Welcome to Under The Stars, where we talk about San Francisco music: past, present, and future. Thanks for hanging with us for the past five years. Let’s get to it.
BLISS FEST 2025, SAT 6/21 & SUN 6/22 AT PRESIDIO THEATRE
With the third annual Presidio Theatre Bliss Festival returning to San Francisco’s national park on June 21 and 22, city residents and music aficionados can take part and thrive in the glow of live music amidst the serene environs of nature on a burrito budget. Single-day tickets are $35 for adults and $10 for youth. If you choose to buy both days, you will automatically receive a package discount of $50 for adults and $15 for youth.
With a Saturday lineup featuring Martin Luther McCoy, The Seshen, and Orchestra Gold, that’s affordable. Add to that a Sunday lineup featuring Grahame Lesh & Friends, Jesús Díaz and the Fifth Chord, and Alam Khan & Eman Hashimi: Tribute to Zakir Hussain.
This is hands down the most accessible, feasible, and least stressful music festival you will find amongst the SF trees this summer. Food, beverage, and art vendors will be announced soon, and the first 100 people on both Saturday and Sunday will receive a free poster designed by Brian Blomerth.
Summer just got easier to navigate, people. Grab tickets and info here.
OUR MUSIC OUR CULTURE VOL. 2, BBE MUSIC
From a stateside view, broken beat, that UK progressive electronic music—not jungle, not house, but most definitely unapologetically Black—has flowed unassumingly through American dance music for 30 years. Maybe folks on this side had a difficult time knowing exactly what to call it, but Missy, Timbaland, OutKast, and all those progressive R&B folks knew a little something about what Phil Asher, IG Culture, Dego, the Bugzintheattic crew, Domu, and so many others had put into the ether.
Once you heard it, you can’t unhear it. Just ask the San Francisco drum and bass community, from yesteryear and today.
Our Music Our Culture Vol. 2 compilation features exclusive heavy hitters from the next wave of “bruk” producers: Domu’s Sonar’s Ghost, label boss Mark Force’s Blakai & Lady Alma Horton project, and also keyboard supremo Joe Armon-Jones, Ben Hauke, and man of the moment Don Kamares, Wipe The Needle featuring Andre Espeut, Bruk Rogers, and Mainz’s very own Soulparlor.
This intermediate temperature, which takes funky house & dubstep to hip-hop, jazz, soul, and more, repurposes those shades of black, brown, and beige into a steppy R&B concoction that remains solid proof that evolution of all kinds remains unavoidable.
Pick it up here.
ESG, SCIENTIST, MILD UNIVERSE, NAKED ROOMMATE AT CEREMONY, SEPTEMBER 12
When it was announced that a new Oakland performance venue was going in at the place where I used to shop for used records, forgot-about cameras, and size 14 hipster trainers, I was immediately intrigued.
Around mid-February and early March, the buzz ran through the Bay Area about Ceremony, a new mid-sized entertainment venue with a state-of-the-art sound system. It was once a Goodwill that closed in 2019, and before that, it was the Lux Theater from 1948 to 1988 when Oakland had a bustling cinema scene, according to The Oaklandside. Owned by the same group that runs Crybaby, Ceremony can hold 400 patrons, has a ground floor with two bars and a kitchen, a second floor with a mezzanine, a basement with the same square footage as the ground level, and a D&B Audiotechnik sound system.
But I buried the lead; now Oakland has a venue that East Bay folks can attend without worrying about catching that last BART train from SF. Seeing an edition of the ABBA ZABBA event that will feature ESG (who keep on coming back to the Bay Area to perform—thank God), along with Scientist, Mild Universe, and one of 48hills’ fave bands, Naked Roommate, all presented by (((folkYEAH!))) makes this entire picture complete. I know the show is in September, but trust me, it will sell out quickly.
Grab those tickets here.
LUNCHBOX, ‘EVOLVER’ RELEASE SHOW AT FOUR STAR THEATER, FRI/18
As each new release approaches, Oakland’s bubblegum pop band Lunchbox is doing us a favor by bringing forth their legendary lost album Evolver. As its singles roll out, we become more entranced with the album’s infusion of a ’90s psychedelic sound, blending breakbeats, guitars, synthesizers, and tape decks—somewhat reminiscent of Stereolab’s Dots and Loops.
Recorded in the couple’s 1990s Oakland basement between stays in Berlin, tour dates in London, and dreamy sojourns up the rugged Mendocino coastline, Evolver is of it’s time and then some.
According to band member Tim Brown, “Evolver is a product of a distinct time and place, or rather three places. The pre-gentrification Oakland Rockridge neighborhood, where Donna and I lived in the so-called ‘Shafterhouse’ with its basement studio, in walking-distance of crucial trumpet-friend Jeremy Goody who lived around the corner; the Mendocino coast up around the town of Gualala, whose rugged, slightly-spooky coastline was (and remains) an irresistible attraction for us (and was the source of all Donna’s photos for the cover and insert); and the city of Berlin, Germany, where we lived in the mid-late 1990s during my graduate research, indelibly stamped by post-Wall underground club culture and the crumbling beauty of a city we were haunted by and are still in love with.”
It should be noted that for the vinyl heads, Lunchbox is pressing this as a double LP for maximum fidelity and playability. This includes a vinyl-only fourth side of beats, loops, interludes, and puzzling aural ephemera, all taken directly from the original master tapes. “Tone Poem,” with its drum breaks, layered vocals, catchy hooks, and dub arrangement, ensures this record will be a keeper in anybody’s collection that will get marginal plays on the turntables for years to come.
Catch them and the vinyl copies for sale at the album release show on April 18 at The Four Star Theater.
Buy it here.
NEAL FRANCIS AT FELTON MUSIC HALL, MAY 9
“What if Thin Lizzy cut a disco record?” is the elevator pitch Neal Francis doles out for his third album in five years. It’s been four years since Outside Lands booked Neal Francis to open for the band NEIL FRANCES. Yup. They played one after another on the Sunday bill.
This Chicago-based musician, who toured Europe by 18 with Muddy Waters’ son, has always held equal space for ’70s rock and groove-centered expansions over his career, but on Return to Zero, Francis used a burgeoning interest in “Thin Lizzy” and spent many evenings on the receiving end of house music pioneer Derrick Carter’s DJ sets at Chicago’s LGBTQ+ party, Queen! The result is a record that feels more centered for the artist who dresses retro but performs irony-free.
With simmering collaborations with Brooklyn-based trio Say She She, and this balance between analog gold, heartfelt rock ‘n’ roll, and pre-punk, while maintaining a soulful vibe throughout.
It may be his best yet.
“I was going to the Queen! nights semi-regularly at one time” stated Francis in SPIN last March. “Derrick Carter is a really fun guy to talk to, a true music nerd. He’s one of those minds, like Questlove, just an encyclopedia. House music is like cycling, going from a band in a room, getting sampled by someone and getting turned into a house track, and now it’s coming back into a band in a room environment, like this circle of inspiration.”
Catch Francis at Felton Music Hall in Felton, CA, on May 9. Tickets here.
BUTCHER BROWN AT THE INDEPENDENT, APRIL 26
I can’t front. On the initial listening of “Unwind” by Richmond, Virginia’s own jazz collective Butcher Brown, with the Swiss Army knife vocal talents of Melanie Charles, I thought I had stepped in on a lost demo session that involved SF’s own Broun Fellinis recording with the infamous Rashida Clendening, aka MC Audio Angel. That breezy and loose drum and bass vibe, with lyrics that feel of the moment but still full of meaning.
“Work is done, it’s time to unwind” goes real hard in the paint, with the flute swirling, the breakbeat breaking, and Charles guiding this off-the-top concoction with the right touch of simplicity.
Butcher Brown’s new album, Letters From The Atlantic is of that seamless blend of jazz, rock, funk, R&B, soul, bossa nova and more. Anyone familiar with DJ Harrison, the sought-after collaborator, two-time Grammy-nominated musician, artist and keys player in Butcher Brown would already know this.
Charles, Yaya Bey, Nicholas Payton, and even Neal Francis (see above) add to the groove-centric release.
According to the band: “‘Unwind’ was a very impromptu, almost improvised piece in the studio that leans into drum and bass and house idioms within acid jazz. We’ve been meaning to collaborate with Melanie Charles for a minute. There’s such a level of versatility with anything she touches—her ear is crazy. She immediately knew what to do with “Unwind” and just exploded all over that track on vocals and flute. We’re blown away by the outcome of this song.”
You can pick up Letters From The Atlantic here and tickets for the show at The Independent here.
THE INCREDIBLE INFLUENCE OF ROY AYERS
Listen, my soul is still talking to me about Roy Ayers. Sometimes, the best way to assess such a significant legacy is to examine those who followed in the legend’s footsteps. To look at how Mr. Ayers’ laid the path forward.
So, before we run the voodoo down, SF, I just want to shed some light on some artists who owe their sound to the duality and vision of the late, great Roy Ayers.
Ride with me, it’s worth it.
ATTICA BLUES
So many times this trip-hop group gets slept on or forgotten, even though they were an integral part linking hip-hop with other forms of electronic music to come. It is made up of producers D’Afro (aka Charlie Dark, born Charlie Williams) and Tony Nwachukwu, who was offered a spot on Mo’Wax founder James Lavelle’s label while he was selling Japanese hip-hop records
I had picked up Attica Blues’ Organized Konfusion remixes at Streetlight in the Castro circa ’97 and would slip them into radio-friendly, rent-paying hip-hop sets at The Cellar on Friday nights when I opened for DJ Jerry Ross, just to see if folks were listening—and they were. An Attica Blues cut could change the grade level of a set from kindergarten to PhD status within five minutes and change. Taking their name from an Archie Shepp album, the band imbued breakbeats with soulful arrangements, blending eras of the time into so much more than typical, sing-the-hook, rudimentary commerce-driven hip-hop of the moment.
Roy Ayers’s idea of “push it forward” leaps from every Attica Blues release.
RECLOOSE, “CAN’T TAKE IT” (FEAT. DWELE)
Even since the urban legend hit the streets about Matthew “Recloose” Chicoine meeting techno artist Carl Craig in 1997 via a demo tape Chicoine slipped into a sandwich while working on Detroit’s Russell Street, I have always had respect for this dude’s hustle.
Then all the remixes of “Can’t Take It” dropped on Planet E, and there I was stuck in the back room of Haight Street’s Tweekin Records on a Saturday morning with $20, trying to figure out which remix I was going to cop to drop at The Top’s happy hour later that day. Even these days, you can still find the Carl Craig, the Recloose Mind Meld Mix, and the Herbert at thrift stores, record shops, and yard sales.
They all still feel very Roy Ayers-related, in terms of the way the vocals play around with the different beat patterns and melodies just how Mr. Ayers used to when he was knee-deep in his heady disco phase. “Can’t Take It,” no matter the version, is a branch off the Roy Ayerstree, and continues until this day to be a banger of a problem on the dance floor.
TITONTON DUVANTE, “AVENUES”
In 2000, Detroit and the northwest London neighborhood of Dollis Hill got together some of the most forward-thinking, drum-heavy, broken-beat techno producers on the planet to make a loose blueprint statement that pointed a light towards where dance music was headed.
Listen, when Planet E Presents 2000 Black: The Good Good dropped, every self-respecting electronic music DJ in the Bay tried to get two copies. Roy Ayers is actually on this record, doing vocals for the label anthem “2000 Black.”
But for my dot-com money at that time—and still today—it’s all about Titonton Duvante, credited by his first name here, who contributes “Avenues,” a banger combo of a tune that sneaks onto the tracklist among the work of heavyweight producers like Domu and Seji. Production-wise, “Avenues” always felt like what you could see Roy Ayers doing in the future, someplace between tech-house and broken beat, still soulful but forever pushing that heat, wiggling that wonk, putting it on that nebula.
But hey.
