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.
On a hot day, nothing tastes better than a cold beer from a Mission Taqueria, which will gladly pour that refreshment into a to-go cup for your afternoon journey around the block.
Keep it moovin….
NOISE POP SPLASH: THUNDERCAT IN ROBIN WILLIAMS MEADOW, OCTOBER 20
The vibes at a DaM-FunK performance can be so uplifting and real that many times after the show you are left longing for just a touch more of that showmanship zeal the next day.
Well, Noise Pop has a treat for you.
Exactly one day after DaM-FunK is scheduled to make things oh so wet and funky at Noise Pop’s SPLASH event at The Phoenix Hotel, the famed concert promoter will be throwing yet another event, this one for free, in what seems to be the San Francisco live music mecca these days, Golden Gate Park.
It’s a free all-ages outdoor daytime concert on Sunday, October 20, 12:30pm-6pm, featuring the stellar bass virtuoso Thundercat, modern soul innovator Lee Fields, and the Bay Area’s own seven-piece band Combo Tezeta, will take place at Robin Williams Meadow. The event will serve as a grand finale to the 2024 “Summer of Music” program that, in total, according to promoters, provided numerous free concerts in partnership with countless small businesses across three months while providing paid gigs to thousands of Bay-Area musicians.
But listen: You can hear local tripsters Combo Tezeta, a 48hills noted act which presents a loose and jam-oriented blend of instrumental cumbias, chicha, and música tropical inspired by the psychedelic late ’60s and early ’70s Peruvian music—they bang on fer days—open for Grammy-winning arranger, jazz, funk, soul/fusion authority Thundercat.
Do you need any more info than where do I sign up?
You can RSVP and get more details here..
LOS BITCHOS, TALKIE TALKIE (CITY SLANG)
Bands that are super self-aware rarely make the same record twice. It’s the truth. And that is the well-needed pivot that the ass-kicking, no-snitching, prismatic, and summertime-emphatic outfit Los Bitchos has concocted with their sophomore release Talkie Talkie.
The London-based quartet featuring Serra Petale (guitar), Augustina Ruiz (keytar), Josefine Jonsson (bass), and Nic Crawshaw (drums) takes the party-centric vibe of their debut, Let The Festivities Begin! from 2022 and reduces the calamity into a get-down sauce.
No, I’m serious. Talkie Talkie is for my finger-gun shooters, my dancefloor killers.
They’ve taken what they do—reinterpreting ‘70s Anatolian rock, retro-futuristic blends of Peruvian chicha, Argentine cumbia, Turkish psych, and surf guitars—and flattened out the bawdy edges.
It’s a sneaky link, a master-type move.
Petale is still money—she’s so money—with the melodic lead guitar riffs that are smooth, chompy, sing-songy, and still bad-ass when needed. It’s important when you are fronting a band that strictly plays instrumentals. True to form, the London four-top is going to throw a lot of linguine at the wall—but most of it sticks quite nicely.
The band still delivers their signature cumbia, as evidenced by the steadfast and sturdy “1k!”, and continues with the at-attention stompers such as “Kiki, You Complete Me.” However, the second half of this record—and that’s what works here—feels like a vinyl record, seeing the band capitalizing on moments and extending the vibe, isolating the groove, presenting a more focused aesthetic this time around.
There is a cool revelation of ambient pleasure on “It’s About Time,” followed up with the ’80s James Bond feel (more Pierce Brosnan than Roger Moore) on the party rock ripper “Naughty Little Clove.”
Listen, I’m biased. When they played The Chapel a couple of years ago, with lead guitarist Serra Petale dressed in wonderful and amusing Daria cartoon character shorts, giving karate kicks and turnt Eddie Van Halen face, they rocked that venue so hard, a full-on sold-out party took over from the dancefloor to the rafters, that started to sweat.
So with that memory on the brain, hearing the specific new territory this band has chosen?
It’s… Los Bitchos for the win… again.
Pick it up, here.
DJ ANDY SMITH PRESENTS REACH UP, DISCO WONDERLAND VOL. 3 (BBE RECORDS)
Let’s uhh let it rip for a second. Music compilations fall out of the sky with normality. Like rain, hail, snow, or 100 million dollar podcasts for football players close to a certain performer with the initials of TS, and so on. Maybe we should pay more attention to them, especially when one of them is helmed by the explorer of vinyl and the provider of samples and breaks for the first two Portishead albums who also played as the band’s international tour DJ.
Thass right: DJ Andy Smith knows some things… So when you see a Bay Area 2017 hit from Trailer Limon pop up on Andy Smith’s newly curated compilation, Reach Up – Disco Wonderland Volume 3, it puts many things into a larger context of positivity. Smith keeps our local artist in good company too. We have selections from Rena Scott, Platinum City, and Buscrates to name just a couple, but once again, it’s Andy Smith adding the excellent edits and remixes, maintaining that elevated space. He’s been sourcing and mixing tracks from across eras and genres since the late ’90s; that know-how, connecting funk to flow, disco to deep soul, trip-hop to proto-house—it’s a skill set that ages exponentially, similar to wisdom. Put your ears on his dancefloor and pre-order here.
AMELIA RAY AT THE BACK ROOM SEPTEMBER 29
A San Francisco native, writer, composer, and performer, Amelia Ray will make you feel something in performance. Albeit a chuckle—she’s a character—or a heartstring pull that comes out of the blue. According to her site, “Ray’s 31-year career has spanned the fields of music, literature, performance art, film, and humanitarianism,” but hey, that’s what storytellers of the highest regard do: relate experiences that connect us all.
The Bay Area soul-rock singer-songwriter will be performing, she’s been overseas for a while, back in The Bay for two separate dates that will leave you at least intrigued and at most overjoyed. I don’t want to take anything away from the numerous awards and accolades she’s piled up—selected to appear at the 2024 National Women’s Music Festival among so many others. But at the base—Amelia Ray’s superpower is that ability to improve understanding and communication between people from various backgrounds. Make time and space to see this one-of-a-kind performer dazzle the home crowd.
Catch Amelia Ray at The Lost Church In Santa Rosa (with Amie Penwell) Feri/20 and at The Back Room in Berkeley on September 29.
HITS, WORLD OF DIRT (PAISLEY SHIRT RECORDS)
Coming from the Paisley Shirt Records imprint with the tagline “San Francisco label that likes lo-fi pop, experimental outsider music, and post-punk sounds” arrives Hits. An Oakland noise-fuzzed in-betweener indie band that uses experimentation, chaos, and hovering vocals to make an arty type of rock that feels still in the process of becoming. When you construct these types of disinterested arrangements—with minimal pandemonium baked into the arrangement—that type of uncertainty reads as honest.
Pick it up here.
HONEY DIJON-DJ-KICKS MIX (!K7 RECORDS)
In the past half-decade, the DJ-Kicks Mix session has finally come to reflect not just the people who make the music but also some of the foundational members of this dance music community who helped turn it into a global billion-dollar-making franchise.
We’re talking Kerri Chandler, Peggy Gou, Theo Parrish, and now Honey Dijon.
A long time comin’ y’all.
As announced on Instagram recently, ’cause that’s where folks announce all the things, Honey Dijon will be helming the new mix coming in hot on October 18.
“This is a sonic journey of all my musical influences from the bump of Chicago to the tribal sounds of New York, the atmospheric vibes of Detroit, and the deep sounds of the UK underground. Music without borders full of dancefloor bliss,” according to !K7 Records’ Instagram page from the vaulted DJ and producer.
That global recognition “as a de facto ambassador for world dancefloors” comes from hardscrabble beginnings that included early years in her native Chicago hanging out with buddies Derrick Carter and Mark Farina. Eager to start DJing, she was so broke she had to go to friends’ houses to record mixes. Moves to DC and New York took her nearer to her goal. Getting breaks via early supporters Tedd Patterson and Danny Tenaglia, taking any gig she could get, ‘I DJed weddings, I DJed opening restaurants, I DJed fashion events, I DJed anything, just learning how to be a DJ.’
That allowed her to immerse that ear into records, labels, and releases. A self-proclaimed “house music nerd” Honey Dijon was schooled by some of the Windy City’s masters and carries that knowledge from the past into the future.
“The dancefloor to me is a sacred space,’ she explains. ‘I feel like I’m a facilitator of spirit through sound. Dancefloors are healing spaces, they’re sexual spaces, they’re joyful spaces, they’re liberating spaces. They’re places for people to discover who they are, they’re places to leave behind your worries, they’re places to celebrate with your friends, to dance, to get laid, to have fun. The dancefloor is a reflection of life and I take it very seriously.”
Pre-order here.
