Since u been on

By Kimberly Chun

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER

Is it still your Granny's Grammys? A "Vertigo"-inducing generation gap — the time-space pull between boomer icons like Paul McCartney, Neil Young, and, straight outta Vallejo with a tacked-on gold Mohawk, Sly "No Show" Stone and new kids John Legend, Gorillaz, and Kelly Clarkson — opened up and inhaled the show whole on Feb. 8, producing a most schizophrenic night on TV.

I suppose it was poetic justice that Clarkson turned into the evening's sleeper star, considering American Idol — still in god-awful "audition" mode — obliterated the Grammy telecast in the Nielsen ratings, drawing almost twice as many viewers and making the awards the least-watched since the '70s.

Clarkson also managed to win the Most Irksome Pop Vocalist prize, in my book, for her whiny and utterly insincere-sounding "thank you" speeches. That giant sucking sound at Staples Center was her kiss-ass onstage gush over a stunned-looking Bonnie Raitt. I don't care how catchy her songs are — I can't wait till she's consigned to the same pop dustbin as Debby Boone, the Spice Girls, and Vanilla Ice.

As the awards divided its attentions between then and now (with three awards each going to the spaniel-like Mariah Carey, Kanye West, and Legend, leaving some like Gwen Stefani — holla, girl! — stranded awardless), the middle-aged U2 split the difference and went home with so many doorstops that even they looked somewhat confused.

But the moment of true, deep wrongness that really stood out for this humble, flabbergasted viewer was the minute Jay-Z and Linkin Park's mash-up performance of their Grammy-winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration "Numb/Encore" smooshed into a genuinely weird and whack rendition of "Yesterday," as McCartney strolled out to join the John Lennon T-shirted Jay. At least it was genuinely — even daringly — bizarre, and it was the fruit of some creative catalog-digging courtesy of Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, who spoke to me from DC a few days after the Grammys while on tour with his solo hip-hop endeavor, Fort Minor.

Chatting just a day before his 29th birthday, Shinoda was loopy with sleep after a late-night performance in Atlanta, but personable, bright fella that he is, he was happy to explain his Grammy-night brainwave.

"We already played this 'Numb/Encore' a few ways, the largest event being Live 8, and we kind of needed to take it up a notch," he reflects. "So we just kind of wanted to take it back to where it started with Jay-Z's Black Album mashed up with the Beatles' White Album — The Gray Album." Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson came up with the idea of using a McCartney song, and Shinoda dug around and discovered "Yesterday." "The funniest part was when we sent the song to Paul, with our harmonies to samples of Paul," he says. "Everyone's feeling a bit nervous, and our thought was this is blasphemy. He loved it. He said he'd never played the song to a beat before."

Jay-Z stepped aside and let Shinoda accept the award and is apparently happy to continue burnishing his relationship with Shinoda by "executive producing" Fort Minor's 2005 album, The Rising Tied (Machine Shop Recordings/Warner Bros) — which means, what, exactly, I wonder? "I produced every song and played every note on the record," says Shinoda, who also enlisted friends like Styles of Beyond, Holly Brooks, Common, John Legend, and the Roots' Black Thought. "Jay was the key person whom I would go to when I felt I was too attached to a song. He was like the tollbooth telling me if something was ready to go to the public."

Only a few songs had to go back for work — with Shinoda stating that "Where'd You Go" and "Kenji" were "off limits because they're so personal." The latter in particular is notable for its rap about the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II. "This song wrote itself because of my family's experience in WWII," the half-Japanese LA denizen explains. "I basically wanted to do this song because the older Japanese generation tends to be very quiet about what they remember. We say shikata ga nai, which means 'it can't be helped.' The idea is, you'd rather look toward the future than look back at something. But for a younger Japanese generation that's a bit of a problem because we want to know the story and no one will tell us." The story continues to be relevant, he adds, "especially in the past few years with the idea of racial profiling. Every once in a while you think the issue goes away, and then spying with cell phones pops up." *

FORT MINOR

Tues/21, 8 p.m.

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

$20

(415) 346-6000

TALES FROM THE TRIP

EARLY MAN

So what's your best tour story? "We played a show in Atlanta and stayed with our friends from Mastadon and got extremely drunk on whiskey," Early Man guitarist-vocalist Mike Conte says. [Mastadon's] Brent [Hinds] pulled out a shotgun and shot a hole straight through his wall, slightly scaring us. Why? Why not. If a bunch of dudes hang out and there's whiskey and guns ..." Sounds pretty tough. "It was maybe a little too tough for some of us involved." Priestess and the Sword also perform. Tues/21, 9 p.m., 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. $8–$12. (415) 970-9777.

ALSO CATCH

MARIANNE DISSARD AND NAIM AMOR Tucson, Ariz., chanteuse, poet, filmmaker, and activist Dissard has emoted alongside Calexico's Joey Burns and Giant Sand's Howe Gelb. Now on her first tour, she brings the sultry Franco-loungecore with her real-life amour, Amor. Thurs/16, 9 p.m., Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) $6. (415) 546-6300.

ACEYALONE The SoCal rapper, poet, and Freestyle Fellowship cofounder does it all for you with producer and coheadliner, RJD2. Sat/18, 9 p.m., Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. $22. (415) 970-9777 *