire album dedicated to Dead Kennedy’s covers, titled \u003cb>Fresh Duck for Rotting Accordionists\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://cornmo.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Corn Mo\u003c/a>‘s bio describes him as “bearing a striking resemblance to Meat Loaf,” which seemed a little off, given that he is more strikingly close to Sammy Hagar at the end of his heroic period. Still, mounting the stage in a full white and black tux, capped with a mane of shaggy brown hair, and strapped with a white-flecked sqeezebox, he did have a meaty stage presence. And if “like a bat of hell,” can be an understatement, well, it was. Mo opened up each song with a long, winding, breathless, hilarious story from his childhood (“the time Jason Kline got peed on by the other Jason…”). The ballad that followed and chronicled each story was belted out with flair that could’ve embarrassed the amateur rock stylings of Tenacious D. A foot-operated cymbal was pounded for extra emphasis where the narrative demanded it, and Mo was unafraid of striking a Liberace pose or swirling his hair in circles when the tempo reached climax. He ended with the crowd-pleasing, heavy metal headslammer, “Hava Nagila Monster,” which tied things together nicely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the intermission, we were invited to watch Kimric Smythe — owner of the accordion shop next door — repair an ailing accordion. Somehow, it didn’t seem to fit the rollicking nature of the rest of the night, and some of the audience began to stretch and head to the back for another drink. We probably should’ve known. As Smythe set up the patient and headed backstage for his toolbox, the accordion exploded in a loud burst, sending strips of squeezebox and what looked like little feathers out into the stunned audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out, along with being an expert repairman and the progenitor of the \u003cb>Monsters of Accordion\u003c/b> tour, Smythe is also a member of the San Francisco pyrotechnic art ensemble \u003ca href=\"http://www.srl.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Survival Research Labs\u003c/a>, and one of the original firestarters at Burning Man. The accordion was blown up, he assured us, with an airbag, “for our protection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The flurries set the stage for \u003ca href=\"http://www.jasonwebley.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Jason Webley\u003c/a>, tonight’s top bill, and the main organizer of the tour. From the beginning, he made it clear that his set was going to be an audience-assisted affair. Sneering and stomping a heavy rhythm to his songs, with a gruff, lumberjack’s voice and a sailor’s swagger, Webley belted them out, stopping mid-song to teach his audience the upcoming lyrics. For the finale, he invited the night’s performers to come up onstage and encouraged his audience to abandon their seats and head to the front. Nearly everyone did. He launched into an exercise in “instant drunkeness,” encouraging everyone to hold their index finger aloft and spin in circles while watching it, until the sober were stumbling into their neighbors. The already drunk went straight to the floor. And, as neighbors helped neighbors back to their bearings, the four accordion monsters launched into the night’s last endearing singalong:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the glass is full drink up, drink up!\u003cbr>\nThis may be the last time we see this cup.\u003cbr>\nIf God wanted us sober\u003cbr>\nHe’d knock the glass over\u003cbr>\nSo while it is full we drink up.\u003cbr>\n(drink up!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.elevenrecords.com/monsters/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Monsters of Accordion 2007\u003c/a> tour is over.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "There's no lack of love for the accordion. From lilting French ditties to rowdy German polka, sober klezmer cryalongs to obstreperous mariachi blowouts -- Italian jingles, Dutch clog stomps, cajun zydeco, Scottish ceilidhs, from the circus to the chapel, the accordion has always had a home among the much of the world's folk music and tradition, seeming to define -- musically, at least -- the peculiar features unique to each culture. Part-piano, part-synthesizer, part-arachnid, the accordion may be one of the most versatile musicmakers around. In its relatively short history of just under two centuries, it has managed to define an impressive amount of styles and inspired a huge range of awkward dance moves.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s no lack of love for the accordion. From lilting French ditties to rowdy German polka, sober klezmer cryalongs to obstreperous mariachi blowouts — Italian jingles, Dutch clog stomps, cajun zydeco, Scottish ceilidhs, from the circus to the chapel, the accordion has always had a home among the much of the world’s folk music and tradition, seeming to define — musically, at least — the peculiar features unique to each culture. Part-piano, part-synthesizer, part-arachnid, the accordion may be one of the most versatile musicmakers around. In its relatively short history of just under two centuries, it has managed to define an impressive amount of styles and inspired a huge range of awkward dance moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet, ever since modern man first wielded the guitar, the accordion has had to take second stage as drinking culture’s brawny, boisterous instrument of choice. In recent years especially, perhaps ever since Weird Al Yankovich began strutting his squeezebox skills, or perhaps when ’80s ubernerd icon, Urkel, first strapped one on on TV’s \u003cb>Family Matters\u003c/b>, our pop culture notion of the accordionist has been all braces, bad hair, and multicolored suspenders. Not the stuff of a self-respecting rock idol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For decades, it’s been as if the accordion itself had slunk away into the shadows. There it learned some new chops, sulked over its self-imposed exile, got a few tattoos on the side, and — now that Yankovich’s career has gained a cult following and new credibility — the squeezebox is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just off of Broadway, in the small nook of downtown Oakland that is becoming home to an ever-larger collection of art galleries, cafes, bars, and strange, half-constructed condo units, \u003ca href=\"http://www.21grand.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">21 Grand\u003c/a> is a gallery-cum-performance space that favors the experimental and subversively populist. It also shares a space with \u003ca href=\"http://www.smythesaccordioncenter.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Smythe’s Accordion Center\u003c/a>, appropriately enough, the area’s longstanding accordion dealer and repair shop. Kimric Smythe, the shop’s owner — we’re later told — is actually responsible for suggesting the \u003cb>Monsters of Accordion\u003c/b> tour in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The space is completely packed for tonight’s show. In fact, every show on the tour — each of which features four solo accordionists and special guest — has sold out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the crowd has left their clogs and lederhosen at home. (There are plenty of suspenders, however, as well as mohawks and Siouxsie Sioux-style vintagewear.) \u003ca href=\"http://www.geoffberner.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Geoff Berner\u003c/a> starts things off. Dressed in a what looks like a mortician’s tailored black and white tux with a cueball head and wry smile, teetering a little as he stands, Berner lurches into his first song. “Volcano God,” a sullen song to the tune of the traditional Jewish hymn, “Oseh Shalom:”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Volcano God, Volcano God,\u003cbr>\nWhich one of my treasures will you take from me today?\u003cbr>\nVolcano God, Volcano God,\u003cbr>\nPraise you with my screams as I watch them fall away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well. That’s one way to start a party. In the silence that followed, Berner told us that he is devoted to developing new Jewish Canadian drinking songs. “It’s a popular genre,” he drawled, setting the stage for the rest of the set. Cut deep with sardonic humor and irreverent wit, and punctuated with Berner’s own brand of darkly humorous, drunken banter, each song plays on Jewish theological concepts and classic klezmer/cantorial arrangements, from “Whiskey Rabbi” to “Lucky Goddamn Jew.” My favorite — and probably that of most of the audience — was the call and response version of “Weep, Bride, Weep,” a wedding song of sorts, to the horrors of marriage and men. By the end, the audience was laughing so hard that Berner need only waft his fingers and the whole room responded at each refrain, “Weeeeep, Bride, Weeeeep…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However long the intermission was, it was not long enough to prevent \u003ca href=\"http://www.duckmandu.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Duckmandu\u003c/a>‘s hockey-game warm-up rendition of Devo’s “Girl U Want” to come crashing into the end of Berner’s solemn set. To go from comic, funereal Yiddish ballads to accordion recreations of ’80s pop hits was a little jarring. In purple jacket, blue pants, and constantly switching between a series of Donald Duck-billed caps (which obscured a pink and blue faux-hawk), Duckmandu moved between rich accordionized versions of Tex Ritter’s “(I Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” with nary a trace of irony. But his coup d’grace had to be a nearly spot-on rendition of California punk band The Dead Kennedys’ “Moon Over Marin.” It takes a calloused throat to mimic singer Jello Biafra’s nasal falsetto, and nimble fingers to follow the chords of the song’s guitar solo. In fact, I later learned, Duckmandu has an entire album dedicated to Dead Kennedy’s covers, titled \u003cb>Fresh Duck for Rotting Accordionists\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://cornmo.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Corn Mo\u003c/a>‘s bio describes him as “bearing a striking resemblance to Meat Loaf,” which seemed a little off, given that he is more strikingly close to Sammy Hagar at the end of his heroic period. Still, mounting the stage in a full white and black tux, capped with a mane of shaggy brown hair, and strapped with a white-flecked sqeezebox, he did have a meaty stage presence. And if “like a bat of hell,” can be an understatement, well, it was. Mo opened up each song with a long, winding, breathless, hilarious story from his childhood (“the time Jason Kline got peed on by the other Jason…”). The ballad that followed and chronicled each story was belted out with flair that could’ve embarrassed the amateur rock stylings of Tenacious D. A foot-operated cymbal was pounded for extra emphasis where the narrative demanded it, and Mo was unafraid of striking a Liberace pose or swirling his hair in circles when the tempo reached climax. He ended with the crowd-pleasing, heavy metal headslammer, “Hava Nagila Monster,” which tied things together nicely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the intermission, we were invited to watch Kimric Smythe — owner of the accordion shop next door — repair an ailing accordion. Somehow, it didn’t seem to fit the rollicking nature of the rest of the night, and some of the audience began to stretch and head to the back for another drink. We probably should’ve known. As Smythe set up the patient and headed backstage for his toolbox, the accordion exploded in a loud burst, sending strips of squeezebox and what looked like little feathers out into the stunned audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out, along with being an expert repairman and the progenitor of the \u003cb>Monsters of Accordion\u003c/b> tour, Smythe is also a member of the San Francisco pyrotechnic art ensemble \u003ca href=\"http://www.srl.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Survival Research Labs\u003c/a>, and one of the original firestarters at Burning Man. The accordion was blown up, he assured us, with an airbag, “for our protection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The flurries set the stage for \u003ca href=\"http://www.jasonwebley.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Jason Webley\u003c/a>, tonight’s top bill, and the main organizer of the tour. From the beginning, he made it clear that his set was going to be an audience-assisted affair. Sneering and stomping a heavy rhythm to his songs, with a gruff, lumberjack’s voice and a sailor’s swagger, Webley belted them out, stopping mid-song to teach his audience the upcoming lyrics. For the finale, he invited the night’s performers to come up onstage and encouraged his audience to abandon their seats and head to the front. Nearly everyone did. He launched into an exercise in “instant drunkeness,” encouraging everyone to hold their index finger aloft and spin in circles while watching it, until the sober were stumbling into their neighbors. The already drunk went straight to the floor. And, as neighbors helped neighbors back to their bearings, the four accordion monsters launched into the night’s last endearing singalong:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the glass is full drink up, drink up!\u003cbr>\nThis may be the last time we see this cup.\u003cbr>\nIf God wanted us sober\u003cbr>\nHe’d knock the glass over\u003cbr>\nSo while it is full we drink up.\u003cbr>\n(drink up!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.elevenrecords.com/monsters/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Monsters of Accordion 2007\u003c/a> tour is over.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Smog Goes Solo",
"headTitle": "Smog Goes Solo | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>What’s the difference between a solo musician and a band?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer was easy back in the good old golden oldie days, when acts could be easily divided between those who went by the names of individuals (Elvis Presley) or adopted some collective title (The Beatles). But times change, and things get more complicated. Personally, I blame the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Thompson Twins\u003c/a>. As soon as people found out there were more than two of them, none of whom were called Thompson, all the rules went out of the window. Or perhaps it was Manfred Mann’s fault. Whatever. The point is that these days more and more musical individuals are pretending to be groups, and the world is a more confusing place as a result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is especially true in the electronica section of your local record store, where you’ll find any number of bedroom-based laptop-botherers releasing records under band-like names (think Aphex Twin, Wagon Christ, and Squarepusher) perhaps in some misguided attempt to sound less like socially awkward boys with an unhealthy interest in bleepy, squelchy sounds. More confusing is that the same practise is also common among the folky/alt-country crowd. Despite having roots containing many a traditional solo singer-songwriter, the likes of Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Will Oldham (Palace) are also blurring the line between the singular and collective. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings me to Bill Callahan and his folky, lo-fi one-man band, Smog. I’ll admit that I came to him (them?) late, despite the fact that he has been releasing music under the Smog name since the late 1980s. But as soon as I heard his low voice sing “Winter weather is not my soul/But the biding for spring” at the start of 2005’s \u003cb>A River Ain’t Too Much Love\u003c/b>, I just couldn’t love it enough. The album is both sparse and luxurious, stripped back to the bone in all the right places in order to let his deep, melancholic voice and black humor glow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I heard that Callahan’s next release would be under his own name, I was worried. As Smog, his music has varied in style, and even his biggest fans will probably admit that his back catalog has its rough patches, quality-wise. So what kind of radical shift was this name change signaling?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out I had little reason to fret. \u003cb>Woke on a Whaleheart\u003c/b>, released this year, may be different, but the adjustments are subtle, and don’t disappoint. Ironically, the most notable change between the last Smog album and Callahan’s first as a “solo” artist, is that the newer release sounds much more like the work of a band than an individual. The arrangements are fuller and more complex, with added musicians and backing singers chiming in all over the place, whereas many of the tracks on the last album could have been recorded by one lonely guy in a mountain shack (and quite possibly were). But, despite all the added warmth and color, Callahan’s droll baritone still sets the tone. More accessible it may be, but shiny happy people it ain’t — thankfully.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, as if to further confuse his fans, the artist formerly known as Smog is planning to play not one but two San Francisco shows in a single day. On October 7 you can catch Callahan first at Golden Gate Park as part of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hardly Strictly Bluegrass\u003c/a> free festival, and then indoors at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theindependentsf.com/oct2007.htm\">The Independent\u003c/a> later that same day. I can only recommend you go see him — but whether he’s going to turn up with a backing band or on his own is anyone’s guess.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "What's the difference between a solo musician and a band?\u003cp>The answer was easy back in the good old golden oldie days, when acts could be easily divided between those who went by the names of individuals (Elvis Presley) or adopted some collective title (The Beatles). But times change, and things get more complicated. Personally, I blame the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Thompson Twins\u003c/a>. As soon as people found out there were more than two of them, none of whom were called Thompson, all the rules went out of the window. Or perhaps it was Manfred Mann's fault. Whatever. The point is that these days more and more musical individuals are pretending to be groups, and the world is a more confusing place as a result.\u003c/p>",
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"description": "What's the difference between a solo musician and a band?The answer was easy back in the good old golden oldie days, when acts could be easily divided between those who went by the names of individuals (Elvis Presley) or adopted some collective title (The Beatles). But times change, and things get more complicated. Personally, I blame the Thompson Twins. As soon as people found out there were more than two of them, none of whom were called Thompson, all the rules went out of the window. Or perhaps it was Manfred Mann's fault. Whatever. The point is that these days more and more musical individuals are pretending to be groups, and the world is a more confusing place as a result.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What’s the difference between a solo musician and a band?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer was easy back in the good old golden oldie days, when acts could be easily divided between those who went by the names of individuals (Elvis Presley) or adopted some collective title (The Beatles). But times change, and things get more complicated. Personally, I blame the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Thompson Twins\u003c/a>. As soon as people found out there were more than two of them, none of whom were called Thompson, all the rules went out of the window. Or perhaps it was Manfred Mann’s fault. Whatever. The point is that these days more and more musical individuals are pretending to be groups, and the world is a more confusing place as a result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is especially true in the electronica section of your local record store, where you’ll find any number of bedroom-based laptop-botherers releasing records under band-like names (think Aphex Twin, Wagon Christ, and Squarepusher) perhaps in some misguided attempt to sound less like socially awkward boys with an unhealthy interest in bleepy, squelchy sounds. More confusing is that the same practise is also common among the folky/alt-country crowd. Despite having roots containing many a traditional solo singer-songwriter, the likes of Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Will Oldham (Palace) are also blurring the line between the singular and collective. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings me to Bill Callahan and his folky, lo-fi one-man band, Smog. I’ll admit that I came to him (them?) late, despite the fact that he has been releasing music under the Smog name since the late 1980s. But as soon as I heard his low voice sing “Winter weather is not my soul/But the biding for spring” at the start of 2005’s \u003cb>A River Ain’t Too Much Love\u003c/b>, I just couldn’t love it enough. The album is both sparse and luxurious, stripped back to the bone in all the right places in order to let his deep, melancholic voice and black humor glow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I heard that Callahan’s next release would be under his own name, I was worried. As Smog, his music has varied in style, and even his biggest fans will probably admit that his back catalog has its rough patches, quality-wise. So what kind of radical shift was this name change signaling?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out I had little reason to fret. \u003cb>Woke on a Whaleheart\u003c/b>, released this year, may be different, but the adjustments are subtle, and don’t disappoint. Ironically, the most notable change between the last Smog album and Callahan’s first as a “solo” artist, is that the newer release sounds much more like the work of a band than an individual. The arrangements are fuller and more complex, with added musicians and backing singers chiming in all over the place, whereas many of the tracks on the last album could have been recorded by one lonely guy in a mountain shack (and quite possibly were). But, despite all the added warmth and color, Callahan’s droll baritone still sets the tone. More accessible it may be, but shiny happy people it ain’t — thankfully.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, as if to further confuse his fans, the artist formerly known as Smog is planning to play not one but two San Francisco shows in a single day. On October 7 you can catch Callahan first at Golden Gate Park as part of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hardly Strictly Bluegrass\u003c/a> free festival, and then indoors at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theindependentsf.com/oct2007.htm\">The Independent\u003c/a> later that same day. I can only recommend you go see him — but whether he’s going to turn up with a backing band or on his own is anyone’s guess.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Probably the most commonly asked small-talk question on the shiny dance floor of the always-classy Bimbo’s 365 Club Wednesday (August 22, 2007) night was, “Have you seen the movie?” \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/movies/index.jsp?id=5541\">The Devil And Daniel Johnston\u003c/a>, the 2004 documentary, has done for Johnston’s career what the “Pink Moon” \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Volkswagen ad\u003c/a> did for Nick Drake. It turned him from a cult figure into a universally beloved one, it turned your secret favorite undiscovered genius into everyone’s favorite undiscovered genius. Johnston’s name used to be like the password that gained you access to the secret club. Either you knew the words to every song, or you’d never heard of him. Luckily for Daniel, he didn’t die at age 24 like Nick Drake did. He is alive and (more or less) well, kept stable with medication, obese and gray and living with his parents in suburban Waller, Texas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> If you’ve seen the movie, you already know the major plot points in the Daniel Johnston legend. Raised in a tight-knit fundamentalist Christian family in West Virginia, Johnston eventually he ended up in Austin, Texas, got a job at McDonald’s, and charmed his way into a role as pet of the early ’90s Austin music scene by handing out cassette tapes he recorded in his parents’ basement and his brother’s garage. He even managed to hustle his way onto MTV. But along with his tremendous (if untutored) talent as a songwriter, Daniel had an uncontrolled, florid bipolar disorder that often blossomed into full-blown psychosis. Over the years he beat a friend over the head with a pipe, crashed his father’s small airplane, terrified an old lady so bad she jumped out a window, and had a total freakout during a trip to New York City, such that Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth was compelled to drive around New Jersey looking for him, and found him on the side of the road, raving about Satan in the pouring rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, Daniel is not only stable, he’s on tour. I had expected to see an audience of aging gen-Xers in the Bimbo’s crowd, but they were nowhere in evidence. Everyplace I looked was 22-year-olds in skinny jeans. Opening for Daniel was the Ohsees, a local outfit headed up by the multitalented John Dwyer, formerly of the Coachwhips. Dwyer announced that they had a new drummer, and it was his 21st birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a long interval between the Ohsees leaving the stage and Johnston’s entrance. The skinny-jeaned, art-schoolish crowd got restless, chanting “Dan-iel! Dan-iel!” for a good few minutes. Eventually he shambled out, and the cheers were rapturous. Dressed in a gray long-sleeved t-shirt tucked into his sweatpants (“SWEATPANTS?” yelled a kid standing near me, sounding actually offended), Daniel did what he does best. In his cracked high tenor, much more cracked and scratchy than it once was, Daniel sang about love and heartbreak and god and the devil, hunched around the microphone so that it almost seemed he didn’t know or care that any of us were even there. He played the first few songs on an odd little square wooden electric guitar that had the tuning pegs in the body itself, in recesses above and below the strings. His guitar playing, never his strongest suit, was especially wobbly this evening. After a few numbers, another guitarist, Brett Hartenbach, played while Daniel just sang. The reason for this became clear: his hands were shaking. My armchair psychiatry “degree” leads me to think that the tremor is a side effect of anti-psychotic meds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In old footage, Johnston always looked and sounded about sixteen, skinny with brown curly hair and wild sad eyes. Now that he’s so overweight and gray and palsied, I had to keep reminding myself that he’s only 46. He looks ten years older, at least. But there was nothing diminished about his spirit or the power of his music, and the art-school kid crowd was right there with him. The resurgent love for Daniel Johnston’s music does not appear, as I’d feared, to come out of an ironic it’s-great-because-it’s-terrible thing. They were loving him because he is utterly authentic, free of artifice, expressing out loud a kind of adolescent turmoil that saner people hide at all costs. “Mean girls give pleasure/it’s my greatest treasure,” went his opening number. “All of your problems are probably fake/and she tastes just like ice cream and cake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnston and Hartenbach played favorites off his classic early cassettes, including the oft-covered “Walking The Cow,” and “Almost Got Hit By A Truck.” He’d sing the first line and the audience would roar in recognition. His between-song patter didn’t disappoint. “We went out for a spaghetti dinner, and it was the best spaghetti dinner I ever ate,” he announced. Later he talked about a dream he’d had about a man sentenced to death for attempting suicide. “And in the dream the man was ME!” he said. “I woke up and I didn’t know what to think.” In the middle of an astonishing rendition of “Living Life” (“Hold me like a mother would/like I always knew somebody should/even though tomorrow don’t look that good”) my companion for the evening turned to me and said “Oh my god, he’s ripping my heart in half!” It was a sentiment you could hear echoed around the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Hartenbach left the stage, Daniel sat at the piano, and played just a couple songs. “Would you follow me anywhere?” he sang. “Are you entertained by deep despair?” Then the Ohsees returned and backed him for the rest of the night. They did their best to follow him, but it’s like trying to outbox the heavyweight champ. The 21-year-old drummer was no match for Daniel Johnston. The king of songs of pain was being backed by a band of ice-cream-and-cake kids, and as much as I like the Ohsees on their own (and I do!) I just wanted them to turn their amps down and get out of his way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel is very much alive, obviously, but I can never shake the feeling that he is enjoying a sort of posthumous career. A tribute album released a few years back was called \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Late-Great-Daniel-Johnston-Discovered/dp/B0002MH3KQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9379755-0144137?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1187901570&sr=1-1\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Late Great Daniel Johnston\u003c/a>. One of his signature songs is “Casper The Friendly Ghost,” about a lonely guy who becomes beloved — only after he drowns in a wishing well. “You can’t buy respect, the librarian said/but everyone respects the dead,” he sang. “And so the legend grew/and all his friends spread the news/he’s Casper, the friendly ghost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a fast rendition of “Rock This Town,” it was all over. Maybe other members of the crowd felt, as I did, that they were seeing something they never thought they’d get to see, and may never get to see again. The sold-out, packed house stomped and cheered and clapped as long as possible, but Johnston never came back for an encore. Between each song, all night, someone was yelling, “We love you, Daniel.” You could tell they meant it.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Probably the most commonly asked small-talk question on the shiny dance floor of the always-classy Bimbo's 365 Club Wednesday (August 22, 2007) night was, \"Have you seen the movie?\" \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/movies/index.jsp?id=5541\">The Devil And Daniel Johnston\u003c/a>, the 2004 documentary, has done for Johnston's career what the \"Pink Moon\" \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Volkswagen ad\u003c/a> did for Nick Drake. It turned him from a cult figure into a universally beloved one, it turned your secret favorite undiscovered genius into everyone's favorite undiscovered genius. Johnston's name used to be like the password that gained you access to the secret club. Either you knew the words to every song, or you'd never heard of him. Luckily for Daniel, he didn't die at age 24 like Nick Drake did. He is alive and (more or less) well, kept stable with medication, obese and gray and living with his parents in suburban Waller, Texas.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Probably the most commonly asked small-talk question on the shiny dance floor of the always-classy Bimbo’s 365 Club Wednesday (August 22, 2007) night was, “Have you seen the movie?” \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/movies/index.jsp?id=5541\">The Devil And Daniel Johnston\u003c/a>, the 2004 documentary, has done for Johnston’s career what the “Pink Moon” \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Volkswagen ad\u003c/a> did for Nick Drake. It turned him from a cult figure into a universally beloved one, it turned your secret favorite undiscovered genius into everyone’s favorite undiscovered genius. Johnston’s name used to be like the password that gained you access to the secret club. Either you knew the words to every song, or you’d never heard of him. Luckily for Daniel, he didn’t die at age 24 like Nick Drake did. He is alive and (more or less) well, kept stable with medication, obese and gray and living with his parents in suburban Waller, Texas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> If you’ve seen the movie, you already know the major plot points in the Daniel Johnston legend. Raised in a tight-knit fundamentalist Christian family in West Virginia, Johnston eventually he ended up in Austin, Texas, got a job at McDonald’s, and charmed his way into a role as pet of the early ’90s Austin music scene by handing out cassette tapes he recorded in his parents’ basement and his brother’s garage. He even managed to hustle his way onto MTV. But along with his tremendous (if untutored) talent as a songwriter, Daniel had an uncontrolled, florid bipolar disorder that often blossomed into full-blown psychosis. Over the years he beat a friend over the head with a pipe, crashed his father’s small airplane, terrified an old lady so bad she jumped out a window, and had a total freakout during a trip to New York City, such that Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth was compelled to drive around New Jersey looking for him, and found him on the side of the road, raving about Satan in the pouring rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, Daniel is not only stable, he’s on tour. I had expected to see an audience of aging gen-Xers in the Bimbo’s crowd, but they were nowhere in evidence. Everyplace I looked was 22-year-olds in skinny jeans. Opening for Daniel was the Ohsees, a local outfit headed up by the multitalented John Dwyer, formerly of the Coachwhips. Dwyer announced that they had a new drummer, and it was his 21st birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a long interval between the Ohsees leaving the stage and Johnston’s entrance. The skinny-jeaned, art-schoolish crowd got restless, chanting “Dan-iel! Dan-iel!” for a good few minutes. Eventually he shambled out, and the cheers were rapturous. Dressed in a gray long-sleeved t-shirt tucked into his sweatpants (“SWEATPANTS?” yelled a kid standing near me, sounding actually offended), Daniel did what he does best. In his cracked high tenor, much more cracked and scratchy than it once was, Daniel sang about love and heartbreak and god and the devil, hunched around the microphone so that it almost seemed he didn’t know or care that any of us were even there. He played the first few songs on an odd little square wooden electric guitar that had the tuning pegs in the body itself, in recesses above and below the strings. His guitar playing, never his strongest suit, was especially wobbly this evening. After a few numbers, another guitarist, Brett Hartenbach, played while Daniel just sang. The reason for this became clear: his hands were shaking. My armchair psychiatry “degree” leads me to think that the tremor is a side effect of anti-psychotic meds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In old footage, Johnston always looked and sounded about sixteen, skinny with brown curly hair and wild sad eyes. Now that he’s so overweight and gray and palsied, I had to keep reminding myself that he’s only 46. He looks ten years older, at least. But there was nothing diminished about his spirit or the power of his music, and the art-school kid crowd was right there with him. The resurgent love for Daniel Johnston’s music does not appear, as I’d feared, to come out of an ironic it’s-great-because-it’s-terrible thing. They were loving him because he is utterly authentic, free of artifice, expressing out loud a kind of adolescent turmoil that saner people hide at all costs. “Mean girls give pleasure/it’s my greatest treasure,” went his opening number. “All of your problems are probably fake/and she tastes just like ice cream and cake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnston and Hartenbach played favorites off his classic early cassettes, including the oft-covered “Walking The Cow,” and “Almost Got Hit By A Truck.” He’d sing the first line and the audience would roar in recognition. His between-song patter didn’t disappoint. “We went out for a spaghetti dinner, and it was the best spaghetti dinner I ever ate,” he announced. Later he talked about a dream he’d had about a man sentenced to death for attempting suicide. “And in the dream the man was ME!” he said. “I woke up and I didn’t know what to think.” In the middle of an astonishing rendition of “Living Life” (“Hold me like a mother would/like I always knew somebody should/even though tomorrow don’t look that good”) my companion for the evening turned to me and said “Oh my god, he’s ripping my heart in half!” It was a sentiment you could hear echoed around the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Hartenbach left the stage, Daniel sat at the piano, and played just a couple songs. “Would you follow me anywhere?” he sang. “Are you entertained by deep despair?” Then the Ohsees returned and backed him for the rest of the night. They did their best to follow him, but it’s like trying to outbox the heavyweight champ. The 21-year-old drummer was no match for Daniel Johnston. The king of songs of pain was being backed by a band of ice-cream-and-cake kids, and as much as I like the Ohsees on their own (and I do!) I just wanted them to turn their amps down and get out of his way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel is very much alive, obviously, but I can never shake the feeling that he is enjoying a sort of posthumous career. A tribute album released a few years back was called \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Late-Great-Daniel-Johnston-Discovered/dp/B0002MH3KQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9379755-0144137?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1187901570&sr=1-1\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Late Great Daniel Johnston\u003c/a>. One of his signature songs is “Casper The Friendly Ghost,” about a lonely guy who becomes beloved — only after he drowns in a wishing well. “You can’t buy respect, the librarian said/but everyone respects the dead,” he sang. “And so the legend grew/and all his friends spread the news/he’s Casper, the friendly ghost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a fast rendition of “Rock This Town,” it was all over. Maybe other members of the crowd felt, as I did, that they were seeing something they never thought they’d get to see, and may never get to see again. The sold-out, packed house stomped and cheered and clapped as long as possible, but Johnston never came back for an encore. Between each song, all night, someone was yelling, “We love you, Daniel.” You could tell they meant it.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Architecture in Helsinki: Places Like This",
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"content": "\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Places Like This\u003c/b> is a blissful romp through new wave, funk, calypso and pop. Intricate, piping-hot rhythms bubble just below the surface and high-energy, herky-jerky vocals echo wildly over a musical jungle densely overgrown with alien synth sounds, bongos and thick horns. The Aussie six-piece has pumped up their twee so full of exuberance and kicked up the funk just enough that it becomes almost subversively over-the-top, yet oddly suitable for repeat listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might mistake the third song, titled “Hold Music,” for a lost track from the B-52’s 1979 self-titled debut album. Cameron Bird’s campy vocals echo Fred Schneider and, paired with Kellie Sutherland’s Kate Pierson-esque expressive harmonies, get a goose from some peppy percussion and a fuzzy synth bass line. Later on, the funk rhythms and soulful horns on “Debbie” provide a solid ground from which you can gaze up at Bird’s screeching falsetto. Toward the end of the album, the bongos and insistent staccato melody of “Nothing’s Wrong” unravel into spacey noise after being drawn together winningly by Sutherland’s bubblegum pop vocals — only to reform like water on a freshly waxed car in a pleasant lyric coda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly for these ambitious multi-instrumentalists, there are so many harmonic ideas on this album that a lesser band might have been overwhelmed and created a head-scratching hodgepodge of an album. Architecture in Helsinki, however, throws them all in the pot and spices it beautifully with dustings of several different genres delivering some of the best aural curry you’ve ever had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, despite its diversity, at no point in the album do you feel lost in a sea of disparate sounds — it all seems to make sense together when bound by the band’s contagious energy. Uncommonly strong nearly from start to finish (I’m not quite as intrigued by “Feather in a Baseball Cap” or the closer “The Same Old Innocence”), you should make sure to rip \u003cb>Places Like This\u003c/b> as soon as you buy it because you just might wear the CD out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Places Like This\u003c/b> is a blissful romp through new wave, funk, calypso and pop. Intricate, piping-hot rhythms bubble just below the surface and high-energy, herky-jerky vocals echo wildly over a musical jungle densely overgrown with alien synth sounds, bongos and thick horns. The Aussie six-piece has pumped up their twee so full of exuberance and kicked up the funk just enough that it becomes almost subversively over-the-top, yet oddly suitable for repeat listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might mistake the third song, titled “Hold Music,” for a lost track from the B-52’s 1979 self-titled debut album. Cameron Bird’s campy vocals echo Fred Schneider and, paired with Kellie Sutherland’s Kate Pierson-esque expressive harmonies, get a goose from some peppy percussion and a fuzzy synth bass line. Later on, the funk rhythms and soulful horns on “Debbie” provide a solid ground from which you can gaze up at Bird’s screeching falsetto. Toward the end of the album, the bongos and insistent staccato melody of “Nothing’s Wrong” unravel into spacey noise after being drawn together winningly by Sutherland’s bubblegum pop vocals — only to reform like water on a freshly waxed car in a pleasant lyric coda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly for these ambitious multi-instrumentalists, there are so many harmonic ideas on this album that a lesser band might have been overwhelmed and created a head-scratching hodgepodge of an album. Architecture in Helsinki, however, throws them all in the pot and spices it beautifully with dustings of several different genres delivering some of the best aural curry you’ve ever had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, despite its diversity, at no point in the album do you feel lost in a sea of disparate sounds — it all seems to make sense together when bound by the band’s contagious energy. Uncommonly strong nearly from start to finish (I’m not quite as intrigued by “Feather in a Baseball Cap” or the closer “The Same Old Innocence”), you should make sure to rip \u003cb>Places Like This\u003c/b> as soon as you buy it because you just might wear the CD out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Checking out the most recent indie film or a new play can be an uncomfortable experience, a little bit like watching a high-wire act at the circus. Will the rope-walker make it across? Will s/he stumble? Will we laugh or shrink in our seats when s/he hits the ground with an ugly thud?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before I set foot into Opera Plaza’s theaters, I’d heard that \u003cb>Colma: The Musical\u003c/b> had been made on less than a shoestring budget, with the filmmaker paying for much of it himself. I’d been told it was made by college buddies. And I knew its storyline centered on the trials and tribulations of a gaggle of adolescents waxing philosophical in suburbia. This was a musical, mind you. I entered the theater cringing but curious, prepared for a cinematic belly-flop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story is set in Colma, CA, where heavy fog and one of the nation’s largest collection of cemeteries add a touch of morbid charm to the standard suburban landscape. This town of squat, pastel-colored houses, headstones, stretches of big box stores and car dealerships is the quintessential teenage wasteland. And it’s the perfect location to explore that grey space between The End of High School and the beginning of Whatever Comes Next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Enter the three main characters: Billy Castillo, the mild-mannered thespian with the Kermit-the-Frog voice who’s dead-set on landing a summer job, a girlfriend, and a speaking part in the local theater; Maribel, fun-loving, chic-ly attired partygirl, looking for a lighthearted summer or at least a good lay; and Rodel, the dark, romantic hero, seeking a way out of Colma, and struggling with his identity as a gay Filipino man, with a sense of flair and an acerbic wit that unnerves everyone around him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the film’s action is driven by Rodel’s fall-out with his conservative father, who discovers his son is gay from an ex-boyfriend, and Billy’s relationship hang-ups: he’s stuck between his ex-girlfriend and the possibility of a new relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film is grainy. At points the frame wobbles. Some of the dialog is a little wooden and the break-out musical numbers are accompanied by a chintzy-sounding electric keyboard. At its opening, the film seems as unstable and awkward as its main characters. Only the sweeping, fog-strewn shots of Colma and the soundtrack — which is amazing throughout — hold it together, allowing the plot to meander along with its wayward cast. To be sure, there are some incredibly inventive scenes early on: An a cappella duet with car alarm; a full-bar, first beer sing-along led by a Hulk Hogan look-a-like; and plenty of wicked one-liners and inside jokes that just barely stumble clear of corny. But it’s not until the film’s end that the musical numbers begin to land like punches, enhancing the storyline and evoking the adolescent angst and wonder of that desolate space after high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though it falters here and there, \u003cb>Colma: The Musical\u003c/b> comes through in the end. Part of me wonders whether the stumbling served to heighten the dramatic tension. By the last scenes, you find yourself cheering for the film as much as for its characters, who somehow stumble over the abyss and safely reach the other side. Colma successfully does what any good independent should, taking huge risks on a tight budget and, despite the odds, playfully carrying it all off with an almost artless sense of ease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More at \u003ca href=\"http://colmafilm.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">colmafilm.com\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>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 \u003ca href=\"http://www.allmusic.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">All Music Guide\u003c/a> who’s charged with categorizing bands into genres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Openers The F***ing Champs, a three-piece featuring two guitars and a drummer, have had to come to grips with their classification as a metal band, or, only slightly better, members of the subcategory indie metal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reasons for and against this classification are equally compelling when listening to their April 27 release on Drag City titled \u003cb>VI\u003c/b>, but stand in even more stark contrast at their live show. Though I caught just four or five songs of this particular F***ing Champs show, you couldn’t miss the young kids in front of the stage thrusting devil horns in the air or beckoning notes from their musical heroes’ wailing guitars. And the sound coming from those guitars is unmistakably metal — heavy on the power chords and distortion. On the other hand, these guys do distill the best sonic elements of the genre and leave the rest. There is no posturing. The swagger is all in the guitars and drums, not in the clothing, strutting, soloing, or wailing overwrought, illiterate, grade-school lyrics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with the Minutemen and punk, the F***ing Champs are way too complex for the genre in which they’ve been placed. Metal brings to mind guys with hair hanging halfway down their backs who wear painted-on stonewashed jeans or (wince) spandex, not the ones who showed up on stage at The Independent in t-shirts and plain denim jeans (and not particularly tight ones at that). And beyond that, the arrangements are more complex than those of the vast majority of metal bands. Nonetheless, before leaving the stage, the guys did allow themselves one indulgence to the traditional metal ethos, raising their guitars over their heads and shaking the last squeals out them before triumphantly crossing guitar necks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Headliner Tortoise has managed, for one reason or another, to distract the jam-band crowd from their vaporizers and hacky sacks long enough to be lumped in with that much-maligned genre. Their sound, especially in recent years, has much more in common with jazz (somewhere between smooth and experimental), but is too-often described by critics as post-rock, a label only a taxonomist could love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crowd displayed some of the telltale signs of the jam-band aficionado, but on stage, it was all jazz grooves and electronica. Tortoise leaned heavily on material from their classic 1998 album, appropriately titled \u003cb>Standards\u003c/b> and threw in a fair amount of tracks from 2001’s \u003cb>TNT\u003c/b> and 2004’s \u003cb>It’s All Around You\u003c/b>. Not only did the band feature vibraphone and a pair of drummers, they also broke out the mallet synth (a sort of electronic vibraphone) on \u003cb>TNT\u003c/b>‘s “Ten-Day Interval.” Like The F***ing Champs, Tortoise is light on the pomp. Stoners may have relished the lighting and the ever-shifting patterns projected behind the band, but the notable lack of banter and relative immobility of the players would have been more familiar to fans of electronic music, noise or indie rock than the Phish crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this particular juncture in the life of the band, Tortoise is playing as a five-piece with keyboards, two laptops, a guitar, a bass and even a cowbell joining the vibes and drums.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their set was eclectic to say the least. Moving effortlessly from the dynamic tom-heavy rhythm of “Monica” to the Latin guitar and heavy, serpentine bass groove of “In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Women and Men” to the surf guitar of “Six-Pack” to the tense drum-roll build-up to “Seneca”, Tortoise seems to take on a new sound with every song of their set. That’ll keep the taxonomists guessing.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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