It'll be a cold, cold January without monthly Monday goth spectacular Death Guild

Holy snuffboxes and ankle-baring skirt-ruffling! The ABC's war on fun in SF continues -- this time the victim is the ever-lively club DNA Lounge, host of great parties as Bootie, Death Guild, Hubba Hubba Revue, and so many more.

After a protracted struggle with the ABC -- which leveled charges of "lewdness" against the club for some hardly even eyebrow-raising go-go antics -- owner Jamie Zawinsky struck a deal to close his club from Monday, January 4th through Thursday, January 28th, 2010, in order to avoid having his liquor license revoked and the club shut down.

We wrote about the DNA woes earlier this year as part of our ongoing Death of Fun coverage. Zawinsky had applied for an all-ages permit, the ABC denied it, he appealed and won. Soon afterward, the ABC sent undercover agents into two parties, witnessed brief flashes of buttocks and such, including a (gasp!) simulated lapdance, and slapped DNA with charges of "running a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals." Because this ridiculous charge from the 1700s targeted only the two queer parties at the club, accusations of homophobia on the part of the ABC roiled the gay community.

Wearing the charges proudly

Zawinsky spent more than $140,000 and a very stressful year fighting the charges. (He could really use your generous, keep-the-party-alive donations here. Join the "Save the DNA Lounge" Facebook group here. Plus: T-shirts!) He has also been a major player in organizing against the insidious War on Fun.

After the jump, Jamie's exclusive statement to us about his necessary compromise, the ABC's petty vindictiveness, and what a month's closure will cost the club:.

It's hard to predict how much being closed in January will cost us, but it's enormous. That means no income at all, but of course we will still have to pay rent, insurance, etc. All the promoters who host events here who will also have to either skip their events or find a new venue to host them that month. We run the risk that some of those
promoters won't come back. We hope and expect that they will, but it's a risk you take any time someone's event gets bumped.

I estimate that the process of converting DNA Lounge to an all ages venue -- and the vindictive ABC legal assault that was a direct result of that -- has cost us over $140,000 so far, not counting January.

I posted more detailed background on this on my Feb 13 blog entry:
www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/02/13.html

And I've updated our Legal Defense Fund page with the recent developments:
www.dnalounge.com/donate/

Good luck, Jamie -- DNA is truly a classic SF joint. And party-goers out there, please help out if you can!

Ty Segall

It’s easy to imagine a battered and bruised zombie surfer hanging 10 to “Standing at the Station” off Ty Segall's Lemons, or the album's shaking version of Captain Beefheart’s “Drop Out Boogie.” Picture drag racing along to Segall's “In Your Car” and “Cents,” with the finish line at a fuzzed-out, frenzied Point Panic party. Deep-in-the-red ragers like “Johnny” take on hardcore’s crash-and-burn strategy -- tearing around on the edges of distortion on just two wheels -- while “Rusted Dust” strips it all down to Segall’s mournful falsetto and a single, evocatively ungainly electric guitar.

Lemons brought Segall together with the gloriously gritty Goner Records. “I actually just asked them if they wanted to put out my record,” he explains. “I didn’t think it was going to happen because I’ve been a huge fan for a long time. And they were, like, ‘Yeah!’

“I was super-psyched. I’m extremely lucky because they’re an amazing label.”

Ty Segall, "Lovely One"

It’s been a major evolution, going from Laguna Beach to Memphis. Segall first relocated North to attend USF, where he bonded with the rest of the Traditional Fools, bassist-vocalist Andrew Luttrell and guitarist-drummer-vocalist David Fox, who grew up in nearby coastal hamlets in Southern Orange County. “When we’re back at home, it’s like we’re all living in the same city," Segall muses. The Trad Fools didn’t know each other very well back home, but together, in the Bay Area, they started hanging out and jamming and, in early 2006, morphed into a legendary party band.

Ty Segall, "Cents"

Why not go to the route of so many other single-musician operations out there and hoist a laptop onstage? “I like the way real instruments sound,” declares Segall. “I grew up listening to ‘Louie Louie,’ the Kinks, and stuff like that, old pop songs, and I loved how they sounded, and so when I started making music, I wanted to make that.”

Of course, now that Lemons is on a roll, he’s formed his own full-fledged touring group with Emily Epstein on drums, Tim Hellman on bass, and Sic Alps’ Mike Donovan on guitar. Coming soon: an album with his bud Mikal Cronin on Kill Shaman Records, surfing, job-hunting, and the solo disc he’s currently teasing out.

The new songs, he says, are “a little bit cleaner, which is nice because having stuff be blown out is really fun, but I think it’s easy to have something sound raw and messed up and have it be cool.”

Ty Segall

A tune might start with a drum pattern, then Segall might press record and write the rest of the song around the beat, but that’s only one fun approach. “I never try to record one way or else the songs sound the same,” he explains. “It’s always fun to experiment, and it’s kind of a goal. How can I put a soul song on this record, if it’s not going work at all? But if it does, it’s going to be so awesome.

“It’s like [the Kinks'] The Village Green Preservation Society [Reprise, 1968],” he continues. “All those songs are so different.” Is that something that Segall aspires to -- when in doubt, do as Ray Davies does? “No way, man, there will never be another Ray Davies,” he says. “But it doesn’t hurt to try a little...”

Saviours. Photo by Magda Wosinka

Scott Batiste of Saviours is in a unique position regarding the band's transforming sound. Unusually for a drummer, he is also the band's primary songwriter, hammering out riffs despite his limited chops with a pick. Though previous albums were crafted on a bass, this year's Accelerated Living (Kemado) was written on guitar. “I got a shitty Flying-V copy and it just became my muse," he says. "I was playing guitar so much, just unemployed, sitting at home and playing guitar all day. Everything just came out faster, and tougher.”

Saviours, "Livin' in the Void"

Once the rough riffs are completed, guitarist Austin Barber takes over, acting as a sort of musical translator. The close understanding between the two is palpable in person, but bears its ripest fruit in the practice space. As Batiste admits, “A lot of the guitar playing I do isn't really decipherable [to the rest of the band].”

In the studio with Saviours

A change in percussive power is certainly noticeable, along with an improvement in every other conceivable metric. Though the approach is idiosyncratic, the strength of Saviours' shuffling grooves, the intricacy and melodic potency of their leads, and the arresting rawness of their sound all point to a band ready to escape their humble Oakland roots in the pursuit of wider renown. In keeping with their hedonistic lifestyle, their transformation into a bigger, better, faster band left no room for second thoughts. Says Barber, “we've played so much together, and toured so much together, there was no real discussion. It was just like, 'go!'”

D-Lo

“Once I heard myself on the song,” D’Angelo Porter says about his studio efforts one night two years ago, “I was like, ok, that’s me right there.” He was right: thanks to “No Hoe,” the man known as D-Lo soon found himself a full-blown celebrity in various ‘hoods.

“In Oakland, I might hear whispers,” he says, “like, ‘There go D-Lo.’ But out of town, like Fremont or Sac, they be chasin’ me down.” One excited fan, encountering him at a gas station in Pittsburg, asked him for a hug, only to promptly “pee on herself” after receiving it. This ghetto Beatlemania hasn’t gone to D-Lo’s head, however, but only inspired him to grind harder.

Thanks to “No Hoe”’s popularity, KMEL found itself getting tons of requests for a song they couldn’t play on the radio. “They was telling me it was too vulgar,” he recalls, “too much cussin’ and all that.”

D-Lo, "No Hoe"

D-Lo, "You Played Me"

“I grew up on hella Bay Area rap,” D-Lo affirms. “That’s all I listened to when I was younger: Keak, Jacka, RBL Posse. Mac Dre was like a big influence to me. Now I’m working with the dudes I used to listen to.”

D-Lo’s debut album is titled Undeniable Talent. “I go to YouTube and look at the comments,” he says. “People say I can’t rap, I just got this one song. That’s why I’m doin’ this album and showing people how I get down with this pen. My pen game right now is killing. Only features I got right now are Sleepy and [Mistah] F.A.B. I don’t want features; I want a song that’s hot.”

"No Hoe" remix video shoot

BELLINI
The Precious Prize of Gravity
(Temporary Residence)

SLEEPER
Behind Every Mask
(Mush)

The return of David Yow and Jesus Lizard couldn't be better timed, judging from releases like Bellini's The Precious Prize of Gravity and Sleeper's Behind Every Mask: there's life in that post-punk corpse yet.

Working with old cohort Steve Albini, the Sicily-NYC-Texas-based Bellini growls like the dread ghost of Live Skull, with all the elastic power of Midwestern maulers like Jesus Lizard and Shellac. Vocalist Giovanna Cacciola croons and barks as if she's had one champagne cocktail too many -- in the bowels of hell.

Sleeper is more insinuating and less definable. These dusky ambient instrumentals seem to be fashioned with an ear toward both post-punk anxiety and brooding horror scores. Carlos Ransom puts his homemade instruments to good use, good enough to make me pick this up long after it's release earlier this year. Play "Witch Hunt" in the darkest corner of your Blair Witch basement tonight for All Hallow's.