Welcome to Under the Stars, where we talk about past, present, and future San Francisco music. We’ve been doing it for about five years. Thanks for hanging with us. Let us get to it.
SURF BORED AT KILOWATT, SAT/5
Southern surf rock outfit Surf Bored is local to San Francisco, fronted by TJ Mimbs, and features a lineup of Bay Area music veterans: Jeremy Lyon (King Dream, Whiskerman), Avi Vinocur (Goodnight, Texas), Chris Tye (Vandella, Suzanimal), Tracey Holland (Vandella, Old Grey Whistle Test), and Scott Padden (Bay Ledges). The crew is sure to light up this bar’s tiny, special stage in the Mission. Make sure to hold space for openers Andrew St. James and Rubber Tramp on this hyper-local lineup that’s sure to fire up your Saturday night.
Get your free ticket here.
SAN FRANCISCO JAZZ FESTIVAL, JUNE 13-15
Forget the cake-throwing tropes of EDM DJs for a second; SFJAZZ, under the direction of Terence Blanchard, is entering the music festival chat this summer with a joyful noise that represents the organization’s big umbrella of music, which slides freely through classifications. The 42nd annual San Francisco Jazz Festival, being held June 13-15 at the SFJAZZ Center, features 35 concerts spread across multiple stages and a new outdoor tent in the heart of the city’s Hayes Valley. It promises to be a summertime event with all the clicks and pops of both traditional and avant-garde tastes that hopes to speak to everyone.
This three-day bash—which includes DJs, food, wine, beer and cocktail vendors, art, vinyl merchants, and more—has a touch of contemporary while still covering all of the classic jazz lanes. I’d attend this event even if I lived in another country; that’s how impressive it is.
Need proof?
With this assortment of local artists, upstart jazz-fusion warriors, and Grammy-winning legacy artists all within three days—SF peeps, you have no excuses. It features the Bay Area’s own Salami Rose Joe Louis, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Idris Ackamoor & The Ankhestra, for starters.
Plus drummer Kassa Overall, award-winning saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin & Phoenix Quartet, Don Was & the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton, Stanley Clarke & Gonzalo Rubalcaba, the Fela on acid vibes of SML, and boogie-funk legend Patrice Rushen.
Festival officials have assured me that, “it’s been a major effort by the full staff in putting this together and more announcements about other features of the festival are still to come,” but if this is just an indication of the direction SFJAZZ is booking, we may have a new music festival title holder on our hands.
Gather more info, but don’t sleep, this could and should sell out.
You can purchase tickets today right here. Three-day and one-day passes are available.
HECTORINE, IS LOVE AN ILLUSION (TAKE A TURN RECORDS)
Hectorine’s Sarah Gagnon asks the age-old question with heavy Weyes Blood-type vibes in tow for the brooding “Is Love an Illusion,” the first single from the forthcoming Arrow of Love release. As much as the visual makes hay with cheeky midday television tropes, don’t get it twisted; the arsenal of musicians on this project, including our old buddy Joel Robinow, who added vocals and played keyboards, is beyond Bay Area impressive. Geoff Saba of East Oakland’s Itinerant Home studio played multiple instruments during the recording sessions. And then there is Gagnon’s live band: Max Shanley on lead guitar, Betsy Gran on keyboards, Geoff Saba on bass, Al Miner on drums, Tika Hall on auxiliary percussion, and Jeanne Oss on saxophone. All that talent fuels those moody soft rock waters Gagnon fits in quite swimmingly. This release from the R.E. Seraphin-related imprint, Take A Turn Records, right outta Oakland.
Pick it up here.
RIP TO THE LEGENDS: WIGGINS, STONE, AYERS, FLACK
When you see Cypress Hill in suits, performing “Hits From The Bong” with a 17-piece orchestra, it’s a personal math-check moment. At least for me. Damn, I’m old.
This achievement, beyond great, a slight WTF with a side of holy shit, made significant impact when it was filmed for Netflix’s weirdly cute Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney. The sight of my 84-year-young Latina Auntie Joan Baez rocking out to the performance is just straight-up gangster. This, after she put the show to a grinding halt with a searing critique of American leadership, stating that our democracy is going up in flames due to incompetent billionaires running the country.
Joan freaking Baez, Jack. Never scared.
This has not been my only recent reminder of mortality. The recent barrage of culture-making and breaking artists passing on… Dwayne Wiggins, a founding member of Oakland’s landmark group, Tony! Toni! Toné!. Angie Stone, the Grammy-nominated R&B singer, killed in a car crash. Jazz titan Roy Ayers and the genius genre-melder of R&B, jazz, folk, and pop: Roberta Flack. These artists seemed to pass within a handful of days, but their legacies, some larger than others, speak to the wealth of creativity they leave behind.
As Wiggins spoke from the hereafter, via a quote the NYT ran in his obituary capturing the creative vision he kept within his Oakland-born heart: “I grew up across the street from DeFremery Park, where Sly Stone used to play and the Black Panthers would hold rallies. Today, you have 20 million rappers in one city; back then, you had 20 million musicians, bands all over the place.”
If you read this column, you know I’m a music junkie. Without music, I don’t even know if I exist, and that is the 100 percent raw truth. So to see these people pass—
My boss Marke B. posted on X about David Harness playing a certain Angie Stone cut during his sets that would blow down the entire dance floor.
A former DJ crew I was in, I believe it was called The Mag 7, dedicated a party in Dolores Park to Roy Ayers on 7/7/07, and it was the most humane thing I’ve witnessed in San Francisco to date.
And man, I was raised on Roberta Flack’s music. In the house, from the parents record collection, to the AM and FM radio, to hearing Donny Hathaway and Luther Vandross (Flack protégés), and of course, the hip-hop generation dapping her catalog up with samples galore—that still ride through today to Madlib and Mndsgn. That light still shines bright.
So I say, sail on titans, sail on…
DJ YUKA YU AT THE ASIAN ART MUSEUM, THU/3
When you can track a local artist and see them gain momentum, with appearances in different venues over time, you get to believing that this diverse and wonderful city is rising once again.
DJ Yuka Yu, fresh off her Noise Pop opening ceremonies designation (she opened for DāM-FunK at the Academy of Sciences), will play the opening party for father of Taiwanese video art Yuan Goang-Ming’s Everyday War exhibit at the Asian Art Museum. Expect photo ops, cocktails, great musical selections, and a rare opportunity to hear the artist speak about his exhibition.
More info here.
LOS MIRLOS AT GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL, APRIL 15
When professionals who play in a certain vein of music—in this case Oakland’s own Combo Tezeta (who we interviewed just a bit ago) and psychedelic cumbia—give you advice on whom to see live to conduct your own research on their dazzling genre you better listen. Combo Tezeta was quite strident with their admiration of Los Mirlos: “They’re the OGs of OGs of cumbia amazónica or selvática, which is a more jungle-inflected style, in contrast to the urban styles of the other progenitors.”
Nuff said. Grab your tickets here and go!
LOS BITCHOS AT GAMH, JULY 23
See them live, catch them via wax, or maybe even stream them; it makes no difference.
Los Bitchos, whose namesake sounds like the ruffians your parents warned you not to hang out with, are always just moments away from catching wreck.
Their debut Let The Festivities Begin! was a kick-down-the-door situation, and that sucker flew off the hinges.
Talkie, Talkie, their follow-up released last summer, was a bit more recontextualized sophomore release.
Band members Serra Petale (guitar), Agustina Ruiz (keytar), Josefine Jonsson (bass), and Nic Crawshaw (drums) took all that ‘70s Anatolian rock, retro-futuristic blends of Peruvian chicha, Argentine cumbia, Turkish psych, and surf guitars and squeezed it through a prism of dancefloor hedonism, extending the groove and making the guitars rock with you instead of earlier fascinations of letting it rip.
This should prove to be a must-see summertime show.
Grab them tix fool!
