Arthur, arthur

BOILING DOWN ARTHURFEST'S two days of transcendental psychedelia and mind-expanding musical machinations to facial hair and fashion is annoyingly reductionist, I know. But Mae-Shi bassist Tim Byron's final wisecrack was too good to pass up. Uttered as Yoko Ono was hustled into the background in the final minutes of the fest: "I feel so naked without a handlebar mustache."

Right on. I'm all for uniformity of image and aesthetic when it comes to certain musical projects – even at a crazy-quilt of a spectacle such as this. I marvel at the way I can't tell one member of SF's Vetiver apart from another thanks to their identical guise of long brown locks, beards, and aviator shades (with the exception of Alissa Anderson).

Still, what a burden to live up to in what the plenty hirsute Winter Flowers guitarist Christof Certik dubbed "the Year of the Beard." And even when there's plenty of psych rock, noise, folk, blues, pop, and unclassifiable quality sounds going down all around, I hate the way that I sometimes fixate on accessories. But can I be blamed when in El Lay, even while strolling round Frank Lloyd Wright's idyllic Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park, rising like a small green, concrete cloud above LA's Los Feliz neighborhood? A girl can't help but feel fairly déclassé without a princess dress, watching singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler and other long-tressed, pretty maids in ankle-length granny gowns cluster behind the slender string functioning as a moat, in an "artists only" area.

I thought about snapping a pic of the charming tableau when I suddenly had a classic LA-woman moment – that instant a Southland lady scrutinizes you, and you can pretty much read the writing on the walls of your well-coiffed, perfectly decked-out watcher's mind: "I can't believe what a slob you are. How dare you not spring for plastic surgery, you pig?" Where's the princess-dress armor or cloak of invisibility when you need it?

Despite those flashes of geography-based insecurity, I have to confess that I dug the first annual music fest. It was a lot like, well, the newsprint the publication so beautifully embraces and embellishes, with art deco swirls and rococo kookiness: funky, friendly, lo-fi to the point of power outages, and as plagued by jankiness as, say, a heavy-volume, wattage-dependent Blue Cheer concert powered by rodent wheels.

But so what? So even the earliest arrivals the first day, Sept. 4, missed Geraldine Fibber honchette Carla Bozulich's new band Night Porter (with the recently relocated Ches Smith) because they were held up in the entrance line. So most people stuck in the snaking queue to the 300-or-so-capacity basement theater (one of three stages at the fest) that held most of the noisier, exploratory artists, missed the seldom-touring Finnish progdelic foursome Circle (who turned in a better show, playing the same songs in the reverse order and building to a brain-frying climax two days earlier at the Great American Music Hall) or the rarely sighted Earth (who played longer in LA than in SF, with the added bonus of SUNN O)))

There was the vibe, a commonality between so many bands looking to higher goals (despite the fest's surprisingly subdued political tenor, although Food Not Bombs held down a booth, and folks sold baked goods for Katrina victims). Though hardly the gathering of the tribes of '67 in Golden Gate Park, Certik agreed, the event definitely reverberated with a "high-minded and spiritual and community-oriented, living-off-the-grid feeling so rare in the city of angles."

And there was the fact that all these bands were as varied as Arthur magazine editor Jay Babcock's tastes, ranging from Lynchian folk-popsters Lavender Diamond, dubby mixmaster Pole, and acoustic guitar virtuoso Jack Rose to blues-jazz-rock power mavens Fatso Jetson, tremulous warbler Josephine Foster, and 80-something bluesman T-Model Ford.

The Bay was well-represented by past and present performers such as Devendra Banhart, Comets on Fire, Six Organs of Admittance, BrightBlack Morning Light, Residual Echoes, and Time Flys. And even the biggies like Sleater-Kinney and Spoon slipped effortlessly into louder, extended, dronier modes, with everyone seemingly taking their cue from the noisiest, most chaotic of the bunch. Whereas Cat Power's Chan Marshall fixated on the reverb on her vocals, Ono, performing with son Sean and band, referenced Sonic Youth at the start, while the "Kill Yr. Idols" elders turned in one of their most enjoyably feedback-ridden performances in an age, with Thurston Moore leaping on a stage jumper to make even more noise.

I imagined SY's playing in dialogue with Magik Markers', during which vocalist Elisa "Destruction" Ambrogio crawled on, cuddled and huddled with, and then dry humped her guitar before setting out into the seated audience, clambering from shoulder to thigh to armrest, while speaking in tongues, grabbing fistfuls of hair, and channeling some American Indian medicine man. A security guard tried to coax Ambrogio down, but she managed to slide out of his grasp, inspiring one listener to do a handstand down front.

Mark Vincent of La Verne, Calif., a friend of a friend whom Ambrogio stepped on along her path to transcendence, later e-mailed: "Watching the band the Magik Markers is little bit like sniffing a magic marker, that is to say that there is a strange feeling of a euphoric high followed by nausea and a slight headache."

But that was all a part of Arthurfest – the opportunity to let music, art, or crowdsurfing-seated-people take you higher, even if the sensation shot straight to the temples. Ambrogio didn't quite get the standing ovation Merzbow's Masami Akita received shortly afterward. But I grew interested in where she stumbles on her spirits when, upon meeting her later, she came off as quiet, buttoned down, and bookish. If the Magik Markers' performance relied almost entirely on spectacle, then Merzbow was their polar opposite – the Japanese veteran experimentalist focused on the hypnotic and mind-expanding powers of sheer, teeth-gnashing noise, sans any visuals apart from the sight of the man himself, nary a long black hair out of place, seated behind two Powerbooks, his mouse hand the only visible sign of life.

The bracing austerity of Akita's performance contrasted with Comets on Fire the next day. My favorite Comets shows have always gone off in close quarters like the Mile High Club and Hemlock Tavern, so it was novel to catch the band on a huge outdoor stage in broad daylight where they kind of tore into the first song and refused to let up even when the always-outta-hand drummer Utrillo Kushner moved to the keyboards (someone should let this guy tap his inner Elton John and make a singer-songwriter pop disc) and Noel Harmonson plopped down behind the kit. "I just saw Comets – that's all I can take in one day" was the finest testimonial overheard from a departing gray-haired listener. I later stumble through a Comet's hacky-sack game in my haste to catch Devendra Banhart's performance, notable for its jug-band glee, the moment the singer-songwriter pulled an audience member up to play his own tune, and its hoard of cute girls in cowboy boots.

Cute was one word for the petite Ono, who had tiny flashlights emblazoned with "Onochord" passed out before her show, along with instructions on how to flash "I love you" in Morse Code. She boogied, strutted, and paraded like an indulgent mom at a talent show, though she still obviously possessed the ability to unsettle and spook, ending "Walking on Thin Ice" with the shout, "You killed my man, you bastard!"

That even startled the kids next to me who were busy flickering their flashlights into their noses and ears, looking for blockage. Ono then strolled over to Sean, whispered in his ear, shrugged, picked up her flashlight, and flashed us a little love.

We loved her right back, right through the encore, "Don't Worry, Kyoko." "I have to tell you the story of this song," Ono began, but didn't go into the fact that she is said to have written the song for the daughter spirited away by her ex after she hooked up with John Lennon. "I haven't played it since ..." "1972!" yelled John look-alike Sean from the side. And her chant – part blue boogie, part mantra – to an absent daughter began, and maybe we're all reconnecting with that missing child, as Ono the 72-year-old artist shook her hips like it was, well, '72.

Best line last week "George Bush doesn't care about black people," by chart-topper Kanye West during the Sept. 2 NBC telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims. But you care about Katrina victims, black and white and every color in between, don't you? So help "soul queen of New Orleans" Irma Thomas, who made it to Gonzales, La., to be with her husband's aunt. She recently e-mailed her fans to say she's fine, but she doesn't know how long it will be until she can get help from FEMA. Aid can be sent to PO Box 1274, Gonzales, LA 70707-1274. Also ex-Nawlins denizens Quintron and Miss Pussycat will be thrown a benefit in the near future in SF – their Spellcaster Lodge and all their belongings have been submerged and presumed destroyed. They have one Drum Buddy and a handful of puppets to their name, but little else, so donations can be sent to their PayPal/Rhinestone Records account; ID: rhinestonerecords@hotmail.com.

Free your mind and your purse strings – for those less fortunate. Free gossip? e-mail Kimberly@sfbg.com.

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.