It’s Under The Stars babe. A quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins. Let’s get to it:
SECRET SECRET, “GARBAGE TOWN” FROM QUEEN OF CUPS
Do you know what we love most here at Under The Stars? I mean besides burritos under 10 bucks. We dig using the “butts in seats” calculus. Meaning, that it warms our frozen soul to see everyday San Francisco venues—haunts, bars, concert halls, and yes, burrito spots—used by local artists in their visuals, like this one from last week’s column=.
Today’s edition features the local band SECRET SECRET, formed in 2018 and comprised of Marika Stuurman, Sadie Alan, Maria Donjacour, and Thomas Fendert—a rock quartet of lifelong friends born and raised in SF.
“Garbage Town,” their no-wave banger of a joint, and the visual, where band members and dancers come clad in retro-’90s workout gear, are an ode to the ‘f*ck a doom loop’ mentality.
With the opening lyrics “If you don’t like the city, you can leave the city, sir,” SECRET SECRET is in, all the way for their city. (And looks like someone may be taking their advice already.)
But then it gets better with a segment featuring dancers shakin’ it down that controversial middle lane on Valencia Street and eventually everyone winds up at that stronghold of a singles scene bar, Cassanova, where rockers, onlookers, and velvet paintings are one.
Thank you, SECRET SECRET! Pick up their Queen of Cups release here.
AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE AT YERBA BUENA GARDENS FESTIVAL, AUGUST 24
If you are a jazz musician and know the history and legacy, you have to have a strong belief—no, that’s the wrong term, solid faith—in your destiny to leave the almighty Blue Note Records for an imprint that does not have much of a jazz reputation. But that’s Oakland’s Ambrose Akinmusire, who approaches his music from a spiritual angle and trusts in his inner weathervane, pointing hither and yon from folky pastorales to hip-hop landscapes for his trumpet.
Owl Song, his eight-selection release from late 2023 on his new home imprint Nonesuch Records (nothing to be sneezed at itself), finds the composer and player making mood music with Bill Frisell & Herlin Riley that’s vulnerable, telling, and hovering around an idea of restrained tones.
For Jazzwise earlier this year he remarked on how special Oakland is.
“I got lucky. I tell people this all the time, but they don’t understand unless they’ve been here—Oakland is a sacred ground. As soon as you put your foot down, it’s different. So yeah, I had great mentors here: ex-Black Panthers and people who had played with Basie or Pharoah, and knew Duke and Miles and Ray Charles. Herbie Lewis was at the first Jazz Camp I went to, it was crazy. My first jazz combo didn’t play some basic blues, we played Jackie McLean’s ‘Appointment in Ghana,’ then an Art Ensemble song.
“And there was Yoshi’s jazz club, and a great radio station called 91.1 KCSM, where I won tickets to see the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which was my first jazz show – only in the Bay Area could that happen. It was so amazing, they came out, and they faced east for 10 minutes, in silence. My association with music up until then was that it’s spiritual, and they confirmed it before they played one note.”
You can catch this inspiring local artist, who is presenting the West Coast premiere of his new project “Honey From A Winter’s Stone” and was recently named Artistic Director of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance (formerly known as the Monk Institute)
Watch me say it: FOR FREE. Mark the date for next month at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Treat yourself.
THE PRETENDERS AT THE MASONIC, AUGUST 13
Pretenders, the debut record by the British-American band The Pretenders on which Chrissie Hynde wrote most to all of the songs and is wearing a ‘fuck you’ red leather jacket on the cover? An album that somehow encompassed all the things happening at the time in 1980—rock, punk, new wave—and still arrived with its own agenda?
It even dropped on January 11, 1980. A new year that did sound like the future. A record had that had ‘eff you’ Reagan vibes before that sucker even made it in the White House.
Yeah. Chrissie Hynde, babe. Pretenders is still a no-skips affair. Up there with ATCQ’s Low-End Theory, PJ Harvey’s Stories from The City, Stories From The Sea, pick any Stevie Wonder album from the’ 70s, Digital Underground’s Sex Packets, and of course the first Erykah Badu joint, Baduizm.
Pause that damn Dragon show where everybody shags their cousin and then plots on how to murder them and go back to Chrissie Hynde’s masterpiece of an album.
You heard me: Listen to it on vinyl, Holmes.
That Pretenders album had all the DNA of The Police, Blondie, The Slits—plus and so much more to come in that decade. Call me a Homer… but I see and hear strands of local faves Destroy Boys and Fake Fruit as well. The blistering punk of “Tattooed Love Boys” to the solemn “Private Life,” was such a moment that Grace Jones had to cover it, in the same year. That’s a hat tip.
And of course, the MTV hit “Brass In Pocket” which is probably how they came into my view.
But let’s breathe in that album cover. As my homeboy Rick, all his close friends call him Ringo, would respond to CH in the red leather jacket?
“Fashion.”
Catch them at SF Masonic and grab tickets here.
ELKKA, PRISM OF PLEASURE (NINJA TUNE)
If you choose to write about music, prepare to swim in the deep end. Monthly, weekly, and daily.
Music releases keep appearing like poorly chosen VP nominations for old you-know-who? Orange-foolish.
That being said, it can be seen as a blessing if you love music and are constantly bombarded with new releases, causing your inbox to request vacation time more frequently.
The Cardiff-born producer and DJ Elkka, on their debut release Prism Of Pleasure, does some expected things on the 10-track release. Big-room energy pleasures through “Right Here” and the slapper-banger pulse of “Air Tight” will surely make those thuddy Berlin nights boom.
But I’m more of a believer in the tracks here that I did not expect to show up.
John Carroll Kirby, the sought-after jazz keyboardist who worked with Solange, Kali Uchis, and Okay Kaya, collaborated on two tracks with Elkka, putting forth a different side to the artist.
“Crushhh” a pool of laid-back beats and ascending chord structures gives Elkka a new backdrop and different colors to swirl around in. Probably the biggest surprise here is “Passionfruit” a nine-minute ever-building statement where breakbeats meet a keyboard and a Moog without rushing a damn thing, Elkka’s vocals leap, flower, and curve back into the track near the end, making this a heart-pumping juncture and the ultimate proof music can surprise you in the most uplifting way.
According to the press notes the album was “composed over 18 months and encapsulates Elkka’s essence as a bold, queer woman who pushes freedom and sensuality to the forefront of her work.”
My ears hear an artist willing to serve the music first, and that is gold, my friends.
Prism Of Pleasure is worth a spin for those ear-lifting revelations. Pick it up here.
NORIO MAEDA, ROCK COMMUNICATION YAGIBUSHI (WEWANTSOUNDS)
French-based label WEWANTSOUNDS is fast becoming one of my new go-to boutique deep crate digger imprints.
They caught my eye with a freakin Jaye P. Morgan deluxe LP originally released in 1976.
For those of a certain age, you’ll get it.
There used to be a cheesy-dope game show hosted by Gene Rayburn called “Match Game” that ran from 1973-82. I’m not even sure of the specifics required to win. I just know the host, and his ensuing panel of guests—second- to fourth-degree actors, Nipsey Russell included, who always talked in rhymes—did this show for a steady check, and would answer questions posed as double-entendres.
Matter of fact, I think the only other place I saw these same actors was on “The Gong Show,” talking even more smack and probably a bit high too. It’s the ’70s, mang.
Jaye P Morgan was one of the b-movie stars who did do a bunch of trash-talk to whomever needed a little love language in the afternoon. Well, as it turns out, she had chops too.
This self-titled record from ’76 was a sheeny blue-eyed pop-R&B album, with production from David Foster and LA’s best session musicians—Harvey Mason, Ed Greene, Jay Graydon, Ray Parker Jr., Tower of Power, Ernie Watts—it sounds like it could be the accompanying soundtrack to the ’80s sitcom Moonlighting—and I mean that in a good way.
WEWANTSOUNDS just reissued a fusion bomb from 1970 that reinterprets traditional Japanese folk songs into a hybrid that feels like library music pushed through that David Axelrod prism, with Ennio Morricone-inflected groove on the other side with a Japanese flair.
Rock Communication Yagibushi, arranged by Norio Maeda, swings with the best through all the jazz, funk, and rock portals, making it a sublime dinner party playlist go-to and more.
Pick it up here.
