March 18 2003

SORRY, WE'RE all out of Burnt Ramen. The never sanctioned, always-all-ages punk, hardcore, and grindcore performance space is no more, says John the Baker, who has managed – and I use that word loosely – its performances since 2000. Smack-dab in the middle of Richmond's notorious Iron Triangle neighborhood, the venue had played the tiny, 150-person-capacity upstart kid brother to older sibling 924 Gilman's more established, expansive space – thanks to the former member of Woodstock, N.Y., punk band the Banned, who got bands to put on their own shows at Burnt Ramen, which includes Mike "Oppressed Logic" Avilez's recording studio.

John blames it all on – get in line – Great White, saying the band's pyrotechnics and the subsequent deadly inferno at the Station club in West Warwick, R.I., has led fire marshals throughout the country to scrutinize clubs more carefully. John suspects that effort extended to Burnt Ramen, whose name probably didn't endear it to the marshals who on March 5 ordered the space to stop staging shows until it was revisited.

Two bands had been booked that weekend, including 25 ta Life on the night of March 5, John says, so when the band decided they wanted to set up a merch booth to raise some money for their drive back to the East Coast, about 30 kids showed up – as well as the police. That's when Burnt Ramen decided they didn't want to deal with the hassle of police scrutiny and the problems of obtaining permits and/or licenses to put on shows, John says.

"It wasn't like Gilman Street, where they have structure and rules. It was a free place for musicians to express themselves," he says. "That made Burnt Ramen unique – no rules, no security, really bad neighborhood. We didn't want to enter into a relationship with the fire marshal in order for us to become a business and be regulated by the city.

"The fire marshal said we'd have to have no smoking. But that's not what we're about!" John says with a laugh, revealing his anarchist roots in the South Bay. "I've started clubs like this before, but they've always gotten shut down."

Now, John says, people are calling every day to lament the end of Ramen. "I've gotten hundreds of responses from people saying, 'Oooh, I've been crying,' 'They can't do that to us.' After a couple days I was able to find a positive attitude towards it all and steer people to continuing to develop what we've established at Burnt Ramen," says John, who adds that he plans to book at Kimo's and to make an album called Fire Marshal Law.

Reef fiends

The early-twentysomething, late-teen band of friends and brothers in English band the Coral may be baby-faced, monosyllabic, and still a bit dazed by the attention they've received since their 2002 debut album dropped into the top 10 of the U.K. charts. But their self-titled album's bold mixture of Piper at the Gates of Dawn-esque psychedelia, reggae, doo-wop, folky madrigals, blues, and "Ghost Riders in the Sky"-style C&W belies vocalist James Skelly's taciturn manner. On record he's capable of singing with a brassy, blue eyed-soul fervor that skates between his favorite vocalist, Dr. John, and Billy Joel, but on the phone from a random hotel room beside an anonymous Texas interstate, he's far from cocksure.

In fact, he's almost incomprehensible – which can be attributed to an accent that originated somewhere 20 minutes from Liverpool, in a fishing village called Hoylake. Yah, he mutters, his brooother Ian is a drummer in the six-piece, organ player-vocalist Nick Power's brooother photographs the group, and bassist-horn player Paul Duffy's brooother is a drum tech. "It's like the Bee Gees, really," he adds.

Jokes aside, the Coral would probably rather be linked to that other band of so-called brotherly love – the Beach Boys. Their sea, sand, and surf obsessions make a better fit, I think, listening to Skelly talk about his musical touchstones: that neighborhood band the Beatles, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Phil Spector, and of course, Pet Sounds. "That's my favorite album," he raves. "You can tell everyone was told to fuck off, and they just tried to scare everyone. It's scarier than anything I've ever heard. It's brilliant, though."

The Coral obviously like to give listeners the chills – their songs are very pop and polished-sounding, but then they hang a right and close in on unfamiliar waters or veer toward strange shores. That instinct could save them from becoming – for better or worse – Oasis. The longtime schoolmates are just seeing where the wind will take them, after they play in San Francisco at Bimbo's 365 Club. "I would have liked to have been a fisherman," Skelly muses. "Think I was just expected to be a dropout." He'll just have to settle for the sorry life of a pop star.

Wild child

Charlie Ahearn, NYC director of the pivotal 1982 early hip-hop-rap culture documentary film Wild Style (which was recently released on DVD), emerged from behind the old-school curtain two weeks ago, dropping into Punch Gallery, 155 10th St., and its exhibit of photos by Ahearn and others of the golden era of hip-hop – all drawn from the recent Experience Music Project-Da Capo book, Yes Yes Y'All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade. On March 8, Ahearn sat down with DJ Shadow to talk about his unexpected entrée into the beginnings of rap as a photographer who had a primarily fine-arts background.

In town through March 31, the traveling exhibit begins with the raw, tentative images of hip-hop in its seedling stages – from photos of early adapter Kool DJ Herc posing in a groovy sheepskin, as well as in a black brimmed hat that would later be picked up by Run DMC, to images that go beyond the visual and are literally scratched with phrases like "Rock on" or "Ecstasy," to snaps of Run DMC themselves on the set of the American Bandstand-ish New York-only TV show Graffiti Rock. It's fascinating to see the musicians and iconography inching toward fully fab fruition – all you need is a soundtrack, which the Psychokinetics will provide live at 10 p.m. on Sat/22.

Hard reign

Bob Dylan the next Andrew Lloyd Webber? You'd think a hard rain was gonna fall and hell was going to freeze over when that day came. Well, get your fireproof galoshes out of storage – American Conservatory Theater is presenting Forever Young, a new musical of songs by Bob Dylan, at the Zeum Theater at Yerba Buena Gardens. The musical was created and directed by Craig Slaight and will feature a cast of impressionable teens from the Young Conservatory. You can almost hear all of the kids complaining, "Dylan who?" In the tradition of last year's similar offering, Dangling Conversations: The Music of Simon and Garfunkel, each song will be presented in a separate scene; tunes include "I Want You," "Just like a Woman," "It Ain't Me Babe," "Positively 4th Street," "Masters of War," "Lay Lady Lay," and "Gotta Serve Somebody." What, no "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35"?