Hey, 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.
But hey, we’ve been doing this for five years, talking about San Francisco music: past, present, and future. Thanks for the hang… We know… It’s complicated….out there. Spend some time with us.
First things first, we’re quite stoked for the 42nd annual San Francisco Jazz Festival happening this weekend at the SFJAZZ Center, surprised by a film being shot at The Makeout Room in the Mission by Olivia Wilde starring her and Seth Rogan, and most certainly ready to welcome back Beauty Bar.
ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD, “WHAT’S IN MY BAG?” (AMOEBA RECORDS)
It’s been a minute since we’ve checked in with the always entertaining and educational video clips put out by Amoeba. This particular “What’s In My Bag” segment acts like the 24-minute TED Talk you actually need. It’s from Ali Shaheed Muhammad, esteemed hip-hop royalty, record producer, DJ, bass guitarist, and historian, best known as a member of A Tribe Called Quest.
While rockin’ a pretty sweet Jazz Is Dead sweatshirt, he gives record junkies, newbies, and lovers of freaky folk music a full circle segment in this compelling series. Stories about Erykah Badu, Flora Purim, Meshell Ndegeocello, his love of for his instrument, the bass, old obscure disco records, the creation of D’Angelo’s hit “Brown Sugar,” moments he spent with the late B.B. King, his love of the German experimental rock band CAN, Weather Report, and so many other insights will make your record IQ grow by 50 points in half an hour. Christmas arrived early, crate diggers, run the clip.
BRAILLE, “GOBLIN BOOTY” (HYPERCOLOUR)
This right here is what the bro-step cats will never get: minimal wonk, effusive swing, a bouncy bass line that doesn’t wear out its welcome, and a masterful touch with the synth-y accoutrement. That’s what’s up, and what can drive a UKG track into the heights of being a summer classic. This track by Braille samples an OG Ghostbusters movie for vocals, waiting until we have just over a minute left on the track before supplying that killer wonk and crushing bass bins to take us all home. YO! The Brooklyn-based Praveen Sharma gives a déjà vu window into a past, dub-step-frenzied era, with contemporary production touches. Unlike the ’89 Ghostbusters II quote “You mean this stuff actually feeds on bad vibes?,” “Goblin Booty”‘s mission is to make y’all wobble.
Get it here.
BEN LAMAR GAY, “JOHN, JOHN HENRY”, YOWZERS (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM)
“Oh, he’s tapped in.” That’s the response I got from my buddy Joshua Sirotiak, a veteran of the Extra Action Marching Band who now lives in Sacramento. We’d just exited the Nubya Garcia show at The Chapel a couple of months ago, and I was trying to pick his brain about his experience playing for Ben LaMar Gay. Josh was his sousaphone-tuba player up until 2018. I caught the Chicago-born artist—a composer, improviser, instrumentalist, and musical folklorist, he does everything—at New York City’s Winter Jazzfest, at Nublu on Avenue C in the East Village on a frigid Thursday night. Gay, along with Makaya McCraven, the Chicago-based drummer, composer, and producer, and UK musician Theon Cross—a tuba player who crafts bass lines reserved for drill, drum, and bass, as well as other forms of low-end music—silenced a sold-out crowd of aficionados throughout most of the set.
It was the intro that, for a couple of minutes, delivered boggy marshland outdoor topography. Gay kicked off the performance with vocalizations, in and out of a tambourine, McCraven brushing wind chimes, and Cross hitting those low notes as if bullfrogs were communicating across the swampy soundscape.
Track “John, John Henry” from his new Yowzers album saw Gay connect to those ancestors. With a keep-it-pushin’ swing tempo and electronic clicks and blips in the sonic workings, a chorus of “the hammer will be the death of me” floats out amidst the vocal work here, blowing in the breeze by Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu. It’s BLG, yes indeed, harnessing and accessing spirits.
Pick it up here.
gyrofield, SUSPENSION OF BELIEF (KAPSELA)
Always been a believer that drum and bass can be made of and into so many varying degrees of movement; all you need is imagination. gyrofield, a moniker for 22-year-old Utrecht-via-Hong-Kong producer Kiana Li, whose EPs have passed through my inbox several times previously. Li’s legit. She’s been dropping albums and EPs since 2018, from self-released productions to projects on Metalheadz, XL Recordings, and FABRICLIVE. Now on Objekt’s label Kapsela, Li is dialing up the weird, hazy, bizarre concoctions that make drum ‘n’ bass the ultimate melting pot; abstract producers push past that same old Amen break for snare-heavy edits.
With an emphasis on drill-adjacent punch, framing what they call “a set of deeper, shapeshifting tracks, cross-pollinating ideas from house, free jazz, and techno,” Suspension of Belief is a make-it-on-the-fly, throw-all-the-sacred-rules-out-the-window redressing of drum ‘n’ bass that’s just abstract enough to keep this new fascination with the bass-grumble genre from the masses on the proper track, emphasizing creativity over commercialization. This slaps.
Grab it up, here.
rRoxymore,‘MOODIFIED’, JUGGLING DUALITIES (!K7 RECORDS)
Always creating sounds and moods that quietly fly, rRoxymore is about to return with a new album on a new imprint. Juggling Dualities, which indirectly points to the trailblazing creative spirit that this French producer has made her name on, going her own way. That squelchy techno-dub mixture on the single “Moodified” is a clever reminder of what rRoxymore does best.
Grab it up here.
THE BLACKBYRDS, CITY LIFE, (CRAFT RECORDING/JAZZ DISPENSARY)
Ask any jazz-funk head: what record is essential to the genre? Most times, you will get 1975’s City Life from legendary ensemble The Blackbyrds as a first answer. So it’s a big deal, a major one, to see the 50th anniversary edition of such record collector library staple getting the 180-gram vinyl press and gatefold jacket treatment in celebration from Jazz Dispensary and Craft Recordings.
Donald Byrd, a landmark trumpet player, vocalist, and big-picture thinker, was a professor at Howard University’s music department in the early ’70s. There, he encouraged several of his students to form their group as a real-world lesson in the music industry. Inspired by the title of their professor’s hugely popular debut, the younger lions who saw a different lane in jazz music called themselves The Blackbyrds.
Original drummer Keith Killgo has stated in the press over the years that the band’s trademark tune, “Rock Creek Park,” was named for an actual green space in Washington, DC. “It’s where you take your girlfriend with a bottle of wine. After dark, the whole scene changes: the bugs, the sounds, the creatures that crawl around. For me, it was more fun. You could be kind of spooky. Yeah, lots of wonderful things happen after dark,” he told the Washingtonian a couple of years back. “In high school, that was one of the best spots to go. Also, it was sometimes just a place to get away from everything and think, meditate, and look at the stars.”
I imagine several folks in the Bay Area would relate that to Dolores Park in The Mission. Stuff has happened, and still goes down after dark. For sure.
I remember that when I was a kid, “Happy Music” was one of the first 45s I ever bought.
City Life, meanwhile, quickly became The Blackbyrds’ best-selling album, and over the years, it’s continued to be a favorite of crate-diggers, partly due to the degree of artistry attached to the project. Saxophonists Gary Bartz and Ernie Watts, vocalist Patrice Rushen, trombonist George Bohanon, harmonica player Tommy Morgan, and singer Merry Clayton (known best for her work on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”) lent her magic to “Rock Creek Park”; these are players, people.
Grab the celebratory vinyl here.
DEAD & COMPANY
59 years in the making, Dead & Company will officially perform live in Golden Gate Park August 1-3 to celebrate 60 years of The Grateful Dead’s music. Opening sets from Billy Strings (August 1), Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson (August 2), and Trey Anastasio Band (August 3) are in tow.
Before the Las Vegas Sphere edition of Dead & Co appeared, the band—which is formed by members of the original Dead, in case you needed the background info—supposedly wrapped it up three nights of farewell at Oracle Park in July 2023. It was estimated that the event pumped about $31 million into the local economy, with 120,000 fans celebrating with the band over three days.
Now, with the event taking place in Golden Gate Park (the hottest venue in SF), three-day general admission tickets starting at $635 ($556 + $79 fees) and three-day VIP tickets starting at $1,725 sold out, and an estimated crowd set to double the number heads in 2023 at the house of splash hits (Giants are doing good this year), the band, the city, hotels, vendors, burrito shops, everybody should… benefit from this celebration.
Tickets are sold out, but you can sign up for the waitlist here.
