The shoe

In this week's Super Ego clubs column, I talk to pop-trance juggernaut Tiësto -- certainly the most branded, if not the most bombastic, "big name" DJ out there. (Funny, though, whenever I told people I was talking to the "Biggest DJ in the World" they all thought I meant Paul Oakenfold.)

Hawking the shoe

I'm not against people making a living as a DJ -- or even getting rich off it. Or even being signed to Ultra Records. But there's a point at which you become a cliche, actually working against the advancement of electronic music, even when you're at the point of including the most disparate listeners into your polished genre's fold. That's why I pricked up my ears when Tiësto so easily shrugged off any attempt to still categorize himself as "underground" and began rebranding himself as a pop artist, a producer, and then finally "just Tiësto" during our brief conversation.

In any case, he's still a bit of a hoot. After the jump, some of my favorite Tiësto moments. He'll be at the Cow Palace this Saturday.

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:.

SKAKKAMANAGE
All Over the Face
(Kimi)

By Kimberly Chun

Sounding for all the world like the lost Icelandic kin of Spoon’s Brett Daniel with his happen-now snarl and way with a jittery Amerindie hook, vocalist-guitarist Svavar Petur Eysteinsson could have grown up in Ohio, Nebraska or Texas, listening to the Breeders, Yo La Tengo, Uncle Tupelo, and any number of Homestead and Saddle Creek combos. His Icelandic husband-and-wife band, Skakkamanage, bears more than a passing resemblance to indie rock brothers by other mothers. A sweetness, naked earnestness and on-edge undercurrent of anxiety permeates tracks like “Costa Bravo” and “Like You Did,” helped along by the boy-girl vocals of Eysteinsson and wife Berglind Hasler, on piano and synthesizers. Mum’s Orvar Poreyjarson Smarason contributes harmonica and backing vocals, and throughout such assists and audibly in-your-face inspirations, Skakkamanage appears to be quickly approaching, by dint of its raw courage, a sound of its own.

By Kimberly Chun

I recommend taking some cult-cha with your cold cereal -- it’ll make the pre-Thanksgiving/Black Friday mania go down easier. More fun stuff than we could fit into print.

Ty Segall and Culture Kids
The raging Goldie ‘09 winner lets it fly with the buskable, combustible Bay Area noise makers. With the Baths. Sat/14, 9 p.m., $7. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. (415) 970-0012.

Turks
The Oakland combo likes its tempos convulsive and screams pitched a few notches above the deep, dark pit of post-punk hell. With Rats Eyes and La Guardia. Sat/14, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Bella Ciao

Those Darn Accordions

Big Lou's Polka Casserole

"What time is it? It's polka time!" That's right, it was polka time at Cafe Du Nord last Thursday night, as three different accordion bands took the stage to play not only polka, but also Broadway show tunes and even some country. The bands, which included Those Darn Accordions, Big Lou's Polka Casserole and Ciao Bella, drew quite a diverse crowd.

Those Darn Accordions

Bella Ciao

There were some utilikilts, cowboy hats, lots of poofy skirts and in my friend L's words "Aren't their a lot of guys with ponytails in here?" We counted eight in total. But no matter what they were wearing, everyone seemed to be enjoying the music and several couples even took to the dance floor for a little polka dancing. And then there were all the lovely accordions, their shiny black and white keys gleaming, their bellows breathing in and out, keeping everyone in time and on time, all in the name of polka time!

Fight the power, Anna Conda!

Farewell, sweet punk 'n drag apocalypse! Just in time for 2012, beloved five-year-old Friday weekly queer meltdown Charlie Horse at the Cinch has released its gin-soaked core neutrinos and called it quits. Charlie Horse hostess, deconstructed Courtney Love, and Guardian cover girl Anna Conda blames the influx of yuppie condo-dwellers and an increasingly anti-gay agenda overtaking the once queerific Polk district for the club's demise. Apparently, noise complaints forced the Cinch to come before the Entertainment Commission and be threatened with fines or closure if the Polk bar didn't tone it down. The Cinch asked Anna to take a break, but she decided it was time to move on from the hostile climate.

It's a truly tragic state of affairs -- one which points up even more the continuing War on Fun that the city seems to be raging against its own origins and spirit. No real problem with drunk bachelorettes in ridiculous heels and Ed Hardy-drenched dudes squealing and puking up and down the street, but some drag queens getting incredibly creative inside a gay bar? WELL, GASP!

Charlie Horse has been a bright spot in the City's increasingly dreary weekend club scene for half a decade, one that made of family of disparate non-wealthy queers who gagged on Gaga and wanted people to know there were amazing blackout options that didn't involve cologne and gay cockatoo hair. It will be sorely, Horsely missed. Anna Conda's tearful letter of farewell -- and rousing vow to carry on -- after the jump. (And catch her Herr-A-Chick nights every first and third Wednesday of the month at the Eagle!)

By Kimberly Chun

This in from the Juan MacLean's people and the Mezzanine: the band's drummer Jerry Fuchs sadly passed away Nov. 8 (The live band will obviously not be performing as scheduled on Nov. 20 at Mezzanine, but Juan will be out for a tribute DJ set to benefit Jerry’s family – all proceeds will be donated to them.):

"Gerhardt “Jerry” Fuchs, beloved and respected drummer for The Juan MacLean, Holy Ghost!, Maserati, !!!, and Turing Machine, amongst others, passed away in the early hours on Sunday, November 8th due to an unfortunate elevator accident that occurred in a Brooklyn loft building. He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Medical Center , a few hours later.

"Jerry was born on December 30, 1974 in Marietta , Georgia . After attending the University of Georgia for graphic design, he left for New York in 1995 to join the band Vineland . His achievements were numerous as he became a New York fixture in the music scene, providing incredibly complex and energetic drumbeats that elicited wide praise and excitement from fellow musicians, critics and friends. On the rare occasion that he was not touring, Jerry did graphic design work for publications such as Chunklet and Entertainment Weekly. Throughout all of his endeavors and successes, Jerry remained one of the most humble and down-to-earth artists anyone could meet. His smile, and loving energy will be missed dearly, as will his talent and contributions to the music scene.

SONYA COTTON
Red River
(self-released)

By Kimberly Chun

San Francisco-by-way-of-Connecticut singer-songwriter Sonya Cotton hails from the halcyon peaks of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Judee Sill: she’s a songbird of a soprano, given to praise though drawn to the dark side of folk song. She contemplates the corpse of a doe on the cover of Red River, but rather than dragging the dead deer of genre up a hill and into new turf, ala Grouper, Cotton prefers to pay her respect to the past and observe tradition with reverence and careful attention. Her immaculate footprints: the three-part harmonies on “Bear” and spare arrangement of “Hunters.”

By Kimberly Chun

You want to wipe away the gloom with some swoony, loony sounds, you know you do. More music than we could cram into ye olde newsprint.

Alternative Tentacles 30th Anniversary Incest-a-Thon
The proceedings kick off with Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine -- and it's going to be raging and ornery from the sound of the outfit's new The Audacity of Hype (Alternative Tentacles). The fun continues with Citizen Fish, Star Fucking Hipsters, and MIA (the hardcore band not the lady) opening tonight; Ludicra, Munly and the Lupercalians, and Knights of the New Crusade Friday, and Alice Donut, Victims Family, and Burning Image Saturday. Sounds like a good, loudly irreverent time for all. Thurs/5-Sat/7, 8 p.m., $20-$22 ($50 three-day pass). Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750.

Hank IV and Celine Dion
Hank Sr. gets a hard twirl in his grave, as the Bay Area troublemakers’ hearts go on. With Blues Control. Thurs/5, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk St., SF. (415) 923-0923.

Dawes
The early-20-something LA foursome have been listening closely to The Big Pink -- namely the Band, not the UK 4AD duo. With Langhorne Slim and Austin Lucas. Fri/6, Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.

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.

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].”

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"

Apparently, perusing the “Lullabies of Armenia” Wikipedia entry did not leave me skilled in that particular musical school. No matter how many times I explained that oror means “rock,” to my boyfriend (making repeating the word crucial to any decent sleep-inducing ditty done in grand Armenian style), he was still loath to let me whisper it in his ear ad infinitum. Oror oror oror oror…

There is no accounting for taste. I am willing to allow, however, that there may have been an issue with my tone. Which is exactly why I need Hasmik Harutyunyan’s Armenian lullaby class, which will be held Saturday in Oakland as an opener to an evening of music as soothing as a mother’s womb.

“When I sing, my dreams take wing,” says Harutyunyan of her haunting melodies

Her performances, reinvigorations of the rich Armenian tradition of lullaby, have taken her all over the world. Harutyunyan has staged concerts with Yo Yo Ma and more recently, Kitka, a Bay Area women’s vocal ensemble who will play a concert after her attempts at teaching us mere mortals the skills we need to lull our partners to sleep after long days of Bay Area rat race.

In Armenia, the songs people sing to soothe their children to sleep speak volumes of their life during the day. They’re narratives, expressions of daily goals and traditional folklore. I am told that one well known theme is that of giving one’s child over to suckle at the teat of a mother deer, which I have no grounds for understanding but trust that the message has something to do with earth and nurture.

The recorded versions of the songs are simple and rich affairs with soft accompaniment by wind instruments or strings, whose strums pack even more vibration into the undulating, soaring tones of the singer. Packaged in an language unknown to most of us, this is the perfect slide into dream world.

“I learn what I can, and I remember when I sing.” Harutyunyan seems to have a grasp of one of humankind’s elemental needs; comfort. Good on us, Bay Area, that she’s giving us a chance to share in what she’s learned.

Armenian Lullabies Workshop
Sat/7, 4 p.m. (Kitka concert to follow at 8 p.m.), $15-$25
St. Vartan’s Armenian Apostolic Church
650 Spruce, Oakland
(510) 444-0323 www.kitka.org

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.

By Kimberly Chun

Ripe for revival and just in time for FELA!, the Broadway musical, as well as the real-life black president, Fela Kuti was a legend in his own time -- the fact that he passed more than a dozen years ago seems surreal. Watch him today on YouTube (below) or on the Slice of Fela DVD that accompanies the new Best of the Black President (Kalakuta Sunrise/Knitting Factory) and includes excerpts from the film Music Is the Weapon and a Berlin Jazz Festival performance. You'll get a glimpse of the visonary's shamanistic sonic power.

No need to rely on the visuals though - just let Black President's two discs' full of hypnotic grooves wash over you. "Army Arrangement," "Roforofo Fight," "Lady," "Water Get No Enemy" -- the first in Knitting Factory Records' remastered reissue series of 45 Kuti titles shines a light on his '60s band Koola Lobitos and takes you higher. Guarans. It's the first time all 45 albums will released on vinyl in North America -- something to look forward to in the next 18 months.

Here's a taste of latter-day Fela with Afrika 70, shot by Ginger Baker (not included on the DVD):