So we have it on record from festival organizers that the Mill Valley Music Festival welcomed over 8,000 attendees from across the Bay Area (and beyond) for a vibrant weekend celebration.” Now that’s about 2,000 short of last year’s totals, but hey, as least youngsters and newbies had the opportunity to see Nile Rodgers & Chic one time in their lives.
According to Rodgers, the idea to form Chic came about after he and the late co-founder of the group Bernard Edwards, a bass-playing maestro, witnessed what one can assume was a mystical performance by Roxy Music, circa 1974, in a castle overseas. I believe they were on ‘shrooms or acid or something, but the combination of images and music struck a chord with the musicians. Beginning with that unique experience, they were motivated to form some type of Black version of this sleekness.
San Francisco, can you imagine seeing Chic or Roxy Music in a castle in 2025?
Probably not, because if they came to town this summer, Chic—and they’d probably be swapped either the Eagles or Styx in the first place—would get stuck in Golden Gate Park with every other band.
The new SF Mayor has Dirtybird playing downtown for free at the Embarcadero on June 14, which is cool. But it ensures that the area will resemble a block-long loaf of spongy-bouncy Wonder Bread. Where is the risk, the fun, the diversity?
Want a wide variety of electronic music artists with a connection to The Bay? Here are some names: Mike Bee (owner of Vinyl Dreams), Infinite Jess (booked by Outside Lands, BTW), Nina Sol, Sharon Buck, UFO!, Bored Lord, Yuka Yu, DJ R3M(runs Dystopia drum and bass night in Oakland). Maybe hit up those kids from SMARTBOMB in Oakland? They were a hit when they played SFJAZZ earlier this year with Mophono and Citizen Ten of Change the Beat.
Smellin’ what I’m cookin’?
Look at any local party lineup and you will find DJs who look like and represent what the ENTIRE Bay Area looks like, Mayor Lurie.
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Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Reach out beyond your comfort zone. Book some folks from underrepresented communities in the Bay. Just saying, that is the secret sauce to what makes the Bay pop. Or, for that matter, read my weekly column. I tend to mention local music. Just saying.
Word on the street is that this year’s Sunset Campout, taking place June 20 through 23 in Belden as usual, featuring Dee Diggs, Anthony Naples, Doc Martin, Louiv, Galen, Solar, DJ Kerry, Anthony Mansfield, Sepehr, and Lance DeSardi, just may be the last one due to ratcheting costs.
Listen, I think we all get it. Things are expensive for [fill in the blank] reasons. And while it’s nice to have DJs playing around the city in public spaces, let’s pull the Band-Aid off. It’s been a very, very, very, very vanilla version of the real thing—meaning, finding the pristine site, sharing it with a specific community for 48-72 hours, having a mindful group of DJs ramp things up, make it peak go-time, and then setting you down with care and love, means so much more these days.
Not a Swiss Army knife type approach. I dunno.
We will talk about Dead & Company in Golden Gate Park, August 1-3, another time.
And with that…
Welcome to Under The Stars, babe. A quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, strong ass opinions this week, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years… Spend some time with us…
TINY DESK ON THE ROAD: RUBY IBARRA AT LAGUNITAS BREWING COMPANY, JUNE 13
Bigtime, legit, and heavyweight, that’s the Bay Area’s emcee-director-spoken-word-artist Ruby Ibarra. We wrote this about her a couple of years ago, and now we must add, she’s the winner of NPR’s 2025 Tiny Desk contest for her track “Bakunawa,” featuring guest artists Ouida, Han Han, and June Millington of the pioneering all-female rock band Fanny.
Ibarra, who was raised in San Lorenzo, spits gold bars in Tagalog, Waray, and English—a multilingualism that speaks to her cultural heritage as an immigrant from the Philippines. She has indeed become an invaluable rap artist, while also making strides in television and films and touring extensively across the United States and the Philippines, including to universities, empowerment conferences, and music venues. However, it is her involvement in the Pinays Rising scholarship program, which she co-founded in 2018, that sets her apart as not only a respected figure in the Bay Area, but also as an advocate using her platform to uplift others.
Ibarra will headline NPR’s Tiny Desk on the Road tour with a June 13 show at Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma.
More info here.
MOURNING [A] BLKSTAR, FLOWERS FOR THE LIVING (DON GIOVANNI RECORDS)
Okay. Mourning [A] BLKstar makes the type of Black records I love.
There is an ever-changing chessboard of influences, genres, textures, and artistic deep dives that keeps everyone at bay here. It whispers, “Pay attention, people; you may miss something,” which is essentially the ongoing subtext of their albums. By the way, for the sake of clarification, I am African American. Yep, I’m Black. Blackety-Black. Like the soul of America in 2025. (Yep. We’re going there.) And I’ll be the first to tell you in your face: I fuggin’ hate it, absolutely detest the action of anyone thinking they have any idea of the type of music I listen to. That juvenile “boxing in” is just the thing you will hear reflected on a Mourning [A] BLKstar album. That much I do know about this elevated, predominantly Black band from Cleveland.
Sorting through photos of this stirring and charming collective, you get a sense of community. There’s a pattern of repetition, too. “We can heal ourselves, from what we’ve been through” on “Legacy to Begin” soothes like a funk-light hymn that practices self-care with horn solos, handclaps, and wood blocks, as if we were gathering around the fire-circle outdoors, warming our bodies for a long journey ahead. Into the cold unknown.
Through these 10 tracks, which drag through through the blues, trippy rock, fuzzed fusion, seasoned funk—meaning this ain’t for dancing, son—you get these vignettes of message, idea, and vibe. Such a fearless band; their message is the truth, so the language, meaning whatever genre gets it across, is just an avenue towards it. These are flowers apt for the times we are living in.
Grab it here.
DESTROY BOYS AT CBGB FESTIVAL, SEPTEMBER 27
Let’s keep it a hundred. Ordinarily, I would look at this CBGB Festival, a New York City collaboration with promoter The Bowery Presents, as some type of high-tech corporate cash grab trying to capitalize on the legacy of the city’s underground rock and roll, punk, post-punk, and all the other climates at its most grimy zenith. This gestation of attitude, that anything goes, a little bit of this and a touch of that ethos, took place as New York in the late 1970s went to rot because nobody wanted to mind the store.
CBGB has a lineup loaded with old-school, first-generation punks and some of their modern-day progeny. Sex Pistols and Smiths, both with abbreviated line-ups. Jack White and Iggy Pop will headline, but then you look at what they are calling the “noisy newbies,” and you see the Linda Lindas, which is cute. Love that band (but not sure they would last five seconds on the OG CBGB’s stage.)
But then I see Destroy Boys listed, and I’m so stoked. This band from Sacramento with strong Bay Area connections, this unit that describes itself as “what would happen if Blondie fell into a Misfits recording session?” would fuggin thrive on that stage of yesteryear. Alexia Roditis and Violet Mayugba don’t mess around. The high-octane percussion accents from drummer Narsai Malik, the band’s tight choruses and hooks? All of that would play.
I still think this event is some sort of corporate cash-in, but I’m very excited to see Destroy Boys, who are also playing Stern Grove and Outside Lands this summer, get their proper national respect. And I gotta add it’s been a real long time since I’ve seen a band care so much for their audience. Always checking in to make sure the mosh pit isn’t too hectic. This band gives more than a shit, they care, they get it, they know they are an inspiration to so many kids coming up in the music scene. It’s so nice to witness that true love of service. But don’t get it twisted; soft they are not.
More info here.
MARK DE CLIVE-LOWE, PAST PRESENT (TONE POEMS ACROSS TIME) (IMPRESSIVE COLLECTIVE / BBE MUSIC)
These two records, released back-to-back in the latter part of April, are some of the most compelling, interesting, and respectful albums I’ve come across in a while that deal with… death. One tries and succeeds in going over emotions and reflections about a parent he was at odds with, but through traveling in his father’s footsteps in Japan, he comes to a sense of peace and growth. Mark de-Clive Lowe churns out that ambient-directed album, off-brand for the super-hyper DJ, arranger, and keyboardist who can never stop moving.
At the suggestion of a friend (musician, producer, and visionary Carlos Niño, our contemporary Rick Rubin), Lowe slows down. Blends up programming with live performances on devices like the ARP 2600, Fender Rhodes, and around 20 other synthesizers and instruments from The Breath in Los Angeles, and creates redemption through wavy instrumental soundscapes that act as a portal to letting go.
It’s some of the deepest music Lowe has made in his career, very Les McCann, Layers-esque if you will.
Soulful and full of warmth.
Buy it here.
EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY, WEIRDO(BROWNSWOOD RECORDINGS)
Here’s the second ode to the Great Unknown. Emma-Jean Thackray, the West Yorkshire-born bandleader who can play just about every instrument under the sun, has made a masterpiece, as far as her young career goes, with Weirdo.
It was originally conceived as a strategy to speak about her struggles with mental health (Thackray is autistic and has ADHD)—and then her partner of 12 years passed away in early 2023.
So, across 19 songs just under one hour, we are delivered a triumph of a record that drives directly through the fog of depression, with fusion George Duke-esque arrangements, fussy rock and R&B joints that plow at the rapidity of nervous synapses, and even a gospel-tinged upbeat movement of thankfulness at the very end. It’s at times complicated, intricate, funny, so sad, and redemptive—but the music is the stuff of masters, which is even more compelling because the little fucker performed, recorded, mixed, produced, and arranged it entirely in her South London flat. Weirdo? More like, prodigy.
Grab it here.
